On the Quality of Things, #16
Three Movies and a Grad Student Diary

by Wade Stuckwisch
illustration by Jacob Chabot

Greetings, Hobo hangers-on. It's been a while, eh? If it seems like I fell off the face of the earth some time around the beginning of August, that's because I did the next best thing: I started graduate school. Yes, I have parted ways with my life of temping and literary transience in New York and shipped off to Tallahassee, Florida to pursue a Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production at Florida State University. "But how could an advanced degree from a well-regarded film school possibly measure up to the fun and excitement of comparing spreadsheets in some fluorescent-lit cubicle for some anonymous New York corporate entity for another ten or fifteen years?" you ask. Admittedly, leaving the Big Apple for Florida's Big Bend was a tough decision. The fact that I wound up weathering near-misses by something like four hurricanes immediately after moving here also felt like a bad omen. On the other hand, I am learning a few new tricks about the craft that will hopefully help me improve my skills as a filmmaker, as well as find some better employment when I get out. A couple weeks ago, I also got to write and direct a short film for the first time in over four years. (I'll see if I can post it somewhere for your viewing enjoyment when it's finished; officially all the work I do here belongs to the FSU Film School.) So although Tally doesn't offer nearly the amount of excitement, culture, or living expenses that The City did, I think coming here was probably the right decision. But we'll see how I feel about that when my loans come due in a couple years.

While Tallahassee lacks many of the amenities of New York, it does have its points of interest. For example, the most prominent element of Tallahassee's skyline is the Florida State Capitol Building, which may take the prize as the world's most blatantly phallic piece of public architecture. Take a look for yourself:

Penis, anyone? Florida State Capitol Building

Florida has also been blessed with many varieties of flora and fauna not often seen in the more temperate climes of New York. Some of these creatures are cute and entertaining, like butterflies, dragonflies, or the tree frogs and anole lizards that gather around my porch light or rest on my windows. Then, on the other hand, there are the giant fucking spiders. The biggest variety I've seen are called banana spiders, possibly because somewhere out there one of these monsters has probably grown large enough to have legs the size of bananas. This is the biggest one I've seen, pictured here with a pack of cigarettes as a reference for scale. (I apologize for the crappy quality of the camera built into my PDA. And no, the relative size shown here is not a trick of perspective.)

Compared to Florida's spiders and cockroaches, NYC's rats seem downright cuddly.

Personally I have nothing against the banana spiders, despite the fact that they are huge and the really big ones have markings on their heads that look like a human skull. In general they are smart enough to stay outdoors and build their webs out of the way of walking paths, so since they don't fuck with me, I don't fuck with them. On the other hand, I am not a fan of the big black spiders down here that look exactly like black widows from the top, especially after I found one of them living in my apartment in a hole where I couldn't get at it with a broom. I actually wound up calling University housing maintenance to get rid of that fucker, which made me feel like the biggest liberal Yankee wuss on earth. The maintenance guy swatted it to death within five minutes of showing up, and then showed me that, while it was evil-looking and about the size of a half-dollar, it wasn't actually a black widow. (By the way, for those of you not yet convinced that WD-40 is the most useful substance on earth, take note that, among its many uses, it can be utilized to flush reclusive spiders from their holes.) I may not be a political scientist, but I think it's not a coincidence that the line between "red states" and "blue states" in the US correlates roughly with the population of poisonous snakes and spiders - my theory is that in an area where one is constantly reminded that nature is out to kill you, one might tend to ascribe to a less pacifist viewpoint. But maybe that's just me.

Also, as a side note: everything you have heard about Florida cockroaches is true.

There are a few other notable oddities about FSU, Tallahassee and life below the Mason-Dixon line that amuse me. The importance of college football to the larger community above and beyond the university's students and alumni strikes me as a little unusual, considering that I have always lived in areas where NFL football is the primary community sports focus. FSU's sports facilities are a sight to behold. The football stadium is a tremendous red brick mecca that looks something like a new world castle. The film school's facilities are, oddly enough, part of the football stadium-apparently in order to get a palatial new home for the Seminoles built, a compromise had to be struck so that academic and administrative facilities would be included in the new stadium. Recently the Seminoles Boosters dedicated a brand-new bronze statue of FSU's football coach, Bobby Bowden, just outside the School of Communication's facilities in the stadium. I may not be the only one to find it odd that my school has a statue of a man who is not only still alive, but who also still fills the position for which he is being honored, but I should probably keep any queries relating to that topic to myself, since the money brought in by the Seminoles' football program helps in a large part to pay for the running of the university. (I should also note that the prominent placement of Nike and Sprint logos on the statue is truly and literally a monument to corporate product placement.) I suppose if the loyalty of FSU's football fans helps pay to educate FSU's students, a little excess here and there can't possibly be a bad thing.

Believe it or not, there's a football stadium in the middle of this structure.

I, on the other hand, have had little time to follow the ups and downs of the FSU football program, as the film school's program has kept me too busy to even watch more than one game on TV, much less attend one. Comparing Florida State's MFA program to boot camp would not be a great exaggeration, with the exception that boot camp doesn't last for two years without respite. (Ever since I watched Full Metal Jacket last night, I've been tempted to get a surplus Army helmet and write "BORN TO FILM" on the front in black magic marker.) Somewhat ironically, the program has also kept me too busy to watch any movies, with a few exceptions. The situation reminds me of when I was temping for Miramax a couple years ago, and noticed that no one there seemed to have any time to actually see movies either. I'm suspicious that 85% of the film and television production industry never sees 80% of the work they produce, which would explain a lot about the quality of product that appears on televisions and cinema screens nationwide. Regardless, I have managed to catch a couple of notable flicks since August, and considering that this is nominally a column dedicated to film reviews, I thought a few words about what I've seen might be apropos.

