John August

Rant

On the topic of old things sucking

Projects, Rant, Shazam

My post on Captain Marvel/Shazam! generated a lot of comments, both on this site and AICN, primarily because of a single observation…

If I were writing a dissertation on the evolution of the Captain Marvel character, [hardcover anthologies] would be invaluable. But I’m not. So every time I read one of these, I’m struck with the same realization I encounter trying to watch The Honeymooners or a black-and-white movie: Wow. Old things suck.

Was I deliberately exaggerating to make a point? Yes.

Was I baiting readers to write in? Sure.

Was I serious? Sort of.

There’s obviously an abundance of old things which not only do not suck, but are in fact spectacular: great works of literature, music, art, and movies which deserve to be called classics — and not just because they’re in black and white. We study them, we emulate them, because they are just so damn good.And yet, when we emulate them too closely, the results are invariably disappointing. That’s a good topic for someone’s dissertation, so I won’t try to address it in a footnote.

[kane]That said, for every great old masterpiece, there are a lot of non-masterpieces. And what frustrates me is when society insists on elevating and fawning over these non-masterpieces simply because they were part of some mythical Golden Age. To me, that includes The Honeymooners. Sorry. I can understand why it was groundbreaking, and the enormous challenge of creating a live show, and why it was seminal. But I don’t care. It doesn’t connect for me whatsoever, and I’m too honest to fake any interest in it.

Thus, to me, it sucks. Everyone is free to have his own opinion, at least until the corporate sponsors find out.Read the fine print on the parking garage stub. It’s a contract.

I could have softened the blow by saying, “Many old things suck” or “Some old things suck.” But that wouldn’t be true to my experience. When I watch a classic film and have that holy shit, this is just as good as everyone says experience, that’s the glorious exception. That’s when I’m happy I’ve deliberately set my expectation meter low for anything older than I am.

Setting aside the implicit ontological paradoxes, most people I know would be curious to travel back in time. They’d love to meet historical figures, marvel at extinct animals, and experience daily life in an earlier age. But I’ve yet to meet someone who wants to travel back in time to watch TV. Imagine, you could watch The Honeymooners in its proper context, live, as it was made. Wouldn’t that be the best thing ever? No?

Of course it wouldn’t, because you live in 2007. The world has changed a lot since the days of Ralph Kramden threatening domestic violence against his wife, and you can’t pretend it hasn’t.Yes, I know he was kidding. There’s a fascinating apologia on the topic, but you wouldn’t see Kevin James getting away with it today.

And yet, time travel is exactly what some fans want out of an adaptation — to create a movie as it would have existed in an earlier era. To me, that’s foolish. You can watch The Honeymooners on DVD, safe in its nostalgic bubble, but to slavishly recreate the experience is cultural masturbation.

And yes, I said “masturbation” just to bait comments.

All-new MySpace beta

Follow Up, Rant, Rave

I now fully regret my earlier [ambivalence](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2006/myambivalence) about MySpace. As it turns out, the site is only lame when you have 600 or 700 friends. Having crossed the magic threshold of [1,000 MySpace pals](http://myspace.com/johnaugust), I truly understand what all the fuss is about.

The difference is [MySpace Advanced](http://collect.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=disallowed), and you can only access it when you have more than 1,000 friends. It’s beta, and I guess I clicked on some sort of non-disclosure button when I accepted. But it’s too great a secret to keep to myself.

Here are just some of the improvements you get with MySpace Advanced:

* __Full CSS styling.__ No longer do you have to hide formatting in weird text boxes.

* __AJAX-y goodness.__ You can delete rogue comments in-place, or drag-and-drop elements on the page.

* __HTML tag destroyers.__ Not only can you turn off HTML graphics in comments, you can automatically delete any comment that tries to use them.

* __Lameness filters.__ Sick of people leaving ASCII graphics as comments? Just click the checkbox and they’re history.

