Cutting Loose…

I thought that, being a staunch supporter of the 80′s and the whimsy it engendered within me, it might be a good idea to discuss the profusion of remakes of my childhood.  But I also don’t want this medium to be one of ranting and complaining about how gone the good old days are, and unfortunately, that’s what it would turn into if I discussed most remakes from that wondrous time.  MOST, I say, for one is not only holding own a respectable position on the box office numbers, but is worth seeing, whether or not you’ve seen the original.

I am of course, talking about Footloose.  I know, I know.  You’re wondering why me, who rarely gives in to the urge to dance, would like such a film.  Funny enough, this isn’t the first dancing movie to really captivate me.  The original Japanese Shall We Dance is actually in my top five films of all time.  Why?  Like both renditions of Footloose, the films champion a central aspect to Libertarianism that I think any man, of any faith can embrace:  If you enjoy doing something that doesn’t harm others, do it.  Love it.  Practice it.  Craft it.  Hone it.  Do it with loved ones.  Do it every day, for hours on end.  Take a break.  Rinse.  Repeat.  It makes life worth living.  And most of all, don’t take that right from someone else.

So why should you see this film?  Well, let’s look at the two things a remake must succeed at to succeed.  First:  is it a good/relevant/fun/thoughtful/well-crafted film.  Second:  does it capture the spirit of the original without blatantly ripping it off, or changing it to suit commercialism, or altering it because “doing this scene this way would be way cooler.”  Most films need only struggle with the former, but remakes must compete in both leagues.  Adaptations as well, but that’s a whole other post I’ll get to some other day.

Lets talk about the second thing first, just for jollies.  I am a die hard fan of the original. My parents edited a music/dance scenes-only version of Footloose on our old Beta machine, thus sparing me the more mature subject matter in my younger years.  To this day, I still know most of the lyrics to Let’s Hear it For the Boy.  I resent any other film that uses “I Need a Hero” for any reason whatsoever.  Despite being pudgy in every other film he was ever in, when someone says Chris Penn, I can only imagine him as Willard learning to find the beat and dancing about farm equipment.  I knew Kevin Bacon before the seminal trivia game based on his body of work.  To put it simply, I am that stuck-in-the-past asshole they need to please.

It’s all about first impressions – let’s be honest, everyone looks for reasons to discriminate, since it’s easier to write something off than be invested in it.  The new Footloose has a fantastic beginning, paying suitable homage to the dancing feet of the original film, BUT brilliantly using the opening to show a crucial plot element that was only talked about in the original.  ”Show, don’t tell” is at the core of good cinema storytelling, so the fact that this movie in the first five minutes featured a missing piece from the original lets you know it means business.  And mercifully, they used the original Kenny Loggins version of the title song to boot.  Yes, I said boot because the film is in Texas.  Wordsmithing!  And the movie did a fantastic job incorporating aspects of the original, preserving the same structure but updating as needed.  After seeing Bumblebee’s original form literally discarded in the Transformers remake, I love, love, that Ren drives the old bug in this update.  In fact, he fixes it up and brings it back to life – surely we can infer some sort of commentary or film theory analysis on self-reflexiveness.  Or some other scholarly term.  Pretty much everything shines – the nods to the original were sincere and well-placed, and the changes were thought out and relevant to the present day.

Which brings us into the film itself being good on it’s own.  Sometimes remakes and adaptations have those moments that totally leave out the first time viewer, and this movie didn’t go out of it’s way to reference its predecessor.  I feel like it took the high road in that it held onto the elements that were still relevant, and updated the ones that weren’t.  What was a cigarette in the original became a joint.  Walkmans became iPods.  They still drink from a garden hose.  Bomont is still a small town where everyone knows each other.  I could go on and on about the subtle differences between then and now that show the differences between today’s kids and those of the eighties, but I’d rather hone in on an interesting point that surprisingly resonates more now than it did then.  On the shallow end, you could probably watch the film and say, “Religion is too controlling/binding/pointless.”  Not just because I’m a spiritual man, but I don’t believe that was the point of the film.  You could argue it, sure, but you’d be missing something much more poignant, that transcends religion, or faith, and trickles down into pretty much every aspect of our lives.

