Dear Hollywood

Dear Hollywood:

First, let me say that the last few years - heck, the last fifteen years - have been magical for me.  Really.  I think it started with 'The Fellowship of the Ring,' one of my favorite books, and one that I certainly never expected to see on the big screen.  I mean, how crazy is it that I got to see the Balrog and Rivendell and... just... everything?  So I thank you for that.  Then there was Spider-Man, the Raimi version.  Excellent, and true to the story.  Then there was Watchmen, another movie I never thought could be done in live-action.  But you did it, Hollywood.  And it was superb.  Then there were the X-Men, and Iron Man, and the Hulk and the Avengers, all Marvel properties, which I don't begrudge you.  Honestly, DC and Warner Bros. have yet to get it together for a large franchise.  Harry Potter seven or eight times, Narnia, another go at Tolkien.  There was Hellboy - twice - and Constantine and Ghost Rider and The Dark Knight and Captain America and Wolverine.  Superman two or three times.  And, yes, I'll even count Green Lantern.  You discovered superheroes at last, Hollywood, and jumped in with both feet.  The kid in me who always longed to see his comic-book heroes come to life has lived to see the day.  Which makes what I'm about to say a little difficult.

It's got to stop.

I say this as a lifelong comic collector.  I have 39 long boxes of comics- conservatively figure 10,000 issues - bought with my own money the hard way, once a week on Wednesday, every Wednesday, for decades.  The comic store guys call me 'sir.'  I know the material, I love the material, I love the movies, even the bad ones.  I'm a fan.  I'm the guy you most want in your corner, but I can't be, not any longer.  Hollywood, you need to quit it with the superhero movies.  The concept has run its course, it's not novel, it's not exciting, it's not anything I want to see.

Do you remember when you were a kid, Hollywood, maybe fourteen, and you knew your way around town and you had your own money?  You could make your own decisions and not have to answer to anyone.  Not until you got home, anyway.  And that one time you decided what you really wanted to spend your lawnmowing money on was ice cream? Not a cone from the truck, but a half gallon from the grocery store.  And you and your friend each bought half a gallon, and plastic spoons, and you went to the park and ate as much ice cream as you thought you wanted. When you were eating, it was great, wasn't it?  But afterwards... oh, afterwards you realized that the reason your mother never let you eat an entire half gallon of ice cream was that it was a terrible idea.

You're eating too much ice cream right now, Hollywood.  You're releasing too many superhero movies, and they're all starting to look the same. What began as a cause slowly became a business and now is becoming a racket.* Can't you see you're poisoning the well?
     I get it, guys my age with my kind of life experiences run you now, Hollywood, and they want to see what I wanted to see.  But it's not the only thing I wanted to see.  Twenty years ago superhero movies were tough to sell and almost impossible to make, I get it, and now that technology has advanced you can put on the screen what you never could before.  The challenge is to do that with new properties instead of retreading ideas and characters and stories that are seventy-plus years old.  I thought I wanted to see my comic books up on the big screen, but it turns out I liked them better when they were on the page.

So, that's it, Hollywood.  We're breaking up, you and I.  No more superhero movies.  I'm done.  When you get a fresh idea that doesn't involve mining someone else's work, give me a call.  I won't change my number, but I'm not going to hold my breath either.