* __Smarter ads.__ Even though it says “gay” in your “orientation” field, the system knows you might be interested in something other than a shirtless guy for Gay.com.

* __Education screening.__ The system parses every message, comment and profile blurb a user writes, generating an estimated education level for the user. I have my threshold set to “College Grad,” which effectively silences the stupid people.You can also set a top education limit, good for shutting out snarky screenwriters.

The new version is terrific. Unfortunately, it doesn’t exist.

Even with a thousand so-called friends, the system is just as lame and frustrating as it was when it was just me and [Tom](http://myspace.com/tom).By the way, has anyone else noticed that “Tom” has formatting errors on his page, and _he’s the freakin’ spokesperson?_ Check his “Movies” section. So, this is my way of saying goodbye to MySpace in all its craptastic-ness. See ya. Wouldn’t want to be ya.

Confessions of a genius script reader

Rant, Resources

LC (whose email handle ThrobbingSocks is much more provocative) tipped me off to this [Film Threat article](http://filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1766) by Allan Heifetz which explains some of the more significant pet peeves of professional (and unprofessional) script readers.

Newbies also love to break the fourth wall. These fools must think they have super strength. “Hulk smash fourth wall! Aaargh! Hulk need to address audience for lighthearted and wacky fun! Hulk’s rom-com is effervescent and delightful! Aargh!”

Unfortunately, once you have a character address the camera you are essentially saying that your movie takes place in a magical fantasy land where anyone can talk to a theatre full of people from another dimension whenever one feels the need to vent.

The full article is [here](http://filmthreat.com/index.php?section=features&Id=1766).

High net-worth individuals

Rant, Words on the page

I’ve encounted this euphemism for “rich people” at least five times this week. It’s not exactly new; I’ve heard it occasionally for the last few years. But I don’t know where it came from, or how long it’s been gaining traction around the memosphere.

This morning’s appearance came in a [Variety article](http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117953808.html?categoryid=13&cs=1) about Radar’s Ted Field acquiring roughly $600 million in financing:

The financial partners in Radar’s fund are a combination of equity financiers and high net-worth individuals, including JP Morgan & Co., D.E. Shaw & Co., Kevin Flynn, the Rothman family, Cardinal Growth, GE Capital, US Bank, CIT and Mercantile Bank.

Kevin Flynn is an individual. The Rothman family presumably counts — though technically, they’re not an individual. You or I would just call them rich, wealthy or loaded. So why doesn’t Variety?

My theory is that super-rich people are actually a bit embarrassed by their vast wealth. “High net-worth individual” is a way of obfuscating and distracting from the dollar signs. Don’t judge me; I have a condition. It’s scientific. It’s treatable: “Oh, I’m not rich. I just have a high net worth.”

To refer back to the old-school SAT analogies:

alcoholism::disease
wealth:: high net worth

My friend Chuck is a VP at a bank that specializes in high net-worth individuals. (Which, to be fair, makes a lot more sense than banking for the poor and indigent.) When I ask him about his job, Chuck uses the HNWI term a lot, generally to protect the anonymity of his clients. Hearing him talk about it, one realizes that vast wealth is like a supertanker; it’s actually kind of a pain in the ass to move it around.

The only time it gets awkward with Chuck is when he refers to, “high net-worth individuals such as yourself.” I can never tell if he’s being generous or deluded. My net worth is high compared with, say, a Kentucky coal miner. But I’m not looking for places to park $600 million. “High” is clearly a relative term.

Which leads to my second hunch: “high net-worth individual” was coined because there’s a vast realm between millionaires and billionaires, and you need something to call these people.

The film industry increasingly calls them partners, because they’re bankrolling many of the super-budgeted movies filling our megaplexes. But I wonder if we’ve lost something by reducing our tycoons and barons to mere high net-worth individuals. Great wealth is supposed to invoke romance, intrigue and familial drama, not spreadsheets and hedge funds. Just by giving it a new term, they’ve taken away half the reason to be rich.