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15JulJuly 15, 2022

Does the hero adopt a corrected philosophy at this point?

And then, one day, the light of truth begins to dawn. The magic words pop into the hero's head and guide her out of the darkness. It can be advice she desperately needs to hear, or simply her own pithy summary of every hard lesson she's learned.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	NO, he retreats to his previous personality flaw.
Alien	YES. “We’ll blow it the fuck out into space. We have to stick together.”
An Education	YES. Reacting to teacher’s place, “I’d love to live someplace like this…That’s all you need, isn’t it?”
The Babadook	YES. To her husband’s ghost: “You’re trespassing in my house.”
Blazing Saddles	YES. He must bring the workers and townspeople together.
Blue Velvet	NO. Not really: he remains conflicted throughout. When Detective Williams says “You’re all through with this now?” he responds “Yes sir, I sure am,” but he continues investigating. Later, he says to Sandy, while holding Dorothy, “Forgive me, I love you.”
The Bourne Identity	YES. “I don’t want to know who I am anymore.” He only cares about what he can become.
Bridesmaids	YES. “I’m not okay.” “Things are going to change but they’ll be better.”
Casablanca	YES. “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world”
Chinatown	YES. When he asks Cross ”How much better can you eat?”, he’s also criticizing his own predatory work ethic earlier in the movie.
Donnie Brasco	YES. “Fuck the rules.”
Do the Right Thing	YES. We can sense that the mayor’s words are now echoing in his head: Always do the right thing.
The Farewell	NO. You would think she would say something subtly showing that she’s coming around during her wedding speech, but her speech is unmemorable. (The closest thing she gets to a corrected statement of philosophy is her final line of the movie where she comes home and shouts “Ha!” using her grandma’s exercise mantra.)
The Fighter	YES. I want you both in my corner
Frozen	YES. It’s a line from before that now gets interpreted correctly: “An act of love of love will thaw a frozen heart.”
The Fugitive	YES. Kimble: Sort of: “I am trying to solve a puzzle here.” (aka I can’t trust in others to find the right answers and I need to rely on myself.) Also: “To see a friend” (aka evil is all around me and I’ve been too trusting.) Gerard: “That company is a monster.”
Get Out	YES. After the ¾ point, he chooses to save himself. He discovers that the only way to save himself from slavery is to pick some cotton.
Groundhog Day	YES. Eventually: “No matter what happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I’m happy now”
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. “It’s not the dragon I’m worried about.” “I’m not one of them”
In a Lonely Place	YES. “I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
Iron Man	YES. “I’m going to find my weapons and destroy them. I’m not crazy, Pepper, I just finally know what I have to do, and I know in my heart that it’s right.”
Lady Bird	YES. “She’s my best friend” “I’m sorry, I know I can lie and not be a good person but... Please, Mom, please I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you - I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I’m ungrateful and I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I wanted more...”
Raising Arizona	YES. “You were right and I was wrong. We got a family here and I’m gonna start acting responsibly.
Rushmore	YES. “I’m just a barber’s son.” About his plan for the aquarium (and therefore his crush on Ms. Cross): “I gave it to a friend.”
Selma	Sort of. He doesn’t frame it as changing his mind, but rather tries to explain his decision as a tactical retreat. But nobody really buys that he hasn’t reversed himself.
The Shining	YES. Danny barely speaks, but he seems to have accepted that his dad must die.
Sideways	YES. Before, actually: “This has been a big deal for me.” In this case, the further hardships cause him to regress, not progress, but the progress he’s already made finally pays off much later.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Quid pro quo: you have to make yourself vulnerable in order to understand evil.
Star Wars	YES. Not until the end: “Use the force”
Sunset Boulevard	YES. in telling her, “I’d take it in a second, but it’s a little too dressy for sitting behind a copy desk in Dayton, Ohio.”

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15JulJuly 15, 2022

Test 3

https://soundcloud.com/user-396207161-132563696/011-marvel-reread-club-february-1963?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

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15JulJuly 15, 2022

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1125873289&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true

Steve and Matt Bird · 011 Marvel Reread Club February 1963

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15JulJuly 15, 2022

Test

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07JunJune 7, 2022

Marvel Reread Club Episode 32: March, 1964, Part 2

Steve and Matt Bird · 032 Marvel Reread Club March 1964 (part 2)

Marvel Reread Club dethaws the second half of March 1964 with Tales of Suspense #51 starring Iron Man, Tales to Astonish #53 starring Giant-Man and the Wasp, X-Men #4 and Avengers #4! A hasty decision to get out of vaudeville! Suspiciously-good fan club costumes! ADA compliance! Statues not sculpted in typical poses!

