Principia Filmatica

...via friend and HH Nation reader Liz. Thanks, Liz.

This hilarious video should strike knowing and painful fear into the heart of anyone who's ever thought seriously about writing a movie.

But as funny as that video is, and as skillfully as it exposes the bland repetitiousness of many movies, I still think it's important to remember something that most people seem to want to reflexively disagree with: most movie formulas are good things.

I'll give you an example of what I mean. Back when I was living in Gainesville, there was a local band I saw a few times whose name I can't remember, so let's just call them Phantom Talent.

Phantom Talent were an example of a music style called "dischord," which gets it's particularly creative name from the fact that as a rule it eschews discernible chords and progressions, and from the fact that the "singing" generally consists, melody wise, of random yelling.

You see where I'm going with this. Here clearly was a band out as much to send a message as to make music. And their message was: fuck the conventions of chords, fuck the conventions of style, fuck the conventions of singing! Indeed, fuck you, audience!

The only reason Phantom Talent was even listenable was because it featured three of the best musicians in town, and because as much as they were trying to make a point about staid musical conventions, what they actually were was full of shit, since their songs still consisted of basic verse/chorus structure, and they were well rehearsed and tight through the changes.

There's an urge you've always got to fight as a creative person, and that's the urge to defy convention just for the sake of defying convention. Just because there's a formula out there that's worked for hundreds or thousands of years doesn't mean that formula is bad. Formula's are formulas for a reason. If you set out to break them for the sake of breaking them, more than likely you will be producing intolerable shit.

One of the first big things I discovered on my own as an adult was the Blues. Like a lot of kids who discovered it in the 60s, I was drawn in initially by the music of the English Blues Boom of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Clapton and the like, and from there immersed myself in the music of guys like Son House, Leadbelly, Freddie King and Howlin' Wolf. Especially Freddie King.

I learned to play the guitar because of the blues. And one thing you learn pretty much right away is that every blues song is essentially the same. From a progressions standpoint, from an on-the-paper standpoint, there is very little flexibility in the blues.

And there's nothing wrong with that. The Blues is fundamentally an interpretive art, rather than a creative one, if you get my meaning. Put another way, it's not really about what you're playing, it's about how you're playing it. And that how is really all that separates the dingy, talentless lounge bands of the world from it's Eric Claptons.

These same lessons apply directly to moviemaking. You do not have a movie without conflict. You do not have a movie unless people want things and obstacles stand in their way. You do not have a movie unless it has surprises. You do not have a movie unless certain things are resolved.

What separates the men from the unemployed men is how you accomplish those things.

A particularly useful example of what I'm talking about is something called "Kierkegaard's Narrative," a existential plot outline that's been followed in movies such as American Beauty, Harold and Maude, High Fidelity, Sideways and many more. Great films all, but different films. But different in the how, rather than the what.

For a more comprehensive look at Kiekegaard's Narrative, click here.

So maybe this is all just me being an old fashioned stick in the mud, but I'm firmly of the opinion that moviemakers are first and foremost storytellers, not innovators. The goal of telling the story well should always take precedence over any other factor. And if that leads to innovation from a technical standpoint (Barry Lyndon being filmed by candlelight), editing standpoint (Rashomon's repeated subjective realities), or any number of other standpoints (The Empire Strikes Back making a key character a puppet), so much the better.

But let's not take a dump on movie formulas because of those lousy hacks who follow them in ways that are completely without imagination. They've done us well so far.

The Church of TCM, plus a few words about Adam's Rib

There are many fine Religions out there. Take Sufism, for example, an ancient mystical sect of Islam whose followers believe in a return to the "primordial state of fitra," a word than translates roughly to mean "insight" or "intuition."

For instance: my intuition telling me to stop reading about Sufism.

Growing up, my folks were both fairly religious, but thankfully this didn't translate into going to church a lot. I say thankfully because as all of you who go to church regularly know, there's nothing a physicist can teach you about relative time you can't learn by going to a one and a half hour church service that clearly lasts four hours.

In my house we had another religion. One we worshipped and pledged ourselves undyingly to. And it's one I've followed to this day.

The Church of TCM

Pictured: Jesus crossed with Mr. Rogers

Since it launched on this day (April 14th) in 1994, Turner Classic Movies has become a dominant part of my family's life (I'm pretty sure we tuned in the first day). Of the 1200+ movies I've seen, it's a reasonable guess I saw 400-500 or so for the first time on TCM, and chances are if you had a time machine and picked a random day these last 16 years and walked into my parents house, a TV somewhere inside of it would have TCM on.

It's quite frankly the Indispensable Channel, and it's programming is so wide and varied you can enjoy it on multiple levels of movie knowledge, from the casual fan who wants to watch Casablanca once a month... or, like they did last month, wants to watch every Akira Kurosawa movie ever made (in honor of what would have been his 100th birthday).

But despite all of that watching, now and then I come upon a widely beloved classic that for some reason I've never seen. So, as part of this TCM anniversary I'd like to talk about how I did this recently with a beloved classic and why I, uh... hated it.

Hated Classic #1: Adam's Rib

A vehicle for Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, who if they had lived in this day in age probably would have probably had their relationship dubbed "Hep-C", Adam's Rib is the story of married attorneys who end up on the opposite sides of an attempted murder trial.

The case: a woman has shot at and wounded her husband, who she thinks is cheating on her.

The way the movie presents the facts the whole thing seems pretty open and shut. The woman is caught at the scene, there are two witnesses, it's her gun and she admits to stalking him up to the apartment and pulling the trigger.

All is well. That is, until Hepburn installs herself as the woman's lawyer (Tracy is given the case as a prosecutor) and proceeds to throw the movie for a vomit-inducing loop.

Hepburn works herself into a real lather, gets into court and throws the following bombshell of a case at a jury: my client (the admitted shooter), a) was just trying to protect her family, and b) if a man had shot his wife under similar circumstances, no one would have a problem with that.

No really, read that again. She admits her client not only did the crime, but had motive and premeditation. Her argument is that if a man had done it, he'd go free. Therefore this woman should go free.

Obviously, Hepburn's tactics lead to marital strife, as Tracy objects to Hepburn trying to shove a traffic cone into the butthole of justice, and Hepburn not understanding why Tracy would want to stand so intolerantly in the way of a woman's right to shoot her cheating husband.

Even in the light of the O.J. trial, where some black people openly rooted for O.J. to go free just because he was black, Adam's Rib cannot be endured as anything approaching the way the justice system works. Johnnie Cochran might have been manipulative and occasionally full of shit, but even he didn't say that O.J. should go free because if it had been a white athlete killing his black girlfriend and her black lover, he'd get off no problem.

Also, that defense strategy doesn't rhyme, which would have been a problem.

