THE CINEMASOCHIST: Ghost Dad (1990)

The Cinemasochist takes a look at movies that have been notoriously rejected by the mass populace, and tells you if you might perchance be missing a classic. Or not.



Ghost Dad assembles a top-notch cast, some of Hollywood’s best screenwriters, Sidney Poitier (yes, Sidney Poitier) behind the camera, and America’s greatest father figure, all in the service of a premise that is completely grotesque. I shudder to think what Hollywood executive dreamed it up and thought it was a good idea. It certainly cannot have been Cosby or Poitier, who seem far to cheerful to invent something so morose. Nor could it have been writers S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, who seem to be trying to wring all they can from this unfortunate story. Whoever invented it must be a sad, lonely person who has trained himself to deal with misery by laughing at it.

The notion of Bill Cosby playing a ghost isn’t in itself so bad. One can imagine mining some comedy from Cosby getting stuck between worlds and trying to make his way around.

But, well... okay, let me put it this way. You’re one of the children in this film. Your mom passed away a few years earlier, and your dad (Bill Cosby) has been struggling to raise you and your two siblings ever since. He’s a few days away from securing a new promotion that will make things a whole lot easier. And then he shows up one afternoon and explains to you that he’s been killed in a car accident, and is now a ghost.

I know--barrel of laughs, right?

Of course, humor can always be found in the gallows, but that is not the kind of movie that Ghost Dad seems to want to be. It wants to be a silly family comedy. We’re even treated to a scene where Ghost Cosby, unable to communicate with his children, develops a goofy game of charades to explain to them that he’s a ghost. We see the children take delight in playing the guessing game, and then we see their faces drop when they figure it out.

Hold on--my sides are splitting.

So what we have is a silly comedy in which three kids are on the verge of being orphaned. The movie avoids the real gravity of the situation by progressing from set-piece to set-piece without much thought. Ghost Dad has to go on a date. Ghost Dad messes around with daughter’s stupid boyfriend. Ghost Dad needs to go get a physical. The most befuddling is the show-and-tell sequence, in which Cosby’s son gets on his case about helping him with a magic trick.

Hello? Kid, your dad is dead. Forget about the magic trick and cry or something. That the kids do not quite grasp what has happened to their father makes the movie even sadder.

The movie is competently made. Cosby is much more at home here than in the dismal Leonard Part 6. The role of a hapless father trying to keep his family together suits him quite well, and he even wrings a few funny moments out of trying to parent from beyond the grave. I must admit that I laughed at a scene in which he is forced to undergo a physical, which he manages to do quite believably (with the help of Arnold Stang--yes, Arnold Stang).  The usually reliable Ian Bannen appears as a scientist named Edith, and the fact that his name is Edith is one of many jokes that the movie insists is very funny.

It should be mentioned--spoiler alert!--that the Cosby character is thankfully not really dead, and he finds a way to put himself back in his body and reunite with his family, and the movie has a happy ending. This is a relief. There is absolutely no way to accept a version of this movie where the character actually dies, and where the kids grieve for their father in a normal way. Such a movie would be tragic, and to try to make it into a comedy would be unconscionable.

Though Ghost Dad is a bit more bearable than Leonard Part 6, they share one thing in common: both are films that fall prey to a premise that is completely unworkable. There may be a way to make a movie about a dad who dies and comes back as a ghost to set things right for his children, but it would have to be somber and honest and not the fun fest that this film wants to be.

* 1/2 out of ****

Is it really that bad?: It's not completely devoid of humor.

Pain level: Fairly low, rising to intermediate whenever the young children are involved.

On films that did NOT reinvigorate the silent film in America: I WOKE UP EARLY THE DAY I DIED (1998)

In the late '90s, possibly stemming from the newfound interest generated by Tim Burton's fantastic Ed Wood, a film was made from one of Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s, unproduced screenplays.  Wood was the auteur who brought us Bride of the Monster, Glen or Glenda?, and Plan Nine from Outer Space, and is widely considered to be the worst director of all time.  The overt inanity of his movies, combined with the notoriety given to him by Burton's film, shotgunned Wood to high camp status.  And thus we have I Woke Up Early the Day I Died, which aims to be a modern-day faithful emulation of Mr. Wood's style, if you can call it that.  It means to present itself exactly as Mr. Wood would have, had he been given the chance to direct it himself.

