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Tim Adkins

A Movie in a Sentence: Some Thoughts on Life in a Day

by Tim Adkins on August 22, 2011 · 0 comments

Image via AceShowbiz.com

Remember when the Internet asked people to turn on their video cameras and record the events of a single day of their lives?

Well, 80,000 people really did that last summer. And they shipped 4,500 hours of footage from 192 countries off to Director Kevin MacDonald and Editor Joe Walker. Over the last year, they and their team figured out a way to extract from that footage a documentary called Life in a Day.

It is one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of filmmaking based on sheer volume alone. One can barely imagine the thoughtfulness and discipline required to design and execute a post-production process of that scale. McDonald, Walker and their team may one day explain it all–if they haven’t already–and when they do they’ll offer a master class in crowdsourcing for any business that is still not sure how to turn users into co-creators.

The film is simple. It follows an obvious chronology from dark to dawn to dusk to dark again. Dayparts become characters and the people who made the final cut of the film are used like dialogue. In one scene, one person utters a sentence that encapsulates the greatest value of the film:

“I’m afraid of people who are different than me.”

That is actually a paraphrase, but the idea expressed is accurate. The scene passes by quickly and would be easy to miss. Perhaps the filmmakers intended it to be part of their thesis. Perhaps not. As the film introduces more and more people from more and more corners of the planet, that line becomes difficult to ignore.

Image via SFGate.com

In montage after montage of ordinary people doing ordinary things in the course of an unremarkable Saturday in July, the homogeneity of the human experience comes into focus. None of us like to be awoken by an alarm clock. All of us enjoy cooked food. And each of us is subject to experiencing the exact same range of emotions. Customs and cultures may separate us nominally, but the human race is a singular one.

The finite wisdom of the film shows us our commonalities very plainly. It really marks the first legitimate post-racial moment in Western culture. That the film exists does not mean racism is over. But it does eliminate one crucial justification for racism.

The woman who uttered that sentence about fearing people different than her could claim, at that time, to be unaware of how similar she is to her fellow man, woman and child. Back when time and space separated the earth into what seemed like self-contained planets, reasonable people could fear the inhabitants from the faraway places who did not look like them or speak their language or worship their deity. It is a matter of opinion how long ago that separation began to dissipate. Following the release of A Day in the Life, the separation is completely gone.

Maybe everyone on earth hasn’t seen the film yet. Maybe the entire global population never will. In any case, it is no longer acceptable to say that you have no empathy for the Other. Because you could. If you wanted to.

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Burning Man: To Be or Not to Be a Terrorist

by Tim Adkins on August 20, 2011 · 0 comments

Image via Woodland Trust

1995 offered numerous options for the American kid who preferred outrage over sloth. There were corporate scumbags in America to loathe. There were faceless Communist tyrants in China to defeat. There were political prisoners everywhere to be freed. And there were precious resources of an abused planet to save. It was a time when you could choose your own enemy. And then do battle against him or them or it in whatever way made you feel good. The stakes were high and self-serving all at once: an odd cocktail of nobility and narcissism.

We used the word “revolution” because our thesauri offered no better descriptors. And because we hoped our faces may someday be silk-screened onto someone’s t-shirt. Like Malcolm. Or Che. Most of us knew, on some level, that America was already settled. There were no more shining seas to set off in search of. And what bits of inequality remained were relics that would likely die with the generations who insisted upon creating them in the first place. We were, as Palahniuk wrote, history’s middle children. Our task was to wait it all out. We could do so loudly. Or sitting on the couch in front of the big screen.

An unsatisfied and aggressive minority would not stand for those choices. They thought they could see Che and raise him. They went to the place where a line signified the very edge of reasonable, mostly legal protest and took a running leap across it. Those were the kinds of people who joined the Earth Liberation Front (ELF).

Image via TargetOfOpportunity.com

Over the years, that acronym–ELF–has featured in much TV news coverage of a phenomenon that has been named “eco-terrorism.” Those video packages–like most TV news–were cut to scare the milk and cookies out of you. In three minutes or less, members of the ELF were prosecuted, condemned and sentenced. They had committed acts of eco-terrorism and eco-terrorism was bad, we were told.

But what exactly is eco-terrorism? Who or what is harmed by it? And what does it mean to be guilty of it? Those are the questions driving the deep character study portrayed in the film, If A Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front.

The film follows the case of Daniel McGowan who was arrested in 2005 in connection with a series of arsons in the Pacific Northwest and deposited into the federal court system so the US government could contemplate the questions about eco-terrorism. We meet Daniel in the middle of the 1990s when he was a simple letter-writer and protest marcher living in New York City. We follow him to Eugene, Oregon where his passions for the environment drove him to enlist in more radical causes. As Daniel and the people who became his ELF compatriots/co-conspirators recall their various actions, the film toggles between recounting what happened then and what is happening now as Daniel defends himself against severe criminal charges. We ultimately learn both why that collection of radical environmentalists disbanded as an active unit and how Daniel’s trial played out.

