And On The Big Screen

To My Youngers,

So we've talked a lot about storytelling this week. Storytelling through books, in life, through art, and arguably in music (though it seems not so much through lyrics as through the experience of a song or band as a whole...) but surprisingly not really at all about storytelling through film. Maybe that's because it seems a bit obvious (what with characters and plots and narrative being some of the key elements necessary to film-making) but there is a whole other dimension to movies that tends to goes overlooked in today's age of downloading, streaming, and netflix...ing- the movie-going experience.

As lame as this sounds, one of my favourites was seeing Snakes On A Plane on opening night. It was like being at the first participatory screening of Rocky Horror, the audience spontaneously got actively involved in the showing: shouting out lines in time with the actors (they were so predictable that we could guess at what was going to be said and be right every time); cheering or booing key characters; and even counting down to with the clock and yelling 'Snakes on a plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaane!' when the carton of snakes burst open... It was awesome. I don't, however, recommend watching it at home. Its just not that great. Its not! The plot is disruptively simple, the characters are one dimensional and the snakes are just, well, just snakes. I know many people who have seen it and asked me 'How on earth did you like that movie?' and I just tell them that it wasn't really about the movie by itself, it was the whole thing all together.

If you're someone who only watches movies on your computer, at home, pretty much by yourself, I'm tellin' you, you are missing out. Few things can compare to the experience of seeing a film on the big screen in a room full of people who are really into it. Its like a concert, only with plot, characters, and no cell phones.

One of the many things I love about my city is the abundance of alternative choices for movie viewing. I mean the silerplexmcmegatheatres have their place I suppose, but they just don't give you that same sense of community that you get at a local venue. We've got a great place that shows independent movies, a fantastic old repertory theatre, and our own cheapie Rainbow cinema (where you can still see Tuesday toonie movies for an actual toonie!), not to mention an real live actual drive-in but twenty minutes down river. I have yet to make it out to the drive-in, but the past two weeks have been absolutely chock-a-block with trips to see old movies on the big screen.

Last night I saw JAWS in a theatre full of people, flanked by two friends who had never seen it before and a small dinosaur we found on the street (we named him Wash, he sat on the seat-back). It was an original print, pieced together from three separate copies of the film, chocked full of scratches, warbles, shifts in colour, and cigarette burns. And it was amazing.

I have seen Jaws before. I remember really liking it (I mean really liking it- it is one of those gems that remain inexplicably un-spoiled despite feeling like you know the movie before ever having seen it). I saw it up at the cottage with my sisters and my neighbors. We rented it from the marina. We didn't go swimming for days. It was really good, really effective, really great story telling, music, atmosphere... it was fantastic. But nowhere near as fantastic as sharing that experience with 150 other people. Hearing a collective gasp at the discovery of the severed arm, feeling everyone around you tense up when the dog is missing, the spontaneous applause that erupted when the shark explodes! Getting caught up in the moment, getting swept up in the crowd reaction. Mob mentality at its finest.

Jaws has got it all- suggestive framing, fantastic pausing, lingering camera shots, and the music- oh the music! But the effectiveness of each and every one of these things is exponentially increased by the presence of a crowd, a big screen, and the smell of popcorn. 

If you haven't seen a movie on the big screen in a while, do yourself a favour and just go. Tonight! This afternoon! Now! Pick something horrible (best at the drive-in!), something scary (midnight showing!), or something classic (from Hitchcock to Evil Dead, even if you've seen it before, I promise you it'll be even better in theatres!).  Find a locally owned independent cinema, get yourself some popcorn, slouch down in the seat, and enjoy spending the next two hours bonding with a roomful of strangers over a fishing boat being eaten by a shark.

-E

Little Paradox

To my elders,

Storytelling is, I believe, how we humans see the world. I am on point with E for that one. They say we can't remember anything before the age of 3 or so, because we can't organize out memories into narratives, so we just can't remember them. We want to see plots and characters and beginnings, middles and ends. Its how we organize things to explain them later.

This leaves us with funny habits though. We need our characters to be consistent, and complex, but interesting, and yet characters are not real people. They cannot be nearly complicated and convoluted, ambivalent or rich as characters. We are not simple. We are infinitely more complicated by experience and history and baggage.

But humans are storytellers. We include the relevant information; we characterize people. Funny story. When I was 15 and had my first job, me and my co-worker had a lot of time on our hands some days. So she came up with a game. Well, she noticed a peculiar habit of mine, and made it into a game. Aka she would say a word, any word, and I could come up with a story that referred to it. My favourite: Dinosaur. As in, my buddy J, who had a mohawk in high school, or, for part of high school at least, Came up to me in english class one day and asked if I thought he looked like a dinosaur. Because his cousin had said his hair made him look like a brontosaurus. I said no, of course, but kinda. In a punk-kid-o-saurus kind of way.

But all this storytelling has had a weird effect in the social media world, apparently. We post so many pictures and status updates and tweets about these awesome stories, the photos of us having fun and smiling and being, well, perfect in our own ways. But the lack of truth, the lack of context, and the tunnel vision of these posts, these photos, makes people feel more alone, less satisfied with their lives, and gives them more of a complex about their own lives. So regardless of the content of our own posts, we believe other people's more. Which is one of those wonderful little paradoxes of life.

