S.F.W.

 

In case you haven't noticed, we live in a culture that is considerably multimedia based. Not just the multimedia of old either. It's a virtual assault on all your senses as so much of our time is collectively spent surfing the Internet catching up on everything from recaps of shows we watch to reading about what our friends are doing in their spare time. Many bemoan that this ability to instantaneously receive information has reduced us to slobbering ADD messes who can't focus on anything that requires us to spend more time than a 30 second commercial runs. To me, the biggest downfall of the new media is the ability for any knucklehead to turn themselves into an overnight sensation. Andy Warhol once made the observation that, "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." I don't think Warhol knew how right he would turn out to be. All you need is a camera anymore and some prop and you can create a video clip that can gain you notoriety. Even one of the biggest music stars in the country today was founded through videos uploaded to YouTube (It's Justin Bieber if you've somehow avoided his story and catchy pop music). I think the compelling question though is- why do we attach ourselves towards making other people famous? Is it just the want to bask in the reflected glory, or BIRGing, off of those that are not that dissimilar from us? Or is it a New Age commerce we are looking to create, a Marxist spin on commodification? Both of those are questions for another day (and I've wrote a 23 page paper on it a year ago to prove that) but the movie S.F.W. from 1994 attempts to answer the questions that it didn't know would exist today.

Cliff Spab (Stephen Dorff) and his friend Joe go out to the local convenience store one night to buy some beer. While there they, along with three others, are taken hostage by a terrorist group that are masked and carrying cameras. The terrorists issue a demand to the television studios that they are going to tape the victims and they want the footage shown live every night during prime time or the hostages will die. This leads to a massive standoff with the police that stretches to 36 days with a few of the hostages being killed. This leaves Cliff, Joe, and Wendy Pfister (a very young Reese Witherspoon) who are left. The terrorists threaten killing the remaining few every day by putting a gun to their heads. Cliff gets fed up with this and becomes indifferent to being shot by the terrorists. He begins taunting them by yelling, "So Fucking What" at the camera for all the world to see. Cliff and Joe eventually formulate a plan to escape with Wendy but in the ensuing gun battle Joe is shot and killed.

When Cliff an Wendy emerge from the building, Cliff is dubbed a hero for saving Wendy. The memory of Joe is pushed into the background of the story because the media wants to focus on the positives. Cliff's brother comes to the hospital- Cliff had taken a bullet to the shoulder- and takes Cliff home to an awaiting media circus. Cliff despises the attention he is getting and leaves with Joe's sister (Joey Lauren Adams), eventually having sex with her as she mourns her brother and resents all the attention for Cliff at the expense of her brother's memory.

Throughout all this we see that Cliff's world is now turned upside down. The city, and country, have adapted his saying into the more family friendly, "S.F.W." It is on billboards, magazines, commercials, and even a cut out in the fast food joint where he worked. They even have a burger special for 36 cents. Cliff asks where the picture of Joe is and the boss says it doesn't matter because "Joe is dead." The implication being- the ones who don't get out aren't worth talking about.

Cliff calls his friend Morrow (Jake Busey) to help him out and they go to Morrow's sister's house. She is a big shot lawyer and she offers Cliff the advice that he should relish his fame and exploit it for every last piece of money he can get. She also is massively attracted to him because he is a celebrity of sorts. Cliff decides to skip town and hitchhikes with a couple who discuss their marital problems with Cliff. At this moment Cliff starts to turn in his beliefs, and sadly- this is where the movie begins to fall apart.

Cliff starts taking advantage of his newfound fame getting hotel rooms for free and convincing others to party with him when they have other things they should be doing. The allure of partying with a "celebrity" is too much for the common people around him. He does have his own desire though which is to be reunited with Wendy. It's clear that in their time at the store they forged some bond that is drifting towards romance. They finally meet and go back to the store only to find it boarded up as a crime scene. Cliff confides in Wendy that he would trade all of this for a nice, quiet, romantic life with Wendy. I won't spoil the ending scenes other than to say that if we've learned anything from new media it's that the best way to kill memes, is to create new ones. Here though it feels like a bit of a cheat.

