Film Class Writings

My Year in Film Class
While not technically a part of the 2008-2009 school year, the first film studied in class was Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a grueling three hour marathon painting a dystopian picture of the future conveyed through dramatic eyebrow raising. I think it is safe to say that after watching the hour and a half of the film that my consciousness allowed me to observe, I immediately understood the value of the eyebrow in terms of dramatic acting. For weeks I was imbued with an irrepressible case of Metropolis Syndrome, in which every time I see a camera I stare directly into it, arch my eyebrow and imagine a symphonic score swelling in the background.
Once school had actually started and we had been given the necessary three month rehabilitation of summer to survive the Metropolis ordeal, we began the year with Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times (I will not be using italics throughout this paper for any movie titles; it isn’t lazy, it’s postmodern avant garde grammatical experimentation) , a film that both exemplified the birth of Hollywood filmmaking and a timeless comedy that shows no signs of age even after seventy years of Charlie Chaplin appearing at every Halloween party ever. Somehow his act remains fresh.
Next was Citizen Kane, widely regarded by cinephiles as, based more on Platonic than Aristotelian criterion, to be the greatest film ever made. I had already seen Citizen Kane twice, so this experience honestly wasn’t anything new to me, besides the fact that the first two times I saw it there weren’t twenty five people texting, giggling through quotes from their favorite Youtube videos, and just generally defecating on the art of film and our generation. The Citizen Kane commentary track followed, in which the most voracious gobbler of movie magic in the history of man, Roger Ebert, explains exactly why Citizen Kane is the Citizen Kane of movies. I took his word for it, though he did give a similarly sterling review to Paul Blart: Mall Cop. I’ll have to wait for his commentary track to decide if Blart is the second best movie ever made.
The next seminal event was the Comedy Sportz auditions (the Z is for “zany,” it sets the mood). I thought I did very well and was generally impressed with my performance, though I did not expect to make the team due to age discrimination. I didn’t take my rejection personally . . .or did I? (Metropolis score rises, I arch eyebrow dramatically).
After nursing my wounds, tending to my ego, and taking a blood test to reveal that the reason my lymph nodes were the size of melons was because I had a raging case of mono, we went to Paramount Studios to gain a little insight into the movie making process. Unfortunately, I don’t think our tour guide had ever seen a movie before, and turned the entire tour into a gigantic advertisement for the madcap shenanigans of Everybody Hates Chris, which I then vowed never to watch unless subjected to torture, and even then I still wouldn’t laugh. Oh, and did I mention that I had mono? Yeah, I had mono. After leaving Paramount, we hopped aboard the Laff Wagon to go see The New Adventures of Old Christine, aka Elaine From Seinfeld Only With A Twerp Kid and Terrible Writers. While it did get a little tedious taking a course in hammy acting a hack writing, I do feel as though I got some sort of endorphin high from fake laughing at the same joke several thousand times, and fully understood how clowns become evil. In general, the field was fun just as a change of scenery and a chance to interact with my classmates in a semi-social fashion. It was interesting and comical, and one of the better experiences of the year. The Old Christine writing staff couldn’t have written it any better. No really, they sucked. Oh, and I had mono.
The film noir unit provided us with the opportunity to watch Double Indemnity and the Maltese Falcon, both highly entertaining and written with the kind of crackling dialogue and general aura of suave mystery that Hollywood has strived for in it’s blockbusters since, and mostly failed two attain. It was around this time that I decided that I was going to be a detective when I grew up, not an astronaut or a firefighter.
We then watched Casablanca, and great film starring Bugs Bunny as the owner of a tavern during some kind of Cartoon War. That Bugs gets me every time.
The Hitchcock unit consisted of Rope, Rear Window and the Birds. Hitchcock is a revered, legendary director and through this unit I learned the art of suspense, the value of a good story and the magic that editing can create. While I don’t see these films as either Hitchcock’s best work nor the greatest suspense thrillers of all time, it’s obvious that Hitchcock was in a league of his own. Hopefully that league wasn’t the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, because in that case he would have died broke and considered a massive flop.
The Sony Field trip was our sequel to the Paramount excursion (notice my use of the word “sequel.” That’s a movie term. Layers!), and by all accounts it was a massive improvement of the Everybody Hates Chris Magic Team. We were given tours of past and present movie sets, educating about the intricacies of the moviemaking process, and just generally had a rip roaring good time. Oh, and we also got to stand in front of the green screen where they filmed all of Godzilla. And all this time I thought that was a real gigantic lizard. I hate reality.
Much of the focus early in the year was on screenwriting, an ultimately fruitless undertaking considering the general amounts of garbage spewed out by the class. I was seventy five pages into my epic screenplay in the summer, called Missing the Point, when my computer crashed, causing me to lose the script, all of my notes on the script, and everything remotely associated with it. I decided to start a new script entirely instead of trying to recreate Missing the Point. Missing the Point was a story of four stagnant friends who develop a six step plan to fulfill themselves and live their lives to the fullest, only to find that their plan destroys most of their relationships with one another as they become obsessed with themselves and neglect their fragile, transient bonds that kept them sane in the first place. The script was to end with one of the friends, the most rational of the bunch, dying in a car accident, with each of the friends providing a monologue giving their different perspectives on the death while agreeing that everything had changed irreparably. While Cinema Night ended up being a raging success with no true failures or flops, I still believe that if more than five people in the class cared about what they wrote, the year could have been astonishing instead or merely “good with a hint of great.” Writing is the obvious Achilles Heel of the film class, as terrible acting can be concealed with good editing, while poor writing can sabotage an entire movie. I felt like I had wasted my time writing a screenplay that I cared about while everybody in the class with the exception of Matt, Trevor, Nikki Adams, Vikki Hogan, Vikki Lopez and I were just sloppy, lazy, and expected someone else to write them a great role instead of creating one for themselves. It was disappointing reading these half-baked bastard children of scripts when the class was so generally talented.
