The Aisle Seat Blog

Today I learned what it truly means when something goes viral.

My movie reviews are protected by a service called Copyscape, which monitors plagiarism. Despite the large banner at the top of each review that reads Protected by Copyscape – Do Not Copy, people occasionally lift my words. (Plagiarists are apparently none too observant.) A Copyscape notification let me know that a woman named Michele Schalin, who writes for a website called The Movie Junkies, had pilfered part of my review of The Hunger Games. My usual response in a case like this is to email the offender and respectfully ask that they remove my copyrighted material from their website. Usually that works. I sent Ms. Schalin just such an email. Then I decided to scan her site a little more closely. I found that sections of my reviews of 21 Jump Street, The Descendants, Safe House, and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo were also incorporated into her own “reviews.” My review of Bridesmaids was printed almost entirely intact.

It was then that I logged onto Twitter and wrote: “Hey @themoviejunkies: How come I keep finding examples of my work plagiarized on your website?” In addition to my own work being cribbed, I also found that almost every “review” Ms. Schalin had “written” was stolen from somewhere. I notified several of my colleagues – including MaryAnn Johanson, William Goss, and Eric Snider – that they, too, were victims of theft. They began tweeting about the situation as well. In the meantime, our tweets were being re-tweeted and commented upon by others. Within an hour, multiple people were publicly calling out Ms. Schalin and demanding an explanation. It was clear that once she logged on for the day, a deluge of bad PR would be waiting for her.

The tweet-rage began to grow. People passed the tweets along to their own followers. I had my @ replies (i.e. messages from other Twitter users) open, and they were rolling in faster than I could keep up with them. I’d get them in groups of 3 or 4; no sooner would a read a batch than another would appear. There were suggestions on dealing with plagiarists, and reporting them to their host servers. There were cries for me to call an attorney. Some were simply expressions of support for me  and/or outrage toward her. My email inbox began filling up too. This thing had touched a nerve.

A short time later, I went back to take screencaps of the work plagiarized on The Movie Junkies website. I noticed that Schalin had altered her Hunger Games “review.” She’d obviously received my initial message. However, she merely reworded what I wrote. The sentiment was still exactly the same. In my review, I wrote: “The film doesn’t shy away from the underlying themes in Collins’ novel: that young people have untapped potential for violence; that “reality” TV shows require manufactured drama; that death and destruction are marketable entertainment commodities.” Schalin had changed it on her page to read: “The basic themes of the stories are still there; anyone, including teens, have the potential for violence in the right situation and our popular reality shows are not all “reality” at all, there is always some drama added for higher ratings.” No longer a direct lift, but still plagiarism. And it was clear that she was panicking.

Then it got really interesting. The flood of tweets had been noticed by two separate bloggers, both of whom wrote detailed articles about the situation (which we shall now refer to as Junkie-gate). Those postings put Michele Schalin’s actions into an even brighter spotlight. Readers were scanning her website and posting more examples of plagiarism onto the blogs. They were logging onto the Movie Junkies website and leaving comments condemning her for theft of intellectual property. The Movie Junkies Facebook page was being plastered with similar comments. Ms. Schalin was apparently online while all this was taking place, because those comments would not-so-mysteriously disappear moments later. The undeterred readers would simply post them again.

In an apparent effort to cover her own ass make amends, Ms. Schalin sent me an email “apology.” Here is the text of that message:

I am very sorry. It seems some of my views that I passed onto to one of my staff to post on the site have used other sources that should not have been included. I should have looked more carefully and we do so in the future. I apologize for this error. 

Of course, I knew immediately it was bullshit, and not just because that second sentence is utterly incoherent. For starters, stealing someone else’s work isn’t an “error.” Second, a staff? Really?! If Ms. Schalin is to be believed, she expressed her views on these movies to a staff person, who then went out and stole somebody else’s words for her. I wasn’t buying it, and I told her so, politely but firmly. I added that rewording my thoughts was still plagiarism. She replied again, promising to take down anything I found on her website. I’ve been told by colleagues that same lame-ass apology was issued to them as well.

Meanwhile, the tweets and Facebook postings continued to come in fast and furious, over six hours later.

As of 6:30 PM, The Movie Junkies was a shell of its former self. The vast majority of its reviews had been taken offline. Only a few remained – including the reworded Hunger Games, 21 Jump Street, and Girl with the Dragon Tattoo “reviews.” The Movie Junkies website had comments disallowed, as had their Facebook page. Ms. Schalin was obviously doing everything possible to salvage whatever was left of her damaged reputation.

Sadly, this was not a rare occurrence. I get plagiarized at least 3-4 times per year. (The most recent episode before Junkie-gate was a mere two weeks ago.) I don’t think this happens because I’m a brilliant, super-amazing writer. No, I think it happens because I’m an easy target. There are lots of critics like me online. We run our sites and have our faithful readers, yet we’re not “names.” It’s tough to steal from, say, Roger Ebert, because millions of people read his reviews and you’d get busted pretty quickly. But steal from Mike McGranaghan and…well, that’s a whole other deal. My website, The Aisle Seat, is small and independently run. I have no corporate backers. I’m not owned by a media conglomerate. Nothing against sites that are (many of them are great and employ extremely talented critics), but I intentionally chose to be “indie” because it gives me complete control over the form and content of my own work. By the same token, I know that I will never have the same volume of traffic as those bigger sites. I don’t get half a million hits per day, or even per year. Sadly, this makes it easy for a plagiarist to crib from me, and from other critics just like me. They figure that no one will notice. So thank goodness for services like Copyscape which help protect us little guys from people like Michele Schalin, who would deem to take our words and our ideas, then claim them as their own.

