MY MOVIE SHELF: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 79 Days to go: 54

Movie #361:  Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

If there are three things I like, they’re history, time displacement, and goofy teenagers from the ’80s. So, yes, I do think Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure is awesome (haha, you thought I was going to say excellent), and I always have. I always will.

I like so many things about Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves). I like their weirdly and arbitrarily elongated names, attempting to sound official and important. I like Keanu’s uber-surfer doofus performance. I like referring to Napoleon as a short dead dude and to Joan of Arc as Miss of Arc (or Noah’s wife), and for a while I would periodically mispronounce Freud as “frood” because I was just always in Bill & Ted mode. (I still will periodically pronounce Socrates the way actor Tony Steedman does here, with an exaggerated accent and alternative emphasis.) (Whenever I’m not thinking of his immortal words, that is.)

My favorite part of Bill & Ted, though, as some may be able to guess, is that it actually handles the concept of time travel really well. The rules it confines itself too are fairly simple: 1) You can go to any point in time, and 2) Your present continues moving forward at its steady pace. With these constructs, it creates stakes for the duo — they have to be at their history report when it’s scheduled to occur in real-time — and it also offers them a brilliant loophole around it — every obstacle they face or thing they don’t have time for can simply be completed after the report and then transported back in time to be waiting for them when they need it. It’s so simple and brilliant and easily established. And since they can spend so little time in each era they visit, and can return to the exact point from which they borrowed a historical figure, they avoid any question of time paradox stuff. (Not that a movie as flimsy as this would concern itself with time paradox stuff, but at least it effectively sidesteps the question, were anyone to raise it.)

I love stories of the manipulation of time. Perhaps it’s a side effect of my naturally overly analytical nature, but I long to be able to make different choices, take different paths, see the different possibilities — not from any sort of dissatisfaction, either, because I’m happier than I’ve ever been, but rather out of a sense of completism. I want to follow all the possible paths on a flow chart, even if only one applies to me. I like to see it branch out (and out and out) before me. Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure doesn’t really do this — it’s more just a silly, fun way to make fun of historical figures — but the groundwork is there. Will Joan of Arc (Jane Wiedlin) really institute aerobics into her soldiers’ training? Will the princesses be missed in medieval England? Does Rufus (George Carlin) pay their credit card bills? And what has gone wrong since the movie’s release to make us live in a world without Wyld Stallyns’ music of peace and stability?

Of course, the movie also comes up against the fatal circular time loop, not just in their travels, but in their interactions as well. For what good is Ted reminding himself to wind his watch if we already know he’s going to forget?

A lot of Bill & Ted hasn’t aged too well (my kids only barely tolerate it), but for those of us in the midst of our formative years when it came out, we will always hold dear these two crucial pieces of advice: “Be excellent to each other. And, PARTY ON, DUDES!”

MY MOVIE SHELF: Outrageous Fortune

 

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 171  Days to go: 171

Movie #206:  Outrageous Fortune

Sisters are doing it for themselves!

I remember watching Outrageous Fortune many, many times on HBO as a kid, and while it was a little bit over my head in places (I didn’t understand the line “he screwed me too” could mean not sexually and I didn’t know what “left me in drag” meant, among maybe a handful of other idiomatic expressions), but I really loved it. The buddy cop movie was a big thing in the ’80s, and here was essentially a buddy cop movie only with chicks, and even though they weren’t cops but actresses, they still worked an investigation together.

Lauren (Shelley Long) and Sandy (Bette Midler) are polar opposites. Lauren is a classically trained actress, having grown up with every advantage. Sandy is a the foul-mouthed star of Ninja Vixens. Yet both find themselves studying acting with the legendary Stanislav Korzenowski (Robert Prosky) and, unbeknownst to each other, both are in their own hot and heavy relationship with local school teacher Michael Santers (Peter Coyote). When Michael is seemingly killed in an explosion, both ladies come independently of one another to the morgue where they first discover each other’s relationship with Michael and then discover the corpse is not him. (“Michael was not a guy other guys would’ve made fun of in the locker room.”)

In a move that can either be considered feminist and independent or submissive and dependent, based on your particular way of looking at it, the two decide to team up to find Michael and find out which one of them he actually has feelings for. My husband thinks this is nuts, considering at the very least they know he was cheating on both of them with the other, but back in the day I thought it was pretty inventive and a way of them taking charge of the situation. They’re going to confront him with his deception, help him if he needs it, and one of them will perhaps reconcile with him in the end. As a story’s premise, I’ve certainly heard worse.

