Ronin critic

Hi kids. This is your favorite critic speaking. I was raised by a critic. I eventually grew up, and turned into a critic. People paid me for it. I figured it was the natural order of things. My destiny. Nah.

First I was downsized. I hung in there as a freelancer. For boring reasons I won't get into, that doesn't work anymore. Basically, I could make more money competing with illegal farm workers picking tomatoes. Poor me. But let's cut to the chase.

As of now, I'm a Ronin critic. Which is to say, nobody's paying me to throw stones (or flowers) at plays and movies -- at least for now. No one is to blame. The Cold Equations of economics have spoken. The Invisible Hand has slapped me to the curb. I don't take it personally.

But, until the Invisible Hand changes its mind, I'm writing this stuff for free. Yep. Like a chump, dolt, poltroon, sap, feeb, chucklehead, I'm just giving it away. After I write the stuff somebody's still paying me for, of course.

OK. Seeing as how I've got nothing to lose, it's as good a time as any to regurgitate a statement of critical principles. (I'll stick to live theater, but most of this applies to film and TV.)

The script is the thing
Many critics approach live theatrical performances like judges at a figure skating contest. They hold up imaginary signs -- 10-9-3 — ranking the director, actors and technical people. The story behind the exercise is an afterthought, or no thought at all. This may be useful to theatergoers who don't want to waste their precious time, but it’s not my style.

To me, a play is a primarily a work of fiction. The actual performance is a delivery system for the script. I start with the script. I talk about the story.

See, I'm not just a lazy bastard cranking out plot summaries. I actually think the story's important.

I trust my own responses
If I love (or hate) the play when I'm watching it, I don't try to talk myself out of it when I write about it. My first response is my most honest response.

Screw the intentional fallacy
When I see a play, my natural tendency is to say, "OK, here's how I'd do it." I fight that tendency. I force myself to ask what the writer wanted to do. What were the goals? Did they succeed?

So, you can have a lousy idea and a brilliant execution, a great idea and a lousy script. You can also have an EVIL idea and a great or lousy script. (In the world of film, Leni Reifensthal comes to mind. She made brilliant movies promoting Nazism.)

If a script is fundamentally wrongheaded, the actors and directors can all hit a "10" and it's still a waste of time.

I judge the story first. Then I judge the performance.

That's pretty much it.

Rescue Me

This post is a stub full of random bloviation and not polished and sandblasted to rich critic-y shininess.

Rescue Me is a damn good shot. It hits a consistently high level. The characters are interesting. The dialogue is great. It takes me into a world I wouldn't otherwise enter. Which is what I want fiction (written, staged or filmed) to do. I.e. get me outta this world. Put me in another one. Good job.

The show has a core philosophy, a basic value system. For want of a better term, it's the value system of sexist, macho assholes. These are the guys (and occasionally chicks) who -- thanks to the genetic lottery -- represent that small portion of the population that doesn't fear danger, wants to fight, needs that adrenaline rush, and actively puts themselves in danger. These are the (mostly) dudes who put out fire, put bad guys in jail and fight wars. We need these guys. But there's collateral damage.

These guys also get into fights, take pills, cheat on their wives, beat on their wives, and screw up royally in their personal lives.

My gut feeling is Dennis Leary shares the basic worldview of these guys. Which goes something like: We're macho assholes. But the rest of you pussies need us macho assholes to fight fire, wars, crooks, etc.

He has that value system. But I have to give him credit. He takes a sledge hammer to the fountation of his moral philosophy and whacks the hell out of it to see if he can make it fall down. Is it solid? We'll find out. WHACK WHACK WHACK.

Leary has a worldview. But he gives the opposing worldview equal time. He extends his chin and says gimme a shot. There are no strawmen in his universe. He doesn't sugarcoat the reality of his world. That takes balls.

I like this show.

Go west. Go 7 light years west.

Now, how the hell did he do it?

Let's assume humanity manages to turn the earth into a dead fish tank. We have the tech to go to a nearby star system with shitloads of planets and moons, terraform those babies, and resettle there.

It's your pioneer situation. I.e.: it ain't fun.

Chances are, the pioneers would speak some garbled, rough-and-ready lingo.

M'luv, obaachan wen bungie jump dis ohio. Wat!?! Azfoo!

A mash-up of tongues a la Gaff's "Cityspeak" in Blade Runner.