Adam's Rib is not really pitched at the level of realism, though. The court scenes are not believable in the slightest and sort of treated as farce (Hepburn at one point puts a series of "accomplished" women on the stand, one of them a circus strongwoman who does backflips in front of the judge before lifting a protesting Tracy in the air with one arm).

But make no mistake, it's farce with a message: women should be equal in the eyes of law and society.

And that's a case worth fighting for... unless you cache it in a legal strategy so dangerously stupid you could use it to justify anything from speeding to, you know, actual murder.

The movie's final kick in the head? Hepburn wins the case. Maybe you guessed that by now, but it still floored me.

Yup. She wins. She fucking wins!

What a profoundly dumb movie.

Day of the Triff-vids (get it?)

This SNL-esque funny-or-die video really has nothing to do with movies, except that it stars Marion Cotillard (Public Enemies), Leslie-Anne Warren (Clue) and William Fichtner (Heat).

Thankfully not making an appearance: William Fichtner's titteas.

And while I'm just throwing a video out there for no reason, for those of you who haven't seen it, here's a magnificent collection of Arnold Schwarzenegger quotes compiled by someone with way too much time on their hands.

Yes, even more time than you, blog reader.

Next time on Hollywood Humiliation: a psychoanalytical deconstruction of the gender modes in Mrs. Doubtfire.

The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes Thrilling Conclusion!

Back in the late Cretaceous period, when I started this series of posts on anti-heroes, I had a few simple goals and expectations.

1. To come up with a clear and firm definition of what an anti-hero is.

2. To have no one agree on that definition, no matter how clear and firm I was.

3. To be called a moron (I even posted a picture of Forrest Gump).

4. To write about 10 of these anti-heroes.

5. To regret coming up with the idea after a while.

6. But still enjoy it.

7. Sort of.

But now that I have written nine of these things, it is time for the grand finale. The big tamale. The last hurrah. Time, indeed, for me to unleash my very best rhetorical wordisms in praise of that greatest of movie anti-heroes.

Anti-Hero #1: J.J. Sefton, from Stalag 17

Long time fans of the blog (and it really bears noting how strange that was to type) might remember that the penultimate entry on my "Movies about the Movies" series was also a Billy Wilder production, in that case Sunset Boulevard. Some of you might groan at the idea of my picking another Wilder movie/character as the top entry on a list, but according to a recent study by the New England Journal of Actual Scientific Things, people who dislike Billy Wilder movies are generally also found to rape their pets.

ANTI: It's midnight in a German prisoner of war camp, and two desperate men are about to attempt a blitz out. The other men gather nervously around. The barracks commander gives the two a few last terse instructions, makes them repeat the plan. And when there's nothing left to say they're suddenly gone, out through the floorboards and into an escape tunnel.

The men pace around. It's the longest night of the year, one says. I hope they make it to the Danube before dawn, says another. The murmurs swell. One prisoner, especially young looking, can't contain himself. "I bet they get all the way to Switzerland!" he blurts. The men all smile.

Except one. He frowns.

"And I bet they don't even get out of the forrest," he says.

They all look at him. "Now what kind of crack is that?" one says.

"No crack. Two packs of cigarettes say they never get out of the forest."

The men are appalled. Many call his bet. He'd make book on his mother getting hit by a truck, one of them says.

Outside, the two men reach the end of the tunnel and pop out on the other side of the wire. The coast seems clear and escape looks certain, but it isn't. They've been set up. A German machine gun nest is waiting for them, and as the two men stand to run one and then the other is mercilessly mowed down.

Inside the barracks, the men are horrified. Except one. He sighs and gathers the cigarettes. One moves to stop him.

"Hold it. So we heard some shots. Who says they didn't get away?" he says.

The man looks up. "Anybody here want to double their bet?"

Nobody does.

So begins the greatest prisoner of war movie ever made, Stalag 17 (yes, better than The Great Escape and Bridge on the River Kwai), and brings the calculating, amoral, selfishly opportunistic J.J. Sefton to the screen, in a performance that won William Holden the Academy Award.

Where most of the prisoners in Stalag 17 spend their time trying to escape or otherwise resist the Germans, Sefton doesn't bother. The only thing he cares about is making life easy for himself. He builds a telescope so the men can spy on a women's camp nearby. He builds a distillery. He builds a racetrack for mice and takes bets. For every service he charges cigarettes, which he turns into food, cigars and preferential treatment from the guards.

Not quite this preferential, but you get the idea.

Sefton snipes at everyone. The barracks chief. The two barracks clowns. No one is safe from his cynicism. One day two new men come into the barracks. Sefton recognizes one of them -- a Lieutenant Dunbar -- as being a rich kid from Boston. He and Sefton had gone into officer's training together, but Sefton was washed out, and now he taunts him mercilessly.

SEFTON: Look, Lieutenant. All your money won't help you here. Because here you're on your own. And no mother to throw you a lifeboat. Now let's see how good you can swim.

The lieutenant has managed to blow up a munitions train while being transported across Germany, and it doesn't take long after he tells his fellow prisoners about it that the Germans swoop in and lock him up. Between that, the two slaughtered escapees and a radio the Germans cheerfully confiscate, it seems inescapable -- there's a spy in the barracks.

No prizes for guessing who they accuse, pin to his bunk and then beat mercilessly.

Sadly, no.

HERO: Only Sefton isn't the informer. And lying in his bunk, bruised and bleeding, he resolves to figure out who it is.

Some watch Stalag 17 and see Sefton's pursuit of the real informer, which takes up most of the rest of the movie, as an act of selfish revenge and nothing more. But this interpretation ignores the deeper complexity of a character who's not just an amusingly cynical bastard, but in my view, a wounded idealist whose passion is finally aroused.

First he tries desperately to buy off a guard.

SEFTON: You better talk, Schultz, because I'm going to find out with you or without you. Because I won't let go for a second. Because they'll have to kill me to stop me! So talk!

Holden's performance here is truly inspired. Watch as his battered face burns with an anger it never showed during the first half of the movie.

But buying off the guard doesn't work, so he's forced to watch. To scheme. Finally, in a sequence that for my money ranks among the best ever filmed, Sefton lies in his bunk while the men sing "When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again" on a borrowed phonograph. The spy (I won't say who) watches the men from a distance, then goes over and uncovers a note the guards have hidden in the barracks. He reads the note and hides it before anyone knows, but Sefton sits up in time to catch the signal (a light cord) still swinging. He sits up and turns to look at it, and a flash of recognition goes through him. He's got it.

With that piece of puzzle, he bides his time until the signal is tripped again. This time he hides out in the bunk during a phony air raid and catches the spy in the act, explaining how the lieutenant blew up the train.

But now that he knows who it is, that doesn't mean it's over.

SEFTON: You tip your mitt and the Jerries pull him out of here and plant him someplace else, like Stalag sixteen or fifteen. Or you kill him off and the Krauts turn around and kill of the whole barracks. Every one of us. So what do you do?

