On a whim, I listened to the all of the current top 25 songs on lala.com. And I didn’t like a single one. I think the last time my taste overlapped with a list like that was 1998. After that, the world and I, we went our own separate ways.
A few months ago, I put Ghost World among my favorite movies of the past decade. I would go further to say that it is one of my favorite movies of all time. The following is a “film note” I wrote for the local independent Brattle Theatre, for their screening of Ghost World, with author/screenwriter Daniel Clowes in attendance. I write about Norman, the character that inspired this little short story of mine back then.
“I wonder if he’s just totally insane, or he really thinks the bus is coming?” says Enid, as she watches Norman sitting at the bus stop, waiting for the bus that never comes. This is probably the most enduring image from the 2001 cult classic Ghost World, which has a wide range of powerful iconography to choose from. From the opening sequence set to 1960’s Bollywood pop, to the angle of the shot in the final scene, every scene is full of detail for those paying attention.
But our minds keep returning to Norman. Is he insane, or does he really think the bus is coming. It is more likely that both of these are true. There is a quiet assuredness to Norman, so we are never quite sure. We feel for the old man. We don’t want him to sit there waiting forever, for a bus that was cancelled two years ago. But then, an even more frightening thought hits us. Maybe this is all he has. Where would Norman go, if he did not sit at the bus stop? He seems funny, but we don’t laugh.
And that is how it is with Ghost World. Each character could play the lead in a riotous comedy about their life, but this film is not playing their quirks just for laughs. We see ourselves in some of them– in the rebellious teenager Enid, and the lovable misanthrope Seymour. And in others, like the video store clerk who can’t tell the difference between 9 1/2 Weeks and Fellini’s 8 1/2, we see the world around us. The ghost world.
Enid is on the verge of graduating high-school and is being forced to be a very specific kind of adult very quickly. She is a jigsaw puzzle piece in the wrong box, a box that most of the people around her seem to fit quite well. She loves Seymour, a lovable nerd who hates the world, but is beginning to realize his cynicism is not sustainable. “Maybe I don’t want to meet someone who shares my interests. I hate my interests,” he tells Enid. Seymour is what Enid probably imagines she will become in another twenty years, for better or worse.
As the movie progresses, we wonder if Norman is the only one who has a grip on his life, if not on reality. He has a purpose in life and cannot be moved from it. If this is insanity, maybe it is preferable to the chaos of those around him. He is the only constant, until the point at which Enid’s life really needs a constant to lean on. At that point, he is gone.
The significance of Norman and his bus have been discussed for many years by fans of the original Daniel Clowes comic book on which the movie is based. What the bus means to you may tell you more about yourself than about what the writer intended. Some people think it is death, and have found subtle clues pointing to this explanation. A better way to think of it is that the bus is an escape. The bus shows up for the first time at the precise moment when Enid’s life is hitting its lowest point. She needs an escape. What do you think happens to those who get on the bus? Here is a hint– look at the words on the bench after Enid sits down at the end of the movie. Unfortunately, this hint is not the answer, but maybe it will help you come up with your own. Whatever your answer may be, as the final shot of the bus driving out of town fades in to the Bollywood pop credits, Ghost World will leave you with a lot to think about. It is a film that a certain kind of teenager must see before they are thrust head first into adulthood. Before they become part of the ghost world.
And to tell you the truth, Norman at the bus stop is only the second most enduring image of Ghost World. The most enduring– and terrifying– image from Ghost World is “mirror, father, mirror”. That is the stuff of which cheesy nightmares are made.
Daniel Clowes at The Brattle on 4th May, 2010
I finally finished the audiobook for Salman Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown last week. I say finally, because it was about 18 hours long.
It’s an okay book, made good by Rushdie’s way with words, made bad by his meandering style, made beautiful by his willingness to give in to every impulse he has, but ultimately made meh by his lack of restraint. There is so much in this book that in the end, there is too much and I don’t care about any of it.
The story starts in ‘90s Los Angeles, goes back to partition era Kashmir, then further back to World War II France, then forward to ‘50s and ‘60s Kashmir, the ‘60s Delhi, then fast forward back to modern day Los Angeles. By the time we get to the end, I am not sure which tangent to care about and which loose ends will be resolved. I don’t need a story to resolve everything—far from it—but I do need to have some sense of where it is headed, or if it is headed anywhere at all.
But Rushdie does have a way with words. As I said a couple of weeks ago, his character names alone are more creative than some authors’ entire life’s work. Continue reading ‘Shalimar the Clown’ »
by extraface, on Flickr: danah boyd and Ethan Zuckerman
As I said in my last post, I spent Friday and Saturday at ROFLcon, the conference for the Internet generation. I liveblogged the event as an official volunteer, and it was a blast. In all, I blogged seven sessions and attended eight.
