William Horberg

Happy Halloween

From the pages of my Tiny Golden Books, a Halloween story for you today!

Trick-or-Treat!!

william

Tomorrow: More Small things to share!

Deconstructing George

This is George. 

He was the everyman creation of a cartoon genius named Virgil Partch, aka VIP, which is how he signed his cartoons.

This is one of my favorite VIP "Big George" cartoons. I cut it out of the newspaper back in 1974 when it was published, hence the yellowing, aged quality of the reproduction here.

Look at the beatific expression on his face as he falls in line behind this barefoot brown skinned woman with a jar perfectly balanced on her head, as if this was the most natural sight in the world, and some male impulse that needs no explanation has propelled him to follow her.

I love the simple line drawings and the silent panels. Pure visual storytelling, stripped down to the minimum information necessary.

With a few lines VIP is able to convey something so familiar and human. The small smirk of delight of the "I'm up to no good" punster. An expression I can easily relate to and recognize from time to time on my youngest son, Diego, when he delights in some minor act of delinquency that he wants to make sure that we know he is well aware of! The little touch of the hand in the pocket sets up the continuity of the action for the next frame beautifully.

Perhaps not many of us conveniently carry balloons in our pocket for occasions such as this, but in perfect cartoon logic, of course a man like George is well prepared. Do you think Virgil Partch ever saw Dizzy Gillepie play the trumpet, to imagine an inflated cheek like this one?

Unaware, implacable, constant, balanced, perfect, eyeless but not sightless under that solid line of black hair, woman marches on. From where, to where, who cares?

George, George. What anarchist impulse possesses you? How far you've come from that first panel and your wide-eyed guileless expression. I love the colors here, how the balloon and the vase are in balance in the composition, and how much tension there is in his outstretched hand as we anticipate him clapping the balloon and upending her poise and equilibrium, which we now see George view as an offence requiring action.

Could Lichtenstien have drawn it better? VIP puts the POP in Pop Art!!

And the payoff panel - the comic reversal of the trickster hoisted on his own petard. George is literally deconstructed, while the great life force of the woman and vase in balance, walks on, unperturbed, or unaware even, of man's futile and puny attempt on her self-contained dignity and one-ness.

I was in high school back in 1974, and when I try to devine my motives for clipping and preserving this particular cartoon back then I can only imagine I must have seen myself therein, probably a metaphor for a failed relationship with a teenage girlfriend.

But today, I enjoy it more as a storyboard of a silent film, and a great example of wordless storytelling, as practiced by one of the masters, VIP.

Is it too lame to end with my own puny effort at same??:

william

Tomorrow: You know what day it is!!

The More Things Change....

There was something eerie and special about seeing the premiere of Gus Van Sant's "Milk" at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco last night.

"Eerie" because of the conflation of history and art as we sat in the real theatre on the real street where most of the events depicted in the film took place, surrounded by many of the real people whose lives were being portrayed on screen. 

"Special" for those same reasons, because the film itself, as beautifully directed by Gus Van Sant, was so special, and because it felt like it was arriving at exactly the right historical moment, despite what was in reality an almost twenty year struggle to get it made.

And most special of all, for an actor who has given us some amazing characters over the years, for my money this was Sean Penn's greatest performance. He was so warm and natural. His voice, his movement, his gestures, it was like he was using all of his DNA to give us such a full and deep impression of a man.

It was almost 37 years ago that Harvey Milk, the subject of the film, moved to the Castro District from New York City and set up his camera shop there with his boyfriend Scott Smith, at what was to become ground zero in a cultural movement and struggle for respect and equal rights for gay people that, despite the major victories Harvey and his supporters achieved before his untimely assassination, as he became the first openly gay elected official, and won an improbable victory over the ignominious Proposition 6 and its sponsors Anita Bryant and John Briggs, still reverberates today. (Who could miss the eerie resemblance between two faces of evil separated by a generation: the well-coiffed All-American act of intolerance agent Bryant and a certain designer-clad hockey mom of today?)

So here we were, one week before an election that not only marks a decisive moment in our nation's history, but also finds us fighting against another major assault by the forces of bigotry and intolerance in a California state referendum, which is Proposition 6, repackaged now thirty years later as Proposition 8.

As Martin Luther King famously said in a speech titled Where Do We Go From Here: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." But clearly it only bends because of the efforts of good people who keep fighting the fight.

Arriving on Castro Street, the theatre had been transformed for a real Hollywood Style Major Movie premiere, with a banner of Sean Penn as Milk several stories tall, and the proverbial red carpet and kleig lights.

Hanging out of windows and lining the sidewalk three deep on the other side of the street were No on Prop 8 protestors, whose chant of "not fair, not right" reverberated through the whole arrival ceremony.

Focus Films CEO James Schamus and John Lyons, the president of production, were in attendance. They were both instrumental, along with Executive Producer Michael London of Groundswell Productions, in backing the film at a critical moment when, once again, it looked like it might tip over.

Here's the director Gus Van Sant, who was typically calm and cool, even as he presided over an event that I am sure he had dreamt about for some time, as this was a story he had been trying to tell for many years.

The Castro is a cavernous old movie palace. It was beautiful inside and a great venue for the event. I had heard rumors of its imminent demise for some time, as these single screen old theatres are so hard to make economically viable today. I hope someone will buy it and restore it and preserve it. So much history there.

As Mayor Gavin Newsome put it in his remarks prior to the screening, "this is a city that doesn't just tolerate differences of identity, it celebrates them."

I think this patron would agree!!

The after-party was held in San Francisco's City Hall. As the site of the assassination of Milk as well as then-mayor George Moscone, it was a bit unnerving to see the crowd there in celebration of the film walk up the steps of the huge rotunda in re-enactment of Sean Penn walking up the same steps in the movie, in re-enactment of Harvey Milk having done the same for the brief time that he held office and came to work here every day.

But we were all here, not just to remember a transformational figure in American history and honor his life and sacrifice, but by telling his story now to help those still very much in need (the whole event was a benefit for four major SF area LGBT groups ), and to raise awareness for the fight that is still upon us, and join together to defeat Proposition 8 next Tuesday.

william

The Playground

Elsa and I went to the "Milk" premiere in San Francisco last night.

What an amazing event. I have some photos and stories to share tomorrow.

In the meantime, away from Hollywood and kleig lights, doesn't this look like a fun place to hang out for a few hours on a Saturday afternoon?

I don't know who the artist is, but it looks like the work of Garth Williams. 

The illustration is an interior end paper from a collection of miniature children's books that Elsa and I found at the flea market the other day.

There is lots to share with you from these little treasures, and I will be writing about them and posting some more fun artwork that evokes such an innocent, bucolic time.

Hope you enjoy.

william

What We Talk About When We Talk About Genre pt 2

More on yesterday's topic of the g-word of the moment: genre!

If we look at the list of genres below (from Wikipedia), you can see another aspect of jargon, i.e. how genre itself has gone from a more general term to being codified in present usage to mean only very few and specific genres. 

Historical drama or biography or memoir is a genre, but you'd never hear anyone today refer to a story of that ilk as a genre film, nor would you misinterpret anyone talking about making a slate of genre films to imply that they were seeking adult dramas, or romances. 