The time the film spends in Oregon provides a great history lesson in the civil unrest that comprised public life in Eugene at the close of the 20th Century. It also chronicles the WTO protests that took place just to the north in Seattle. Together, these sequences provide clear context so we may understand how the urge to protect the planet informed the setting of a spectacular series of fires. It is sympathetic to Daniel and his compatriots/co-conspirators. It is also coldly objective in presenting the facts of the arson cases. Some of the people who set the fires–including Daniel–appear on camera to explain why and how they were set. The film makes it plain that crime occurred. The film’s real conflict–with apologies to Daniel’s dilemma of struggling to defend himself against the criminal charges–concerns those questions about what is in a name: “eco-terrorism.”

Image via Berkeleyside.com

Never mind the prefix, terrorism has become the great sofa king of our time. It has lost all meaning even as it continues to be used again and again to separate “us” from “them.” As a tactic, it remains potent. But should every tactic that elicits fear and terror rate as terrorism? At what point does a tactic become a purpose? Thoughtful people should agree on a delicate threshold at the very least. It may be the one thing separating the mobs from ripping each other apart. That, more or less, is the point made in If A Tree Falls.

Two sound bytes really resonate. The first comes from an authority figure (e.g. the police, the FBI, etc) who says, “One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.” The second comes from someone who worked on Daniel’s defense who reports no person or creature was killed–or even injured–in the dozens of fires set by this ELF unit. The film doesn’t track Daniel into a courtroom so we never get to see what his actual defense was, but he and his compatriots/co-conspirators declare in different scenes that the point was never to harm any living soul, but to stop some souls from doing harm to the planet. Their intent, they assure us, was noble. And the execution of their tactic, according to the facts, yielded millions of dollars in property damage and lost business. Nothing more.

If you believe the first sound byte to be true, the actions of this ELF unit present an either/or proposition. That’s the easy way out and it suggests a very low threshold for terrorism. If they’re not on our side and they play dirty, then they must be terrorists. If they violently disrupt the order of things, then they must be terrorists. If the TV news says they’re terrorists, well…

If you consider the planning necessary to burn dozens of buildings without killing or injuring anyone, you have to wonder about the belief system that informs the conviction of the perpetrators. You also have to wonder about the circumstances that drove them to ignite those infernos. I never lived in Eugene, Oregon but I lived around and among plenty of history’s middle children during the years immediately before and after Y2K. I wrote letters. I marched. I ran from the tear gas and the rubber bullets. When the powers that you’re fighting get to write the rulebook AND decide when the rules don’t matter, it is difficult to stay the course of reasonable, mostly legal protest. Malcolm talked about that in his Ballot or the Bullet speech. Che chose to fire some bullets. The kids from the ELF…they just set fires. Without killing anyone.

Why?

That’s a much better question than are they or are they not terrorists? A tactic, after all, is just a tactic.

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Yo, that kid look mad familiar, son.

by Tim Adkins on May 17, 2011 · 0 comments

Will Ferrell has a new movie out. It’s not very funny but it is pretty good. The goodness of it is derived, in significant measure, from a supporting character who is a junior high-aged kid. The actor who plays the kid, if you’re not already aware of who he is, should look very familiar: he’s Biggie’s son. The one he had with Faith Evans.

Christopher “CJ” Wallace has been making the rounds to promote the flick and to help satisfy the curiosity of his father’s fans. So far, we’ve seen three interviews worth sharing. Following are excerpts from each:

http://www.thebvx.com/2011/05/02/5-questions-with-christopher-cj-wallace/

BJ: What attracted to you to the role?
CW: Kenny was the kid that I’m the opposite of. He’s like really lonely, not athletic kid, doesn’t do much, doesn’t really have friends, only has his sister to look out for him because his mom works all the time. All he does is ride his bike around his neighborhood where Nick (Will) lives. His best friend is an alcoholic who’s losing his wife. He sees Will as an opportunity just possibly to get a friend. No matter if he’s a crazy drunk or whatever. It was kind of a way to draw Kenny in to him, asking so many questions why, why do have so much stuff on your lawn, why do you keep drinking beer…It was almost like a good challenge for me to do it, to see if I could pull it off.

