the groundhog day project

It's weird that a film that wasn't very kid friendly and was so tied into the Cold War was something I liked. Even when I saw it the first time in the theater. The movie: White Nights . In my "movie life" list, I've had to jump ahead. The next five movies on the list were films I have already written about in this blog: Silverado 692 The Legend of Billie Jean 752 753 Real Genius 736 Better Off Dead... 772 773 Commando 530 531 532 533 534 535 536 I mean, it starts with a dance number, and ballet not musical, which by 1985 I'd not had much experience with musicals, but I would soon come to love them. And, honestly, watching this dance opening today, it is awesome. Mikhail Baryshnikov is great. And, now for the first time I look up what that show was. Le Jeune Homme et La Mort , about a man driven to death by his faithless lover. Which that one scene of it conveyed so well I'm wondering what else might be involved in the plot. ...

"Love on the Rocks" is an interesting case. Jess sings it like its his love that's on the rocks, like his life is so bad. But, he's the one putting his relationships in danger. He leaves his wife behind to go play with the Four Brothers (he does invite her to come along but it feels like something he always does knowing that she will never go, like they are already on the verge of some separation). He leaves his wife to go to California. And, later, he leaves his new wife to wander the country and grow a beard. Which is too bad, because "Love on the Rocks" is probably the only really good song he's got in The Jazz Singer . Not that I haven't known all these songs since I was a kid and we might watch the movie or listen the soundtrack regularly. Hell, I even knew well enough to sing along the lyrics to "Kol Nidre" (the thing Jess sings when he returns to the synagogue). I also knew "Hava Nagila" but we performed that in music cl...

I'm watching The Buddy Holly Story tonight. It's already late when I'm starting because, well, because life is a busy thing and I was feeling like I was getting sick earlier today--ended my argumentation class a bit early, even--and slept a bit this afternoon, had to take my daughter to gymnastics this evening. The Buddy Holly Story is an interesting case because it's actually been a good amount of years since I've watched it last... In fact, I don't really remember the last time I watched it, nor the first. And it's not like there are particular times watching it in between that stand out. But, this is movie that I saw plenty when I was young, and by release date, it came next, after Star Wars . This was my mom's movie, really. She grew up on Buddy Holly music. And, that mean's I grew up on Buddy Holly music. And Pink Floyd, and Journey, and Duran Duran... I had my mom's music, my dad's music, and six older sisters' music. Different in...

[Rob Gordon's] Top five dream jobs Journalist for Rolling Stone magazine, 1976 to 1979 - Get to meet The Clash, Chrissie Hynde, Sex Pistols, David Byrne, get tons of free records. Producer, Atlantic Records - Get to meet Aretha, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke. More free records and a shitload of money. Any kind of musician. Besides classical or rap. Settle for being one of the Memphis Horns or something. I'm not asking to be Jagger or Hendrix or Otis Redding. Film Director. Any kind except German or silent. Architect Rob of course readily offers, "I'm not sure I even want to be an architect." Laura critiques his choices: "So you've got a list here of five things you'd do if qualifications and time and history and salary were no object? ... One of them you don't really want to do anyway." Rob proffers, "Well, I did put it at number five." And, Laura makes the point that matters. "Wouldn't you rather own your own record...

People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands, of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? - Rob Gordon (John Cusack), High Fidelity More importantly, do I watch too many movies because I have no life or do I have no life because I watch too many movies? Note, of course, I acknowledge there, it's "too many" movies. First, regarding the movie that's on right now-- High Fidelity --there is an excess of voiceover here, but this is one of those movies that knows how to use voiceover, how to use it to actually add to what's happening on screen. Plus, the voiceover is not quite voice over , rather Rob tends to talk to the camera, so it's voiceover plus fourth wall breaking. It shouldn't ...

Clerks. Kevin Smith supposedly got into filmmaking because of Slacker . Jason Reitman (maybe I'll watch one of his movies next) supposedly got into filmmaking because of this movie, even though his father directed Ghostbusters and Stripes and Meatballs ... Well, I guess he's a bit young to remember his father making that last one. It could be interesting to map influences like that, track backward from some first-time director to the dawn of cinema.           And, I'm sitting here watching a movie and blogging about it. A year ago, I didn't really think I'd still be doing this. Same thing two years ago. Three years ago, blogging daily about Groundhog Day was just a silly idea I had once, not something I thought I'd actually do. I was in the teaching credential program that winter and spring quarters; thinking of turning my bachelor's in history into a teaching gig. Slide back another six years, and I'm getting my first inkling of being a teac...