List of genres

• Historical: A story about a real person or event. Often, they are written in a text book format, which may or may not focus on solely that person or event.
  • Biography: The details of the life story of a real person, told by someone else.
    • Autobiography: Essentially the same as a biography, with the exception that the story is written by the person who is the subject of the story.
    • Memoir: Similar to autobiography, with the exception that it is told more "from memory", i.e. it is how the person personally remembers and feels about their life or a stage in their life, more than the exact, recorded details of that period. Though memoirs are often more subjective than autobiography works, memoirs are generally still considered to be nonfiction works. There are also some fiction works that purport to be the "memoirs" of fictional characters as well, done in a similar style, however, these are in a separate genre from their nonfiction counterparts.
  • Historical Fiction: A story that takes place in the real world, with real world people, but with several fictionalized or dramatized elements. This may or may not crossover with other genres; for example, fantasy fictionor science fiction may play a part, as is the case for instance with the novel George Washington's Socks, which includes time travel elements.
    • Alternate history: A more extreme variant of historical fictionwhich posits a "what if" scenario in which some historical event occurs differently (or not at all), thus altering the course of history; for instance, "What if the South won the American Civil War?" is an Alternate History concept that has had treatment in fiction. Alternate History is sometimes (though not universally) referred to as a subgenre of science fiction or speculative fiction, and likehistorical fiction, may include more fantastical elements (for instance, the Temeraire series uses the fantasy element of dragons to create an Alternate History plot set during the Napoleonic Era).
    • Period Piece: This type features historical places, people, or events that may or not be crucial to the story. Because history is merely used as a backdrop, it may be fictionalized to various degrees, but the story itself may be regarded as "outside" history. Genres within this category are often regarded as significant categories in themselves.
    • Costume drama: A type of drama that especially relies on lavish costumes and designs. This type crosses over with many other genres.
    • Jidaigeki: A story usually set in the Edo period of Japanese history, from 1603 to 1868.
• Adventure: A story about a protagonist who journeys to epic or distant places to accomplish something. It can have many other genre elements included within it, because it is a very open genre.
• Action: A story, similar to Adventure, but the protagonist usually takes a risky turn, which leads to desperate situations (including explosions, fight scenes, daring escapes, etc.). Action and Adventure are usually categorized together (sometimes even as "action-adventure") because they have much in common, and many stories fall under both genres simultaneously (for instance, theJames Bond series can be classified as both).
  • Superhero: A modern story about a person or creature who possessessupernatural or superhuman abilities. Often, they use their abilities toprotect or avenge others; hence the "hero" portion of the term. It should be noted that while the genre is reasonably common and broadly-definable (it can include science fiction, fantasy or both for instance), the term "superhero" is in fact technically a trademark (owned jointly) of DC Comics and Marvel Comics, who between them coined the term; thus, many games and stories that are not owned in part by either company often refer in-story and often in-title to their characters as "heroes" or other stand-in terms meant to imply their superhuman nature (examples of the former usage include the television series Heroesand the video game City of Heroes; an example of the latter is The Incredibles, which refers to its superheroic characters as "supers"). The genre should not be confused with heroic mythology or folkloric tales, as older, traditional folk characters such as Hercules or Robin Hoodgenerally are not considered to fall under the "superhero" genre.
  • Military: A story about a war or battle that can either be historical or fictional. It usually follows the events a certain warrior goes through during the battle's events.
  • Spy fiction: A story about a secret agent or military personnel member who is sent on a secret espionage mission. Usually, they are equipped with special gadgets that prove useful during the mission, and they have special training in things such as unarmed combat or computer hacking. They may or may not work for a specific government.
  • Swashbuckler: A story about a protagonist who gets into risky situations. In the story, the protagonist is usually in fights against villains, using weapons. The single-handed sword is most commonly used by the protagonists in this genre.
  • Martial arts film: A story characterized by extensive fighting scenes employing various types of martial arts.
    • Kung Fu: An action story set in China or associated with Chinese martial arts.
• Science Fiction: A story about technology or the future. It generally includes or is centered on the presumed effects or ramifications of computers ormachines, travel through space, time or alternate universes, alien lifeforms,genetic engineering, or other such things. The science or technology used may or may not be very thoroughly elaborated on; stories whose scientific elements are reasonably detailed, well-researched and considered to be relatively plausible given current knowledge and technology are often referred to as hard science fiction. Owing to the wide breadth of the genre, it very commonly has elements from other genres, such as action, comedy,alternate history, military or spy fiction, and fantasy mixed in, with such combinations often forming new major subgenres in their own right (see below).
  • Military Science Fiction: A story about a war or battle against aliens, monsters or other nations. It usually has technology far superior to today's, but not necessarily implausible. Military Science Fiction essentially is the addition of science fiction elements into a military fiction story.
  • Space Opera: A story characterized by the extent of space travel and distinguished by the amount of time that protagonists spend in an active, spacefaring lifestyle. Star Trek, Star Blazers and Star Wars have often been categorized as such.
• Punk: An umbrella term, and suffix, for several Science Fiction subgenres, normally categorized by distinct technologies and sciences. The themes tend to be cynical or dystopian, and a person, or group of people, fighting thecorruption of the government.
  • Cyberpunk: A futuristic storyline dealing with people who have been physically or mentally enhanced with cybernetic components, often featuring cyborgs or the singularity as a major theme, and generally somewhat cynical or dystopian (hence the "punk" portion of the name). This is often confused or placed with Techno-thriller, which is actually a separate and less specialized genre.
    • Postcyberpunk describes a subgenre of science fiction which some critics suggest has evolved from cyberpunk. Like its predecessor,postcyberpunk focuses on technological developments in near-future societies, typically examining the social effects of a ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, genetic engineering, modification of the human body, and the continued impact of perpetual technological change. Unlike "pure" cyberpunk, however, the works in this category feature characters who act to improve social conditions or at least protect the status quo from further decay.
    • Dieselpunk: Initially proposed as a genre by the creators of the role-playing game Children of the Sun,[12] dieselpunk refers to fiction inspired by mid-century pulp stories and set in a world similar to steampunk though specifically characterized by the rise of petroleum power and technocratic perception, incorporating neo-noir elements and sharing themes more clearly with cyberpunkthan steampunk. Though the notability of dieselpunk as a genre is not entirely uncontested, installments ranging from the retro-futuristic film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow to the 2001 Activision video game Return to Castle Wolfenstein have been suggested as quintessential dieselpunk works of fiction.
  • Steampunk: A story that takes place around the time steam technologywas first coming into use. The industrial revolution is a common time frame which steam punk stories take place in, and the steam technology is often actually more advanced than the real technology of time (for instance, Steam Detective features steam-powered robots).
    • Clockpunk: It has been occasionally used to refer to a subgenre of speculative fiction which is similar to steampunk, but deviates in its technology. As with steampunk, it portrays advanced technology based on pre-modern designs, but rather than the steam power of the Industrial Age, the technology used is based on springs, clockwork and similar. Clockpunk is based very intensively on the works of Leonardo da Vinci and as such, it is typically set during the Renaissance. It is regarded as being a type of Steampunk.
  • Biopunk: A story that is about genetics and biological research (often falling under the horror category). It focuses on some harmful effects characters have created when they change an animal's code to (unintentionally) create violent monster.
• Fantasy: A story about magic and supernatural forces, rather than technology, though it often is made to include elements of other genres, such as science fiction elements, for instance computers or DNA, if it happens to take place in a modern or future era. Depending on the extent of these other elements, the story may or may not be considered to be a "hybrid genre" series; for instance, even though the Harry Potter series canon includes the requirement of a particular gene to be a wizard, it is referred to only as a fantasy series.
  • Science Fantasy: A story with mystical elements that are scientifically explainable, or which combines science fiction elements with fantasy elements. It should be noted that science fiction was once actually referred to under this name, but that it is no longer used to denote that genre, and has somewhat fallen out of favor as a genre descriptor.
  • High Fantasy: A story that takes place in a completely different world or universe, having different races, traditions and even religions. Often, there aren't any real world events that tie into the story. The best known example of high fantasy is probably The Lord of the Rings.
  • Wuxia: A distinct quasi-fantasy sub-genre of the martial arts genre.
• Romance: A story about character's relationships, or engagements. It's a story about character development, rather than adventures.
• Crime Fiction: A story about a crime that is being committed or was committed. It can also be an account of a criminal's life. It often falls into the Action or Adventure genres.
  • Mystery: A story about a detective or person who has to solve a crime that was committed. They must figure out who committed the crime and why. Sometimes, the detective must figure out 'how' the criminal committed the crime if it seems impossible.
    • Murder Mystery: A mystery story which focuses on one type of criminal case: homicide. Usually, there are one or more murder victims, and the detective must figure out who killed them, the same way he or she solves other crimes. They may or may not find themselves or loved ones in danger because of this investigation; the genre often includes elements of a the suspense story genre, or of the action and adventure genres.
• Comedy: A story that tells about a series of funny or comical events, intended to make the audience laugh. It a is very open genre, and thus crosses over with many other genres on a frequent basis.
  • Comedy of manners: A film satirizes the manners and affectations of asocial class, often represented by stock characters. The plot of the comedy is often concerned with an illicit love affair or some otherscandal, but is generally less important than its witty dialogue. This form of comedy has a long ancestry, dating back at least as far asShakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing.
  • Parody: A story that mocks or satirizes other genres, people, fictional characters or works. Such works employ sarcasm, stereotyping, mockery of scenes, symbols or lines from other works, and the obviousness of meaning in a character's actions. Such stories may be "affectionate parodies" which merely mean to entertain those familiar with the source of the parody... or they may well be intended to undercut the respectability of the original inspiration for the parody by pointing out its flaws (the latter being closer to satire).
  • Black comedy: A parody or satirical story that is based around normallytaboo subjects, including death, murder, suicide, illicit drugs and war. So-called "Dead Baby Comedy" sometimes falls under this genre.
  • Romantic comedy: A subgenre which combines the romance genre with comedy, focusing on two or more individuals as they discover and attempt to deal with their romantic attractions to each other. Thestereotypical plot line follows the "boy-gets-girl", "boy-loses-girl", "boy gets girl back again" sequence. Naturally there are innumerable variants to this plot (as well as new twists, such as reversing the gender roles in the story), and much of the generally light-hearted comedy lies in the social interactions and sexual tension between the characters, who very often either refuse to admit they are attracted to one another, or must deal with others' meddling in their affairs.
  • Comedic Science Fiction: A comedy that uses science fiction elements or settings, often as a light-hearted (or occasionally vicious) parody of the latter genre.
• Documentary: A story that re-tells events rather than create them. Usually, it is about true historic events.
  • Mockumentary: A story that isn't about true historical events; rather, it uses the documentary "style" to cover fictional, and generally humorous, events or characters. Very common in film and television, both as a full film or series, or as a brief sequence or episode within a larger work. Examples include Best In Show and The Office.
• Horror: A story that is told to deliberately scare or frighten the audience, through suspense, violence or shock.
  • Monster: A story about a monster, creature or mutant that terrorizes people. Usually, it fits into the horror genre, for instance, Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein.
  • Giant Monster: A story about a giant monster, similar to the monster genre. However, giant monster stories are generally about a monster big enough to destroy buildings. Some such stories are about two giant monsters fighting each other, a genre known as kaiju in Japan, which is famous for such works after the success of such films and franchises asGodzilla.
  • Slasher: A story (generally in film) that usually has an antagonist, who is a serial killer or simply insane. The "slasher" stereotypically kills his victims in the movie by slowly creeping up to them, and then quickly killing them with a sharp object, such as a Chef's knife. The genre lead to the creation of the Final girl theory.
  • Survival Horror: A horror story about a protagonist who is put in a risky and life threatening situation that he or she must endure, often as a result of things such as zombies or other monsters, and the rest of the plot is how the hero or heroes overcome this.
• Thriller: A story that is usually a mix of fear and excitement. It has traits from the suspense genre and often from the action, adventure or mysterygenres, but the level of terror makes it borderline horror fiction at times as well. It generally has a dark or serious theme, which also makes it similar to drama.
  • Disaster-Thriller: A thriller story about mass peril, where the protagonist's job is to both survive, and to save many other people from a grim fate, often a natural disaster such as a storm or volcanic eruption, but which may also be a terrorist attack or epidemic of some sort.
  • Psychological-Thriller: A thriller that is less about the action, and more about the mental condition of the hero. The hero usually has what seem to be mental problems that get in the way of his objective - which may or may not be real mental instability. Some Psychological Thrillers are also about complicated stories that try to deliberately confuse the audience, often by showing them only the same confusing or seemingly nonsensical information that the hero gains.
  • Crime-Thriller: A thriller story that revolves around the life of detectives, mobs, or other groups associated with criminal events in the story.
  • Techno-Thriller: A thriller story whose theme is usually technology, or the danger behind the technology people use, including the threat ofcyber terrorism.
• Western: A story that usually takes place in the Wild West.

