Matt Zoller Seitz’s annotated prologue to The Royal Tenenbaums—part of his series of video essays on Wes Anderson for the Museum of the Moving Image.
A quick plug if you don’t mind:
I operate two other tumblrs that might be of interest to you. One of them is All Teal Everything, a ’90s sports nostalgia machine. If you haven’t been in a while, give it a look.
The other, Celebrity Pallbearers, is a bit more conceptual—a comment on a comment of our culture blah blah. That one’s new, and I need all of the help I can get with submissions.
Like, link, reblog, submit, follow as you see fit.
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Notes on a Lost Art: Sum 41- “Fatlip”
1. It’s no surprise that, as inescapable as this song was in 2001, no one talks about it now. “Fatlip” is catchy but also sort of disposable in its genre-hopping and pop culture references. Pop-rock songs like it, beginning with maybe Blessid Union of Souls and continuing today through Hot Chelle Rae, come up once a year or so*, and they’re dependent upon allusions that are dated the second the songs are recorded. But good for them I guess. No one was retiring Sum 41’s jerseys in the first place, so why not build castles out of sand?
2. A lot of people have tried the “filmed party” video before, but this is my best example of one that works. Director Marc Klasfeld is either: the most hands-on, meticulous director this side of Stanley Kubrick, controlling every detail of the video to make it look spontaneous, or he is a genuinely spontaneous director who let this moment happen. There’s really no in between. Judging from the fact that the clip’s extras are over their ideal weight and wearing branded t-shirts, I would guess he captured the ramshackle flow of a real party. (I got that sense from the “Country Grammar” video too, which he also directed.) While the band is engaging in the video, the extras make it look like a suburban adolescent Amarcord.
3. Everyone involved in the video seems as if he’s having so much fun. Take the moment at 2:00, for example. It’s just one person spinning another person as fast he can. When’s the last time you did that? It’s such a simple, child-like thing that it’s almost impossible to fake. The angry girl at 2:44 is interesting too.
4. Like most other people who care too much about cinema, I worked at a movie theater in high school. I ushered there with a guy named Brandon, who acted way older than seventeen and was as punk as anyone else I’ve ever known. Since he huffed the Gum-Off, spit into the nacho cheese, and insulted customers, I figured being his friend would be a smarter idea than being his enemy. Most other people at the culturally-diverse AMC Galleria 8 didn’t like him because they interpreted his shaved head, as well as the iron cross on his off-day jean-jacket, as racist. Plus, you know, he was a total asshole. But if I have to spend seven hours a day mopping Fanta with someone, I might as well get him to like me.
The bowtie of my uniform was a little too straight for Brandon to recognize me as a fellow punk, but I knew enough to ask him the right questions and keep him talking. (“Dude, you haven’t said much about west coast stuff. Do you prefer the Dez version of Black Flag or the Rollins version?”) Anyway, Brandon had dedicated his young life, from his fashion to his anarchic weltanschauung, to the strictures of the punk rock lifestyle, and, all of a sudden in 2001, this rash of power-pop bands—Sum 41, New Found Glory, mxpx—called themselves punk. You can imagine how infuriating this development was for him. Most of our conversations from then on were diatribes about how un-punk Sum 41 was. And by diatribe, I mean Brandon screaming, “They’re from Canada!”
So, inevitably, some teenaged girl would be wearing a pink t-shirt that read “PUNK” in rhinestones, and she would ask what screen Legally Blonde was on. Brandon would ignore the question and ask, “What kind of punk bands do you like?” She would answer with Sum 41, and he would fire back, “I didn’t ask you what gay* bands you like, I asked you what punk bands you like.” The conversation escalated from there. If you’ve invested a lot into something esoteric, then it upsets you when other people co-opt it. I understand that.
However, I don’t think Brandon was frustrated that these girls self-identified as punk—because what is “punk” if not a restless spirit any adolescent can relate to? What frustrated him was that they created their punk selves with such little effort. If he went to shows every night and drove a safety pin through his ear to be called punk, and they could just wear a necktie as a belt, then what did that say about the way of life he had chosen? Even if he didn’t want to admit it, “Fatlip” made his life a little less meaningful. It forced him to reach the same conclusion that all young punks—and in some way, all teenagers—do: This is all a worthless construction. Punk was more to him than a shirt, but, for the first time, those girls forced him to look at it as just a shirt.