Does it succeed?  If I say yes, does that really explain anything?

The mastermind behind it, by all accounts, was Billy Zane, who had just previously given the one non-praised performance in the most successful movie of all time.  Zane was co-producer and editor of the film, and stars in the lead role.  The director is Aris Iliopulos, whose first film this was and who has not directed since.  Was it Zane's intention to put an inexperienced director behind the camera, so he might turn out to be as inept as Wood?  Could be.

And that's not the bombshell.  The bombshell is that Zane gathered around him a gargantuan all-star cast.  To list them would be exhausting, but they include Christina Ricci, Eartha Kitt, John Ritter, Tippi Hedren, Ron Perlman, Karen Black, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, and Taylor Negron.  Many of them appear in almost-unrecognizable cameos.

Is this film proof that a good movie can be wrung from the hands of one of the most inept filmmakers of all time?  Certainly not.  I Woke Up Early, I have a feeling, accurately transfers the badness from Wood's script through to the screen.  The fragmented plot and proclivity for debauchery are undoubtedly Wood's, and the film has the grainy atmosphere of a no-budget Z-movie from his era.

The main criticism of I Woke Up Early, upon its release, was that it was an intentionally bad film, and thus couldn't replicate Wood's accidentally bad films.  But the cynicism actually lines up with Wood's work fairly well; many have forgotten just how cynical a filmmaker Wood was, and much of his badness came from his condescension to his own material.  He knew most of what he was making was schlock; many of the films he made were meant to be "moneymakers" so that he could make the really good films.  Glen or Glenda? was an attempt to shoehorn his own struggle with transvestism into a commissioned film about a transsexual.  Plan Nine from Outer Space was a last-ditch effort to turn a few minutes of footage of Bela Lugosi into the horror legend's "last film." Though Wood was reportedly an enthusiastic filmmaker who loved every shot of his lousy films, his intentions were never quite so pure.

At the center of the film is Mr. Zane, who plays an escaped mental patient who robs a loan office, loses the money, and spends the bulk of the film on a killing spree trying to find the money.  The plot makes little sense, but Zane's performance is inspired; he bravely hurls himself violently through every inch of the film.  I've always felt he was an underrated comic actor; he has the pitch-perfect facial mugging of a melodramatic silent film actor, and it's a shame his comic ability is not put to use more often.  He is the film's only real through-line, as most of the all-star cast weaves in and out of the movie as if appearing by accident.

The movie's biggest downside is that it was written as a silent film.  There is no dialogue, and Wood aficionados will confirm that the distinctively clunky dialogue is one of the greatest joys of watching his movies.  The absence of lines like "The future will affect all of us in the future" deprives the film of part of what made Wood an icon.

Still, the movie passes this test: if Wood had actually directed it, I have a feeling it would be like this.  It's certainly not a good movie.  At times it's a trial to watch, though it does have its share of funny moments; with this cast, it would be hard to be a complete failure.

It is what it is.  If you have any aversion to camp, stay far, far, away.  If witnessing the last gasp from America's most legendary talentless artist means anything to you, it will be worth a shot.

** 1/2 out of ****

I Woke Up Early the Day I Died is pretty much completely unavailable on DVD or video.  It is viewable on Youtube here.  As the only available print was a German release, certain captions are in German; the English translation is in the Youtube annotations.

Best Picture #3: THE ARTIST (2011)

Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist is now in the running to be the first silent film to win Best Picture since, well, since the silent era.  This is both promising and a bit disheartening.  Promising, because it reopens the silent film as a marketable form.  It recognizes the silent film not as a dated artistic restriction, but as a viable artistic choice.  Silence calls our attention to the screen in a different way.  It also requires a different kind of acting, depending more on the director than the actor, on facial expression and montage where there would otherwise be dialogue.  Actors like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton, neither of whom really made the leap into sound films, would be proud to see the silent film still alive.

