Day 2 of 30 - Your favorite movie

Whenever anyone asks what my favorite movie of all time is, I always answer "Little Shop of Horrors."

I first saw that movie when I was thirteen, and it has just about everything a nerdy thirteen-year-old boy would want. The nerdy guy gets the girl. It has chopping up and singing. It has a gloriously insane Steve Martin. And did I mention the nerdy guy gets the girl?

Many times when I watch movies, I nitpick. I would have done this differently. I would have changed this camera angle or interpreted a character differently or used different music. The exact opposite happened when I saw "Little Shop of Horrors" for the first time. I wouldn't change a thing. Part of (maybe a lot of) that is just being a thirteen-year-old, I know, but I haven't had the same complete syncronicity with a film before or since (maybe with the possible exception of "The Muppet Movie").

Since then, I have really impressed with other films ("Vertigo" is a real stand-out) but I approach them as an adult. I don't completely lose myself over to them the way I did when I was younger.

For me "Little Shop of Horrors" is a great synthesis of stylized performances, set design, and musical numbers. It is a singular vision of one of my favorite stories - the Faustian legend.

Plus it has this song:

Missed it by this much...

Somehow thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to read Frank Darabont's initial draft for the fourth Indiana Jones move - something he called Indiana Jones and the City of the Gods. And you know what? It is really good. Basically the same story as the final film, but it addresses my complaints about the film - there is no bad dialogue and the movie doesn't lose focus of that fact that Indiana Jones is the main character.

Plus (and this is a big plus for me) it gets the Indiana Jones character right (which the final film only sort of does). Because despite the fact that he gets to make out with beautiful women and crack a whip, deep down, Indiana Jones is a nerd. Seriously, can you imagine Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger growling at a bad guy, "It belongs in a museum!" No. Because only nerdy nerd nerds say stuff like that. Only nerdy nerd nerds care this much. Just like only nerdy nerd nerds download early rejected drafts of a film screenplay and blog about it.

Yes, I am aware that George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg don't want this available to the public. No, I am not quite sure how I got it and, no, it is not on my computer anymore so I can't email you a copy, so all of you lawyers just put down your cease and desist letters and go back to suing each other. I justified this to myself because I already paid my $10 to Spielberg and Lucas and did not think I got anywhere near $10 worth of entertainment. Let me read this script and we'll call it even.

I did not like Indiana Jones 4 for a number of reasons, but mainly because it epitomizes the type of movie I hate more than anything else - the half-assed movie.

I love a lot of movies, including some really bad ones. Much to my wife's chagrin, I own (and occasionally sing along with) Xanadu. One of my favorite movies of all time is Little Shop of Horrors (the musical version). I am also a big big fan/champion of Freaked, the movie once described my dad as, "What's the point of that?"

In case you haven't guessed, none of these are what you would call Academy Award winning material.

One thing about all of those films is that, while some people may call them bad, no one can say they are inconsistent. I will take consistently bad over good in places, sort of good in places, and bad in places.

One of the films I dislike the most for this very reason is Cradle Will Rock. The film suddenly become so busy saying BIG IMPORTANT THINGS about THE POWER OF ART that is shirks the subplot of Bill Murray and Joan Cusak - two frightened and damaged people who find a moment of connection. That is the real story of the film - not the main story about the big musical for the masses and yadda yadda. The fact that the filmmakers could get the moments between these two people so subtle and right and then surround it with bombastic theater people waving their arms and clamoring for attention is unforgivable. I would rather the movie be out-and-out bad than something like that.

If you are going to make a movie - make a consistant movie. Don't give me something namby pamby, make it all good or, if you can't do that, make it all bad and then some. I am sure some day some guy will write a blog entry about it and you can die satisfied.

Ok, enough of the ranty post. Tomorrow, I'll try for the funny again.