While I’ve been filing several local, evergreen stories for Twin Cities’ KFAI, there’s been a terrible lag in uploading my works to the web. But I’ve a fun, timely update.
One story, for which I wasn’t paid, but which was fun, parrots the Joker if he were to ask about “important movies”: “Why So Serious?”
As America faces down the Oscars, listen to my story: “What Makes a Movie ‘Important?’”
One example of poor reputation management…
Is leaving my web presence out-of-date for weeks, while I worked on and pondered a strategic improvement, and let my blog sit.
While I often enjoyed writing film reviews and critiques, I missed reporting stories. And, so, I stepped away from writing about and appraising movies, but not my passion for them.
I need to unveil Wright’s Words’ new site, but it’s not yet ready for primetime. If you want to know about my work or background, please go here.
“Failure is not a option!”
This is a familiar phrase. We hear it in war movies, such as “G.I. Jane.” In fact for some, it’s banal and shallow. Why: how much do we learn from our success? And how much more from our screw-ups?
There’s a book about “Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big.”
This prevailing question about the good, which comes from failure, bubbled up in my brain because of a piece in the “Wall Street Journal:” The Art of Failing Successfully.
Which experience teaches us, or impels us to grow the most? It ain’t that wonderful triumph!
While awards and handshakes are splendid, and affirm each of us, our mistakes and wrong-headed decisions, or judgment calls teach us in ways success cannot.
Ask anyone who’s tried the untried; ask Steve Jobs.
Ask the folks behind the Apollo 13 mission; in the movie, mission chief Jim Lovell’s colleagues described it as a successful failure.
Hello readers,
I plan to diversify my writing, and make a strategic revision to WrightsWords.com. While writing about movies can be fun and satisfying, I miss other forms of journalism. A variety of diverse and divergent topics and themes interest me. I miss reporting stories. This may disappoint some of you. But I need to mix up my writing.
Griff, a 20-something social misfit, claims a haven from a wider world, where he’s a nerd. “Griff the Invisible,” an Australian film, directed by Leon Ford, is a story of 20-something and left over teen angst burst to life, on-screen.
When most people don’t get or appreciate you, it makes for a small life. You might question your sanity or at least stability. You’re often isolated, and bullied.
The last time you felt like a misfit, how’d you try to fix that? Did you reach out, strain yourself to become social, more sociable? In 1986′s “Lucas,” the title character tried, but that fell flat. In 1953′s “From Here to Eternity” after his girl wonders if he takes her seriously, Pvt. Pruitt tells her, “No. No one lies about being lonely.”
Griff the "Invisible?" (Courtesy: Indomina)
But you try to fix the misfitness, quash it. Did you reach into your imagination, into a comic book-like mental tool kit?
The movies’ opening title: Oscar Wilde “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth,” lays out how we’re to take reality.
Griff (Ryan Kwanten) takes this to heart. What if you were a hero with super powers, which made you special, interesting to others (if they knew) and provided a sense of self and power that you don’t have in real life? Would you take that? Griff did at least according to his imagination’s eye. As real as the John Nash’s delusions in 2001′s “A Beautiful Mind.”
This highly stylized film opens at the Lagoon Cinema on September 9th.
Griff has a banal job with a banal company, where he’s bullied and misunderstood, as he was throughout school. He finds an outlet in acting out like a small town Batman, after work, wearing a costume. Small ones; he wants to help vulnerable women. He sees himself as a hero, but only neighborhood-bound – within a few bus stops from his apartment!
Soon we’re introduced to Griff’s brother, Tim (Patrick Brammall), who feels responsible to Griff as his one sympathetic anchor to “normalcy.” Tim visits Griff with his introverted girlfriend, Melody (Maeve Dermody), in tow. Soon it’s clear that she clicks with Griff, while not with his brother. They exchange glances while big brother is oblivious.
Can nerds find love? (Courtesy: Indomina)
What! The introvert might just get the girl? Each starts to bump into the other, and trying to avoid Tim, and inevitably awkward questions. After a while Melody tells Griff: “I live in a bubble that no one gets in! Griff. You get into my bubble.”
Then we have a dramatic wrinkle: we see that Griff’s powers, his alternative world, is closed to the known world; it’s solely a figment of his imagination. The super suit we see is seen through his mind’s eyes only. And then doubly powered by his and Melody’s. That’s an interesting crack in the fourth wall of movie “reality” and imagination! Comic book movies, such as “Spiderman” or any of the “Batman” or “X-Men” franchises and others omit the possibility of those questions.