BJ: You’re the son of the most perhaps beloved rapper ever, the Notorious B.I.G. Do you ever think about doing music?
CW: [If I did music], I feel that a lot would be expected of me, and I’m definitely not up to where my father was. Acting just came randomly. I wasn’t even into it at first. When I did ‘Notorious,’ my grandma, Ms. [Voletta] Wallace, she told me that I should come in and read for the part as my father. Honestly, I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to do it because it seemed so likely for me to do it, like Biggie’s son is going to play Biggie. After I had my acting coach and really read through it, I started to find out things that I didn’t know about him. Then I took more of an interest into it. It was actually fun, going out to New York, living like him, going into his old apartment, doing what he did. It was cool.

http://www.bet.com/news/celebrities/2011/05/12/q-a-christopher-jordan-wallace-acts-up.html

Let’s talk about your Dad a bit. I know you were still a baby when he passed, but do you understand how iconic and beloved he and his music still is?
I never really knew him—it’s hard to believe that sometimes. Maybe if I would have known him or had conversations with him it would have been different. But I haven’t really understood all of that yet.

Does your mom ever tell you about how you’re similar to your dad?
My mom always says I’m a lot like him. She says I even rub my nose the way he did and the way I breathe and snore is like him, too. She always says that I remind her of him.

So as the son of the Notorious B.I.G., why didn’t you want to become a rapper?
I really just wanted to make my own path. I definitely would not be able to continue my dad’s rapping legacy because I’m not on that level yet—I’m not that good. I rap, I joke around, but I’m not serious about it. I didn’t want people to be like, “Like CJ, little Biggie.” I’d rather them be like, “CJ the actor made his own movie, directed his own film and won the Oscar,” stuff like that.

http://www.movieline.com/2011/05/before-he-made-his-screen.php

Did you start listening to rap by listening to your dad’s music? I think I was your age when I first started listening to him.
I don’t know — I remember one time, when we first moved to L.A. in 2004, being in the car and it came on the radio and said, “And that was Christopher Wallace’s ‘Juicy.’” I asked my mom, I didn’t even know! “That’s me — I’m Christopher Wallace!” She was like, “No, no, no, that’s your dad.” Then I kind of got into it a little more.

Well there’s also the fact that some of his lyrics are a little explicit! Were you even allowed to listen to some of those songs when you were younger?
[Laughs] My parents treat me a little older than I am, and I actually appreciate that. I don’t like being treated like a little kid.

You do seem to have an old soul.
[Laughs] Is that good?

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Deep and Pretentious Thoughts on the Nature of Mobbs

by Tim Adkins on May 14, 2011 · 0 comments

Image via AllMoviePhoto.com

On the weekend that Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seal Team Six, Fast Five roared into American movie theatres to collect $86 million from US consumers. At the big, nameless cineplex in my neighborhood, Fast Five played on three screens that weekend. Next to one of those massive auditoriums, The Conspirator played rather quietly in a much smaller room. One way or another, I witnessed all three events: bin Laden’s death, Vin Diesel’s final(?) ride and Robert Redford’s contemplation of how the mob interacts with the law. I don’t expect that those three men conspired to tell me a unified story. I was kinda grateful they all converged unwittingly—if only for my unintended benefit. (And perhaps yours, too.)

Osama bin Laden was the archiest of arch villains. He starred opposite everyone who has lived in these United States in the drama that has unfolded following September 11, 2001 (or February 26, 1993, if you prefer). Even kindergartners who couldn’t pronounce his name were forced to play opposite bin Laden as TSA probed their Spiderman sneakers and Hanna Montana backpacks before permitting them to board a flight to see Grandma and Grandpa. Bin Laden was also the greatest mystery of the last decade. We were told he existed. And we were told, by his own video testimony no less, that he was responsible for random massacre after random massacre all over the world. That he had been captured, killed and disposed of without a gory public reveal made some sense. For myths to endure, they must never be completely exposed. Belief doesn’t need proof. It just needs conviction. And conviction was never a problem where Osama bin Laden was concerned. The mobs on both sides have always known precisely how they feel about him.

You may be one of the people who has already mobbed theatres to see Fast Five. With $150 million in domestic box office at press time, the odds favor it. Even if you haven’t, I don’t need to tell you much about the movie to give you a rich understanding of it. Big men and pretty women make sexy cars go real fast. It’s the same exact plot as the four films that preceded it. And, truth be told, if you appreciate that sort of thing…the Fast franchise is awesome. So much so that the latest film (which could be the final installment but probably won’t be) is pornographic. It’s money shot after money shot after money shot. And, like a money shot is supposed to do, it satisfies. For the most part. (Personally, I’ve never known Brazilian women to be so startlingly thin and assless, but I’ve not traveled that country as extensively as the filmmakers may have.)

Image via whysoblu.com

If the odds say that you have already seen Fast Five, they also say you haven’t seen The Conspirator. It hasn’t played on more than 500 screens at any one time since its release last month—timed cleverly to coincide with the sesquicentennial of the attack on Fort Sumter that ignited the War Between the States. The Conspirator tells the generally under-reported story of the woman who was tried, convicted and executed for being thought to have conspired in the plot to assassinate President Lincoln. (Whoops. Maybe there should have been a spoiler alert there. Or, you could have taken a 10th grade Social Studies class. In lieu of running a Wikipedia search, of course.)

