Episode 101: I Ain't Afraid Of No Newsletters
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
EPISODE 101: I AIN'T AFRAID OF NO NEWSLETTERS
So a long time ago on a social media platform far far away -- because "eight months ago on Facebook" sounds like something you write at the beginning of a three page rant about a passing comment that HURT ALL MY FEELINGS -- I had the idea to spend the 40 days prior to the release of Episode VII posting Star Wars trivia, photos and my own random thinklings.
Like for instance, did you know that the whole Luke learning use to the Force by shutting his eyes against the laser-shooting globey thingy (its official Star Wars name) on the Millennium Falcon is pretty much start to finish a foreshadowing of the end of the movie, where once again Luke is faced with a laser-shooting globey thingy and only succeeds in defeating it by shutting his eyes and trusting the Force? Did you know that?
Oh, you did?
*sigh*
Well, it was exciting new information to me.
And you know, I enjoyed doing it so much that I had the idea, I should try and figure out a way to do more of this more often/aka torture the people who follow me on Facebook further.
Then life happened and after an initial thrill the sweet sweet space ride someone had loaned me began to, how do you say, rip itself apart while still in motion? Thank goodness for life preservers (which I'm told are also known as gin martinis).
Then life happened again, and for about two months I could only lay in a heap, my bones having been slowly extruded from my body during my slow motion crash without me knowing it. That was fun.
Then the bones grew back, though probably more brittle (and I'm hoping also maybe hollow, because Flight!). And now finally here we are.
So what this is that you're holding upside down on your eye screens (stop that) is hopefully going to be a weekly bit of "hey click on this link" and "did you ever wonder about" and "ha ha funny cat" and rambles over the fulsome heaths of contemporary pop culture.
Like Ghostbusters. That comes out this week -- today, if I get this out on time. (Although today is really not today any more, is it, what with movies all coming out now on Thursday nights rather than Fridays.
What's the deal with that, anyway? Is this basically like college, where it was kind of bad to go out drinking on a Tuesday, but Thursday was not only acceptable but expected? I don't understand.)
Anywho, I've found some great links and trivia on the original Ghostbusters. Like this oral history of the film that the original cast did with Esquire a while back that reveals that even in 1984 Bill Murray was already the Mayor of Everyone's Hearts; he knew every doorman, everyone in every restaurant, and while they were on set "he would go to an ATM machine, get a couple thousand dollars' worth of small bills, and pass them out to homeless people as we walked down the street."
There's also a great story of how New York let them shoot one day at rush hour, basically closing off Central Park West at 65th St. (which is in a word insane). The resultant traffic jam ended up shutting down the roads all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge; the cast and crew could actually see the endless line of stopped traffic from the top of the building. It was like the end of Field of Dreams, but with rage instead of father figures.
Later, when they heard locals wondering who the #!%! had done this, the cast and crew spread the rumor it was Francis Ford Coppola, who was shooting The Cotton Club in town. TAKE THAT, F-COP!
There's a lot more there; God I love a good oral history.
And I've found some other links I'll put below, like this interview with the new film's writer, Katie Dippold, who among other things talks about what it's like to write a movie and have crazy people hate it before it comes out because it has women instead of the original men who don't want to do the movie and/or are dead. (RIP Harold. You were amazing. Groundhog Day Forever.)
So that's a lot of what I'm hoping this will be--little fun facts and links and maybe the occasional thought from me. In addition to being a writer of newsletters and sometimes other stuff like magazine articles and TV shows about God and vampires I'm a Catholic priest. (NOTE: BY READING THIS NEWSLETTER YOU HAVE BEEN OFFICIALLY TURNED INTO A CATHOLIC. PLEASE SEND US YOUR MONEY.) So I might even try to say something now and again that's a little spiritual-ish.
Easy, Barry. I promise it won't hurt as much as whatever you just did to the DC TV universe.
For instance, I was rewatching Ghostbusters the other night...
[Aside: My spell check keeps editing "rewatching" to "rewetting"... I feel like behind this lies some nameless programmer's either sense of humor or cry for help (to which I say bully for you, Programmer #8378613; fight the power).]
...And I got to the part where they use the trap to capture their first ghost. And I suddenly remembered as a kid, I loved those traps. LOVED them. Seriously, that might have been my favorite part of the movie, this tiny detail of watching all that chaos get sucked up into those boxy little steel traps.