The events of Junkie-gate moved so quickly that my head felt like it was spinning. Good critics found their work stolen – and then banded together to make the internet take notice. How wonderful that we look out for one another. As for Michele Schalin, her desire to take a short-cut caused her to be publicly humiliated. I don’t feel sorry for her. She brought it all on herself.

Update (3/29/12): As of 9:00 AM, the Movie Junkies website is completely offline. A message on their homepage says the site is “undergoing scheduled maintenance.” Apparently, their Facebook page is too, as it’s also gone.

Michele Schalin's "review" of Bridesmaids

My review of Bridesmaids

Awards season is here (again)! It’s hard to go more than five minutes without hearing about some group, somewhere, handing out awards to the best films of last year. Now I’m going to add my own to the pile. These awards won’t just celebrate the best pictures and performances of 2011, although that’s certainly part of it; instead, I’m honoring anything notable, be it good, bad, or indifferent. And the best part: no musical numbers or long-ass acceptance speeches! Without any further ado (because, damn, I hates me the ado), here are the 2011 Aisle Seat Awards!

Actor With the Biggest Output of Crap: Nicolas Cage (Drive Angry, Season of the Witch)

Best Use of 3D: Hugo 

Worst or Most Pointless Use of 3D: Green Lantern

Best Line of Dialogue: “Go fuck yourself!” – Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) to the future Professor X and Magneto in X-Men: First Class

Worst Line of Dialogue: “May the best va-jay-jay win!” from New Year’s Eve

Most Appropriately Titled Movie: Atrocious

Most Intimidating Anatomy: Michael Fassbender in Shame

Best Movie Nobody Saw: Bellflower

Worst Movie Everybody Saw: Fast Five

Moldy Oldie Award: Take Me Home Tonight, which finally saw release after nearly four years on a studio shelf

Biggest Waste of Talent: Dream House, which starred Daniel Craig, Rachel Weisz, and Naomi Watts, and was directed by Jim Sheridan

Best Original Scores: Hanna and Drive

Best Musical Number: “Life’s a Happy Song” from The Muppets

Worst Musical Number: Brandon T. Jackson rapping and Martin Lawrence breakdancing, both dressed as overweight women, in Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son

Best Opening Credits Sequence: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Movie Most Improved By a Director’s Cut: Sucker Punch

Slacker Award: Tyler Perry, who only released one movie in 2011, as opposed to his usual two or three

Don’t Quit Your Day Job Award: Kevin Smith, who tried making a horror film with Red State, and seemingly forgot how to write interesting characters or a coherent plot in the process

Most Uncharacteristically Sloppy Movie From a Usually Reliable Director: Ron Howard – The Dilemma

Perviest Scene From a Movie Other Than Shame: Horny old guy licks the face of a naked, comatose Emily Browning in Sleeping Beauty

Best Character Name: Dean “Motherfucker” Jones - Horrible Bosses

Movie Not Nearly as Good as the Hipster Buzz Would Lead You To Believe: Hobo with a Shotgun

Movie Every Bit as Good as the Hipster Buzz Would Lead You To Believe: Attack the Block

The Nooooooooooo! Award for Most Heartbreaking Badness: Cars 2, which broke Pixar’s perfect track record of making good films

Most Overused Idea: Opposite-sex pals engaging in “emotion-free” sex (No Strings Attached, Friends with Benefits)

Least Justifiable Bandwagon: “Give Andy Sirkis an Oscar nomination for Rise of the Planet of the Apes!”

Busiest Actress No One Had Ever Heard of Before This Year: Jessica Chastain (The Debt, Take Shelter, Coriolanus, The Tree of Life, The Help, Texas Killing Fields)

Most Impressive Debut: Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene

Best Action Sequence: Tom Cruise scaling the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Best Villain: The tire in Rubber

Best Documentary: The Elephant in the Living Room

Worst Documentary: I Want Your Money

Best Animated Feature: Rango

Best Comedy: Bridesmaids

Best Picture: Hugo

Best Actor: (tie) George Clooney in The Descendants/Jean Dujardin in The Artist

Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

Best Supporting Actor: Nick Nolte in Warrior

Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley in The Descendants

Worst Picture: Jack and Jill

Worst Actor: Adam Sandler in Jack and Jill

Worst Actress: Leighton Meester in The Roommate

Worst Supporting Actor: (tie) Kellan Lutz/Jackson Rathbone/Peter Facinelli in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1

Worst Supporting Actress: (tie) Ashley Greene/Nikki Reed in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1

In my new book, “Straight-Up Blatant: Musings From The Aisle Seat” (available here), I make the radical suggestion that the Oscars should be given out ten years later. Why? Because time reveals which movies and performances become classics and which lose their luster. The same could be said about annual ten best lists. In a few weeks, you’re going to see a lot of film critics, myself included, unveiling their picks for the ten best films of 2011. It’s a fun tradition to take part in, but how do those lists stand the test of time? A couple years ago, I started the tradition of reassessing my own lists a decade later. I don’t re-see every film on the list; I merely use the benefit of hindsight, coupled with a natural gravitation back to certain movies, to see how I feel today. With that in mind, here are my current thoughts on the pictures I felt were the best of 2001.