Griff contrasts a reality of social isolation with one of a comic book reality and Griff’s need for release.
Late in the movie harsh reality seems to intrude. Melody joins Griff as his back up on a mission to save the mayor, with Tim in tow. Here Tim insists on talking reality with her. Breaking down the pieces of their “mission” and “special equipment.” She tells Tim: “He’s a freak. He’d never fit in at dinner with my family. But so am I!” A crisis: Griff overhears this, but only until the signal was dropped.
He wants her. He’ll change! But then there’s a grand, tragic irony: after he has decided to grow-up, has thrown away all his hero crap and tried normalcy, Melody turns cold. I would have loved you forever.” Separated by his apartment door, they both cry over an opportunity gone.
“Griff the Invisible” is brief, fun, smart and semi-innovative.
I spoke with Justin Chadwick, director of “The First Grader,” one day after having seen it at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center – for free! Always the right price, but particularly so during a toilet bowl economy. As with many independent film-makers, he is down-to-earth and pretty much a straight shooter.
"The First Grader's" director, Justin Chadwick, with Will Wright (courtesy Wright's Words)
Will Wright: It’s common and typical for Anglo film-makers to make movies about black people, where the anchor of the story isn’t black him or herself. It’s refreshing to see that there isn’t a heroic, superior Anglo who comes in to “save the school.” We had “Dangerous Minds,” 15 years ago, and “Freedom Writers.” How concerned were you, being a man from Manchester, who wasn’t introduced to all the dynamic and violent politics coming in and doing this story?
Justin Chadwick: Well I was very aware from the outset that I am from Manchester England. And I had not been to Kenya before, and it dealt with a period of history, as well as Kenyan history that hadn’t been told. There’s very few records remaining of that time. At the time of making this film, the British press side of things. They’re represented as being these guerilla army that basically murder people in their beds. There’s that, but this other side.
So I knew going into Kenya, that, I was from outside. I had to use that to its advantage, to use it as a way of me being able to go in as a guest in their country. The first three or four months I was there I basically observed, and listened and let people tell their stories. I’d go speak to the elders in each village that I’d go it. And because of that approach, everywhere I went I was open-heartedly received. I wasn’t like the other movies that’d been there: “Tomb Raider,” “Out of Africa,” even “Constant Gardener,” had shipped everything in to that country. I was living with the people I was working with, living in the community where the school was. Even from the very first, I was with Kmani Maruge in his hospice. I would go in with Kikuyu, which were his tribe. So they built an openness and between me and the people I was representing and also the people I was working with.
Mr. Chadwick directing "The First Grader"
I didn’t know what it was going to be like in Tudor England, or with the “Other Boleyn Girl,” or I didn’t know what it was going to be like when I did “Bleak House,” in Victorian England. With this I actually talked directly with the people that this story involves, to try and find the truth. And I think that’s what stood me in stead for it really.
W: You’re the second film-maker I’ve met recently who’s spoken of having that observational approach, attitude. Can you tell me how many of your peers use that approach?
Ang Lee, when he did sense and sensibility – I remember reading how he felt like an outsider coming into English, period, costume drama, would use that eye that he had, and that sensibility that he had to try to understand. He made a film from being like that, in that way. He made a film that was really true. And yet you know, he was from a different world, and a different country. And I remember that was something that was in my mind when I was going into this.
This began for American newsreaders in 2004, when the New York Times’ Marc Lacey wrote a Sunday profile piece. There he described what “changed when the Kenyan government declared a year ago that primary school education would be free through grade 8. Millions of new pupils showed up at neighborhood campuses, swelling enrollment from 5.9 million students to 7.3 million virtually overnight. Mr. Maruge, with his gray beard and weathered face, was among those in line.”
According to Robyn Dixon’s reporting for the Los Angeles Times, a year later, “As a young man, he was angered over his lack of education. He put those feelings away, but the thirst for education lay dormant most of his life. Now it has burst out, perhaps too late to keep up with the whirl of his belated ambitions: primary school, secondary school, university and a career in veterinary science.”
Oliver Litondo as Kimani Maruge in "The First Grader"
W: How did you design the proportion of Mau Mau flashback scenes to the proportion of the present-day, desire to learn kind of scenes?
