A State Of Mind

This was a really fascinating look behind the curtain of North Korea. I never fathomed that the government would allow such a thing to happen. But I guess I juts assumed that because they'd never let U.S. have a peak back there. They hate the U.S. Blind hatred. The comical kind of hatred where everything that goes wrong (the nightly power outages, famine, etc) is somehow the fault of the U.S. They're raised to hate America. They love socialism and communism, and we don't, so they hate us. Also, we bombed them pretty bad in the 50s and they think of us as US imperialists. They have a great example to fall back on with Bush invading Iraq and basically destroying it. Old U.S. Up to their old tricks.

The fact that North Korea hates the US because of the war and the bombing and the atrocities and the killing of millions of their people, makes me feel bad. I know I had nothing to do with it, but it kind of feels like that guy you hate at work who when you find out he hates you, it makes you feel bad. Even though you don't like him yourself. You don't want the people you hate to hate you. You want everyone to like you, even the people you hate.

Still, I don't even know how they got this kind of access. I would assume Kim Jong Il's people had to approve of it before it could be released. And they do only make all true statements that just seem to come off as offensive because of what the truths are, but it's still pretty impressive that they got that much access.

When it comes to the actual content of the film, what a look into their way of life. The TV has one channel (full of propaganda) that runs for 5 hours a day. The state run radio pipes into each and every home. You can turn it down, but you can't turn it off. What a power trip. That has SUCH implications. On the upside, when it comes to the tv stuff, it's easy to say to someone "hey, did you catch this on tv last night." Makes small talk really easy. Unfortunately, they don't seem to do small talk.

From the outside, this thing functions like a cult or some excellent long con brainwashing. Like, it's fine for them, because they know no other life, but you guys, as Maria, my busser at Fridays says, "this is no fine." And you could say that who are we to judge because it works for them...but is it really?

It's pretty impressive how nice of a floor show they can put on when they practice from 12 hours a day in 8 below freezing whether...on concrete.

Hell House

Really interesting stuff. I tried to watch this with no judgement, but that was basically impossible. Especially with the embarrassing 90s haircuts and fashion rolling around. I read an interview with a director and he commented that in Texas, the movie plays very serious. In New York, it plays like a comedy. I can definitely see that.

From the audition scene I really felt like I was watching a Christopher Guest spoof. Like...you guys have got to be kidding. The script writing scene sounded ridiculous. He was trying to explain what Magic: The Gathering was (ultimately they decided to just go with calling it Magic). She pronounced it o-EE-ja board with no idea how to spell that one. When they read back the entire scene, it just sounded absurd. And the Harry Potter book reference? Yikes. How very 90s. The dude actually used the phrase, "power of the dark side." At times, their obliviousness of their own ridiculousness made them seem kind of precious. Then you realized they were brainwashing young minds with their sick imagery.

I find it hard to understand how they think it's a good idea to scare people into embracing and believing in God. I wonder if that works for them. I feel like the people who would be interested in going through this Hell House this would already be believers, or not be and go to make fun of the whole thing. I would think that the people this would work on would be young impressionable minds, and that seems like a very sticky issue. This would make a fabulous companion to the doc Jesus Camp.

And overall, this seems like a really messed up thing for Christians to be doing. They have to write 666, draw a pentagram (even if hey accidentally drew a star if David, but whatever), they have to pretend to shoot people, kill people, slap women, stab people. All of this, no matter if it's fake or not, seem pretty un-Christian. They make a reference to role-playing being bad but...that's sort of what they're doing here.

They have a lot of money for this production. Building new sets every year. Getting new props every year. Recording news audio every year. It makes sense because they did say that there were 12,000 people who came through the Hell House and tickets are $7. That means they probably bring in at least 70grand a year for this.

I really like how they cut together the scenes of going through the Hell House. They showed different tours cut it up with footage of the tour guides, the volunteers going through the tour themselves and other goings on of opening night.

At least the tour ends on a good note. They try to get some people saved (is that how you say that?). This tour of Hell House makes me think of going to the Church Of Scientology in New York and after we watched the video, being hounded by the nice smiling Scientologist lady about it.

Funnily enough, literally, just now, in the middle of watching the scene where the Slipknot loving alternatives youths argue with one of the Christian dudes about Christianity, God, religion in general, and the fucked upness of their Hell House, I learned that The Insane Clown Posse are Evangelical Christians! That was a coincidental turn of events. I bet those 90s youths would be disappointed to hear that.

