"I'M HER ONLY FRIEND?"

This is going to be the greatest movie of all time. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the pitch meeting: "It's Single White Female meets Color of Night at college . . . but PG-13 so there's no gratuitous nudity!" (Where do I get the Color of Night influence, you ask? Elementary, my dear: that one shot makes it clear that the girl menacing Leighton Meester or Minka Kelly---whichever one of them is playing the lead---is NOT Minka Kelly or Leighton Meester---whichever one of them is playing the creepy roommate---but a relative and possibly sibling; just like in Color of Night where the killer wasn't Jane March but her dorky brother.)

But details aside, just revel in the glorious crappiness of that trailer. February can't come soon enough.

WHO IS PIERRE MOREL? I'M GLAD YOU ASKED

One would think that being both a dazzlingly erudite—and extremely serious—intellectual and a lover of action movies would be a contradiction in terms. Well, guess what? Contradictions are a matter of perspective and shit blowing up is awesome. However, being in possession of a cerebral cortex that can melt steel does give its possessor a taste for action movies of, at the very least, a reasonably low level of stupidity. It is for this reason that I, the humble owner of one such cortex, demand a certain degree of originality and wit in my action pictures. Other variables, like the presence of Jean-Claude Van Damme, may let a movie get away with being more derivative and retarded than others, but generally, I want an action picture to at least try.

I've been a fan of Luc Besson for a very long time. His body of work as a director hits me, aesthetically, in various defenseless places: sharp visuals, brisk editing, French music on the soundtrack, Anne Parillaud, a tendency to allow actors to cut loose and munch scenery (Gary Oldman in Leon/The Professional and, yes, Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element; if you turn the treble down so his shrieking doesn't deafen your dog, that's one of the great performances in the history of unintentional homosexuality), and Milla Jovovich. At a certain point—approximately coinciding with his Joan of Arc picture, which vibed “vanity project” a little too heavily for most critics and audience—Luc Besson started producing more often than directing, leading to a string of terrifically entertaining, modestly ambitious action pictures: the Transporter series (without which Armond White's longstanding crush on Jason Statham would be less florid), the Jet Li vehicles Kiss of the Dragon and Unleashed, and several others. None of these movies reinvent the wheel, but all of them are energetic, stylishly mounted, entertaining, and—not that this matters when discussing their quality—quite profitable.

Lately, the go-to director in Besson's action movie factory has been Pierre Morel, the DP on the first Transporter and Unleashed. Not so coincidentally, the three features Morel has directed for Besson have all been, to varying degrees and in their own unique ways, massively fucking cool. While Morel employs fairly standard modern action picture camerawork and cutting, his compositions are clear, framed well—he is, after all, a former DP—and while his editing is fashionably quick, it's purposeful rather than the coked up/tweaking style of Neveldine/Taylor, Bay, Tamahori, et al. While reports that Morel's next project is a new adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune are a little worrisome, astute cineastes will recall that the last time some poor bastard tried to make Dune, his next picture was Blue Velvet, so there's certainly no reason to panic just yet.

Rather than fret about what's yet to come, let's instead look at Morel's existing body of work:


District B13 (France: 2004, US and UK 2006)

As already stated, the movies generated by Luc Besson's action movie factory are not to be confused with deeply felt auteur pictures, so to say District B13 is merely a showcase for the French martial art/sport parkour is not being dismissive at all. First of all, it's a perfect showcase for the French martial art/sport parkour, which is so fucking crazy and involves such absurd physical skill that it might as well be the stuff of science fiction, and District B13 is set in the near-future dystopia of 2010 (which, some minor physical details of the militarization of French housing projects aside, they got pretty accurately).

Secondly, parkour is fucking rad. Despite Hollywood's attempts to assimilate it and drain all the pleasure out of it, parkour managed to escape relatively unscathed since only about four people in the world actually know how to do it. Two of them, David Belle and Cyril Raffaeli, star in District B13, as, respectively, a good kid from the projects taking on evil drug dealers and a good cop on a corrupt police force taking on the same evil drug dealers. Eventually, because certain laws of nature are unbreakable, it transpires that a bunch of evil white guys in suits are using the drug dealers as pawns in their nefarious scheme to nuke the projects and put up expensive housing for other evil white guys in suits, or perhaps using the fallout from the nuclear explosions to create a mutant race of evil white guys who are even more evil, a paler shade of white, and favoring an even more conservative cut of suit. We may never know, in part because the action sequences in this movie are so mind-bogglingly badass that whatever the evil white guys are up to is irrelevant. Observe:

(Note, that's really David Belle doing all that)

(Alas, it's all smushed, but you can still see Cyril Raffaeli's moves)

What makes District B13 such a fucking blast to watch is that Pierre Morel doesn't just plunk the camera down on sticks and tell David Belle and Cyril Rafaelli to jump through transoms and over cars. Morel's camera is an equal collaborator with the stunt coordinator, and the editing is, while rapid-fire enough to keep adrenaline levels in the red, still coherent enough that it works with the action rather than obscuring it. The visceral thrills generated by the action sequences function almost symbiotically with the giddily retarded storyline with all the evil white guys in suits and nuclear missiles and such, producing an end result that's about as much fun as it's possible to have watching a movie.

