Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

I watched Inception for the second time the other day. It remains, in my mind, a good but not great story. Certainly it is well made and I applaud Nolan’s ability to structure a complex series of layers into a coherent storyline. I enjoy the movie, but it could have been much more interesting. The real strength of the movie is the fact that people have been discussing it endlessly since it came out. Hell, I’d give a limb to write a story that people discuss endlessly. Based on that alone, I’d want to murder Chris Nolan in a jealous rage. Add in The Dark Knight and he and I are eternal enemies, even though he’ll never know it. He’s joined my list of People I’ve Never Met but Despise because of Their Professional Success, right there with Ben Affleck.

Anyways, after my second viewing of Inception I confirmed my initial interpretation of the story, which we’ll get to below. I also noticed a couple of annoying plot holes. Herewith are two plot/mechanics problems and my overall interpretation about the film.

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I caught Panic Room on TV the other day. I haven’t seen it since it was in theaters; it was one of those movies I enjoyed while watching and then never thought about again. I still let the gods of cable TV run my viewing; despite the growing ability to watch whatever I want when I want to, I never actually put in a DVD of an old movie or order it up. I like to just find them on TV when I least expect it. It goes back to my crude childhood days of having 12 channels and no VCR; the sudden rush of delight when you turned on the TV and there was actually a good movie on still warms my otherwise black and unhappy heart.

Motherfuckin' Raoul

So, I watched Panic Room for the first time in years. Still a great movie, in my opinion. Sure, you once again have to try and care about characters who are so goddamn rich they can buy a townhouse like that in Manhattan. And that is pretty goddamn rich.

The question of why so many characters in fictions are rich is an interesting one. Of course, let’s first agree that I have no idea what percentage of characters are, in fact, rich in fiction stories. I’ve done no research. It just seems to me like an awful lot of stories focus on people who are rich. In stories like Panic Room, of course, the simple answer is: Poor people do not have anything to steal. Case closed.

Anyway, they manage to get you caring about our rich white protagonists with the double-punch of Sad Jodie Foster as Divorced Wronged Woman and her daughter, played by pre-Twilight Kristen Stewart, as Sick Girl who has diabetes and needs constant care to stay alive. So, sure, they’re rich and white and privileged, but they have their problems too. Once I get past my own class-warfare issues, it’s a fine story, told very well.

Except for Raoul.

In the story, Junior, a crackhead Trustafarian, recruits Burnham, who works for the security company that installed the alarm and titular panic room in the house, to help him break in and rob the place. It’s made very clear that Junior has chosen the moment carefully because his aged uncle has died and the house was sold, but he believes escrow has not yet ended, so the house should be completely empty. So the plan is clearly that they sneak in when no one is there, Burnham uses his knowledge of the alarm system to make sure they are undetected, they steal the $22 million in bearer bonds hidden in the panic room safe, and then they sneak out. Since no one else even knows the bearer bonds are there, it is obviously planned as a quick, easy crime. When Junior finds out the house is occupied, he goes into a fit of rage and panic. Because he was sure no one would be in the house.

Junior has just introduced Raoul to Burnham, and Burnham is upset at his last-minute inclusion. Raoul wears a mask and carries a humongous gun, and talks like a hard case. Why in hell is Raoul there? Junior says he recruited Raoul because he has experience with robbery, but it doesn’t make any sense: Junior was convinced the house would be empty and they would encounter no resistance. Junior is clearly shown to have no ability to think ahead or make complex plans. So why would he recruit a psychopath like Raoul before knowing there were people in the house that would need to be ‘handled’?

On one hand, the answer is easy: The story needed Raoul. Junior’s weak. Burnham’s a good guy, deep down, who refuses to hurt anyone. Junior and Burnham are not menacing. Raoul adds that edge of menace the story needs, because he is not a nice guy, he is willing to hurt people, and he is clearly in it for himself. So that’s the easy answer: Raoul is there because the writer decided he needed Raoul to bring some tension to the story, and to escalate the violence believably.

On the other hand, it makes absolutely no sense. Junior expects an easy score. Why would he risk a share of the money and complications to bring Raoul in? This could have been solved very easily: Have Junior call in Raoul after they discover the house isn’t empty. A panic decision. Works perfectly. Except then, of course, you’ve ruined the flow of the sequence. As it stands the scene where the three criminals arrive at and enter the house is masterfully done. David Fincher, the director, has an ease with the camera that makes for fluid visual storytelling. The camera swoops through the house like a bird, smoothly tracking the movements of the men as they appear outside, traverse the perimeter, and finally effect an entrance. They then go immediately to work. To insert a sequence where Junior calls in Raoul and then waits for his arrival would have slowed down the pace excruciatingly and ruined that flow.

These sorts of ripple effects happen a lot. As you write a story you have to be thinking about your details, because a simple change suggested towards the end can cause your whole plot to ripple out, knocking things out of place. In the end, I could believe that the screenwriter just decided to let that slight illogic lie, handwave it as evidence of Junior’s criminal-wannabe, crackhead-addled thought process. And it does almost work. Well enough anyway to get by with, except for one cranky guy watching it on Encore or whatever eight years later.