I don’t remember our last conversation. He’s one of these people who, for all intents and purposes, only exists in my memory now. But I’m sure whatever he said was full of righteous anger. It makes sense, cosmically, that he was off on my last day. I like to imagine he was doing something rebellious, wandering around some dangerous place, armed with his bald head and boots. Brandon might have acted older than seventeen, but he was as naive as the rest of us. And probably just as lost.
*- Of course I have a playlist of these types of songs. I’m just waiting on a catchy name for the subgenre. Don’t kid yourself.
*- Kids: In 2001, teenagers still used “gay” as an abstract pejorative. Language is arbitrary, but it’s good that we moved on from this.
It’s that time of year again:
Redacted Breeze: Summer Songs with neither “Summer” nor “Sun” in the Title
I guess you could play this at a party if you wanted to, but I didn’t necessarily go for high-energy songs. While it does build up to some energy, I wanted the majority of the mix to feel a little more sunburnt and water-logged, especially on what would be side B. The whole thing is probably more appropriate for a summer night. There are exceptions, of course, but I was reaching for songs that, for lack of a better description, don’t really go anywhere. Most of the songs establish a groove and just stay there, which is what I wanted. Because summer is sort of lost time. Anyway, I put it together with a 5-second crossfade—and the sequencing took me a long time, though I can’t really articulate the logic behind it—but feel free to do whatever you want with it.
"Riff Raff's Got a Record Deal: Making Sense of the Most Viral Human Being in Music"- David Shapiro- Gawker
“But I realized, after finally meeting him and sitting in his presence, that Riff Raff is a product of Gatsbyesque self-invention—a dude who decided that Riff Raff was who he wanted to be and became it, and feels some combination of disdain and shame about the circumstances in his life that he couldn’t control that led up to him becoming Riff Raff. He’s like a superhero. Almost every autobiographical detail he gave me, even down to something as instantly discernable as his height, was a lie. Or a joke. Or both.”
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![THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIMEJerry MaguireAt a theater that no longer exists, I took in Jerry Maguire as the second entry of a Thanksgiving break double feature. (I wish I could remember what the first movie was…I can be so forgetful sometimes…) I saw it with my ne’er-do-well friend James, who prodded me into sneaking in since we were too young to buy tickets.And I loved what I saw enough to download all the humanheadweighs8lbs.wavs that the AOL Entertainment Channel had. My Gateway was customized for months. Looking back on the film today, it’s still good—in its own self-serving, over-long way—but it isn’t the revelation it was to me then. Now I only seek out movies that respect their audience and are made with adults in mind, but I can’t underestimate the impact of experiencing a picture like that at a younger age. In 1996, a breakout year for independents, Jerry Maguire was the only traditional studio film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and I was led to believe it was the best that the system had to offer. Now I see it for what it is: a film slightly more accessible than Shine. (And with way more Wayne Fontes cameos.)STARS/PERFORMANCES - Actors Who Are Unquestionably Tied to the Decade- TOM CRUISE [+10]Cameron Crowe’s third film as director starts with The Who’s “Magic Bus,” one of two Who songs in the first seven minutes*. TOM CRUISE narrates a voiceover that matches the intensity of the song, and he explains that his titular character is a big shot sports agent at a big shot firm with big shot clients. Most of these clients are famous athletes (and Ki-Jana Carter) who play themselves [+3].But the movie also does that weird thing in which famous athletes are playing famous athletes—but not necessarily themselves. For example, real-life Brent Barry, winner of the worst dunk contest ever, tells a kid that he is, in fact, “Steve Basketball” or whatever, but that he can’t sign the kid’s card because it’s not the brand he endorses. We’re supposed to see that and decry the greed of the modern sports world, but I couldn’t stop thinking about why Brent Barry wasn’t playing himself. Or, if he didn’t need the real Brent Barry, why didn’t Cameron Crowe just hire an actor? He loves doing this. Later on, he casts Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and Glenn Frey in distracting bit parts. Because why hire a struggling actor who needs the work and exposure when you can give The Eagles more money?Anyway, far be it for me to criticize a writer I actually admire—I named my site after a line of his—but Crowe’s opening voiceover is obvious enough to include the line, “What had I become? Was I just a shark in a suit?” [+2] So clearly, this is not a cinematic universe in which it’s okay to be a big shot agent.I am from AOL’s TOS Department. Please confirm your account by typing your user name and password.