District B13's smashing success as a piece of escapist entertainment lies mainly in its seemingly paradoxical balance between having a sense of humor about itself and still being passionately sincere. Ironic detachment absolutely kills pictures like this, because ultimately any action movie has to be stupid, because fucktarded meatheadedness is as essential an element of the action movie as scenes where women cry and hug each other are to the Cinema of Estrogen. But if you, as an action movie (reverse reification? Put that in your bong and blow some bubbles) are just smart enough to realize how stupid you are, have you not achieved a Socratic ideal and a resultant level of aesthetic purity? Yes, Luc Besson is Socrates, Pierre Morel is Aristotle, David Belle and Cyril Raffaeli are collectively Alexander the Great, and that's the known world writhing on the ground with a foot in its ass. No more need be said of District B13, other than “if you haven't seen it, go fucking see it. Right fucking now.”


Taken (2008)

“I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you're looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money . . . but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it - I will not look for you, I will not pursue you . . . but if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.” —transcript of Liam Neeson's induction speech to the Badass Hall of Fame

This is a very important movie, because this is the first time we really learned how severe the consequences are of getting Liam Neeson pissed off. Sure, he ripped shit up in Darkman, but he was all disfigured and miserable and shit in that movie. In Taken, the progression is simple:

(a) Bad guys kidnap Liam Neeson's daughter
(b) Liam Neeson is displeased
(c) Liam Neeson kills everyone
(d) Liam Neeson gets his daughter back, nullifying the purpose of the bad guys' entire enterprise

No frailty. No digressions. Just straight up “oh you done fucked up now” unleashing of an extremely intelligent, competent, and dangerous man upon the forces of evil.

Morel is working in a much more naturalistic style here; Liam Neeson isn't doing that wacky Bugs Bunny cartoon parkour shit, and the picture is set in actual Paris, not extrapolated science-fiction Paris. However, “more” naturalistic does not mean that Taken is some kind of fuckin documentary or anything. Liam Neeson is practically machine-gunning bad guys with his dick for most of the movie, but the greatest lapse in plausibility is definitely that Liam Neeson's daughter and her airhead friend are in Europe following U2 on tour.

An argument can be made that Liam Neeson's daughter's interest in U2 is a sign of greater depth than that of the average teenager, and a further argument can be made that with opening acts like Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand, Interpol, The Scissor Sisters, Kanye, and The Killers (as well as shittier but still popular groups like Snow Patrol, Keane, and Ash) on the Vertigo Tour, the girls might have been going for the opening act; the fiscal wastefulness of paying U2 ticket prices to see someone like Franz Ferdinand, while massive, is nonetheless in keeping with the behavior of privileged teenagers. But this is avoiding the central issue: teenagers dumb enough to go over to Europe and kidnapped—for all intents and purposes—in the fucking airport are not going to be U2 fans. Not in 2005 anyway.

I have an alternate theory, that rationalizes this thorny and problematic intellectual dilemma into quivering submission: having the band be someone old enough for Liam Neeson to have heard of them saves valuable screen time, lest he have to spend five minutes that could otherwise be devoted to breaking bones and blowing shit up to having to use “the Google” to find out who Kelly Clarkson is. Because, let's not forget, the intent of Taken is not to be a photo-realistic portrait of the American dipshit teenage girl. Taken is a picture about Liam Neeson reducing villains to bloody, formerly sapient heaps of viscera.

And yet, much like District B13 before it, it's just smart enough to get into some actual relevant political shit—in this case, the international sex slavery trade—without either getting bogged down in nuance or doing the issue a disservice through flippancy or exploitation for artificial drama. It's more of a symbol of the dangerous shit that can happen if you don't take your dad seriously, if your dad is ex-CIA who can kill everybody in the city when necessary and you're a dipshit teenage girl whose idea of tragedy is the wrong guy asking you to the prom. This is why if I ever have a daughter, I'm going to make sure my autocracy is subtle, because when you're too strict they end up with questionable, anachronistic taste in pop music and get kidnapped by Albanian white slavery syndicates.

Of course, everything eventually works out because Liam Neeson kills everyone, and his daughter (Shannon from Lost, with her hair dyed brunette to make it plausible that Liam Neeson and Famke Janssen fucked and had her) realizes how cool he is, finally. At the end, when Liam Neeson introduces the daughter—an aspiring singer—to the famous pop star for whom he runs security, all is well with the world. Well, except the coroner in Paris, that poor bastard is going to be working overtime for a month processing all those dead guys.

Liam fucking Neeson. Who knew? I mean, he's always been pretty cool, but again I think Pierre Morel deserves a bit of the credit. He may not, technically speaking, be a Serious Artist (very few directors who make cool movies where lots and lots of people get killed meet the criteria, sadly, though if I have anything to say about, those criteria will change) but he is a serious entertainer, and a skillful director of entertainments has the necessary mastery of his craft to know how to make his leading man look sufficiently badass at all times. Of course, Liam Neeson's dick wouldn't drag the ground in this if it wasn't big on its own merits, but the director is the guy who controls where the ground is. You know what I mean.


From Paris With Love (2010)

A loose remake of the 2003 Danish kind-of-sort-of documentary The Five Obstructions, wherein Lars von Trier trolled the everliving fuck out of his mentor, avant-garde director Jørgen Leth, by forcing Leth to do five different versions of his 1967 short The Perfect Human with a different “obstruction” each time (not being allowed to have a shot longer than 12 frames—that's half a second—being the first example, and they just get crazier from there). This time around, Luc Besson and Pierre Morel lost a bet to some sadistic bastard who forced them to make an action movie starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers and John Travolta.

