I was thinking about how much of Star Wars IV that I don’t care to rewatch. Like the whole first 1/3. Up until Luke partners with Han and they leave the planet with Obi-Wan and the droids, it’s all exposition.  It’s all setup.  Same shit with Episode VI: Basically, I don’t recall or care to rewatch the entire sequence with Jabba the Hut.  And I don’t much care for the death of Yoda either.  It’s not until the battle of Endor that I really get into the movie. The irony with both films is that the endings were so much fun that I forget how bad the beginnings were and feel good leaving the theater.  That’s exactly where Episode V fails.  It doesn’t end on a high note, so it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth so there’s nothing to distract you from how dull the entire movie was until then.  In fact, the whole entire movie is as exposition-y as the crappy parts of IV and VI.  That’s why it’s so crappy in my view.  It’ll make more sense as you read on.

When I look back at the Star Wars films, I realize how little I would appreciate them if I saw it as an adult. In fact, I was too young to understand a majority of each Star Wars movie when I saw it the first time.  By the time I could appreciate how movies rely on reveals and twists for hightened drama, I already knew the reveals, thereby neutralizing the drama, thereby neutralizing the entire Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.

Then I wondered if I’m being too hard on new films as an adult.  If I saw any of my favorite movies, I could be hard pressed to enjoy them, because I might be a little too critical. (Like the video troll here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp-E0KXQoUU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEClNaZh-EU, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGGUX4_0HQY).  I think when I watch new movies, I’m going to remind myself that all my favorite movies have crappy sequences, even crappy entire acts, but I still appreciate the good in them.  So I might as well look for the good in a movie than expect a perfectly tidy or completely engaging film.

All Great Movies Have Unwatchable Lulls

Like the Matrix, which is just too exposition-y right up until he wakes up in the real world in the human farm.  From then on the movie is engaging. Until then, it was mysterious and at best interesting.

Terminator 2 has the significant lull smack in the middle, but then it reboots itself.

Speed actually is non-stop amazing until the final act, when it gets repetitive. That’s one instance that the beginning and majority of the movie was SO good that the failure of the third act actually pulled away from our memory of the film, reminding me how important it is that you leave the theater on good terms with the audience.

Jurassic Park is actually pretty boring until… Dennis steals the embryos and the nightmare starts, but we were pulled through by the general good feeling of exploring a new world.

Armageddon actually had like 10 minutes before even introducing the miners, then like 20 minutes before they were told about the mission at NASA. Basically, the movie started when they went through the tests (NASA approved). Before that it was exposition, setup.

Same with The Rock. It’s not until the The Chase that the movie comes into its own. Until then, we were being introduced to the threat, and introduced to the heroes, but they hadn’t engaged in the mission. After the chase, the heroes finally engage the threat and the movie begins.

It’s making me wonder if the setup is my least favorite part of every movie, or more clearly, it makes me wonder if I consider a movie to be the action sequences where the characters are actually engaging the threat, and every associated scene.  Everything else is setup – and not yet the movie I come back to see over and over again.   In this sense, “the movie” is the part I remember, the part I’m engaged with, the part I return to watch.  To me, setup is not part of “the movie”, although it is critical.

“I consider a movie to be the action sequences where the characters are actually engaging the threat, and every associated scene.”
–Glenn Duenas

I guess it’s really “characters in conflict”. But not just any conflict. Characters in conflict against a clear threat or clear villain.  It’s Characters in conflict on a mission.  Before that, conflict is just there but there’s no clear mission.  Rather, the characters haven’t engaged that mission.

I guess that’s what makes Terminator 2 work. The mission of the first half is survival, the mission of the second half is “save the future” (and survival).

When does the mission kick in in Avatar? Maybe you can tell me because I wasn’t really watching.  I clocked out mentally like 30 or 40 minutes into the film, some time (maybe a long time) before Jake decides to defend the Navi, which is what I figured (from the start) was gong to be the main mission.  So maybe I was waiting for him to engage his mission for way too long, and mentally clocked out before he did, so by the time it came I didn’t care anymore.