In early November we had our screenwriting meetings, in which I unveiled my second screenplay, A Classic Masterpiece of Cinema, a satire of independent filmmaking, the idiocy of pop culture ephemera, art criticism, teenagers, and pretty much the entire world. Not to boast (okay I’ll boast), but it was pretty damn good. Unfortunately, it was also pretty damn long, so I wasn’t able to film it, leaving it to reside with the Dead Sea Scrolls and most of the Library of Alexandria as lost classics.
From there we began our foreign films unit, which included The Bicycle Thief, Jules and Jim, and Breathless. The Bicycle Thief was a simply beautiful story about the fragile, doomed relationship between a man and his bike . . .or his son. I can’t remember, just that at some point they ate pizza together. Jules and Jim involved a ménage a trois, and was so discouraging that I immediately went home after the film and told the two lesbian nymphos living in my room to pack up their things immediately before someone drives my 2006 Corolla off of a bridge. Breathless was just a how-to course in French New Wave cool, which was impressive considering it was released hot on the heels of the French’s performance in World War II, one of the least cool things in recorded human history.
Towards the end of November we sorted out who would be directing, what they would be directing, and who would be cast. Having been told that A Classic Masterpiece was out of the question, I was able to write another thirty page script, my third of the year, in only two days. The original draft was erroneous and under developed, but it had potential and I had time, so I was willing to gamble on it. Frank, Cole and Maren were cast as my three leads, after a devastatingly difficult casting meeting that had little to do with me. I was satisfied, and the joy of seeing the thinly veiled reactions on people’s faces as the roles were announced was a priceless mine of unintentional comedy that I will never forget, at least for another month.
Once those ugly foreigners and their artsy films were out of the way, we moved on to those extremely handsome Americans and their artsy films, as we lost ourselves in the 1950’s with George Clooney’s excellent Good Night and Good Luck, featuring one of the most captivating acting performances we had seen all year.
Some Like It Hot was innovative, original and hilarious. At this point, the Wayans Brothers have pretty much made it impossible for cross dressing and homosexuality to be funny, but Some Like It Hot showed that good writing can actually complement taboo ideas, not just be completely ignored in aiming for shock comedy.
Fistful of Dollars caused another dramatic change in my future career plans, as I decided to switch my major from Detective Work and Cool Slang to Squinting and Dead Eye Shooting in the Wild West. I can’t wait for college.
Related to the Western unity but in actuality existing on a transcendent plane of film greatness was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, my personal favorite of the films we watched this year and an undeniable classic.
Before Christmas Break, we went on a field trip to go see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button in Los Angeles. I honestly can’t remember anything interesting happening on this field trip, so it must have been a simple, controversy free good time.
We watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on the first Tuesday of the break, and it was obviously a monumental undertaking in thought and understanding, but a generally stimulating experience. It obviously is incomparable to much of the lighter, more enjoyable fare from earlier in the year, but has its own merits as the grandiose opus of an auteur and a bold defiance of Hollywood rules.
Over Christmas Break, I scouted locations for my film, tried to plan some shots and shopped for ridiculous T shirts for Frank to wear to ensure the physical comedy that the general populace seems find giggle-worthy. The pre-production phase of film making was one of the most exasperating and trying facets, however it would pay off in the long run, I was told.
Looking back at my original shooting schedule, my early ambition seems almost comical. According to the schedule, shooting was supposed to have wrapped on January 27. The last shot of the film was taken on May 13th, two days before Cinema Night. The early stages of shooting were fun and carefree. Neither Frank nor I really knew what we were doing, but we had tons of time, the stress hadn’t set in, and the whole process just seemed exciting, new and fresh. Unfortunately, almost all of the footage from January to March was horrible, and we essentially had to reshoot the entire film in a two week span in April. It was around this time that I realized what the returning directors had said about how easy the process was once you had learned the ropes. Once I had my tactics down, we made amazing progress, shooting several tapes worth of solid film and doing so in half the time we had originally. Having realized the nuances of the shooting processes, I began to regret not entering the program a year earlier, as I felt that my next film could be astounding, while Realistic was bound to be riddled with the errors of a novice.
Oh, and during April I appeared as the Grim Reaper in a One Act. It wasn’t that important, but I thought I would mention it.
Very little editing was done until April, because my computer was a Stone Age relic and the new NASA Supercomputers hadn’t arrived from Apple yet. Once they did, they made the editing process expedient and simple, allowing me to piece together fifty five minutes of footage in only a week of editing. Without these computers, editing Realistic would have been a monumental challenge in only a month.
The last month or so of editing and composing Realistic was a blur of stress and repetition, with a to-do list that seemed to extend ad infinitum. Because of this, when Cinema Night finally came it didn’t feel like a celebratory culmination, but rather just another step on the list. The feeling of emptiness that followed the completion of the movie and the idea of being actually finished with the long gestating work was one that seemed surreal and intangible. Being constantly occupied for months and then being faced with the prospect of having to choose your own ways to fill the voids in your free time can throw any man into a crisis. I have since begun job hunting in order to find another way to productively structure my time, though I anticipate no amount of shelf-stocking can compare to the novelty and joy of movie making, but I suppose all good things must have their end, even when it feels like the best parts have just begun.