Here’s my take on it:

In fear and in anger and in shock, a community still reacts very aggressively to a tragedy.  Their solution?  Outlaw those things.  That’s sort of a band-aid without actual treatment, or ointment, or anything.  The fastest way to get someone to do something is to tell them not to do it.  Especially kids.  Does that teach them responsibility?  Accountability?  Thinking about their actions?  No, of course not.  It either creates an irresistible mystique about said foreign object, or it teaches us to blindly ignore it.  Or even hate it.

The one thing I did miss from the original (SPOILER ALERT) was the book burning scene, where our esteemed Reverand sees the fire he kindled within his flock literally ignite before his eyes.  Yeah, it was on the nose and over the top, but it illustrated a fine point.  Not that faith is bad, but that misguided faith is dangerous.  Extremism in any form, on either side, is bad. People need to learn from their mistakes, and not just get told “hey that’s wrong; NO!”  They need explanation.  Understanding.

Lack of understanding breeds intolerance.  We need tolerance, but tolerance really isn’t enough anymore; I think for humanity to function at the rate it’s growing, we need to go one step further, and teach acceptance.

Now, back to show don’t tell:  people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, family situations, social status denominations, and tax brackets dancing together to songs from decades before they were born?

That’s acceptance.

And this movie teaches it, and entertainingly so.  So go see it!

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Four Things

Much like concert masters, there aren’t many writers who can be locked in a room together for thousands of hours and not kill each other. That’s an achievement LoneShark is very proud of. Granted we take food breaks every so often, which helps. And, through the ups, the downs, the knock-down brawls, we’ve learned a thing or four about working together. Here, we present:

4 TEAMWORK PRINCIPLES IN SHARK-SPEAK: A Sensible Method for Not Offing Your Teammates.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: “You talkin’ to me?”

Communicate. And don’t just communicate: communicate early, long before it has become a problem. Even when you know people exceptionally well, it’s not worth assuming that you know what they’re thinking. So listen. Then speak from the heart. Possibly listen some more. Repeat. This works well for relationships too, which might be advice well-needed if you end up locked in a room with two other men for thousands of hours.

THE SECOND PRINCIPLE: “Don’t cross the streams.”

Energy Management. Know the level of the idea you’re backing. If you’re backing it, I’m sure it’s an idea worth considering, but is it an idea worth sinking the project over? Cross the streams at the wrong time and you risk total protonic reversal. Setting egos aside, project-scuttling ideas turn out to be very rare indeed. Don’t treat a minor note like your life depends on it. Save your energy for when it really is an idea that your artistic integrity depends on. Then, spin, palm-heel to the chin and gracefully slam the offending mediocrity to both the ground and unconsciousness.

THE THIRD PRINCIPLE: “We’re putting the band back together”.

Recognize and respect strengths. Every member of your writing team should be someone who’s unique talent you believe in. It should be someone you trust. You are going into battle together. Creatively, know that you aren’t working with Shakespeare-typing monkeys who are getting lucky at the typewriter. Respect that you all got to where you are with a lot of hard work, late nights, calloused finger-tips, heart-break, financial ruin. Kinda like the blues.

THE FOURTH PRINCIPLE: “Be like water.”

No one way has all the answers. Take what works from one place, leave the rest. So far, every script has been different and will damn well tell us that it wants to be written differently. Some stories want a pooled effort only when we plot and when we review, but not when we put fingers to keyboard. Others demand the triumvirate of attentive minds for every second of type time. Real-time, one location thrillers are particularly demanding succubi… So go with the flow and make techniques up as you go. It’s much harder (impossible) to be wrong when there are no rules.

Patrick.

