When You Aim For The Stars And Really Miss

[Emilymcplugger]

I was just going to say “How come people in movies never take their shoes off when they get home?”

It’s true.

They also never say “goodbye” at the end of a phone call. Getting real people right is hard work and it’s something that often film-makers struggle with in particular.

It’s one of the reasons I love Jaws as the chaos of the first 10-15 minutes or so as we are introduced to Chief Brody and the island’s awful, greedy leadership feels real, even though it’s anything but.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I was just going to say “How come people in movies never take their shoes off when they get home?”

Because they are not Japanese?

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Lee Child is an author with frequent good ideas that rarely hits the landing. You often hit the final two chapters and walk away with a sense of “oh, is that it?”

61 hours is a particularly disappointing and unremarkable mess. I don’t mind working things out first, but when they’re blatantly obvious that bugs, and then add a silly ending to boot and I’m completely out.

 

[gunhilltrain]

It’s true.

They also never say “goodbye” at the end of a phone call. Getting real people right is hard work and it’s something that often film-makers struggle with in particular.

It’s one of the reasons I love Jaws as the chaos of the first 10-15 minutes or so as we are introduced to Chief Brody and the island’s awful, greedy leadership feels real, even though it’s anything but.

Jaws is quite perceptive in the reactions of most of the characters. Possibly peak Spielberg. It's sort of Moby Dick condensed to three people over the course of a couple of days.

By the way, Murray Hamilton was an underrated actor. He was great as Mr. Robinson, for example.

 

[Bramblethorn]

The thing is, these discussions get so complicated based on what exactly the fictional setting/historical period is and exactly what the artistic goals of the piece are.

Indeed. Though I would note that those settings and goals are also choices, and when somebody keeps choosing settings that give an excuse for restrictive casting choices, it's fair to think that they have implicitly chosen to have that kind of casting.

Vanessa Riley writes historical romances focussing on Black characters, often in England. She makes the observation that in Jane Austen's time there were around 10,000-20,000 Black people living in London, and fewer than 30 dukes through the whole of the Regency (not many of those handsome and available, at any given time!), and yet romances about dukes are the norm and romances about Black people in that time and place are seen as far-fetched.

I guess part of the reason I'm reluctant to give much benefit of the doubt on the historical settings is that even when storytellers have no such constraints their stories often end up... racially weird. Stuff like Firefly where the setting leans heavily on Asian cultural elements - people swearing in Mandarin, Inara's Buddhism, surnames like "Tam", katanas! in! spaaaace! - and yet no Asian actors to be seen. (Maybe one or two extras? Definitely nobody in the main cast, and I'm struggling to think of even secondary characters.)

Even further down are the race swaps for characters where it could be argued that race is an essential or at leasts important flavouring part of the character. Personally all the talk of casting a Black James Bond never makes much sense to me as in my mind the character is fundamentally based in 1960's elitist establishment - Eton, Cambridge, MI6.

I suspect that's precisely why there's so much talk of casting a Black actor in the role.

Bond is fun, but as you suggest, it's a very regressive type of fun. Society has changed hugely since he was created, and while the franchise has adapted where it can - attitudes to women, etc. etc. - at the heart of it you have a guy whose job is to kill people in the service of Her Majesty Queen El–

–oh fuck, it's not any more, now his job is to kill people in the service of King Charles. Bloody hell, that's going to take some processing. Sorry, where was I?

I think a lot of people who enjoy the Bond movies believe that government-sponsored extrajudicial assassination is generally a bad thing, and that the kind of people who take that job are not good people, and that the government Bond works for is more likely to be forming public-private partnerships with evil billionaires than taking them down. That kind of thought can occasionally get in the way of one's enjoyment. But you can't change those aspects of Bond without utterly unmaking him. So giving him a Black buddy, or a female M, or making him Black himself is a way for viewers who care about that kind of thing to feel more comfortable with enjoying the franchise.

(And you don't even have to actually cast a Black James Bond! You just have to encourage people to talk about the possibility that it might someday happen!)