10. Monster’s Ball - It’s kind of unusual that this Billy Bob Thornton/Halle Berry movie is on this list because, if I remember correctly, I gave it 3 1/2 stars. Usually there are at least ten 4-star movies in a given year. As is often the case, 2001 had one or two major releases that didn’t open beyond NY and LA until after my deadline. One of those movies was Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down. Oftentimes, studios will send critics “screeners” of limited release films for awards/ten best consideration. Sony didn’t send me Black Hawk Down, which I awarded 4 stars when I saw it a few weeks later. Similarly, Richard Kelly’s cult fave Donnie Darko never opened in my market. I later saw it on DVD and gave it 4 stars as well. So looking back, I think Monster’s Ball would have to be a runner-up on my list. I still remember the movie’s raw power and devastating performances; however, making the list today, I’d certainly leave room for at least Black Hawk Down instead, and it would land somewhere near the middle.

9. Bully - This Larry Clark-directed true crime drama was based on a book I’d read and been floored by. The true story is about a punk teenager in Florida who, along with his drug-addled friends, brutally murders one of his pals, then covers it up. Clark’s movie was brutal and unflinching – and something I’ve never felt compelled to revisit. My admiration for the movie hasn’t changed. Still, if I’m putting Black Hawk Down somewhere near the middle of this list and bumping off Monster’s Ball, that would drop Bully to #10. And it’s awfully tempting to put the hypnotic and original Donnie Darko there instead.

8. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - I’ve always been a believer that there’s nothing wrong with putting a purely-for-fun movie on a ten best list. This Kevin Smith comedy was probably the most fun I had at a movie in 2001 (I saw it theatrically more than once), so I’ll stand by its inclusion here, even if there are technically “better” films out there.

7. Startup.com - This extraordinary documentary (which hit some of the same themes The Social Network hit nine years later) didn’t get a very wide release. I saw it at a film festival and felt it was both timely and relevant, an of-the-moment look at how a friendship was destroyed when the dot-com bubble burst. Today, the film seems absolutely prophetic. (Again, see the true story told in The Social Network.) I was absolutely correct in putting this on the list. If you’ve never seen Startup.com – and odds are you haven’t – rectify that situation immediately.

6. Shrek - Of course this one belongs here. ‘Nuff said.

5. Waking Life - Yeah, that’s right. A decade ago, I put Richard Linklater’s animated philosophy course ahead of Shrek. I won’t begrudge this groundbreaking movie its place on my list, but c’mon…ahead of Shrek?!

4. Moulin Rouge - Baz Lurhmann’s reinvention of the movie musical was sweeping, romantic, and, most importantly, cinematic. I was bowled over the first time I saw it. And the second time as well. I still think it’s a great film. Absolutely top five.

3. Memento - Christopher Nolan’s ingeniously twisty, told-in-reverse thriller. We’re gonna come back to this one in a moment.

2. The Majestic - This one is sticky. I freely admitted that Frank Darabont’s ode to patriotism and heroism struck a chord with me just a few months after the horrific events of 9/11. I wrote: “In another time, this would have been a very good movie; in our time, it is a great one.” In other words, it dealt with things that were on my mind right at that moment. Even then, I knew it wouldn’t hold up as a #2 pick, but you have to go with what you feel. I’m a big Frank Darabont fan, and I maintain that The Majestic was unfairly ignored at the box office. My prediction was correct, though: I wouldn’t put it nearly so high today.

1. A.I. Artificial Intelligence – Steven Spielberg  took over this sci-fi epic from the late Stanley Kubrick and created a genuine love-it-or-hate-it film. I was on the “love it” end. That said, 2001 was one of those years where there wasn’t one particular movie that seemed to stand head and shoulders above the rest for me. My logic for choosing A.I. was that it was the one movie I saw that year that I felt really tried to swing for the bleachers. Looking back, I think Moulin Rouge and Memento actually achieved that goal. While I still admire A.I. for its invention and daring, I’ve never gone back and seen it a second time, as I have with a couple of the other pictures. So, if I was doing my list today, I’d bump this down a bit, put Moulin Rouge in my #2 slot, and make the groundbreaking, fascinating Memento my #1 for the year.

The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is flip through the guide to see what the movie channels are running all day. Last week, I noticed that Cinemax was not only running The Gong Show Movie, it was also running it in HD. This boggled my mind for two reasons. First, I’d forgotten all about the film, which was a cable staple when I was a kid. Second, it has never been released on home video in any format, much less in anything resembling HD. Needless to say, I programmed my DVR faster than you could say “Jamie Farr.”

For those who don’t know or don’t remember, The Gong Show Movie was conceived to be a raunchier version of the TV show. It makes extensive use of uncensored footage from the program, as well as genuine contestant auditions. Interspersed around these moments are fictional scenes in which host/producer Chuck Barris (playing himself) laments the notoriety his creation has brought. The main joke in the picture is that wherever Barris goes, people want to audition for him: in a hospital, a coffee shop, even standing at the urinal in a men’s room. Barris ultimately grows tired of it all – and also tired of the badgering he gets from an uptight network executive - so he flees to the middle of the desert where no one will bother him. The grand finale finds all of the other characters in the movie tracking him down and singing a song designed to convince him to come back. It works.