Film genres

Genres unique to movies:

• Animation: A genre descriptor that refers to the medium; animation is the use of computer renderings or drawings (or occasionally photos of representational objects, known as stop-motion animation or claymation) shown in a sequence in order to depict an action or event rather than using the filming of live actors.
  • Traditional Animation: Also known as "cel animation", this is one of the oldest animation subgenres. Basically, it is a way of animating acartoon by drawing and painting pictures by hand. Each drawing or painting is a different frame of animation, and when they are flipped or put in sequence at the right speed, they give the illusion of movement.
  • Stop Motion: A genre similar to Traditional Animation, however, instead of using hand drawn pictures, stop motion films are made with small figurines or other objects that have their picture taken many times in order to provide the animation frames.
  • Computer Generated Images (CGI): A genre of animation that includes animating a cartoon on a computer modeling program. Models of characters or props are created on the computer, and then programmed to do something specific. Then, when the animation is completely programed, the computer can play a completely computer generated movie. CGI is often used for the visual effects in Live Action films as well.
  • Puppetry: Although it is technically Live Action, puppetry is a different way of "animating" a movie and puppets are often used in lieu of live actors. Usually, there are small figurines or figures (similar to stop motion), but these are controlled and filmed in real time. Like CGI, puppetry can be found in Live Action films as a method of achieving a special effect.
• Live Action: The opposite of animation, live action uses the filming or videotaping of live actors instead of representational animation. Essentially, it is filming using real people, props and sets. Many a live action production does feature animation to achieve certain special effects work, but the film still falls under live action so long as at least some characters are played by real people whose physical performance is captured on film or video.

Wow.

When you look at this list, what do you see? 

Diversity? Eclecticism? Variety? A cornucopia of choices?

Now read this recent article from the Los Angeles Times:

• By Geoff Boucher, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer 
  October 20, 2008
  
  
  The Oscars present Hollywood as it wishes to be -- refined, glamorous and high-minded -- but on Saturday night at the Greek Theatre, the Spike TV Scream 2008 Awards showed the movie industry as it truly is in 2008: obsessed with superheroes, overflowing with fake blood and relentless in its pursuit to sell popcorn to teenagers. And despite a name that sounds like a B-movie convention, the Scream Awards turned out to be so of-the-moment in their target audience that top studio executives, major stars and A-list directors not only attended, they talked backstage about the show as a sign of the times.
  