Why Dylan Niles Should Direct: A Letter of Recommendation From One of Ancient Greece’s Finest Thinkers

The problem with life, besides the fact that it’s brief, fleeting, a constant cycle of ebullient hope and excruciating pain, and that it’s as tedious as a twice told tale spoken in Ben Stein’s monotone vexing the ear of a drowsy man that accidentally drank an entire bottle of Nyquil when mistaking it for cherry soda, is that it is full of asinine rhetorical questions. If there’s one thing I hate in life, it’s the poaching of white rhinos in West Africa. But I’m also not too fond of rhetorical questions. Why did the chicken cross the road? Irrelevant! If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Inconsequential! What is the sound of one hand clapping? Frivolous! Luckily, the existential dilemma of “Why Dylan Thomas Niles Should Direct A Student Film To Be Displayed At Cinema Night In the 2008-2009 School Year” is not even remotely rhetorical. Aristotle spent his entire life working on the whole “what is the nature of time?” thing, but he could have this thing wrapped up in a solid three minutes. So, rather than have me, a clearly biased, self-obsessed, highly subjective observer write a paper about why I should direct, I’ll just have Aristotle cover this one for you, in florid, philosophical persuasive prose. Look, I know what you’re thinking: “Impossible! Aristotle has been dead since 322 BC! He can’t possibly write an essay describing the respective merits of Dylan Niles! This is just an excuse for Dylan to praise himself and flaunt his massive ego while speaking in third person, the primary signifier of a sociopath!” To this, I recommend that you do whenever I do when someone asks me to do something morally vague, or with potential criminal repercussions: Don’t ask questions, just go with it.