Sefton bides his time. When the Gestapo shows up to take Lieutenant Dunbar away, the men stage an impromptu rescue and stash him in the camp. The spy offers to distract the guards, but Sefton smoothly interferes and prevents him from spoiling the plan. Dunbar is safely hidden, but only the barracks chief knows where. The Germans try desperately to find him, but without any inside information they're helpless to find him.

Finally it's time. Dunbar has to be moved. In another midnight meeting, the men draw dog tags to see who'll bust him out. But when the dog tag is drawn, the spy grabs it and makes the case it should be him.

With that, Sefton steps in. In a speech that would have been home in an episode of Columbo, he confronts the spy, shakes him up, reveals how the system works and gets him to crack. When the spy dives for the hole in the floor and cries out in German, the men restrain him.

Sefton's biggest enemy steps up to him. "Brother, were we all wet about you," he says. Sefton looks at him, grabs a cigar and strikes a match on his face.

"Forget it."

Sefton suggests a plan. He'll get Dunbar out of his hiding place, and when they're ready to go the men will throw the spy out of the barracks. The men in the goon towers are trained to shoot anyone out of the barracks after lights out, and the distraction should allow the two of them to escape.

Sefton grabs the clothes and the wire cutters. Every eye in the barracks is on him. When he gets down into the hole, he stops and addresses them.

"Just one more word," he says. "If I ever run into any of you bums on a street corner, just let's pretend we never met before."

According to Wilder, Sefton was his favorite of the characters in his movies -- the one he missed having around -- and it's not hard to see why. Sefton is smart, acerbic, funny and totally and unashamedly his own bastard self, just like Wilder. And he also suffers the indignity of being an outcast and the final vindication of proving everyone wrong, which is something we all, if we're lucky, have that fierce joy of feeling now and then.

I suppose it's obvious by now that I love the character of J.J. Sefton, too. He might be my favorite character in all the movies, for in that shock of being an outcast he rises to the challenge of being more than a self-obsessed heel.

He becomes a hero.

Note: The entirety of Stalag 17 can be watched on YouTube. It probably goes without saying that if you haven't seen it, stop what you are doing right this minute, even if what you're doing is pulling a knife out of your chest, and watch the movie.

Star Wars vs. The Hidden Fortress: a myth debunked

There's no doubt that the films of Akira Kurosawa have been very influential in the West, sometimes to the point of all-out imitation. His Seven Samurai was turned into John Sturges' The Magnificent Seven. Yojimbo was turned, virtually shot for shot, into Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars. Rashomon was remade in 1964 as The Outrage (starring Paul Newman) and its non-linear storyline has influenced everything from Courage Under Fire to Pulp Fiction.

Yup. The guy was good.

But perhaps the most misunderstood of these influences is the legend of the impact The Hidden Fortress had on Star Wars.

Do these movies have similarities? Sure.

The Hidden Fortress is the story of a general trying to smuggle a load of gold and the princess of his beaten homeland across hostile territory with the help of two lowly goofballs, who as much as the princess and the general are the main characters.

Sound familiar?

The movie is also just a fun romp, with plenty of chases, sword fights and humor. And like Star Wars, it was a huge international hit. The biggest of Kurosawa's career.

But despite all the hubbub, and all you've probably heard, that's really where the similarities end.

For example, let's take the character of the general, Obi-Wan Kenobi in Star Wars and Rokurota Makabe in The Hidden Fotress. Kenobi is very old, almost ancient. More wizard than general. Reserved, patient, with secrets to tell. Also -- and this is a point really worth noting -- he gets killed at the end of the first act.

Makabe is mysterious, but forceful. He always seems on the edge of killing the two goofballs. His duty and shame at being defeated has led him to sacrifice his own sister so the princess could more easily escape, and at one point he nearly sacrifices himself. But above all he is a fierce, strong, youthful warrior. By my count he kills at least 10 people in hand to hand combat by the time the movie is over.

The characters of the two princesses in each story are more of a comparison. Both are young, entitled, well... bitches. But where the princess in Star Wars is captured and has to be rescued, and is a loudmouth, the princess in The Hidden Fortress is merely in hiding (in a hidden fortress, get it?), and has to be smuggled across enemy lines to help restore her kingdom. Also, for much of the movie, she passes as a mute, to hide herself better.

Perhaps the most celebrated similarity between the two movies, and the one George Lucas readily points to, are the characters of the two lowly goofballs. Kurosawa's characters were called Tahei and Matakishi. Lucas made his into robots and called them R2D2 and C-3PO.

"My main influence," Lucas says. "Was Kurosawa's decision to tell his story from the viewpoint of the two lowest characters."

Though not quite this low.

And we see this from the opening shot of both movies. Kurosawa starts with Tahei and Matakashi wandering in the wilderness, complaining and arguing about a war they fought in -- and lost -- and the fact that they haven't eaten in days. As everyone who's seen Star Wars knows (which means pretty much everyone. Except my friend Eric Thelen), Lucas also starts with his bickering robots, wandering the ship during a battle, complaining about those things robots complain about.

But even here, the difference are vast. C-3PO and R2D2 are comic characters who do a bit to drive the plot. But basically, like most movie robots that aren't the villain, they're good natured servants who are basically there to add sci-fi window dressing and make the well-trained actors who portray them feel like idiots.

"I. Will. Get. You. For. This. Compute."

Tahei and Matakishi, though they're amusing fraidy cats, are not good natured or well meaning. They're desperate thieves who take any opportunity to fight with each other, abandon the group, steal the gold or sell out Makabe and the princess, leading of course to Conflict.

The only reason they stick around is because they think they're going to get some of the gold they're transporting, and the only reason Makabe doesn't kill them is because they think of a route to the homeland any idiot should have been able to think of, and because he needs someone to help carry the gold.

None of this sounds like the comparably lovable and loyal R2D2 or C-3PO, and it shouldn't.

So despite all of the myths, calling Star Wars a rip off of The Hidden Fortress really boils down to lazy scholarship of the worst kind. Scholarship that seems to be repeated without end.

The two Criterion Collection essays on The Hidden Fortress refer to it as "the major influence on Star Wars" and owing "much of the scenario" to it, respectively. The second essay even seems to think that Han Solo is the general character comparable to Makabe.

Humbug.

Perhaps most egregiously, this line of thinking completely ignores the fact that Star Wars is not a story about Kenobi, or the princess, or the two droids. It's first and foremost Luke's story, which borrows from a hundred Boy-King legends -- especially the Arthur legend -- none of which The Hidden Fortress has nothing to do with.

The Hidden Fortress doesn't even have a Luke character, for crying out loud. Or an Emperor character. Or Darth Vader. Or Han Solo. Or Jabba the Hutt.

On the plus side, it doesn't have Ewoks, either.

So how about we all (again, not including Eric) stop this totally out of control myth, huh? And get back to just enjoying movies for what they are.