Of course, nobody in the 21st century would understand a solitary slovo.

So, letting some screenwriterish approximation of oldwesternese and Chinese stand for the future slang is the next best thing.

OK, Joss.

I'll buy it.

Rufus T. Firefly

OK. Have purchased aborted first season of Joss Whedon's "Firefly" after falling in love with last year's "Serenity."

Didn't know movie was picking up from dead TV series. Didn't watch the gorram series. I knew it would suck intergalatic donkey dong. In advance. So didn't watch it.

See, here's the deal.

I fucking hate "cowboys in space" on a basic conceptual level.

Science fiction (SF) should be science fiction. I.e.: SOMETHING OTHER. Something outside human experience. Not the same everyday crap blown up against the hurricane fence of our everyday shitty lives, only projected into space or other dimensions.

Which is basically all Lost in Space did ...

Department stores in space! Hippies in space! Juvenile delinquents in space! Pirates in space! Cowboys in space!

Fuck that shit.

Or Outland? Peter Hyams says "Behold, nothing up my sleeve. I will now pull a science fiction movie -- out of my ass!"

The audience gasps ...

It's High Noon in Space! Wow! How did he do that?

Eaagghhhhhhhhh!

There is nothing, nothing that could possibly EVER get me to watch a cowboys in space movie or TV show without projectile vomiting.

But Joss Whedon did.

Serenity Prayer

Just saw "Serenity" with Andrew. Damn.

Somebody shoulda propped open George Lucas' eyes like Alex in A Clockwork Orange and forced him to watch it.

See, George? That's how it's done.

It's called a story, George. A story.

Viddy well, O my brother.

We could be heroes …

By Marty Fugate
Arts and Entertainment Writer

Is it possible to be a hero without being a macho jerk? For Jeff (Sheffield Chastain), it’s more than a theoretical question.

Like millions of baby boomers and Gen-Xers, Jeff grew up under the shadow of a heroic father, a Popeye-like icon who rescued 23 of his fellow sailors from a sinking ship in the Korean War. As a hero, Jeff's cold-warrior dad was the genuine article. But as a dad, the man was a not-so-heroic, uncommunicative, hard-drinking bully.

Jeff tried to follow in his father’s better footsteps but got kicked out of the Navy for smoking pot. Dad stopped speaking to him and died a few years later. Jeff bumbled around and eventually got work as a night security guard in a New York City apartment building, all duded up in a pseudo-military uniform, a “lobby hero” and nothing more.
Jeff still wants to take a stand, put his life on the line and accomplish something, just like dad. But he doesn’t want to be a macho jerk.

You find this out, because Jeff is one of those guys who can’t stop talking. He first pours his heart out to his boss, the security captain, William (J. Bernard Calloway), an upright, by-the-book, black man who’s landed this position of authority through sheer force of will. At first glance, William is an ideal role model and surrogate father to Jeff – he’s heroic and still a decent guy. But his decency and heroism may have limits.

You soon discover that William's not really listening to his puppy-like underling. William is preoccupied because his brother, accused of taking part in a nasty murder, has asked him to help cook up an alibi. He figures his brother is innocent, but figures the racist system will find him guilty anyway if he doesn’t lie. Maybe, in this case, doing the right thing means doing the wrong thing. In a moment of exhaustion, he drops his guard and blurts this out to Jeff. Jeff just figures that, when the time comes, William will go by the book and puts it out of his mind.

At this point, two tough-talking New York City cops enter the picture. There’s Bill (Jonathan Hammond) a heroic, fearless crime fighter (nicknamed “Supercop”) who’s also an adulterous skirt-chaser and perfectly willing to lie to back up his buddies and blackmail anybody who’s not his buddy; he’s probably the spitting image of Jeff’s dad. His rookie partner, Dawn (Tina Frantz), idolizes Bill and has already slept with him. They’ve just returned from an incident where Dawn knocked the lights out of a raging drunk with her nightstick. The action was justified, but Bill’s her only witness. Not to worry, he tells her. He’ll back her up. Bill also agrees to back up his friend William, and help get his brother off the hook. Whether he’s lying or telling the truth for his friends and partners doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s a question of loyalty. It’s what you do.

But when it comes to his partner, Bill’s loyalty is a one-way street. He pretends to build up Dawn's confidence, but he really holds her in contempt; his pep talks are just a way of getting Dawn in bed — and she’s not the only woman he’s fooling around with. Bill’s perfectly willing to withhold his testimony if his partner doesn’t continue her sexual favors and keep her mouth shut about his various misdeeds.