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03JunJune 3, 2022

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: By the time the final quarter of the story begins (if not long before), has your hero switched to being proactive instead of reactive?

Eventually you realize you can’t solve your problems without getting in the driver’s seat.

While this is the latest possible moment for the hero to turn proactive, I should emphasize that it’s also fine for the hero to become proactive, starting way back when the hero commits or at any point in between.

Mike in Swingers finally goes out and meets a new girl.
Cady in Mean Girls begins to make amends and joins the mathletes.
Clarice in Silence of the Lambs decides that the answer must be back in Ohio.
Tired of sneaking around, Steve McQueen steals a motorcycle and peels out in The Great Escape.

This is usually considered the one unbreakable rule of fiction, but there are rare exceptions: The hero of Witness never becomes proactive, and the hero of Raiders of the Lost Ark suddenly becomes totally passive. (He decides to follow that old bumper sticker’s advice: “Let Go and Let God.”) The first cut of The Terminator included a proactive turn, but it was cut out in the editing room to speed up the movie. (Originally, they were on their way to blow up Skynet’s future manufacturing plant when the robot caught up with them, but that decision was cut out of the final version, so that storyline became the basis for Terminator 2.) Because the movie is so exciting, the audience doesn’t care that the heroes never become proactive.

In very rare cases, it can be heroic not to go on the offensive: The dad in Kramer vs. Kramer could redouble his efforts when he loses his custody case, but he decides it would be too hard on his son. When his wife relents and surrenders custody anyway, it feels like he earned it by not fighting. Likewise, in Sideways, Miles simply waits for Mya to call him at this point, but because he has a history of hostile drunk dialing, it seems heroic for him to summon up the patience to wait for her call.

Straying from the Party Line: The “Passive” Protagonist of The Farewell

There were many Western ways for The Farewell to end:

Billi can’t take it anymore and confronts her Nai Nai with the truth.
Billi agrees to go along with the deception, but someone else unexpectedly snaps and confesses.
Billi agrees to go along with the deception but the truth comes out accidentally.
Nai Nai figures out something’s going and gets the truth through interrogation.

In each case, this would happen around the ¾ point, and the fallout from the lie coming out would supply the drama for the final quarter of the film. I was fairly sure that one of these would happen. But I thought of one more possibility:

Billi agrees to go along with the deception, but as they say good bye, Nai Nai slyly hints that she knew all along and appreciates that nobody told her.

As we moved along, I started to think that was the most likely.

But then we get to the actual ending: Billi agrees to go along with the deception, and leaves without the truth ever coming out, and Nai Nai never gives any real hint that she knows the truth. The ending card implies that Nai Nai never found out and survived because of that.

This totally breaks our western rules of “big lie” storytelling. Big lies must come out! Once the rock has been rolled uphill, it must be released, come barreling back down and knock everybody flat.

Wang is defiantly refusing to give us what we expect and demand. This is the same conflict Billi has with her family. Wang is saying to us, “That’s the confrontational American way of doing things and you’re sure that it’s the only way, but there’s a gentler Chinese way, and our way can work better than your way, if you just learn to go with the flow.” No confrontation, no narrative climax, no release.

But, crucially, Wang knows she is defying our expectations. She’s not just saying, “Oh, did I create a passive protagonist? Whoops, I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to do that.” She is creating tension by pointedly defying our expectations in every scene and that tension is powering her movie.

And the scene at the climax where Billi must run across town to forge a new medical report before the end of the wedding is absolutely crucial. Suddenly, she must improvise and actively participate in the plan to do nothing. She must act to maintain her lack of action. The ending would feel like a much bigger fizzle if she had not been forced into action like that, showing that she’d switched sides definitively.

Straying From the Party Line: The Passive Protagonist in Bridesmaids

Deviation: On paper, Annie seems like a fairly uninspiring protagonist.
The Potential Problem: Let’s look at all the character ‘no’s on the checklist: She’s not good or clever at her job. She doesn’t have a strong self-image, or three rules she lives by. She’s largely buffeted by events and reacts as anyone would. She doesn’t just fail once at the mid-point—she suffers nine disasters in a row and becomes horribly depressed, which seems like a little much. She never becomes proactive: even when she pitches in to help at the end, she does so only because Helen asks her to. She never takes charge of the situation or gets out in front of her troubles.
Does the Movie Get Away With It? Surprisingly, it does. True, the third quarter is a downer, but the movie earns it by rooting Annie’s crisis to real-world pain: Annie extraordinary suffering is tied to America’s extraordinary suffering… Robert Kirkman famously created “The Walking Dead” to explore what happens after most zombie movies end. Likewise, Bridesmaids shows what happens after most romantic comedies end: she’s already had the traditional happy ending: her boyfriend helped her start her own business doing what she loved to do! But what happens when the economy crashes, the business fails and the boyfriend leaves? That horrible situation, reflecting the grim economic reality of so many Americans right now, fuels this movie, and allows it to go much darker than most romantic comedies dare to go. Ultimately, we are able to root for Annie throughout, despite her passivity and almost-bottomless depression. In fact, we totally love her, but the movie is walking a dangerous line, and it could have easily lost us.