  "There's a feeling that film and comic books and all these genres that didn't used to get respect are having this truly dynamic moment right now," said Zack Snyder, director of "300" and the upcoming R-rated superhero epic "Watchmen." "Just look around tonight and you get this feeling things are going into interesting places."
  
  

   

  • 

    Photos: Spike 2008 Scream Awards
  The Scream Awards, which will air Tuesday night on the Spike TV cable channel, are hardly a ratings powerhouse, but you wouldn't have known that from the celebrity turnout. Anthony Hopkins, Samuel L. Jackson, Winona Ryder and Gary Oldman appeared to present or receive awards, and two of the most successful filmmakers alive arrived on stage in dramatic fashion -- "Sweeney Todd" director Tim Burton floated in via hot-air balloon like the Wizard into Oz, and "Star Wars" mogul George Lucas entered accompanied by a marching regiment of clone troopers. 
  
  Backstage, Lucas, standing not far from black-clad rock star Marilyn Manson and comic-book industry icon Stan Lee, seemed a bit dazed by the strange confluence of pop culture streams. "This," he muttered, "issomething."
  
  These are lean times for corporations that routinely gamble more than $100 million on major films. Last week, Paramount, citing financial constraints, pushed back the release of "The Soloist," which was considered to be a strong Oscar contender. 
  
  
  At the same time, studios are scrambling to buy the rights to obscure superheroes, and there are no fewer than two dozen projects based on comic-book characters or video games that are in various stages of production. The reason is simple: This summer, "The Dark Knight," the latest Batman film, racked up $527 million at the box office in the U.S. alone, making it second only to "Titanic" as the highest-grossing film in history.
  
  "Iron Man," "Hancock," "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "The Incredible Hulk" were other major hits in a season that might be remembered as the Summer of Glove. More than that, you have to go back to 1998's "Saving Private Ryan" to find a year when the top movie wasn't a hero movie or an animated film.
  
  The Scream Awards presented a pop-culture environment where filmmakers like "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan shared the same stage as comic-book writers such as Mike Mignola, creator of "Hellboy," who said that in the old days Hollywood would strip-mine comics and scoff at the creators. Now, they walk on the same red carpet, which on Saturday night had giant posters of the Green Lantern and Spider-Man above it.
  
  "Comic books have given birth to all of this," Mignola said. "Comic books are the baby that gave birth to a giant. And sometimes it was a difficult delivery.
  
  
  "After this summer, everything is getting green-lit in Hollywood; there are so many projects in the pipeline that they won't all fit into the summer release schedules," he added. "So you're going to see summer last all year long. Comic-book movies are going to be year-round. It's the center of entertainment right now." 

  

I like popcorn. And some of my all-time favorite directors were genre masters like Anthony Mann or Samuel Fuller or Val Lewton.

But if I ate only popcorn, or a steady diet of only any one kind of food, I feel I'd be missing out on variety, the spice of life. If you feel, like I do, that the current film marketplace is kind of bland, think about how the economics and the ascendancy of the newfangled genre mentality, as that word is now commonly used, contributes to your choices or lack thereof.

And then harken back to these words from master director Elia Kazan:

“The highest form of art is when there’s no formalistic “genre” difference between the comedy, the farce, the tragedy, the social meaning, the symbolism. It’s one piece. The Rules of the Game has everything in it, but it’s all one. Renoir is a big enough man so that he finds people at once tragic, very funny, ridiculous, beautiful, sensitive, insensitive, cruel, generous, foolish, heroic.”

When it comes to genre, I'm with Kazan, who also said:

"The mood of bewilderment is the most honest and the most lifelike, therefore the most anxious." 

Hmm.

If we do live in the Golden Age of escapist entertainment, perhaps it is the reassuring comfort of genre that is the palliative to the anxiety and bewilderment we all honestly feel in real life these days?

What do you think?

william

Tomorrow: Good Things Come In Small Packages!

  

What We Talk About When We Talk About Genre

Hollywood is a place whose language is full of jargon. 

Like any trade, it has its vernacular: insider vocabulary which is full of rich, symbolic language and coded meanings.

One word that has become more and more powerful and loaded and prevalent in usage is genre. 

A French word that basically means "type" or "kind", which can be applied to books, music or movies.

genre |ˈ zh änrə|nouna category of artistic composition, as in music or literature, characterized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter.ORIGIN early 19th cent.: French, literally ‘a kind’ (see gender )Films have long been defined and discussed in terms of their genre. Box Office Mojo, a popular website that tracks film revenues domestically and internationally, also ranks films by genre in terms of their box office results.Their genre breakdown includes mirco-categories, so we can see what the most successful "fat suit" comedy is, or "dirty cop", or "talking animal (live action)" movie.Westerns and musicals were long two of the most popular genres and a staple of the golden age of Hollywood filmmaking, but for some time they have been perceived as genres that have fallen by the wayside in the tastes of contemporary audiences.
Genre and audiences

"Although genres are not precisely definable, genre considerations are one of the most important factors in determining what a person will see or read. Many genres have built-in audiences and corresponding publications that support them, such as magazines and websites. Books and movies that are difficult to categorize into a genre are likely to be less successful commercially."

This last statement is the defining axiom behind most of what gets made and how it gets distributed and consumed in the film marketplace today.

But what does it really mean?

I'm curious - do you choose what you will go to see or read or listen to by genre?

In reality, almost every story fits into a genre, or if the teller is at all ambitious, perhaps blends one or more genres, or tries to invert or expand upon the conventions of its genre.

As a concept, genre was not originally synonymous with formula, but, in my opinion, these days they are less and less distinguishable.

Tomorrow: A Deeper Look at Genre

william

Sunday

Gone fishin'!! 

(actually taking the kids today to a premiere of "Madagascar 2" courtesy of our friend Marty the Zebra - Chris Rock).

See you tomorrow with a discussion I hope you will engage in about the power and problems of Genre in filmmaking.

william

The Magic Cabinet

I've reprinted here a long article about autism from the New York Times the other day, but it is definitely one worth reading in case you missed it.

The story of the Magic Cabinet, how and why it was made, and what it became, and what it represents, is one of my favorites.

The tension described here, between D.I.R./Floortime and more traditional ABA therapies for children on the autistic spectrum, is something that most parents involved with this disorder have to navigate, without much of a road map of who to turn to or who to trust.

October 19, 2008

Reaching an Autistic Teenager
By MELISSA FAY GREENE

On a typical Monday morning at an atypical high school, teenage boys yanked open the glass doors to the First Baptist Church of Decatur, Ga. Half-awake, iPod wires curling from their ears, their backpacks unbuckled and their jeans baggy, the guys headed for the elevator. Arriving at Morning Meeting in the third-floor conference room, Stephen, his face hidden under long black bangs, dropped into a chair, sprawled across the table and went back to sleep. The Community School, or T.C.S., is a small private school for teenage boys with autism or related disorders. Sleep disturbances are common in this student body of 10, so a boy’s staggering need for sleep is respected. Nick Boswell, a tall fellow with thick sideburns, arrived and began his usual pacing along the windows that overlook the church parking lot and baseball diamond. Edwick, with spiky brown hair and a few black whiskers, tumbled backward with a splat into a beanbag chair on the floor.

