Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

This past holiday weekend, I had the privilege of spending Thanksgiving with another family. It's always fun to see how other people do the day: what they eat and what they don't eat, how much football is a part of the equation, how the tables are divided up, etc. While Thanksgiving is pretty much the same no matter where in the nation you are, it's fun to see the little idiosyncrasies each family possesses.

This group, for instance, had the excellent tradition of the younger generation going out and seeing a movie all together. If feeling particularly unconversational, they might see two movies. In desperate times, where they just don't want to talk to anyone, they've gone to see three. I call this "putting your money where your mouth isn't."

This Thanksgiving was a two-movie-holiday. So I saw Casino Royale (again) and Stranger Than Fiction (again). I would like to relay the conversation I had with one of the more combative members of the family after the movie, as he explained his feelings about the movie and movies in general.

In order to understand the feel of this exchange, go ahead and imagine the scene like this: there are six of us in a minivan, and I'm the one in the way back where the last row is supposed to be, but is not. The character I'm speaking to is driving the vehicle, and is speaking loudly and with large gestures, often taking both hands off the wheel. Picture all of my lines in a quiet monotone from the back.

For purposes of anonymity, the driver will be referred to as "Neil," even though that's actually his name. I've occasionally added links for reference in case you doubt the veracity of any of either of our statements.

Neil: "See, you were right, the movie wasn't that bad. But it would've been so much better if they'd just cut out all the narration."
Me: [long, long pause as I contemplated the seriousness of the past comment] "Wouldn't that completely destroy the entire point of the movie, since it's a film about a guy who hears a voice narrating his life?"
Neil: "No, because without the narration it would feel so much more like Almost Famous, which is obviously what they were going for. It's pretty much the same movie."
Me: "Well, I guess the tone is sort of simil... wait, how is it the same?"
Neil: "One's about a guy writing about being a rock star, and this movie has writing too. Plus, this movie has Dustin Hoffman as the god-like guy, and Almost Famous had pretty much the same actor, because they had Jack Black."
Me: "Phillip Seymour Hoffman."
Neil: "Right. Hey, what happened to him? His career's totally fallen apart."
Me: "Well, he just won last year's Best Actor Oscar."
Neil: "Yeah, but everybody knows he sucks now. Like Clint Eastwood used to be good, and now everybody knows he sucks."
Me: "He just won Best Picture."
Neil: "Yeah, but nobody saw it because everybody knows that he sucks."
Neil's Girlfriend: "Sweetheart, you're getting too worked up again."

Let's leave this little tableau for an instant and jump right to the end:

Neil: "See? Everything you guys are saying totally agrees with everything I've said! You're wrong, I'm right, I win!"
Neil's Girlfriend: "Sweetheart, it's two in the morning, let's go home."

Ah, Thanksgiving. These are the moments we treasure forever.

Borat Review: Cultural Learnings Make Benefit For All Readers

I'm going to skip the original paragraph that introduces Borat: Cultural Learnings etc etc. and its main character, played by Sacha Baron Cohen. You know all this. I'm jumping straight to conspiracy theory.

My response to the film was basic skepticism. I really didn't believe that those interviews were real - and I know that a lot of people are mystified at how he got such results as well - but I mean this as a filmmaker. I simply have trouble believing that it was possible that it's possible to end up with footage that perfect, to have all those pieces cut together so well, to have all of it all come together as breathtakingly easy as it seems to. If you watch any reality TV show - even the extremely controlled and well-funded ones - the footage that they get doesn't compare to the footage in Borat. In this film, they get shots of apparently unrehearsed events from multiple angles, they get that oh-so-necessary close-up on every bit of action that they need to. Their shots always looks clean and crisp no matter what environment they're shooting in, even when they're shooting quick encounters with interviewees who are sure to catch on to the joke sooner rather than later. It's the most unlikely of films of all time.

I've done some research, and it looks like a lot of the people who were interviewed for the movie do exist and are quite angry and insulted about their roles in the movie. They all seem to be real, living, breathing, furious people. This leaves us with three options:

1. The whole thing is real. Every interview and event, including some of the more stunning ones - like the Pamela Anderson spot - were all filmed just as you see them. They were all quietly filmed while people made complete asses of themselves in what is fast becoming one of the most successful comedies of all time. If this is the case, not only is Cohen a genius for his ability to roll with the punches, but his staff of producers are simply the best in the game right now. Head and shoulders above everyone else. Though I suppose, since they came from HBO, that's to be expected. They're also, though, some of the meanest people on the planet.