The Gong Show Movie is about as sloppy a construction as you will find. Directed by Barris (and co-written with Robert Downey, Sr.), the film has a sloppy, thrown-together quality that undoubtedly accounts for the scathing critical notices it received. The primary goal seems to be showing all the stuff that censors wouldn’t allow on TV; it barely feels like a real movie. The rest of it has an odd sour grapes feel. For better or worse, “The Gong Show” made Chuck Barris a very rich man. Why he would choose to denigrate it – and himself – on the big screen remains unclear. What’s most striking is that he brings such authenticity to his self-loathing production, casting real-life wife Robin Altman as herself, and including lots of “Gong Show” regulars such as The Unknown Comic, Gene Gene the Dancing Machine, and Jaye P. Morgan. (An unedited version of Morgan baring her breasts on the show is one of the movie’s signature scenes.) The whole message seems to be, “I hate this thing that made me who I am, but I’m going to keep doing it anyway.”

While painful to watch, The Gong Show Movie also has a legitimate curiosity factor that is hard to ignore. It is neither a mea culpa nor a defiant “screw you” to those who proclaimed “The Gong Show” one of the signs of the decline of Western civilization. Why, then, was it made in the first place? Clearly, Barris wanted us to see all the dirtiest bits from the show in their full glory. But that could have been done documentary-style. The fictional scenes play like self-flaggelation, with Barris sharing his misery with the audience. They are as unnecessary as they are bizarre. The whole project has a confused aura around it, as though the film itself has no idea why it exists.

Seen today, a couple of things are notable. Even the most extreme acts shown in the film are tame by today’s standards; the majority of this stuff would fly on network television with nary a peep from the censors. There are cameos from second-rate celebrities (i.e. Pat McCormick) who exemplify an era of cheesy entertainment long gone by. There’s even a pre-fame performance from Phil Hartman, who disturbingly and ironically brandishes a gun. These individual elements do nothing to mitigate the fact that the film itself is a pointless, disjointed, unfunny mess.

The Gong Show Movie was rejected by audiences; it played on 775 screens but only earned $1.4 million. (Astoundingly, the budget was about $6 million. What that money went toward is a great mystery, because it sure isn’t on the screen.) A major bomb in its day, Universal promptly buried the movie. It played on cable in an era when not many films were made available for broadcast, and that was pretty much it. Barris, of course, went on to write a book called “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind,” in which he claimed to have a secret life as a government assassin. That book, while doubtlessly an enormous crock, is far more entertaining than his lone big screen foray. Come to think of it, most of the inspid acts on “The Gong Show” are more entertaining than this film. If you like fascinatingly terrible movies, though, it’s something you need to see at least once.

To read about another piece of forgotten garbage – The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band – pick up a copy of my book, “Straight-Up Blatant: Musings From The Aisle Seat.” To order or get more information, click here.

In the spring of 2009, I was at my local cinema, talking to my friend Bill, who works there. (Incidentally, you can and should follow him on Twitter @The_MovieStar.) Nicolas Cage had a new picture in theaters – as he always seems to – entitled Knowing. It was a sci-fi, thrillery kind of thing about a college professor who finds a list of numbers that, when deciphered, seem to predict world catastrophes. Astoundingly, the list somehow fails to foresee Season of the Witch, but that’s a subject for another day. Bill commented to me that a lot of theater patrons were calling the movie by the wrong name. Instead of Knowing, they were calling it The Knowing. They were adding the word “the” where no “the” existed.

Coincidentally, another movie playing around that same time was a typically ignorable Channing Tatum vehicle called Fighting. (Imagine a tween-centered remake of Fight Club, and that’s Fighting.) I asked Bill if people were doing the same thing with this movie, ordering tickets for The Fighting. He informed me that they most certainly were not. This sparked an intense discussion of a completely trivial and insignificant issue…but hey, that’s the kind of dudes we are. Eventually, we agreed that people were getting the name wrong because they’d been conditioned to expect a certain kind of title from sci-fi/horror/thriller films. In those genres, it is common to turn a gerund into a noun: The Shining, The Reckoning, The Reaping, The Happening, etc. Given that Knowing had an eerie preview, these title-mangling folks were simply assuming that it wasn’t about about a guy knowing something, but rather about some cataclysmic event called a “knowing.” In short, they weren’t paying very close attention.

Bill and I then realized that all movie titles suddenly sound more menacing and creepy when you turn a gerund into a noun and add the word “the” at the beginning. Over the next few months, we began testing this theory on every new movie possible. Pixar’s Up became The Upping. Orphan became The Orphaning. Bandslam became The Bandslamming. Fall of 2009 brought us The Extracting, The Whiteouting, The Boxing, and, of course, The New Mooning. You get the picture. Some titles didn’t lend themselves to the game as easily. When I told Bill I was heading in to see Tyler Perry’s The I Can Do Bad All By Myselfing, he looked at me the way a dog looks at a Shake Weight, i.e. with a combination of confusion and pity.

