Where'd You Go, Bernadette

Year 12, Day 228 - 8/15/20 - Movie #3,630

BEFORE: James Urbaniak carries over from "Wonderstruck".  He's one of those actors who turns up again and again, if you're looking for him, that is.  He's already been in two movies so far this year, so another two appearances guarantees him a spot in my annual countdown in December.  Same goes for Judy Greer and David Paymer, and surprisingly, if I stick to my schedule, it looks like I'll be giving a shout-out to Johannes Haukur Johannesson, too.  Oddly, I can't say the same about Cate Blanchett, who may finish the year with just two appearances - you just never know.

But Urbaniak's a lock - you may not even know who he is, but you've probably seen him in a bunch of things, possibly without being aware of it.  He's racked up over 150 IMDB credits as an actor, across a wide variety of genres - animated movies, biopics, TV comedies, video games - versatility will get somebody pretty far in my book.

THE PLOT: A loving mom becomes compelled to reconnect with her creative passions after years of sacrificing for her family.  Her leap of faith takes her on an epic adventure that jump-starts her life and leads to her triumphant rediscovery.

AFTER: SPOILER ALERT warning for "Where'd You Go, Bernadette" - turn back now if you haven't seen the film, because once again, it's impossible for me to discuss certain elements without revealing a bit too much, I suspect.

I didn't like the lead character, Bernadette, at first - to the extent where I wasn't sure if I was supposed to hate her, much like Richard McCreadie in "Greed".  But this didn't seem like a satire of any kind, this seemed like a much more sincere story about a woman who once had a professional career as an architect, and gave it up for some reason.  Her character had won a MacArthur "genius" grant and believed in using only local and repurposed/recycled materials, long before it was trendy.

The WHY of her career, WHY she withdrew from society is explained more and more as the film goes on, and the device that's used to tell this story is a film-within-a-film, a documentary on YouTube (she watches the first half, her daughter later watches the second half), which I suppose works as a narrative device - though I don't know many people who would watch a documentary about themself, that seems sort of narcissistic.  From a story standpoint, the only person we should see watching a documentary about themself would be a character who had amnesia, and needed to recall details from their own life.  Right?  It makes more sense that the daughter would watch this, to learn aspects of her mother's career that she wasn't already aware of.

When we first meet her, she's something of a "Karen", which symbolically has become the name for the type of suburban white woman who finds fault with everyone around her - or is it just minorities that they don't like?  Bernadette lives in suburban Seattle, and the area is full of well-meaning women with nothing better to do but enforce the local guidelines about how many blackberry bushes you can have in your backyard, or what time you can pull up to the school to pick up your daughter, but also they want to make sure that their kids know a few words in Swahili and are extrememly cosmopolitan, (as long as their kids don't date minorities, probably).  But Bernadette has problems getting along with the "Karens", so that kind of makes her an uber-Karen, or a Queen Karen, maybe a "Bernadette" is what the "Karens" need to come along and put their attitudes in check.

Either way, it's become a problem that Bernadette can't get along with ANY of the neighbors (yet she doesn't realize that if she doesn't get along with anyone, the problem isn't everyone else, it's her) and her relationship with her husband is faltering, too, even if they're both unaware of it.  He's got a position at Microsoft and is working on a device that will take dictation straight from a person's thoughts, no need for problematic texting or typing, or even saying words any more!  Because who has that kind of time?  Note: I think this device is not only impossible to invent, it's a very dangerous one - who wants their thoughts to be put directly into an e-mail that could accidentally get sent out?  I know there are a couple toys on the market that seem to function on the power of thought, but I kind of like the way things are right now, with typing texts, it's really not that much work.

Bernadette's got other problems, because she's doing a lot of dictation herself, sending instructions to her assistant, Manjula, who takes care of everything for her, from ordering clothes for the family's planned trip to Antarctica, to building a giant sign instructing all the local "gnats" (Karens) to keep off of her property.  Bernadette doesn't know it, but her assistant claims to be working out of a call center in India, only that's not the case.  This is how our country may eventually go down, with foreign agents creating apps and assistants to make our life easier, only they're really stealing all of the private data, passwords and bank information from our phones. Bernadette's living a life of privilege, but very soon it's going to come crashing down.

