Saw this at Deadspin and couldn’t resist re-posting. Apparently, Wade Boggs could pack in a few back in the day. Oh say, anywhere between 50-70 beers on your average road trip.
This really goes a long way to explaining his claim that he willed himself invisible to avoid a knife-fight.
Caught the SVA student portfolio show at The Art Director’s Club last night and I was pretty amazed with a lot of the work up on the walls. Didn’t get a chance to take any photos (camera is dead at the moment) but I’d have to say the best piece I saw is Annie Chiu’s ad for Victoria’s Secret. It’s a blueprint/floor plan to a house, where every room is labeled “Bedroom”. Simple, effective and smart. A damn near perfect ad.
There was some other great stuff on the walls. Other stuff, not so great. But it was amazing to see what kind of competition is out there (and coming straight out of undergrad at that). Most importantly, it was nice to see what makes a great ad and what makes a not so great ad. I still have to bring my work up to the next level – but it helps to see what other people are doing. Part of the process of becoming a successful copywriter is recognizing the great ads and steering clear of the bad ones (and “good” ones as well).
I’ve still got a lot of work to do. First on that list is coming up with one perfect campaign so I can get myself off the wait-list and into grad school. I’m on the edge. I have 72 hours left to drop my work in the mail and push myself over it.
My favorite baseball books:
1. The Boys of Summer, by Roger Kahn
2. Veeck as in Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck, by Bill Veeck with Ed Linn
3. Summer of ‘49, by David Halberstam
4. Shut Out: A Story of Race and Baseball in Boston, by Howard Bryant
5. You Gotta Have Wa, by Robert Whiting (currently reading)
David Bordwell writes about Back to the Future. Kinda.
Is this sort of exercise necessary? It’s hip to be square.
Consider Back to the Future (released the same year as NiFF was published). It might have begun with Marty McFly skating down the street for several minutes on the way to Doc’s laboratory. Instead, the narration introduces Marty by showing him cranking up the lab’s amplifier to overdrive. He strikes a star pose, hits a guitar chord, and is blasted off his feet. He’s shaken up but awestruck: “Whoa. . . Rock and roll.” We now assume that Marty likes to take risks, that he’s committed to his music, that he’s a bit preening, and that he can bounce back. Likewise, before Marty comes in, during the opening shots exploring the lab, we get information about Doc as well, though more indirectly. For both characters, the narration encourages us to leap to conclusions that will be confirmed again and again in the story that follows.
Versatile. Ultra-lite. Indestructible.
All you need is a spoon and your meal kit is set.
Finally got a day-off from the March Madness madness and Dave and I took in Boarding Gate during the matinee at Cinema Village (the original plan was to also catch Contempt at Film Forum as a “Girl and a Gun” double feature but we didn’t pull it off).
I thought the greatest strength of Gate was director Olivier Assayas’ use of the camera to deny the audience information. He sets the rules up early and obviously, playing with focus during a two-way conversation with Asia Argento and Michael Madsen’s characters, keeping much of the action and dialogue out of focus. Eat your heart out, Toland.
Having set this rule, Assayas then uses the device in more subtle ways throughout Gate. It doesn’t really serve to develop the plot, which bothered me, but as Dave pointed out, it does mirror the plot and theme.
Like the images on the printed film itself, the audience is never supplied with all the answers in what is essentially a murder mystery. Is this intentional? Is Assayas trying to illustrate that in the modern, capitalist world his characters are forced to tear each other apart to succeed? And is their motivation for these actions so irrelevant that so too are important threads of the plot and identity of key players?
Or is he just a hack?
And in a film where much goes said that should remain unsaid, do we care?
But, Asia Argento is in this, and there are worse reasons to see a movie.
The more I think about Juno being nominated for a Best Picture Oscar the more offended I get that Knocked Up was completely overlooked by the Academy.
Both films brush on the same themes and have the same dilemma (unwanted pregnancy) as the crux of their plots, yet they handle this issue in such different ways with Knocked Up to far greater success, that I find myself thinking, again, “What the hell is the average movie-going public thinking?”
Diablo Cody’s script for Juno was full of so many snappy one-liners, pithy dialog and parent-child one upmanship that I couldn’t tell if I was watching a movie or an exercise in conceit. People like to go to movies like Juno because we like to demonstrate how smart we are. It’s like everyone in the theater is patting themselves on the back and winking at the screen after another whip-smart line from Ellen Page. You look around the theater, give knowing nods to the strangers seated next to you and make a strained effort to laugh at the right jokes. You see? We get it. We belong.
But isn’t this completely disingenuous? Do people really talk like that, let alone 17-year old high school girls? I’d like to think that every family would deal with such an event with the patience, understanding and grace seen in the film. The real world, however, is far more complicated than simply having the right attitude. We are all, after all, human. We make mistakes. We handle those mistakes poorly and what happens in life is often far more ugly and messy than what you see printed on the silver screen of the latest Hollywood indie darlings.
What impressed me so much about Knocked Up is that Judd Apatow gets it. Life isn’t easy. When a crisis hits we often don’t tackle it head-on. Instead we go to Vegas and eat shrooms. We make mistakes. We get frustrated. We stop looking for that job after a few lousy interviews and sit at home feeling sorry for ourselves. We escape.
The characters in Knocked Up deal with their issues in such sloppy, self-destructive ways that we can only relate. Yes the characters in Juno are sharp as tacks and can handle the latest crisis like any minor inconvenience. We get the jokes. But that isn’t us. We keep secrets. We play in secret fantasy baseball leagues so our wives don’t interrupt “guy time.”
And while it’s true that Knocked Up ends on a “Hollywood moment” note I don’t see how else the movie can end and succeed. Perhaps that’s the limitation of the Hollywood system. Call it unfair.
But life isn’t fair. Jobs suck. Relationships are hard. Breakups are devastating. Pass the bong.
Sorry I haven’t written in a while. Work has been getting me down. I have been writing, just not publishing. In the next two weeks, look for my essay on Knocked Up v. Juno, my review of Zodiac (movie of the year), and an appreciation of the Sierra cup.
Film Society of Lincoln Center will screen Walker at 6:30 and Searchers 2.0 at 8:30. Director Alex Cox will have a Q & A following both screenings. I haven’t been this excited for a NYC screening since Anthology’s wonderful screening of Lindsay Anderson’s Mick Travis trilogy last summer. Criterion is releasing Walker this month and I haven’t read much about Searchers 2.0, although I am excited to see Sy Richardson act in something other than a Superbowl FedEx commercial. Tarantino owes Cox and Richardson a big, fat apology for never recognizing that he stole the character Norwood from Straight to Hell and turned him into Jules Winnfield. “Put your tie on, boy.”
Insanely, I’ve never seen Walker but it promises to be a good allegory for Reagan-era U.S. foreign policy filtered through the story of William Walker, an American mercenary who briefly held the presidency of Nicaragua in the mid-19th century.
So I’m really into this dude Mark E. Smith. He’s in this band called The Fall. And I don’t care what anyone says or how many Mitsubishi ads he does, his last two albums have been great. And now, I find out he’s in this side-project with Mouse on Mars called Von Südenfed. This is easily the most danceable music I’ve heard this side of Paisley Park Studios. It’s pretty great. Check it out. Thank to Dave for the tip.