- Other Notable Actors- Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., Renee Zellweger, Bonnie Hunt, Jonathan Lipnicki, Jay Mohr, Jerry O’Connell, Donal Logue, Beau Bridges [+15]
So Jerry has a crisis of conscience and spends all night in one of his vapid hotel rooms—a “no-smoking” one [+1]—typing out a heartfelt mission statement on his huge laptop [+1]. Since CopyMax [+1] is open late, every worker at his agency gets a copy of this scathing memo that accuses them of soulless money-grabbing. Unsurprisingly, the higher-ups don’t like this, and they get his own protege to fire him. While Jerry makes a valiant effort to save powerhouse clients like Rick Mirer and Katarina Witt, he ends up striking out on his own with just one loyal employee, Renee Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd, and one loud client, a 5’10” receiver named Rod Tidwell [+1]. As Tidwell, Cuba Gooding, Jr. steals the movie as much as you remember, but his and TOM CRUISE’s performances are so big that they’re almost distracting. In some scenes, such as the “help me help you” locker room bit, they are upstaging each other in such a competitive way that the game-within-the-game almost becomes more interesting than the film itself. Had Crowe possessed the foresight to cast Jamie Foxx as one of Tidwell’s teammates, the camera would have exploded from the overload of self-important showmanship.Cuba is pictured here with his motivation for Chill Factor.At the same time Jerry is trying to repair his professional life, he’s embarking on a relationship with his colleague that makes him “feel like Clarence Thomas” [+1]. Their budding romance is complicated by: her adorable young son [+3], her disapproving sister, and the bizarre structure of the movie. They don’t actually pursue each other until an hour and fifteen minutes in, then they kind of break up twenty minutes later, until they get married in the very next scene? What saves it is that Zellweger nails the balance between the guarded protectiveness of a young mother and the restless whimsy of a woman in her mid-twenties. The tentative way that she gets involved with Jerry—combined with how hard she falls for him—really rang true for me. Since I haven’t been very funny so far, what if I were to tell you that Jonathan Lipnicki looks like this now?And he keeps in touch with the little girl from Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire! ’90s bros sticking together! Crazzzy!TECHNOLOGY/CULTURAL RELICS- Could the Plot Reasonably Occur with Current Technology?Yes [-10], but the life of a sports agent probably no longer depends as heavily upon beepers, fax machines, and answering machines [+3]. It is across these devices (and flip-phones [+1]) that Jerry learns Rod will have to play out his present deal—at great risk of injury—before he can secure a (still underwhelming by current standards [+1]) contract that would take them both out of a giant hole. Which leads us to a climactic Monday Night Football game, complete with old ’90s uniforms [+1]. Rod gets hurt, then is okay, then calls his family’s see-through telephone [+1] to tell them he loves them, then inspires Jerry to say “you complete me” to Dorothy. It’s all good. Show me the money.- Hacking/ComputersAs big shot as he is, Jerry doesn’t have any hacking skills.- Other Technological NotesI haven’t mentioned the Sega, Game Boy, cassettes, or off-white computer monitors [+4].FASHIONHalf-shirts, snapbacks, pleats, baggy sweaters, denim on denim, caricature t-shirts, and hair parted down the middle [+7]. On TOM CRUISE alone, we get double-breasted suits, olive-colored suits, and dad jeans [+3].Time for a Who song. I wish I knew as much about anything as Cameron Crowe does about the redemption of self-centered White guys.’90s FILM CONVENTIONS “You Know This Is Going to Change Everything.” “Promise?” [+1]Celebrity Cameos [+1]Calling Any Black Person “Hootie” [+1]Cliched DVD Chapter Titles (“Betrayed by Team Cushman”, “A Man of His Word”) [+5]Female Reporters in Locker Rooms Being a Thing [+5]Poster Is Just a Huge