Truth be told, I haven’t been able to stop playing this little game. Once we started goofing around with names, I found that I was attempting to apply our theory every weekend, with each new batch of film titles.  In 2010, I went to see The Inceptioning, The Salting, The Towning, The Burlesquing, and, naturally, the uber-creepy Julia Roberts flick The Eating, the Praying, and the Loving. Earlier in 2011, multiplexes saw movies I privately referred to as The Hall Passing, The Sucker Punching, The Hopping, The Source Coding, and The Priesting. Playing at my local theater as I write this are The Helping, The Driving, The Shark Nighting, The Debting, The Contagioning, and The Moneyballing. Don’t they all sound creepy?

Funny I should mention Contagion. My reason for writing this blog is to spread the disease. I can’t stop doing it, but maybe if I pass it on to you, the personal torment will subside and I will be spared any future horror. Kind of like the way making copies of the deadly videotape saves Naomi Watts and her son in The Ring. Or, as I call it, The Ringing.

Any time you walk into a cinema, there’s the possibility of something happening; sometimes you see a great movie, but other times you simply have a memorable experience. I’m willing to bet that every hardcore film buff has a mental list of their most magical or unforgettable trips to the theater. I certainly have mine. These are not ordinary memories I’m about to share. These are the ones that, for one reason or another, were excessively out of the ordinary. As a film critic who’s been hitting up cinemas for over two decades, I’ve collected some stories. I write about my most memorable one, seeing Star Wars for the first time, in my upcoming book. Here are four others I will never forget.

Theater: Allen Theater – Annville, Pennsylvania

Year: 1995

Movie: Grease

To make a long story short, a run-down movie theater in the town where I went to college was purchased and beautifully renovated. For the grand opening, they scheduled a big screen showing of Grease, with director Randal Kleiser in attendance. I was asked to be the official videographer for the evening, capturing the event on camera. I’d seen Grease theatrically as a kid and loved it. When the picture hit cable, I made a point of watching it every single time it was on that first month; if it ran in the middle of the night, I set my alarm clock and woke up to watch it again. All told, I’d seen it about 15 times prior to that night. Over the years, I have met my fair share of famous people, but the only time I ever turned into a gushing idiot was upon meeting Kleiser. I spent several minutes babbling to him about his film and what it had meant to me. But the real treat of the evening was seeing Grease in its original format again. The director shot it in widescreen format, but whenever it ran on cable, it was in the dreaded “pan and scan” format, meaning that almost half the image was cut off at any given time. Watching the movie projected on a giant screen in its intended aspect ratio was like seeing it again for the first time. It made me realize just how much a film’s impact can be lessened when you view it improperly. On TV, it seemed like John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John were dancing up quite a storm; on the silver screen, it was obvious that they were surrounded by dozens of other people also dancing up a storm! I literally rediscovered the magic of Grease that night. On a side note, I was lucky enough to be asked to accompany Mr. Kleiser to the airport the morning after the screening. He was an incredibly gracious gentleman, and I most certainly took the opportunity to grill him about working with Pee-Wee Herman on Big Top Pee-Wee.

Theater: Charles Theater – Baltimore, Maryland

Year: 2000

Movie: AJ’s Dogumentary

By far the strangest experience I’ve ever had was at a film festival. You probably don’t know the movie AJ’s Dogumentary, because it never got picked up for release, which is too bad; it was a terrific little picture. Anyway, it was a documentary that looked at eccentric dog owners and the various ways they pamper their pets. To help build interest, the festival staff somehow convinced Baltimore’s Charles Theater to host a screening to which people could bring their dogs. And so it was that I watched a movie with about 150 people and two dozen pooches. Amazingly, many of the animals actually seemed to be paying attention to the screen, probably because they were seeing other dogs up there. Even more amazingly, barking was kept to a bare minimum, and as far as I know there was no peeing or pooping on the floor or seats. In fact, the dogs were better behaved than some all-human audiences I’ve seen movies with. Those Milk Bones handed out at the concession stand probably helped.

Theater: Charles Theater – Baltimore, Maryland

Year: 2000

Movie: The Girl Next Door

Here’s part two of that story. While covering this particular film festival, two colleagues and I befriended another festival-goer, who happened to be the mother of a well-known young actor from a long-running “must-see” network medical drama. (Yes, the one you’re thinking of.) We sat through AJ’s Dogumentary with this very nice woman and her equally nice husband. When it was over, her husband – who was associated with a different film playing the fest – had to be at another location, so we told her she was welcome to stay with us to watch the next film screening in the same auditorium. That film was The Girl Next Door, a documentary about Stacy Valentine, a small-town housewife who entered and won a Hustler magazine contest at the prodding of her husband. Despite the slightly naughty subject matter, The Girl Next Door was presented in the festival guide as being a probing look into how this woman went from a June Cleaver-esque existence to something completely opposite. What we didn’t know until the movie started was that Stacy Valentine also went into very hardcore porn – a fact the filmmakers were quite willing to convey in incredibly graphic behind-the-scenes detail. One of my colleagues grew embarrassed and quietly snuck out within the first hour. About 15 minutes later, so did the other one. Not wanting to be rude, I forced myself to stay put, as it seemed rude to completely abandon this woman after inviting her to sit with us. Awkward! I’m pretty sure I breathed a sigh of relief once the end credits began to roll. Nor surprisingly, this woman and I talked about everything except the movie we’d just seen. I’ve long joked that if the actor in question ever wanted to see a dirty movie with my mom, I’d have to let him.