The movie then gets increasingly awesome as Lauren and Sandy use their wits and talents to track down Michael, outsmart the many people who are tracking him down, and ultimately save themselves and the world. (As always happens in these kinds of love triangles.) They are never helpless or lacking in ingenuity. They always find a way to get themselves out of a jam, be it through their own will and determination and creativity or even by enlisting the help of honorary Indian guide Frank (George Carlin), who just so happens to be friends with a Native American dirt bike archery gang. However, all the dirt bike gang does is help Sandy track Lauren down when she’s been kidnapped and provide momentary distraction. Despite all the men on the sidelines, Lauren and Sandy take care of themselves, and I really love that.

One of the most interesting things about Outrageous Fortune, though, are how old Shelley Long and Bette Midler are in the film. Long was 37 and Midler was 41 when it was filmed, and it wasn’t considered a niche flick or a mature ladies’ flick or even a chick flick. It was a mainstream comedy, and it would never get made like that today. Today, if such a film were to be made at all, the women would either be much younger, or the fact of their ages would be a notable plot point. Sandy’s sexuality wouldn’t be so easily accepted as promiscuous and okay (“We are WAY into double digits here”) and Lauren’s probably wouldn’t be so overtly playfully lustful. That’s unfortunate to me, because these are fascinating and fabulous, well-rounded, real women. They are diverse and interesting and could exist in the world. They are smart and funny and idiosyncratic and they treat each other — especially by the end — like true friends. Save an occasional Bridesmaids, that doesn’t happen too much in movies anymore. And the world is the worse for it.

I mean, really, would it be so bad to have a chick play Hamlet sometime?

MY MOVIE SHELF: Dogma

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 287  Days to go: 276

Movie #90: Dogma

As the disclaimer states at the start of Dogma, this movie is a comedic fantasy. It tells the story of two angels cast out of heaven that are trying to get back through a Catholicism loophole and a ragtag band of crusaders trying to prevent that from happening because to prove God wrong would unmake existence. And like any Kevin Smith movie, it’s filled with fast-paced dialogue, witty observations and a lot of silliness wrapped up in a lot of profanity. Also, in the same way every other Kevin Smith film is basically a stage for Smith to expound on his numerous pet theories, Dogma is a single, consolidated location for all his theories on religion.

Unsurprisingly, Smith has a lot of theories on religion — particularly Catholicism, which I assume he’s most familiar with — and everything is presented here in both a wry, discerning way and a completely tongue-in-cheek one. But in the midst of all this wildly overblown farce are some actual thoughtful and enlightened ruminations on the concept of faith.

Linda Fiorentino plays Bethany, a lifelong Catholic who has lost her faith (though she still goes to church out of habit). Bethany is the last Scion (the last living descendant of Jesus — the movie doesn’t posit Jesus himself had any children, but that Mary and Joseph had other children after Jesus was born and that Bethany is his many-times-great-grand-niece) and is tasked by the Metatron (the voice of God, played of course by Alan Rickman because I assume Morgan Freeman wasn’t available) with stopping fallen angels Bartleby and Loki (Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, naturally) from transsubtantiating into human form, being wiped clean of all sins, and ascending into heaven. The two angels were long ago servants of God but were cast out when they questioned His/Her orders and have been roaming the cheese-headed wasteland of Wisconsin ever since. Like Bethany, Bartleby has lost all faith, is disillusioned by the seeming capriciousness of a God that can be so forgiving with some and so cruelly unjust with others. Even coming from a comedic fantasy, that’s a feeling I know for a fact many people have felt in their lives.

Bethany is joined by thirteenth apostle Rufus (Chris Rock), former muse Serendipity (Salma Hayek) and supposed prophets Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith), and they all have quite a lot to say about religion, the Bible and belief systems in general — well, everyone but Jay and Silent Bob, who are mostly around for comic relief. Serendipity talks about the Bible’s gender bias, while Rufus has a beef with its racial homogeny — both pointing out the obvious fact that, moved by divine inspiration or not, (white) men wrote the Bible and inserted their own agendas and prejudices into it — not necessarily intentionally, but that it’s a known risk factor in the translation. People always see things through the lens and perspectives of their own experiences, and so mankind has to find a way to filter through the biases of the hundreds of generations who came before and simply connect with the truth of the original message. It’s not an easy thing to do, but I think it’s such an important part of living a full life. Faith is not about taking things as they are spoon fed to you, never questioning the things you are told. Faith is about humbling yourself enough to know that you don’t know the answers — that no one does — and seeking out the truth in your heart and in your soul. Faith is about simply believing that we have a purpose, even if we never know what it is — that something out there is bigger than we are.