That's one theory. Another is that Pierre Morel was sitting around saying to himself “I made an action star out of Liam Neeson. Goddamn I'm good.” And, while polishing off a bottle of wine and watching MBB (Maison Boîte Bureau = French HBO) one night, Match Point came on, followed by the movie version of the Hairspray musical, and Pierre Morel started giggling to himself and said, “I am going to put the homosexual gay guy who killed Scarlett Johansson and the fat woman who played Tracy Turnblad's mother—holy merde, that's John Travolta? Wow . . . ok, sure, John Travolta—and I am going to make action film. Heh heh . . . Où est l'autre bouteille de vin, muthafuckaaaaa?” and eventually passed out, only to wake up the next morning with a massive hangover and a voicemail from Luc Besson saying “What's good, Pierre? Totally dig the casting choices, babe, Rhys Meyers and Travolta it is!”

Either way, this movie is nine kinds of crazy. Jonathan Rhys Meyers plays a well-educated, competent dork with a hot, fairly agreeable girlfriend, whose day job is playing chess and gossiping with the U.S. ambassador to France, and by night takes phone calls from some anonymous CIA guy who has him do shit like put phony license plates on a car so when the dudes in the car do spy shit, if they get caught, it'll have fake plates on it, and the local cops think some other country's dudes were responsible for the spy shit. Pretty cool night gig, all things considered, but Jonathan Rhys Meyers wants more. He wants to be a guy in an action movie, not an understated drama about a low-level covert ops dork.

Soon, after successfully planting a bug in a French dude's office, Jonathan Rhys Meyers gets his wish. His anonymous spy boss tells him to go meet John Travolta at the airport because the Customs Frogs are being all premenstrual. Although this interrupts Jonathan Rhys Meyers' engagement dinner with the hot girlfriend, she's supportive because this is his big promotion! Wow, a movie where the girlfriend doesn't bust the hero's balls about spending too much time at work. What could this mean . . .?

Jonathan Rhys Meyers arrives to find that the Customs dudes are very reasonably insisting that John Travolta's obviously fake cans of disgusting energy drink are not coming into France with him. Travolta's doing a wildly over-the-top Ugly American routine, but Jonathan Rhys Meyers intervenes. First he asks Travolta if it's going to be an excessive testicular compromise to just give his energy drinks up. Travolta says yes. So Jonathan Rhys Meyers, in a surprising turn of events, steps up to the plate and does something really badass: he slaps a “Diplomatic Mail” label on Travolta's bag and walks out. Problem solved. Baisez-toi, Froggy. (Ed. Note: Pierre Morel said it, not me)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers and John Travolta establish the time-honored mismatched buddy cop dynamic, except Jonathan Rhys Meyers keeps surprising the audience with displays of balls; when it transpires that the real reason Travolta was so insistent on keeping his six-pack of energy drink was because he had gun parts hidden in the cans, JRM's response is “I'm authorized to get you any weapon you want,” rather than getting all prissy about Travolta illegally smuggling a gun into the country. Then, following a pretty well-filmed shootout in a Chinese restaurant that resulted in me Tweeting “There is cocaine raining from the ceiling. This is win” and JRM carrying a vase full of cocaine for the next half hour of screen time, JRM's response, rather than any pussy-ass moralizing against drugs, is “If you really want to score some coke, I can get you some.” Pure, uncut awesome.

Structurally, things appear a bit off, because JRM and Travolta do a whole picture's worth of bonding in the first hour, even going so far as to do a bunch of the blow in the vase (in a hilarious apparent homage to the scene where Ethan Hawke smokes dusted weed in Training Day) and culminating in Travolta dropping a suicide bomber vest out a housing project window to blow up a car full of Pakistani terrorists. This isn't even the capstone on the sequence: Travolta's backing a car into another car into another car into JRM's SUV—wired with a car bomb by the terrorists—and detonating it, is.

Now, with the terrorists having, problematically, a bunch of photos of JRM and his girlfriend on the wall in their drug lab in the 'jects, Travolta is a little suspicious. After he and JRM hand over the confiscated drugs from the dead baddies' lab, JRM invites the antisocial Travolta to dinner with his fiancee and his fiancee's friend, and Travolta, surprisingly, accepts.

Dinner goes well, but Travolta acts strange and seems to inadvertently antagonize JRM's fiancee's friend. He does something weird with his cell phone. Then, when the fiancee's friend takes a call on her cell, Travolta abruptly shoots her in the head. Whoa. It turns out JRM's fiancee is actually a terrorist sleeper! And . . . holy shit, that plot twist actually isn't retarded! Wonders never cease. The fiancee grabs a gun, shoots JRM in the shoulder, and splits, in one of the harsher cinematic breakups in recent memory (paling in comparison to Arnold putting one through Sharon Stone's forehead and coldly smirking “Considduh dat a divoooooahss” in Total Recall, of course, but that was 20 years ago).

The good guys determine that JRM's now ex-fiancee is plotting to blow up an African aid summit and a whole bunch of important political people. There's only one thing to be done. John Travolta has to hang out the window of a speeding car with a bazooka and try to blow the bad guys up. Only it turns out the fiancee ISN'T IN THE CAR! Travolta still blows up the car, of course, because certain things must be done, and hauls ass to the summit.