The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes, part 5

Whew. I mean, has it been some kind of hard week or what?! I don't like to go much into personal details here on the ol' HH, but here's a rundown.

1. Flew to Jamaica, where I was accosted on the beach by a group of thugs and had to fight them off with coconuts.

2. Went to jury duty, where I was dismissed because it was a drug related case and I showed up in costume as Dr. Gonzo from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

3. Was stuck in a waiting room with some guy on the phone having the "yeah, I've got AIDS" conversation... which quickly devolved into a plan to go his ex-boyfriend's house, throw a brick through his front window, and murder him.

4. Wished my life was as interesting as those things, because I made them all up.

Except the AIDS thing. That actually did happen to me once. Just not this week.

But we're not here to discuss whether there's enough Weird in my life, we're here to discuss anti-heroes. Specifically, the 2nd best anti-hero of them all, according to the crack team of scientists, scholars and dope fiends who came up with this list.

Anti-Hero #2: Ethan Edwards, from The Searchers

Most movies that rise to legendary status are like those rare jewels that never come from behind glass. They are pure... nearly divine, flawless in every move, every motive, every line. They seem to have arisen perfectly formed from the consciousness of a genius and then been miracled to the screen without interruption.

John Ford's The Searchers is not like that. It's premise -- a gunfighter and a young half-breed go on a five year search for a young girl kidnapped by Comanches -- is rudely interrupted by a series of pointless diversions dealing with the half-breed's girlfriend, played by Vera Miles, who's pissed he's been away for so long.

Intended as comic relief, these scenes only serve to annoy us, as we wait impatiently for the return of the dark force that sustains the movie and lifts it beyond these missteps, one of the greatest characters ever put on the screen: Ethan Edwards, the gunfighter, played by John Wayne in undoubtedly his greatest performance.

ANTI: Did I say gunfighter? I meant a bitterly racist, extremely violent gunfighter. A Confederate soldier who never gave up his gun or his sword. It's hinted he's spent the three years since the war fighting as a mercenary for the French in Mexico, and as the movie opens he's come across the great Texas wasteland to his brother's home.

A great impromptu welcoming is made for Ethan, but he's uncomfortable with the attention. His greeting to his brother's wife implies a past relationship. Then an old friend up shows up and asks him to join the Texas Rangers, but Ethan says he took an oath to the Confederacy, and a man's only good for one oath at a time. Listening to him, we suspect the truth: Ethan's only true oath is to himself.

Shortly after Ethan's arrival, cattle belonging to his brother's neighbor are stolen, and a posse, including Ethan and his half-breed nephew Martin, is formed to go after who did it. They follow the trail, only to realize the theft of the cattle was a ploy by Comanches to lure them away from their homes. By the time they can rush back to the Edwards homestead, the Comanches have slaughtered everyone except two of Ethan's nieces, who've been abducted.

They quickly pursue the Comanches, catching up with them at a river where a small skirmish ensues. After the Comanches flee, they follow the trail and come upon the grave of a dead Comanche warrior. Ethan pulls out his gun and shoots his eyes, gunfire echoing in the valley.

Reverend Clayton: What good did that do ya?

Ethan: By what you preach, none. But what the Comanche believes, ain't got no eyes, he can't end the spirit land. Has to wander forever between the winds.

The posse pursues the Comanches a while longer, but eventually most of the men either peel off, get killed or return home, and it's down to Ethan and the half-breed Martin. Martin's sister and Ethan's niece Debbie is still with the Comanches, and the rest of the movie takes the form of their five year search for her.

It's hinted that Ethan's mother was also killed by Comanches years before, and with the assault on his brother's house and the capture of his niece Ethan's hatred becomes all consuming. He's cruel to Martin because he's a half breed, treating him like a child, refusing to let him drink, trying to ditch him. When one night Ethan suspects men will come up on their camp and kill them, he uses Martin as bait before shooting one of the men in the back.

Martin takes the abuse and refuses to leave Ethan's side. Not because he has any love for Ethan, but because of a terrible suspicion he keeps in his heart that grows with the years: Ethan no longer plans to rescue Debbie. He plans to kill her. "She's been living with a buck," Ethan says. And that's not being alive.

Link: things that are uncool.

HERO: After five years, and many close calls, Ethan and Martin finally catch up to the Comanches that captured Debbie. The chief has taken her as one of his wives, and when she runs out to tell them to leave, Ethan pulls out his gun.

"Stand aside," he says. Martin shields her with his body and pulls out his gun, but before anything can happen a Comanche comes over the hill and shoots Ethan with an arrow, and the two men escape.

When they return, it's with a Texas Rangers raiding party. The force attacks the Comanches. Martin kills the chief and scalps him. Debbie flees the battle, but before Martin can do anything, Ethan is after her on a horse. She runs down a hill and into a cave with Ethan close behind. She stumbles suddenly, and flops against the wall of the cave. Ethan comes up and dismounts, gun in hand, and approaches her.

She's been living with a buck.

He looks into her wide and terrified eyes. Her terror is almost childlike. This is the face he's been searching across five years for. First to find, if she was still young, and then to kill.

To kill. He's told himself over and over again. She's not Debbie anymore. She's a Comanche.

By this point, we know Ethan. His hatred is terrible. It consumes him, almost against his own will. But faced with this helpless sight of his own niece, something suddenly softens within him, and he scoops her up into his arms.

"Let's go home, Debbie," he says, and with the battle won they ride the long journey back to the Edwards homestead. They approach slowly, with Debbie on Ethan's horse, and then in his arms. Martin's girlfriend comes out to greet him. They'll soon be married. The sun is setting, a meal almost certainly awaits.

Ethan carries her all the way to porch, where she's greeted by relatives she's long forgotten. They lead her inside.

Standing on the porch, Ethan takes one longing step forward, wanting to join the family, but stops himself. He doesn't belong in there, in all that warmth and happiness. A song swoons with lyrics so perfect they almost seem to have inspired the movie, "his peace of mind, he knows he'll find. But where, oh Lord, Lord where? Ride away, ride away..."

Ethan gives one more mournful look, and turns, as he must, toward the wilderness. Even after all he's been through, he' still not a man at peace with the world or himself. But through his heroic act of mercy, he's managed to restore a sense of harmony to his family. And maybe that's enough.

Greatest closing scene in a movie ever? Perhaps.

The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes, part 4

So if you're anything like me, over the last week and a half you've been on a day trip to Tampa to watch the US defeat El Salvador in a preliminary World Cup match, and then you spent the next four of five days watching coverage of the NFL Scouting Combine, which you of course do every year.

Or perhaps not.

And it was fun while it lasted, wasn't it? But now that it's over, it's time to get back to the task at hand, the last double entry of my Profiles in Courage Award winning series on Anti-Heroes.

Anti-Hero #4: Harry Callahan from Dirty Harry

You've got to ask yourself one question: Is this huge, phallic gun covering up for something?

