Monday Morning Media Quarterback

Apocalypse, disaster, alienation, thy name is Los Angeles.  

In Bladerunner, “L.A. has become a pan-cultural dystopia of corporate advertising, pollution and flying automobiles, as well as replicants, human-like androids with short life spans built by the Tyrell Corporation for use in dangerous off-world colonization.”

In reality—hey that is reality around here!

Los Angeles has been blown up, attacked by aliens, ridden with pestilence, smashed by earthquakes, populated by murderous madmen and become a post-apocalyptic battlefield in films from Escape from Los Angeles to Terminator II, where Schwartzenneger snatches a video-playing boy from death at the insipid Valley mall by LA’s concrete river. 

Then there’s The Omega Man (the original, gun-crazy zombie-slaying Charlton Heston version of I Am Legend) and Falling Down, where bespectacled Michael Douglas, fresh from a killing spree, asks “So I’m the bad guy?” 

But the ultimate Los Angeles dystopia movie is Bladerunner.  It’s an art director’s opium dream of LA—the stately Bradbury building is home to a genetic modification engineer and the humanesque ‘toys’ he’s built, the detective lives in a crumbling Frank Lloyd Wright house, the emblematic LA tunnel makes an appearance.  

In Bladerunner, just like LA, you’ve got your perfect, highly-engineered specimens.  In the movie, set in 2019, Rutger Hauer’s platinum blonde ultimate soldier nibbles hungrily on equally blonde, impossibly lithe 20-ish Darryl Hannah.  Just like LA.

 Later, Darryl Hannah’s character Pris, who like her fellow replicants only lives a year or two, complains of her “advanced decrepitude.” She’s a model LA woman like so many other aging ‘blondes’ finding surgeons in the back pages of Los Angeles Magazine, desperately fighting the good fight. 

In the movie, there’s an unending parade of beaten-down pedestrians, men in nuns habits, Asians of many descriptions, a Chassidic Jew and other LA types, walking numbly through the rain.  In reality, LA is a dystopia of people from 170 countries who’ve come here to misunderstand one another, living in stucco houses and dining in minimalls.

In the movie, you got your cynical killer cops like M. Emmet Walsh, Edward Olmos and Harrison Ford himself as Deckard.  Just as Robert Patrick’s shiny fascist LAPD motorcycle officer in Terminator II is a well-observed LA reality, Bladerunner, like the real LA, is loaded with lots and lots  of cops.  The movie has street patrolmen, helicopter cops, car cops, bladerunner detectives.  In LA County, we’ve got a not-so-gorgeous mosaic of LAPD officers, LA Sheriff’s deputies, California Highway Patrol, Santa Monica/Pasadena/Long Beach police, even LAUSD school police and park police.  

Bladerunner is LA.  Oh sure, they got the predominant ethnic group and the weather wrong.  In Bladerunner, it’s Asians, in 2007 LA, more than 50% of the population is Hispanics.  In Bladerunner, the forecast is for perpetual acid rain, in LA, it’s dry smoggy heat, with white particulates from the fires. 

But those are only details.  In its anarchic chaos with its enervated residents, Bladerunner is LA in the dark.

We go through life asleep here.  As the late Brion James replicant puts it, “Wake up. Time to die.”

I saw Bladerunner: The Final Cut, at the Landmark in West LA not long ago.  This is about the 17th version of Bladerunner released, but I have to say the 25th anniversary version, seen on-screen in a new all-digital print, was the best yet.  It’s now on what I hear is a sumptuous, and expensive, DVD.

It’s the first of nine films based on Philip K. Dick’s fiction, ranging in quality from Minority Report and Total Recall down to Paycheck and last year’s excellent Through a Scanner Darkly.

Although the movie is on many all-time best lists, Bladerunner was a critical and commercial failure when released in 1982, despite the best efforts of brilliant director Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator), composer Vangelis, incredible cinematography and art direction, and the acting of star Harrison Ford.  It also had decorative performances by Darryl Hannah and Sean Young, and brilliant supporting work by Emmet Walsh, James Olmos, Brion James (Leon the killer replicant with a soft spot for his family pictures), snake charmer Joanna Cassidy, and Rutger Hauer as charismatic replicant leader/killer Roy Batty. 

In Blade Runner, “Harrison Ford stars as Rick Deckard, a retired…blade runner, a euphemism for detectives that hunt down and assassinate rogue replicantsin Los Angeles circa 2019.” The plot combines science fiction and film noir detective work. (Karl Williams All-Movie Guide.)

So if Bladerunner’s so great, why the initial box office disaster?  It may be heresy to say, but as my trainer at the gym says, Bladerunner is slowwwww.

Rupert Everett speaks his mind.  He’s one of very, very few Hollywood leading men who’ve come out as gay (perhaps the reason the star of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” isn’t a star anymore.)  And he’s not afraid to let his opinions out of the closet.   On George Clooney:

“Clooney thinks that, provided he does films which are politically committed, he’s allowed to do Ocean’s 11, 12, and 13. But the Ocean’s movies are a cancer to world culture. They’re destroying us.”

