Sometimes It Takes a Long, Long Time

This week the Internet broke over an hour of television that traced the relationship of two middle-aged gay men during a fictional apocalyptic pandemic.

It was the third episode of the gargantuan new hit HBO series The Last Of Us, which is based on what is acknowledged to be one of the best videogames ever made.

As a middle-aged gay guy who has never been into videogames and who long ago gave up being mainstream, this was quite a shock.

Nevertheless, it was a pleasant one, since it vaulted one of my favorite records of all time, Linda Ronstadt’s 1970 hit, Long, Long Time, to the top of the 2023 streaming charts, where it continues to stay.

The teenage me, who longed for love in exactly the way Linda did in that song, could never have imagined our anthem could sit, sit, sit there for this long, long, long of a time.

The same shock might be said for those of Asian descent who have watched the film Everything Everywhere All At Once emerge at the top of the pack of award contenders for film of the year.

Its latest achievement was to lead the recently announced Oscar nominations by picking up 11 nods. That includes a first time ever best actress chance for an Asian identifying woman, its star, Michelle Yeoh. (Note: Okay, back in 1936 the biracial Merle Oberon was nominated in that category. But she never came out as part Asian nor was it EVER discussed).

Sure, a non-English language film like Parasite shockingly won best picture in 2019 but it wasn’t a Hollywood made film about an American family. It also wasn’t the kind of mainstream American box-office hit using newer American cultural storytelling techniques inspired by the younger skewing gaming industry.

One can only imagine how encouraging EEAAO is for aspiring Asian artists coming of age right now in post insurrection America. Not to mention any young person who longs to see film or TV hits, both commercial and artistic, that offer up stories in more varied and less traditional ways that they can relate to.

I did not have “rocks with googly eyes making me cry” on my Bingo card

As a consumer and writer barely clinging to middle age, I will admit it took me a bit to get on both The Last of Us and EEAAO bandwagons.

I watched the first episode of the HBO series when it debuted a few weeks ago and was mixed. The acting was good but it was so frenetic and with so many characters and situations that were vaguely defined that I ultimately decided I didn’t care much. I raised this with a group of college seniors who I instruct in TV writing and they assured me everything would become clear soon and to stick with it.

As most adults do, I promised to maybe take a look again with very little intention to do so.

Until the explosion of week three when middle-aged gay, gay, gay romance became a TV thing and a mainstream videogame story instantly became more inclusive by way of Linda Ronstadt.

The same thing happened with EEAAO, a movie I admired for its audaciousness but lost me in the second act and didn’t do much for me emotionally when I saw it the first time.

But with all the praise and Oscar nominations (Note: Awards that I still pretend are very little indication of anything by ignoring my lifelong obsession with them), converged with the fact that I was now facing TWO thesis TV and Film writing classes to whom the film’s narrative and execution HEAVILY spoke to, even ever intractable me had to take another look.

And am I glad that I did.

Not only did it teach me that, okay, I can occasionally be wrong about a few things, but that there are infinite ways to tell a story.

And just because your limited mind isn’t used to them that is no reason to shut the barn door and sit in the slop with the rest of the close-minded pigs in your sty.

(Note: Pig sty and barn door analogies? Really?)

It also once again taught me something else.

Representation Matters.

These days that term seems to come across as a political diatribe. A must have, a demand, or at least an incessant want of too many of the “woke.” Or woke mob. Or… well… choose your adjective and noun depending on who is speaking.

But all it really means is a longing to be seen and heard. A path to get listened to and a means to include oneself or one’s group in the world that might also open up the world’s hive mind.

It’s a desire, ironically, to be acknowledged as a part of the pack.

Now this doesn’t stop you from still being an outsider, or prevent you from striving to stand out and lead that world pack in a different direction. Just as it won’t prevent you from continuing to be stubbornly indifferent, ahem, to anyone unlike you and yours.

But in order to ensure the personal freedom to live our lives the way we see fit (Note: As long as we are not causing others physical harm), those in the pluralities and underrepresented need to be visible and seen in order to get included.

One of the easiest ways to do this is in your choices, and tolerance, for films, television or anything else that might diverge from what you consider on first view to be your own very, very VERY good taste.

This goes especially for those barely clinging to middle-age.

Linda Ronstadt – “Long Long Time”

01.29.23

by notesfromachair

The Top Guns

The Oscars unveiled its 2023 nominations this past week, joining the previously announced award nominees lists from the major unions of craftspeople that make movies (Note: DGA, WGA, SAG, PGA, among so many others).

The work and the films run the gamut from big budget and big box-office to micro-cost and little-to-speak-of in the way of tickets sales. They also stretch from the extremely well reviewed to the mixed or even disliked.

This is nothing unusual and as it should be.

AND… If you’d like to hear our totally unvarnished take on this year’s Oscar contenders, as well as marvel with us over how it is that Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams, this year’s genetically gifted announcers, can still manage to look that good at 5:30 in the morning, click here for all the hot takes we have and then some.