ANTI: My selection of Harry for the list is something of a cheat, since I'm not particularly enamored with the character but his presence allows me to talk about a kind of character that was a one time very popular, and still somewhat is now.

But cheating or not, Harry's not a good dude, nor is he a good cop. Consider this scene, between Harry, Harry's new Mexican partner -- hilariously named Chico Gonzales -- and a fellow cop, De Georgio.

Gonzales: There's one question, Inspector Callahan. Why do they call you "Dirty Harry"?

De Georgio: Ah, that's one thing about our Harry, doesn't play any favorites. Harry hates everybody: Limeys, Micks, Hebes, Fat Dagos, Nigger, Honkies, Chinks, you name it.

Gonzales: How does he feel about Mexicans?

De Georgio: Ask him.

Harry: Especially Spics.

The only person Harry hates more than his superiors, or his new partner, is the Scorpio Killer, a over-the-top lunatic played by Andy Robinson who claims he will shoot people from rooftops until the city pays him $100,000.

Harry and a fellow cop (Gonzales has been wounded in a previous shootout) eventually get a vague tip that Scorpio might live in Kezar Stadium. But instead of waiting for a warrant or even having probable cause, Harry breaks in. Kicking down the door to the greenskeeper's room, he finds the sniper rifle, and then a chase ensues where Harry blasts Scorpio in the shoulder at the 50 yard line and proceeds to beat a confession out of him on where he's keeping a girl he's kidnapped.

Pictured: standard police procedure.

Unfortunately for Harry, who's supposed to be a cop, he apparently hasn't heard of, you know, the law, so when the DA tells him what he did was grossly illegal and Scorpio will have to be released, Harry's reaction, rather than to feel bad for fucking up so enormously, is to say, "the law's crazy!"

Later, Scorpio kidnaps a bus full of children, and demands to be driven to the airport where he wants a plane and $200,000 to be waiting. And if I see any cops, or any funny stuff, he says, I'll start killing children.

In a move that really should go in the "what the fuck were you thinking?" Hall of Fame, Harry's chief asks Harry, who by this point is so angry he's ready to chew asphalt, whether he wants the job of bag man. I mean, why would you do that? Harry doesn't follow orders. Plus, he fucks everything up!

Thankfully, Harry turns him down. Not so thankfully, he chooses to attack the bus alone, waiting on an overpass and then jumping on it's roof as it passes. Nevermind there's a psychopath inside who could murder every child within reach while you're playing Mission: Impossible on the roof, but Harry is so determined to kill Scorpio he doesn't seem to care about anything else, including dead children. Or maybe he's just an idiot.

So the bus crashes, and Scorpio leads Harry on a chase through some kind of factory. They shoot at each other a few times until Scorpio finally makes it to a nearby lake, where he grabs a kid who frankly must be deaf to have not heard either the bus crash or the multiple rounds of gunfire before now.

Scorpio puts a gun to the kid's head and orders Harry to drop his .44 Magnum. At first Harry looks like he'll do it, but then he remembers how little he cares about children so he pulls a Quick Draw McGraw and miraculously shoots Scorpio in the shoulder, allowing the kid to flee. Harry walks up, asks Scorpio if he feels lucky, and proceeds to blow his head "clean off."(Editor's note: "Off" I buy. But I'd wager "clean" is the last word you'd use to describe shooting someone in the face with a .44 Magnum.)

With Scorpio now dead and shredded pieces of police procedure manuals floating around in the breeze (metaphorically speaking), Harry pulls out his badge, looks at it, and throws it into the lake.

Credits roll.

HERO: Born in a time where public concern over violent crime had reached it's peak, Dirty Harry became a symbol of the kind of avenger who could bring justice when the system -- more concerned with the rights of the accused than the rights of victims -- had failed.

Written mostly by military enthusiast and infamously outspoken right winger John Milius, Dirty Harry sought to show a world where you know who the good guys are (you), who the bad guys are (them), and the laws that stand between you bringing the bad guys to justice are not laws that need to be respected. If you need to use excessive force, well, what's excessive? If you need to plant evidence (not that Harry does this), well, you know he did it, that's what's important.

It's particularly interesting watching Dirty Harry after you watch a movie like Sidney Lumet's Q & A, which features a cop played by Nick Nolte who starts the movie by shooting a drug dealer in cold blood and then rigging the scene to make it look like self defense.

But in Lumet's world, the cop who goes outside the law to get the bad guys doesn't stop there. Once you're willing to break the rules, Lumet argues, where do you stop? As an investigation into the shooting progresses, Nolte's cop is revealed to be a part-time mafia hitman perfectly willing to kill the lawyer investigating him.

And that is taking it a step too far, in my view, but I'd have to say my sympathies in this matter lie largely with Lumet. Ours is not a world of good guys and bad guys. The road to tragedy, as they say, is paved with good intentions. Dirty Harry tries to argue that Harry is good. Not because he is necessarily ideal -- though knowing Milius' work, it's not hard to imagine him arguing that -- but because bad guys are bad, we're know they're bad, and anyone who stands in the way needs either to be ignored or punished.

The movie cheats this point of view by never showing anything negative arising directly from Harry's recklessness. In an early scene, he freely fires his .44 Magnum at a group of criminals robbing a bank, despite the fact that civilians are running all over the street in a panic. Real police officers never, ever do not do this. The money isn't worth the potential loss of life. But Harry shoots away, and wouldn't you believe it, no civilians get hurt.

Dirty Harry doesn't concern itself with these kinds of shadings, and I have to say I find it's moral certitude really sort of naive and quaint. I would argue, as many of Lumet's movies (and movies written by legendary screenwriter David Webb Peoples) do, that people simply do not get to declare who they are. You show your worth by your adherence to the rules of morality, and it is that which guides you to who is good and who isn't.

So is Harry good, or does he just think he is?

Frankly, I'm not sure. As you can imagine from the above, I don't particularly think so. But like my entry on Travis Bickle, I think the question is the thing worth asking, though in this case I don't think the question was particularly on the mind of the filmmakers.

Two things, though, that I'm sure of.

1. A guy like Scorpio is better off dead (or at minimum, in prison).

2. Though Harry throwing his badge into the lake was meant to show his frustration with the justice system, I was personally happy to see him do it for a completely different reason. As Jack Nicholson's character in A Few Good Men might say, "he puts people's lives in danger." There's got to be something heroic about giving up something you're terrible at.

Anti-Hero #3: Sanjuro from Sanjuro

Yes, it's a samurai movie.

ANTI: Rude and unkempt, a killer with a saunter does Sanjuro come into the movie. Nine young samurai have gathered in a room. They are in earnest. Corruption has gripped their clan and they meet to decide how to dispose of it. The boldest one, their leader, says they have discovered that two elders are definitely corrupt. He has reported this to an official, Mutsuta, who says he cannot help them. The eight other samurai start muttering. Bastard Mutsuta. But it's okay, the leader says. He's reported this to the leader of the clan, and he's agreed to help. The samurai mutter cheerfully. The leader, what a great guy!

