Whenever someone tells me that they went through a bad breakup I always think it goes just like this
Jan/100
See? Sometimes I think of other people as the characters of my favorite TV shows. It’s rare, but still..
That car ride home would SUCK.
I am every TV character in every favorite show I have ever had
Dec/092
It’s true. It is completely impossible for me to watch one of my favorite shows without starting to believe that I am one of it’s main characters or that one of it’s main characters is “exactly like me”. I think this could be part of the reason that I enjoy TV shows WAYYYY more than most of the people I know. Those people are just watching this show, for me this show is my LIFE. (That’s not totally true, but it’s not totally not true either.) For fun I thought I’d take a few of my favorite shows and the characters that I identify with the most from those shows and see how it works out. Should be fun.
SHOW: 90210
CHARACTER: Dylan McKay
WHY I WATCHED: I can remember very specifically that 90210 was my first ever “favorite show”. I remember secretly staying up late to watch it and the thrill of watching what was at the time the edgiest thing on television. I was only 11 or 12 years old, not even a teenager, but I knew that this show was awesome and that I was in love with Brenda Walsh.
FUN FACT: Realizing that Luke Perry only really has one acting mode (acting like Dylan McKay) I have watched everything he’s ever been in. Even the sci-fi series Jeremiah, which wasn’t really that good.
WHO IS HE: Ummm only the coolest dude at West Beverly High. Dylan was the ultimate cool bad boy character on television. He was somehow wise beyond his years even though he was probably 16 in show time. When Brandon got a DUI, Dylan took him to rehab because he’d been there man. Dylan didn’t care about school, he had a trust fund, lived in a hotel and he drove around a Porsche from the 60s. He didn’t need no freakin’ school, man. He just hung out there to hit on Brenda and say cool things. Originally a straight bad boy, he became friends with Brandon and started to date Brenda showing that he was really a good person who had a few problems. Whenever things start to go wrong in Dylan’s life the show would always veer back into “uh-oh, Dylan’s drinking again!” mode (Would I come to school drunk?) and he would become his own worst enemy. (Here’s a good example.) When all is said and done, Dylan is the most fascinating and important character in the series history. To this day, I love him.
WHO AM I: Trust fund, cool car, surfing ability and the hair definitely put me in the “nothing like him” category, but let’s not just stop there. At times I definitely am my most worst enemy and I definitely have a tough exterior (what the hell are you laughing for?). Really, I’m a good person who has a few problems.
DID I SUGGEST USING HIS NAME FOR MY SON? Yes.
VERDICT: As much as it kills me to say it, probably not. As much as I want to be a bad boy, I’ll NEVER be as big of a bad boy as Dylan McKay. He was just too good to be true. And I mean true as in ever exist in real life.
SHOW: Dawson’s Creek
CHARACTER: Pacey Witter
WHY I WATCHED: I really have no idea. I liked maybe half the characters and hated the lead character, but Pacey was by far my favorite on the show and one of my favorites of all time.
FUN FACT: I once thought it’d be a good idea to “frost my tips” after I saw Pacey rock the look in this picture. It was not a good idea.
WHO IS HE: I am going to defer to Wikipedia here:
He is an academic underachiever who uses humor and sarcasm to relate to people, as well as to hide his emotional pain stemming from his very unhappy childhood. Because of Pacey’s underachiever status in school and lack of common sense, he is branded by his working-class family as their “great disappointment”, or “great embarrassment”. Both of his parents frequently call him a loser right in front of him, which has led to his very low self-esteem. His best friend is Dawson Leery and he appears in a few of Dawson’s early films. Pacey is a romantic at heart.
WHO AM I: Woah, we might actually be on to something here. Academic underachiever? Check! Uses humor and sarcasm to relate to people as well as hide emotional pain? Check! Unhappy childhood? Check-ish. Branded by family as a disappointment? Not check, but…. branded by self as a disappointment for lack of academic success and common sense? Check! Low self esteem? Check! Romantic at heart? Check mate.
Today a lot of this stuff isn’t really true about me anymore, but at the time of it’s airing and a few years afterwards it totally was. I was Pacey and Pacey was me. Then again, Pacey “outgrew some of his lethargic, clownish ways; becoming more mature”, so….. yeah.
DID I SUGGEST USING HIS NAME FOR MY SON? Yes.
VERDICT: Yes!
(Quick note: both of these characters were originally intended for smaller roles on their shows and ended up stealing the show. I feel like that’s important for some reason.)
SHOW: Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel
CHARACTER: Angel
WHY I WATCHED: Because it’s so awesome I couldn’t not watch. These shows are two of the very, very few shows that have ever made me scream “No!” at the TV when something happened that bothered me emotionally. High praise.
FUN FACT: I based my personal religious beliefs on something Angel said in the Angel season two episode Epiphany.
Angel: Well, I guess I kinda worked it out. If there’s no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters… , then all that matters is what we do. ‘Cause that’s all there is. What we do. Now. Today. I fought for so long, for redemption, for a reward, and finally just to beat the other guy, but I never got it.