That’s why my wife The Duchess and I can’t wait for true Internet Television, so we can just press buttons on our remotes when we like or dislike something. I’m not thinking about tedious typing of opinions. Just big red and green LIKE and DON’T LIKE buttons we can mash whenever something displeases us. And then a little avatar of our heads pops up on screen, cursing and dancing in rage. For both buttons, actually, now that I think about it. And who wouldn’t want my disembodied head to appear on your screen, cursing and complaining?

This is the problem with being a working writer: You just can’t enjoy movies any more. You’re always tugging at the plot threads, seeing if anything shakes loose. It can be maddening. This is why I drink. Because I know someone’s out there right now, doing the same to my books. The bastards.

I can still remember the day we figured out Room 29.

Being a nerdy kind of guy my entire life, I went through a period of being enamored by puzzle books, in the sense of entire books being a puzzle. The first one I came across, and the one that remains, in my mind, the best example of them, was Maze by Christopher Manson. I don’t remember how I found it; by the time I came across it the contest portion (offering a $10,000 prize to the first person who successfully solved it) was long over. I didn’t care about the contest; the book itself was unbelievably cool.

There were others. There was the Merlin Mystery, which was unbelievably complex and zero fun. Zero, zero fun. Maze remains my favorite, by far.

Maze is a book that is also, literally, a maze. Each page of the book contains a drawing of one of the rooms of the maze – basically the pages are the rooms. The conceit is that you are part of a group of people who enter the maze along with a less-than-helpful guide, who narrates your progress (or lack thereof) through the maze. In each room/drawing there are doors marked with numbers; you choose which room to go to next by selecting a numbered door and then turning to that page. In the drawings and the text are clues both to which room to go to next and the overall puzzle. Your goal is to find the shortest path from room 1 to room 45 and back out again, and to decipher and answer the riddle hidden in room45.

It’s fucking genius. Part of it is the writing. Here’s the text from Room 1:

…the entrance hall of the Maze. They looked carefully at the bronze doors, trying to choose. The uncertainty of visitors is one of my little pleasures.
“It’s easy to get lost,” I said helpfully. “This can be a sinister place.” The sun glared at me through the gateway.
Something was ringing behind one of the doors. They spent some time trying to decide which door it was, not understanding that the silences of the Maze are as eloquent as the sounds.
“Decisions, decisions,” one said. “Too many decisions.”
“The story of my life,” said another.
“We don’t want to be late,” said a third, opening one of the doors.
“Nary a soul to be seen,” said the first, peering into the gloom.
I waited patiently for them to choose which was to go … into…

The sense of every little thing – every word, everything in the images – being a clue was enervating. I would pore over every room seeking clues. I drew matrixes of rooms, trying to figure out the shortest route. For a while we were stymied; we could not figure out how to cross over to what seemed like the second half of the maze, we kept dead-ending. And then one day I was examining Room 29:

And we realized we were missing a door. We’d seen #8, #40, #35, and #2, but there’s one more door in there (unnumbered doors don’t count). Can you see it? It was pretty exciting when we finally did.

In the years since failing, pretty convincingly, to solve the riddle (our triumph of noticing the hidden door in Room 29 was our last intellectual Win with this) I’ve occasionally attempted to capture (i.e., steal) the tone of this little puzzle book for my own writing, with little success; the images are at least 50% of the atmosphere. In fact, I even attempted my own ersatz version of the Maze a few years ago (it was a Geocities web site, believe it or not). Check it out, if you want, but don’t complain to me if it makes no sense!

This ain't the first time a movie about a Box has totally sapped my will to live.

I’m not entirely sure when this blog became nothing but half-assed movie reviews. I’ll have to launch an investigation. Until I figure it out, just be thankful that I throw myself on Crap Grenades so you don’t have to. In other words, I sat down and watched The Box starring Cameron Diaz the other night, and now that my week has been ruined you are safe from this horror.

The Box is a movie based on Richard Matheson’s short story “Button, Button”, written way back in 1970. I have something of a Writerly Man Crush on Matheson; not only have I loved most of his writing, but he’s endured, which isn’t easy. I’d like to think someone like Will Smith is going to make a travesty out of one of my books decades after I’m gone, but chances are slim.

The basic premise is this: A financially strapped couple are visited by a mysterious man who gives them a box with a button. He tells them that if they press the button, they will receive $1 million, and someone “they do not know” will die. That’s the same premise as the original story, more or less. The original story, of course, ends pretty quickly. It’s creepy, and it’s effective – hell, they’re still adapting it forty years later. I’d call that effective.

The movie, unfortunately, grinds on for quite some time after this set up. Forget Cameron Diaz’s unfortunate accent. Forget that I am increasingly convinced writer/director Richard Kelly was merely impenetrably lucky and not a genius when he made Donnie Darko. The simple fact of the matter is, The Box starts off with a terrific premise (albeit one given to the filmmaker by the howling ghost of a much better storyteller) and then completely and utterly fails to develop that premise into anything nearly as good.

This is a pretty common problem for writers. The high-concept idea is not that hard to come up with, but plotting is frickin’ hard. It’s easy enough to imagine a world where robots have rebelled against us and rule the world, it’s difficult to tell a story around that premise. If you doubt me, try it.

What Kelly does with his solid-gold premise here is flail about and come up with a ridiculous reason behind the premise, and then he doubles down on that ridiculous reason and dares you to drown in the ridiculous. Which is audacious in its way.

<— SPOILERS AHOY! Turn back now if you don’t want this story ruined for you. —>

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