Disheartening because The Artist, clever and authentic, brightly entertaining that it is, isn't about much other than itself.  If its style is not dated, its story is.  Its story of a silent film star (Jean Dujardin) who has trouble breaking into talkies has been done before: it's Singin' in the Rain, without the music.  True, it's skillfully made in a daring way that few films are brave enough to tackle, but it might be better to see the Best Picture award go to something more meaningful and less fanciful.  A week after seeing it, people may still be talking about the cultural significance of The Help, or George Clooney's deeply felt performance in The Descendants.  But mainly what they'll remember about The Artist isn't the characters or the story, but the gimmick.

Still, what a film it is.  It's an old-fashioned entertainment in a retro style, and as such it's marvelous.  George Valentin (Dujardin) is an action superstar, in the vein of Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn.  His films all have to do with swashbuckling and romance, and he's usually wearing a black mask.  He's a celebrity with a fairly gargantuan ego, as we see in his early appearance at a premiere, much to the frustration of his leading lady (Missi Pyle, radiant as usual).

Then the talkies hit.  Valentin rebels against the system, attempting to keep the silent film alive, but he fails.  Riding the wave of sound is a plucky new star, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bujo), who's the talk of the new Hollywood.  But she's still a fan of the old Valentin, and savors a moment of flirtation that the two of them had while she was an extra in one of his films.  As he struggles with the end of his career, she grows more and more popular, but retains her fascination with him.

Dujardin and Bujo are perfect for their roles.  Dujardin makes for a dashing, ruggedly handsome alpha male, whose obstinacy at his downfall is tragically believable.  James Cromwell fits perfectly into type as Valentin's loyal-to-a-fault limo driver, as does John Goodman as the studio head.

Writer-director Hazanavicius has crafted a film that might, historical references aside, very well have been made as a legitimate silent film of the era.  It's also heartwarming and funny, with starmaking performances from Dujardin and Bujo.  My hope is that it will inspire a new wave of silent films to come, and soon we will have a new silent film in contemporary setting, which doesn't have to be about being a silent film.

*** 1/2 out of ****

Best Picture #2: The Tree of Life
Best Picture #1: The Help

AN OKAY YEAR AT THE MOVIES 2012 - Week 7: C-I-L-L My Landlord

Hal Ashby is rarely mentioned in anyone's list of the greatest auteurs of all time, but I've been an admirer of his since seeing his breakout cult hit Harold and Maude.  His later films--including Coming Home, Shampoo, and Being There--are well-received and even listed among the greats, yet none has seemed to make a name for the director, in the same way as a Scorsese or a Coppola.  I've never seen anyone make reference to a stereotypical "Ashby film."

This is strange, since the director has a unique style and voice, and each of his films is recognizable as his.  His underseen debut, The Landlord, shows the same visual touches seen in Harold and Maude and Being There, but also raises similar social questions.  Released in 1970, The Landlord is about race in America, and what it meant to be black at that time.

The landlord is Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges), a rich kid who buys a run-down apartment building in Park Slope in the hopes of refurbishing it for himself.  But after forming a relationship with the African-American residents there, he begins to change his mind.  The Landlord is a remarkable film that compellingly portrays the race relations of its time, and features a finely nuanced performance from Bridges as the snotty but gradually maturing Elgar, as well as from Lee Grant as his sheltered mother and Pearl Bailey as an eccentric mystic who's one of his tenants.

31. The Tree of Life (2011): Feb. 13
32. Kull the Conqueror (1997): Feb. 14
33. The Landlord (1970): Feb. 18

Best Picture #2: THE TREE OF LIFE (2011)

Some directors tell stories; others compose symphonies. Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life is a symphony of images, connected not by the logic of plot but by the strands of memory and thought. It is not the story of a boy growing up, but the story of a man contemplating his own growth, as well as his relationship with his parents, and even the origin of life itself. Our own personal experiences are often the jumping-off point for contemplating the big questions: what is life? Where does it begin and end? What does it mean to be a father? To be a man?

The parents in question are played by Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain. Their characters are not so much unique and specific as they are universal. They represent paternity and maternity, respectively. Pitt is the eternal father: stoic, strict, and firm, but loving, and a strong leader of his family by example. Chastain is the mother: supportive of the father but more compassionate and more likely to take the children’s side. The press material lists the family’s name as O’Brien, but I don’t recall anyone ever saying anyone’s name in the film. The father is the Father, the mother is the Mother, and the son is the Son.