Straying from the Party Line: Do the Right Thing's Passive Protagonist That’s Not Solving a Large Problem!

So finally we’ve captured that elusive beast: a great movie with a passive protagonist. In face, we have sometime even more rare: a great movie that’s not about the solving of a large problem!

Let’s start with our hapless hero Mookie, and all the ways he deviates from our list:

He’s not especially resourceful.
He has a lot more flaws than strengths.
He doesn’t make a lot of difficult decisions.

There is indeed a moment in just about the right spot where Mookie takes responsibility for a problem: 18 minutes in, he quickly shuts down Buggin’ Out’s first calls for a boycott, ushers him out, lectures him, and then Mookie comes back in and promises Sal that he’ll keep Buggin’ Out away from the pizza place.

So that sounds about right, and indeed this problem will get larger and larger, but Mookie himself will not do much of anything to solve that problem until it suddenly gets out of hand, more than an hour of screentime later.

(There is one scene about halfway through in which Mookie mildly repeats his advice to Buggin’ Out, but he actually makes the problem worse, because he also confirms Buggin’s worst fear by noticing that Buggin’s “Jordans are dogged”. He doesn’t suspect that the ruining of Buggin’s Air Jordans by a white homeowner on the block is by this point the real source of Buggin’s mounting anger.)

Meanwhile, Mookie skips most of the steps that we expect to see a hero go through:

His offhand commitment to solving this problem doesn’t lead to an unforeseen conflict with another person.
He doesn’t grapple with a lot of tough moral dilemmas.
He has no lowest point or midpoint disaster.
He doesn’t turn proactive until the height of the climax, when he acts suddenly, belatedly, and rashly.

So does the movie get away with all of this? Absolutely! Let’s break it down...

First of all, why doesn’t Mookie’s passivity infuriate us?

Like Jake Gittes back when he walked a beat in Chinatown, Mookie is in a position where it seems (at first) like the “right thing” to do is to do as little as possible. Shut down Buggin’ Out, shut down Pino, humor Smiley, compliment Raheem on his rings. We don’t get frustrated with him because it seems like he is indeed “doing the right thing” and successfully keeping the peace (You could say that the one time Mookie breaks his commitment to mildness is when he gets angry at Sal about being nice to Jade, and it is perhaps this violation of his code that karmically brings about the crisis.)
We can tell that a problem is brewing, and we sense that we can’t trust Mookie to resolve it, but that makes the movie more exciting. This isn’t a movie about the solving of a big problem, it’s about the gradual combustion of a suppressed problem.

But this still leaves the question: why do we put up with it? There’s a good reasons why most stories are about active protagonists solving large problems: Because that’s how we’re primed to watch stories. Our first instinct is to invest our identification in one character, caring only about that character, and only caring about the story to the extent that we care about the character. This is the easiest way to tell a story and the easiest way to read or watch a story.

This movie asks a lot more of us. It asks us to jump around, and never plant ourselves too firmly in any one character’s shoes. This makes it harder to care, but Lee and his collaborators know how to compensate for this lack of a comfort zone:

It’s just really funny. The dialogue is funny. The performances are funny. The vibe is funny.
The editing style is bracing and invigorating. It’s bouncy. It’s brash.
It’s absolutely gorgeous to watch. Cinematographer Ernest Dickerson’s number one influence was Jack Cardiff, who shot Michael Powell’s movies, such as Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes, and he successfully recreate the eye-popping use of impressionistic and vibrant color.