Maybe the right question there is not "what if Black James Bond?" but "what if it's possible to tell an interesting story about somebody who's not James Bond?"

Which brings us to probably the final peg. The 'suspension of disbelief' level. We know that Anne Boleyn wasn't black. We know that Jodie Turner-Smith is, but then we also know that she's just an actress playing a role for our enjoyment, so why should it matter? For that matter, we knew that (say) Judi Dench wasn't Queen Elizabeth either and it didn't faze us.

Yep. We all have our lines for suspension of disbelief, but I think it's worth thinking about why we've drawn them where we do.

(But again, if we agree this is what's happening, then why isn't John Wayne as Genghis Khan is back on the table? Or to cut out the historical issues of whiteness - how do we feel about a black opera singer playing Madame Butterfly, or a Chinese-heritage actor playing Othello?)

Opera is an interesting one. By convention, I think audiences are willing to suspend disbelief a little more on actor/character dissonance than they would be in film, because they do want performers who can actually sing. (And perhaps because many of its customs evolved in the days when one was watching performers from quite a long way off without benefit of TV screens.)

 

[MelissaBaby]

Because they are not Japanese?

I don't know about you, but most people I know don't come home from working all day and leave their street shoes on while they are watching TV, reading or whatever they do in the evening. Unless they have some kind of shoe fetish or something.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Controversially in films one of the biggest complaints I have is how working people are portrayed by the insanely and ridiculously wealthy.

Take for example, Christopher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT. In that story the Joker plants two LUDICROUSLY LARGE bombs that no-one could miss on two ferries and then tells the inhabitants they have the control to the other bombs. He does this to try and cause both the prisoner boat and the civilian boat to turn against each other.

The civilian boat don’t work out that someone called the Joker is most likely playing a trick on them, and also don’t try and figure out a way to communicate no hostility towards the prisoner ship. Nolan instead plays with the idea that regular people are too thick to think like this.

Is that Nolan in particular, do you think? It seems to me that sort of mindset is almost inevitable in a story about Batman. If the people of Gotham were good enough and smart enough to save themselves, the city wouldn't need a billionaire genius and he'd just be some playboy with a thing for wearing a mask and beating people up.

Though as per my comment to TRC, Nolan still made the choice to tell a story about that character...

 

[joe432]

The end of nearly every recent Stephen King novel, particularly 11/22/63. The Green Card Man concept was such a cop out. I enjoyed the book up to that point. It seems King had no idea how to finish the story, and introduced the card carriers as a way to scratch out an ending.

Thank you for saying this!!! King is amazing at creating characters and settings but can’t write a decent ending!!

 

[Duleigh]

The end of nearly every recent Stephen King novel, particularly 11/22/63. The Green Card Man concept was such a cop out. I enjoyed the book up to that point. It seems King had no idea how to finish the story, and introduced the card carriers as a way to scratch out an ending.

I met him once on a cross country Amtrack train, spooky dude. As far as I'm concerned other than The Stand and The Shining, he did his best work as Richard Bachman

 

[alohadave]

I met him once on a cross country Amtrack train, spooky dude. As far as I'm concerned other than The Stand and The Shining, he did his best work as Richard Bachman

I know it'll never happen, but the book version of The Running Man could have been epic if adapted close to the book.

It'd probably be seen as derivative now with the reality game shows and flying a plane into the building.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Is that Nolan in particular, do you think? It seems to me that sort of mindset is almost inevitable in a story about Batman. If the people of Gotham were good enough and smart enough to save themselves, the city wouldn't need a billionaire genius and he'd just be some playboy with a thing for wearing a mask and beating people up.

Though as per my comment to TRC, Nolan still made the choice to tell a story about that character...

I think it’s something Hollywood and the wealthy have a hard time with in general.

They don’t know people and so either everyone is awful (like TDK and also Beauty and the Beast, can’t believe I’m having a go at that) or stupid and easily fooled (like in The Simpsons when they vote in Sideshow Bob and…er…Beauty and the Beast).

