Paralysis of the Mind

I'm very tired of being so constantly riled up about the political direction of our country where I end up being basically so sick of my fellow Americans, our preznit and the random moral decay brought out by those who act like they cherish the morals — while robbing the bank — that I end up getting into a pervasive funk. I could use a little good news once every blue moon or so.

Which is why tonight, I very much enjoyed Our Dear Leader's news-related conference tonight.

There's a lot of bad news, of course. The White House press core gently licked Bush's taint while the cameramen cleanly worked the balls, and Condi cleaned up the rest. With answers like "The terrorists can't run" (yet no Osama question) and "Diplomacy in South Korea" (yet no "So, if we know they have WMD, can't we invade?" query) Bush shoved his dick down various throats until he climaxed, somewhat embarassingly, all over David Gregory's (of NBC) face. My distaste of gay porn aside, I enjoy seeing Bush get his jollies off, because it always makes him say something dumb afterward. Some people smoke, some people cuddle; Bush says something mindblowingly stupid. It's his form of the afterglow, I guess. Remember how he splattered his load after landing that jet on the aircraft carrier all by hizzelf and then, how he spun around and screamed "Mission accomplished!" Those were good times.

So there Bush is, dick hanging out, with Gregory pulled to the side, wiping his face off on Condi's dress, he suddenly says, "My plan is to cut Social Security benefits to the middle class and rich but less for the poor to bring the system into shape." Karl Rove, who was rather... how shall we say it... involved while Bush was shoving his dick into various orifices of the press core hits the kill switch but it's too late, baby, now it's too late, and Bush, positively gleaming after his sloppy little display, has no idea what sort of idiocy he just unleashed.

Americans don't care if the President occasionally has to relax from his difficult job and sexless home life (can you imagine Laura getting wet? I certainly can't; those features are made of plastic, built to last and are probably rather cold to the touch) by rampaging through the press core. Interns no; the vapid liberal media, sure! Hell, Americans don't care if Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh set up a Conservative Thought Police that quietly pulls liberals, blacks, hispanics, Protestants... hell, moderates, Jews and ugly people off the street and dumps their dead bodies in the local river. They don't care if their own mother is turning tricks on the corner to Donald Rumsfeld — and I've heard he can be a rough lay who tends to dominate men, women and occasionally, underage Taiwanese boys — but by God, never EVER tell an American they're either a) not getting their money's worth or much WORSE yet b) some of their money is going to the poor.

You could hear the frenzied shrieks. Rich people were promised that cutting social security would be good for them, but suddenly the President was talking about old-age welfare? Huh? Even the middle-class, all 14 of 'em, looked around and said, "Wait just a fucking minute. That's MY money you're playing with."

Americans are nothing if not greedy and selfish. Even saying... nay... SUGGESTING that the poor are going to get any sort of ride is a foolish thing to say. Bush says he can ride the rail like the one night he rode Ashcroft after getting the shy little recluse to sing to him, but if his performance tonight is any indication, he's making a worse mistake now than the one time he let Rumsfeld get drunk at a state dinner and then escorted him to the Lincoln Bedroom and the assortment of bike chains and splintery wood lying there on the floor.

And that was a pretty bad mistake. Just ask Jeff Guckert. He taped the whole thing.

One day, one MTV worker turned to another and said those fateful words.

"Y'know, it would be interesting it we put strangers in a house and filmed it, wouldn't it?"

And thus, the worst television idea since anything featuring Joan Collins was born: reality TV.

The Real World was so groundbreaking, so fundamentally different, that it immediately found itself a cult following. Which is wonderful. Within those boundaries, almost anything creative can be made better. The fans were willing, the producers were daring, and then... blammo, it all fell to pieces as soon as the idea hit the pop culture nexis.

Somehow, I'd like to blame this on Pedro Zamora.

What pushed reality TV over the top though was not anything the Real World was originally about. Let us compare Friends to American Idol for a moment. Now Fox, with a major hit in its hands, built a lovely set in a theater (I think it's devoted entirely to Idol at this point) and obviously pays Simon Cowell a nice chunk of change. But the engine of the show, the shrieking talentless girls and the castrato no-talent boys, get nary a dime. If NBC didn't have to pay Courtney, Matt or Jennifer anything, Friends would be on until 3-5 of them died of old age. It's cheap as hell to make a reality show, so the business end is successful.

