Other Worlds

Today, the Scribble prompts us with “Out Of This World”. Though the clear encouragement is to discuss space and the like, I’ve decided on a slightly different tack. I hope you don’t mind.

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Other worlds exist. I know this to be true. I’ve visited a few myself. The thing about these visits though, is that it’s technically untrue to say that I’ve visited. For you see, when I enter these worlds different from our own, I’m not really myself anymore.

Some of these worlds are vastly different from the one you and I spend most of our time. Some are eerily similar, with one or two things different. Some seem to exist in this world, but in a different time. Often times, I kid you not, they pay me to visit.

The first time I was paid for visiting, I found myself propositioning a seventeenth century whore in France. As she and I walked across the dirt road to my shabby home, four vampires in human form walked by. One of those vampires would become pregnant, and then sacrifice herself for the sake of her child. Another of those vampires would be the father of that child, and would evntually find his soul again and become a champion. That was a fun world to visit.

Less fun was the world in which I was one of a group of Mexican travellers, filthy and sweaty, journeying through the sweltering canyons in search of the Virgin Mary’s image upon the stones. Hundreds of us, some family, most strangers, walked for miles and miles to glimpse the side of the rocky wall. I can’t honestly say whether or not I saw what I sought, but I did see a shimmering light, a reflection, maybe, and I knew intuitively that everyone else saw it, too. We all looked on, hopefully, eagerly.

Then there was the time that I was mostly myself. I was at the Food Court in one of the malls of this world. We were in Los Angeles. I was enjoying my day, almost ready to resume shopping, when suddenly there was an announcement: “Attention, attention! Please evacuate the mall immediately! Repeat: please evacuate the mall immediately!” We later learned that foreign terrorists had released a deadly gas through the ventillation system of the mall. As we ran toward the exits, I spotted many who were not as fortunate as I was. Frothing at the mouth, bleeding at the eyes, dying. The horror of the situation remains with me to this day. Were it not for a hero named Jack, and the rest of his unit, who knows how many more would have suffered the same fate?

On a lighter note, there was the time I was in what appeared to be our world, but in the 1970’s. I was at a dance club, when two men — one short and with curly hair, the other tall and blonde with a long-ago-broken nose — entered. The short one was clearly hopped up on some kind of drug, so he barely noticed when he bumped into another man. Oh, but he noticed when the other man challenged him to a Dance Off. And oh, what fun it was to watch and cheer for the two competitors.

There exists a world where I am a high school student in a town called Arcadia, where Joan, a fellow student, believes she can see and have conversations with God. There’s a world in which I’m at a club that Big Momma barrels through to catch the bad guy. There’s a world where I’m a student at a fictional college where everyone is Accepted.

I’ve been spared by the evil vampire Angelus, saved by Jack Baur, and I’ve seen both Starsky and Hutch. Because between “Action!” and “Cut!”, these worlds truly do exists. They aren’t actors playing parts, they are realities unfolding.

People ask me sometimes why I want to be an actor. I say, why wouldn’t you want to live a life where everyday the impossible becomes not only possible, but probable? I wouldn’t want anything else.

– ldi

Dear 7-11 Cashier

Dear 7-11 Cashier -

Hey, man. What’s up? Not much with me. Cool.

So, I don’t wanna seem like a dick, but I have a quick request: when I’m buying a thing of ice cream from your store, and the little placard thingie says that it will be $4.99, and then you ring it up, and you and I can both clearly see that the total is $4.99 because the LED states it on your and my side of the register in nice, bold, big green numbers, please don’t tell me that my total is in fact $5.oo. Then, when I mention this discrepency, please don’t argue with me like I’m not right, and claim that there’s a single cent in tax, when we both know that’s a complete fabrication on your part.

Furthermore, once we’ve sorted all that out, please don’t proceed to get all pissy with me when I ask for my receipt. I think in general, and I’m not trying to tell you how to do your job, you should maybe just assume that all customers want their receipt. Just, you know, go ahead and offer it to them all, and if they don’t want it, they’ll probably ask you to throw it away, or they’ll throw it away themselves. I’ll bet you’re concerned because you think that if it gets thrown away, the company’s losing money, and your boss will fire you, right? Is that it? Well, let me assure you, 7-11 Cashier, that the company expects customers to want their receipt. They actually count on it. I promise.

Thanks a lot for your time.