Kate Lockley: And now you do?
Angel: Not all of it. All I wanna do is help. I wanna help because, I don’t think people should suffer as they do. Because, if there’s no bigger meaning, then the smallest act of kindness is the greatest thing in the world.
Also, I’ve always fought anyone who said that I had a crush on Sarah Michelle Gellar simply because I believe that “Buffy is Angel’s girl and I would never do that to Angel.” I have problems.
WHO IS HE: A vampire with a soul who falls in love with a vampire slayer that would literally do anything for her, even if it means dying or sacrificing himself so that she can live. A person who feels so bad about the things he’s done in his past that he spends his entire life trying to make up for it. He has a good sense of humor and is a great friend to those close to him, but sometimes his desire to do “what’s right” costs him in his relationships.
WHO AM I: Well, I’m not a vampire (even if I am writing a 2000 word comparison to myself and TV characters at 2AM) for one. The only real comparison I can make here is that I am a good friend, that I try to make up for bad things I’ve done in the past and that I have a sense of humor. I’m way funnier than him though.
DID I SUGGEST USING HIS NAME FOR MY SON? Well, I would have if “Angel Morales” didn’t sound like such a Mexican drug dealer and “Angel Church” didn’t sound so stupid.
VERDICT: Not really. Personality-wise maybe, but that’s not enough to overcome the whole vampire-who-fights-demons-dates-vampire-slayers-and-saves-the-world thing.
(Are we having fun yet? This is awesome! Hey speaking of awesome…)
SHOW: How I Met Your Mother
CHARACTER: Barney Stinson
WHY I WATCHED: I watched this show for the first time specifically because of Neil Patrick Harris who just so happens to play Barney Stinson. I ended up sticking around because it was consistently funny mostly due to, you guessed it, Neil Patrick Harris.
FUN FACT: I may quote this show more than any other to the point where my friends now say “legendary” to me more than I say it.
WHO IS HE: The ultimate womanizer who thinks relationships are dumb and that Ted is a moron for trying to find his wife all the time. He looks awesome in a suit, has opinions and theories about everything, likes girls with Daddy issues, has tons of catchphrases, tends to exaggerate stories and really, just wants everyone to like him and be important to their life.
WHO AM I: The areas where I am not Barney are pretty obvious and I don’t really have to say it, but the areas where I am Barney are really spot on when you think about it. Like Barney you can say many bad things about me, but you can NEVER say I am a bad friend, I have opinions and theories about many things and often need to be told to shut up, I will exaggerate any story if I think it’s funny and/or worth it, I think that my friends who spend too much time with their girlfriends are idiots and if you think I don’t think I’m everyone’s best friend then you just don’t know me very well. I’m very proud, almost to a fault, like girls with Daddy issues, I looking fucking fantastic in a suit and I’m awesome.
DID I SUGGEST HIS NAME FOR MY SON? No, but to be fair I didn’t watch the show at the time he was born. I probably wouldn’t have though, I had a dog named Barney once.
VERDICT: Despite being a lot alike you really can’t overlook the womanizing or the fact that he has much more game than me and a lot less morals. Still, if I was going to compare how good of a friend I was to a TV character that is also a great friend Barney would be the guy I pointed to. Same deal if we are talking about a TV character that is as awesome as I am.
This is getting too long so I am breaking it into two parts. PART TWO HERE!!!
Southland Tales
Jul/090
If there was ever a movie tailor made for me, it would be Southland Tales. The Rock, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Justin Timberlake and Sean William Scott? YES and PLEASE. Honestly, if someone gave me $20 million dollars and told me to make a movie I am pretty sure I would call those four immediately (and maybe Mandy Moore if I needed another girl, who btw is in this movie too) and beg them to be in my movie. Yet, somehow someone managed to put those four (five) in a movie and it sucked. Bad.
I recently watched it for a second time to see if it was better and it wasn’t. It was still bad. Some people who saw this movie didn’t “get it”, didn’t get the point of the plot. I got it and I still hated it. It’s not a very good screenplay which actually doesn’t surprise me at all. Some people think that Richard Kelly is one of the best young screenwriters out there. Those people would be wrong. (For one, you can’t be considered a great screenwriter if you don’t understand how people talk.) Look at his history:
Donnie Darko: Beloved movie, which I think a lot of was due to people not “getting it” the first time they watched it. Like the Sixth Sense type of thing. This really had nothing to do with Richard Kelly because if you watch the director’s cut everything is explained a lot more clearly and some of the movie’s mystery disappears.
Domino: I actually read his draft of the script which had all of the characters from 90210 in it (the idea was that Domino, based on her history, should have been like a character in 90210 and not like she really was) and this was a pretty creative idea. Once that was taken away though, the movie doesn’t really have a great story to stand on. It has too many characters and too many intertwining plots to be what it aspires to me. It is my favorite of Richard Kelly’s movies though, but maybe that’s because it’s the one time Tony Scott’s crazy camerawork actually fit the material.