Like a symphony, the film is composed of movements. The first movement, sure to be debated at length, chronicles the beginning of the universe and the origin of life on earth. We see the Big Bang, the emergence of unicellular organisms, their multiplication, their evolution, the beginning of sea life, early animals first crawling out onto land, and dinosaurs. And finally, we see an asteroid hurtle toward the planet and wipe it all out.

It may be difficult to see the significance of this segment, considering that the remainder of the film contains no reference to it. Like many prologues, it is there to provide a contrast to the rest of the film. Everything in this first movement flows so simply and easily, guided by randomness. I think the key to this chapter is located in a sequence in which a dinosaur, wandering in a valley, steps on another dinosaur’s head until it is dead. This is not a brutal scene, but merely one of nature. Even the dinosaur getting stomped on doesn’t seem to care.

Once the asteroid hits, the slate is cleaned and there is no more simplicity. The randomness of the early scenes gives way to the complexity of humankind. An early voice-over from the Mother speaks of the difference between nature and grace; where the scenes of prehistoric life represent mere nature, the family represents the pursuit of grace.

The bulk of the rest of the film takes place during the boy’s pubescent years, during which he is played by Hunter McCracken. It particularly explores the difficulty--at times downright impossibility--of the father-son relationship. The boy is on the cusp of adulthood, at that moment when he is just grown enough that he desires autonomy, but not quite grown enough to view his father as a fellow human being, rather than an imposing authority figure. We see his clashes with the Father, as well as the implication that in the Father’s absence the Mother is more easily manipulated. The boy simultaneously wants to please his father, to be his father, and to kill his father, which sounds contradictory to anyone but an adolescent. Envy also enters the equation, when the boy feels his younger brother is treated with more respect than he is.

The production design, by Jack Fisk, is a perfect evocation of a universal neighborhood. Though it takes place in the 1950s, one shot of the suburban streets dimly lit by dusk sunlight was all I needed to remind me of my own adolescence. The film is filled with such reminiscences: the bottle rockets, the BB guns, church on Sunday, and I particularly liked the neighborhood boy with the--shall we say--unique haircut.

A Bergman-esque coda has been interpreted by some as a version of the afterlife, but I don’t think the film bothers with this kind of metaphysics. Rather, it depicts the mass of memories that has accumulated in the boy’s mind over his entire life. The boy is played as a grown man by Sean Penn, who is better than anyone at showing inner conflict and contemplation with few words. The key to his motivation for doing so revealed in one very brief shot near the end, and makes complete sense.

The Tree of Life is at heart an existentialist film. It tells the story of what one man has made of his life, and ponders the question of where he should go next. The prehistoric sequence depicts species making their own way out of the water and evolving. The recurring present-day image is of Sean Penn climbing across a rocky beach; he is in a sense evolving himself, building the rest of his life from what has happened in the past. But while the animals evolve from necessity, the man evolves from, as the Mother says, grace: a desire to follow the example of his parents and to set an example for his children.

**** out of ****

 Best Picture #1: THE HELP (2011)

AN OKAY YEAR AT THE MOVIES 2012 - Week 6: The Two Faces of Horror

This week I got to watch a couple of examples of the two major types of horror film that are prevalent in today’s cinema. One is, of course, the first-person “found footage” pseudo-documentary approach that was pioneered by The Blair Witch Project and re-pioneered by Paranormal Activity. The other has made quite a surprise comeback recently, and that is the spare, spooky, efficient ghost story. This subgenre has been reinvigorated with the re-emergence of Hammer Studios, the company behind some of the best horror and suspense B-movies ever made.

Atrocious represents the first category. Its premise is that it’s edited together from 35 hours of footage from a family’s vacation in rural Spain. The implication is that something happened to the family. We hear urban legends about the nearby forest. The kids are themselves making a documentary about the forest to explore the urban legend. Stories of disappearances are told. The family friend says he was told never to go into the woods. And there is a Shining-like labyrinth in the backyard that is easy to become lost in.