But I swore I was going to blame this on Pedro Zamora, and so I shall. By the time Zamora and his arch-nemesis Puck blasted into our living rooms, the Real World was a certified hit... but mostly among the types of people that are poor and advertisers only care marginally about, despite being in that magical 18-34 demographic. But suddenly, the battle of wills between Puck and Pedro did not simply decide that Puck would go home, nor would it lead to the endless personality typing of people who have strived since to be LIKE Puck (for whatever reason)... it decided the entire fate of the television age in which we live.

Because Pedro, the perfect hero, triumphed over Puck, the cold villan, reality TV suddenly had a story. It suddenly wasn't just about a group of stupid kids living in a house... but more than that, it suddenly didn't just have to be about stupid kids living in a house. The drama that came easily, like ignorant in-fighting or roommates confronting each other, was suddenly replaced by something a lot more important, and therefore, far more interesting. Pedro died, but his spirit, like it or not, lives on in every single moment of drama in a reality show. I'd like to say he did things for AIDS awareness too, since it was not entirely his fault things ended up like this.

But go back and watch early Real Worlds. They're almost painfully bad, the slow cumbersome editing, the lack of mega-drama. Through lightning-fast edits now, every reality show (save one in particular) is just a series of corners where something is lurking. The Apprentice, for example, is an incredibly tedious idea — people in suits talking in a tasteful walnut-inlaid boardroom? Surely it's a joke. Yet with the magic of editing, they can turn interminable drudge into something people like.

Personally, I don't understand it one bit, and I find it to be horribly plodding and just plain boring. I'd actually watch CNBC for an hour over The Apprentice. But still, look, there's Caroline... she's smirking! Why is she smirking?! WHY ARE THE OBOES PLAYING WHILE SHE'S SMIRKING?... it's a production student's dream far more than an enjoyable hour.

But these poor deluded souls jive and strive for the camera and sometimes it makes for compelling watching. And more importantly: they don't earn a paycheck from Mr. or Mrs. Major Network.

It's no surprise, of course, to see that to keep up with its hell-spawn, the Real World has had to push to extremes. Whether it was throwing lil' miss whore Trischelle in the middle of a Las Vegas hot tub party or DWI-bound-manic-depressive Ruthie into the Hawaiian surf, the Real World no longer bears even a remote resemblance to "reality" in anysuch way... which, of course, is the whole point of the editing process. Reality is not that fun, otherwise why would we want to escape it with mind-soothing television?

Television, though, was by no means a creative force before the reality craze swept through town. And with fare like the Sopranos, The Shield, Deadwood and even The Simpsons still being made, it's hard to argue that creativity is any less or more prevalent than it used to be.

Still, it's hard not to wonder when music channel VH1 (that's Video Hits 1, for those of you scoring at home) has a series of announcements proclaiming that "April is about the music" and will feature several non-reality related shows about (surprise!) music... well, black humor isn't for everyone I guess. Nor is flipping to MTV2 — a station created entirely to show music videos when MTV got too crowded — to catch that all-important 7 hour special where Steve-O staples his nuts to his leg and runs around.

The one great exception to all of this is American Idol. It's success is not surprising to me — banking that teenage girls are going to like something featuring popular music is no more daring than suggesting that pizza tastes good — but the scope certainly is. Idol is different because it deftly straddles both ends of the reality spectrum. The show starts straight reality show; few contestants are shown, the pieces are heavily edited, it isn't live. But once things start working down to the nitty-gritty, everything totally changes. Suddenly, the show is actually like reality, because if you screw up, you could face elimination, and no amount of editing is going to help you. That's why it should be no surprise that the only people to come out of reality shows with any lasting fame have been American Idol contestants. Omorosa is suddenly just a bitchy businesswoman when you pull her out of the edited environment and people off Survivor just aren't that interesting when they're not on the island.

To me, that makes Idol the most creative reality show; therefore it's absolutely no surprise that the idea didn't start in America.

So, wither TV? The short answer is that TV was always mindless and that we're no better or worse off than during the days of Gilligan. But looking longer, many of the reality TV ideas we see turned into shows are remakes of ones done earlier by Europeans — who had their reality TV craze kick off a bit earlier than we did. And new shows? Try old shows: Coupling and The Office are BBC ripoffs, Joey is garbage and a bad idea to boot, and while Desperate Housewives is popular and at least non-reality, making a trashy soap about attractive women is... well... pizza is pretty tasty, don't you think?

In short, get rid of your television. You'll be much happier and smarter without it.

Watch TV and you're bound to see the ad for it. Yes, finally, someone has had to guts (stupidity, depending) to bring The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to the big screen.