Director Jefery Levy (who went on to direct episodes of popular TV shows like: Monk, CSI, and Rescue Me) does a good job in the first part of the film of forming a compelling story. Part of that is the writing of Danny Rubin (who did the vastly under appreciated Groundhog Day) who speaks critically of the way celebrity is formed. The story is that much of this was based on what was happening with Kurt Cobain. If you recall, after Cobain died the speculation was that this was a young guy who got too much fame too fast, and didn't know how to process all of that. The same thing happens to Cliff here and when he is reluctantly battling with the implications of that- this is an excellent film. Dorff, in one of his earliest roles, shows promise as an actor here. Promise that you could argue he never quite got to again consistently. He portrays Cliff as being a troubled sou who is trying to balance his sense of accomplishment with his resistance to accept it. I mean- he was a hero in some regards, but it was his plan and it ultimately led to the death of his friend. When Adams pops into the film it really takes off in the first half. She provides the voice of dissent to the circus on Cliff's front lawn. They want the positive story. They want to solely focus on how brave Cliff is. Monica, Joe's sister, forces Cliff to fully confront the feelings of guilt over Joe's death. You see glimpses of it in the restaurant scene but there is a small portion of him that plays to the crowd in the place rather than doing it selflessly. Monica makes him focus on Joe and in those moments he rejects this newfound fame. He knows the cost of it all.

Morrow's sister represents the flip side of that in a sense. She advises him to embrace it all- in part because she wants to get a cut of the profits- but also because that's how she views him. He isn't a real person, he's someone who is famous. He leaves her but then begins to see that he can't run from his problems- they are going to follow him everywhere. That's a fine message but the script goes way overboard in having him embrace that. It turns him from a sympathetic character into a jerk. If you push away with one hand but accept with the other you still have a karmic balance that balances you. Here Cliff forgoes all of that to just indulge in what people want to give him. They try to push Wendy back into the story here and it works to some degree. Wendy represents both worlds to him and is the middle of that road. She knew him before the chaos, and knows him after. She seems him though as the guy before the fame and glory. In the end, that's what he craves. He doesn't want the fame and fortune, he just wants the existence he had before all of this started. The people who have become viral celebrities more often than not want the same thing.

At times, I really enjoyed this film. At other times, I feel like the characters made questionable decisions and the script let the internal story down. It's an interesting film though for the times we live in, and is probably more relevant today than it was when it was first released. In that time, the Internet was not even close to what it is today. And the allure of fame and fortune is far too easy to grab. Many seek it, but some like Cliff have it thrust upon them. It'd be interesting to see a story as to how they handle it. The film can currently be found on your On Demand channels in the free movies section under Impact (Well at least on Comcast. If you have something else you are on your own).

All About Steve

A few months ago I discussed Sandra Bullock's return to the mainstream in her 2009 hit The Proposal. Couple that film with her Oscar winning turn in The Blind Side and it made for a 1-2 punch that critics and fans alike raved about. However, while that makes for a fun comeback story- it's not a totally accurate one. In the middle of those two films was the film All About Steve which did not do really well at the box office. It's a good thing too because it could've brought all of Bullock's momentum to a dead stop. This is not a good film in any way, shape, or form.

Bullock plays Mary Horowitz who is an eccentric crossword puzzle maker for the Sacramento Herald. She is single, awkward, socially maladjusted, and possibly slightly autistic although that last one is never explicitly mentioned in any way. She goes to a local school on career day and the kids begin making fun of her for her career choice and for not having a boyfriend. Feeling depressed and beaten down she is not looking forward to the blind date her parents have set up for her. When her date Steve arrives (played by Bradley Cooper) she is immediately attracted to him and changes outfits into something more revealing. They get in the car for their date and she jumps him right away. Being a guy he is all for this until she continues to talk throughout the process causing him to fake a phone call to get away. She goes home in love and puts together a crossword puzzle that has nothing but clues about her blind date. This gets her fired from the Herald and she decides to take Steve up on his offer to go on the road with him (he says this when he is trying to get away) and sets out to find him. That set-up may not sound great but there is some potential there. That portion of the film runs about 20 minutes. The film is another 65 minutes long after that.

From there the film spirals into a confusing mess. You're not sure if Mary is in on the joke ever, and if she isn't then it isn't really nice to be laughing at her throughout. Steve is a cameraman for a cable news network and his reporter (Thomas Haden Church) thinks this is the height of comedy so he keeps telling Mary where they are going to be next.  Mary blindly follows along to each stop and it makes you feel like Church's character is bullying Mary in a way. He's dragging her along because he knows she has feelings for Steve and will do whatever they ask her to do in a means to help.