So what I learned today is how to express what I consider “the movie”, and my objective for making a “good” movie.  When I make a film, I have to remember to minimize Act 1 (exposition, the set up) and make sure the rest of the film has a clear mission that the characters are actually actively engaging.  It might be possible to create a movie that narrates the exposition, and starts with the mission, saving me and the audience all of Act 1.  But it might be too jarring.  We’re tuned to ease into a world, and it takes time to come to a liking of the character, so maybe that’s the purpose of the setup.  I’ll be thinking about that, while writing “the movie”.

I wonder if I could re-edit “The Matrix” with a “Previously on: The Matrix” recap of everything before the red pill and the blue pill.  I wonder if I could do the same with Star Wars IV and The Rock.  Could a stranger appreciate the movies as I do if they only had one or two minutes to recap?  I think so.  It would be no different than re-watching Star Wars with the context of already knowing who Luke and Obi-Wan are.  After all, it wasn’t until the second viewing of The Rock that I fell in love with it, and where did I pick up?  At the roach scene.  Maybe 10-15 minutes into the movie.  It’s the rest of the movie that hooked me.  Can I open a movie with a recap?  I think so.  Am I brave enough to try it on my first film?  Probably not, but I’ll keep it in mind for sure!

~G

P.S. Titanic, on the other hand, is an enigma.  It’s about survival (don’t you have any other themes, Jim?) because the opening sequence establishes that it all ends with a sunken ship, so the whole movie we know what will be the character’s objective – to survive.  So we had a mission — but not the real mission.  Because he instead gave us the whole forbidden love story to pull us through the whole movie.  But even so, the lingering threat was there – except in this case, the heroes didn’t engage the threat.  Well… until the last hour of the film as it’s sinking.  Like Jurassic Park it becomes a relentless tour de force for survival until the bitter end.  Which I guess is the part of the movie I remember most.  Interesting.  (Actually, the part I remember most is when she goes below deck and they’re dancing… and later make love… It’s the whole having fun part of the movie).  Or maybe it doesn’t have a clear mission which I why it’s not a movie I return to watch, ever.  But when I have, it’s strikingly gripping for some reason.  I guess it’s the strong characters and inter-personal conflict which heightens and is heightened by the whole ship sinking sequence.

Derren Brown proved that when giving a gift to someone, he could trick that someone into thinking they wanted a bike all along, when they actually wanted a leather jacket. (It was Simon Pegg actually, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEmCQzueyEQ ; or as part of a Derren vs Celebrities video: https://youtu.be/PrlFGPB0rpg?t=7m30s ). He did this with the power of suggestion, using dozens of subliminal cues to trick his mind into thinking hard about bicycles while Derren was preparing to reveal a gift that was to come. The person’s mind was already in the realm of “what’s the gift” and “what would I like it to be” so as the subliminal cues were getting him to think about bicycles, his brain made the subliminal connections and rewrote his mental story to include the bike. When he asked what that person wanted, he said “a bicycle”.  Sure enough when he opened the box it was a bicycle.  But he went further because that person had written down their desired gift a few days earlier in a signed envelope that he kept on his person (in his wallet) since he sealed it.  The envelope said “leather jacket”, proving Derren has just altered his memory.

Why do I bring this up?  Because some people posit that memories can’t be wrong, especially when they’re strong memories.

According to Snopes (https://www.snopes.com/2016/07/24/the-mandela-effect/ ): “The Mandela Effect is a collective misremembering of a fact or event. … The term “Mandela Effect” was coined by self-described “paranormal consultant” Fiona Broome, who has written on her web site that she first became aware of the phenomenon after discovering that she shared a particular false memory — that South African human rights activist and president Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s (he actually died in 2013) — with many other people. Then she began noticing other examples.”

The Mendella effect is the idea that we remember facts differently than they are AND the supposition that our memory is correct and the facts have somehow been modified by some paranormal agent. This paranormal activity is proven by the fact that multiple people have the same (incorrect) memory. Like the fact that so many people remember Nelson Mendella dying in the 1980’s, except he didn’t. How could so many people have the same incorrect memory if it didn’t happen that way? The universe must be mutable.