Theater: Muvico Egyptian 24 – Hanover, MD

Year: 2007

Movie: Shrek the Third

Movie theaters come in all shapes and sizes. Big cities, of course, have the biggest theaters, often called “mega-plexes.” It is not uncommon for such venues to have twenty or more auditoriums. I’d been in monster palaces of this variety before, but an outing in May of 2007 kicked it to a whole other level. The Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, MD is home to a rare spin-off of the mega-plex – the themed mega-plex. Owned at the time by Muvico (and since taken over by Cinemark), the Egyptian is a 24-screen theater designed to resemble an ancient Egyptian temple. Walking into the place was like walking onto a massive movie set. Everything appears to have been carved out of sand and stone. The gargantuan lobby contains multiple columns emblazoned with Egyptian art. Statues of pharaohs are carved into the walls high above the concession stand. The corridors – as well as the auditorium interiors – have elaborate murals made to look like hieroglyphics. There is a glass mosaic Nile River running across the floor. If the Egyptians had built a state-of-the-art movie theater inside the Sphinx, this is what it would look like. My visit to the Egyptian 24 was significant on two counts. First, and most obviously, it was ridiculously fun. It was like the mothership calling me home. Secondly, it served as a reminder of how important showmanship is in the movie exhibition business. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, when most movie theaters were generic shoebox-looking places, often with no real personality. Seeing a place like the Egyptian made me realize how the magic of movies starts when you first walk through the door. Whether it’s themed or not, and regardless of how many screens it contains, a theater with some pizazz makes going to the movies a fun experience that you want to repeat again and again.

The lobby of the Egyptian 24 multiplex.

Since I see hundreds of movies a year, I have other memorable experiences, but these are the ones that stick out most. I bet you have a few too. If you have any you want to share, tell your tales in the comments section below. I’d love to hear them!

I’m not the type of person who’s supposed to get skin cancer. I mean, I’m a film critic, for crying out loud. I spend excess amounts of time in dark, windowless rooms. Aside from time spent mowing my grass or walking into/out of buildings, I really don’t spend any significant amount of time in the sun. I prefer shade. Nice cool shade. Nevertheless, I somehow got damned skin cancer. It was never my intention to talk about this publicly, but last week, I commented on Twitter and Facebook that I was having surgery. This was done not for attention but as a way of letting followers/friends know that I wouldn’t be doing my usual amount of film-related reviewing and commentary for a few days. Well, the amount of care and concern I received touched me, and so I thought maybe I should provide a more detailed explanation.

It started back in the spring. I noticed a very small area on my left cheek (my face cheek – get your mind out of the gutter) that was red and flaky. My family doctor thought it was dermatitis and gave me medicated cream to put on twice a day for two weeks. After two weeks went by, nothing had changed, so I started putting it on four times a day for another two weeks. Still no change. Finally, in mid July, I went to a dermatologist, who told me it was simple sun-damaged skin. (I’m very fair skinned and therefore extremely susceptible to damage even from minimal sun exposure.) She also found two other places on my face that had it, places so small I hadn’t even noticed them. The solution for this was simple; she froze those areas, killing the cells. The freezing process is strange. Freezing feels like burning. Having those little areas of skin frozen felt like someone was holding a lit sparkler to my face. Not painful, really, but unusual. During this process, the dermatologist noticed another very small area on my forehead that was ever-so-slightly pink. I’d seen that before too. It had been there for years. I never thought much of it. After all, you could barely see it, although from time to time it inexplicably got very red for a day or two. I’d always been taught that skin cancer was ugly and nasty looking. This spot – no bigger than a pencil eraser – was barely noticable. Still, she wanted to biopsy it.

About a week later, she called and told me it was basal cell carcinoma, a.k.a the “good kind” of skin cancer. I found this concept bizarre. How can any sort of cancer be good, really? Hard to fathom as that is, there’s some truth to it. Basal cell carcinoma doesn’t spread to other parts of the body, and it probably isn’t going to kill you. It will, however, destroy the tissue where it exists, and over time that can potentially evolve into the “bad kind” of skin cancer. She recommended that I have the cancer surgically removed. Not wanting to risk any greater harm, I agreed to undergo the procedure.

And so it was that last Thursday, August 25, I underwent a process known as Mohs surgery. Named for the man who invented it, the surgery entails cutting out the suspicious area of skin and immediately inspecting it under a microscope. If there is no cancer detected around the edges, it means the doctors got it all. If some is still present, they go back and cut out a little more. This process is repeated until they get a “clear” sample.

Amazingly, I had a terrific experience in the American healthcare system. My appointment was for 8:30 AM; they took me back at 8:27, and I never had to wait more than ten minutes to see the doctor. First she gave me an injection in my forehead to numb the area. After I could feel nothing, she cut out the pink area in question and bandaged me up. I was placed in a waiting room while the skin was checked in the lab. The waiting room was stocked with refreshments I eagerly took advantage of, given that I’d been too nervous to eat prior to the surgery. My wife patiently waited with me. About 40 minutes later, the painstaking process of examining the sample was complete. A nurse showed me a graph with several red dots on it. Those were the areas where cancer was still present. I had to have a second round.