JRM may have taken one in the shoulder, but since he has balls (something I was still barely used to even now, near the end of the picture) he hauls ass to the summit and gets there first. The security dudes, naturally, detain him for carrying a gun, being coked up, and having both a mustache and one of the funniest fake American accents ever (more on which in a bit), but JRM runs into his boss, who has the security dudes let JRM in, sans gun.

JRM and his ex have a bit of a showdown where it appears that, despite Travolta telling JRM talk is useless and guns are the answer, JRM is going to talk her out of it. Except, alas, she's still going to detonate her suicide bomber belt, so JRM has to put one in her forehead Arnold-style after all. Travolta, having gotten there in the nick of time, catches the now deceased ex before she hits the ground and detonates her belt. End of threat. Our denouement shows a now grown-ass man JRM having to take his Desert Eagle out of his pocket before he and Travolta play a game of very manly chess. Roll credits. Ahhhhhh.

What really makes From Paris With Love such a delight is the proudly weird tone. Jonathan Rhys Meyers' flaaaaaaat Ameeeeeeeerican aaaaacceeeeent is funny enough, but his little two-sentence back story that he relates to Travolta as they swagger into the housing project to take down the terrorist's coke lab—that he grew up in the fucking Cypress Hills Homes in East fucking New York—is just breathtaking. I mean, someone who looks like Jonathan Rhys Meyers (i.e. white, not to mention like the kind of guy who'd bottom for Ewan McGregor in Velvet Goldmine), growing up in that hood, definitely would have had to grow a pair of balls to survive.

John Travolta's performance is a slightly stickier issue. It seems, at first, to suck, but as the movie gets crazier and crazier, his performance seems to get better, but it's more because the movie itself coalesces around his weird overacting than it is that he's actually good. Which, once more, is a sign that Pierre Morel knows what the hell he's doing. They even admit in the making-of documentary that Travolta's undirectable and just does whatever the fuck he wants; faced with such a situation, some directors might keep tilting at windmills and get the difficult actor to behave and stick to the script. Pierre Morel, though, realizes that that's going to be impossible, and crafts the rest of the movie to be the right kind of crazy to make sure that Travolta's overacting and goofy improvising seems to fit.

In that same making-of doc, Pierre Morel comes off a smart guy with a sense of humor (of a scene where Jonathan Rhys Meyers is backing up Travolta on a staircase and dead extras keep falling out of the sky from offscreen, Morel says, dryly, “On the schedule, we called this scene “Chinese Rain” because it's raining Chinese people.”) This impression is certainly reinforced by his pictures, which manage to be smart—mainly by knowing when to shut up and be stupid—and entertaining.

Considering the kind of pictures Morel makes, and considering that the title of auteur could just as easily be attributed to Luc Besson on the pictures he's directed so far, just going to work, punching the clock, and doing the work is all one could reasonably expect from him. The fact that Pierre Morel invests his pictures with such pizazz, though, is a sign that he's more than just some hack cashing a paycheck: he's a genuinely inspired craftsman.

Still a little worried about him directing Dune, though . . . but maybe his unpretentious, no-bullshit (unless it's fun) style can make it work. But, hey, even if it doesn't, the David Lynch rule dictates his next picture will fucking rock.

AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

Hey, guys! Check out this piece I did for premiere.com; I swear it's me even though it's not 7500 words long and 66.6% profanity. I will not do anything as tacky as exhort you to pimp this blog in their comment section, but if you absolutely must I suppose there's nothing I can do.

REQUISITE "REAL OR FAKE?" THEORY RE: I'M STILL HERE

Short version: I don't give a fuck.

Long version: I really don't give a fuck.

WHAT IS THAT, YOGA?

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

(h/t BoingBoing)

And, because one is never enough, courtesy of Film Drunk:


More extensive verbiage coming as soon as I figure out how to write about Robert Altman without sounding like a total jackass. Now if you'll excuse me, I have drinking and football to prepare for.

THIS REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT MAY MOVE SLOW, BUT THAT'S BECAUSE IT DOESN'T HAVE TO MOVE FOR ANYONE

The time has come to talk of statecraft. In Western society, all too often skinny fuckers dominate, leaving one nation sorely under-represented and in need of a voice. Of sovereignty. Of our own very large flag. With nearly a century having past since the presidency of William Howard Taft, and the pale shadow that was the first Clinton administration being almost two decades old, Fat Guy Nation needs a cabinet, stocked with something other than peanut butter.

With this being America (and the forum being a movie blog), our cabinet will be drawn from movies and television. I speak as a man somewhat smaller than I have been, but still a man of appetite, a trencherman, an enemy of the thin in all their nefarious forms (except in fashion advertisements, pornography, subway seats, and various other expedient fora). Thus, I feel qualified to appoint the government of my people.


The President (in exile)—Hugo “Hurley” Reyes, Lost

Although Hurley's actual administrative experience was as the undemocratically appointed guardian of a possibly supernatural island—and all took place off-screen with the exception of the vignette in the Lost season 6 DVD—this is, unquestionably, our leader. Not only is he very large indeed, and nobly resisted one of the best opportunities ever to lose weight (being stranded on a deserted island with nothing but fruit and fish to eat), any just society should be proud to have as its leader a man who addresses people as “dude.” Think of the opportunities in American history which would benefit from such a leader:

Nikita Krushchev (banging shoe on podium): I vill moof nuclear bums to Cuba! I vill threaten your very vay uff life, American svine!
Hurley: Dude, seriously? You need to chill. Let's have some nachos and talk this out.

