I hear that every so often. I also
hear:
“Mr. Crankypants”; or,
“Well, fine, but *I* liked it.”
And my favorite:
“Someone needs a nap.”
To be perfectly honest (as much as I
can be, trapped in subjective egoism) I am, without equivocation, a
pain in the ass to take to a piece of entertainment that I have to
fork out $$$ to witness. (I'm equally as picky with free stuff, but
paying for it gives me extra self-righteousness.)
There are two tines on this
bitchfork: having to pay exorbitant prices for entertainment and
having to pay exorbitant prices for entertainments that cheat me out
of my due: a logical, sensible, truthful plot that resonates with
richly developed, somewhat sympathetic characters not overshadowed by
ever-increasing smash-and-bang CGI, that, as the patron saint of
Messrs. Crankypants everywhere, the unsurpassed God of Nasty, Pete
Townshend, so eloquently put it: “It's all Shepherd's Bush
entertainment; you smash a guitar and a thousand geezers go
“Aaahhhhh.”
And the second tine: paying $$$ for
a plot that wraps itself up so neatly and impossibly, wherein the
hero and/or heroine escapes almost perfectly intact with their cohort
of sympathy-inducing straggle-ons from a series of disasters so
complete and nearly Armageddon...ic... that it boggles the mind. (At
least Shelley Winters and Gene Hackman had the decency to die in the
“Poseidon Adventure.”)
Money, right? Who's got it these
days? My local ubermegamultiplex charges up to $14.00 for one movie.
How much is that in minimum wage hours? (Hmmm... in New York State
it's $7.25/hour. If the average digital eye candy runs 2 hours 20
minutes, that's 2.33333333 times $7.25, which comes out to... carry
the logarithm... $16.91 in minimum wage hours. You come out ahead by
$2.91, not counting snacks, in which case you lose about another $15
if you go for the suitcase-sized Raisinettes and an über-vat of
cola-flavored high fructose corn syrup.
And live theatre's even worse. Local
prices range from $28-$60 for a two-hour show. The benefit is that
you get real people hoofin', singin', and emotin' all for you. (Way
more expensive, but I can work with real folk sweatin' it out just
for me.)
Regardless. I don't have tons of
disposable dollars to throw away without a second thought. Even if I
did, I'd want my money's worth. I want someone to have sweated over
the script, who actually put something of themselves into it,
something honest, something true, who gives me something I have to
think about. That I can take away. So when I go to the theatre and
the plot only adds up to so much instead of where it could have gone
if the playwright had preferred spilling some metaphysical blood
across the page instead of just pushing sociological buttons without real exploration in order to be current/edgy/daring, I get annoyed. I
hate it when the plot cheats out by settling for a more
heart-friendly ending instead of biting the bullet, taking the hard
road to existential truth and reaching maximum emotional potential.
I'm not asking for The Most Profound Script Ever Written; I'm asking
for some attempt at logic and truth.
Ya wanna know one of my all-time
favorite endings? The last 48 seconds of “Hudson Hawk.”
Previously in the movie (SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS HERE!!!) Danny Aiello
is seen going over a cliff in a limo which (a) plunges a hundred feet
and smashes into the base of said cliff, and then (b) explodes in a
huge fireball. Given the understanding that he is still in the doomed
limo, we assume that he is clearly and totally dead, by way of being
mangled, exploded, and roasted. Yet, surprisingly, he reappears at
the end, riding a convenient donkey, only mildly bruised and lightly
scorched. Comrade in crime Bruce Willis expresses due shock, (with
more than a touch of nudge nudge wink wink) and asks the miraculously
reconstituted Aiello how he survived the crash.
“Air bags!” Aiello replies
joyfully. “Can you fuckin' believe it???”
“But what about the fire?”
Willis asks (somewhat paraphrased by this writer).
“Sprinkler system!! Can you
fuckin' believe it???”
Why is that a great ending? Because
by asking if we can fuckin' believe it, the movie harpoons and
lampoons every Hollywood cop-out bullshit truthless ripoff climax
crowbarred into a substandard plot specifically intended to keep
audiences smiling on their way out of the megamultiplex.
Okay, granted. I don't realistically
expect much from blockbuster, high-energy, low-brainage movies like
the reboot of “Star Trek.” Yeah, it was killer on character, and
that's what was important after decades of adoring fandom for
Shatner, Nimoy, Kelley, et al (and followed by Picard and company). I
enjoyed the hell out of the new kids on the nebula, but
scientifically and plot-wise . . . ? It was (thank you, Spock)
illogical, ridiculous, and insulting to a gerbil's intelligence.
Flying into a black hole. Really. And people call me picky.
What's next? Swimming across a river of lava?
But Star Trek is only a symptom of
the disease. The level of what I'm expected to ingest these days
without question is staggering. (Oh, and on a side note: did anybody
else shudder at the sight of a crashing spaceship in Start Trek II
that destroyed several people-filled skyscrapers, killing no doubt a
thousand or two, only to have a character escape the crash by leaping
off of the ship onto a . . . whatever. Really?? Even after 9-11?)
Entertain me. If that's what you
offer, then do it well and do it with respect for my intelligence.
Thrill us as best you can and if you can possibly raise the bar, then
OMG please jack that shit up. You won't turn us off. Trust us to
rise to the occasion. Don't settle for formula; use the formula
to break new ground, give us something we won't forget. Surprise us.
And don't try to engage me with important issues only to
fail me with nothing important to say about them. Don't fluff my
ethical spirit. I expect to not be treated like an idiot.
(Although there is the argument that I possibly invite it by walking
in and paying the high price (at least at the megamultiplex,
anyway)).
And I do expect some evidence of
respect for my capacity of disbelief suspension. I do expect--and
will always continue to expect—that writers and producers will
understand that my forked-over, hard-earned shekels will be given
their full value and exchanged for a plot that at least tries to
impress me, rather than simply making me go “Aaaaaahh.”
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