Though the story doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny, Atrocious is one of the scariest films I’ve seen recently. It’s not the most original, but the way it uses the first-person point of view is expert. It doesn’t cheat; the camera never goes anywhere that the characters holding it wouldn’t, and we are placed firmly in their shoes. We don’t see anything they don’t see. The film teases us with limited light and the possibility that something is around the corner. At night the film switches to a stationary camera, a la Paranormal Activity, pointed out the window toward the woods, that sees all that happens while the characters are asleep.

The film doesn’t quite pay off in the end, opting for a conclusion that doesn’t live up to the tension that has been built. Writer-director Fernando Barreda Luna might have instead gone with a more mysterious ending, rather than one which explains too much. Still, Atrocious is lean, taut, and very scary.

The Woman in Black represents the other kind of horror film. It’s the same kind of movie that Hammer Studios used to make long ago, when Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee ruled the day. It has haunted houses, forbidding English fog, vengeful spirits, and incredulous people who wander down dark hallways at midnight. Though not as highbrow as Hammer’s other prominent new production, Let Me In, it’s more of a throwback to the old Hammer, and a welcome sign that this kind of movie is still alive after all.

Daniel Radcliffe, in his first non-Harry Potter film role since The Tailor of Panama, plays Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer who leaves his four-year-old son to look into the case of a recently deceased woman’s estate. Kipps is a haunted man already, having lost his wife (Sophie Stuckey, who played a haunted little girl in the underseen Close Your Eyes and The Dark) during childbirth. He stays at the dead woman’s lavish yet run-down house, only to find the surrounding town plagued by strange occurrences, and the house haunted by the title character.

Director James Watkins (who co-wrote the terrifying My Little Eye, one of my favorites) doesn’t quite make the house into its own character, the way Robert Wise did with The Haunting or Stanley Kubrick did with The Shining, but he does make it a spooky place to be. The Woman in Black is a cleverly constructed film, even if it isn’t much more. Candles flicker, creepy dolls seem to stare directly at us, children behave precociously and seem to be eerily prescient. And of course, the Woman in Black appears occasionally to give us a fright.

Radcliffe appears very young to be a lawyer, not to mention a father, and the movie uses that to its effect. His character is young and naive, but also filled with a goodness that is lost on the more jaded older characters. Ciaran Hinds is likable as the only one of the townspeople who befriends him, and Janet McTeer has a few things up her sleeve as his wife.

If The Woman in Black is not particularly ambitious, it is an entertaining throwback to the Hammer quickies of yesteryear. The kind of movie that was directed by Freddie Francis and written by Jimmy Sangster. Its point is not so much to fill you with dread, but rather to jump out from the dark and scare you. And that’s okay too.

25. Midnight in Paris (2011): Feb. 5
26. Trigger Man (2007): Feb. 6
27. The Woman in Black (2012): Feb. 6
28. The Artist (2011): Feb. 6
29. Atrocious (2010): Feb. 8
30. Oleanna (1994): Feb. 9

There have been 42 days so far this year, so that puts me 12 behind.  This is harder than I thought it would be, but let's not give up.

A Confession About Whitney Houston, 1963-2012

I haven't always had the nicest things to say about Whitney Houston.

In the late '90s, as I reached my late teen years, my taste in music had not yet quite expanded.  I was a devotee mainly of modern and classic rock: my library was filled with Alice in Chains, Metallica, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, Tool, and whatever new flash-in-the-pan groups there were. (Yes, there was a time when Creed didn't automatically suck, and Nickelback was an interesting new band out of Canada.)

Though I still got my new stuff primarily from the radio at that point, I was still one who scoffed at Top 40-ness.  The mainstream of hip-hop, R&B, and pop that the majority of my high school compatriots listened to was execrable to me.  I was growing up in the time of Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, the Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, and any other corporate-pop teenybopper that middle-aged men in suits were shoving into the faces of unassuming young people.  I was one of the only ones listening to actually good music, and everyone else was listening to dull, pre-packaged shit. (All that stuff still is shit, but since my high school years I've learned to differentiate good shit from bad shit.)

And then in 1999, two kids shot up their high school in Colorado, and the ticking time bomb exploded.  Parents around the country erupted in an all-out war on the music that the killers supposedly listened to.  This was my music too, and I resented essentially being punished for something someone else did.  I listened to this music, and I turned out fine.  Just how is rock music to blame for some dumb person's actions?