Tales From The Script

To stay with the Hollywood theme, I decided to watch Tales from the Script. The first interviews were worrisome. The writer of Ghost, the writer of Angel Eyes, the writer of Mona Lisa Smile. Yikes. I don't care about these people's thoughts. Their scripts were not great. But I love behind the scenes of Hollywood kind of stories. Eventually they got people like William Goldman and Frank Darabont and the writer of Akeelah and the Bee, so it was all good.

They separated this one into different segments and used different scenes of movies to introduce each segment. It was mostly full of short b-roll with mostly talking heads cut together in such a way they the whole thing became a fluid thought. That sort of thing. It was funny that they segued from "I'd rather sell a bad script, cause that shows what a good agent I am" to the guy who wrote The Grudge. Aw. Embarrassing. It also contained those pauses that Dear Zachary had when ending a thought. I still find that to be a bit weird and awkward.

Very fitting that this doc about writers had some really great lines. "I decided to keep the smoke in my ass and not let it get to my head." But it's funny writing this with all these writers probably thinking they're pretty good at their jobs when really, lots of them aren't very good.

The guy who wrote Ghost, wrote Deep Impact and had a lunch, unknowingly, with the guy who made Armageddon. This dude basically took notes on how the Deep Impact dude's story was going to unfold and brought that to Armageddon. That seems like something you should be able to sue over. Especially in Hollywood.

I think that's a great doc to what ch for aspiring screenwriters. I'm not one, but I can really see the appeal and I like to be able to appreciate all the roles it takes to produce a film.

Fun facts: The writer of X-men is the writer of Watchmen is the writer of, wait for it, The Scorpion King. What the hell?! Stop that. The writer of Go is the writer of Big Fish is the writer of Corpse Bride. I mostly like those movies though, so that's okay. The writer of Bloodrayne is the writer of Go Fish is the writer of American Psycho is a lesbian and does a great (terrible) impression of Uwe Boll. And Last Action Hero was written by Zak Penn, rewritten by Shane Black and doctored again my William Goldman. All interviewed here.

Overnight

Shayla asked me to watch a documentary about education, and just by luck I found one of the only ones on instant watch about education and it was only an hour. This one was more like an expose you'd find on the new. I started it and it wasn't anything that I was interested in so I had to stop it and try something else.

So, I changed it up and started watching Paperclips. An education doc about a small town school in Tennessee educating its students about the Holocaust. Then that was super boring too (I guess I'll just wait for Waiting for Superman to come out), so I decided to to watch Overnight, the dissolution of Troy Duffy's career as it happens.

I really dug this one. It wasn't very polished, the editing wasn't great and the camera was definitely not awesome, but it really kept my attention. The ultimate Hollywood unsuccess story. And wow. He's a douche. An absolute abhorrent personality. I don't know who wins the terrible award, Billy Mitchell of The King of Kong, or this asshole here. Probably Duffy, though ("They put up a quarter of a million dollars, but that's chicken feed to them. And they're being so Jewish about it" -Troy Duffy.) At least Billy Mitchell was really just a caricature of an over the top human being.

It's crazy to think he was going to get that much control over a movie with no filmmaking experience and from working in a bar. How did the Weinstiens put this much trust in him? Just like they basically let Ben and Matt do Good Will Hunting the way they wanted when they were just nobodies. And it's funny how, even with Troy being horrible and the movie being, in my opinion super bad and incredibly overrated, I still wasn't sure if I actually wanted the whole thing to tank and blow up in all their faces. Troy deserved it, but the other guys didn't. Maybe because he's an actual real person, not a fictional evil villain. Even if he is a clinical narcissist.

This thing was clearly made by people who didn't care about making him look terrible. From the edits they make, to the way they cut Troy, he's just a tool form start to finish. Maybe that's the whole idea. He looks like a dick and nothing else.

This one had a lot of titles explaining what was going on. There was a lot of organized chaos. I liked that it seemed to kind of be like the sort of thing where they just shot the footage to have the footage, but later had to turn it into an actual movie. That's probably not what happened, but that's how it seemed because the footage was so sort of raw and sloppy and freehand. It's interesting because a lot times in a doc, it's hard to get the person you're following to act naturally, forget the camera and just behave the way they would regardless. What's funny about this is that I feel like this really was Troy Duffy at this time. And that is bad news for him. As we saw.

They caught some really great moments on camera. This is a great doc in that it's not manufactured action. The stuff just falls into place. The camera caught what it caught and that was enough. It's a day to day real life account of a story that's being documented as it happens. The car accident? Lucky stuff. And it's funny how we have the perspective of hindsight being 20/20. We know the future and this was just showing the inside look on how it happened. That's always fun to see. It was fun to finally hear the joke because I already knew the punchline.