Thunder From Down Under

Last night I had a dream that Naomi Watts was my girlfriend. The dream was very PG-13, but it was very nice.

Oh, The Humanities!

I took a lot of crap courses during my senior year of high school. During the previous year, I did the hard-core academic stuff that would look good on my college applications (two math classes for fuck’s sake!). Knowing full well that my destiny lay in the world of filmmaking, a field in which academic achievement isn’t nearly as valued as is the ability to spin quality-sounding bullshit, I chose the appropriate courses to further my aspirations. Instead of Calculus, I took Problem Solving (a full semester of impractical brain teasers). In place of Honors Biology, I opted for Oceanography (guaranteed monthly field trips!) and Anatomy (when I actually showed up, we spent the entire time eviscerating fetal pigs and cheating on tests). But there was one class that truly stood ahead of the pack – a class that has stuck in my mind, shaped my life in innumerable ways, and has come back to haunt me. That class was Humanities with Miss Soave.

As defined by my computer’s dictionary, Humanities is the liberal arts as subjects of study, as opposed to the sciences. That’s a pretty broad definition. The class itself could have been called An Introduction to Beatnikery or Blue State Attitudes and Aesthetics 101. We studied Jazz, wrote “music-inspired” essays, analyzed Robert Mapplethorpe’s tamer photographs, watched clips from “The Breakfast Club,” and learned to Samba with our illegal Brazilian classmates. We also went on two field trips that I’m pretty sure put us on NSA watch lists for future communists and NEA contributors - one was to an exhibit of Herb Ritts’ Uber-gay portraits of naked dudes holding tires, and the other was an all-day visit to Harvard Square in all of its druggy, intellectual splendor.

Miss Soave was sexy in a nerdy/hippyish way - an attractive, female version of Mr. Van Driessen from “Beavis and Butthead.” I am guessing that she was only about 28 at the time. She made great pains to be the cool young teacher. On our first day, she let us know that we’d all have “a really rockin’ year” and that she didn’t want to hear any “dissing of anyone in this classroom.” Her grading system was awesome. I could have vomited on a piece of canvas, explained that it was a metaphor for fascist oppression, and gotten an A for it. Dayna somehow got a score of 120 on a paper she wrote contrasting the book and movie versions of John Grisham’s “A Time To Kill.” Seriously, 120 points! I didn’t know that grades like that even existed.

Near the end of the school year, Miss Soave had us write a letter to ourselves in ten years. In it, we were supposed to write our dreams and aspirations for where we would be in a decade. She assured us that she would mail them out to us at the appropriate time. I received mine in the mail a few days ago. She mailed these letters out a year early, perhaps so that her former students could take that extra year to accomplish any unrealized adolescent dreams. Here is the abridged version of my letter:

May 13, 1997

Dear Me (what are those things coming out of her nose?), (a cheeky “Spaceballs” reference)

In ten years I will hopefully be working on a movie set somewhere, filming what will become a huge worldwide box-office success. I will probably be engaged, if not married. I will NOT be married to Dayna Pell. Ms. McPherson will be watching me become successful and she will be eternally bitter. I will be a perfect physical specimen, and might have a Southern accent.

At this time, a #3 at McDonald’s costs $3.77. A gallon of gas is about $1.60. A movie ticket costs $7.25, but I get in for free.

Much Love,
Mike

So, how am I stacking up? I have worked on several movie sets. None of them have become huge worldwide box-office successes, as of yet. I would be as shocked as anyone if I become engaged or married in the next 12 months. For those of you who don’t know her, Dayna Pell has been my close friend and partner-in-snarkiness since the eighth grade. Many of our high school friends speculated that the two of us would eventually hook up. It will never happen. We are way more Jerry & Elaine than Harry & Sally. You can read her take on this blast-from-the-past letter by clicking here. Ms. McPherson was my evil drama club advisor who was making life miserable for all of my friends at the time. To this day, I would relish the opportunity to make her seethe with envy at my successes. I am far from a perfect physical specimen, but hey, I’ve made some progress since my college days. The Southern accent thing was a reference to the fact that I would soon be leaving my native New England for four years in North Carolina. The accent didn’t stick. For the sake of my aforementioned physique, I wish that I didn’t know how much a McDonald’s #3 cost. I weep for the gas prices of yesteryear. And I don’t get into movies for free anymore (although, I still use my NCSA Student ID to save a couple of bucks).