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle: In the larger pantheon of burnout/buddy movies, Harold and Kumar fall short of being worthily comparable to Cheech and Chong, Bill and Ted, Jay and Silent Bob or Method Man and Redman (excluding Method and Red's mercifully short-lived Fox series, of course). On the other hand, this East Asian/South Asian doobie-ous duo does bring a slightly new perspective to the stoner movie formula. Harold is an uptight Korean-American entry-level office slave set upon by his lazy Caucasian superiors; Kumar is an Indian-American slacker seeking to avoid his father and brother's footsteps and duck out of attending medical school. Both are seeking to relax on the weekend at their apartment in Hoboken with some kind bud, and the evening's mission soon becomes the procurement of a sack of White Castles to mollify the munchies. The contrast between the uptight serious guy and the wisecracking ne'er-do-well is nothing new, but choosing to focus on the adventures of two college-educated, upwardly mobile young professionals after they've burned a couple is a welcome twist. The whole Asian thing is really only good for a few jokes at the expense of a pan-Asian students' association, and to motivate Harold and Kumar's antagonists, a gang of relentlessly "extreme" Jersey punks and a squad of interloping small-town cops. All in all, the jokes in Harold and Kumar are pretty random and miss as often than they hit, but the formula is entertaining enough, and the good jokes, like Jamie Kennedy's cameo, are funny enough to make many of the slower moments forgivable. Friends of stoners, Asians, Asian stoners, and fans of White Castle alike should probably enjoy this movie.

The Village: So, how quickly did you guess the ending surprise twist in The Village? Really, that quickly? Well, good for you! Now why don't you go home and hit yourself in the head with a hammer, genius? Just about anyone who watches The Village and makes four or five educated guesses about the twist ending should be able to guess both "surprise" turns within the first twenty minutes - it's not that hard if you're expecting it. But that's not the point, people! It's about the STORY, not the friggin' twist! And I challenge you to come up with exact nature of the twist's motivation that quickly, smart guy. M. Night Shyamalan has assembled a fascinating cast of characters in the children growing up in the repressive, fear-driven environment of this curious village, and he has been blessed with brilliant performances by Joaquin Phoenix, Bryce Dallas Howard, Judy Greer and Adrien Brody to bring the children of his village to life. Unfortunately, the adults of the village are woefully underdeveloped and aren't nearly as interesting, and since so much of the plot of the movie (which I will refrain from spoiling by revealing the twist, obvious as it is) revolves around their motivations, the film's finale comes off as somewhat anticlimactic. Still, the intricacy of Shyamalan's metaphorical village - not to mention cinematographer Roger Deakins's marvelous frame-within-a-frame rendering of it - is so moving that I think it would be a shame for anyone to miss or wholly dismiss this picture just because they guessed the ending faster than they guessed that Haley Joel Osment could see Bruce Willis because Bruce Willis is dead. Besides, the real test of any movie with a surprise twist is not how surprised you were the first time, but how well the movie holds up on a second viewing (think about Fight Club or The Usual Suspects as examples). I suspect that in that regard The Village is appreciably better than the inscrutability of its twist.

Shaun of the Dead: Every great once in a while, a movie comes along that any good film student will wish that they made first, or even claim that they were already planning to make and are genuinely shocked that someone went and ripped off their idea. Usually these are pretty run-of-the-mill ideas, like that movie about the students who plot to kill their roommate in order to get straight A's. (I think there were actually two or three movies released at about the same time with that plot.) However, I am genuinely disappointed that somebody got around to making a comedic parody of the zombie film genre before I got around to making my own zombie magnum opus, tentatively titled Where Did All These Fucking Zombies Come From? (anticipated release date: 2005). Since so many post-Romero zombie films contain strong themes of social satire anyway, the idea of taking those elements and translating them into a straight spoof seems long overdue - the only probable reason that it has taken this long for a film like Shaun of the Dead to surface is due to relative obscurity of the source material, up until the recent success of movies like Resident Evil and 28 Days Later. Shaun of the Dead's send-up of the ways of the walking dead and comparison to the wiles the idle living is hilarious in its dead-on accuracy, a contrast to the titular hero's poor skill with a firearm. The joke of how long it takes Shaun and his hapless buddy Ed to notice that London is being taken over by zombies is almost too much to be believable, but it results in many brilliant comic moments. Star and co-writer Simon Pegg has a true gift for the type of black, deadpan humor required for a comedy about thousands of people dying and coming back to life, and scenes like the one where he tries to convince his mother that his possibly-zombified stepfather was never any good in the first place are his time to shine. Director/co-writer Edgar Wright also displays an impressive formal understanding of how to use cuts and camera movements to not only compliment jokes, but occasionally make them as well. The subject matter may be too bleak for some audience members looking for a light comedy, but fans of black comedy and zombie movies should hunt down Shaun of the Dead… before it's too late.

Yup. Three movies. That's it, excluding a few I saw on tape or DVD. And one of the ones reviewed here is one I saw in Buffalo before I left for Tallahassee. Personally I'm amazed I've had the time to write down anything about them now. I'll see if I can catch a few more flicks over Thanksgiving and Christmas break, but Lord knows when I'll have time to write about them. In the meantime, keep in mind the wise words of Norm MacDonald in Dirty Work… "No matter how hard life gets, there's always beer." Semper Fi, cinephiles.