“O.K., guys, let’s talk about your spring schedules,” said Dave Nelson, the 45-year-old founding director. He wore a green polo shirt, cargo shorts and sneakers and had a buzz haircut and an open, suntanned face. After his son Graham, 19, was given a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (A.S.D.) as a young child, Nelson left the business world and went into teaching and clinical and counseling work. On that Monday, he was instantly interrupted.

“I had a very bad night!” Edwick yelled from the floor. “Nightmares all night!”
“What was disturbing you, Edwick?” Nelson asked.
“What do you think?” Edwick cried in exasperation. “It’s St. Patrick’s Day!”
“What’s upsetting about that?” Nelson asked.
Edwick dropped his shoulders to relay how tiring it was to have to explain every little thing. “Leprechauns,” he yelled.
“Oh,” Nelson said. “I thought maybe it was the tornado that hit downtown on Friday night.”
“No, not the tornado!” Edwick yelled.

Nick stopped pacing to comment: “Edwick’s not scared of tornados; he’s scared of leprechauns.” I burst out laughing and so did the faculty members, while Nelson seemed to relish the interruption rather than find it a hindrance to the morning routine. His hidden agenda was precisely to entertain outbursts like Edwick’s, while making room for a sardonic intelligence like Nick’s. No matter the stated purpose of Morning Meeting, the true purposes were always the same: conversation, debate, negotiation, compromise and the building of relationships. T.C.S.’s only serious admissions requirements are that a boy should have at least some functional language and that there’s a good chance he can become part of the “community” of the school name.

The group turned to registering for spring classes. In addition to biology, algebra 2/trigonometry, English literature and U.S. history, there were the electives: Dragon Lore, Comic Books, How to Shop for Bargains and the History of Snack Food. Past electives included All About Pirates, Spy Technology, Ping-Pong, Dog Obedience, Breaking World Records, Unusual Foods and Taking Things Apart. (“I just wish they’d come up with a second-quarter class, Putting the Things Back Together,” Nelson told me.)

“I knew it!” Edwick complained, mashing about on the beanbag chair. He was disappointed because no one picked the elective he’d proposed: the History of Meat.

What makes the Community School unusual is not its student body — plenty of schools around the country enroll teenagers with an autism spectrum disorder. But, like about only two dozen schools in the country, it employs a relatively new, creative and highly interactive teaching method known as D.I.R./Floortime, which is producing striking results among T.C.S.’s student body. (D.I.R. stands for developmental, individual differences, relationship-based approach.) The method is derived from the work of Stanley Greenspan, a child psychiatrist and professor of psychiatry, behavioral science and pediatrics at George Washington University, and his colleague Dr. Serena Wieder. D.I.R./Floortime can be effective with all kinds of children, whether they have developmental challenges or not. As applied by T.C.S., it is an approach that encourages students to develop their strengths and interests by working closely with one another and with their teachers. The goal for students is neurological progress through real-world engagement.

With the skyrocketing diagnoses of A.S.D.’s in recent years, parents and school systems are challenged as never before to find techniques to keep these teenagers engaged, productive and nondespairing. Boys with A.S.D. (they outnumber girls four to one) who were difficult to console, to teach, to restrain at age 4 or 8 can be nearly impossible for parents and teachers to manage and to steer at 14 and 18. While a 25-pound toddler’s tantrum is wearying, a 150-pound teenager’s tantrum is dangerous. Puberty and young adulthood take many of these young people unawares.

How best to serve this population remains a subject of debate, because autism is a “final common pathway” diagnosis, meaning children arrive here from different points of origin, are troubled by a wide variety of issues and respond to different strategies. “You meet one child with autism and, well, you’ve met one child with autism,” says Linda Brandenburg, the director of school autism services at the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Maryland. Given the wide range of expression in autism and related disorders, there is no one-size-fits-all intervention. “We now know that there are several different models that seem to work — some more behavioral, some more developmental, some more eclectic,” Dr. Fred R. Volkmar, director of the Yale Child Study Center, told me. “What we really need to be doing, what the law says, is design programs around the kids rather than force kids into a program.”

The vast majority of programs for autistic youth in the U.S. use an approach called Applied Behavior Analysis, in which teachers and therapists use well-established techniques of reward and punishment to shape a student’s actions toward goals like toilet training, learning vocabulary or completing a puzzle. A typical A.B.A. lesson rewards memorized responses, specific behaviors and compliance to external directives — “Pick up the fork, Jared.” An instructor may move the child’s arm, hand and fingers to model the desired behavior. The child is then rewarded — with praise, with hugs, with a treat — when he performs the act correctly. As the first method to work with profoundly self-absorbed children and to demonstrate that progress could be made, A.B.A. — which came to national prominence in the late 1980s — has been a lifesaver for countless families. Critics worry that the method focuses on modifying the symptoms rather than addressing the underlying disabilities, and many say they fear that A.B.A.-trained children often do not “generalize,” that is, take a behavior learned in one setting and apply it in another. A child may learn to make eye contact in response to “How are you?” and to reply, “Fine, how are you?” But such rote memorization does not give the child the intuition to know when a stranger is to be greeted warmly and when to be avoided, and it does not enable him to meet his grandmother with greater warmth than the grocer.

“All teachers and therapists use elements of behaviorism,” Nelson told me. “As an intervention for autism, the A.B.A. movement was one of the first to suggest how intensive the intervention has to be — maybe 40 hours a week — to see results. This notion of intensity has been valuable to everyone that followed.”
The Community School — with a teaching staff of 12 and a $25,000 tuition — employs the intensity but not the methodology of A.B.A. Rather than spend time on a student’s mastery of a skill preselected for him by an adult, the idea is to harness a student’s energy and desire to learn. As a student interacts with peers and teachers, solves problems and expresses his ideas, his behavior should naturally begin to lose its rough edges. The essence of Floortime is that a person learns best when self-motivated, when an inner drive sparks the acquisition of skills and knowledge.

As with A.B.A., achieving D.I.R./Floortime’s far-reaching goals for students requires intense interaction — a wooing of a child from his or her remove — for as many hours of the day as parents and teachers can physically sustain. Dr. Greenspan would like to see an autistic child productively interacting with an adult for most of his waking time, seven days a week. Those drained parents who have the means hire therapists and trained baby sitters to help them approximate that schedule, during either home-schooling days or out-of-school hours.

Because the goal of D.I.R./Floortime is the kindling of a student’s curiosity, intelligence, playfulness and energy, the lessons can take on a spontaneous, electric quality. I have seen sessions with young children during which the child and his or her therapist or parent tumbled across the house, behind the sofa, into closets or onto the porch, picking up balls, puppets, costumes, books and snacks along the way. At T.C.S., classes can look like debates between equals; school days can include board games, sports, plays, science experiments, music, art, ropes courses or rafting trips in which all students and teachers playfully compete, contribute and perform. All the boys at the school probably have average or better intelligence. Onlookers might call a few “high functioning” (though that adjective has no clinical meaning), and T.C.S. is an accredited high school and middle school, offering college prep and high-school courses to students able to complete a conventionally rigorous course of study. (Other students pursue less-demanding tracks oriented toward getting a G.E.D., attaining job skills or developing independent-living skills.) So it’s not all fun and social time. But rote learning is never the goal; the goal is that the students should be able to think, to feel, to communicate and to learn. Most of the kids are making the first friends of their lives here.