Dear Mr. Sautner,

Salutations. It’s me, Aristotle, student of Plato, teacher of Alexander the Great, and a huge fan of Dylan Niles’ blog. After years of studious observational practices, I can conclude with utmost conviction that Dylan Niles should be given ultimate dictatorial power of the Free World. However, if that cannot be arraigned, allowing him to direct is probably the next best thing. I have arrived at this conclusion for a number of reasons. First and foremost, Dylan Niles is a man of vision. Not physically, of course. He has 20/80 vision, and a minor case of astigmatism. I am referring more to his fundamental ambitions, his copious quantities of creative juices, his poet’s eye, his musician’s heart, his philosopher’s brain, and his Popeye biceps. He is a dreamer, a romantic, a man yearning to express himself in any way possible, though typically through yelling. Dylan Niles has goals that can only be attained through one means: By allowing him to operate a functioning video camera and record a story so heart wrenchingly beautiful it will fuse laughter and sorrow into a brand new hybrid emotion inexpressible through words. Only through pictures. And Dylan Niles is just the man to take those pictures.

Secondly, Dylan Niles is a neurotic, obsessive, egomaniac. While these traits to not translate well to other facets of life (like social interactions) they are the characteristic of a truly great director. I considered for a moment some of the finest film makers in history: Kubrick, Orson Welles, Hitchcock, Coppola. All of them regarded as neurotic, obsessive, eccentric egomaniacs. Is it possible that I am spin doctoring Dylan Niles’ inherent character flaws to portray him not as, in colloquial terms, ‘ a total jerk’ but rather as a stereotypical ‘gifted but troubled artiste?’ Yes, that is exactly what I’m doing. But I also compiled the earliest recorded study of formal logic, so you have no right to question my opinion.

Thirdly, and most importantly: Dylan Niles looks terrible on camera, and should not be allowed anywhere in front of one. From his reliance on hand gestures to his gratingly obnoxious voice to his disgusting facial expressions to the fact that he cuts his own hair, the very last thing that a paying customer wants to see on cinema night is Dylan Niles. The magic of movies lies in the escapist virtues of watching beautiful people doing amazing things, not watching awkward people like Dylan Niles brush his uneven bangs out of his eyes while he humiliatingly attempts to portray affection in some half-baked romantic comedy. Making Dylan Niles a director, and keeping him and his grotesque, irritating voice and mannerisms away from the ill-prepared eyes of the students of Trabuco Hills High School is a public service and an act of charity.

My next point is that Dylan Niles loves to wear berets. However, whenever he wears a beret in public, he is mocked, berated, and often has inanimate objects tossed at him by unruly teen heathens. But all true artists wear berets, ask any notable Frenchmen. Were Dylan Niles given the chance to direct, whenever he was faced with opposition or had a milkshake tossed at him in the drive through of an In-N-Out, he can simply explain: “It’s okay. I’m a director.” And they will undoubtedly understand, giving Dylan Niles the peace of mind he deserves.

My observation of Dylan Niles has also led me to the conclusion that he has far too much free time on his hands. From looking up old Nickelodeon shows on Wikipedia to playing the same level of Halo 3 all day, the man really needs a life, a hobby of some kind. It’s only a matter of time before he takes up stamp collecting and slowly evolves into Norman Bates.

Finally, in the twilight of his high school career, Dylan Niles has been thrust into that realm occupied by many in this phase of their lives: One of doubt, reflection, fear of the future, high school nostalgia, and occasional remorse. Dylan Niles is well aware that the next seven months, his last in the bubble of comfort and stability that is high school, will vanish before he even has time to appreciate them, no matter what he is doing. This crisis has convinced Dylan that he wants to devote the his remaining time in high school not to the menial pursuit of the same basic teenage activities that he has experienced so repetitively throughout the past four years, but rather devote himself entirely to a film making project, to pour himself wholly into the creation of something lasting, something that he will remember for the rest of his life. Life is, as I have said, rather brief in duration. Very few people have the chance to make something that can capture a moment, an epoch in their youth that has the chance to be eternal. Dylan Niles has that opportunity. All he has left to do is seize it.