2. Parts of the film are real - most of the interviews are real, a lot of the reactions are legit - and they faked some of the more tricky situations: the streaking through the hotel ballroom event, possibly the Pentecostal meeting, the bit where the horse keels over just over Borat's shoulder (how did that happen? how is that possible?) and - hopefully - the Pamela Anderson scene. I think this is fair. There are some scenes that are just brilliant if they really are people's real reactions, and there are some scenes that are funny either way. And honestly, I'd just feel bad for Pamela. And that poor, patriotic rider.

3. The whole thing - all of it - is faked. Pretty much everyone is in on the joke. Everyone is acting, this film is a giant hoax. Even the post-film explanations from those tricked in the film, like this somewhat suspicious one (read all the way down to the bottom. As she gets going, she gets funnier and funnier. The bit about the chairs is fantastic) - they're all invented by those in the know.

Y'know what? I think that I truly don't care. If this is all a giant moneymaking game invented by Cohen and those minds at HBO, it doesn't actually matter to me. I got my money's worth out of that movie no matter how it came into existence. Borat is the most categorically offensive, insulting, degrading, and hysterical movie to be released to theatres in years. It goes against everything America believes in.

And if the joke turns out to be on us, well, wasn't that the case anyway?

By the way, if that Pamela Anderson scene is real, the whole rest of the movie can be faked. I don't care. It's worth it just for that one scene.

The Only Thing Playing That's Worse Than "The Grudge 2"

As I write this, I am just finishing up (as in exporting out and re-converting, the boring parts of filmmaking. Well, the most boring parts) to a short film for tomorrow morning's church service as. This month, our church has rented a real classy projector that can play movies and put pictures on a gigantic screen behind the band and the speaker during worship, without having the video play on their faces, too. It looks awesome. Last week I got a bunch of stock footage online and made a video to play while the band did Delirious?'s "Did You Feel The Mountains Tremble?" I synched it up to a click track, rehearsed it with the band, fixed it up to look perfect - it was pretty rockin', I must admit.

So this week, the decide they want another video, but no one can tell me what songs they're playing until I finally tracked down the lead singer during last night's Bebo Norman concert. And last night, you'll note, was Friday. Which left me: today.

So I shot and edited this little film together all by myself today, and let me tell you, friends, it is awful. I mean, truly awful. I can't express how bad it is in mere blogwords. The only thing saving it is the fact that it's basically a b-roll movie (in case you don't know what b-roll is, I'll explain it at the bottom*) to play behind the band, and some of my b-roll is pretty good - because it's shot on HD and looks a lot like it was shot on real film (this is the unexplainable obsession of all filmmakers - they love having their movies look worse than they did when they shot them, as long as they look more like film). Some of it, in fact most of it, is pretty freaking lousy, though.

And this is the worst moment: there's this one part where I needed a shot of a hand holding the steering wheel while the car is stopped. And the girl who I'd shot with before had already left for the day, so I went out, set up the camera, and shot it myself using own hand (sadly, I've got feminine enough hands to pull it off). But by the time I got out to the parking lot, it was 6 o'clock and the sun was down. So I shot it by the glow of the lot's halogen lights, with my own hand and then tried to color-correct the shot later to look like daylight. And also like a girl's hand.

Yeah. It's bad.

Tomorrow, it's going to get played on the 50' x 30' screen behind our band during worship, and no one besides me will have seen any of the film before that moment. And it really sucks.

*B-roll is the parts of a movie where it doesn't matter that much what's being shot, it's just something to save your mistakes and go between the actual necessary things. For example, when you see a documentary, there might be an interview with someone, let's say a zombie. And while the zombie is talking, it'll cut away to whatever the zombie is talking about: rising from the grave with a roar, absorbing shotgun blasts to the chest from cowering citizens, limping along with that inescapable one-leg-dragging zombie limp that George Romero probably really wishes he'd copyrighted. Those shots are called b-roll.

When I say that I have a "b-roll movie," it means that my whole movie is just a bunch of random footage I stitched together to tell a story. Sometimes this works very well - Mark Romanek's video for Johnny Cash's "Hurt" for example.

Sometimes it doesn't. This is one of those times.