Of course, it’s not easy to promote that kind of faith. That kind of faith is difficult and taxing. It’s much more convenient to simply follow a bunch of rules and take the required steps and go through the motions that many of us are taught in childhood. But as Rufus and Serendipity point out, God is bigger than all that, and no single religion has it truly figured out. Real faith is work because it requires toil and acceptance and humility. It requires tolerance and patience beyond what most of us have naturally. Bethany initially rejects her role as a leader of this kind of faith, because it’s scary and it’s hard. Nobody could fault her for resisting that path, because most people would do the same — it would feel like too much of a burden, too heavy a responsibility to carry. I like that the film accepts this about us as humans, and doesn’t make judgments about the innate flaws we all have.

Where it does make judgments is everywhere else, from Loki smiting a bunch of Mooby executives for laughs, to Bartleby and Loki being mere pawns of the demon Azrael (Jason Lee) because as far as Azrael’s concerned going back to the nothingness before existence would be better than Hell, to the cynical idea that a pompous man of God (Cardinal Glick, played by George Carlin, OF COURSE) would bless his own golf club in order to improve his game. It also winks at God’s sense of humor, casts street hockey punks as minions of Hell, accuses someone of selling his soul to Satan to up the grosses on Home Alone, says that God is a woman (played by Alanis Morissette, duh), and indicates She has a serious love of Skeeball. Like, who doesn’t?

Obviously I don’t think Dogma is the last word on God and religion, any more than I think religions are the last word on God and religion, but I do think that open-mindedness and discussion and meditation on a subject — even one as fraught with the perils of questioning closely-held belief systems as religion is — are the true paths to enlightenment. I think we learn more by opening ourselves up to the views and experiences of others than we do by insisting that our way is right and nothing else is possible. As Rufus says, wars are fought and lives lost over beliefs, but ideas are much more flexible. If our faiths were built on ideas — changeable, malleable, evolving ideas — I think we’d be a lot closer to peace and acceptance than we are now.

I’m not so naive as to think anything like peace or total acceptance is even a possibility in this world, but it certainly is a nice idea.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Aristocrats

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #22: The Aristocrats

As I approached this movie on my shelf, I’d begun thinking of it as something I purchased for the shock value of it, for the edginess of owning something so offensive and inflammatory — like Madonna’s foil-wrapped Sex book in 1992. Whether it was good or not was immaterial; the point of owning it was to show people how brash and bold and uninhibited you were. I was always trying to prove myself in this way when I was younger, and as my first marriage had died in 2005, I was on a bit of a youth resurgence when this movie came out. It wouldn’t surprise me if that’s why I bought it. And, honestly, maybe it was. But watching it again tonight I realized, I still think it’s damn funny.

The Aristocrats is a documentary about an inside joke among comedians. The standard vaudeville setup is almost beside the point, though, because what the joke really is, is comedy gymnastics — a chance for comedians to hone their improv skills while one-upping each other in terms of the most vile, offensive, shocking things they can come up with. Over the course of the film, more than a hundred comedians appear to talk about — and give their own foul versions of — “The Aristocrats.” The longer they can keep it going, and the more disgusting and immoral they can make it, the more hilarious it is. And even though these hundred comedians are all telling the exact same joke, their different styles, and their very personalities, give each version an individual flare.

I won’t go into the joke here, because writing it won’t have the same effect, but I will point out some of my favorite moments.

1. Bob Saget steals the show for me with one subtle, brilliant, visual reference to the size of a man’s penis — the best take on a common subject I have ever seen.
2. Sarah Silverman does her usual genius work by making the joke about herself in her cheerful way and then, as is also her way, going very dark and very funny at the end.
3. Billy the Mime is great for two reasons: the random passerby glancing at him with concern as they cross the walkway behind him, and the fact that I recognized him as Steven Banks, whose one-man show Steven Banks’s Home Entertainment Center is something everyone should see numerous times (thanks be to YouTube).
4. I love that, for a room full of comedians still raw from 9/11, Gilbert Gottfried’s performance of the joke at the Comedy Central Roast of Hugh Hefner, in all its vulgar glory, was a salve on everyone’s wounds.
5. I miss the sharp, analytical mind of George Carlin and his loves of language and of pushing the envelope.
6. There are some really funny women out there. Make more of them your content creators, Hollywood.

The Aristocrats is definitely not for the faint-of-heart. It is the filthiest joke of all time, and that is not an exaggeration. No one who is easily offended — or maybe even ever offended — should go anywhere near it. So, I don’t know, maybe I did buy it to be edgy, or maybe I just love it in my own sick twisted way, but I’m keeping it anyway, even if I only watch it once every ten years.