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Patrick Ward-Perkins

The name conjures up grandeur, a man of action, and of words, and one fond
of cheese.  A cheese-lover if you will.  Action-lad.  Story-teller.

For me, Patrick will always be the Duke of Dashdom.  The High-Sultan of
Hyphenating.  The word-joiner.  Noun-linker.

Now I’m not just play-typing here.  Nor am I trying to tear down his
majesty.  Rather, when asked what my topic would be for this first blog
entry, I did the thing most people (particularly those of the indecisive
Gemini-ilk) do when asked to make a choice: you look for a sign.  A sign
from the universe, from God, the great earth-spirit,
whatever-you-wish-to-call it.  Maybe even Deepak.  Being that we had at
the time been working together in true LoneShark fashion, I thought it
would be funny to point out Patrick’s frequent (ab)use of the hyphen.

It had been A Hard Day’s Night, to cross-reference another colourful
English-abuser.  While at the helm (keyboard, to you non-seafaring folk),
Patrick attempted to write, ninja-like, the following:

Cell-phone.
Sun-dress.
Apple-cart.
Sex-vendor.

As if any two adjacent nouns required such adhesive when a proper
adjective was not present to adequately proclaim the latter. I asked him
about this – perhaps it was some cultural nuance I’d missed in the
previous ten years I’d known him.  He didn’t know.  Which is fine.  I’m
still not sure why I will go out of my way to say words like “tortilla”
and “Chile” (the country) with proper accent, even in the most red-neckish
thoughts (“that there tortilla shop over yonder”).

Then, I saw my answer.  I stole the type-device and showed him.  Look-see
up at the top of this blog-entry, and see for yourself.

Patrick himself is a hyphenate!  Decade-long question answered, I felt
compelled to share.  Not that this is supposed to death-rock your world or
anything – nay friends, we’ll keep-save that for later.  I just thought it
would be funny to talk-story about, and over-use the hyphen as if it were
last year’s in-style thing to do.  Cheers!

Your Huckleberry,

Jason

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Movie Posters

If you’re anything like me, you can still get lost in the magic of movie posters. They’ll slow me down when walking to or from my seat in a theater, whether in a multiplex or a surviving single screen house that somehow stood the test of time. The good ones catch your eye and tease you about what story or adventure you can be drawn into next, provided the many people it takes to make a film have done their job well. Perhaps a little vignette plays in your mind’s eye when you stop to gaze upon some cool and maybe even cryptic artwork. The fun part is waiting to see if the film delivers something as enjoyable as your little vignettes. If it’s a teaser poster, your imagination faces a greater challenge: you’ve probably only been given an object or maybe even a foreboding landscape. To cite a recent example, the Super 8 poster did a wonderful job of preparing your mind for what could only be a classic tale of how an extra terrestrial presence will affect endearing small town characters. Of course, it helps to bare the name JJ Abrams on any poster art.

When the guys and I were talking about completely revamping the LoneShark website, we knew we needed something bold to take our web presence to the next level. A way to express how much we love our craft. Then the light bulbs went off – let’s come up with some archetypal genre imagery and put ourselves in what would look like movie posters! If every website has your typical “about us, home, gallery, links” why not just make those page titles more creative, then really go for it with a website that allowed us to fully embrace our love affair with visual storytelling. Oh, the delicious buffet of genre iconography that was now in front of us to choose from. How could we ever narrow down this cinematic menu when there are different color palettes, outfits, and wardrobes to convey themes like Westerns, World War II, Gangsters, 70s cops, Modern Samurais and everything in between? Ultimately we had to take what we wanted and leave the rest like a salad bar to be visited another day. The cherry on top being of course that by choosing this new direction for the website, we’d be inherently breaking the stereotype of writers who usually get left behind the curtains of filmmaking yet are the most important foundation of hollywood. Being seen in our element of imagination seemed more appropriate.