So why doesn’t it deflate the movie that nobody is trying to solve anything? I would say that we are somewhat aware as we watch that our narrative expectations are being frustrated, but we go along with it simply because we trust the filmmakers. Every aspect of the filmmaking is so good that we know we’re in safe hands, and we give the movie a reluctant benefit of the doubt until everything finally coalesces in a very satisfying way at the climax.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES, but proactive in a negative way until the last ten minutes.
Alien	YES, she’s standing up to everybody and trying to blow up the ship.
An Education	NO. She switches very late. The ‘third act” is only ten minutes, as was the first act.
The Babadook	YES. Well, it would be the final quarter if the final act weren’t so short. That’s a problem with “it’s all in your head” stories: a corrected philosophy basically solves the problem.
Blazing Saddles	YES. He’s proactive throughout.
Blue Velvet	YES. he’s proactive throughout.
The Bourne Identity	YES. at just this point.
Bridesmaids	NO. Somewhat, she still has to be asked to help find Lillian, and doesn’t have any influence on the final wedding.
Casablanca	YES. “You have to think for both of us.” “All right, I will.”
Chinatown	YES. He’s fairly proactive throughout, despite his claims to the contrary.
Donnie Brasco	YES. proactive from the beginning.
Do the Right Thing	YES. He waits too long.
The Farewell	YES. Yes, when…
The Fighter	YES. Very briefly, when he demands that they all work together, but once he does that, they do the work of working out their differences and leading him to the championship.
Frozen	Sort of. Her goal of getting Kristoff to kiss her is still somewhat passive, and Olaf is leading her around. She really only become proactive at the last, crucial second.
The Fugitive	YES. Very much so.
Get Out	YES. He briefly tries to be proactive at the midpoint, but doesn’t succeed until the ¾ point.
Groundhog Day	YES.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. He devises the rescue plan.
In a Lonely Place	YES. he proposes marriage, forcing her hand.
Iron Man	YES. Finally cares where Stane is and what he’s up to.
Lady Bird	YES. She goes off to school, despite her mom not talking to her.
Raising Arizona	YES. They lock and load and hit the road.
Rushmore	YES. He’s proactive throughout.
Selma	YES. He’s proactive throughout.
The Shining	YES. finally.
Sideways	Sort of. He never becomes proactive. Maya has to finally reach out to him, and it takes a huge effort just to be reactive, and drive to see her. BUT, they’ve set up a situation in which one of his big problems is drunk-dialing, so, ironically, it seems somewhat heroic that he doesn’t reach out to her, and waits for her to call.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Goes to Ohio by herself.
Star Wars	YES. they plan to attack the Death Star…
Sunset Boulevard	Somewhat, when he starts sneaking out. He doesn’t really become proactive until he walks out, with fatal consequences. Perhaps he intended to tell Betty, or leave Norma, but…

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02JunJune 2, 2022

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: After the crisis, does the hero finally commit to pursuing a corrected goal, which still seems far away?

Any recovering addict will tell you that once you stop sabotaging yourself, you still have a long, long way to go to get your life back on track. All you’ve done by committing to a corrected goal is get back to zero with a better plan.

Remember: Everybody hates a lucky man. The solution shouldn’t land in the hero’s lap, and it shouldn’t be within easy grasp. Even at this late point in the story, once the hero has a corrected philosophy, there should still be a long way to go and a short time to get there.

The heroine of An Education realizes that she must now try to get into Oxford without a high school degree.
Jason Bourne decides he must take the fight back to the CIA all alone.
Phil in Groundhog Day realizes that he must help as many townspeople as possible, honing his schedule over hundreds of repeated days.
Danny realizes that he must somehow stop his father himself in The Shining.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	NO, he retreats to his previous goal and tries to get laid by a drunk girl.
Alien	YES, blowing up the ship.
An Education	YES. She becomes determined to get into Oxford without a high school degree.
The Babadook	YES. although it’s not really far away. When she confronts it strongly, it retreats to the basement.
Blazing Saddles	YES. He convinces the townsfolk to give the railroad workers land to save the town.
Blue Velvet	YES.
The Bourne Identity	YES. he decides to confront his ex boss.
Bridesmaids	YES. Fix everything.
Casablanca	YES. he takes them to the airport, but Renault warns Strasser.
Chinatown	YES. He realizes he has to get Evelyn and Catherine out of town, away from Cross and the police.
Donnie Brasco	YES. he realizes that he has to get out now.
Do the Right Thing	NO. Not really: he acts rashly, then reverts into paralysis.
The Farewell	YES. She happily joins in a drinking game with her family, no longer feeling disconnected from them.
The Fighter	YES. he realizes that he’ll have to force his new handlers to allow Dicky back in.
Frozen	YES. Get Kristoff to kiss her.
The Fugitive	YES. he finally investigates Devlin McGregor
Get Out	YES. He fights them all to the death.
Groundhog Day	YES. He’s got to change as many lives as possible in one day. It’s a big job.
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. Ride new dragons to save them all.
In a Lonely Place	NO. The movie is over. He is destroyed.
Iron Man	YES. Defeat Stane, save Pepper.
Lady Bird	NO. Well, she pretty much just has to wait and see if she gets off the wait list.
Raising Arizona	YES. Save the baby, then return him.
Rushmore	YES. He creates a similar life for himself at Grover Cleveland to the one he had at Rushmore: puts on a new play, etc. He also vows to get Blume and Cross back together.
Selma	Sort of. He commits to doing it in the courts, but the movie certainly doesn’t portray that as “what he should have done all along”, but rather an avenue that opened because of everything he had done so far.
The Shining	YES. Danny commits to stopping his father.
Sideways	NO. He recommits to the false goal of making Jack happy, even retrieving his wedding rings after his adultery.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. She’s on the right trail, but that trail has gone cold.
Star Wars	YES. Finally discovers true goal: use the plans to blow up the Death Star.
Sunset Boulevard	Somewhat. He decides to leave Norma, but that seems easy.