Bob Woodward: Mr. President, the burglary of the Democratic national headquarters has been connected to a slush fund for the Committee to Re-Elect The President. I demand your resignation.
Hurley: No way, dude. I don't share my slushies with any committees. Dude, someone fed you some bogus info.

Ken Starr: Did you, or did you not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky?
Hurley: Yeah, I did, dude. It was nice.

Much better than reality, no? Also, let us not forget that Jorge Garcia's experience as a drug dealer on Curb Your Enthusiasm is highly relevant, considering the American government's complicity in drug trafficking going back at the very least to Air America in Vietnam; even though he is the president of Fat Guy Nation, not the United States of America, relevance is relevance.


Minister of the Interior—Jay Landsman, The Wire

Any real grown-ass man government needs secret police. That's just the way it's done. Who better—and who, by God, of larger physique—to run our secret police than the glib, pornography-loving sergeant of the Baltimore PD Homicide squad? Sure, when Ziggy Sobotka killed Glekas, Landsman fucked up and didn't tell Daniels about it, the Greek to flushed all his drugs, and the detail had to be content with popping Sergei, but you don't want the Minister of the Interior to be too competent, otherwise it's coup d'etat time.

More important than his skills as a policeman, though, Landsman is a funny motherfucker. The man can deliver a eulogy, and if you're going to have secret police, enough people are going to be killed that that'll come in handy. Landsman's charm only ever cracked when he was being pressured by Rawls and other superiors to deliver stats, and since in this administration he'd be answerable only to president Hurley (who, being a president in exile, won't even be around), and our yet-to-be-named Prime Minister (who we don't need to worry about), that character flaw is null and void.

The Wire had a number of awesome fat guys: Bunk, Prop Joe, Bunny Colvin had a bit of a gut. I'd say we could employ Bunk as a long-suffering secret policeman and hook Prop Joe up with a position in the Finance Ministry and let his good product generate some revenue, but Bunny Colvin presents a problem. Sure, he could be a capable administrator in the secret police for years and years, but all that independent thinking and moral integrity is nothing we want anywhere near a totalitarian government. Bunny Colvin is fucking awesome, though.


Minister of Offense—Walter Sobchek, The Big Lebowski

That's right. Our military isn't about any pussy-ass shit like defending the populace, we're all about going out and fucking shit up. Why Walter? “I'm a fuckin veteran!” That's why. Also, anyone who can get you a toe, with nail polish, by 3 o'clock is a valuable asset.

John Goodman is a very important figure to our people (despite his recent weight loss). He's been one of my favorite actors ever since his line reading of “You just got your asses WHIPPED . . . by a buncha goddamn nerds” in Revenge of the Nerds. But rather than make him Minister of Sport for his role in that movie, or Minister of Psychotic Intimidation (or Minister of The Life of the Mind) for his role in Barton Fink, we should show the proper respect to Mr. Goodman's service to his people and give him the most prestigious cabinet position we can.

As Minister of Offense, Walter's ability to properly demonstrate what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass would be invaluable. And, as a cog in a totalitarian regime, his musing “Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos” is enough of an endorsement to infer loyalty to the regime. He will, though, have to find a deputy to run the office on Shabbos.


Chief Justice of the Star Chamber—Paulie, Goodfellas

Here's the thing. I may have lost faith in democracy (as reflected by the nature of this theoretical government), but I don't want us to be assholes. Paulie was a reasonable guy. You wouldn't want him anywhere near the budget—see the sequence where he buys out Sonny's club and bankrupts it by selling everything that wasn't bolted down, and his impatient “fuck you, pay me” tendencies would make him a volatile Minister of Internal Revenue—but for a clear-headed pragmatic approach to disputes, Paulie'd be a pretty good choice. Also, we're fat guys. We need somebody who can cook, and Paulie could cook his motherfuckin' ass off; that thing with the razor blades and garlic is genius.


Minister of Antiquities—Casper Gutman, The Maltese Falcon

Sure, Sidney Greenstreet's dead, but that should come in handy as Minister of Antiquities, and his accent would lend a bit of class to the cabinet meetings. This appointment carries with it the additional benefit of increasing the chances Peter Lorre might come by to hang out.

The deputy Minister is, of course, Salaa from Raiders of the Lost Ark (not the jokey-jokes incarnation in Last Crusade). This department needs people comfortable with working in semi-legal gray areas (as both Gutman and Salaa are), and someone with a cool accent so the long boring story of a given object's provenance is less of a chore to listen to.


And, last but not least . . .

Prime Minister—Rex Ryan, Hard Knocks

Handegg season is upon us, and our new lord and master is Rex Ryan, head coach of the New York Jets. The comic geniuses at Kissing Suzy Kolber—an essential site for the young, politically incorrect handegg aficionado—started imagining Ryan as a profane, out-of-his-duckfucking-mind motivational genius almost immediately upon his hiring to coach the Jets, only to find, through HBO's Hard Knocks, that their take on Ryan was, amazingly, almost understated. Words cannot properly capture Ryan's secular divinity, but these clips give some idea.