Then, from the next room, they hear laughing. It is Sanjuro. You are fucking idiots, he tells them. The leader of the clan is the true mastermind, and he will send people here to kill you. And you have also put Mutsuta in danger, by telling the leader you told Mutsuta of the corruption.

Oops.

Sanjuro is a killer for hire, we learn later. He seems to live most of his life in the countryside. Where the young samurai are proper and clean, Sanjuro is rough, unshaven and given to violence. There is almost a Bogart quality about Toshiro Mifune's performance, in that we sense a basically honorable man who has now and then lived dishonorably and feels the shame of it. When he decides to help the earnest, young samurai, who would otherwise surely be killed, we get a sense he's trying to make many old wrongs right.

Late in the movie, when forced to kill an evil man he's double crossed, he warns the young samurai, who by this point see him as nearly a God, "he was exactly like me."

HERO: Sanjuro's heroic act is a lot less subjective than Harry's. Seeing the nine young, basically helpless samurai, he decides to help them. To advise them. In a corrupt world, their sense of direction is valueless, and it takes a man with long experience in underhanded business to know what to do. His talent for killing is unmatched, and he sees the moves of the corrupt coming, and though the young samurai at first oppose him, the more he is proven correct the more they begin to follow him.

He volunteers to pose as a double agent, joining the clan against the nine young samurai. He plans and executes a rescue of Mutsuta's wife and daughter. The wife seems cheerfully oblivious of the situation, but she manages to see into Sanjuro's soul.

Mutsuta's wife: You're too sharp. That's your trouble. You're like a drawn sword. Sharp, naked without a sheath. You cut well, but good swords are kept in their sheaths.

Sanjuro marks his attempt to sheath his sword, so to speak. Rather than profit from death, for this one moment he finds the courage to save lives (eve though he ends up killing a lot of people in the process, each one more reluctantly than the last).

At the end, when he's killed the last enemy, the nine young samurai implore him to stay and be their master. But he refuses. He has found it within himself to act honorably, but in the end he does not belong. His destiny, like so many of these characters, is to wander.

A few words about Roger Ebert

I'll get back to my Ansari X-Prize Winning series on Anti-Heroes in my next post, but for now I thought I'd bring whatever small attention this blog brings to things by posting a link to the Esquire profile on Roger Ebert that's been making the rounds.

Roger Ebert: The Essential Man

As many of you probably know, or perhaps you do not, Ebert has been suffering from major health problems over the last few years, one after the other, leading eventually to the permanent removal of his jaw and his complete inability to eat, drink or speak.

But, as the story shows, where his mouth has stopped his fingers have come alive, as the always prolific Ebert has thrown himself into his new and different life with boundless energy and vigor.

It's a pretty bittersweet thing to read, especially for a long time fan of Ebert like myself. Though he's derided by some as just a TV critic, I've always found him to have a true passion for the movies. His Website is a particularly valuable resource for archived reviews (he began in 1967), and his Great Movies series has not only been a guide for me of how to just come right out there and say you love a movie -- snickering be damned -- but also helped me discover all time favorites like Being There, Nashville, and La Dolce Vita.

You know, being a critic of any kind is really a funny enterprise, because the truth is that for the vast majority of people, criticism is irrelevant. There have been times I've implored some of my very best friends to watch a movie, and still, you know, they don't. Why should I or anyone else assume you wonderful people out there in the dark are going to be moved to change your opinion or go see a movie just because some cheesedick in a magazine or a newspaper or in the vast Chum Sea of the internet said so?

And that's sort of the thing you learn. Don't think of it that way. Think of it for what it really is: a conversation. When Ebert writes a review of a movie I've seen, I read it, think about it. Consider his argument. About 70% of the time (higher for drama, lower for comedies), I'll agree with it. But if I don't, I still respect his opinion. I let it dwell in there.

Sometimes he hates an ending and I think it works. Sometimes he loves the casting and I hate it. And sometimes we can both just sit there in the aftermath of a great movie and simply bathe in the glow of it. Either way, we have a conversation, and no matter how much we disagree, we still walk away as friends.

Roger Ebert is my friend.

The funny part about all this is that his fans have actually sort of benefitted from his illness, as he's filled in the gaps of his life with a huge outpouring of written material. He retreats there, where his voice can still be heard, same as always. It's his personal friends who never get to speak to him again. Never get to hear his voice. His wife never gets to hear him say, "I love you" again. Though when you read the story, you realize how little the sound matters when compared to the reality of it.

It's us out here in cyberspace who reap the rewards, but the truth is that we all still sort of grieve and hurt for what he's going through, no matter how little he says we should.

After all, he's our friend.

The Worst Movies... Ever -- Wax and the Discovery of Television Among the Bees

I suppose it is inevitable that there have been many more bad movies made in the not-so long history of cinema than good ones. After all, being good at something takes time, dedication, skill and luck. Not too many people have those things, and even the very best fuck up every once in a while.

Making a piece of shit, though, is easy. I should know. I mean, look at this blog.

So I suppose the point is that I will probably never run of out movies to write about for this series. And even if I managed to write about every shitty movie that has ever been made (which of course is impossible), they're still cranking out new ones every week.

So far I've tried to be selective, to weed out those well-meaning hacks whose only sin was to get caught in the buzz saw of their own inescapable hackitude. After all, who but a bastard enjoys kicking an old, sagging dog in the balls?

What I've tried to focus on, rather, is people who either had some sort of really fucking evil/stupid intent, or were just trying to make an easy, exploitative buck, or who managed to fail on such a grand scale of every level of moviemaking it makes you wonder if they'd ever watched a movie in their life... and if they have, whether they've had poisoned dog shit injected into their brain stem since then.

Today's movie is like that. And man oh man, is it a doozy.

It's....

Wax or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees (1991)

Go ahead, read that title again. I'll wait.

Doesn't help, does it? Believe me, I can sympathize. I watched this movie in college for a class called Writing Through Media, one of those classes that's supposed to be easy but ends up, in my case, being taught by a 95-pound grad student who I'm sure went home every night and smashed his shriveled nuts between biographies of Ingmar Bergman.

So anyhow, he sat us down at made us watch Wax, and I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the most befuddling experiences of my life.

This is the first image that comes up when you do a Google search for "befuddling."

Anyhow, the movie starts with James Maker, a member of the Supernatural Film Society (motto: fuck you, audience!), whose goal is to film the spirits of the dead walking among the living.

Because clearly this isn't a subject that's been covered before.

Suddenly we cut away from James Maker and are introduced to his grandson, Jacob, a flight simulator programmer who also moonlights as a beekeeper of Mesopotamian bees he inherited from his grandfather.