T.C.S. does not promise miracles. It does not promise to be a perfect fit for every teenager with an A.S.D. Dave Nelson does not invest great faith in the possibility of leaving the autism spectrum behind, no matter how much parents (like himself) would love to believe it. The breakthroughs at T.C.S. are subtle rather than headline-grabbing, noticeable at first only to the adults closest to the kids and to the students themselves. But for these families, any forward motion can inspire a moment of real hope and happiness, and quite remarkable progress happens every day.

Stephen, 17, a solidly built boy with a sweet face under a heavy thatch of bangs, entered T.C.S. in 2005 prone to blowups of alarming power. His parents adore their son and have been whipped about like sailboats by his furies. His first year at school, during group construction of an outdoor marble-run, a boy fumbled and a marble dropped. “I am going to assassinate him,” Stephen exploded. “I. Will. Behead. Him.” Stephen’s academics are top-notch, but the stance of the Community School is not to ignore a student’s psychological deficits while skipping ahead to schoolwork or life skills. It doesn’t matter that Stephen is at home with algebraic theorems if he is going to react like a toddler when ambushed by a mad or sad feeling.

Ty Martin, 14, is a cute and curly-haired guy who lives in terror of loud or strange noises. The faux thunderstorm in the produce aisles at the grocery store makes it difficult to take him shopping. A classmate’s coughing or a siren in the distance distracts him from schoolwork. His mother often was obliged to retreat to a windowless basement room at home, hugging and soothing her son when the outside world — especially lawn crews next door with leaf-blowers — overwhelmed him. “He doesn’t like crows,” Judy Martin told me last spring. “If crows are at a park, he’ll go from happy to berserk in five seconds. If we go to a restaurant, we’re all on edge, praying the bartender doesn’t turn on the blender.”

Sam Gross visited San Francisco with his mother two years ago at age 15. During a tour of Alcatraz, the handsome olive-skinned boy climbed a nearby fence and prepared to dive. Had his mother not spotted him and screamed, Sam would have been injured or killed by falling onto the rocks. But he was not trying to kill himself. He planned, as he explained in his monotone voice, to turn into a merman and swim back to the mainland.

Then he began to deteriorate. For two years, he spent every day in a ball under his blankets, rising only to pound either side of his head with such ferocity that two bald spots bloomed under his fists, then dangerously swelled. He had to be sedated to stop the self-battery. By the time Sam reached the Community School, he was nearly incommunicative. Whenever he began using his head like a punching bag, the teachers asked him to stop, and he did, but otherwise showed no sign that he heard them.
Students arrive at T.C.S. trailing long histories of school failure and humiliation, suspension, expulsion, truncated transcripts, social isolation, victimization, self-loathing, suicidal ideation or years of home-schooling patched together by mothers forced to leave their jobs. “On our first visit with Dave Nelson, Ty started screaming: ‘I hate this place! I want to leave right now!’ ” Judy Martin says. “Most principals don’t want to work with a kid like that. But what I saw on Dave Nelson’s face was ‘I can work with a kid like this.’ ”
Many prospective parents begin to weep during their intake interviews with Nelson. For them and their children, this place represents something of a last chance.

While there is no direct relationship between Dr. Stanley Greenspan and the nation’s D.I.R./Floortime schools, other than one of mutual respect, the theoretical underpinning of these schools relies on his argument that human intelligence itself is constructed out of the warm back-and-forth signaling between child and parent, beginning at birth. Jean Piaget located a child’s investigation of causality in the material world, for example, with experiments like pulling a string attached to a bell, but Greenspan and his colleague Serena Wieder see these insights occurring in the emotional realm, when a baby learns that his or her smile brings the parent’s smile. Brain development is not a solo pursuit but a rich and complex flowering that occurs only in the hothouse of human relationships.

What does this have to do with autism? A child born at risk of an A.S.D. has cognitive and sensitivity issues that inhibit engagement. Pleasures enjoyed by a typical baby can upset him: a mother’s face seems too close, so the infant cranes away; the father’s tickles may produce fear reflexes rather than laughter. Meanwhile the sunlight is burning his eyes, the diaper scrapes his skin and the baby begins avoiding interaction with people at the cost of normal brain development.

I begin to picture the brain metaphorically as a tangled ball of Christmas lights. When you plug it in, there are strands that light up perfectly and there are dark zones where a single burned-out bulb has caused a line to go out. If the bulb for Exchanging-Smiles-With-Mother doesn’t light up, then Empathy won’t be kindled farther along the strand, or Playfulness, or Theory of Mind (the insight that other people have different thoughts from yours). The electrical current won’t reach the social-skill set, the communication skills, creativity, humor or abstract thinking.

According to the D.I.R. perspective, emotion is the power source that lights up the neural switchboard. D.I.R./Floortime’s goal is to connect autistic students with other people as a way of fueling their cognitive potential and giving them access to their own feelings, desires and insights. The latest findings in the field of neuroplasticity support D.I.R.’s faith in the capacity of the human brain to recoup and to compensate for injury and illness. “Early intervention is optimal,” Dr. Greenspan told me, “but it’s never too late. The areas of the brain that regulate emotions, that sequence ideas and actions and that influence abstract thinking keep growing into a person’s 50s and 60s.”

T.C.S. students are masters of withdrawal, and for the D.I.R. model to work, each student must be an active partner in his own education. But how do you ignite the enthusiasm of an autistic teenager who has long since walled himself off from the outside world; who uses little language or who screeches in random yelps or vulgarities; who flips out when pried away from his computer game; who speaks to you, if at all, in long monologues on arcane subjects with zero interest in your response? What do you use as a staging ground for a relationship with an increasingly furious and despairing adolescent?

The Floortime technique might be summed up as: “Follow the child’s lead and challenge the child.” It is most easily visible on the videotapes documenting Dr. Greenspan’s 25 years of clinical work with younger children. In each video, the gangly psychiatrist crouches on the floor of his comfortably shabby home office in Bethesda, calling instructions to parents about how to catch the attention of and interact with their remote-seeming children. “I treat everything the child does as having a reason — to feel calmer, for example, or to feel excited,” Dr. Greenspan told me. “Often the parents have notions of what the child should be doing, so they’re trying to control the child rather than build on the child’s natural interests.”

In my favorite video, a 30-something husband and wife flank their 4-year-old daughter; the husband, in round horn-rim glasses, sits forward on the sofa; his wife curls up on the floor nearby. Their daughter, with chopped-off blond hair and a doughy face, looks to me like Helen Keller, pre-Anne Sullivan. Seeming almost blind, deaf, mute and mentally retarded, she bounces from sofa to table to wall. She is without affect, her movements ungainly and her eyes unfocused. She makes slurping sounds, as if she has reached the bottom of a drink with a straw. “We’re going to try to get a continuous flow of back-and-forth going here,” Dr. Greenspan says.