They took me back into the surgery room, re-numbed my forehead, and started cutting again. Then it was back to the waiting room for another 40-minute wait. (The Mohs process is exacting, and depending on the number of passes needed, it can take all day.) Eventually the nurse returned and said I was all clear. Back in the surgery room once more, they again numbed my forehead and stitched it up. When the process was over, I felt lightheaded and dizzy, and of course very sore. The doctor told me that even though it was minor surgery, I should rest for several days.

I understand why. I was pretty tired all weekend. It was hard to sleep with the bandage on, since the incision under it alternately hurt and itched. The frequent pain in that area made my whole head hurt. But hey, I was cancer-free, and that’s what was important. I really only have two concerns now. One is that my two year-old son tells me he’s afraid of my “boo boo.” The other is hoping that the inch-and-a-half incision in my head doesn’t leave too noticable a scar.

My story is mild. There was nothing even remotely life-threatening about my cancer, and the Mohs procedure itself was surprisingly painless. I won’t pretend I went through some big ordeal because, frankly, I didn’t. Earlier in the summer, my father-in-law was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. He had surgery to remove a large tumor from his brain. That’s an obstacle to overcome. What I went through was peanuts. Even so, it does serve as a reminder that anyone can get skin cancer, and it doesn’t always have to look like those terrible pictures they show in the media every summer when they want to warn people about the dangers of too much sun exposure.

So that’s the story of what happened. From now on, I have to put on sunscreen if I’m going to get any kind of sun exposure. I can live with that. Besides, there’s no sunlight in the comfort of a darkened movie theater.

It’s happened again. A firestorm has been ignited. Armond White had the audacity to dislike Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, which probably didn’t surprise you. What did is that his pull quote on Rotten Tomatoes dubbed the Potter series “the dullest franchise in the history of movie franchises.” Now, we all know Armond doesn’t really believe that; he just said it to piss y’all off. And did he ever! As of this writing, there are over 200 comments on his review, calling him names like “racist troll” and “ignorant prick,” rallying for his banishment from the Rotten Tomatoes website, and even demanding that he commit suicide. You folks sure do despise this guy. That’s why I need to make something perfectly clear: if you loathe White’s antics, it is not his fault, it is yours.

Let me take a second to backtrack in case anyone reading this is unfamiliar with our subject. Armond White is the film critic for the New York Press, but his work has also appeared in the New York Times, The Nation, and Slate, among others. He is a member of the National Society of Film Critics and a three-time chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle. In other words, he’s got an admirable pedigree. That said, White has openly been dismissive of online film critics (for which he can go screw himself, really). He also has contempt for sites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic, which aggregate individual opinions into a consensus. White is bitter about the fact that the days when a single critic could make or break a film have passed. That’s his problem; the world changes, and you can either jump on that train or get run over by it. White’s response has been to try to derail the train by intentionally taking a contrarian opinion on virtually every movie that comes out, just to stir things up. He wrote that Resident Evil: Afterlife was better than Avatar, and that Jonah Hex was preferable to Toy Story 3. He praised Dance Flick, Transformers 2, and Death Race, while panning There Will Be Blood, The Social Network, and The Wrestler. White’s point is valid: consensus has replaced  individual opinion, and today’s online film community attacks anyone who dares go against the popular consensus. My problem with White is not that he chooses to take an uncommon stance – we used to have to do that in college speech classes – but that he isn’t honest about why he’s doing it. He should just publicly acknowledge that he’s trying to foster debate and leave it at that.

Here’s what I’m saying: you Armond White haters know this. Before a big movie is even released, you anticipate his opinion on message boards and on Twitter. Guessing which films he’ll like and which he’ll decimate has become a popular online sport (albeit one akin to shooting fish in a barrel, thanks to his predictability). Then, when he ultimately posts his review, you all launch into the personal/professional attacks. You spew out missives on your websites or on the comments page of Rotten Tomatoes. Most notably, you play right into his hands.

That’s right…White has been keeping this charade up for several years now, because you guys keep feeding into it. He wants to piss people off. That’s his whole reason for doing it. So when he sees the vitriol directed at him for simply expressing an unpopular opinion, it reinforces his idea that he’s right. Do you know what people do when they think they’re right? They start to feel morally superior, and they keep their behavior right up!

If you’ve ever played a slot machine, you may know that the odds of winning big money are small. However, periodically you win a few bucks. Slot machines are designed to give you little morsels of success every once in a while so you keep playing. If you popped in a $50 bill and promptly lost every cent, you’d walk away and never come back. You need that feeling of making a dent in things. That’s called “reinforcement.” Anything a person does repeatedly, he/she does because something positively reinforced whatever it was he/she did. “Flaming” Armond White on Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter, or anywhere simply reinforces his behavior. He succeeds in his goal. You are literally letting him win.

Bottom line: if you hate Armond White, think he’s a troll, and get consumed with rage every time he defiantly takes an unpopular stance, then simply stop reinforcing him. Stop calling him a troll, stop calling for Rotten Tomatoes to banish him, and for pete’s sake, stop demanding that he kill himself. Take away the reinforcement and his fun will evaporate. It really is that easy.