Better representations of people can be found in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “Galaxy Quest”, “Dave” and more works by Gary Ross. People are flawed, make bad decisions and can be fooled, but likewise they can be incredible and achieve remarkable things by working together.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

I met him once on a cross country Amtrack train, spooky dude. As far as I'm concerned other than The Stand and The Shining, he did his best work as Richard Bachman

I don’t know about that.

SALEM’S LOT is ace.

DEAD ZONE, very good.

RITA HAYWORTH AND THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, top drawer.

The truth is endings and summary’s are hard, even to posts like this, which is why I tend not to

 

[MelissaBaby]

The end of nearly every recent Stephen King novel, particularly 11/22/63. The Green Card Man concept was such a cop out. I enjoyed the book up to that point. It seems King had no idea how to finish the story, and introduced the card carriers as a way to scratch out an ending.

I'm going to disagree with that somewhat, because I don't think the timey-wimey Green Card stuff is really important to the story.

What does matter is the relationship between Jake and Sadie, and the resolution of that narrative is actually one of King's best endings.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

I don't know about you, but most people I know don't come home from working all day and leave their street shoes on while they are watching TV, reading or whatever they do in the evening. Unless they have some kind of shoe fetish or something.

Varies by climate and tradition. Brits wouldn't take shoes off until bedtime, unless they had a mucky job and were changing clothes entirely when they got home. Though traditions are changing as people from other countries make their opinions known that shoes in the house is icky, and the youth of today are likely to remove shoes. I was raised (by my American mum, but my English gran would agree) to believe that you aren't dressed if you're not wearing shoes, and what if the doorbell goes?

I suspect central heating has encouraged people to consider removing shoes more.

 

[alohadave]

I'm going to disagree with that somewhat, because I don't think the timey-wimey Green Card stuff is really important to the story.

What does matter is the relationship between Jake and Sadie, and the resolution of that narrative is actually one of King's best endings.

I agree. It was a bittersweet ending, but at least he was able to have that last dance.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Indeed. Though I would note that those settings and goals are also choices, and when somebody keeps choosing settings that give an excuse for restrictive casting choices, it's fair to think that they have implicitly chosen to have that kind of casting.

Put it this way - if I wrote a story based on my own life, depending on the time-period the cast would be:

Period 1: Sixth-form - All white
Period 2: University - Jewish, Anglo-Indian, Malay + multiple white
Period 3: Job 1&2 - All white again plus (one/two) Anglo-Indians
Period 4: Job 3 - Jewish, Black British, Chinese, Japanese, half white/Singaporean Chinese, 1x White, Danish
Period 5: Job 4 - All Chinese

If I ask you which one I should write about and you immediately say 'not period 1!' without asking anything about what is going on in my life in each period, then you're prioritizing 'wokeness' over story-telling.
If my sixth-form buddy writes his story about period 1 and I write my own one about period 4 and I ask you which one should be made into a major motion picture. If the answer isn't 'whichever one is better' then you're prioritizing 'wokeness' over quality.
If I write my period 1 story and you try to persuade me to race-swap some of the characters then there's an element of 'wokeness' for 'wokeness' sake.
If I want to Harry Potterize the whole of my all-white schooling and you're saying 'if you don't skip ahead to university soon, I'm going to start giving you the side eye...'

None of which changes the fact that increasing the casting from a more racially balanced pool of actors is a noble goal. It just rubs up against 'write what you want to write' (the single most common piece advice on this forum). And certainly when you look at all of a movie studios/TV companies output and there's a pattern, it's a problem. (In some ways this is or should be less of an issue in TV production where you typically hire a writing team and if you get diversity in your writing team, getting diversity in your casting follows easier)

Vanessa Riley writes historical romances focussing on Black characters, often in England. She makes the observation that in Jane Austen's time there were around 10,000-20,000 Black people living in London, and fewer than 30 dukes through the whole of the Regency (not many of those handsome and available, at any given time!), and yet romances about dukes are the norm and romances about Black people in that time and place are seen as far-fetched.