While many proud citizens of Fat Guy Nation are physically large enough to have their own gravitational pull, Ryan has the intellectual and rhetorical gravitas to give his mind equal power over time and space. Since our president is in exile, someone needs to run shit. Rex Ryan can run shit.

Other notable fat guys may have a place in this government—and I am its Minister of Culture—but this foundation will not lead us astray. It will lead us far. Then it will stop to catch its breath.

THE SECOND ACT OF AN AMERICAN LIFE

Ben Affleck has directed two features now. The second one looks like it's going to get nominated for Oscars, too. Everyone who remembers five years ago, can I get a “what the fuck?”

Careers do not usually defy expectations, especially for those who achieve massive, almost immediate success. Sustaining that initial good fortune is a difficult trick, being as it is so totally dependent on luck. The vast majority either sustain—for the fortunate, anointed few—or settle into a neutral state of ongoing, moderate fame. Or, in the cases that induce the most delicious flavor of schadenfreude in douchey nerds (present!), go up in a drugs-and-pussy mushroom cloud. Some of the neutrals luck into a late-career renaissance (one love, Alec Baldwin), but mushroom clouds almost never un-explode. Almost. There's one exception. “Robert Downey, Jr,” you might say, but he was more of a train with a smacked-out conductor at the wheel, that crashed into shit all the time and threatened to derail but kept magically jumping back onto the track (because no matter how many kiddie pools he was arrested in, he always made good pictures). No, the one true mushroom cloud recovery that comes to mind is B-Fleck.

Benjamin Geza Affleck was born on August 15th, 1972 in Berkeley, Calfornia, and spent his formative years in Cambridge Massachussetts, where he met longtime friend and future collaborator Matt Damon. He was reared in a household that supported creativity and progressive politics, and from a very early age, the tall-dark-and-handsome Affleck found success as an actor. His most visible early success was as part of the spectacular ensemble of Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, the single most baffling picture ever made in terms of being a predictor of its cast's future success. While Matthew McConaughey was certainly fucking hilarious as jailbait-chasing puer aeternus Wooderson, how the hell did Randall “Pink” Floyd not own the universe for the next fifteen years (it was his twin brother who was in Mallrats with B-Fleck later)? And how did Mitch Kramer not become his generation's Michael Cera, the dork Casanova? As—while undeniably great in the picture—the single least-appealing character in the movie, how did B-Fleck become its biggest star?

Well, because he was sitting around with childhood friend Matt Damon one day asking himself, “why am I not the biggest star in that picture yet?” Damon, similarly befuddled, went, “I don't fuckin know. How come I was in Mystic Pizza with Julia Roberts and she's already so famous she's starting to get less famous, and I'm sittin here drinkin beers with you?” B-Fleck said, “I don't fuckin' know.” But, rather than moan their balls off unproductively, the two decided to write a script together for them to star in.

The process of getting Good Will Hunting to the screen was almost too easy. Studios immediately dug the script, Rob Reiner was attached to direct or produce or something, and it was briefly mired in turnaround bullshit until Kevin Smith and Harvey Weinstein got involved. By that time, Damon had already turned some heads in Courage Under Fire and landed the lead in Francis Coppola's 90th “comeback” picture, and B-Fleck had developed a collaboration/friendship with the aforementioned Mr. Smith.

Good Will Hunting, the first feature either Matt Damon or B-Fleck had ever written, grossed over $100 mil on a budget of under 20, won them Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, and made them into an unprecedented, mildly gay, kind of superstar duo. In what began to look like an enormous mistake for B-Fleck in coming years, he immediately pulled the “no homo” card and went to work for Michael Bay, while Matt cultivated his “serious actor” brand and eventually struck gold with the Ocean's and Bourne series.

Largely due to the kind of pictures Matt made in the ensuing years, B-Fleck began to appear to value stardom more than art. This impression, especially as it relied on the contrast to his friend's career, was, in hindsight, unfair. What really happened was a horrible streak of bad luck. The pictures B-Fleck headlined from 1998-2003, while disparate in theme and genre, can all be grouped together under the heading “It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time.” A selection:

Armageddon (1998) dir. Michael Bay

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Michael Bay movies always make a shitload of money (except for The Island, which was actually a good movie, which confused everyone so much they couldn't find the theater, resulting in it flopping).

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: Armageddon fucking sucks. The only good scene in the movie—Bruce Willis chipping golf balls at the Greenpeace boat—is politically suspect, thus ruining even that fleeting joy. Still, Armageddon, suckage aside, did make a shitload of money.

Phantoms (1998) dir. Joe Chappelle

Okay, this was actually good. In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, B-Fleck, playing his character from Chasing Amy, says “Affleck was the bomb in Phantoms,” and he was both tres meta and absolutely right.

Dogma (1999) dir. Kevin Smith

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: B-Fleck and Kevin Smith were tight, this was the longstanding labor of love Smith had always wanted to make—in the credits for Clerks, it says something like, “Coming next: Dogma!”

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: It ended up being fucking terrible. The Catholics got their tits in a twist about all the alleged blasphemy, but the real blasphemy ended up being the sloppy direction, dumb script that wasn't as profound as it thought it was, and the waste of a great cast.