Shameless self-promotion, to be assured, but also informative, fun and a bit bitchy.

Still, I do have one small but definitely full-on bitchy bone to pick over what is and what is not required for great screen storytelling these days.

Top Gun: Maverick has been judged one of five BEST adapted screenplay nominees by BOTH the Oscars AND my own Writer’s Guild of America this year.

I mean, SERIOUSLY?

HUH???????????????

I don’t care how much $$$$ it made or the fact that it seems to be credited with single-handedly reviving the domestic box-office at brick and mortar multiplexes post-pandemic.

There are financial awards for that, not to mention attention from NATO.

The latter would be the National Association of Theatre Owners, not the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. That last one is a world peacekeeping organization vs. the former, whose job it is to keep the nation’s movie theatres open and its owners at peace.

Note: Top Gun: Maverick DID NOT save the world.

Unless the only world you know is the movie business.

Perhaps that’s the problem.

Hey, there is nothing wrong with big, broad blockbuster entertainment. And there is nothing wrong with big, broad blockbuster entertainment being nominated for awards.

When they are deserved.

But if you are talking about basic storytelling 101 in the blockbuster arena, at its most essential and most basic there are the GOOD GUYS and the BAD GUYS.

Yet in Top Gun: Maverick, this box-office behemoth of a sequel to a blockbuster from the wretched excess decade of the eighties, we don’t even know who the bad guys are because the writers are too scared, too lazy or likely too worried to tell us.

Tom Cruise’s Maverick is tapped to choose and lead a small group of elite fighter pilots (Note: Think Cruise and his buddies thirty plus years ago) to stop __________________ from enriching uranium, which can presumably, in turn, give THEM, the _________________, a nuclear bomb(s).

But who is THEM???

Who are THEY? Who is __________________? The ENEMIES? THE…..BAD GUYS?

The best we are given is the general term rogue nation.

and here I thought the real enemy was Miles Teller’s mustache

Except no rogue nation can fit the definition of what country or powers are being even vaguely suggested, even if you take into account the very, very few clues provided in the screenplay/film. (Note: For a breakdown of the evidence, here is one excellent analysis, much better than we could do here).

So, well, whom are we rooting against and why are we invested in this mission in this award-nominated screenplay?

Okay, okay, I know. It’s because we want Tom Cruise to win. Always.

Well, some of us.

But from a STORYTELLING point of view in a war movie, don’t we need to know WHO IS THE ENEMY??????

That is, aside from logic.

Of course, right. A major reason we don’t know is international box office potential. The forces behind Top Gun: Maverick don’t want to offend any nations, or nationalities, or inanimate objects, rogue or not, for risk of denting their profits with any type of political firestorm or cultural cancellation.

And at a $1.44 BILLION in ticket sales worldwide, including $744 million in foreign territories OUTISDE the U.S, who can argue with that strategy.

But…is it AWARD WORTHY dramatic writing?

It depends on what you are giving the award for.

To whit, Top Gun: Maverick is now the FIFTH highest grossing movie of all-time, soaring past the original Black Panther. The latter film, a worldwide phenomenon, grossed $1.347 billion in total, $647 million from the US and almost $700 million from overseas.

And it had a ton of discernible villains, not only from within Wakanda, its own country, but even from the U.S.

Best Marvel villain ever — no questions at this time.

Not to mention, its current Oscar nominated sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, has SPECIFIC ENEMIES from ALL OVER the UNIVERSE.

That is because the people behind the Black Panther movies know how to BOTH tell a good story AND respect their audience.

See, blockbusters can be artistically interesting and don’t HAVE to play it vague and safe.

If the filmmakers and the studio decide that is what they are going to do.

What is surprising is that a very large group of Hollywood writers in both the Motion Picture Academy and the Writers Guild have drank their employers’ Kool-Aid and chosen to keep everything they know about great dramatic screenwriting away from their ballots in favor of their hoped for bloated bank accounts.

I would like to attribute it to solely a large group of white male Hollywood writers over 50 whom long for the glory days, when they could imagine themselves as digital Tom Cruise, or even simply employed by the likes of Simpson and Bruckheimer.

But then I realize I am one of those white male 50+ voting writers.

And among my biggest nightmares would be to wake up resembling anything akin to the fictional Maverick or the digital and/or real life version of that particular movie star. Or in the employ of any two producers making any Simpson-Bruckheimer type product.

So that answer is way too easy.

Instead, I attribute it to a much more realistic view of what’s happened to corporate artists worldwide since time began, especially in Hollywood.

As your bank account rises you have to work like hell to prevent your work and your taste and your voting opinions on anything from going into the toilet.

And that requires the kind of effort and determination that far too few of us are still willing to suit up for.

Lady Gaga – “Hold My Hand” (from Top Gun: Maverick)