This led to a general antipathy toward all "safe" music.  Anything "lite" I viewed as an attack.  It was a tactic.  It was middle America saying to me, "You're unable to think for yourself!  Here, listen to this treacle so you don't hurt anyone!"

Whitney Houston fell under the umbrella of "safe" music.

This is not to say that she made bad music, like Britney or Christina or the BSBs or 'N Sync.  I never really hated her music, but only the fact that she was downright wholesome and family-friendly.  She sang songs about love and acted in chick flicks.  She was the kind of singer of which my grandmother and aunts would say, "Oh, I like her." And so I had to disavow her.  This was war, after all.

And so I have to admit that I wore a visible smirk when it was revealed that she was a drug addict.  It wasn't merely schadenfreude.  Whitney missed gigs, cancelled shows, and faltered when she did show up.  She was allegedly dazed, and would mess up her songs.  This was the sort of stuff that was usually pinned on my people.  My music was supposedly made by a bunch of drug-addled ruffians.  And here was their wholesome, family-friendly singer, their Whitney Houston, who turned out to be not only an addict but a piping hot mess, steaming before our very eyes.  I found it very amusing indeed.  I had won this battle.

I was wrong.  For one thing, it said nothing for my own musical preferences that Ms. Houston was as big a train wreck as they were.  It's a weak debater who seeks merely to muddy the waters rather than prove himself right.  The argument that "Look, Whitney does it too" only shows that the hedonism of the drug culture invades Lite-FM as well, and is not limited to Layne Staley.  I had tried to use Whitney Houston to tell the buck-passing parents of the country that there was plenty bad influence to go around.  It was a bad argument; at worst it proved that I had already accepted that my musicians of choice were exactly what mainstream America claimed they were.

I was also wrong to lump her in with the rest of the "safe" music of the time.  For all her faults, Whitney Houston was an artist.  Her music wasn't great all of the time--I still maintain a general distaste for light R&B--but it was real.  Amid all the corporate concoctions we called pop music in the late '80s and '90s, she emerged as a human person who made music that was her own, not the creation of the music industry.  And she did on occasion record a song that just rocked ("How Will I Know" is a song I unabashedly love).

Time heals all wounds, and as the mainstream of America has generally softened its attitude toward rock music and its cultural partners (the music hasn't really changed, while the video games and movies have gotten much more violent), I softened too.  There's no more culture war; our side won.  As I began to open myself up to the "safe" shit of the day (I own a selected few BSB and 'N Sync songs), I gave Whitney another chance too.  And while still not really my taste, she was still pretty great in her heyday.  Her downfall is one of the great tragedies of the musical world.

I am very sorry to have ever looked at Whitney Houston as one enemy pawn dispensed with.  She was too good to have been reduced to that.

AN OKAY YEAR AT THE MOVIES 2012 - Week 5: The Dea(r)th of 3D

Of all the complaints leveled at the 3D movie fad since its resurgence, the most potent is that the added dimension actually restricts rather than enhances the visual experience.  The effect often gives the film a dim, grungy look, and unless the film takes place completely in daylight (as in Piranha), some scenes may be downright hard to see.

This may be why the critical and audience response to Sanctum was so fierce.  Executive-produced by James Cameron, and touted as having been filmed with the same 3D effect as Avatar, Sanctum does not appear to be an ideal 3D movie.  Most of it takes place in dimly lit underground caves, and a good deal of it takes place underwater.  An added 3D effect would no doubt make dark scenes even darker and more difficult to view.

I watched Sanctum on an HDTV in 2D, and it's fine.  It's a perfectly formulaic thriller, but it delivers.  It has a couple of key performances by Richard Roxburgh and Rhys Wakefield, playing a father-and-son exploring team.  Their relationship is right out of the boy-does-good-for-dad book, but the two actors have an exceptional chemistry.  Ioan Gruffudd (pronounced "Ian McKellen") is on hand as a buffoonish villain.

Sanctum is hardly the first film I've been grateful to avoid in 3D and view in the correct dimensions.  My Soul to Take, which takes place in almost perpetual night, would have been horrid to sit through with the glasses on, but in 2D it's an entertaining little scare flick.  It will surely not be the last clue that the 3D fad is a nonstarter, and on its way out.

