Interview – Steven Soderbergh

It’s unfortunate that we don’t live in a time now where a polarizing film is a positive. Like in the ’70s, if you made a film like Straw Dogs, and half the people hate it and half the people think it’s a masterpiece, that’s viewed as cool. Now it’s not. Now if you don’t get unified critical acclaim, your film is viewed as a failure. There’s no badge of honor in having a high-end critic bash you and have it in a sense prove that the film is not down the middle. Now you get e-mails from people that are like, “Oh, I’m so sorry about the Times.” That doesn’t prove anything. That’s great. They’re angry. That’s great.

Read the rest of the interview here.

Interview – E.B. White

I revise a great deal. I know when something is right because bells begin ringing and lights flash. I’m not at all sure what the “necessary equipment” is for a writer—it seems to vary greatly with the individual. Some writers are equipped with extrasensory perception. Some have a good ear, like O’Hara. Some are equipped with humor—although not nearly as many as think they are. Some are equipped with a massive intellect, like Wilson. Some are prodigious.

 

I do think the ability to evaluate one’s own stuff with reasonable accuracy is a helpful piece of equipment. I’ve known good writers who’ve had it, and I’ve known good writers who’ve not. I’ve known writers who were utterly convinced that anything at all, if it came from their pen, was the work of genius and as close to being right as anything can be.

Read the rest of the interview here.

See it Again – Saving Face

Rotten Tomatoes Freshness Meter

Critics – 87%

Audience – 87%

What  You Should Know

Saving Face is the best kind of independent film. It’s funny, touching and unexpected. It accomplishes these things without being ugly, off-putting or in-your-face about being a low-budget production (for a wonderful, current example of this I give you – Detachment). The film has an unusual story that unfolds in a wonderfully a-typical fashion. A third or more of the film is subtitled.

Why You Should Reconsider

I know, this film has very high ratings from both critics and audience members so why is it here? My guess is most people never heard of Saving Face. This is the type of low-key independent film that wins awards, gets great reviews and then fades quietly out of sight. This is an incredible waste.

The few people who expressed disappointment with this film felt that it was too “Hollywood” in it’s ending (it does not end in abject pain and misery for everyone involved – sorry independent movies but that is your go-to ending). Some felt that this was just a poor man’s version of early Ang Lee films, which is an incredibly odd statement since the only real similarity here is that the characters are Chinese.

You should reconsider seeing this movie again because of how this story is told. It has a very slow, controlled pace that is very sure and pulls the viewer smoothly along. The characters are well-defined and the performances are a treat to watch. As with any of the movies listed in See It Again I believe if you come to this film with an open and accepting mind you will not be disappointed.

Misconceptions

I would imagine that many sites and video stores have this film categorized in either their independent section or their gay/lesbian section. While both are technically correct for this film, Saving Face is a much less aggressive, more palatable film (for people who typically watch mainstream movies) than many that fit into these two categories. That is to say that there is no agenda with this movie, it is not trying to make a bold, progressive statement about art or acceptance. This is a story about family, about community and about finding a way to be true to yourself even when these truths violate the norms of these groups.

Saving Face walks a wonderfully fine line between mainstream and independent cinema and while some might find this to be a fault, in either direction, I think most will find watching this movie to be a rewarding experience.

The Art of the Cover

So the purpose of this post is to discuss that thing just above this text. Before we can dive into that matter we need to first address an important question: what makes a good cover song? A quick search brings up a number of articles concerning this topic. The first comes from CTV News. They interviewed a number of musicians to get their take on this question.

Ron Sexsmith

According to Ron Sexsmith: “Try not to sound anything like him.”

“I thought Michael Buble’s version of my song (‘Whatever it Takes’) was pretty interesting because it was so different — he did this Latin lover take on it and then Feist’s version of ‘Secret Heart,’ I always thought was great too, because for the most part, most people who have done that song have done it kind of like me — but her version was like Euro pop or something, it was cool.”

Matthew Morrison

Matthew Morrison, a  cast member of the television show Glee said, ”It’s an interesting question because I’m sure there’s some kind of specific answer but it’s either like a really good cover or a really bad cover. There’s never an in-between cover.”