This is especially true for you Harry Potter fans (and make no mistake, I’m one of you). Who gives a shit if White calls it the dullest franchise in history? The vast majority of critics loved the series, and it made a gajillion dollars at the box office, proving that audiences loved it too. Our point of view is by far the dominant one. Let the bitter old man stand off to the side and bitch about the kids on his lawn. Who cares about him?

You could even do the opposite, which is to read and – sit down for this – actually consider what he has to say. No, he’s probably not being honest but, for better or worse, he backs his ideas up. Sometimes hearing a different point of view can be fun. You don’t have to agree with it. Just be open to another perspective. Doing this will also help your cause, because it’ll take the steam right out of White’s argument.

What happens next is up to you, Armond White haters. If you really want the guy to go away, that power is in your hands. Just please stop whining and moaning about it. It makes you sound like Armond White…well, never mind.

Sometimes life takes you in funny directions. So it was for me in the fall of 1999. I won’t bore you with specifics, except to say that I was more or less stranded in Nashville, TN. Nothing against the place, which is beautiful, but anyone who knows me could tell you that it’s one of the last spots on Earth you might reasonably expect to find me. Yet there I was, killing a week. Thankfully, there was a 24-screen multiplex on the outskirts of the city, and I spent almost every day there during my time down south. And on one of those days, I wandered in to an 11:00 AM show on the opening day of Fight Club.

Sorry to be a bit crude here, but an hour into the 130-minute film, I had to pee worse than I ever have before. Despite this, I couldn’t bring myself to walk out, even for a minute. I was completely enthralled by David Fincher’s adaptation of the Chuck Palahniuk novel, which tells the story of an office drone (Edward Norton) who enters the world of underground bare-knuckle fighting, courtesy of the enigmatic Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt). That fist fighting eventually morphs into outright anarchy, as the two begin committing acts of domestic terrorism in their fight against “the establishment.” When Fight Club was over, I exited the theater in a state of euphoria. If it is possible to become obsessed with something on sight, I’d done exactly that.

Now, if there’s one thing less likely than me spending time in the country music capital of the world, it’s me giving a rip about bare-knuckle fighting (or anarchy, for that matter). I am in no way what you’d call “in fighting shape.” Moreover, I’m a pacifist. I have no interest in boxing, or wrestling, or that cage-fighting thing you see ads for on pay-per-view. This stuff simply ain’t my cup of tea. But damn, did I loves me the Fight Club. Once I blessedly got back home to Pennsylvania, I couldn’t stop talking about it to my friends.

That passion was baffling. What was it that made me so fascinated with this dark, violent tale – one that, on the surface, seems to go against my entire being? At first, I thought I was just caught up in Fincher’s creative visualization of the story. That’s partly true, without accounting for everything. Then media articles started popping up, talking about how the movie portrayed the societal impotence of the modern man, caught in an era where materialism rules and emotions must be repressed. For a while, I thought this might explain it, until I realized that I couldn’t really identify with the sentiment. Multiple viewings of Fight Club over the last decade made me think that perhaps my devotion to it was tied in to the circumstances of the time in which I first saw it. The fall of 1999, as you can perhaps guess, was not the greatest time of my life. I was under an undue amount of stress and attempting to deal with a bunch of things, personal and professional, that simply weren’t panning out anywhere near the way I thought they would. Maybe Fight Club was simply the right film at the wrong time.

None of these explanations ever fully satisfied me. Then, about a month ago, something clicked. I was in an ultra-rare bad mood (I’m usually a cheery guy, really!) when my mind suddenly and inexplicably flashed back to Fight Club. Everything made sense in that moment. I’d finally cracked the reason why I identify so deeply with the movie, in spite of all logic.

You see, Fight Club is an angry film. It’s about people who are pissed off – at their employers, at their significant others, at society, and at themselves. I’m a believer that all of us have a dark side within us. Not a dark side that makes us hurt other people, or act like jerks, or become Sith lords, or anything like that. Simply a reserve of anger toward those who, at some point in our lives, have done us wrong or screwed us over. Maybe it’s a former boss who made you take the fall for his/her own mistake. Maybe it’s an ex who cheated on you or used you. Maybe it’s a family member or close friend who took when they needed something, then refused to give when you were the one in need. Regardless, we’ve all felt that feeling of anger at another person, combined with a self-directed anger that we were stupid enough to get into that situation to begin with, or that we were powerless to stop the situation from getting so bad.

Fight Club understands this. The film is a cry of rage against the rat bastards of our individual worlds. We can’t really haul off and deck one of those rat bastards – without potential repercussions, at least – but it sure does feel good to imagine it. Fight Club imagines it for us, in a way that is both vivid and cathartic.

I once did one of those Facebook surveys where you have to list 25 random things about yourself. Among my innocuous personal trivia was a more intimate tidbit. I wrote: “I get along with almost everyone, but I also have a mental shit list of people whom I detest. There are six names on that list.” I love Fight Club because I’ve had the displeasure of being in the orbit of people like that, no matter how temporarily. The Tyler Durden in me would be proud.

I am Jack’s seething resentment.

Next time: an unfairly ignored gem that was largely seen only by people who were paid to (i.e. critics). I think it deserves to be discovered.