Close-Up of the Star’s Face [+5]Catch Phrase [+5]Traveling Montage [+5] (Bonus +1 for Character Playing with a Symbolic Toy Plane)All Black People Have Huge Families That Get Together at Family Gatherings [+5]OTHERFor the first part of the movie, Jerry is engaged to Kelly Preston’s Avery Bishop, and fond any thirteen-year-old was of her. She’s some kind of mountain climber important enough to be on a poster in Jerry’s office. She is presumably a client of his, if mountain climbers are important enough to have big shot agents. But then, when she breaks up with him, she’s working for the NFL Draft in some capacity? And later on, she seems to just be the hanger-on of some other person in the press box. It’s unclear who she is or what her job is.Jerry Maguire ends up on all kinds of “best sports movies ever” lists, but Cameron Crowe didn’t shoot any of the football footage. It was all second unit. Just seems kind of cheap to me that it would be so highly regarded as a sports movie when its own director didn’t think the sports material was important enough to shoot himself.Speaking of shooting, just after Janusz Kaminski’s opening credit as director of photography, there’s an amazing shot of the sun shining as it’s raining unlike any other I’ve ever seen. Nice.I already criticized the film’s structural problems, but Bill Simmons also has an entertaining assault on its implausible third act timeline. Jerry Maguire is based, in part, on a real-life agent named Leigh Steinberg. As this recent Sports Illustrated article attests, he’s…not doing so well.+1FINAL TALLY I can make fun of this movie all I want, but you and I both know that it works. It’s great. You can judge movies, especially splashy studio movies, by the strength of their supporting performances, and every single one of the performances in this film—except for Glenn Frey’s—contributes to its perfect mixture of comedy and tragedy. Even if it only scored 84 points, Jerry Maguire is a movie worth watching again.*- Although I’m sure Crowe edits in units of Who songs, not minutes or hours.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m473g0xnfh1qb6l8oo1_500.jpg)
THE QUEST FOR THE MOST ’90s FILM OF ALL TIME
Jerry Maguire
At a theater that no longer exists, I took in Jerry Maguire as the second entry of a Thanksgiving break double feature. (I wish I could remember what the first movie was…I can be so forgetful sometimes…) I saw it with my ne’er-do-well friend James, who prodded me into sneaking in since we were too young to buy tickets.
And I loved what I saw enough to download all the humanheadweighs8lbs.wavs that the AOL Entertainment Channel had. My Gateway was customized for months. Looking back on the film today, it’s still good—in its own self-serving, over-long way—but it isn’t the revelation it was to me then. Now I only seek out movies that respect their audience and are made with adults in mind, but I can’t underestimate the impact of experiencing a picture like that at a younger age. In 1996, a breakout year for independents, Jerry Maguire was the only traditional studio film nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, and I was led to believe it was the best that the system had to offer. Now I see it for what it is: a film slightly more accessible than Shine. (And with way more Wayne Fontes cameos.)
STARS/PERFORMANCES
- Actors Who Are Unquestionably Tied to the Decade- TOM CRUISE [+10]
Cameron Crowe’s third film as director starts with The Who’s “Magic Bus,” one of two Who songs in the first seven minutes*. TOM CRUISE narrates a voiceover that matches the intensity of the song, and he explains that his titular character is a big shot sports agent at a big shot firm with big shot clients. Most of these clients are famous athletes (and Ki-Jana Carter) who play themselves [+3].
But the movie also does that weird thing in which famous athletes are playing famous athletes—but not necessarily themselves. For example, real-life Brent Barry, winner of the worst dunk contest ever, tells a kid that he is, in fact, “Steve Basketball” or whatever, but that he can’t sign the kid’s card because it’s not the brand he endorses. We’re supposed to see that and decry the greed of the modern sports world, but I couldn’t stop thinking about why Brent Barry wasn’t playing himself. Or, if he didn’t need the real Brent Barry, why didn’t Cameron Crowe just hire an actor? He loves doing this. Later on, he casts Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner and Glenn Frey in distracting bit parts. Because why hire a struggling actor who needs the work and exposure when you can give The Eagles more money?