Royal Wood commented that making small, creative changes to the music “are crucial to putting out a relevant cover.”

“What offends me the most is when people cover a song but they don’t change it … they basically just sing karaoke. What’s the point? I can listen to the original, which would have been far better and inspired and real and raw, and in the moment, and all you’ve done is copy and paste.”

A more succinct and ordered way to answer this question can be found at: Musicalis Eclectica:

1. Be original
2. Have a point
3. Respect the original.

The source of this post gives a detailed explanation for each point and is worth checking out.

Trent Reznor

So now we return to the video above and Trent Reznor. Let me start by saying I think he is incredible. A friend turned me on to the album Broken when it was released and I’ve been hooked ever since. The man is able to tap directly into emotions and manipulate his listeners any which way he likes (I mean this as a compliment). He’s gifted, original and after a number of questionable years where I thought we would never be together again he’s back in my life.

Whether you loved The Social Network or, like me, you thought it was an incredibly pointless film to make, you can’t deny that the score played an enormous role in the film’s success. Here we are, on film number two and David Fincher, Reznor and Atticus Ross are at it again. The video above, as I am sure everyone already knows, is the opening sequence to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It is also a bad cover.

While it would be impossible for me to say I am not biased, based on the criteria I attempted to loosely collect above I would argue this cover is poor because it does so little to change or improve upon the original version of the song.

I imagine this seems like a silly matter to devote so much time and text to but my respect for Mr. Reznor is truly that great. I have no doubt that the score for the film itself is wonderful, especially since the subject matter seems nearly tailor-made for his style of music. Much like my previous post on George Lucas I am willing to concede that this is possibly a generational thing. Perhaps the people who are praising this cover are younger and nostalgia or sentiment are keeping me from hearing what is really there.

There is no way to answer that question so instead I will leave you two videos. The first concerns The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, dealing with the sound design for the film. Ross and Reznor discuss, among other things, the difficulty of creating this cover.

The second is from the band Toad the Wet Sprocket (who are alive and well, who knew?). I am including this to give an example of what I think is an excellent cover. The band really puts their mark on the song by slowing it down.

Interview – Ray Bradbury

You can’t learn to write in college. It’s a very bad place for writers because the teachers always think they know more than you do—and they don’t. They have prejudices. They may like Henry James, but what if you don’t want to write like Henry James? They may like John Irving, for instance, who’s the bore of all time.

A lot of the people whose work they’ve taught in the schools for the last thirty years, I can’t understand why people read them and why they are taught. The library, on the other hand, has no biases. The information is all there for you to interpret. You don’t have someone telling you what to think. You discover it for yourself.

Read the rest of the interview here.

George Lucas – Change and Unrealistic Expectations

George Lucas is a difficult man to get your head around. For those of us who have only known a world changed by his movies and influence I would imagine it is not possible to have an unbiased perspective concerning him. That being said most of what I know about Mr. Lucas comes either from his movies or second-hand comments made by those who have worked with him. Why is this? Mr. Lucas provides the following answer:

Honestly, everyone feels you have to talk about yourself all the time. They say I’m introverted because I don’t give many interviews. But I don’t give many interviews because I don’t make many films.

After reading this quote I realized how little I know about Mr. Lucas. This naturally led to a search for interviews. The first is interesting because the interview itself is not the most illuminating part. Published in 2006 this interview with Time Magazine has an introduction that provides an excellent (and succinct) summary of how Mr. Lucas’s films changed the American film industry. I am posting the first three paragraphs below but you should read the rest here.

Movie history can be divided, without much forcing of the issue, into two eras: before Star Wars and after. The landscape before the first Star Wars film, in 1977, was a very different terrain. The best Hollywood directors, freed from censorship and the nagging sense that they were cranking out movies while their European brethren were hand-crafting films, had begun to forge a distinctive adult American cinema. Few thought in terms of box office megamillions. The idea was to earn enough to entice someone into financing your next picture. (Jean-Luc Godard had done this successfully in France in the 60s; Robert Altman adopted that model for his pioneering 70s works.) Most films by the most gifted Americans were present-day dramas that picked at some social scab until, in the last reel, it burst.