Clooney the man? “He’s not the brightest spark on the boulevard. He’ll be president one day. Mark my words, if he’s straight, he’ll be president.”

On other Hollywood legends, Everett said: “De Niro, Redford, Keaton, Allen, Pacino… They’re all just tragic parodies of themselves. Al Pacino looks like a mad old freak now…The other day I saw Because I Said So with Diane Keaton, and I thought, ‘here’s one of the women we loved most in 1970s cinema, debasing and humiliating herself in this load of trash’.

“Why? Because we’re sheep, we just follow the herd … It’s just part of the huge amount of product that’s put out now that’s really bad.  And it’s our fault. We’re all responsible for how the culture is.  You can’t draw a distinction between the celebrity nonsense on television and the film industry.”

When I attended the AFI tribute to Al Pacino this spring, most of the attention was paid to his part in Scarface 25 years ago; forget Panic in Needle Park or the Godfather, or later films like Scent of a Woman, Heat or The Devil’s Advocate (where, admittedly, Pacino screams rather than acts.)

Pacino’s histrionics have become ripe for the kind of parody George Lopez (below) did, appearing as Scarface’s coke-laden Tony Montana.

Someone more charitable than Everett might recognize that the parts he attacks are the only ones that Hollywood will give Pacino or particularly Keaton to play these days.  Keaton and Meryl Streep are just about the only American actresses of a certain age (55+) working fairly consistently in film.  Even Jane Fonda’s return to film began and ended with Monster-In-Law.

But you’ve got to admire Everett’s critical cojones.  As  an earlier celebrity, put it, “If you don’t have anything good to say about someone, come sit by me.”

So the Mitchell report is out, naming names in major league baseball, of players who aren’t “clean”.  The blame is all laid on the players, like bloated superpitcher Roger Clemens, not on major league baseball that never made any attempt to do drug testing, ban substances or set penalties. 

U.S. baseball fans who bought $6 billion worth of major league tickets are complicit too; the ‘chicks dig the long ball’ (and blazing strikeout) entertain-me-at-all costs philosophy excuses the players and the leagues.  Yes, I booed Barry Bonds this summer–but I paid for our tickets to do so.

As long as there are sports there will be cheaters.  Some countries like made a national fetish of creating super-athletes, often using the same tools today’s baseball players tried. 

But baseball, with its focus on records, history and tradition (from the national anthem to the 7th inning stretch and ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’) will suffer more than most sports if the playing field is not leveled.  The hallowed Hall of Fame will be hollow indeed if cheaters and man-monsters like Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Mark McGuire and the rest are ‘enshrined.’

It’s on: Michael Vick was sentenced to 23 months for animal cruelty and financing a dog-fighting conspiracy.  Like many addictions, from cocaine to gambling, Vick’s is costing him dearly:

The Atlanta Falcons are attempting to recoup bonus money from his 10-year, $130 million football contract, Vick is in default on a $1.3 million bank loan for a wine store, and two other banks have filed suits seeking repayment of a $4.5 million in loans and lines of credit.

Perhaps Vick was just born out of time and place.  Shakespeare immortalized bear baiting, and Queen Elizabeth (the first one) was a big fan of what was a big-time sport.  Even today, there are those who will defend Michael Vick and dogfighting, some on cultural, others on libertarian grounds. Money quote:

In the end, if animals are property — and they are — then their owners should be fit to do with them as they please.

Society–and the law–doesn’t see it that way.  That’s why Vick is losing his liberty–and as predicted here, his money.

I killed another rat last night. Broke its back with the “bow” of a $2.99 rat trap.  The bow was baited with peanut butter, which apparently is irresistable to the sensitive nose of a rat.

This is the second rat I’ve gotten this week with a rat trap.  I’m not much on killing animals, but I make an exception for rats who want to scare my family, eat my dog’s food and sneak around my house. 

And just as Superman is vulnerable to kryptonite, the smart, cautious rat is undone by peanut butter.

The Consumer Electronics Association has been saying the US is in the midst of the ‘digital transition’ for years.  If so, it’s one of the longest on record.  With less than a year and a half to go before analog programming is cut off, less than 15% of Americans have digital sets.  Worse, less than half of those actually watch high definition programming according to Nielsen Research.  (Hat tip to www.nikkifinke.com).

It’s no surpise: analog televison sets are persistent in your house–they just work. Unlike computers, they don’t get obsolete every two years.   And although prices on plasma, DLP and LCD TVs have been dropping, so have real estate values–it’s harder to get a home equity loans to make your house pay for its home theatre.

The CEA’s sales numbers  look good; sales of digital TVs rose from 12.5 million in 2005 to 18.5 million or so in 2006, or 50%.  But there’s probably close to 300 million TVs (one for every American at home, in the bars, hotels, etc.) meaning 250 million CRT analog sets are still humming contentedly.  Only a fraction will be replaced by 2009; prepare for lots of ‘fixes’ using set-top box analog to digital converters. 

I’m bracing for another massive Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas.  And this year, with high gas prices, foreclosures up and a recession coming, the sunny view always portrayed by Gary Shapiro of the CEA (home of the ‘biggest and best CES ever’, every year) looks gloomier.