It is a rare thing indeed when favorite individuals from different fields of endeavor combine their skills to create a total - you know - thing.
While I find it difficult to narrow down my most admired writers to less than five, one of those five is - every time - Aaron Sorkin. With directors, I can probably get it down to two or three, and a constant there is going to be David Fincher. So, of course, I was pleased as a sucker punch when these two got together to make The Social Network. The only thing that could make it better is if Trent Reznor did the soundtrack. he's only done two in the past and they were both over a decade ago and both curated soundtracks - music supervisor type collections. (Those would be Natural Born Killers and Lost Highway).
So when it came to pass that Reznor and partner-in-crime Atticus Ross were actually going to score the flick, it was like watching a thing that doesn't happen often happen.
I'll review the flick here after I've seen it, but in the meantime, the soundtrack is out and it is a thing of beauty listened to on it's own without 24 frames of reference per second.
And because I like to distract myself in this fashion, I've remixed one of the tracks (titled "On We March") into something that sounds like it should be on the soundtrack to Three Kings II: The Legend of Clooney's Gold.
Because Reznor's a cool dude who knows how to harness the power of his fans, the internet and the open source ethos, he's got a remix site up where he offers the tracks to mess with and a venue to listen to the remixes made from them, rather than suing people who genuinely like his music. Click below to listen to my remix.
It's clearly this year's front-runner to inherit the Lost slot in current popular culture, a slot that didn't really exist before. And I got to see it a couple of weeks ago and I'd read Nick Wauters script a few months ago (the mild pleasures of staffing season) and, as one might expect, some things were tweaked between the script and the show. And they might be the wrong things.
As a read, it was a little difficult to get into, largely owing to an inordinate number of flashbacks and, in fact, flashbacks couched within other flashbacks. Right off the bat, I was bumping all over the place on just tracking timeline, let alone it being an ensemble piece. So...yes, many characters to follow around as well.
This flashback structure remained unchanged.
I don't generally have a problem with flashbacks as a whole. It is generally good advice not to use them if you don't have to, and that said, I've been known to use it a few times.
Even if the nested flashbacks don't bother you, here's one thing that did bother me as a result of these seemingly unnecessary bits of viewer-time-travel. Each flashback was based around a single character. You get to see, essentially, from that character's point of view as they orbit the events of The Event. Unfortunately, that means at least one case of a flashback full of quick cuts, urgent shouting and general tension as a dude tries to stop a plane from taking off. It was the same plane we saw take off already in another guy's flashback.
They could have done something about that.
Instead they changed a little mysterious happening (not the event of The Event). It was downgraded from a real brainscratcher to a we've-sen-that-before thing. Spoilery, but not very spoilery: a guy goes to his cruise ship cabin and finds someone already in that room and no record of him ever being in said room. A typical Gaslight situation. In the script, somehow that room just utterly vanished. It wasn't even a room. It was a closet. I was both puzzled and intrigued and perhaps it would be explained later. That bit? Gone. It was better before. Sounds like a network note.
The future of this show is going to rest on making sure that the mysteries are intriguing and don't drag on too long without answers. They may lead to more questions, a la Lost and that's okay, but Lost had great characters and so far, in this show, every one is just a cog in the machine that is The Event.
What is The Event? Don't know. Because for lots and lots of talking about it by two-thirds of the cast, no one ever says what it is or gives a clue as to its nature, which leads to some very questionable dialogue. Combine with that where there's a scene of the President and some other suits sitting in a room talking about it and they flashback to the President and the same suits in a room talking about it.
The whole show is just a build up to the last two minutes, where you find out what genre of show you're really watching and your first indication of what The Event could be.
I have my initial theory, but they're could have to keep me interested long enough to find out if I'm right. I don't want to be right, also. It's too simple an idea that if I am right, they're not trying hard enough.
What is it? To protect the spoiler averse, here it is in Klingon (I think) : pIq ghotpu
Tonight, I went to the Terriers premiere. T'was awesome.
Terriers, if you don't know, is the new FX series created by Ted Griffin (who wrote the Ocean's 11 (the good one) and executive produced by Shawn Ryan (he of The Shield). It goes a little something like this, imagine Jim Rockford split into two halves, a smart half and a dumb half and they undergo the adventures one might associate with unlicensed private detectives who live in a beach-town suburb of San Diego. That's Terriers in a clamshell.
Oh, and one of the Rockford-like halves (the brains of the operation) is Donal Logue. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
I began the night by getting in line for Catfish. I began my night by talking to the big man himself, Shawn Ryan, to thank him for inviting me.* We spoke very briefly, in which I told him of my efforts to try and get staffed on Ride-Along (his upcoming Chicago cop show), if not as writer, then as assistant. Neither effort, of course, worked, never managed to get past the network meeting. I mentioned being from Chicago (and was wearing my Addison/Wrigleyville "L" stop t-shirt) and that I was looking forward to the show. He failed to spontaneously hire me on the spot. Then he immediately walked down the red carpet...as if to rub it in.
Checking in, I got my ticket and seat number and headed into the theatre, expecting to be placed as far from anyone of importance as possible. Instead, I was two or three rows in front of Ryan, Griffin and the rest of the producers (including Tim Minear, he who can write no wrong).
FXPrez John Landgraf spoke briefly beforehand, reading aloud from favorable reviews before introducing Ryan and Griffin. Griffin...was funnier. Which seems appropriate. The show is funnier fare than one would expect from something with the Ryan name on it, though the pilot was written by Griffin. And, in fact, Terriers is lighter than most of the current FX dramas. Not that it's a comedy, by any stretch. There's drugs, alcohol, a sex tape, a bad land deal and murder, but there's plenty of funny brought as well.
After, the screening I repaired to LaVida on Gower for the afterparty. There, I met, talked to or nearly spilled a drink on a third of the cast of The Shield, Lisa Bonet, Minear, John Ross Bowie from The Big Bang Theory, Jed Seidel (writer on Veronica Mars) and Donal Logue (who arrived after taping Jimmy Kimmel).
Logue was a gracious host, as he co-owns LaVida and when the subject of Chicago came up (which with me, it always does) he lit up. He'd just done an interview with Mancow that morning. And after he imparted words of encouragement with regards to my writing aspirations, I left him to go about looking damn good in all black.
*No, I'm not friends with Shawn Ryan, I just happened to follow him on twitter and he's an awesome guy.
It is a rare thing indeed when favorite individuals from different fields of endeavor combine their skills to create a total - you know - thing.
The Event 