In the larger marketplace, the most popular films were the ones that were made for everyone, and that everyone wanted to see once: you, your kids, your mom. That’s the broad, if thin, constituency that made blockbusters out of The Love Bug, Airport, The Poseidon Adventure, The Godfather, The Sting—and Jaws, by Lucas’ contemporary Steven Spielberg. The majority of these pictures made their money slowly, playing first runs, then gradually reaching the smaller towns and theaters; the theatrical life of one of these crowd-pleasers might be a full year. There were genre movies, of course, but not many science-fiction films. Those were kids’ stuff; movies of the 70s were for adults. Besides, special effects weren’t sophisticated enough to open viewers’ eyes to the fantasy worlds its makers might be dreaming. Even Jaws, which broke a few rules by opening in a thousand or so theaters, and by reviving the monster-from-the-deep subgenre of Atomic Age s-f, was bound to rely for its special effects on a hydraulically operated shark that kept short-circuiting off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard waters.

Star Wars changed everything. It quickly became the top-grossing movie in the 65-year history of feature films (replacing The Sound of Music, if you need evidence of how much things had changed). With its then-wizardly special effects, and the cheerleading use to which they were put, it cued a revival of the s-f genre, which had been a B-movie fad in the 50s. Back then, the kids who gorged on s-f were a Saturday matinee minority. Star Wars arrived just as teen culture was taking over movies. Lucas’ film proved that a movie could be a smash by creating a textural density that lured a part of the audience back through the wickets a dozen times. This wasn’t your uncle’s, and aunt’s, hit movie; but if they didn’t get it, who cared? The kids (mostly boys) were pouring all their disposable income into return visits. Thus Star Wars became the first cult-movie megahit.

So much of what Mr. Lucas has said or made since has been far from game-changing. It is hard to not feel disappointment over his most recent works, a point that he addresses directly and I think well in this interview. Sequels, prequels or any other form of follow-up films to the Star Wars or Indiana Jones movies cannot avoid unreasonably high expectations. Combine this with Mr. Lucas’s greatly empowered position as a producer and director and many of the factors that kept him grounded with his early works seem to largely be missing now.

In an interview with Jon Favreau, Harrison Ford briefly discussed working with Mr. Lucas and the collaborative process that allowed those films to become the successes they are.

This clip paints a kind portrait of George Lucas, not what so many fans and fan sites tend to put forth about his character. Rather than try and summarize what I think he’s like (curse you second-hand speculation!) I thought I would post this interview Mr. Lucas had with Seth MacFarlane.

The more I read and see the more he seems to be a pretty decent, agreeable guy. Not only does he strike me as being grounded but his attitude is ultimately enviable. His secret to success? He and his people (and we know how impressive they all are) love movies. They make movies that they themselves would like to see. His attitude toward his fans is respectful but not deferential, something of a rarity today when fans have increasingly direct access to filmmakers. While all of this is refreshing and positive it still leaves us with that ugly elephant in the room: the prequels.

To be fair Mr. Lucas made the point in his interview with Jon Stewart that each generation has their own take on his works. The younger generations, according to Mr. Lucas, greatly prefer the prequels or even the television show, Clone Wars. There is no accounting for taste (or my own bias against these prequels) but to conclude I leave you with a clip that addresses what I believe to be the major flaw with the prequels. Patton Oswalt, as usual, is not safe for work.

Man Meets Baby #3 – To Buy or Not to Buy

The Short Version

A fair number of sources and sites seem to debate what parents need to purchase for their children. A person with no baby experience will undoubtedly feel intimidated by these lists made by experts. Never fear amigo, I have made a list of items I think you, the man new to all things baby will need.

Need: A Pack n Play, A Changing Table, A Diaper Pail, Baby Bath, Baby Bouncer, Front Pack.

Might need: Baby Swing/Exersaucer, Pacifiers, Video Baby Monitors, Nursing Pillow.