Sincerely,

Aristotle

xoxoxoxoxo

Worst Sequel Ever: A Million Dollars of Baby Geniuses

I am sickened. Disgusted. Appalled. Once again, Hollywood has taken a beautiful masterpiece of a movie and tainted with the stain of a filthy, obscene failure of a sequel. Now don’t get me wrong, I loved Baby Geniuses 1. I mean, what could possibly be funnier than a baby talking? I’ll tell you what: A baby talking while disco dancing in John Travolta’s white suit from Saturday Night Fever! One of my favorite scenes in the history of the picture shows. It even coined one of the best catchphrases of all time: Diaper gravy! I had never really thought of describing diarrhea by likening it to a food of similar composition and complexion. Now that’s great writing! Baby Geniuses was one of the most original, thought provoking, all around hilarious movies of the 90’s. A laugh riot! So you can imagine my disgust when I saw the sequel, Clint Eastwood’s 2004 flop, Million Dollar Babies.
Where do I even begin with this festering piece of pop culture garbage? Let’s start with the plot. It had absolutely nothing to do with the first movie! Baby Geniuses 1 ended with Sly, the smartest of all the Baby Geniuses, and his twin brother Whit going on a lighthearted romp to escape from Cathleen Turner and Christopher Lloyd, two evil scientists attempting to steal the secrets of the universe, which the babies were born with and could only convey through baby talk. Now that’s the kind of old fashioned family comedy that I can support! That’s what I want to see on a fun day at the movies! For this diaper gravy of a sequel, they went in a new, disgusting direction. First of all, there were no babies! You’d think, since the first movie was 92 minutes of highly intelligent babies talking, pooping, and hitting grown men in the testicles, they would at least have the decency to explain why, in this “A Million Dollar Baby Geniuses” there was not a single baby genius to be found! Why would Clint Eastwood, one of the most respected directors in Hollywood, do such a thing? You don’t mess with perfection! I’m all for a little change in the sequel, but replacing the two main characters from the first movie, the adorable, 3 year old Fitzgerald brothers, with some black guy named Milligan Freeman and Hilary Swank? Ridiculous! Were the babies grown up? Why was the entire film about boxing? Where was Christopher Lloyd? Did it take place in the future? This was the most confusing sequel since I saw that Lord of the Flies trilogy from Peter Jackson, which was nothing like the book.
Not to mention that this movie was completely inappropriate for a family audience. In fact, this was an R rated movie, completely alienating the younger fans of the first one, which was rated PG for potty humor. Where the first Baby Geniuses movie only made use of silly, lighthearted insults like diaper face and pee brains, the sequel used the s word, the f word, even the p word. I almost cried when I heard this foul language. Clint Eastwood, you are sick! I was nine years old when I saw Baby Geniuses 1, and 14 when I saw the sequel, and even I was sickened to my very core by the foul language in this film. The nerve of that man!
Not to mention the disturbing, perverse subplot that involved Hilary Swank, the Million Dollar Baby Genius, going into a coma! Horrific! What kind of twisted, depraved man would include the controversial subject of euthanasia in a children’s movie! This is a strict violation of my Christian values! Every life is precious, every child is a beautiful creation of God, especially baby geniuses. The very idea that Clint Eastwood’s character would think it was acceptable to pull the plug on a baby genius caused me to cross myself and say three Our Fathers right there in the theater just to save my soul from this Satanic propaganda. What would Rick Warren think of this? Imagine the poor mothers having to explain to their children how a life support machine works, or who Teri Schiavo was, when all they wanted to do was sit back, enjoy some popcorn and laugh at another classic diaper change scene involving a poop fight.
Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one who felt this way. Roger Ebert gave the film four stars, and it was nominated for seven Oscars, including a win for Best Picture! Best Picture? Meanwhile, Baby Geniuses 1 is ranked #66 on IMDB’s worst movies of all time list. Am I the only sane person in the world? I have lost all respect for Clint Eastwood after this bastardization of the Baby Genius franchise. I will never see a Clint Eastwood movie again. Actually I do hear that he is coming out with one that is an adaptation of the popular video game Grand Theft Auto, so I might see that one. Until then, I am still steaming over the worst sequel of all time, A Million Dollars of Babies.