I reached the registration room on Friday morning to get my volunteer badge and t-shirt and then hung around until noon. A bunch of Internet celebs had set up tables to sell their wares—Chad Vader was there, as were various Cat related products.
The keynote was at 1pm, so I headed over with my fellow livebloggers. I wasn’t blogging the opening keynote, so I could just listen. The keynote was called The Future of the World Weird Web given jointly by danah boyd (now of Microsoft NERD) and Ethan Zuckerman (Harvard’s Berkman Center). That’s them in the picture up top, and yes, that is how they were dressed. It was that kind of an event. The highlight of the keynote was that I now know about the Kenyan superhero Makmende.
This was followed by the boyd and Zuckerman moderated panel called The Long View, with old-school viral video heroes such as Joel Veitch of RatherGood.com. If you don’t know who that is, behold the excellentness that is “We Like the Moon”. ‘Cause it is good to us. (my liveblog)
After that, I ran over to the Secret Masters of Digg panel with four of the top front-pagers at Digg.com. I’ve been watching Diggnation for years, so you would think I would enjoy this, but not so much. It was OK, and maybe informational if you social media success was your goal in life. But it isn’t my goal. (my liveblog)
That panel was followed by the best one of the conference—I can haz dream? Race and the Internet. Baratunde Thurston is the web editor of The Onion and is a regular web presence with his comedy and political insight. Christian Lander writes Stuff People Like. Put these two guys together and you have banter that could rival the best of late night TV comedy. My liveblog is here, if you can get a gist of their humor. The two girls who run My Mom is a FOB were good, but unfortunately found themselves on stage with a couple of star comedians.
by neoneuromancer, on Flickr: Christian Lander, Baratunde Thurston
Finally, I ran back to the main hall for the final panel for the day—And Then the Internet Swooped In. This one featured people who’s ordinary life had become the stuff of viral videos and shared links on the Internet, and their lives were never the same. Like David and his son David, who most famously said “Is this real life?” while on drugs after visiting the dentist. And the guy who owned Keyboard Cat. And Mahir Cagri, who’s personal web site was an Internet meme before people called them memes. And who is—allegedly—the inspiration for the many quirks of Borat. My liveblog is here, and yes, Mahir does actually randomly say the word sex in the middle of an unrelated sentence.
by ekai, on Flickr: Mahir, David jr, David sr, Charlie Schmidt (owner, keyboard cat)
The next morning, Saturday, I got there just before 10am. I had waffles at the WAFLcon table, and walked in for the keynote. It was by Kevan Atteberry, the guy who created Clippy—the annoying animated paperclip who insisted on helping you to use Microsoft Office.
The main takeaways from that keynote were—Clippy was designed on a Mac and Kevan was not responsible for the functionality. Only the animation. He was amusing, and everyone had a few good laughs at Microsoft’s expense. (my liveblog not on roflcon.org yet)
After that, I blogged the Running the Tubes session. This was a panel about some of the infrastructure that supports the viral Internet. I would just like to say that Pete Hottelet of Omni Consumer Products Corporation was the funniest person at ROFLcon. When my liveblog shows up on the site, I will put a link here; but I don’t think I caught all his one-liners in the blog. He was really good. Some of the other guys were trying to answer the questions seriously; not this guy. Also, the name of his company may seem serious, but it’s quite the opposite. Look it up on Wikipedia.
At lunch, Matt of the “Where’s Matt” videos (where he does the same silly dance at different locations around the world) did a dance with a group of people in front of the Stata Center at MIT. You’ll probably see it on YouTube some day.
The last session I attended was Johannes Grenzfurthner of monochrom. What is monochrom? In their own words, an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science and political activism. They do subversive, confrontational, context-hacking stunts. Quite magnificent.
This is him in Soviet garb from an earlier session:
by Mirka23, on Flickr: Ambassador Nikita Chrusov
For a gist of the kind of things monochrom does, read about Georg Paul Thomann, the non-existent artist who saved a country from becoming non-existent.
That was my last session of the day, and of ROFLcon. It was great fun. I will add more pictures, maybe video and links to liveblogs as they become available.
(by Mr. Babyman, on Flickr: this was written on the wall at the bottom of a very long flight of stairs in building 54 at MIT.)
All day Friday and Saturday, I’m volunteering at ROFLcon.
That’s “roll-on-the-floor-laughing” conference.
It’s a conference to celebrate web silliness and seriousness for a generation that pretty much grew up on it.
Examples of ROFLcon celebrities:
- the father-son stars of the YouTube phenomenon David after Dentist
- Joel Veitch, who made one of my favorite Internet animation videos of all time
- the guy who created 4chan
- a few of the all-time highest frontpagers at Digg
- the person who runs Stuff White People Like
- a keynote by the guy who invented Clippy, the animated paperclip Office assistant
and so on.