(I loved them way more than Mr. Stay Puft, actually. In fact, re-watching (and/or wetting) the film I had this fleeting memory of thinking I was supposed to love the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, and so I tried to play along that I did. But it never really landed for me.)
Of course, the ghosts don't stay bottled up. Beardo EPA Guy comes and forces the Ghostbusters to shut their plant down... (because Environmentalists are bad!) (Actually, I think it was a statement about beards.
Really, check it out, something about that beard is just repellent, right?):
So they flip the switch...and all hell breaks loose.
And I don't know...I don't exactly know why the idea of locking chaos away was so meaningful to me as a kid, but if I've learned anything as an adult (and that really is something you're going to have to judge for yourself) it probably is that locking the ghosts and the chaos away is never really a good long term thing. In fact, the more you try to shut them down, the stronger they seem to get. Much better to let them fly about and listen to them as they rant and throw stuff and/or live in the mess that let's be honest is usually the state of most of our lives anyway, and wouldn't most of us be happier if we just accepted that fact.
But that's me. I'm in sort of "I think I'll be happier if I just let myself be as crazy as I kind of sort of am" time of life. Won't that be a fun train wreck for you to watch.
So that's what you're in for. I'm going to try and have these up each Friday. (Do newsletters go "up"? Or "over"? "Onto"?)
I promise they won't all be this long. And also, I promise there will always be cool links to things I think you might like, such as Samuel L. Jackson explaining Game of Thrones, or better newsletters, like Orbital Operations, by the scifi author/great human being Warren Ellis, which inspired me to try this out in the first place and has quickly become one of my favorite reads every week. (You can sign up/read a sample here.)
Or the one from the folks at the Reply All podcast, which has some great links. (If you're looking for a podcast, try Reply All. Some just fantastic stories about the internet and being human on it (in it? around it?).
ARGH, MODERN WORLD, WE NEED NEW PREPOSITIONS!
You're all wonderful people. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
++ LINKS ++
First: If you've haven't read Ta-Nehisi Coates great and important book about being black in America, Between the World and Me, it's been out a year, and I highly recommend reading it. Coates posted a fascinating article earlier this week about the "ongoing near certainty of anti-police violence" earlier this week, and that too, is worth a lot of attention.
Second: If you haven't been paying attention to the Emmy nominations from yesterday, Tatiana Maslany from the BBC America sci-fi show "Orphan Black" got nominated for the second time in a row. On the show, Maslany plays seven or eight different characters, all pretty much at the same time. It's a performance so astonishing I'm always expecting to see more names on the credits. (Really, she's that good.) Here's a clip from the end of the second season that shows just how freaking amazing this show is.
GHOSTBUSTERS DELETED SCENE, in which Bill Murray, who improvised pretty much all his lines during the film (Reitman says whenever they felt like they needed something they'd just look at Bill and say, "Do something"), returns to his Caddyshack role.
The trailer for "Spook Central", which suggests there are huge hidden meanings to the film. (Think "Room 237" -- but done as a joke.)
And one last gem: I kept hearing how the internet hates the whole idea of the new film. I certainly wasn't a fan of the first trailer, but the whole He Man Women Hater's Club outrage had eluded me. So I googled -- always a good way to make things go bad.
This is what I found.
My favorite quote:
...Why ruin it with four unattractive and not-terribly-funny feminists? Had Hollywood made "Ghostbusters With Chicks" in the eighties, it would have had Vanity, Demi Moore, Phoebe Cates, and Apollonia busting ghosts in bikinis -- and it would have been awesome. Other than the chubby one from "Bridesmaids," I don't even recognize the other three in this upcoming remake. I just know that every time they open their obnoxious and ignorant mouths men everywhere are having First-Wife Flashbacks.
[...]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with strong women. I'm married to one. There is nothing wrong with strong women fighting for what they believe in. We all know, though, that Hollywood's idea of feminism is not about that. Just try to be a woman who fights against abortion and for home-schooling and see how much love you get in the 90210 zip code.
All I can say is, someone is a very lucky lady.
Next Week: Justin Lin's Final Frontier.
P.S. Every browser is different, but on Safari, TinyLetter newsletters tend to cut off some of the images. But if you click on the images they should pop to full view; also, on Reader View you can see the full page pretty much the same as I see when I'm typing it. Hope that helps!