Well, I don't think romances about Black people in Jane Austen's time are far fetched. Riley is writing what she wants to write and presumably has done her research.
Talking about dukes, well presumably adding marquess, earls, viscounts and barons into the mix will swell the numbers somewhat (but these are aspirational matches so why not play Top Trumps with them, hell, go for the Prince!).

I guess part of the reason I'm reluctant to give much benefit of the doubt on the historical settings is that even when storytellers have no such constraints their stories often end up... racially weird. Stuff like Firefly where the setting leans heavily on Asian cultural elements - people swearing in Mandarin, Inara's Buddhism, surnames like "Tam", katanas! in! spaaaace! - and yet no Asian actors to be seen. (Maybe one or two extras? Definitely nobody in the main cast, and I'm struggling to think of even secondary characters.)

Haven't seen enough Firefly to respond to this, but, yeah, if your universe-backstory is one big melting pot of cultures and then there is not a range of ethnicities, that's strange.

Stuff to do - Bond will have to wait for the moment.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I don't know about you, but most people I know don't come home from working all day and leave their street shoes on while they are watching TV, reading or whatever they do in the evening. Unless they have some kind of shoe fetish or something.

I guess I've never known anybody like that. Probably worth doing in New York City, but I've never seen it with any friends, family, or neighbors during the time I've been, call it conscious, since about 1960. Maybe it's a regional thing? I'd include New Jersey because I lived there for many years too.

P.S.: My late in-laws didn't do it either, and they grew up in Louisville and West Virginia (my father-in-law) and Williamsport, PA.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I met him once on a cross country Amtrack train, spooky dude. As far as I'm concerned other than The Stand and The Shining, he did his best work as Richard Bachman

Duleigh, you must know it's spelled Amtrak! Didn't King write an autobiography? I know he talked about growing up poor in Maine, and how that influenced his writing. Spooky might be a good word, since you actually met him. There is a strain of weirdness running through his work, but that's part of who he is and he doesn't try to hide it. From what he wrote in The Shining, he knows a lot first-hand about alcoholism. Was that one of his own problems?

 

[gunhilltrain]

I know it'll never happen, but the book version of The Running Man could have been epic if adapted close to the book.

It'd probably be seen as derivative now with the reality game shows and flying a plane into the building.

He stretched credibility at times, probably on purpose. In that scene with the plane crash (was that The Running Man?) the guy in the plane cockpit and the guy in the building he's aiming for can see and recognize each other at the last moment. That would obviously be impossible with a plane approaching at around 200 mph at least. It certainly is dramatic.

 

[MelissaBaby]

Duleigh, you must know it's spelled Amtrak! Didn't King write an autobiography? I know he talked about growing up poor in Maine, and how that influenced his writing. Spooky might be a good word, since you actually met him. There is a strain of weirdness running through his work, but that's part of who he is and he doesn't try to hide it. From what he wrote in The Shining, he knows a lot first-hand about alcoholism. Was that one of his own problems?

He has explicitly stated that The Shining is an allegory for alcoholism.

 

[Duleigh]

Duleigh, you must know it's spelled Amtrak! Didn't King write an autobiography? I know he talked about growing up poor in Maine, and how that influenced his writing. Spooky might be a good word, since you actually met him. There is a strain of weirdness running through his work, but that's part of who he is and he doesn't try to hide it. From what he wrote in The Shining, he knows a lot first-hand about alcoholism. Was that one of his own problems?

I met him, but we didn't really talk, he was just sitting in the lounge watching the people, something I find myself doing quite often now that I write.

Boulder and Estes Park CO are two very unique areas, Boulder was where he lived when he wrote The Stand, and Estes Park was aligned with The Shining, but there's nothing in Estes Park that fits in The Shining. However, when you step out the front door of the Stanley hotel in the early morning it is like the mountains are set up as walls around the hotel, and down by Boulder the Flat Iron mountains look like a shield protecting the area. The mountains in that area are very inspirational, I can see why generations of men dropped everything to go up there and disappear into the woods.