Anyway, far be it for me to criticize a writer I actually admire—I named my site after a line of his—but Crowe’s opening voiceover is obvious enough to include the line, “What had I become? Was I just a shark in a suit?” [+2] So clearly, this is not a cinematic universe in which it’s okay to be a big shot agent.
I am from AOL’s TOS Department. Please confirm your account by typing your user name and password.
- Other Notable Actors- Academy Award Winner Cuba Gooding, Jr., Renee Zellweger, Bonnie Hunt, Jonathan Lipnicki, Jay Mohr, Jerry O’Connell, Donal Logue, Beau Bridges [+15]
So Jerry has a crisis of conscience and spends all night in one of his vapid hotel rooms—a “no-smoking” one [+1]—typing out a heartfelt mission statement on his huge laptop [+1]. Since CopyMax [+1] is open late, every worker at his agency gets a copy of this scathing memo that accuses them of soulless money-grabbing. Unsurprisingly, the higher-ups don’t like this, and they get his own protege to fire him. While Jerry makes a valiant effort to save powerhouse clients like Rick Mirer and Katarina Witt, he ends up striking out on his own with just one loyal employee, Renee Zellweger’s Dorothy Boyd, and one loud client, a 5’10” receiver named Rod Tidwell [+1].
As Tidwell, Cuba Gooding, Jr. steals the movie as much as you remember, but his and TOM CRUISE’s performances are so big that they’re almost distracting. In some scenes, such as the “help me help you” locker room bit, they are upstaging each other in such a competitive way that the game-within-the-game almost becomes more interesting than the film itself. Had Crowe possessed the foresight to cast Jamie Foxx as one of Tidwell’s teammates, the camera would have exploded from the overload of self-important showmanship.
Cuba is pictured here with his motivation for Chill Factor.
At the same time Jerry is trying to repair his professional life, he’s embarking on a relationship with his colleague that makes him “feel like Clarence Thomas” [+1]. Their budding romance is complicated by: her adorable young son [+3], her disapproving sister, and the bizarre structure of the movie. They don’t actually pursue each other until an hour and fifteen minutes in, then they kind of break up twenty minutes later, until they get married in the very next scene? What saves it is that Zellweger nails the balance between the guarded protectiveness of a young mother and the restless whimsy of a woman in her mid-twenties. The tentative way that she gets involved with Jerry—combined with how hard she falls for him—really rang true for me. Since I haven’t been very funny so far, what if I were to tell you that Jonathan Lipnicki looks like this now?
And he keeps in touch with the little girl from Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire! ’90s bros sticking together! Crazzzy!
TECHNOLOGY/CULTURAL RELICS
- Could the Plot Reasonably Occur with Current Technology?
Yes [-10], but the life of a sports agent probably no longer depends as heavily upon beepers, fax machines, and answering machines [+3]. It is across these devices (and flip-phones [+1]) that Jerry learns Rod will have to play out his present deal—at great risk of injury—before he can secure a (still underwhelming by current standards [+1]) contract that would take them both out of a giant hole. Which leads us to a climactic Monday Night Football game, complete with old ’90s uniforms [+1]. Rod gets hurt, then is okay, then calls his family’s see-through telephone [+1] to tell them he loves them, then inspires Jerry to say “you complete me” to Dorothy. It’s all good. Show me the money.
- Hacking/Computers
As big shot as he is, Jerry doesn’t have any hacking skills.
- Other Technological Notes
I haven’t mentioned the Sega, Game Boy, cassettes, or off-white computer monitors [+4].
FASHION
Half-shirts, snapbacks, pleats, baggy sweaters, denim on denim, caricature t-shirts, and hair parted down the middle [+7]. On TOM CRUISE alone, we get double-breasted suits, olive-colored suits, and dad jeans [+3].
Time for a Who song. I wish I knew as much about anything as Cameron Crowe does about the redemption of self-centered White guys.