(For the record, most of what follows was written prior to today. For my Monday-night class this quarter, we've been having to write drafts. I don't normally like writing drafts. That is why I like the blog format, I think—I just write and what comes out is what is, with only minimal changes as I go. Anyway, there has already been a 500-word assignment setting up the topic, and a 750-word draft that I put together as a sort of teaser, ended on a cliffhanger even. (I've also handwritten the last several lines (probably) of the final piece.) The final version is supposed to be 1200-1500 words. I have been taking word count as a challenge in this class, so I may aim for 1200 even. We'll see. [Note: I finished at 1320, then cut back to 1200, which was not easy.] As I write, because it is once again the 2nd of the month, Groundhog Day will be playing. This blog has been going for 31 months now. I have watched this film about 396 times in that span. That's from start t...

I've seen Cape Fear once. The remake, I mean. Also, the original once. I have no idea where today's blog entry will be going. Play by play? Like, that was an awkward way of not starting with voiceover, for example. Juliette Lewis staring at the camera, and is that a blackboard behind her? Is this a report she's doing for school like Lidia in The War ? How young is Lewis supposed to be here? Are they watching Problem Child ? In other news, according to the trivia section of this movie's IMDb page, supposedly Steven Spielberg was attached to direct this remake at some point and he planned on casting Bill Murray as Max Cady--DeNiro's role. Scorsese is really liking his rack focus--that's when two sides of the scene, that should not be in focus at the same time, are. In other other news, I may have to finish up my final paper for this writing class early so I can share it in this blog next week. It relates to Groundhog Day and next week is the 2nd. That also...

I really wish that the opening line from Roger Ebert's memoir Life Itself were said out loud in the film Life Itself instead of just being text on the screen because I really want to use it as the title for this entry but tradition puts only lines of dialogue (or lyrics) as the title here at the Groundhog Day Project . (And, there should have probably been a comma in that sentence somewhere.) I was born inside the movie of my life. That's the line. I would figure that my life is a movie except, well, my life is not very exciting. If my life is a movie, it's some weirdly slow indie film. I'm trying to remember Julie & Julia . I saw the movie once when it was new, and I've read Julie's book (and a whole lot of Lawrence Dai's blog entries about the film), but I'm barely remembering how Julie's story works as a visual narrative. I remember some shots of Amy Adams failing at cooking, something with lobsters, but it's the Julia Child sequen...

In class tonight, we were talking about finding a story. Like, you're producing a news story and you're in a situation and you need to know the main elements of the scene, but the story... the story has to be found. And, I got sidetracked in my head. I thought about one of my unpublished novels, possibly the best one of the bunch. It's called Clubhouse Blues . It began as my third attempt at a new storytelling format--a serialized story put online one chapter at a time. It was set in the same small California town as two of my previous novels-- Seeing Her Naked  and Twice Into the Same River . Each of these was built around children and/or teens trying to, you know, figure out life. Seeing Her Naked had run for ten chapters, building an audience as I emailed out chapters as I wrote them. Each chapter was written in one sitting, about one a week. The night I wrote the last chapter was, up until that point, about the most painful night of my life. I was writing on a comput...

As Anomalisa gets underway again, I reflect on the days that were full of life. And I reflect on today. I think of full days like some speech tournament days--good and bad--or when I met my first girlfriend in Salt Lake City, or my second in Memphis, or my third in Burbank. It is not that many things need to happen. It is just that something needs to happen. I've written before in this blog--so very long, it seems--about the moments worth repeating. But, it could just be about the moments... the mundane moments. Today, for example, I awoke just before my 6:11am alarm. I actually have several alarms set, most of them on my old phone which is now just a glorified alarm clock. The 6:11am is louder and on my iPhone. I was awake early enough that I did not have to rush. I fed the cats and headed out, stopped at Starbucks on the way to work. Taught class at 8:00am and at 9:50am. I got a good impression of both set so students. I've got a good feeling about this quarter. It was the...