With me so far? At least sort of? Good, because this is where things sort of go sideways.

One day, Jacob's bees decide to drill a hole in his head and insert a television.

Seriously.

The bees start using the television to show Jacob various things (though I'm willing to wager it isn't things freakier than this movie). For instance, Maker has a statue of Cain and Able on his front lawn. The bees show the Cain statue murdering the Able statue and then being branded with an X, forcing you to wonder: what really counts as dead for a statue?

This next part I'll just quote directly from a summary of the movie I found:

"Then at work, Jacob wonders why his co-workers never wonder what happens to the missiles they launch that don't come back (never mind that a programmer probably doesn't deal with missile launches), and he realizes that they turn into flying saucers which fly to the moon where the dead live."

At about this point, sitting there, wondering what the fuck is going on, realizing I'm going to have to write about this thing and get a grade, I began to wonder whether someone was going to burst in and tell me I was on Candid Camera.

Sadly, this didn't happen. And by "sadly" I mean, on Candid Camera they usually stop whatever shitty thing is going on.

Wax just went on and on. And on and on, and into (if you can believe this) ever weirder areas. The bees start showing Maker what are supposed to be very strange images, but what are actually just piece-of-shit computer effects that look as though they were rendered in CorelDraw. These are then crossed with stock footage of bombs crossed with stock footage of bees crossed with stock footage of audiences burning themselves to death rather than continuing to watch the movie.

At some point, Maker decides to make a pilgrimage to the Garden of Eden Cave. And by pilgramage I mean like really long, totally inexplicable shots of Maker walking across the desert. In his beekeeper's uniform.

Don't believe me? Click this, if you dare. And yes, you can use this link to watch the entire movie. Speaking as your attorney, I would advise you to avoid this and do something more worthwhile, like clubbing baby seals.

Back to the summary, whose matter-of-factness betrays the sheer insanity of the movie better than anything else possibly could:

"When arriving at the cave, Jacob learns that the cave is actually the entrance to a planet inside of our planet where the bees live. There, he dies and goes to join the world of the dead. For a while, he becomes the X symbol. Then he becomes a poem in the language of Cain. Then he travels to some other planet, including the Planet of Television. Next he decides it's time to fulfill his destiny, which is to kill someone. So, he becomes a bomb and blows up two Iraqi soldiers in a tank. Then he becomes the X symbol with himself, his grandfather's arch enemy, and the two soldiers he blew up."

I've discussed/made fun this movie so many times with friends it's been at different points suggested to me that the movie must have some sort merit to be have been at least so memorable.

These people are wrong.

I mean, I'm sure the director, David Blair -- who spent six years making this filmic equivalent of dead babies -- was trying to make some really serious, deeply felt points about missile launchers, the after-life, and, you know, beekeeping.

But seriously, the thing makes absolutely no sense at all. Watching it, you realize the magnificence of it's ineptitude can only be topped by those rare, majestic turds that rise ever so gracefully out of shitty toilet water.

I wish I could find the essay I wrote that night about the movie. The only thing I remember was that I wrote it in this very Baroque English style, like Dickens, and was bursting at the seams to control myself from what I've been doing right now, and then went downstairs and got drunk with my chums.

Other than that, I don't have the slightest clue what we did that night, but of this I'm sure: a movie about it would have been a lot better than Wax.

The 10 "Best" Anti-Heroes, part 3

Boy, that was some Superbowl, eh? A game so good my brother vomited all day Monday, though it probably had more to do with undercooked buffalo hot dogs than the game.

Anyhow, back to the matter at hand: anti-heroes. Specifically, these two anti-heroes.

I have sort of paused here at my keyboard a minute wondering whether I really have to repeat my definition of what an anti-hero is. As this is my third entry, I've already written it twice. And since I have four more to go, that would probably get even more tiring for me than it would be for you.

So can I trust you to go back and look at what I wrote before/remember it? Good.

I'm glad we're friends.

Anti-Hero #6: Travis Bickle, from Taxi Driver

Yes, I'm talking to you. Now stop looking at me like that.

I hemmed and hawed and thought and wondered more about including Travis Bickle on this list than anyone who made it or didn't. I put him on, I took him off. I stared at the wall. I punched myself in the head. At the end of the day, I decided my indecision reflected a virtue in the movie itself. More on this below.

ANTI: I sort of have to laugh at the start of a paragraph about why Travis Bickle is unlikable, since he is, in my view, one of the least likable characters in the history of cinema.

We get no real sense of Bickle's uprbringing as the movie begins. He tells people he was in Vietnam, but nothing about what happened. Now he's a taxi driver. We don't know for how long (too long, apparently). He is alone. He tells us he's been alone most of his life. What he doesn't tell us -- but we sense anyway -- is that something is very wrong with him.

Has Bickle separated himself from society or it from him? It's almost certainly both. When he's not out patrolling the streets as a taxi driver -- a job completely unsuited for the sociopath he is -- he stays in his room. He exercises. He schemes. Now and then he goes to the movies... always muttering about the scum on the streets.

Bickle: I think someone should just take this city and just... just flush it down the fuckin' toilet.

Bickle has retreated so far into himself he's lost all sense of society and it's rules. At one point Bickle meets a blonde in white (Cybil Shepard) who works for a politician. He comes in and makes bold conversation. When she agrees to a date, he takes her to a theater showing a porno. Why does he do this? Her objections totally confuse him. He tries to call her, but she's through with him. Later, he attempts to kill her boss.

When his mind finally snaps, it retreats into the rules of the movies: bad people deserve to die, and good people are justified in taking the law into their own hands to kill them. Bickle thinks of himself as a good person. An avenger. But is he?

Either way, he's better than these two assholes.

HERO: Now here's where the interesting part begins, and why actually watching the movie is so important, because on paper, Travis Bickle is without a doubt absolutely the hero of the movie.

I mean, he meets a 12-year-old girl who's working as a prostitute (Jodie Foster).

A 12-year-old. As a prostitute.

Even Bickle is appalled. She jumps into his cab for a moment, saying she wants to be taken away. But she just as quickly jumps out, and when he tracks her down she brushes it off as just having been strung out. Bickle wants to take her away, take her back to her parents. No, she says. She's happy with her life, though how could she be? Bickle persists. He goes to meet her pimp, a freak named Sport played by Harvey Keitel.

Bickle asks about Foster's character, who's also Sport's "steady" girl, and Sport replies with, for my money, one of the most shocking speeches in the movies.

Sport: Well, take it or leave it. If you want to save yourself some money, don't fuck her. Cause you'll be back here every night for some more. Man, she's twelve and a half years old. You never had no pussy like that. You can do anything you want with her. You can cum on her, fuck her in the mouth, fuck her in the ass, cum on her face, man. She'll get your cock so hard she'll make it explode. But no rough stuff, all right?

Jesus.