Forces of Nature (1999) dir. Bronwen Hughes

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Hey, it's Sandra Bullock. It's a romantic comedy. What could possibly go wrong? Also, Bronwen Hughes made a really good picture a couple years later called Stander with Thomas Jane. Which wasn't a romantic comedy, but hey, she's a good director.

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: One of the dirty little secrets that we're never supposed to talk about now that her jagoff husband cheated on her and she has an Oscar is that Sandra Bullock never has chemistry with her male co-stars. Well, except Ryan Reynolds. But that's part of her recent career renaissance. Back in the 90s, she still had the no-chemistry thing going, and this was no exception.

Bounce (2000) dir. Don Roos

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Making movies with your girlfriend is always a good idea.

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: The above is sarcasm.

Reindeer Games (2000) dir. John Frankenheimer

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: John Frankenheimer made The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds once upon a time, both thirty-five shades of awesome.

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: Those pictures were over thirty-five years old at that point, and John Frankenheimer never made a good picture again afterward.

Boiler Room (2000) dir. Ben Younger

Again, another smaller movie that was actually kind of all right, but B-Fleck wasn't the lead. Early role for one Mr. Vincenzo Gasolina as well.

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001) dir. Kevin Smith

Yet again, smaller movie, not a lead performance. Some shreds of self-awareness and willingness to make fun of himself on display, and goddammit I love this movie. [Ed. Note: future post on why Kevin Smith's movie version of a greatest hits album is my favorite movie of his a distinct possibility]

Pearl Harbor (2001) dir. Michael Bay

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: B-Fleck had made a couple good movies in a row, and hey, Armageddon made a shitload of money.

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: Armageddon was the second-worst picture Michael Bay ever made. This is the worst. Not only that, but the 78 fucktillion times I saw the trailer to this piece of shit rank a close second to only making it through 9/11 because I arbitrarily scheduled a morning job interview in one of the towers for the next day as my most traumatic experience of 2001.

The Sum of All Fears (2002) dir. Phil Alden Robinson

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Hey, it's Jack Ryan! The Hunt For Red October was awesome, Patriot Games was fun, and Clear and Present Danger . . . well . . . ok, forget Clear and Present Danger. Taking over for Harrison Ford should be a snap, right? Right . . .?

Why it ended up blowing up in B-Fleck's face: See above. The Sum of All Fears didn't suck as much as Clear and Present Danger, but it still sucked, as Tom Clancy novels do when you don't adapt the crap out of them in just the right way, and there's no way in hell someone who wasn't even 30 yet when this picture was filmed has the gravitas to take over for Harrison Ford. Shit, Harrison Ford didn't even blow up til he was over 30, even he needed to be over 30 to have the gravitas to be Harrison Ford. And he fucking is Harrison Ford.

Changing Lanes (2002) dir. Roger Michell

Another good movie, though B-Fleck's character is douchecuntpedophile levels of unlikable in it. This, however, would be his last halfway decent picture in this phase of his career, as 2003 had a one-two-three of fucktardery no mortal actor could possibly recover from on its way.

Daredevil (2003) dir. Mark Steven Johnson

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Uh . . . because comic book movies are popular . . .?

Why it blew up in B-Fleck's face: Comic book movies, alas, are usually terrible. You can count the ones that aren't on one hand (the first two Spider-Man movies, The Dark Knight, the first Iron Man . . . I'll try to think of one for the thumb). The effects looked cheesy, Colin Farrell's shaved head was more funny than scary, and the whole thing just feels cheap, which is unfortunate considering it cost 75 million fucking dollars.

Gigli (2003) dir. Martin Brest

Why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Martin Brest, once upon a time, directed Beverly Hills Cop and Midnight Run, two of B-Fleck's (and my) favorite movies. Also, making movies with your girlfriend is always a good idea.

Why it blew up in B-Fleck's face: See Reindeer Games; Martin Brest had long since lost his fastball. And Jennifer Lopez had long since made it her mission in life to make everyone who liked Out of Sight—in which she was spectacularly good—need a drink; her movies seem almost like they're trying to be bad. Even though Gigli wasn't as bad as everyone said it was, it's still one of the worst movies ever made.

Paycheck (2003) dir. John Woo

And, at long last, we have the final nail in B-Fleck's career's coffin. Look, the fucking title is Paycheck. I don't even have to make a joke. And I won't. The fact that this movie exists at all is a sign that we need Remedial Irony classes in our schools. This ended John Woo's sad run as a Hollywood hack as well. Philip K. Dick turned over in his fucking grave when this came out.


A couple more terrible B-Fleck movies would come out in 2004, but only because there's too much money at stake to just cancel shit in Hollywood. B-Fleck was getting motherfucked every day in the tabloids due to the tackiness and excess of his girlfriend's—and, more often than not, his own—attention whoring and money hemorrhaging. The decline and fall of B-Fleck and J-Ho's relationship was as tawdry and distasteful as its rise and peak. When the smoke cleared, B-Fleck found himself, basically, without a career.

His salvation would come in both intelligence and self-awareness. Unlike many of the other massively famous, B-Fleck realized that he'd become, not to put to fine a point on it, a bit of a joke. The career path upon which he'd set out when he first became famous was at an end, certainly.