The Long Version

You’ve had the baby and now you are home. Quickly you discover that your child really needs only three things: sleep, food and diaper changes. The rest of the time it’s you looking at your baby or you trying to get some sleep. Let’s get practical for a moment here.

Your baby can’t do anything. It can’t eat on it’s own, it can’t hold it’s head up and for some strange reason you have to wrap it up at all times or it wails like a banshee.

So let’s talk specifics. Your baby is going to have to sleep. Whether or not you decide to co-sleep with your baby you need to have another option available. Why is this? Because you child is going to sleep very often. During the day you are going to be holding them but, let’s be honest, at some point you need to put them down. I am going to exclude cribs from this list because, like car seats, they are a rather serious purchase that everyone needs to make and there are a number of safety requirements that make them a very detailed purchase. For this list I am going to focus on the more portable, less obvious places where you put the baby down.

In my case we had two options, a cradle and a Pack ‘n Play. I would advise you not purchase a cradle if you have to buy all of your child’s needs. The reason for this is that you can only use one for a short period of time and you can purchase these portable play yards from companies like Graco where they have an insert that works as a cradle or basinet.

The usefulness of these Pack n Plays cannot be overstated. They will be with you for a long time, first with the upper insert installed and then as a playpen. The fold up easily and have wheels so you can move them from room to room with little hassle. We owned two of these and kept one of each floor of our house. Whether it was used for a nap or just a moment so I could change my clothes the Pack n Play was an essential for getting through the day.

Next is the changing table. Many people claim you don’t need one, that they use a sturdy dresser and that works just fine. I suppose you could do this just like I imagine you could use a mattress on the floor for your bed and couch and dining room table. My point being that changing tables get a lot of use. In the first three months my wife and I were doing a diaper change every hour and a half. I can say that this is the only baby item we own that I really wish I had researched more.

The table we have was great when our daughter was smaller. At 16 months she is almost the length of the table and it has been at least six months since I had a place to rest the wipes (other than in the compartment underneath – this photo is of the table I own) because my previous spot, balancing it on the top right edge is no longer safe from her well-aimed kicks.

Let me be clearer on this point. You have this tiny, squirmy child that has either just gone to the bathroom or has just spit up. In many cases the matter that should be in the diaper has either shot up out of the diaper or manages to get past you when you are taking the diaper off and you suddenly find yourself trying to remove a diaper, keep a child from rolling about in vomit or fecal matter, removing the clothing that is now covered in something awful and you can’t reach your baby wipes because you have no surface to put them on. Then you are trying to get the wipes into your diaper pail while keeping a hand on your child so they don’t fall to the floor.

This isn’t a doomsday scenario, it was a pretty common one for me before my daughter started on solid foods. It’s gross, it’s messy and when your baby is really small it is a matter of logistics. If your child can’t sit on their own, or worse before they have head control, you need to control their bodies. You need a surface that is contoured to help keep them in place while you remove the mess that is now everywhere. If you look at the picture again you’ll see that the top of the table has a lip to it, which is where your contoured diaper pad fits in. The pad is soft and easy to clean, two things which a dresser top are not.

I know you haven’t changed a diaper before but, good fellow, try and visualize this process and picture yourself only having one hand to do everything. If you are handy you can build yourself something that works, otherwise I advise making the changing table one of your gift registry items and really looking them over to find one that works for you.

Then there is the diaper pail. Another item that some seem to think is unneeded. My wife and I were of this opinion until we discovered something – after a certain point a regular pail will develop a stink that cannot be destroyed.

After trying every cleaning agent known to man we decided why not try and buy a real diaper pail since we had to buy a replacement anyway. The one we purchased was not very expensive, it has its own fitted bags that cost about as much as snazzy trash bags do. It has a little container for baking soda just under the lid and forms a good seal when it closes. The best part? I have never smelled that smell again. When you consider you keep this thing in the room your baby sleeps in I think you will agree they are worth it.

The baby bath is another handy item that certain people put on their not to buy list. I cannot imagine why. Babies are really quite fragile. And squirmy. When you get them wet it’s just like getting any skin wet, they become slippery. Now the people opposed to baby baths seem to think that if you own a kitchen sink there is no need for one of these contraptions.