To assume human memories are like computer memory is completely non-realistic. We all know that… Or do we? I’m all too aware that my memory is constantly morphing. I noticed once as a preteen that I had distinct visual images of my old home – before I was 4, but upon seeing a photo album of the house again for the first time years, I noticed that my memories of my old home exactly matched these photos. PLUS, I had no memories of that home in addition to those seen in that photo album (except possibly one). I realized then that my brain had taken visual cues and created memories from them. I knew I couldn’t trust my brain anymore, and perhaps, that’s why I always second guess myself and seriously consider that I could be remembering wrong — especially when someone is more adamant about it than I am. It’s why I like to write down my train of thought when I write a report, or an email, not just the conclusions because I know that if I later tried to recall WHY something happened I could easily make up a memory to fit my conclusion.

I later learned about possible reasons for Deja Vu. That Deja Vu is the memory part of your brain registering the moment before the cognitive part of the brain interprets it; or possibly it’s the chemical reaction associated with memory recognition without the actual memory. Deja Vu usually is associated with a weird third person feeling, a sense of watching my body take actions instead of that sense of performing the actions myself, implying to me some brain chemical imbalance. So it’s either purely chemical or a brain sequencing failure. Either way, a memory is never more accurate than a piece of paper.

I’ll go further.  I’ve had instances where I’m recounting something that happened to me, and suddenly I can’t remember the next part. I get nervous about the next memory that comes to mind. I can never be 100% sure that the memory is accurate — especially if I know the outcome. That is, I have a gap in recollection and I know my brain can either recall an accurate memory or fill in the gap with a memory that matches my assumptions for why it happened.  In fact, I notice that I’ve told a few stories a handful of times, and because it’s farther apart each time I tell it, I remember less of the story, but I know bits and pieces. I’ve gotten into some situations with people who were there who remember different colors of objects or different versions of my story (usually quantities and sequences) from the previous time I told it. In those instances, I’m never really sure if I’m right — although I can usually gauge the strength of the memory and push back with my conviction. But because I HAVE caught myself creating memories of things I’ve done when I haven’t done them (probably because I’m thinking about the things I have to do at work when I snooze in the morning), I know it IS possible that I’m creating memories of things I wish I had done (in some cases) or memories of things I had-to-have done (in most) without actually remembering doing them.

So why would ANYONE believe their memory is superior to facts? to evidence? Because they don’t take an effort to estimate the chances of remembering the correct spelling of Berenstain Bears (it’s Berenstein Bears, right?) when you learned it as a child; which is probably well below 50/50 since we’re all extremely used to seeing the -ein letters together versus the rare but correct spelling with -ain.  And in the most frequent cases: Because they don’t consider that their friends probably recall certain events from a common incorrect story teller, which in many situations could have been they themselves!

Or maybe the universe is mutable and someone or something is going around changing the facts. Maybe it proves parallel timelines and that changes to our past by time travelers may create butterfly effect changes to some events in our current reality, but none significant enough to affect all events. And … I guess because consciousness is independent of our physical reality… WE have the correct memories?

Yeah, that sounds right. The Mendela effect proves it!

~G

P.S. I don’t really think anyone seriously considers this proof of the paranormal, but that it is probably a conflation of an interesting observation with paranormal extremists and/or trolls on the internet.

P.P.S. Don’t forget to watch the Derren Brown video(s) above.  if the link goes dead, search Derren Brown Simon Pegg.

What makes a great film?

• Rewatch-ability?
• Density of content?
• Depth of journey?
• Depth of character?
• Spectacle?
• Music?
• Theme?
• Duration?
• Pace?
• Philosophy?
• Acting?