(In Estes Park I prefer the Ko Ko Pelli Inn over the Stanley)

 

[gunhilltrain]

Bond is fun, but as you suggest, it's a very regressive type of fun. Society has changed hugely since he was created, and while the franchise has adapted where it can - attitudes to women, etc. etc. - at the heart of it you have a guy whose job is to kill people in the service of Her Majesty Queen El–

–oh fuck, it's not any more, now his job is to kill people in the service of King Charles. Bloody hell, that's going to take some processing. Sorry, where was I?

I think a lot of people who enjoy the Bond movies believe that government-sponsored extrajudicial assassination is generally a bad thing, and that the kind of people who take that job are not good people, and that the government Bond works for is more likely to be forming public-private partnerships with evil billionaires than taking them down. That kind of thought can occasionally get in the way of one's enjoyment. But you can't change those aspects of Bond without utterly unmaking him. So giving him a Black buddy, or a female M, or making him Black himself is a way for viewers who care about that kind of thing to feel more comfortable with enjoying the franchise.

(And you don't even have to actually cast a Black James Bond! You just have to encourage people to talk about the possibility that it might someday happen!)

Maybe the right question there is not "what if Black James Bond?" but "what if it's possible to tell an interesting story about somebody who's not James Bond?"



Yep. We all have our lines for suspension of disbelief, but I think it's worth thinking about why we've drawn them where we do.

When the James Bond books were written, and then the movies were made, there were relatively few Blacks in Britain. Now there
likely are Black spies and agents doing that work. Of course, real spies rarely have the adventures that the fictional ones do.

The British never had the legacy of slavery in their own homeland. Thus I think most Blacks in England now have roots in the West Indies or directly from Africa. Was the Sidney Poitier character in To Sir, With Love supposed to be from the West Indies or was it never specified?

 

[gunhilltrain]

He has explicitly stated that The Shining is an allegory for alcoholism.

Yet people have tried to tried to say that the Kubrick movie was also somehow about the oppression of Native Americans. That seems like a bit of a stretch. And Kubrick usually didn't expound much on what his movie meant.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I met him, but we didn't really talk, he was just sitting in the lounge watching the people, something I find myself doing quite often now that I write.

Boulder and Estes Park CO are two very unique areas, Boulder was where he lived when he wrote The Stand, and Estes Park was aligned with The Shining, but there's nothing in Estes Park that fits in The Shining. However, when you step out the front door of the Stanley hotel in the early morning it is like the mountains are set up as walls around the hotel, and down by Boulder the Flat Iron mountains look like a shield protecting the area. The mountains in that area are very inspirational, I can see why generations of men dropped everything to go up there and disappear into the woods.

(In Estes Park I prefer the Ko Ko Pelli Inn over the Stanley)

I think the nearest town to the Overlook hotel, which does figure in the plot, is fictional. (Can anybody confirm that?) The remains of the Overlook are mentioned briefly in Misery.

By the way, if you consider King to be a celebrity (seems a fair way to describe him), then I wouldn't talk to him much either unless he specifically invited me to. Many if not most famous people seem to be a bit skittish - if not actually annoyed - by uninvited people who try to have conversations with them. It's okay to just say hello and a few other brief remarks. "I'm your number one fan!" King probably has experienced issues with his own fans at times.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I think the nearest town to the Overlook hotel, which does figure in the plot, is fictional. (Can anybody confirm that?) The remains of the Overlook are mentioned briefly in Misery.

By the way, if you consider King to be a celebrity (seems a fair way to describe him), then I wouldn't talk to him much either unless he specifically invited me to. Many if not most famous people seem to be a bit skittish - if not actually annoyed - by uninvited people who try to have conversations with them. It's okay to just say hello and a few other brief remarks. "I'm your number one fan!" King probably has experienced issues with his own fans at times.

Used to be, all you had to do was go to Nicky's Diner, on Union Street in Bangor, he'd eat lunch there about three times a week, and ask him if the Sox won last night. After that, you would be pals. All that changed after his accident.