I have to disagree. The first bath my daughter had at home was in our sink, my Mother-in-law and wife doing the bathing. I had to leave the room because I was certain it was all going to go horribly wrong. She survived and that was that, until my wife went back to work and I was the one doing bath time. Now if you are anything like me you are not the most gentle, careful person. You are not known for you ability to be delicate. Picture now your kitchen sink. Hard surfaces everywhere, right? It’s about four or five feet off from the floor? It’s deep? Now picture putting a tiny baby that can’t do anything, even move it’s head in order to get out of water and breathe into your sink.

These baby baths remove what for me was the horror of bath time. They are small and portable so you can bathe your child anywhere. I did it on the floor of her room until she was about nine months old. This meant I didn’t have to worry about dropping the child. The bath is plastic and the bottom can be inflated with air so it is very soft. One side can be lifted so you can rest the baby’s back at an incline. I’m being overly-detailed here so you can get a sense of the little things that the bath lets you do. It lets you use one hand to do the bathing and the other to support the baby on this incline. Now think of your sink. How are you holding the baby while you wash it? How are you rinsing it off? Where are you putting the towel to dry off your baby?

The final selling point for me was travel. It didn’t matter where we went we had our own, clean bathtub. The added bonus is these aren’t that expensive and fit nicely onto a registry wish list.

The baby bouncer might seem like an unnecessary item since you’ve decided to get yourself a Pack n Play. The reason why I recommend getting one is they are much smaller and therefore can fit in many places where the Pack n Play cannot. Take, for example, the bathroom. Have you thought about this yet? Your home alone with the baby and you have to go take a shower. Where do you put the baby? You can put the baby in the other room while you shower but then the baby is going to cry. You are then going to think, “Is she crying because she’s alone or because something happened?” Trust me, right now, baby-less, you think you are a calm, rational person who is not going to freak out about all of this baby stuff. You are wrong.

You are going to freak out. A lot. For the very reason that you are new and you haven’t done any of this before. So things like the baby bouncer are a good investment for you because you want to be able to shower or use the bathroom without running out every three minutes to make sure that you child is okay.

Finally the last item is the front pack. My wife and I held off using ours until our daughter was close to three months old but many people use these much earlier. The front pack is a really handy contraption that allows you to have both hands free while holding the baby. Forgive me for stating the obvious here but I would not have known that. This is huge. I have often thought of writing a book about becoming a dad and calling it “The Art of Doing Things One-Handed.” Being able to have both hands free while carrying the baby opens up a world of possibilities, like grocery shopping and washing the dishes and….yeah it’s not a great world but you are doing it anyway so it’s nice to make it easier.

This item tends to be a bit less controversial than the others but some seem to think it is a waste of money. The trick is to find one that is easy to use but also offers good support and will be viable for more than a few months. The model we went with the Baby Bjorn Original Classic. It is usable between the weights of eight pounds to twenty-five so at 16 months we are only now looking for a replacement (my daughter is very small, chances are you will need a replacement sooner).

Items I Think You Might Want

A baby swing or an Exersaucer may seem like an extravagance. You don’t technically need either of these items to care for your child. We own both and I would recommend them. Why? Because it’s nice to be able to let your baby do something other than lie on their back or in your arms. You know how in movies, or in restaurants or pretty much anywhere else little babies seem to always be crying? That’s because they do it a lot. ‘The experts’ say it’s because they can’t do anything else to express how they feel. It’s horrible. You heard me, horrible. Listening to your child cry is one of the most defeating things you will ever do. After several hours of listening to it you will be ready to make any concession, offer them anything in order for a little peace and quiet. Enter these two items.

My daughter would get tired of being on her back, hanging out in the pack n play. Sometimes it would be because she couldn’t see us and sometimes I think it was just too much of the same. So normally we would hold her or put her in the front pack. Other times she needed to be down and it was really, really nice to have this other thing you could put her in. When they are very small a swing is nice because it, well, you know, swings. Many babies like the motion and just sleep. Some, like my daughter, just like to swing and it makes them very happy. It’s not a magic fix and I am sure some babies aren’t crazy about swings so, as with all baby items, don’t spend a ton of money (unless it’s something like a car seat where it’s best to go for what you want rather than cut corners). Our swing, like many of our baby products, was a Craig’s List purchase and was well worth the ten dollars.