In The Conspirator, Redford directs an art house dream team: James McAvoy, Robin Wright, Tom Wilkinson, Kevin Kline, Evan Rachel Wood, Danny Huston and Colm Meaney. If that weren’t enough, casting director Avy Kaufman throws in two ex-pats from The Wire, the guy from Rubicon, one of the Boondock Saints, Nucky Thompson’s brother and Rory Gilmore. Some of those people barely have any lines in The Conspirator. (Actors on both coasts must have been tripping over each other to get even a morsel of a chance to work with the Sundance Kid.) The resulting film isn’t bad. It leans more toward Lions for Lambs than Quiz Show. But it isn’t bad. There are a couple of monologues that are pretty compelling. And the steady stream of cameos–which also includes the Stapler Dude from Office Space–makes the screen come alive every few minutes as Redford’s ensemble trudges earnestly through an intriguing history lesson. The lesson may be contextualized within the final throes of the Civil War but the tug-of-war between mob rule and the rule of law is pretty timeless.

Every nation shares a central task: mob management. Those great hordes who pledge allegiance to a system of taxation and get, in return, a preselected flag to attach to their car antennae are an excitable bunch. And they do not discriminate. They will welcome anyone whom they believe agrees with them as long as a noob doesn’t dim the fervor that fuels the mob. If the mob isn’t convinced of your fidelity? Well…too bad for you. The mob must celebrate itself after all. And when it isn’t affirming all that it thinks itself to be, it takes great satisfaction from harshly condemning and swiftly punishing those people or those ideas that would dare to challenge it. If we have learned anything from the oscillations of this grand American experiment, we’ve learned that the mob can yield to genuine democracy. Well, maybe it’s not all that genuine. And maybe it’s not all that democratic. But when the mob fractures and the resulting divergent passions do not wane, what else would you call it?

Image via History Matters

Redford’s film makes no secret of its intention to draw a parallel between the physically brutish intranational divide that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers and the intellectually brutish divide that has driven Red States and Blue States to make each other purple with ideological rage. Rage is a funny thing, really. It can dull as quickly as it can swell. It can yield benevolent change much like it can wreak discriminate mayhem. Way back in the 1860s–when a nation was winding down a war with itself–the mobs on both sides took turns being satisfied. First, the South got its man. Then, the North got its men. And a woman, too. According to the law, at least one of them deserved it. When everyone’s already dead, “deserve” isn’t much of a differentiator. As long as the mob is satisfied, does it really even matter at what cost? Of course it does. But that’s not the mob’s concern. Not until remorse kicks in anyway. If’n it ever does.

Given the subject, it would have been easy for The Conspirator to spend all of its 120 minutes judging the Northern mob that wanted anyone accused of being connected with Lincoln’s assassination to be punished. It does that for a good chunk of those minutes as part of its argument that every actor deserves to be judged objectively within the confines of the law. It also spends more than a few minutes suggesting that the mob isn’t completely unwise as it indulges its own passions.

Image via the Associated Press

Watching the world react to the news of bin Laden’s death was surreal. To say the least. In some ways, it was downright bizarre. The “USA! USA! USA!” cheers erupting outside of Barack Obama’s house and the “I’m so glad he’s gone” sentiments shared on Twitter and Facebook spawned from the same nebulous sense of victory. The boogeyman was dead! Finally! We won! Right? But who are we? And what was won? By the way, was anything lost as a result?

As I trolled for deeper and deeper coverage of bin Laden’s death in the days that followed, I found myself thinking more and more about both The Conspirator and Fast Five. The mob had a pretty good point. Some things are that simple. Given the choice between a dead boogeyman and a not-dead boogeyman, which would you choose? The mobs that flashed on Pennsylvania Ave or on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal were not wrong to celebrate bin Laden’s death. Or to call for any of the things they called for. They weren’t right either. Not entirely. More importantly, they weren’t alone. There was still that mob on the other side: the compatriots of bin Laden. Surely there would be some sort of reprisal, no?

If bin Laden’s mob comprised a sovereign nation, perhaps. If that were the case, those planes never would have crashed into those buildings. No nation built on any kind of law would execute such a desperate tactic. A nation, by definition, has a stake. Stakes make preservation a priority. But preservation is only possible when there is something to preserve. Bin Laden’s mob–like any group of religious extremists–was built on a shared sense of desperation. Desperation tends to hone your focus. Distraction isn’t really an option. If it were, you might abandon your search for meaning in favor of enjoying 90 minutes of fast cars and pretty women. And if you did, you probably enjoyed it. Just as much as any member of the mob relished dancing on the boogeyman’s grave.

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