To get that kind of balance is tricky in a film. I wanted to put in that backstory because it was so important to the man that he was when he went to the school to learn to read, he wanted to understand his past, to move on.
I worked with an editor called Carol Littleton; she’d done films like “ET” and “The Big Chill,” and she’s a brilliant editor. She always talks about the playability of a film; you go into a cinema, and the film has to play. That you’ve got to sweep your audience with you to the end of the film.
It was something, from the very beginning, that I’m very conscious of, when I’m working on the script: it was, yes, a simple story about a man going back to school and being educated. But also it had to propel forward with an energy. So that was something – just the pacing of the film, how we put the flashbacks. Each time there was a scene, it pushed on to the next. So there was a momentum to the film; it always had pace to it.
As Mr. Lacey reported in 2004, having access to lessons and a great teacher is splendid. But then to have that teacher plucked out from under you, like the first rug and hint at stability, was rough and short-sighted. Mr. Chadwick mentioned an anecdote that Jane Obinchu, Mr. Maruge’s sole headmaster in the film, told him about how her students reacted to her having been away from that school, and aborting her trouble-making.
“Jane Obinchu was the one who told me about the riot at the end of the movie; that was something that wasn’t in the film’s original script, that Ann had written. Jane said,’Oh did they tell you what had happened? Let me tell you about what happened when I was thrown out of the school.’ And then she told me about these amazing children. This stand, as their parents were welcoming the new headmaster for the school, the children closed the gates of the school, stood-up against them with rocks, not plastic rocks and bits like it is in my film. And they refused to open the gates to the school. There was this big, huge riot. The parents climbed over the gates of the school. The police had to be called to break it all up,” Mr. Chadwick said.
He continues, “Yes, it feels extraordinary that kids rise up, against their parents.” That climax wasn’t in the original script. He mentioned it because, that is something like from a Hollywood film, but it wasn’t. I know, when people see that in the film, they’ll think gosh that’s a figment of a writer’s imagination. But it’s absolutely true there.”
Click, if you’re hunger for the second half of this conversation with Justin.
Justin Chadwick harnesses child power
Sidney Lumet, a filmmaker known for progressive-minded movies, was an American Rabbi of movies, a teacher on topics that few of us are bold enough to confront one-on-one. Having died on April 9th, he left a legacy, and left us hungry for more.
His indelible works include “12 Angry Men,” “Network,” “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico,” “The Pawnbroker,” “Murder on the Orient Express” and “The Verdict.” A few of those came out in a streak in the 1970s. Many of these provoked viewers to go beyond their comfort zones. Frankly he may be connected with theme of justice as much as he is with any other.
It is morose when a craftsman’s, an artist’s works are summarized by up to 5 percent of his output; it’s also typical. Most general interest news venues ran typical obituaries, which provided summaries of Mr. Lumet’s achievements and legacy. Why not go beyond that, and fill in some details and nuance?
“That Lumet is significant is pretty much a given,” Mr. Gregg said, a media scholar and producer at the University of Minnesota. He made those several movies of substance, but in the 1980s he also gave us “Running on Empty” in 1988 and “Fail Safe” in 1964, both of are anti-war, the last far more so than the former.
Many Jewish American or American Jewish filmmakers’ careers are marked by conventional stories; these were about happy, shiny, suburban peoples and their mass sensibilities. Mr. Lumet will not be remembered for giving a rip about or bothering with such insipid projects. He was a mentsh, which is decent in Yiddish – just a decent man who on occasion defied Hollywood.
His stories dealt with public corruption, bigotry, the greed in entertainment and news, and a perspective on being Jewish in America. His films pushed us more often than we would push ourselves. ”He was willing to take on controversial issues and make movies that addressed controversial issues, sometimes pitting one person against insurmountable odds..,” Mr. Gregg said. Mr. Lumet’s indelible images and ideas were visceral, evocative and dangerous to some people.
In 1990′s “Q & A,” he dealt with subtle questions of “race,” bigotry and mixed-”race” perspective when few other filmmakers would. It’s an exceptional a police procedural, but under the masses’ radars. Before then, and at least as potently and pointedly, he confronted those topics in 1957′s “12 Angry Men.” It was shown most bluntly when Ed Begley’s character spoke with zeal about “those people.” Mr. Gregg said that, “in terms of his ability to convey internal tension and really bring about solidly great performances from his talent.”
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