– ldi

The King Has Entered The Small Building

I just finished watching the movie The Mist, based on the Stephen King novella of the same name. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed it. I remember hearing some complaints about the ending, and now that I’ve seen in, I sorta get it, but really, how would you have ended it? The world is saved, everyone lives prosperous lives, the dead are revived, the disgruntled are settled, and the two arguing groups find common ground? I say there’s a place for a swell, happy ending, but it just wouldn’t have fit here. I’m not sure the ending they decided on fit here either, but like Frank Darabont or Stephen King mention, “There was like, two hours of movie before the ending.” Well put, Frank Darabont or Stephen King.

But this is not a movie review.

No, today we talk about something that’s been bothering me of late. The subject of violence in movies. Note, please, that it’s not the violence itself that bothers me. Recently, a work friend of mine invited me to a table read of a script written by a kinda-friend of his. Afterwards, this work friend of mine and I talked about the script. Without giving too much of the story away, I’ll just tell you that most of the script is a relatively dark comedy. However, about halfway into the script, a couple of guys discuss some killings which included some pretty gruesome torture. Later still, a main character himself is tortured to within an inch of his life.

I don’t mind violence in movies. I don’t even mind torture in movies. I’ve seen all the SAW movies, and as long as they keep having interesting twists that I don’t expect at the end, I’ll probably continue seeing them. No, I don’t mind violence in movies; I do mind violence in movies where the violence just doesn’t fit. If you include a graphically violent scene in a movie, you better either be making a movie where the violence is the reason for the movie, or a movie that has earned that violent scene.

This kinda-friend of a work friend of mine’s movie neither had non-stop violence, nor earned the violence it did have. When I mentioned this to that work friend, he disagreed, which is cool. However, his main point seemed to be that these days, you need to have the violence in order to sell the movie.

So I guess what I’d like to do is to clarify what I mean by earning your violence. Because I refuse to believe that mindless violence is really what people want these days, and if you haven’t earned your violence, then your violence is, indeed, mindless. So, how do you earn it? I say two ways: character and story.

Yeah, I know. You’ve heard all this before. But that’s because it’s true. Why do I care that somebody just got decapitated? Or impaled? Or eaten? I don’t. Unless, that is, you’ve made me care. Let me know who these people are. I don’t need their whole life history, but I’d like to know a bit more than, “This guy is scared because someone is chasing them. And the someone chasing them is angry because the script told them to be.”

I used to be a fan of horror movies. But recently, I saw a billboard for some movie. Maybe it was The Ruins, I’m not sure. That was so weird to me. Even as I was looking at the billboard, I wasn’t sure what it was. As far as I’m concerned, so many of these recent “horror” movies are interchangeable. P2, The Ruins, Captivity… I don’t know what these are anymore. I really have no interest in seeing them, and that leads me to believe that that’s because they aren’t being advertised well, and that leads me to believe that that’s because the studios just don’t care anymore. As long as people are flocking, why change? Of course, it’s really just a cyclical practice, right? At first, when SAW came out, people flocked because it was something kind of new. Then the studios started making more and more, and eventually that’s all there was, so people had no real choice but to see the movies. Remember when The Real Cancun came out, and everyone was freaked because if this was popular enough, it might have meant the end of scripted movies? So, when it bombed, everyone breathed a sigh of relief? Remember that? Well, the truth is that if the studios had kept at it, kept making “reality movies,” eventually they would have become successful. People won’t stop going to the movies, so if they give us fewer options, we’ll just have to take it.

So I had all but lost my faith in horror movies.

I just finished watching The Mist. Thank you. Thank you for making a movie about, get this, people. There’s the dad who wants to keep his son safe (and thankfully, it never gets into cheesy Tom-Cruise-War-Of-The-Worlds territory, where danger makes him realize that he should be a better father), the woman convinced this danger is the wrath of a vengeful god, the man who rather be smart and dead than foolish and alive, the soldier in love. So, what did all this character building and backstory and history accomplish? It made the deaths matter. When one person died, or killed another, it impacted us. It wasn’t just another death to get the killer closer to another death to get the killer closer to the eventual showdown with the hero.

And these character building moments, combined with keeping the monsters shrouded in mystery for a while, made the violent images stronger, because we a) cared about the people, and b) knew that the movie had accomplished so much with so little, so that when they finally did show us stuff, it stood out.

So thank you, The Mist, for letting me enjoy a horror movie again. And really, thank you Stephen King. You’ve given us worldwide horrors, nightmares personified, and literal battles between Good and Evil. But I’d say some of your best stuff comes from throwing a small group of people into a cramped building or room, tossing in a threat, and seeing how they react.

– ldi