The Exersaucer was a bit pricey, but for about six months it made for this really fun, independent toy that my daughter loved. She was able to do her own thing, and so were we.

Pacifiers are controversial. I have no idea why. The only arguments that people have (and the hospital where we had our baby agreed with these enough to have a “no pacifier” policy) are odd and have more to do with the parents than the children. The two major arguments I have heard are:

1) The child will be hungry and the parents will give them a pacifier not understanding it is time to nurse/feed.

2) The child will form an attachment to the pacifier and then end up being one of those weird kids who are five years old and walking around with their ‘binky’ hanging out of their mouths.

Point one is really pretty simple. Newborns eat at very regular intervals. So stick to their feeding schedule and you don’t have to worry about whether or not you are underfeeding them. Also, they don’t suffer in silence. If your child is hungry and you trying giving them something other than food, they will fuss and scream and let you know this isn’t working. Just a side note, if you are planning on breastfeeding the first few days are really, really hard. You don’t know this yet but it turns out that babies aren’t born knowing how to nurse well. They have to learn and for some this takes a bit of time. Oh, the other thing. For the first few days the woman can’t nurse because there isn’t any milk, just this strange in-between substance called colostrum. I won’t go into all of this but basically in those first few days you child can’t eat like that want to and the pacifier is the thing that helps make this less awful.

Point two is also simple. You need to stop using the pacifier before the child forms an attachment. I would imagine the age varies but removing pacifiers from your child’s life before they are one year of age should solve the problem. We did it at nine months and it went really smoothly.

Removing the pacifier may result in having a very bad day or two but that is a fair trade-off for months of peace and quiet. I am emphatically pro-pacifier because they work very well. In the first few months I found it to be an almost instantaneous solution to hysterical baby crying. This is a good thing.

Video baby monitors are the only really iffy item listed here. I will be honest, I don’t own one. I have wanted one for about a year but it just never happened. What the people opposed to these argue is you will learn your child’s cries and be able to discern when you need to go in and when you don’t. I can say this has not happened for me. What has happened, a lot, is I have thought I have heard my child crying (because she had woken up) and gone in only to find her crying in her sleep. This then lead to an early wake-up and a baby who was very fussy for several hours after.

The truth is there are a lot of times when your baby will cry and you are wondering, “Did something happen?” and for the most part, if you have your child in a crib and there is nothing in it that can hurt her the answer will be ‘no’. That being said, if you are looking for gift items this upgrade from the standard monitors will be helpful for several situations. The sleep crying, the times where they fight sleep at the beginning of the nap and you are wondering if they have fallen asleep so you can start doing that somewhat noisy thing, and the times where you don’t understand why it is so quiet and wonder if something wrong. Like I said, this is the least solid item on this list but for me it’s something I wish we had gotten.

Lastly the nursing pillow. Okay, I sense your hesitation here. Nursing = woman. Yes and no, compadre. If your partner is breastfeeding you are not going to be doing too much bottle-feeding while she is around. Presumably one or both of you will be going back to work and then you have the mixed up schedules, middle of the night feedings and who knows what else. If you are doing formula you are now on an equal footing and it’s time to become Mr. Bottle. This is where the nursing pillow is handy.

Until your baby has head control (three months-ish) you have to do some weird positioning in order to give her a bottle. Couple this with the baby not always cooperating because sometimes babies just fight you and it’s much, much more comfortable to have them resting on a pillow while you do your thirty minute bottle time.

You can, obviously, use a normal couch pillow, they do work. If this was all about you I would say that is most likely all you need. Your partner, however, is going to be nursing in different locations in all kinds of situations and will most likely benefit from one of these contoured pillows. It works better for you, too and they don’t cost all that much. If you have resistance to the pillow I would say let it slide, I found it to be much better for my back because I am somewhat tall and sometimes those bottles go on forever.