Four days ago I watched Lawrence of Arabia as a 30 year old adult. I watched it with new understanding of life and interest in the subject matter. I also watched prepared for a long duration, intermissions, and long shots. I lowered my expectations to virtually none: It’s probably going to be a slow and okay drama with some impressive imagery. And after four hours, my expectations were met, which thoroughly disappointed me. Yes, it was good at conveying the human condition with much of its paradoxes, but I didn’t leave blown away by spectacle, pace, theme, or story. The music was memorable but only in its two main themes, which were repeated again and again and again. And probably once more. And the acting was great, but dated.

Do I respect the film? Without a doubt. Was there value in watching the film? As a filmmaker, unquestionably. Would I rewatch it? No. I might re-read the script though, for I’m confident that the script is only 120 pages–which normally translates to 2 hours–but the pace and indulgence, dragged it longer. Was the cinematography amazing? Absolutely, save for some day-for-night shots which confused me. Mostly everything else was practical on set masterful photography.

Unfortunately, whenever you watch a 4 hour film, you’re forced to ask yourself: Is this worth 4 hours of screen time? Even when a comedy hits 2 hours, many believe it should have ended 30 minutes ago (25% ago). So when you get a hyped up film with a run time of 3 hr 48m, any pause in the film forces you to ask that question. As a filmmaker you start to wonder what the structure of the film might look like?

Structure

As best I can understand it, it was two films. The first half had a clear goal with a mediocre conclusion. The second half was a vaguely-compelling meandering open-ended series of events with a sudden conclusion. So sudden and unexpected that I had popped a caffeine pill right before the last scene expecting much much more.

FIRST HALF

Lawrence is a well-educated military officer with a fetish for history and culture, especially of Arabia. He gets reassigned from his post in Cairo to a position in Arabia (Iraq?) to serve Prince Faisal as a liaison. He then wins the respect of the natives, by apparently shedding his loyalty to his birth nation and adopting their culture, and eventually unites warring tribes in an effort to over-take Aqaba (on the southern-most part of the modern-day Israel/Jordan border) via land where they least expect an invasion because it requires crossing the desert in 20+ days (about as long as it takes for the camels to start dying). The “break into act 2” occurs when he first meets Prince Faisal, proposes the idea to him, and goes against his military orders and takes 50 of his men to go on the journey. The next hour or more is about him running into obstacle after obstacle and meeting and uniting a warring tribe on their journey (they meet the tribe after crossing the desert alive: they meet at Wadi Rum, modern-day Jordan, between Israel and Saudi Arabia, 37 miles from Aqaba). Toward the end of the first half, they finish crossing the desert and successfully invade Aqaba (in about 2 minutes of screen time) where, upon searching for their rewards, everyone’s intentions for conquest get challenged. Lawrence continues on to Cairo to tell his generals that they’ve captured a fortress that is impossible to capture, promising the Arabs that he’d return with weapons and gold. Lawrence reaches the Suez canal (civilization) on camel where he hitches a ride to Cairo and makes his demands adding that he never wants to return to Arabia for it has destroyed him as a man. The final shots before the intermission are a teaser for the second half of Lawrence’s journey: Lawrence is convinced to return to Arabia, not because of military reasons, but because Lawrence wants to be remembered as the man who gave the Arabs Damascus (in modern day Syria).

In summation: It’s Dances with Wolves, Avatar, Point Break, or Fast and Furious but with Brits and Arabs. An English scholar becomes a real man and a hero by befriending the natives by assimilating into their culture (though not religiously) and leading them against some common enemy to victory. They win by the end of the first half teaching everyone that nothing is written and that men are far more capable than they think they are.

If it was polished correctly, this film could have been an entire film in itself with a clear and decisive ending. But as is, it felt like a proper ending to the half and then teased a sequel.

His Journey

Here’s a map of the major cities in Lawrence of Arabia. They started in Waidi Rum with Prince Faisal and his Bedouin people, then headed west to take Aqaba, an important port city. Then Lawrence headed west to the Suez canal, traversing ten times the distance we spent 90 minutes on, and then some more, via automobile, to get to Cairo.

Then, in Part 2, he returned to Aqaba (probably by boat) and they marched north to Damascus.