Okay, this is really me, now. No more hiding. Listen--we're all worried, we're all in pain. That just come with having eyes and ears. But, just remember one thing: it can't get any worse, it can only get better. I mean, high school is the bottom. Being a teenager sucks, but that's the point; surviving it is the whole point. Quitting is not going to make you strong. Living will. So, just hang on and hang in there. You know I know all about the hating and the sneering. I'm a member of the "Why bother?" generation, myself. But, why did I bother coming out here tonight and why did you? I mean, it's time. It begins with us, not with politicians, the experts and the teachers, but with us, with you and with me, the ones who need it most. I believe with everything that's in me that the whole world is begging for healing' even the trees and the earth itself are crying out for it. You can heart it everywhere. It's the same kind of healing I desperate...

You ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up? - Hard Harry Hard-On Pump Up the Volume is not about the stuff that's wrong with the whole country, or society as a whole. There are hints of bigger stuff (especially in Mark's final speech) but mostly, Hard Harry's broadcasts keep spiraling around Hubert H. Humphrey High School, where Principal Cresswood (Annie Ross) is following in Joe Clark's footsteps (a la Lean on Me ), weeding out the bad students rather than making them (or at least helping them make themselves) better. (Plus Murdock (Andy Romano), the Vice Principal does his own locker searches without anyone around and eventually gets into a fight with a student.) Meanwhile, the lives of many of the teenagers at the school... welll, they suck. They live in Paradise Hills, Arizona, suburb of Phoenix. (And presumably the equivalent to Paradise Valley, that includes eight resorts; it's a tourist town.) And, they're living in ...

"Feeling screwed up at a screwed up time in a screwed up place does not necessarily make you screwed up." - Hard Harry Hard-On No teachers today, again , except as antagonists... Well, I suppose my take was that Joe Clark was the antagonist of the larger story if not the throughline of Lean on Me . And, for so many high schoolers, plenty of teachers are the antagonists. Not just teachers--parents, other adults; like they're all the phonies Holden Caulfield saw them as. The perspective here: this movie puts us on the side of the teenagers. Hard Harry Hard-On (Christian Slater) starts us out with the radio show we will learn is an unlicensed broadcast--that's the basic setup for Pump Up the Volume . Hard Harry Hard-On, of course, is also Mark Hunter, a fairly shy (meek may be a better descriptor) high schooler. Mark's parents grew up in the sixties but have turned establishment--his father is the "youngest school commissioner" in Arizona's history...

Then, there was The Principal . Actually, in movie terms, this movie came before Lean on Me . It's a different beast, perhaps, because it's fiction. Doesn't start with school. Rather begins in a bar. Rick Lattimer (James Belushi) is clearly an angry, violent man. Making that clear right away, as he goes after his wife's divorce lawyer/new boyfriend with a baseball bat. Afterward, cop asks him his occupation. Wait for it--school teacher. We're supposed to be surprised. I'm not sure why we should care (except of course we know already this is a movie about a principal (who could very well also be a teacher). He's also a disgusting bachelor-type. Smells the bad milk, is revolted, puts it back in the fridge, for example. (Box office aside: I saw this movie at The Academy, a second-run theater in Pasadena, so I'm not sure when I saw it. But, looking at the weekend it came out, I like that I saw all of the top 12 ( The Principal was #4), but only about ...

Stand and Deliver is distracting me from ignoring it to write about something else. Police in the office investigating a crime as Escalante (Edward James Olmos) shows up for his first day. Even if that's what really happened, it's one of those details that is too on the nose to be believable. (Like John Dillinger taking seventeen people hostage with a wooden gun--changed to only three people to be more believable in Public Enemies per Cracked 's "5 True Stories Cut from Movies for Being Too Unrealistic.") And, movie classes are way too short. The scene starts like it's the beginning of class, but like a minute later the bell is ringing. A little better writing/editing and we could get into class in media res, or, you know, leave the scene before the bell rings. Just because it's a movie set in a classroom doesn't mean we need to be dismissed by the bell. Timeline is a little odd, too. He's been at the school "for a few months" and we...