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01JunJune 1, 2022

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does the hero adopt a corrected philosophy at this point?

Rick in Casablanca realizes, “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.”
The heroine of The Babadook says to her husband’s ghost, “You’re trespassing in my house.”
Ripley in Alien stops taking the company’s side and says to her remaining crew members, “We’ll blow it the fuck out into space. We have to stick together.”
As with the false statement of philosophy, sometimes the corrected philosophy is stated by someone else and accepted by the hero: “Be a mensch,” in The Apartment, and “Use the force,” in Star Wars.

Rulebook Casefile: The Corrected Philosophy That May Not Be Correct in Selma

I’ve always said that the most common storytelling structure applies to effective stories precisely because it applies to the steps and missteps that people tend to make in solving big problems in real life. Last time we talked about one way in which the true story of Selma fits this structure, but had to be fudged a little to fit in a bigger way. This time let’s look at another place where the movie and the real story match the structure closely, but Ava DuVernay (and/or credited screenwriter Paul Webb, but let’s assume it’s DuVernay) chooses to undercut it.

Usually, the hero begins with a false philosophy, then, about three-quarters of the way into the story, after a spiritual crisis, the hero adopts a corrected philosophy going into the final quarter, which will finally allow them to succeed.

Does that happen in this true story? On first glance yes, very much so. King begins the story with a philosophy that he should use illegal non-violent resistance to trigger on-camera violence by the Selma police, and thus move President Johnson to action. And at the ¾ point, King is leading the movement across the bridge only to be confronted by the police waiting for them, and lots of TV cameras. But then the police step aside, possibly to let them pass and possibly to set up an ambush. King stops anyway, takes a knee, prays, and decides to turn the whole march around and go home. Instead, King pursues the right to march in court, wins, and then Johnson agrees to support the support voting rights after all before the new march can happen.

So King has a quite literal come-to-Jesus moment, abandons his original strategy, and wins as a result. That couldn’t fit the structure better. Real life has delivered DuVernay a perfect structure. But she’s doesn’t seem to be entirely comfortable with it.

She shoots the reversal as a questionable choice at the time. The audience is just as shocked and disappointed as his (literal) followers. Even after they win in the courts and complete the march triumphantly, DuVernay never really signals to us that this was the right choice. We’re never sure that King couldn’t have and shouldn’t have won by continuing that second march.

For one thing, in both the movie and real life, the real reason Johnson caves is that one of the northern white preachers who came down for the cancelled march (who says in the movie “I for one don’t fault him for it, except he owes me a bus ticket home”) is beaten to death by the Klan. Is that what Jesus wanted? Maybe it’s better that one died instead of multiple deaths that could have happened on the bridge (or, perhaps even worse, no violence at all), but that’s a horrible choice.

On a larger level, King’s critics within the movement are given strong voices in the movie. He comes to an understanding with one (John Lewis), but not with two others (Malcolm X and James Forman). The reversal seems to back up what they were saying, and their criticisms linger even after the victory.

Is King’s tendency to miss out on the all the violence in the campaign a personal flaw, or a coincidence? As I said last time, DuVernay invites us to ask this question, and doesn’t give us an answer.

This is also where the final song comes in, where Common raps about these events as well as more recent events in Ferguson. This song seems to implicitly ask, “Could King have accomplished more?” Do we still have such horrible problems today because King didn’t push hard enough? Because he didn’t leave behind a strong enough movement when he finally gave his life?

