My son wants to be involved in film making and I’ve been
trying to educate him as best I can about story craft and introducing him to
the great movies. He’s now running the
film club at his school and recently introduced me to one of the most
remarkable movies I’ve ever seen - ”Birdemic” by James Nyugen.
(My son would love it if you stopped by and visited his film
blog and said hello.)
http://www.filmanticmanny.blogspot.com/
http://www.filmanticmanny.blogspot.com/
Nyugen made Birdemic for about $10,000 from his own pocket,
shot in his spare time on weekends and evenings over a period of several
months. What to say about
“Birdemic”? Its an apocalyptic movie
inspired by Alfred Hitchcocks’s “The
Birds”, in which modern Los Angeles
is attacked by birds who look like they’re trying hard to be eagles in an old
Atari game. They hover in a way which is
oddly hallucinogenic and poop bombs and vomit toxic yellow . . .stuff.
Boy, is it bad.
I’ve seen bad movies, and generally they’re just formulaic
and boring. I was spell bound by
Birdemic, breathless with admiration, aghast at the sheer density, variety and
audacity of crap. It was wonderful the
way eating lard from a can with a spoon might be wonderful. Imagine every rule of story craft being
broken, not by brilliance but by cheerful and innocent ignorance. This was a man who had no business making a
movie, should have been kept away from them by a restraining order,
nevertheless filming his little ol’ heart out, swinging for the high fences the
way that Babe Ruth once would swing so hard at pitches if he missed the ball he’d spin himself in a
tangle and fall in the dust. One has to
admire it. It is mediocrity on such a
scale as to acquire a kind of grandeur.
There was a time when science fiction was exclusively the
fiction of pulp magazines with lurid covers of maidens in peril wearing brass
brasseries and little else. Ray Bradbury
complained that whenever he told people he was a writer people would light up
with respect. When he said he wrote
science fiction that respect quickly evaporated. This is an experience erotic fiction writers
know very well, if we even try to tell people what we write. I recently read, or attempted to read, “Fifty
Shades of Grey”, arguably the most successful novel of all time. I won’t go into its faults as Erica Jong does
in her article “Fifty Shades of Arrgh!”
E L James is not a novelist, wasn’t trying to write a novel, and no
illusions about herself. She was a
“Twilight” fan and was writing fan fiction that quickly picked up a huge online
following. When she moved her fiction
from one web site to another a multitude of readers followed her and publishers
took notice. Since then the multitudes
have only growned, and the rest of us who’ve been writing this stuff for years
have only groaned as well. I made it as
far as page 100 and set it aside and picked up Lisabet’s “Bangkok Noir” which I
enjoyed much more, all the more for knowing the author. Read locally I say. But inside I’m still cheering for E L
James. She may be the Moses who brings
the rest of us into the mainstream so much better than we can.
People who aren’t writers often think the moment a writer
loses his/her literary cherry is when they get that first contract. Not so, I say. For me that moment was long ago when I was
reading a story in a magazine that was just awful and thought “I could write
better stuff than this crap – and this guy’s published! . . . hey . . .”
And I just hope somewhere out there someone is reading my
stuff and thinking the very same thing.
SALIERI: “. . . Now
I go to become a ghost myself. I will
stand in the shadows when you come here to this earth in your turns. And when you feel the dreadful bite of your
failures – and hear the taunting of unachievable, uncaring God – I will whisper
my name to you: “Salieri: Patron Saint
of Mediocrities!” And in the depth of your downcastness you can pray to
me. And I will forgive you. Vi saluto.
“Mediocrities everywhere – now and to come – I absolve you
all. Amen!”
“Amadeus” by
Peter Shaffer
Poor Salieri. Nothing is worse than reaching success only to find someone moved the goal a few light years beyond your reach.
ReplyDeleteBut I suppose it depends on your definition of success.
It sounds to me like "Birdemic" is far beyond mediocre. Mediocre means boring and unremarkable. This film sounds more like "Plan 9 from Outer Space".
ReplyDeleteThere's something sublime about truly horrible art.
I don't think Fifty Shades falls into that category, however.
A fascinating post, Garce. I hadn't heard of "Birdemic." Years ago, one of my sisters and some of her friends in high school made a short film version of Frankenstein. (My sister played Justine, who is unjustly hanged for the murder of Victor Frankenstein's youngest brother, which was actually done by the monster.) I wouldn't say high school movies are spectacularly horrible, in most cases, but the epic under discussion was groan-worthy.
ReplyDelete