’90s FILM CONVENTIONS
“You Know This Is Going to Change Everything.” “Promise?” [+1]
Celebrity Cameos [+1]
Calling Any Black Person “Hootie” [+1]
Cliched DVD Chapter Titles (“Betrayed by Team Cushman”, “A Man of His Word”) [+5]
Female Reporters in Locker Rooms Being a Thing [+5]
Poster Is Just a Huge Close-Up of the Star’s Face [+5]
Catch Phrase [+5]
Traveling Montage [+5] (Bonus +1 for Character Playing with a Symbolic Toy Plane)
All Black People Have Huge Families That Get Together at Family Gatherings [+5]
OTHER
For the first part of the movie, Jerry is engaged to Kelly Preston’s Avery Bishop, and fond any thirteen-year-old was of her. She’s some kind of mountain climber important enough to be on a poster in Jerry’s office. She is presumably a client of his, if mountain climbers are important enough to have big shot agents. But then, when she breaks up with him, she’s working for the NFL Draft in some capacity? And later on, she seems to just be the hanger-on of some other person in the press box. It’s unclear who she is or what her job is.
Jerry Maguire ends up on all kinds of “best sports movies ever” lists, but Cameron Crowe didn’t shoot any of the football footage. It was all second unit. Just seems kind of cheap to me that it would be so highly regarded as a sports movie when its own director didn’t think the sports material was important enough to shoot himself.
Speaking of shooting, just after Janusz Kaminski’s opening credit as director of photography, there’s an amazing shot of the sun shining as it’s raining unlike any other I’ve ever seen. Nice.
I already criticized the film’s structural problems, but Bill Simmons also has an entertaining assault on its implausible third act timeline.
Jerry Maguire is based, in part, on a real-life agent named Leigh Steinberg. As this recent Sports Illustrated article attests, he’s…not doing so well.
+1
FINAL TALLY
I can make fun of this movie all I want, but you and I both know that it works. It’s great. You can judge movies, especially splashy studio movies, by the strength of their supporting performances, and every single one of the performances in this film—except for Glenn Frey’s—contributes to its perfect mixture of comedy and tragedy. Even if it only scored 84 points, Jerry Maguire is a movie worth watching again.
*- Although I’m sure Crowe edits in units of Who songs, not minutes or hours.
Killer Mike- “Reagan”
from his album R.A.P. Music
I don’t remember the last time I literally gasped at a song, but I did on the last line of “Reagan”.
(Source: Spotify)
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Teaser: The Master - Oct 12
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Laura Dern.
(Source: bobbyfinger)
"SNL Cast Timeline"- cabletv.com
(I’m mostly including this exhaustive infographic—so exhaustive that it looked ugly when embedded—to come back and use it for my own research purposes. But enjoy.)
"Refresh: The Lonely Futurism of TLC's Fanmail"- Lindsay Zoladz- Pitchfork
“In 1999, I spent some time in front of a computer teaching myself HTML and Photoshop, and I would visit strangers’ personal websites to get ideas for new designs. These were the days when most websites had hit counters to measure their traffic, and I have a distinct memory from around this time of stumbling upon a site that promised to post the name of their 100,000th visitor. The counter was only about 50 hits shy, and somehow there was something exciting to me about acquiring this bit of micro-fame. So I refreshed. And refreshed and refreshed and refreshed. And then the counter said 100,000 and I took a screenshot of it and emailed it with my name to the person who ran the site. I had achieved what I’d set out to achieve. So why didn’t it feel that way?
In the 10 years since Left Eye’s death, we all got to be a little famous. The idea of ‘fanmail’— even the very word— feels quaint and outdated. The channels have opened up so that we all send it and— more importantly— receive it on a daily basis in some form, be it retweets or reblogs or likes. The fact that I took a screenshot of a hit counter just so I could see my name on someone’s website is now deeply embarrassing to me, because how can you even imagine a time when it was a thrilling novelty to see your name on the internet? One thing that even the all-knowing Vic-E could not predict is the democratization of celebrity. Which means fame now feels that much more attainable, but the catch is that we finally get to know all about that alone-in-a-crowded-room feeling that famous people have been singing about for years.”
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