It took forever for a theatrically-released movie about King to be made, and it wound up arriving in an era where protests were turning more radical, inviting DuVernay to be more critical of King’s approach. King’s “corrected philosophy” and subsequent victory fit very neatly into my structure, but viewers don’t leave the theater sure it was correct, and that’s a strength of this morally complex film

Rulebook Casefile: An Ironic Corrected Statement of Philosophy in The Fighter

We’ve discussed many times the idea that every hero should have not one but two statements of philosophy, one at the beginning of the story, and another after the spiritual crisis, about three-quarters of the way through the story.

The initial statement of philosophy is inherently ironic, because it’s wrong. The hero’s words to live by are ruining his life, or at least holding him back. But when the correct statement of philosophy arrives three-quarters of the way into the story, there’s a danger that it will seem preachy or lame, as if it’s “the moral of the story”. One way to get around this is to have the corrected statement of philosophy be delivered in an ironic way.

We’ve looked at two examples of this recently in sitcom pilots. In both cases, the sitcom was trying to maintain an “edgy” tone, and they didn’t want to break that for a moment of sentiment, so they found a way to deliver the true statement or philosophy ironically:

In the “Community” pilot, Jeff is delivering a disingenuous speech in order to break up the study-group early so that he can seduce Britta. He doesn’t realize until halfway through that his bullshit is actually something he himself needs to hear.
In the “Modern Family” pilot, it sounds as if Jay is delivering a heartfelt summation of the episode in a voiceover, but then we cut to him and he’s reading his stepson’s ludicrous love-letter, shaking his head in derision the whole time.

The Fighter is a much more forthrightly emotional story, and it does have a traditional corrected statement of philosophy (“I want Dicky back, and I want you, and I want Charlene, I want my family. What’s wrong with that??”), but after that there’s another one that’s very ironic. In his big championship fight, Micky’s chosen entry music is Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again”: Just before he goes into the ring, he and his brother touch their foreheads together and sing the lyrics in unison:

“Here I go again on my own! Goin’ down the only road I’ve ever known! Like a drifter I was born to walk alone! ‘Cause I made up my mind! I ain’t wastin’ no more time! So here I go again!”

Then, without another word, Micky goes into the ring and wins the championship. How ironic is that? First of all, any other movie would only use such a cheesy song in an ironic way, so it’s ironic that it’s unironic here. But of course the big irony is that the brothers are merging into one as they sing about how neither one needs the other.

The most fundamental dilemma in storytelling (or life) is individualism vs. solidarity. Every battle that tears America apart, culturally, economically, and politically, is fueled by that irresolvable dilemma. In this scene, Micky and Dicky finally solve their conflict by embracing a paradox.

The 40 Year Old Virgin	NO, he retreats to his previous personality flaw.
Alien	YES. “We’ll blow it the fuck out into space. We have to stick together.”
An Education	YES. Reacting to teacher’s place, “I’d love to live someplace like this…That’s all you need, isn’t it?”
The Babadook	YES. To her husband’s ghost: “You’re trespassing in my house.”
Blazing Saddles	YES. He must bring the workers and townspeople together.
Blue Velvet	NO. Not really: he remains conflicted throughout. When Detective Williams says “You’re all through with this now?” he responds “Yes sir, I sure am,” but he continues investigating. Later, he says to Sandy, while holding Dorothy, “Forgive me, I love you.”
The Bourne Identity	YES. “I don’t want to know who I am anymore.” He only cares about what he can become.
Bridesmaids	YES. “I’m not okay.” “Things are going to change but they’ll be better.”
Casablanca	YES. “The problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world”
Chinatown	YES. When he asks Cross ”How much better can you eat?”, he’s also criticizing his own predatory work ethic earlier in the movie.
Donnie Brasco	YES. “Fuck the rules.”
Do the Right Thing	YES. We can sense that the mayor’s words are now echoing in his head: Always do the right thing.
The Farewell	NO. You would think she would say something subtly showing that she’s coming around during her wedding speech, but her speech is unmemorable. (The closest thing she gets to a corrected statement of philosophy is her final line of the movie where she comes home and shouts “Ha!” using her grandma’s exercise mantra.)
The Fighter	YES. I want you both in my corner
Frozen	YES. It’s a line from before that now gets interpreted correctly: “An act of love of love will thaw a frozen heart.”
The Fugitive	YES. Kimble: Sort of: “I am trying to solve a puzzle here.” (aka I can’t trust in others to find the right answers and I need to rely on myself.) Also: “To see a friend” (aka evil is all around me and I’ve been too trusting.) Gerard: “That company is a monster.”
Get Out	YES. After the ¾ point, he chooses to save himself. He discovers that the only way to save himself from slavery is to pick some cotton.
Groundhog Day	YES. Eventually: “No matter what happens tomorrow, or for the rest of my life, I’m happy now”
How to Train Your Dragon	YES. “It’s not the dragon I’m worried about.” “I’m not one of them”
In a Lonely Place	YES. “I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
Iron Man	YES. “I’m going to find my weapons and destroy them. I’m not crazy, Pepper, I just finally know what I have to do, and I know in my heart that it’s right.”
Lady Bird	YES. “She’s my best friend” “I’m sorry, I know I can lie and not be a good person but... Please, Mom, please I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you - I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, I’m ungrateful and I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I wanted more...”
Raising Arizona	YES. “You were right and I was wrong. We got a family here and I’m gonna start acting responsibly.
Rushmore	YES. “I’m just a barber’s son.” About his plan for the aquarium (and therefore his crush on Ms. Cross): “I gave it to a friend.”
Selma	Sort of. He doesn’t frame it as changing his mind, but rather tries to explain his decision as a tactical retreat. But nobody really buys that he hasn’t reversed himself.
The Shining	YES. Danny barely speaks, but he seems to have accepted that his dad must die.
Sideways	YES. Before, actually: “This has been a big deal for me.” In this case, the further hardships cause him to regress, not progress, but the progress he’s already made finally pays off much later.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Quid pro quo: you have to make yourself vulnerable in order to understand evil.
Star Wars	YES. Not until the end: “Use the force”
Sunset Boulevard	YES. in telling her, “I’d take it in a second, but it’s a little too dressy for sitting behind a copy desk in Dayton, Ohio.”