I don't know, beside the studio, who is profiting from this. I do know that Douglas Adams died in the past year, and had been against a movie version. And, having read the book(s) with millions of other people, I know that as they are, they would make for some unpopular and/or uninteresting movies. I say this not because they're bad books; rather they're much too deep, much too thoughtful to be stripped down into movie form.

The obvious comparison is Lord of the Rings, a book (Tolkien despised the fact that his editors made it a trilogy) which was almost talismanic icon to fans of science-fiction and fantasy. Tolkien wanted no part of a movie version; he was said to hate the entire film experience. His sons, who controlled the book after his death, kept it away from movie producers for many years. However, once it got to the big-screen, it was given such a powerful touch that the movies turned out much like the books: epic, wandering and glorious. Tolkien, perhaps, would not have been disappointed.

However, this is where the story diverges. The Hitchikers' Guide is not a forward moving adventure, indeed, most of its charm is the moments when it looks back and/or inward at the human beings or aliens it is chronicling. When Adams launches into a 2 page description of the Guide's corporate history — both skewering the corporate mindset and yet also extolling his famed dry wit — you have a sense that the book could have been about anything really, and Adams would have made it worth reading. That it happens to be through an wide arc of universal adventure, well, that only makes it the sillier.

Movies, though, do not capture the element of "silly" very well. Worse yet, movies tend to be able to capture one thing and one thing only, and if somehow they DID manage to show the Guide in a silly way, it would be leaving out so much more. Which, of course, would be a huge disappointment.

So, Hollywood will focus on the adventure and more than likely turn the Hitchhikers' Guide into a sweeping action-adventure with touches of humor (think Spiderman, with a little more snark). I can almost picture Ron Howard a la the Simpsons pitching this movie: "You see, it's a buddy picture... guy meets alien, alien takes guy drinking, world explodes... and he must decide who will live... and who will die." And that's going to be it, an adventure buddy picture. Yeah, okay, the buddies include a two-headed drunk and a depressed android (he'll be the funny one), but if you can boil it down to an essence, you can make a movie out of it.

I write all this knowing that I'll probably drag myself to see the movie. And that's the ultimate rub: the people who make these ghastly movies know that the fans will bitch, moan and scream... and then schill out the 15 bucks (or however fucking much it costs to see a movie these days) to grab the action. And better yet, the masses — who don't really want to see anything that creative or interesting anyway (Titanic, anyone?) will happily plunk down the cash. A blockbuster is born.

There's really no problem with this, except for my own small criticism that, in America, creativity is getting massacred by profit margins, and the war is rapidly turning into a rout.

It wasn't that long ago that making a re-make was considered a rarity, even a risk. In 1998, director Gus van Sant was widely criticized for remaking "Psycho" with some critics even calling it an ego trip. Of course, looking back, it's hard to believe that Vince Vaughn was in the lead role (this was before he decided to make a career out of playing the same smart-alecky comic character in every movie) and of course, the train wreck that is Anne Heche featured prominately. The new version, of course, was not nearly as good as the original. But I doubt that's what anyone in power cared about: the movie made decent money. Suddenly, an idea was born.

Today, every other weekend gives you a chance to see a remake. Missed the Manchurian Candidate the first time around? Desperate to see Ocean's Eleven in a modern way? The first Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Amityville Horror weren't enough? Even George Lucas had a go, and decided to prequel Star Wars... and on top of that, every movie that's even mildly popular must have a sequel. After all, America was full of burning questions after the end of Miss Congeality, right?

Of course, there hasn't been a single remake that approaches the original, either in content or in impact, but that doesn't stop the studios. I can only imagine who is salivating to try and remake Reality Bites (hip hop replaces grunge) or, God help us all, Titanic II (maybe the boat didn't really sink!)

What was once a home of some free-thought and occasional loose controls has turned into a trash factory. Conservatives, who routinely open up their smirk on "Hollywood morals", have totally missed the point. Hollywood should be their utopia: the rich are getting richer as all elements of risk are removed from the project as creativity is completely rubbed away. That is not only what they're looking for in terms of corporate control, they must be tickled by the population's reaction: to buy more tickets. It's the ultimate two-sided reward.

So Hollywood is failing. But what about the rest of the creative sciences? We'll take a gander at TV and the radio tomorrow, followed on Saturday by a little piece on what's really gone wrong with creativity in this country. I wrote it all at once, but like Tolkien, my editor swears it needs to be a 3-parter. :)