The mother smiles sadly, knowingly. “That would be nice,” she says.
“We’re going to build on what she does,” the doctor says.
The girl is flapping a plastic toy in her hand. “Will she give it to Daddy?” Dr. Greenspan asks.
“Can I see that?” the father asks as the child roams the room. The child seems not to hear him. But then the girl, traveling by, indifferently drops the toy into his outstretched hand. Delighted, the father says: “There’s a star on it! And there’s a triangle!”
“Here you’re losing her, Daddy,” Dr. Greenspan says, and sure enough, the girl escapes and heads for a wall. “If you’re trying to educate her with complicated language that she’s not processing, then you’re going to lose her. You want to change your orientation from educating her to interacting with her.”
The child picks up a bright plastic flowered eyeglass case off a table and twiddles it. “See if she’ll give it to you,” the doctor prompts.
“Can you give it to Mommy?” the mother asks, and surprising everyone, the girl hands it over. “Thank you!” the mother says.
The mother hides the eyeglass case behind her on the floor. The girl treads in place for a moment, swinging her arms and slurping. She begins to laugh a strange, heaving laugh. “Huh-huh-huh!” The mother moves a little to show that she’s sitting on the eyeglass case, and the child dives for it.
“Good, good!” Dr. Greenspan cheers.
“Can I have it back?” the mother asks. The mother hides it inside her own sweater, half-exposed.
“Let her get it! Let her get it! Let her get it!” Dr. Greenspan says in excitement. It is of paramount importance to him that the child initiates her own ideas and motor plans. Every time her parents start to physically turn or steer her, he stops them, crying: “Let her do it! Let her do it!”
The mother next slips the eyeglass case into the bib of her daughter’s pink overalls, and the girl stops in her tracks. Dr. Greenspan is prepared to leap over furniture to block the parents from giving her a clue. Suddenly, slowly, the girl’s gaze drops. . . . She finds the eyeglass case! In her own pants! “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” she says.
“Make it more complicated!” the psychiatrist pleads.
“Can we go give it to Daddy?” the mother asks.
The mother walks over to the father, who hides the eyeglass case in his shirt. The girl freezes in confusion. The psychiatrist loves a moment like this and tries to prolong it. He sees momentary frustration as a vitally creative occasion. He urges parents to be “playfully obstructive.” He’s not after results; he wants to see a child thinking. “She can do this,” he advises them.
The girl slowly looks down, plucking at her overalls. For a moment it seems they have lost her. But — no — she’s looking inside the bib, where she last found the eyeglass case. It’s not there. Again she freezes. She must be thinking, “Mommy went to Daddy. . . . ” Slowly she turns toward her father.
The expression on the father’s face, when his daughter plucks the eyeglass case from his shirt, is of heartbreaking gratitude. A moment later, he pitches the eyeglass case over her head to his wife. The girl turns and beholds her beaming mother holding the eyeglass case. “Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!” she says. Mom pitches the case back to Dad, and when the child turns to run to her father, she skips in her delight, her face radiant, making a hoarse sound of laughter.

Children with autism — especially Asperger’s — are famous for all-consuming interests in Matchbox cars, bus maps, train schedules, oscillating fans, Civil War battles, baseball statistics, black holes, dinosaurs, chess or Star Wars. While most programs try to discourage these obsessions, D.I.R./Floortime argues that they can offer openings into relationships. Does this work? Parents of T.C.S. students say that it does. Most speak in glowing terms about the school’s lifesaving impact on their families. Outside experts are more cautious, reluctant to give any one approach a gold medal when there are so many variables, including the profiles of the students admitted to T.C.S. in the first place. “Stanley Greenspan is an engaged and enthusiastic clinician,” Dr. Volkmar says. “People are attracted to Floortime because it is respectful of the child and the child’s wishes. He wants to follow the child’s lead. I would imagine that more able children do produce leads that are worth following — I’ve seen kids with Asperger’s do well in Montessori programs too — but what if the child isn’t doing much that you’d want to follow? I wonder if following the lead of a child who’s doing nothing but body rocking results in a roomful of people all body rocking with him.”

Dave Nelson says: “T.C.S. is a school, so I’d argue that our success should be measured by how well we educate our students. The boys have far better attendance rates than at their previous schools. They have far better emotional regulation — many could not attend school before due to their outbursts; while here, emotional regulation is core curriculum. Many were depressed to the point of suicidal ideation at their previous schools; that’s not happening here. Some were victims of bullying, some were aggressors at their previous schools; not here. All our parents report that their children are functioning better, are happier and are better communicators, thinkers and learners.”

Judy Martin says: “My son Ty’s progress has been monumental. He doesn’t cry in dark basements anymore. He isn’t entirely focused on himself; he is learning real empathy. He never liked school, and now he loves it. Every day this past summer he asked me when he could be with Dave Nelson. This is a child who never cared about teachers or friends. Now he tells me he loves them. I chatted with Stephen the other day by the vending machine as his money got stuck. He was problem-solving rather than blowing up. We rode the elevator together, chatting about the problem, while he decided to go find a teacher to help him.”
One morning at school, the fire alarm went off. My first thought — like everyone’s — was, Oh, my God —Ty! We descended the stairs to the parking lot. Ty was within a circle of T.C.S. teachers. “It was Elana!” he yelled to everyone about one of the teachers, who had been trying to prepare a snack for her class. “Elana burnt the popcorn in the microwave!” Poor Elana Himmelfarb, covering her face, not knowing whether to laugh or cry, said again and again, “I am just so, so, so, so sorry, Ty.”

He was trying to forgive her, but he kept asking, “Elana, why did you make the fire alarm go off?” His face was red, his curls were plastered back with perspiration and he was rocking a bit, long after the alarm had been silenced. Back upstairs, when the smoke cleared, Ty huddled in a beanbag chair with Rebecca Richter, one of the teachers, beside him.

“I hate that noise,” Ty said. “That’s a bad noise. That has a witch’s voice.”
“You really didn’t like that noise,” she agreed.
“This can NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN,” he sobbed, demanding that Rebecca promise him. “This will never happen again, will it? This can never happen!
“I need you to call my mom,” he said, weeping. “I’m having a very bad day. Will you call my mom? I need her to come get me.” I imagine a region of Ty’s brain blinking hard, a fistful of tiny red lights setting one another off: Panic! Panic!
“If we can keep Ty engaged with us, it means that he is harnessing and organizing his energies in order to interact,” Nelson told me later. “By keeping him connected, we won’t let him be kidnapped by random fragmented thoughts. If you aren’t engaged with other people, then you are completely at the mercy of your own regulatory system. Think about a situation where you were overcome with distress and how being able to tell someone helped you avoid becoming uncontrollably distraught.”
Gently Richter moved Ty from unreality (“the witch’s voice”) onto solid ground (“I’m having a bad day”). Given the tools to hang on, Ty survived until the end of the school day. And the breakthroughs continued. “When Ty came home that day, we talked through the events, as the school has trained me to lovingly do,” Judy Martin told me recently, “and Ty said, ‘Mom, I feel bad for Elana, because she didn’t mean to do it.’
“ ‘Do you think she felt embarrassed?’ I asked him, and he said yes. This moment was huge: Ty has always struggled with seeing the viewpoint of others, and here he was able to take a moment that frightened him and look at it from Elana’s viewpoint. We go to restaurants all the time now, and Ty couldn’t care less about the blenders. Lawn crews arrive next door, and they don’t faze him.”

When Sam Gross, now 17, arrived at T.C.S., he tripped along down the hall on the balls of his feet, rolling his head, thrumming on his chest with his fingers, humming to himself, lost in other worlds. The only points of entry he offered were during serious flights of fancy. “What this school needs,” he murmured in his low, resonant voice one day to a teacher, Lucie Canfield, “is a magic cabinet.”
“What would it do, Sam?” Lucie asked, delighted.
After a long pause he said, “Turn Sam into Samantha.” Sam wanted to travel back in time, he explained, to when he was a little girl; then he changed his mind and wanted to use it for teleporting.
Sam’s parents and his psychiatrist were initially less than enthusiastic about the magic cabinet: “Let’s not get started with this stuff here,” they said. But Lucie had already asked Sam, “What would a magic cabinet look like?”
Sam had replied: “Cow-colored.”
Lucie pushed poster board and colored pencils at Sam and said, “Show me.”