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31MayMay 31, 2022

The Expanded Ultimate Story Checklist: Does a further setback lead to a spiritual crisis?

The easy way tends to end in a disaster and loss of safe space, but trying again the hard way is no guarantee of success. In fact, it often leads to another failure. The difference, this time, is that our eyes are wide open, and suddenly we can see why we failed. Now we need to come face-to-face with the factor within ourselves that’s causing these failures.

Most heroes discover they need to change their personalities at this point, but others realize they need to be true to themselves and stop trying to change. This is usually the point at which the hero replaces a false goal with a true goal, and a false philosophy with a corrected philosophy.

The couple realizes divorce just isn’t fun anymore in The Awful Truth.
The parents decide they’ll probably split up in Raising Arizona.
After admitting he’s not Italian, Dave in Breaking Away visits his father’s quarry and admits he’s not really a stonecutter, either.
Andy in The 40-Year-Old Virgin freaks out about selling off his action figures.
The heroes of Blue Velvet and Donnie Brasco realize how far they’ve fallen when they each hit a woman.
The spiritual crisis is quite literal in Witness when the cop and his Amish crush finally kiss.

Straying from the Party Line: Rushmore’s Offscreen Catharsis

In Rushmore, at what point does Max Fischer finally turn a corner, get a girlfriend, and vow to make peace with everyone? Well, we don’t know, because we don’t see it. Instead, we see just the opposite.

We do get to see some personal growth: He finally apologizes to Dirk (spontaneously) and Margaret Yang (when prompted), he starts his first new society at his public school, he reaches out to Blume and exchanges medals with him. He reaches out to Miss Cross again with another aquarium scheme. But then, after that falls apart, we see him ordering dynamite and heading off to Rushmore with a rifle: “I have one more piece of unfinished business.” We then see him in a window aiming the rifle at his bully. To our relief, he just shoots him with a potato gun, then gives him a script for a play.

Nevertheless, as the next scene begins, somewhat-ominous drum music plays and we see that Max has gathered all of the characters from the movie, both friends and enemies, in one room for his play. Of course, we soon realize that, while his Vietnam play is far from safe, his intentions are entirely positive and this is a different Max: He’s got a girlfriend, he’s introducing everyone to his father, and he’s implicitly making peace with everyone he’s wronged.

This is tricky. Audiences do like going back and forth, sometimes getting ahead of the characters (we know what’s going to happen to them but they don’t) and sometimes falling behind (we can’t figure out what they’re doing for a few scenes), but this movie features false alienation: Intentionally making us doubt our trust in the main character, only to please us by re-affirming it.

In this case it works: it adds a little tension and excitement to an ending that might otherwise be anticlimactic. Yes, it’s a little disappointing that they have to skip over some of Max’s personal breakthroughs, but it’s a comedy, not a drama, and we’d rather get an nervous final laugh than a heartfelt catharsis.