Kenneth Lonergan sets this up with well-constructed action and honest dialogue. He succeeds in creating believable characters and making you care about them. “Lobby Hero” reaches out and grabs you in the first act. If there’s a test of a great play, that’s it.

Unfortunately, the second act was a bit of a letdown. Without giving too much away, let’s just say that Jeff never really takes a heroic stand – he stumbles into doing the right thing because he can’t keep his mouth shut. Dawn takes a stand, but it’s partly out of spite. The truth comes out and nobody (whistleblowers or whistleblowees) gets fired, jailed, or pays much of a price. Assuming he’s innocent, even William’s brother may still be freed.

This is not to say it’s not still entertaining and often wildly funny. But is it possible to be heroic without being a macho jerk? The play poses the question but doesn’t answer it.

The performance itself is heroic. Director Kate Alexander pulls off some genuine magic in the act of transforming the small set of lobby and brief strip of street outside into the illusion of the real world. Within that illusory world, Chastain is hilarious (with shades of Steve Buscemi), as the motor-mouthed, rubber-limbed also-ran; Calloway (with shades of Samuel L. Jackson) makes you believe in his character as a good man in a very bad situation; Hammond is side-splittingly funny as the two-faced, egotistical, adulterous “Supercop,” especially when he’s doing that “I don’t have a real marriage to speak of” speech to Dawn; Frantz convincingly draws you in her portrayal of a cute young woman in a man’s world fighting to be seen as something more.

I would’ve liked more resolution, but that’s not Lonergan’s style; exploring the worlds of ordinary men and women is. Resolution or not, “Lobby Hero” is a deeply moral play. It’s also deeply funny. The characters strive with the issues of life and death.

There’s a very good chance that they may not get it right.

But you still walk out laughing.

“Lobby Hero”
at Florida Studio Theatre
Reviewed Aug. 7

Originally published in The Longboat Observer

How Many Miles to Babylon?

Finished watching the first season of Babylon 5 on DVD, in a self-indulgent marathon session. Had deliberately not watched it on the tube as I was a Star Trek fan and one space opera a time is enough.

Having watched it, I realized how much time I had wasted watching STTNG.

Have always had core problems with Trek. Nutshelled:

It's a media-free universe. Except for one scene in one movie (where Kirk gets sucked out a hole into space -- yay!) there are no reporters, news organizations or, for that matter, any future TV shows of any kind. Evidently, all these cats in the future do is play around in the holodeck. Writers went the way of blacksmiths.

The chuckleheads in the future all blindly support the Federation. There are no racist throwbacks on earth who say: "Screw the aliens and this inter-galatic peace crap." There's no atavistic "Earth First" organization throwing sand into the Federation's gears and cogs.

Since it's a media-free universe, nobody ever seems to criticize the Federation. ("Captain Kirk, in an apparent violation of the Prime Directive, destroyed the suicide booths on Whackoff-7. Critics are calling for his immediate ...") Nope. No sir. It's one big happy-happy Federation. No arguments here.

The notion of military tactics and strategy are on the level of the kid on the short bus playing chcckers with chesspieces.

The aliens aren't really alien. Ohmygod, it's Q, the deus ex mechanae from beyond dimensions. Gimme a fucking break. There's NOTHING that feels really alien -- like the beings in Lem's Solaris or all of Lovecrafts eldricht nasties. All aliens in the Star Trek universe have two eyes, a mouth, two legs, etc. Basically, we're talking latex prosthetics.

Aside from not being alien, none of the aliens are better than us. The evolutionary ladder ends at humans. All the aliens we bump into are EXACTLY on our level. Any aliens above us conveniently disappear into another dimension. There's no sense of the galaxy as an eco-system of intelligences -- some much greater than ours.

And, assuming FTL is possible, you would also have to assume some of the intelligences would be OLDER than ours, and would have left the infrastructure of their FTL civilizations all over the place. Nah. Except for the occasional Guardian of Forever, the universe is made up of (A) Uninhabited planets (B) Savages with stone axes (B) Technological civilizations at EXACTLY the same level as earth.

This shit always bugged me. I always imagined writing sort-of an anti-Star Trek to address these points.

Stracinzky (or however you spell his name) did it.