Sincerely,
Don Hartshorn 


* thank you Eric Hoffer

At The Pearly Gates

   The huge bouncer glanced up from his clipboard and nodded at me. I shuffled forward, next in line.
   "Yeah.. uh.. my name's Don..."
   "I know who you are," the bouncer said, glowering at me. He still flipped through pages on his clipboard, sheet after sheet after sheet, it seemed like a ream of paper even though it looked like there was only one page.
   "So you're Saint Peter?" I asked.
   The bouncer nodded.
   "But... I thought... I mean... you're black."
   St. Peter stopped flipping pages, and stared over his reading glasses at me. "Is that a problem?"
   "Oh, no, no. God, no!" I said. "It's just.. I thought you were Middle Eastern."
   "You mean Jewish?" Saint Peter asked. "Is that a problem?"
   I ran my finger along the velvet rope and looked past him to the white, luminous gates. Still closed.
   "You gotta understand," I said. "This is not at all what I thought it would be. Waiting in line forever, the limos, the kleig lights, the velvet rope. Who knew the gates to Heaven looked like one of those douchebaggy Hollywood clubs down on Sunset?"
   Saint Peter pushed his glasses up on his nose. "So your eternal reward looks... what did you say? douchebaggy?"
   "I'm just digging myself deeper and deeper here, aren't I?" I said with a nervous laugh. "I was expecting..."
   "Clouds? Harps? A wise old white man with a white beard, a big tome, a quill pen with a really long plume?" Saint Peter grew more agitated with each word. "Let me ask you something, smart guy, do you eat the same thing every day?"
   He stared at me, his eyes reflecting infinity, and I knew he expected an answer.
   "N... no," I said. "I like to mix it up. Mexican, Chinese, good old home cooking."
   "So what makes you think I want to see cherubs and dazzling golden light all the time?" Saint Peter said. "I've been here near on two thousand years, maybe I'm tired of harp music, maybe I think I'll puke if I see another puffy cloud. Maybe I want to be a black guy every once in a while."
   I held my hands up, surrendering. "Okay, okay, sorry. I'll keep a more open mind."
   Saint Peter cleared his throat and regained his composure. "I happen to like Hollywood. Reminds me of Rome under Nero. Before the fire, of course."
   "So..." I said, pointing at the clipboard, "I don't want to be a pest, but..."
   He flipped a few more pages on his eternal clipboard, scanning them intently. "Well, I don't see anything too egregious. You were mostly good, and the bad stuff you did wasn't all that bad, compared to some people I see. Looks like you're... oh..."
   Ready to step across the velvet rope I paused. His 'oh' didn't sound like a pleased 'oh,' but more like a troubled 'oh.'
   "Is there some sort of problem?" I asked.
   "Kind of," Saint Peter said. "It says here you kept a blog?"

Two-Fisted Tales

Where did Steve McQueen go?
   Before you get all smarty and tell me he died quite a while back, I know that. I mean in a metaphorical sense, where did Steve McQueen go? A tough guy, who thought with his fists and led with his iron chin. A man's man, who could ride a horse, race a motorcycle, beat up the bad guy and still win the dame at the end of the day. A guy who could do stuff, who knew how to fix a car, or build a house, or take justice into his own two hands and see it delivered. What actor today knows how to do any of that stuff?
   Seriously, look at all the headliners. Pretty boys, who couldn't find their way out of a paper bag if their agent wasn't around to tell them how. They didn't have lives before they became actors, their lives are as actors, so they don't know how to do anything else. If you put them on a deserted island they'd starve to death or die of exposure because they don't know how to take care of themselves. It's just embarrassing, I tell you, having our country's major cultural contribution - films - riding on the mincing posturing of sissy actors. For God's sake, the toughest guys in American films aren't even American, they're Australian putting on a convincing accent. Jeez.
   Hollywood producers, put down your mirrors of cocaine and listen to me. No more emaciated metrosexuals, if you have a man's role, you get a real man to play it. Like in the old days. When Rock Hudson was a movie star.

Thanks, Hollywood

As I've related, I've seen a steep drop-off in weirdness around me, and many of my topics for this blog have to do with something odd that happened to me. I was running dry, grasping for ideas, vapor-locked and hoping for inspiration that just wasn't coming.
   Then, today, I had to go to Hollywood for an audition.
   I hate the drive, I hate that part of town, I resent every minute I'm forced to be anywhere in sight of the Hollywood sign. But, oh, the weirdness. Sweet, sweet, weirdness, falling into my lap like a gift from on-high.