It is pretty obvious that I haven’t changed a whole lot since high school. Having observed human nature as a camp counselor, lifeguard and bartender, I don’t think that most people do. I was in Harvard Square a few weeks ago on a perfect sunny day. I perused foreign magazines at the world-famous newsstand, dodged Christian and Scientology missionaries, was never far from Smart People discussing Important Subjects, or Stoned People discussing Stoned Subjects. I couldn’t help but think about the day I spent there at the age of eighteen, and the class that brought me there. As goofy as that class was, I can remember it in greater detail than virtually any other class I took in four years of high school. It was a godsend during a particularly shitty year in my life. I actually got to discuss, write, and joke about things that I actually found interesting.

Goodnight, Miss Soave, wherever you are…

MUM #1: Empire of the Sun

Here’s the first in a series I am calling Mike’s Underappreciated Movies. MUM #1 is Steven Spielberg’s most underrated directorial effort, Empire of the Sun. I remember seeing it in the theater when I was about eight years old, and it became one of those movies that was always in my house even if none of my friends had ever seen it.

In a nutshell, it is the story of a spoiled English boy named Jim (played by a 12 year-old Christian Bale) living in China with his wealthy parents at the outbreak of World War II. When the Japanese invade Shanghai, Jim is separated from his family. He lives on the streets, befriends some shady Americans (John Malkovich and Joe Pantoliano), and ends up in a prison camp next to a Japanese airfield for the duration of the war.

If all that sounds pretty depressing, it is, but Spielberg goes through great pains to show these events as a kid would see them – horrific and sad, to be sure, but with a child’s sense of excitement, beauty and even humor. Empire of the Sun contains many of Spielberg’s recurring themes: the Lost Boy, the distant father, flight, and a World War II setting. You can see him warming up for later projects. The scenes on the streets of Shanghai and the prison camp are echoed in “Schindler’s List.” The terrifying invasion sequences (especially those in the car) and images of rivers choked with corpses would resurface in “War of the Worlds.” One could argue that this movie has several parallels to the Spielberg-produced “An American Tail”, which was released around the same time.

What sets this flick apart are the settings, style, and performances. If there’s another movie out there about rich Brits in China during World War II, I haven’t seen it. In fact, how often do we get World War II movies with an Asian view (even if it’s filtered through American and English eyes)? Sad to say, I have very little knowledge of what the Chinese went through during the war. Based on this movie, I would like to know more. Also, why haven’t we seen more Japanese films about the era? God knows they have some stories to tell and some fantastic filmmakers who are up to the challenge, but I digress. The film’s contrast between the lifestyles of the wealthy Europeans and the impoverished Chinese is very striking. One early shot nails this point home brilliantly: Jim’s family and friends are on their way to an opulent costume party just before the invasion. To get there, they must be driven through the crowded streets of Shanghai in their expensive cars. One of the rich women is made up to look like Marie Antoinette. She stares out of her car’s window in a daze at hundreds of desperate peasants. She feels safe in her fancy car, but is completely surrounded. The revolution is coming, along with the guillotine.

Another brilliant but strange sequence comes late in the film. The British and Americans have been uprooted from their prison camp and have migrated across the plains to an abandoned stadium. The stadium has been filled with chandeliers, grand pianos, and fine furnishings that were looted from the Westerners’ homes after the invasion. There is very little dialogue, and the way cinematographer Allen Daviau captures the surreal setting with gorgeous early-morning light is magical and creepy all at once.

In terms of spectacle, Spielberg does not disappoint. On that basis, this is probably the closest he has ever come to emulating his idol, David Lean. Since this movie was made in the mid-1980’s you can be sure that the thousands of people fleeing tanks and crossing vast wastelands are not digital extras. Many of those 1940s planes flying past the airfield in perfect synch with practical explosions are quite real. Whatever miniatures were used are impossible to spot.

If for nothing else, rent this movie to see Christian Bale. I can’t think of another performance by a child that covers such a breadth of emotional and physical demands. He starts off as an effete brat that you want to slap (thankfully, his Chinese nanny does that for us), loses his parents, nearly starves on the streets of a war-torn city, becomes a gutsy, peace-keeping busybody in a refugee camp, crawls through mud, has a nervous breakdown, is betrayed by a friend, and somehow emerges as a peculiar but likeable kid. Bale is in nearly every scene, is always convincing, and there is never a split second of Child Actor Cuteness. Put this flick next to “American Psycho” and “Batman Begins” and you will see that this guy has tremendous range, and should be around for a very long time.

The movie isn’t perfect. John Williams’ music is absolutely gorgeous, but a bit overbearing. I wish I knew more about Miranda Richardson’s character. The kamikaze pilots saluting Jim is a beautiful image but is kinda cheesy. These are minor quibbles. There’s a lot of great stuff in this flick, and you should definitely check it out.

Oh, yeah. Ben Stiller has a couple of lines in it, too.