Dave Nelson agreed. This was the clearest opening they’d had from Sam Gross. Everything Nelson knew about Floortime told him to follow the boy’s lead. “Let’s see where this goes,” he told Sam’s parents.
Sam finished several quite beautiful drawings of a tall, rectangular closet. It would have a blue curtain and a bell stand on top, with a chain he would pull when he was finished transforming or teleporting. Nelson brought in a refrigerator box, and Lucie and Sam painted it in a nice Holstein pattern of black on white. “We made a point of always saying to Sam not that we were building a magic cabinet, but that we would pretend with him,” Lucie tells me. “I explained that magicians used tricks to make people think they disappeared.” T.C.S. would facilitate this exploration, with Sam, of the frontier of fantasy, with the expectation that he would encounter some reality along the way.

The special day arrived, and Sam stepped into the cabinet and drew the curtain. Dave waved a magic wand and read words Sam had written: “Abracadabra-a-whirl. Let Sam turn into a girl.”
There was silence inside the box. Then Sam called, “Do it again!” Dave chanted the words again. Silence. Then: “Let Lucie do it!” The teacher took the wand and gave it a try.
Sam peeked out, still male. “This is not the right cabinet for turning into a girl,” he said in consternation. “This is the cabinet that turns you into Paul McCartney.” He exited. At home that night, Sam looked up magicians in the Yellow Pages and booked one to come to school the next day. Dave Nelson canceled. It was time for reality to intervene.

Back at school, Sam spent the week focusing on how to teleport out of the cabinet to surprise folks in the cafeteria on the ground floor. Then one day he made an unusual request of Lucie Canfield: he needed help cutting a back door in the box that would allow him to slip away like a stage magician. It was a striking and brave acknowledgment of the material world.

Sam never staged his trick, as it was real magic that excited him. And he muttered, over the next few weeks, seditious thoughts along the lines of, What kind of school is this that doesn’t provide a real magician? The Magic Cabinet still stands in the art room, bell-towered and cow-colored. Many of the students enjoy stepping behind the blue curtain now and then for a moment of quiet remove from the world or to prepare to burst back upon the room in an assumed role. “It’s expanded from a product of Sam’s fantastic imagination to something of real purpose,” Judy Martin told me. “Kids peek out their heads as characters from books they’ve been reading, changing their voices and facial expressions.” The Magic Cabinet has come to stand for what the Community School offers these students: the possibility of transformation.

Melissa Fay Greene is the author of “There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue Her Country’s Children.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Dave Nelson sounds like a cool guy. Props to you for all your hard work with these children, Dave.

william

Got Milk?

Next Tuesday Elsa and I are going to San Francisco for the world premiere of a new movie.

Milk Trailer 2008

"Milk" is the story of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay politician elected to San Francisco's Board of Supervisors, who, along with Mayor George Moscone was assassinated in City Hall by his embittered colleague Dan White on November 27, 1978.

Written by Dustin Lance Black, and produced by Dan Jinks and Bruce Cohen, the film stars Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, and features an incredible cast including Josh Brolin as Dan White, James Franco as Scott Smith, Emile Hirsch as Cleve Jones and Diego Luna as Jack Lira, and was directed by Gus Van Sant.

Gus is a filmmaker I really admire.

Even if I haven't loved every one of his films, I feel everything he does is interesting, and his ability to maintain a personal voice and vision while working both within and outside of the Hollywood system, is both incredibly difficult and incredibly rare.

His first feature film, Mala Noche, was recently released on dvd as part of the Criterion Collection. And a few years later, his breakout independent film "Drugstore Cowboy" really put him on the map.

His most commercially successful film was "Good Will Hunting" which introduced the writer/actors Matt Damon and Ben Affleck to world audiences and won them the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

And last year, his little seen "Paranoid Park" was the culmination of his recent work in very small, more experimental narrative films, and won the 60th Anniversary Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

But I met Gus before any of his acclaimed feature film career started, when I was still living in Chicago, and I saw his incredible short film "The Discipline of D.E." based on a William Burroughs short story.

I had a small company called FutureVision, Inc. at the time, and when I say small, I mean it was me and one other guy, who had anointed ourselves as producers, printed up some business cards, and started to try to hustle our way into show business. One of our first ventures was to try to produce a series for Public Television called American Film Showcase, to (you got it!), collect and showcase the work of interesting and emerging young American film directors.

Although we actually taped a pilot with a local Chicago film critic (no, NOT Ebert or Siskel) this grand, art-y notion never took off, but in the process we solicited and screened hundreds of short films, and found some really cool new voices. One of them was Sally Cruikshank, whose wonderful animated short film "Quasi at the Quackadero" I posted about earlier.

And one was Van Sant's "D.E." (for Do Easy, as in taking the path of least resistance - a lesson if I had followed I probably would have stayed home and never come out here to LaLa Land!). :)

Gus was a film student at the Rhode Island School of Design, and his teacher there was also one of my early mentors, a Polish film director named Marian Marzynski, who after R.I.S.D. came to live in Chicago and teach at Governor's State University.

This was in the early '80's, the nascent years of cable and pay television, and when the series idea belly-flopped FutureVision ended up becoming a distributor of our American Film Showcase shorts, and licensing them as what was called "interstitial programming", basically a glorified word for filler, to cable tv.

I never stayed that close to Gus in our different journey's out here, but I think I had a place in his heart as one of the few distributors to actually send him a check, however small, back in his hungry days, and I was thrilled by the opportunity to try to support him and help try to put together the cast and financing for "Milk" when the script came to me while I was running production at Sidney Kimmel Entertainment last year.

Hollywood has struggled for years to bring the Harvey Milk story to the big screen. The good ones are never easy, and this was no exception. Warner Bros had a version of the film in development for almost 20 years, with directors like Oliver Stone and various writers coming and going, without ever getting out of development hell.

How timely that it is coming out now. The freedom, respect and equality that Milk fought and died for is still under relentless attack, as evidenced by odious legislation like the current Proposition 8 initiative on the California ballot this election and the torrent of money and false and hateful advertising flooding the airwaves in support of it.

A friend of mine just sent me the following information for those of you that want to and can afford to join the cause to defeat that horrible measure:

"The home page for the campaign is NoOnProp8.com. There's a lot of information and a donation button right at the top. The information that is not on the page that I find appalling is that the Mormon church has put $20 million into the yes campaign so far. I have nothing against Mormons (well, now I do), but the fact that a religious institution from out of state is working so hard to rewrite California's constitution is beyond alarming. More people need to know."

I'm excited to see the film and to see my old friend Gus walking up the carpet at the premiere. I hope it is a success and opens hearts and minds around the country to Harvey's timeless message, as well as being just a damn compelling and entertaining drama of flawed and honest humans.

Even though I never found that D.E. zen discipline, Gus seems to have channeled a bit of Burrough's aesthetic into his own career and work, following his own path and marching to his own drummer.

I can't wait to see what he will do next!

william

Gotham Awards

Yeah!

Congratulations to Charlie Kaufman and all of my "Synecdoche, New York" collaborators!

The film was nominated this week as one of the five Best Independent Films of 2008, as well as one of the Best Ensemble Casts, by the Gotham Independent Film Awards.

Even more auspiciously, "synecdoche" was the featured Word of the Day at Dictionary.com.

How is that for Kismet!

All the more reason to get out this weekend, if you live in Los Angeles or New York, and support original, adventurous, independent filmmaking.

Tomorrow: Another indie film that I hope will be one of the Best of 2008.

william