And finally, this movie. This movie is way too long, has way too many characters, has way too many plots and needs way too much narration to explain what is going on. Robert McKee, the screenplay guru, hates narration and in the movie Adaptation described it like this “God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That’s flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.” Which is exactly the problem with this movie. For as visually stunning as this movie attempts to be, it doesn’t follow the one simple rule of film and screenwriting “show not tell”. If you got rid of Justin Timberlake’s character in this movie you would have no idea what is going on. This movie is BUILT on voice-over. It wouldn’t survive without it and that’s why it shouldn’t be a movie.
When the best way you can describe a movie is “this guy is found in the desert and he doesn’t remember anything so he hooks up with a porn star and there is this other guy and neo-Marxists and this drug/energy source called fluid karma and there are like all these crazy government rules and Republicans are bad and this kid who gets drafted and…”, it’s not a good movie. To describe this movie you need to say the word and about 40 times. I don’t really see how this movie got from pitch to production honestly. Just because Donnie Darko was a cult hit, doesn’t mean you give someone a ton of money and let them make whatever they want.
The crazy thing about Southland Tales is it might go from bad to okay if you cut about 40 minute off of it. Get rid of the Neo-Marxists for the most part, get rid of Justin Timberlake and make the movie almost completely about The Rock and Sean William Scott. Nothing else. Then you might have a good movie. Instead, Richard Kelly made this movie SHORTER than the cut he released at Cannes. Oof.
The sad thing about the whole deal is this is the movie that I want The Rock to be in. This is the kind of stuff that I want him doing. Crazy, creative stuff that could be awesome and allows him to show his full range of charisma, but after this epic fail he won’t do it. Not again. He knows where his bread is buttered and that’s at Disney so that’s where we’ll be seeing him for a long, long time. It’s kind of sad. For that, I will always hate you Richard Kelly.
PS: Sometimes I surprise myself with how much I actually know about screenwriting. I should probably get into that again since I am about a 500x better writer than I was five years ago.
90210
Nov/080
I’ve been watching a lot of 90210 on Netflix lately. The original of course, not that new stuff. I was a big fan of this show growing up. Mostly because I was watching it in 1990 when I was 8 years old thinking I was cool like my older brothers. Brenda was actually my first crush. I had a poster of her and everything (I think I also had a poster of Dylan which I later realized was meant for girls, but let’s just pretend I didn’t say that.) Looking back on the show now it’s astonishing how bad it was. The dialogue is just scary bad. Last night I watched the episode where Brenda loses her virginity at the Spring Dance to Dylan (yeah!). That’s all I remembered about the episode. I’d completely forgotten about the weird subplot of Steve getting drunk because Kelly forgot his birthday and the fact that he was adopted or the other one where Andrea imagines herself as Carrie. Weird. There was a pretty hilarious discussion at the end of the episode that sums up how bad the dialogue was.
Brandon: Is it just me or was tonight one of the strangest nights of all time?
Steve: Definitely one of the strangest nights.
Andrea: Definitely.
Kelly: Definitely.
Donna: Definitely.
Brenda: Definitely.
Dylan: What can I say? Spring. Is in the air.
First of all, that doesn’t even make sense. Second of all, that line is supposed to make Dylan look cool. He said it like that too. “Spring (dramatic pause) is in the air” and here I am thinking that Dylan is probably the coolest character in the history of television. I almost named my son Dylan! (Alternative name: Logan as in Logan Echols from Veronica Mars. Also, if I’d have had twins I was shooting for Brenda and Brandon. I have problems, I realize this.) I should probably stop watching this as it’s causing me to rethink everything.
- Were Brandon and Andrea the ultimate will-they-won’t-they-but-never-actually-do couple of all time? Sure, it’s a nice thought. The two smart poor kids surrounded by rich people hooking up, but let’s be for real. Brandon was way out of her league and he was much better served hooking up with hotter girls like Emily Valentine and later Kelly.
- Speaking of Andrea, will there ever be a girl like her in a TV show again? Now whenever they want a girl to be not as attractive as the other girls they just “She’s All That” a pretty girl (who is usually prettier than the pretty girls.)
- It sucks that Shannon Doherty was such a bitch as she was one of the best characters. The show died a little when she left.
- I love how every character has flaws in the early seasons that are later erased. Dylan went to A/A (this would lead to some of the greatest episodes of all time when he fell off the wagon), Kelly was a slut (in one episode she drunkenly sleeps with Steve(!)), Steve was a drunk, Kelly’s mom snorts coke, Donna was really dumb, David Silver is a loser. In later seasons everyone is perfect and they need to bring in outside guys to make the mistakes.
- Ian Ziering is one ugly dude. I bet he logs into his myspace everyday.
Who am I kidding? I’m going to watch every episode until Brenda leaves.
Whoops
Sep/080
Kind of forgot I had a blog for a couple weeks there. I guess I have been busy doing… I don’t really know what I’ve doing. All I know is that I haven’t watched any TV and haven’t updated my blog in almost two weeks. Weird.
That, of course, all ends tonight as it is the season premiere of 90210. BRENDA IS BACK! YES!