At one stop Mary meets up with two others to create an oddball trio (played by DJ Qualls and Katy Mixon). Qualls character sculpts famous people out of apples, and Mixon's character- well they never explain what she does but she seems sweet but naive all while wearing skimpy clothing- not that I'm complaining about that with her. The three of them partner up and begin following the news van around the country. At this point it's unclear what the film wants to be. It's played as a comedy but being stalked around the country by someone isn't something that feels "ha ha" funny. Furthermore, every time the action cuts back to Mary and her crew it's played as if it is a Saturday Night Live skit before getting back to the other side of the story. It creates a jarring narrative throughout that ultimately renders the film not enjoyable.

The biggest problem here though is the script written by Kim Barker who also wrote License to Wed which makes her 0 for 2 in my book. There are a multitude of issues here. For one, every event in the story revolves around some goofy coincidence. At about the hour mark it feels like this whole film is slowing down and then a bunch of deaf kids fall into a well that happens the minute they run over it. Let me say that again- a group of kids are running through a field and when they all hit one spot it collapses and they are all stuck. Why does this happen? Why is it deaf kids? How does something like that just happen? There is no good answer, and this film isn't done well enough to be doing this as absurdist comedy.

The biggest problem with the script though is that it takes two charming leads and strips them of all their charm. Bullock is turned into an annoying character doing a bad Lucille Ball impression. In a quest to make her as quirky as possible they hide her face under a bad haircut and ask her to do as many things as possible to not let her natural ability shine through. On top of that they turn Cooper into a guy who is sort of picking on Mary the whole time and it creates zero chemistry between the two of them. They spend too much time trying to play up the eccentricities of Mary's character to invest in the thing Bullock does so well- which is creating a character that is easy to root for. Here she is easy to root against, and that's clearly not what the film wants you to feel.

Bad idea and execution in every sense of the word.

Black Dynamite

Blaxploitation films hold a special place in the annals of cinema. They came to prominence in the 1970's and were specifically made for a black, urban audience. They weren't designed to be high concept films. They were there to provide starring vehicles for black actors and provide films that more closely spoke to that audience. They are quite a few that transcended that label though and became hits an staples of the cultural vernacular- the most prominent example being the 1972 film Shaft. The genre influenced many people currently in Hollywood and some of the familiar trademarks of that genre have seeped into modern cinema. Michael Jai White felt that the time was right to pay homage to the films of the 70's so he sat down with an idea and some friends and wrote the screenplay for the film Black Dynamite.

The story here is a simple one. Black Dynamite is a Vietnam War veteran and he vows to clean up the drug use in his town when his brother Jimmy is gunned down by drug runners. he first seeks the help of the CIA but they want to try and reign him in and prevent massive bloodshed and Dynamite finds out that his brother was actually an undercover spy for the CIA. In his investigation he finds out as well that drug dealers are running those drugs into the local orphanages filled with young black children. From there the plot, as it does in most of these films, spirals into a massive quagmire of twists and turns. Some make sense, some are just silly- but that's part of the fun.

The government is in on this all. Dynamite and his gang of helpers (including the hilarious Tommy Davidson as Cream Corn) intercept what they think is a big heroin shipment but they only find crates of malt liquor. They happily remove the liquor but are confused about what this malt liquor means. This leads to an absolutely hilarious scene at a chicken and waffle restaurant where the gang spend minutes uncovering what this plot all means. And I mean it's hilarious. The connections are increasingly absurd and by the end it just makes enough sense to be semi-plausible.

Outside of the dialogue there are some incredibly amusing nods to the style of film from the 70's. At one point the one actor reads the stage directions along with their line. There is a boom mic that pops into frame at one point. That filming style too- it's not what any film student would ever be taught. The camera is jittery often throughout the film. The camera's focus is always on the action but it shifts left to right throughout the film to the point where you're eyes have to follow the camera as opposed to a still shot where you can explore the images on screen.

Acting wise it is clear that the people here are having fun. White apparently had viewing parties for these types of films and it shows in his performance. He embraces the campiness of these films and the style of reciting lines. It carries a stilted but confident air every time he speaks.That is necessary when you are saying lines like this: "The worst thing about these dealers getting children addicted to this new smack, is that these children are ORPHANS…. And orphans don’t have parents." Or this line: "You can hit the streets or the sheets, it don’t make me no nevermind. That’s your bag, baby. You can go or you can come, can you dig it?" If those lines weren't played for laughs it would be way too earnest and thus out of place in this type of film. Davidson is great in his small role as are Arsenio Hall and Phil Morris. The women don't have much to do here but that is par for the course with these films. However, Salli Richardson does do well in the lead female role.

This film isn't high art by any stretch of the imagination, but that's not it's intention. It's meant to be a throwback type of film for some, and an introduction for others. As it is, it works well as a standalone film and it is a great way to spend 90 minutes of your time.