Route: (Damascus to Aqaba to) Waidi Rum to Aqaba to Suez Canal to Cairo. The parenthesis route was added to make the visual nicer even though the real one was Aqaba to Damascus.

This map (http://digital.nls.uk/bartholomew/highlights/seven-pillars-wisdom/map.html) appears to show his path from Aqaba north, with divergent paths that converge on Damascus, which might be the armies he led and not exactly himself.  It’s not limited to the movie scope either, so it may be later routes too.

SECOND HALF

The second half was essentially a sequel or coda, like Star Wars Episode V but without an Episode VI. Whereas Episode IV A New Hope might have been the better story, Episode V was the sequel with a lot of meandering setups and loose ends with no clear goals or direction, and then it ended. Lawrence Part 2 was like Episode V.

Part 2 saw Lawrence now actively trying to be the hero and legend he wanted to become while grappling with the drama of the first half, where he was forced to kill a man he saved and saw one of his two servants die in quick sand.

If it wasn’t pointed out by a video essay I incidentally watched years ago, I would not have noticed that this is where the theme of identity was played out. The second half followed Lawrence’s journey north with his Arab followers on a conquest of the Turks on a war path to Damascus.  And we saw him become more and more barbaric and blood thirsty. People around him watched as the hero they adored was humanized. And his boldness had consequences, getting him caught, tortured and raped before being released. But in the end he made it to Damascus with the Arabs before the British armies and therefore, the Arabs had a word at the negotiation table. The film ends with the Arab tribes struggling to unite and Lawrence trying to write terms for a new Arab nation independent of British rule but allied to them. The final scene is a meeting with Prince Faisal and the British military leaders (with Lawrence) in Cairo where the British give Prince Faisal control, but lie that the British and French haven’t signed an agreement to split up the Arab land after victory. The final shot is Lawrence leaving the head quarters on a truck to London when a motorcycle passes them, reminding us of the opening sequence where Lawrence is riding on a motorcycle and dies.

WHEN IS INTERMISSION?

I couldn’t find a time code for intermission with a simple Google search, but I found this forum post regarding splicing the reels together:  http://www.film-tech.com/ubb/f1/t001540.html .  Apparently, the film comes in 13 reels.  At the end of reel 8 is the intermission walk out music.  The beginning of reel 9 is the intermission return music.  So assuming all reels are the same length, then the intermission is 9/13 through the film or 69% of the film.  However, reel 13 could be much shorter.  If the reel is almost empty, intermission would be about 9/12 of the film or 75% of the duration.  So Part 1 is 69-75% of the film.  Assume 70%, NOT the expected 50%.

After watching Lawrence of Arabia, a 4-hour event, including the 30-minute intermission with a 3.5 minute overture, we began talking about how long a movie should be.  It’s difficult to say, but looking at the list below, there seems to be a pattern of gluttony with certain directors.  Popular directors whose movies err on the long side include Martin Scorsese with 7 movies over 2.5 hours, Peter Jackson with 6 movies, and Michael Bay (5 over 2.5 with only 1 over 3 hrs).  Then there’s David Lean (2 at well over 3 hrs), Stanley Kubrick (2 over 3 hrs and 2 more above ~2.5), Francis Ford Coppola (with 2 over 3 hrs, and 1 more over 2.5 hrs), and Oliver Stone (with two over 3 hrs, and writer of Scarface, very close to 3 hrs).  Just my observations.  There may be some more modern directors who push close to 3 hours, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head.

What surprised me was that Avatar wasn’t that long, at 2 hrs 42 min.  In fact, Titanic was about 30 minutes longer than Avatar.  And Transformers 4 was 3 minutes longer!  I also found it funny (gluttonous?) how all the movies in Michael Bay’s Transformers series are longer than 2 hours 20 minutes!

It’s also tough to compare different generations of movies, since run times include credits which nowadays can run up to 9 minutes long!  Compare that to movies before 1970’s that only had like 3 credit slides and then “The End”.  That’s like no more than maybe 60 seconds of credits.