Quick takes
   A lady at a stop light frantically stuffing a creampuff down her throat as she makes a left on red to beat the oncoming traffic. I can still see the powdered sugar explode around her face as she wrenched the steering wheel. If only she'd been on the phone too...
   The rapping bus-rider. The guy standing at the bus stop rapping up a storm, no iPod, no musical accompaniment, just him, his rhymes, and anybody with an open car window. Not half bad.
   The Sparkletts water man running across the street in front of oncoming traffic from both directions. Westbound had to brake to avoid splattering him across Sunset Blvd., and then Eastbound traffic had to do the same. Almost committing suicide to deliver water - dedication or death wish? You decide.
   People in the crosswalk who, for some reason, didn't see or hear the huge red fire truck barreling down on them. Everybody in cars with rolled-up windows heard the sirens and saw the lights, but the people crossing Sunset at Stanley had been struck blind and deaf. But they were surprisingly nimble when they realized it wasn't a movie shoot.
   Did you know there are 24-hour Subways? The sandwich shops, not the mass transit trains. Well there are, and I counted three as I drove down Sunset. How many transvestite prostitutes need a BMT at 3 AM? More than I suspected, evidently.
   Alligator Dave. There was a guy at the audition who signed in with the name 'Alligator Dave.' Seriously. Like Crocodile Dundee but not cool and without the Australian accent. He seems to believe that naming himself after an animal will help his chances at an acting career. He's about 23 years too late.
   The tour bus taking pictures of me as I left the audition where I saw Alligator Dave. The bus was stopped in front of the nondescript office building housing the casting studio, hoping to see a big star (I guess). They got me instead. I happened to glance up at the people on the top of the open double-decker and I saw a few cell phones, a few digital cameras, and one video camera pointed my way. I can only imagine the excuses the bus driver was making.

To Boldly Go...

A few weeks back I turned off my cable service - told you I would - and now my TV is pure antenna. I have line-of-sight to the transmitters on Mt. Wilson about 5 miles away, so I get many, many stations crystal clear and perfect. And on one of those channels last night, I re-discovered the original Star Trek.
   Years ago, back when I was in elementary school, I discovered Trek at after-school care. I found myself alone in the Lego room one day, wandered out to the TV room where people were gathered, took one look at the show - it was the one with the rock-eating monster protecting her babies - and I was hooked. Hooked like a perch on a worm, like a duck on a junebug, like a runway model on smack. I watched every episode from then on, forgetting Legos and even abandoning Lincoln Logs. I managed to convince my mother to take me to one of the first Star Trek conventions, where I got a windbreaker and a copy of the Starfleet Technical Manual. Yeah, I was a wee little nerd.
   In the intervening years Paramount has put out movie after movie, and done series after series. But I gotta tell you, none of them match classic Trek. I haven't seen an episode with the original cast in years, and this was actually very well written, Shatner was a far better actor than he's given credit for, James Doohan was excellent, and even if I found faults with the direction and editing, the whole thing was waaaaay better than I remember it being.
   So now, decades later, I'm going back to where it all started. Classic Trek. The wee little nerd inside me is jumping for joy.

False Recognition

A few years back when I was working as a government contractor and traveling a lot, I saw a friend from college in the Frankfurt airport. It was one of those weird things, I wasn't sure it was actually him, he wasn't sure it was actually me, and it was totally incongruous that we would see each other in passing in an airport in Germany. We said 'hi,' exchanged brief pleasantries and, bewildered, went about our business. Totally freaky, and awkward for both of us.
   Flash forward to yesterday. I was in a sketchy part of North Hollywood, after 10 PM. I pulled into a 7-11 to buy lotto tickets - you can't win if you don't play - and I saw my friend Jeff. At least I thought I saw him, more specifically someone in his car who looked like him. Jeff does live in the LA area, so it wasn't completely outside the realm of possibility that I might see him in North Hollywood, but it was after 10 in a not-so-great part of a not-so-great place and Jeff's a family man. Not a risk-taker, if you catch my drift. So I didn't go over at first, I was biding my time. In the store I watched outside, waiting for Jeff to get out of his car and come over to say hello. No such luck.
   I got my lotto tickets and went back outside. I leaned over and waved to the person in Jeff's car, catching their eye.
   Of course it was not Jeff. Not even close.
   See, Jeff's a white guy, like me, and the guy in Jeff's car was an Asian guy. An Asian guy who looks like Jeff from the back in the dark in a 7-11 parking lot in North Hollywood after 10 PM. To say that the Asian guy was wary and suspicious is putting it mildly. He actually rolled up his window.
   I guess I'm more dangerous-looking than I realize. In the dark, in a 7-11 parking lot in North Hollywood after 10 PM. Score one for me.