So really, Chuck Klosterman is right, in a way. Choices make us happier in the short term, in the now, but less happy in the long run because it makes us feel more alone and less connected. So I propose something unorthodox. Ambivalent stories. Stories that are good and bad, funny and sad, shallow and deep. Because I believe that we can use all of this media to share. We can use all of the things available to us to connect more, or at least, in more authentic ways, because we can be ourselves, have those options, and connect with people all the same. Connect with people who are better suited to us. More options means that we don't all have to fit into a clear cut mould. And that can be better. If we stopped comparing ourselves to other people and judging our lives against snapshots.

-K

p.s. Ambivalent story of the day: Last spring I had accepted my grad school offer and had all these plans for the future and had, at least on paper, figured out my life. But I was bored as crap. Waiting to start your life, or a chapter of your life, is incredibly dull. I worked a bit, I volunteered, and I hung out. And ya, I had fun, but empty fun. Unsatisfying, vapid, useless fun. I don't regret it, and I feel bad calling it vapid when I made friends out of it and do have fond memories of bits of it. So I saw how those people live. The ones who go out all the time, and make random friends and hang out and have fun, and produce Texts from Last Night. Its funny, sure, but life is about a lot more than soundbites and tweets.

Storytelling as ... Everything

To My Youngers,

I was catching up on some vlogbrothers videos yesterday (as I am wont to do) and was struck by a particularly loverly sentiment (as I am also wont to do) expressed by John Green about the purpose of studying/discussing literature: "Its not so much about uncovering secret mysteries for the sake of uncovering secret mysteries, its about using story as a way into thinking about our actual lives and how we're actually living them."

So first off I love the enthusiasm with which Mr Green (ha ;o) states that the true purpose of hearing stories is to learn from them, to apply the lessons within to our own lives and to benefit from the experiences of others, even if those others are fictional. Its seems a rather obvious idea, but also unfortunately one which is often lost on the hoards of students forced to analyze everything from Dickens to James Joyce. I have had so many students beg me to tell them 'What the author means...' as if that will somehow magically provide them with the answers to life, the universe, and everything. Its not about what the author means but about how you relate to the story, the novel, the work. What does Napoleon's take-over of the farm remind you of? Haven't you ever felt like one of the invisible unwashed masses like David Copperfield? What about Holden Caufield- I mean haven't you ever seen a giant 'fuck' spray-painted on the side of a school and just wanted to go berserk? Apply, apply, APPLY these things to the real world! What is the point of storytelling if not to form connections, to bridge the gaps of human existence, to make webs where once there were voids? To make magic out of molehills.

That is part of this sentiment I find, frankly, absolutely fantastic- the idea that a reason to read stories is to discover secret mysteries, to understand the magic of existence! Now of course our esteemed Mr Green  says that discovering said mysteries is not the point of reading books- but wait, no! He says discovering them for the sake of it is not the purpose...  Now that's the magical part. Its not secret mysteries as set out by the author (because "What authors mean doesn't really matter") but instead the secret mysteries revealed to you through your interpretation of the author's words. Definitely more important and, I think I am pretty safe in saying, also much more awesome. The way that something said by Yossarian can make you re-imagine the universe, that something done by Charles-Wallace can make you re-evaluate your perspective, that the world-view of Tyler Durden or Rob Fleming can make you stop, look, and listen...

One of my favourite Nick Hornby moments happens in Song Book when he is discussing his discovery of hidden meaning in About A Boy after hearing the Badly Drawn Boy song about the dead duck day (could that be more cryptic for anyone who is not a Nick Hornby fan? I think not. Read his books, enjoy, then come back and re-visit this post...)  Now I think K has mentioned this before so bare with me, but the idea that someone else's reading of your words can teach you something about yourself that you never knew- totally the very point of story-telling! The push and pull of learning, the 'student becomes the teacher; is mirrored by 'the teacher becomes the student...'  As a teacher I can tell you that my students teach me things every day- I know that sounds corny and trite, but its my favourite thing about teaching and what will keep me enthralled by it for years to come. You can never know everything, you can never even come close, and having a roomful of other experiences informing, changing, and building your perspective(s) is one of the most amazing things in life. Its not just the readers, the viewers, the audience, who experience this discovery, but the authors/creators themselves... it works with books, with artworks, with songs... Hornby says of the experience "I wrote a book that wasn't about my kid, then someone writes a beautiful song based on an episode in my book that turns out to mean something much more  personal to me than my book ever did." It is not only the power of music, the insightfulness of song writing, but the experience of having an author's words mean something to you that the author not only never intended, but which has the power to change how you see things...

Now I could go on here about the insane relevantness of song lyrics and connectedness of melody, about art and seeing things in the in-between, about books changing how I see the world, but I think I'll save that for another time. For now I'll just say that it is never what the creator means that is important, but the connectedness with which you interpret their words/images/ideas and the way in which you relate to them, which allows a book/song/painting/piece of art to achieve its full potential.

That, and that I love John Green...

Aaaaaaand scene.

-E