Later, after his mind has broken completely, Bickle buys what seems like 10 guns and storms Sport's place High Noon-style, killing Sport, Foster's client and another man in an attempt to set Foster free. In the process, Bickle is (seemingly) mortally wounded himself, leading to the famous shot of him sticking a bloody finger to his temple and pretending to blow his brains out.

We then cut to the the movie's intriguing last scene, where Bickle has survived his injuries and been declared a hero, receiving the commendation of the city and the return of Foster to her parents.

Is this real, or just a fantasy of Bickle's... his last thoughts before death? I'm inclined to think the latter, even though the movie doesn't say. Presumably it wants us to think about it.

When you get down to it, the question of Taxi Driver is really one of context. In objective terms, is it morally justified to kill three men in order to free a 12-year-old from the bonds of prostitution?

Killing three men for pie is harder to justify, unless, of course, it is really good pie.

In High Noon, to use an example, Sheriff Will Kane (Gary Cooper) systematically tracks and kills three men. In the movie named after him, Nevada Smith (Steve McQueen) hunts down the three men who killed his father and raped, skinned and murdered his mother. And war movies... sheesh. Bodies pile up by the thousands. The guy who wipes out an enemy platoon by himself gets a picture with the president.

The trick, of course, is in the above examples we're never unsure who the good and bad guys are. The point is clear and in bold. Will Kane tries to get help from everyone to face down the gang, but he's ignored. Killing those men is an act of sheer courage. Nevada Smith learns to act like a bad guy and even causes the death of a woman, but his need to avenge the death of his parents is as old as literature. And besides, he even spares one of them (to ride off to the swell of heroic music).

The fact that Bickle is a crazy, racist sociopath short circuits our perception of the moral force of his actions. In effect, the movie asks us to consider what's really important -- the deed, or the man? Bickle believes completely that his actions are morally justified. His failure is that he doesn't see himself as we see him. Otherwise, he would doubt as we do.

At the end of the day, I didn't put Bickle on the list because I'm sure he's a hero. I don't really think the question can be answered, or is intended to be (though if you put me on the spot, I'd probably say no). Bickle goes on the list because I respect the ability of director Martin Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Schrader to ask the question in a way that is endlessly and brilliantly fascinating.

Anti-Hero #5: Sam Spade, from The Maltese Falcon

Adam Savage from Mythbusters loves that falcon prop so much he made his own. Clink that link, by the way. Savage is batshit crazy.

When I first started thinking about the possibilities for this list, one actor jumped immediately into my mind -- Humphrey Bogart. But the longer I thought about Bogart's career, the more I realized he tended to play either certified assholes (The Petrified Forest, The Caine Mutiny, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), or, if not genuinely good guys, then certainly not bad guys (The African Queen, To Have and Have Not).

Only a few movies seemed to break the mold. Casablanca, where his words speak a callousness his actions betray. In a Lonely Place, where his abusive, alcoholic character is proven not to have committed a murder, but he's such a dick that whatever, he might as well have. And then this one -- The Maltese Falcon -- for my money, Bogart's greatest role (with a nod to his turn as Captain Queeg in the aformentioned The Caine Mutiny).

ANTI: In his review of The Maltese Falcon for his "Great Movies" Roger Ebert put the dark character of Spade as well as it can be put:

"Spade is cold and hard, like his name. When he gets the news that his partner has been murdered, he doesn't blink an eye. Didn't like the guy. Kisses his widow the moment they're alone together. Beats up Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), not just because he has to, but because he carries a perfumed handkerchief, and you know what that meant in a 1941 movie. Turns the rough stuff on and off. Loses patience with Greenstreet, throws his cigar into the fire, smashes his glass, barks out a threat, slams the door and then grins to himself in the hallway, amused by his own act."

The movie's plot centers on a long lost falcon (from Malta), covered in jewels, being pursued by a number of lowlifes and criminals. Once Spade is involved, he dives in like Kirstie Alley into a doughnut ocean, playing the angles and dividing the criminals against each other.

Meanwhile, the police are still investigating his partner's murder. They wonder if Spade did it. We don't blame them. When Spade gets control of the falcon, we wonder if he'll decide to keep it and screw over the others.

HERO: But he doesn't. And moreover, he finds out who killed his partner, in a last act that shows Spade's charade for what it is: a means to an end.

The Sam Spade character is perhaps the ultimate example of the film noir anti-hero: cutthroat, intelligent, sometimes cruel, sometimes murderous, but ultimately redeemed in the eyes of the audience by a code of conduct he holds to that the "villains" don't.

In Rififi, Tony le Stephanois was a thief who cruelly beat his ex-girlfriend for taking up with a rival. But he believed in honor among thieves and was willing to both kill and die for that honor.

Sam Spade doesn't have to kill or die for honor. But he believes, as he says to his secretary, that "when a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it." And he does, wading neck deep into a band of criminals willing to do anything to find the invaluable falcon and using their desperation against them, even though this puts him at grave risk.

At the end of the movie, when he finds out the killer is one of the criminals after the falcon -- a woman he's sort of fallen in love with -- he turns her over to the police anyway.

"I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck," he says. "The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you."

Cold, sure. But Spade makes sure his partner gets justice for his murder. He even turns over the money he was paid by the criminals as evidence. He may be untrusting and manipulative, willing to screw another man's wife even after he's been murdered, but he has a code, and that's enough. In the dark world in which he travels, it's even heroic.

Merry... Superbowl?

So as you all know, or by now have figured out, normally I like to keep to a sort of once a week policy around here. Back in the good ol' days of the blog, I updated much more regularly -- say, every other day. But as this thing has evolved I've moved to longer and longer (and better) posts, which obviously take a lot longer to write.

So right, boo hoo. I get it. The point is: yesterday was my day to do it and well, I managed to get sick and suffer through a fairly serious phlegm exodus and decided instead to watch an excellent documentary about the making of Apocalypse Now called Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.

Seriously, if you're an Apocalypse Now fan, go watch it. They went crazy-go-nuts making that movie.

Anyhow, this would normally leave today as my day to write about Anti-Heroes, but since tomorrow is the Superbowl -- and that to me is a far better thing than Christmas, the Kentucky Derby and the Lower Oakland Roller Derby Finals all rolled into one -- who would seriously be reading?

I mean, I know I won't. I have a full day planned. The refrigerator is stocked with beer and my head is stocked with plans to drink it.

So allow to me to violate my own rules and wait until Monday finish/work on my next crackerjack update, okay? Thank you. I won't let you down (at least, probably).

In the meantime, via Life on the Bubble, where I first saw this, a clip from what looks to be an excellent documentary on screenwriting -- Tales from the Script.

And yeah, I know, this blog is like 98% about movies and only 2% about screenwriting.

But there's a funny story about a vagina in here, so that makes it okay.

Prediction totally unrelated to this: Saints 31, Colts 28.