In other cases, it doesn’t work: There’s a moment in the first season of “Mad Men” when Matthew Weiner decides to create the false impression that Don is preparing to kill his half-brother (instead, he’s going to pay him to leave town, which, as it turns out, causes him to commit suicide.) It’s essential to build identification with anti-heroes: We can’t sympathize, but we can at least empathize. By breaking identification in those scenes, Weiner briefly pushed our already-limited tolerance for Don past the breaking point, and struggled to get it back. When I recommended the show to people after that first season, I warned them about that episode: “At times the show will seem darker than it really is, but stick with it.”

The 40 Year Old Virgin	YES, when Trish jumps his bones on the 20^th date on a pile of his boxed up toys, he denounces her and flees.
Alien	Somewhat. Decides to save the cat, showing that she’s now more empathetic.
An Education	YES. She finds out that he’s married.
The Babadook	YES. Ditto.
Blazing Saddles	YES. Just a minor one, and it happens offscreen. Around the time of that an army of villains is rounded up to destroy the town, he realizes that saving this town is also a chance to help his own people.
Blue Velvet	YES. Well, the real spiritual crisis happens earlier, and continues for a long time, but it does culminate when he sees how his behavior looks in Sandy’s eyes when she finds out.
The Bourne Identity	YES. seeing her family, he says that he doesn’t want to know who he is anymore.
Bridesmaids	YES. Megan stops by and set her straight.
Casablanca	NO. Actually, the opposite of a setback causes the crisis: Ilsa says she’ll come with him, and he realizes that it’s wrong.
Chinatown	YES. Yes, finds out the truth about Evelyn and Catherine (and the glasses).
Donnie Brasco	YES. hits his wife, feels certain he’ll have to kill someone soon in the mob.
Do the Right Thing	YES. something in him snaps.
The Farewell	YES. …but her mother quickly disabuses her of that notion. (She can’t cook, clean, or write Chinese.)
The Fighter	YES. It’s not so much a setback as a dangerous bit of success: he takes good advice from Dicky, putting him back in danger of falling into his old ways.
Frozen	YES. Hans betrays her.
The Fugitive	YES. he realizes how naïve he’s been and that he’s been betrayed by his friend.
Get Out	YES. he realizes when he speaks to Jim in pre-op what white people really see in him.
Groundhog Day	YES. He realizes that he’s a terrible person, and if he’s a god, he’s got to be a good god.
How to Train Your Dragon	NO. Not really. Again, the crises are reversed in this movie. He has the spiritual crisis in the first quarter, has no midpoint crisis, then loses everything at the ¾ mark (but not in a way that makes him question his already-corrected philosophy). So then, given the fact that he is on the straight and narrow from minute 20, why doesn’t the movie feel inert? Because there are so many ramifications of that initial crisis for him to deal with, and because he still tries to have it both ways until the loss of everything at the ¾ mark.
In a Lonely Place	YES. but only at the very end when he realizes that his fiancé is leaving him.
Iron Man	YES. He has several spiritual crises in this movie, but yes, he does have an ultimate one here when he has to crawl to claim his old heart back.
Lady Bird	YES. When she ditches Kyle.
Raising Arizona	YES. They decide to split up after all this is over.
Rushmore	YES. Ms. Cross definitively rejects him and he drops out to become a barber.
Selma	YES. He reverses the second march. That night, one of the white northern priests who’s disappointed by the decsion (“He owes me a return ticket”) is killed while waiting for action in Selma.
The Shining	YES. (Danny re-emerges as sole hero) When Danny assumes his mother is dead, and then his spiritual mentor Hallorann is killed, he finally shakes out of it and goes mano-a-mano.
Sideways	YES. He finds out his novel isn’t getting published, and he admits that he’s not going to make it as a novelist, isn’t a good person.
The Silence of the Lambs	YES. Lecter’s escape questions whether it was worth it to work with him.
Star Wars	YES. This causes him to doubt the force, fall back on his reliance on technology and his original dream of becoming a fighter pilot.
Sunset Boulevard	YES. when he realizes that Betty wants to leave Artie for him.

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30MayMay 30, 2022

Marvel Reread Club Episode 31: March, 1964, Part 1

Steve and Matt Bird · 031 Marvel Reread Club March 1964 (part 1)

Steve and Matt grapple with the first half of March, 1964, featuring Amazing Spider-Man #10, Fantastic Four #24, Journey Into Mystery #102 with Thor and Tales of Asgard, and Strange Tales #118 with the Human Torch and Dr. Strange. Fancy Dan! Photo collages! Unfabulous crowns! Continued lack of Wizard spandex! Frau Lieber!

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