B-Fleck quietly took up with, and married, Jennifer Garner, with whom he now has two children and a much more stable and quiet relationship. He quietly (and with a shocking minimum of look-at-me narcissism) became more involved with progressive politics. Where earlier, in the midst of his "I make Michael Bay movies and blow a hundred grand a night at poker" period, B-Fleck stumped for Gore in a way that made people actually not want to vote for Gore (god that 2000 election was a motherfucking mess), B-Fleck now worked more behind the scenes, occasionally popping up on Real Time With Bill Maher and managing to seem as smart as Salman Rushdie (no mean feat).

To relaunch his acting career, there could not have been a more perfect role than George Reeves in Hollywoodland. The parallels with B-Fleck's own career were subtle but present, and the idea of a man who became famous and ridiculous at the same time, and whose demise left everyone scratching their heads and concluding that he did it to himself, must have resonated. Amazingly, this comment on his own life and career, with all the attendant world-weariness, humility, and insight, came when B-Fleck was only 33.

Hollywoodland was but a first step along the new path. The second, far more decisive one, was Gone, Baby, Gone. Based on a novel by Dennis Lehane (whose Mystic River and Shutter Island have also been adapted for the screen, with varying degrees of success), Gone, Baby, Gone tells the story of Boston private detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro trying to find a missing four-year-old girl, which leads to an ending that is absolutely fucking devastating, and not in any way you might think at the outset.

Although based on the fourth in a series of five books, B-Fleck's Gone, Baby, Gone doesn't feel like it's missing any backstory. This is partly due to the unpredictable twin character arc of Kenzie and Gennaro in the novels; at the beginning of Gone, Baby, Gone, they're romantically involved, which gives the movie a much simpler jumping-off point than the “they hooked up in high school and suppressed their true love for each other while Patrick married Angie's sister and Angie ended up getting beaten up by her husband even though she can kick anyone's ass and through the emotional intensity of their previous case they ended up in bed together and now they're making a go of it” of the books. It's also because B-Fleck made a number of fortuitous choices in tone, visual aesthetic, and most importantly, casting.

The first two, which have a slight impact on the third, come from the many connections Gone, Baby, Gone has with The Wire. Lehane himself wrote several episodes and appears in a season 3 cameo as the evidence room cop who lets McNulty go in and take the surveillance device that they end up nailing Stringer's cell phone with, for one. For another, the movie and show share a naturalistic style in writing, acting, and cinematography. For a third, Amy “Beadie Russell” Ryan and Michael K. “Omar” Williams are both in it (though holy shit Amy Ryan can act: anyone capable of playing both Beadie Russell and Helene McCready is a fucking deity).

Top to bottom, the cast is on point. Morgan Freeman is Morgan Freeman (the thought of any director needing to give him notes is more blasphemous than anything in Dogma) but managing to keep Ed Harris from gnawing overmuch on the scenery is something any director, especially a first-timer, can hang his hat on. It was nice to see John Ashton again (another Beverly Hills Cop/Midnight Run shout-out from B-Fleck, in an impeccable display of taste) and he doesn't disappoint, perfectly cast.

Where B-Fleck made his best choice though was his leading man. When I first heard B-Fleck was going to be directing this, I thought “Ah fuck, he's doing this so he can play Patrick; while it's perfect casting, I nonetheless harbor doubts about whether or not this whole enterprise is a vanity project.” (Yes, I use semi-colons and words like nonetheless when I think, fuck off). Then I heard, no, B-Fleck isn't playing Patrick. Instead, he got his little brother: C-Fleck. I made the mistake I think a lot of people did, seeing C-Fleck playing a retard in To Die For and Good Will Hunting and thinking that was him. Sure, he's got that high-pitched, tremulous voice, but C-Fleck can fucking thesp. I didn't really realize it until Gone, Baby, Gone, but holy God that little motherfucker's good. And B-Fleck especially deserves credit for having the balls to cast C-Fleck, knowing everyone was going to roll their eyes and making drawling accusations of nepotism, but also knowing C-Fleck would rule.

B-Fleck made a number of changes to the book, all of them for the better (impressive, considering the book was already really good). The main one was changing this cartoon-character wigger drug dealer into a Haitian for the sheer fuck of it, and it worked splendidly. (Ed. Note: see if you can spot all forty of the mindfucks on the actor's Wikipedia page; seriously, his CV is so weird I swear his page has been vandalized).

Gone, Baby, Gone ended up winning an armload of awards, and in one stroke made it not only necessary but mandatory to take B-Fleck seriously again. He started getting acting gigs again, but mainly character parts in things that won't embarrass him (well, except He's Just Not That Into You, but hey, he's got kids to feed). However, the difference between directing a good movie and being a good director is the follow-up. And that follow-up drops on the 17th of this month.

The Town is getting delirious buzz. They're talking Oscars. B-Fleck's playing the lead in a picture he wrote directed. At this point in his career, though, and after seeing Gone, Baby, Gone, we can be reasonably sure that he's not jerking off into a mirror on some Orson Welles trip. He's doing this because he's the right actor for the part, we can assume. I want this picture to be very, very good. Not being religious, the whole notion of redemption usually makes me snore, but something about the way B-Fleck exploded, imploded, and emerged whole, a man, on the other side is impressive. It's as implausible as the shit in the movies he was making when he was shtupping Jenny from the block, but hey. Part of the universe's manifest sense of humor is that not even the most coked-up hack screenwriter can imagine anything with a higher “get the fuck out of here” factor than reality.