20. Priest (2011): Jan. 30
21. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009): Jan. 31
22. Masked and Anonymous (2003): Feb. 1
23. Sanctum (2011): Feb. 2
24. Red State (2011): Feb. 4

**P.S. Shortly after writing and posting this, I read that Sanctum's co-writer and producer, Andrew Wight, recently died in a helicopter crash in Australia while filming a documentary.  He will be missed, and the film he left behind was quite entertaining.**

Woody Harrelson and SOPA: How they're related and why they matter

I’m Woody Harrelson, AMA

Those unfamiliar with the Internet culture cosmos known as Reddit may have missed the trouble that the actor Woody Harrelson found himself in this week. Mr. Harrelson, star of "Cheers" and Money Train, participated in Reddit's recurring AMA (Ask Me Anything) tradition, in which famous or otherwise interesting people sign onto Reddit and answer any questions that Redditors may have.  AMAers have included actors (Zach Braff), B-list TV celebrities ("Jeopardy" winner Ken Jennings), politicians (a pre-scandal Anthony Weiner), victims of scandal (a young woman who is followed on Twitter by Anthony Weiner), and regular people with interesting jobs (an elementary teacher).

The AMA threads originate from the soul of the Internet.  It represents its greatest use as a tool: sharing of information.  The answerers offer insight into a life that others are interested in, and put themselves at the behest of all the intertubes to answer any questions.

Mr. Harrelson's AMA garnered attention for two reasons.  First, because he faced certain questions he might not have anticipated (one Redditor, I think, accused him of date rape).  Second, because the AMA was likely posted not by Mr. Harrelson but by a PR rep, as a way to promote his new film Rampart.  Mr. Harrelson, or his PR guy, was clearly seeking only to answer questions about the film.  He was promptly ridiculed.

Oddly enough, Mr. Harrelson's AMA ended up answering a very important question indeed.  It provides the key to why bills like SOPA and PIPA have been pervading the U.S. government and the world community.  The Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act were lobbied for by the Motion Picture Association of America, who represent Mr. Harrelson's home turf.  The reason for the MPAA's support of the bills is the same reason for Mr. Harrelson's Reddit disaster: both see the internet only in dollar signs, and not for its true purpose.

The MPAA, among other legal entities in the entertainment industry, fought hard to push anti-piracy legislation through Congress, and almost succeeded.  Their purpose was to curb the rampant online piracy of movies and music that has been losing them money.  Their complaints were for the most part based on unprovable negatives (think of all the Nickelback albums that weren't sold), but their advantage was that they were dealing with people who didn't quite understand how the internet worked.  The threat of the bill's passing was that it put the internet squarely in control of the entertainment industry and anyone who has the expendable funds to lawyer up when necessary.  In the interest of catching the baddies it would have severely restricted the best tools the internet has to offer.  Think of it as the Patriot Act of the internet: punishment of the whole for the sake of a few.  Thankfully, the internet fought back and the two bills were put to a quick death (at least for now).

SOPA/PIPA supporters share with Mr. Harrelson (or his PR guy) this tunnel-vision with regards to the internet.  It's a refusal to see it as anything but (a) a money-making machine, or (b) a money-losing machine.

Now, is the internet a money-making machine?  Of course.  Could Mr. Harrelson have used Reddit to successfully promote his film, of which I've already forgotten the title?  Absolutely.  He has sufficient enough street cred, especially after Zombieland, that if he had submitted to a legitimate AMA and not blatantly set it up as an advertisement, he might have cultivated legitimate interest in whatever dumb movie he just made.  A major complaint against SOPA/PIPA was lodged by corporations themselves, whose online business could potentially have been hurt if it were put into law.

What the Harrelson and SOPA incidents--and you can throw in the Anthony Weiner scandal as well--represent is a fundamental misunderstanding by our higher-ups of what the internet is good for.  It has established itself as a force that, though it can be regulated, cannot and should not be wrangled, whether it be by government, or the entertainment industry, or a horny Congressman who wants to have sexy chats.  The entertainment industry tried to lasso it.  Woody Harrelson tried to steer it toward his own interests.  In all these cases, the internet bit back.