I’m liveblogging the event all day for the official web-site. I’m more interested in the academic types at the conference, so I’m especially excited about the two panels with danah boyd, one with Baratunde Thurston of The Onion (no, he’s not academic; but he’s smart and the panel is about race), and ROFLing the News.
I should be on twitter, my posts should show up on roflcon.org and I might get hold of Chad Vader for my Star Wars site. We’ll see.
I don’t want to have to do this living. I just walk around. I want to be swept off my feet, you know? I want my children to have magical powers. I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it. #
Blue Skies:
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It’s been that kind of a week.
Imagine you were in a large open-air stadium with ten thousand people. There’s a cold wind blowing and it’s silent. And suddenly one of these three openings start playing:
Would you get goosebumps? If so, you really need to watch the Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth) documentary, It Might Get Loud. He uses a meeting of the three great guitarists, Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White as an homage to the guitar. The movie is like comfort food for music fans. [trailer]
I’m almost done audiobook’ing Rushdie’s Shalimar the Clown and I’ll write about that later. At the moment, I want to talk about his art of naming characters.
There’s Bombur Yambarzal, the waza of Shirmal. Boonyi Kaul Noman, the Anarkali of Pachigam, and her mother, Pamposh Kaul. There is Nazar-e-Buddoor, the seer of Pachigam. Maximillian Ophuls, the flying Jew.
Larger than life characters need larger than life names.
To quote RGV, as I usually do:
Why do villains have names like Bikhu Yadav, Bhai Thakur, Gaddam Narayana, etc instead of Santosh, Ramu, etc?
Ans: Larger than life characters demand larger than life names. If Vito Corleone’s name was John David, Godfather would not remain Godfather.
Another book that I recently audiobook’ed also had extraordinary names. Ignatius J. Reilly, Myrna Mynkoff, Claude Robichaux, Angelo Mancuso, and Burma Jones, the colorful cast of characters from A Confederacy of Dunces.
I think hearing the names in audiobooks makes you a lot more aware of the music of the names.
∞
Some of Rushdie’s names have strange roots. Max Ophuls is the name of a German director who died in 1957. Bombur Yamberzal is the name of the first Kashmiri opera.
So I’m volunteering for the Independent Film Festival of Boston. Should be fun—I’ll be ushering at Somerville Theatre, Saturday afternoon and Sunday evening. Look for me if you’re there. Just got my badge and t-shirt—picture below.
Opening night is tomorrow—Kevin Kline is in town, there’s a capella and a theremin player.
Kick-Ass comes out today. It’s a movie about kids turned ruthless superheroes, which I’ve been looking forward to since December, when the good folks at AICN showed a a rough-cut at BNAT.
AICN = Ain’t It Cool News, the rambling movie news site that rises like Mothra out of the great city of Austin, TX.BNAT = Butt Numb-a-thon, the annual, 24 hour movie extravaganza hosted by AICN in the great city of Austin, where they manage to pull off amazing early screenings like Return of the King with Peter Jackson in attendance and Passion of the Christ with Gibson.
This week, Roger Ebert came out with his review for the movie. He finds it to be morally reprehensible:
Shall I have feelings, or should I pretend to be cool? Will I seem hopelessly square if I find “Kick-Ass” morally reprehensible and will I appear to have missed the point? Let’s say you’re a big fan of the original comic book, and you think the movie does it justice. You know what? You inhabit a world I am so very not interested in. A movie camera makes a record of whatever is placed in front of it, and in this case, it shows deadly carnage dished out by an 11-year-old girl, after which an adult man brutally hammers her to within an inch of her life. Blood everywhere. Now tell me all about the context.
I understand where he’s coming from, and maybe I will have the same reaction after watching it. But Harry Knowles’ response to Ebert is pure AICN-style rambling goodness:
Roger states at the beginning of his review that he feels he’s going to hopeless square for his feelings about the morality of KICK ASS.At a base level it is a film about taking a stand, to protect the innocent and uphold justice… in a pretty fascist as kicking manner. I am not upset at Roger for his point of view… I understand, it is a lot to take.
But I remind you that there was a time, when Martin Scorsese was under fire for having a 13 year old Jodie Foster play a whore in TAXI DRIVER - which is more or less about a man that in the end is a hero for taking violent action to protect that girl.
At that time there were critics that wanted to hang Marty. You were not one of them. I remember that time because as a 6 year old I can remember watching you and Gene defend Scorsese and you were my heroes.
I have to say it is a little sad to see you go the route you did in your KICK ASS review. And don’t worry, while I suppose you’ll never really just get KICK-ASS… You’re no square in my book. But you may be in danger of being a ‘grown up’.
Do read the whole thing; it’s write-ups like this that have made me come back to AICN for more than a decade. It’s written by people with a human voice; not people playing at being journalists.