So then what? You can’t just play dress up and take some photos. We had to feel this out, plan the scenarios, choose the right photographer to collaborate with, scout locations, get into character, create the environments.

The whole time we were up to these creative shenanigans I couldn’t help but think about my childhood growing up with an illustrator father who collected movie posters and passed the obsession down to his son. It used to be a treat when the giant portfolio would come out from under the bed (since any collector worth their salt stores ‘em flat as opposed to rolled) and we’d flip through the giant artwork, each one representing a beloved piece of cinema. It was now time to take this vast knowledge and invigorate this very specific website mission. The inspiration flowed hard. The torsos of intrepid heroes anchoring a glorious montage of action. Bad guys giving pursuit. Iconic villains and their hordes of hard-to-kill foes. One of the greatest examples of such movie poster iconography would have to be a piece done for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade by our dear friend and legendary illustrator Drew Struzan. I had this and other now very collectable one sheets on my wall growing up.

You rarely see such exquisitely hand-illustrated posters today, so getting Drew to paint the three of us into enough movie posters would have been a lot to ask. Especially since he’s now retired. Photography was to be our medium, perfectly suitable for the looks we were going for.

After we did the photo shoot, the next stage of fun was designing the comps. The process of taking all of our amazing images shot by the immensely talented Rene Gomez http://rgomezphoto.com  and placing them in various layouts with genre-appropriate stylings and titles. It’s difficult as visual creatives to narrow these down. You just want to save them all and hang them up in a gallery. If you think about it, this is undoubtedly why many films have poster variations that increase in collector value depending on how rare they are. Some people love to collect foreign movie posters because the artwork that represents a film will change depending on the territories a film is released in. We loved the challenge of creating some foreign poster flare which came out in our “Shark Bites” page that we designated as a gateway to LoneShark’s social media platforms.

On the Slate page, we couldn’t help but go for some vintage espionage flare. To us, the word “slate” (an industry term for your stable of movies to be made) sounded like it could be turned into an acronym for some clandestine organization S.L.A.T.E., which of course stands for something… so clandestine we’d be foolish to divulge it. We were thrilled to feature Jason’s epic mustache in those comps. If you find some of the hidden artwork on the website, you’ll see the fun we had pulling from all kinds inspiration from the early days of Bond to the lesser known spy movies full of sexy exploitation and campy machismo. You can just hear the electric guitars twanging away. One of the comps even sported some coloring intended to give the feel of an old VHS tape cover. One that could have been sitting on the shelf of some relic rental store, fading from sun exposure. Our movie geekdom often knows no bounds.

Sadly a great deal of the ancient art of poster design has been forced to yield to the demands of fast turnaround or the blatant face recognition of household name actors who may be the distributor’s only hope of ticket sales on opening weekend. However, with a healthy dose of optimism, things are looking up for the importance of great storytelling and the execution of narrative that is so intrinsic to real movie magic. Lots of recent films have been shifting the trend of name-only box office draw. Posters should be a catalyst of imagination and wonder, not just pretty actor portraits. They are an invitation to allow the filmmakers the privilege of borrowing your mind for a little while, and hopefully making you glad you took the ride.

Story, as well as the poster art that represents it, shall live on.

Jonathan

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In the beginning…

In the beginning, there was the Word.  But it had not been written, much less spoken.  At the start of the third millennia, Jason did gaze upon the empty page, wondering what the Word might be.  Many nights passed, in mirth and jest over violence learned and pretend with Patrick.  And then he too came to gaze upon the blankness within, both in English and in Français.  Other Words were written, wondrous ones that they wove into story after story.  And then, through Bruce Lee, Patrick met Jonathan, and their Words were similarly joined and forged.  Honed and tempered. New Yorked.  And then, one fateful day, they gathered their Words under the written Arizona sun beneath the shadow of the Hollywood sign.  Suddenly the page was not blank.  Suddenly there was the Word.  Three smiles in hand and ales toasted high, at last it was spoken:

LoneShark.

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