Once the dominoes start to fall, her husband feels the need to stage a sort of intervention, and who's to say that he's wrong?  Bernadette has put all of her medications together into one big, unlabelled candy jar (hey, that could at least make life more interesting), and he's found her asleep on a bench at the local pharmacy, after she had her virtual assistant order her seasick medication for the upcoming trip.  Meanwhile, one of the "Karen gnats" is now working as a Microsoft admin for her husband, and Bernadette's convinced herself this is the beginning of the end for their marriage - before long that assistant's going to be his mistress, and perhaps Bernadette's seeing just a few steps too far into the future, but really, that's when this sort of thing needs to be addressed, before the damage is done.

In the middle of the intervention, when her husband, prospective therapist, future "other woman" and someone from the FBI have her attention, Bernadette does what she does best, she escapes.  This is what she did 20 years previous after a career setback, she quit the game.  What else is there to do?  Some people probably live their lives like this, as soon as things start to not go their way, burn it all to the ground and move on.  Maybe it's healthier this way, I don't know.  But all you need to know is that she leaves, and her husband adopts a "Eh, maybe she'll come back?" attitude, and this is telling.  Her daughter eventually figures out where she's gone, and they take off after her.

It's not really a spoiler, because the first thing we see in the film is where Bernadette has gone - she's taken that trip to Antarctica.  Still, it's a weird twist - someplace most people wouldn't even go on a dare, but it's there she finds herself, and also where she "finds" herself again.  All you really need to know is that her creative mind has FINALLY started up again (we do see some evidence of the ways she's been renovating and decorating the family's home, so really, perhaps it never left) and through a large, complicated set of extraordinary circumstances, Bernadette is at one point seriously considering spending more time in Antarctica, for career reasons.

NITPICK POINT: This is a pet peeve of mine, but many people, including the majority of the cast of this film, end up mispronouncing the word "Antarctica".  It's supposed to be Ant-ARK-tick-a, but some people say "Ant-ART-tick-a", ignoring the first "C", and that's just wrong wrong wrong.  Yet those same people will say "ARK-tic" referring to the northern part of the globe.  How can somebody correctly pronounce "Arctic" and not "Antarctica"?  This drives me crazy.  Cate Blanchett correctly included the first "K" sound more often than anyone else here, so she's to be commended - the rest of you all need English lessons.  And it was the director's job to make sure all the actors knew how to say it, so that's a fail for him, too.  FUN FACT: the name "Arctic" comes from the Greek word "artikos", meaning "near the bear", probably a reference to the constellations of Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, therefore "antarctic" means "the opposite of the Arctic", by extension "opposite of the north" and therefore "not near the bear".  Appropriately, there are polar bears in the Arctic, but not in Antarctica.

How is this film perfect for the pandemic, in addition to knocking "Karen" culture?  Well, according to this film, spending an extended period of time at the South Pole requires a certain kind of person, somebody who's determined, rugged, and willing to work alone, accomplish tasks as an individual.  Also, the station manager states that the people who do best there are somewhat anti-social, and Bernadette fits that profile quite nicely.  It's like she was born for the job.  And this kind of reminds me about my feelings at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when I found out that I'd have to spend a couple months at home, cancel all social engagements, and avoid contact with other people, including the majority of my friends.  Umm, wait, what's the downside, exactly?  I can work just a few hours each day, not leave the house for a week, and binge-watch the shows I've missed over the last couple of years?  Sign me up.  Which makes me think that the whole lockdown was pitched to America all wrong - if the government announcements had just used words like "stay-cation" and "furlough" instead of "lockdown" and "quarantine", I think more people would have been on-board from the start.  Hey, everybody, remember how you've been saying you wish you could spend more time with your family?  And single people, you know that book or screenplay you're always saying you're going to write, but you can never seem to find the time?  Well, guess what...

The weird movies keep on coming this year, and this one's no exception - it's getting to the point where nothing really surprises me any more.  I'm not even sure if this is just a clear indicator of just how far a film has to go these days to try to rise above a crowded field, or maybe it's just that collectively we've been making movies for well over a century now, and it feels like every other story has been done before in some fashion, so that just leaves us with the strange ones that haven't been told before.  In some sense, weird is good, because weird is also original, weird is different, weird is unique.  So now if I see a film that isn't weird in some way, that seems kind of old hat - like, haven't I seen this story before a few times now?  It almost feels like Richard Linklater tried to make a Wes Anderson film, do you know what I mean?  It's got that odd, earnest tone that reminds me a little bit of both "Moonrise Kingdom" and "The Life Aquatic of Steve Zissou", if that makes any sense.

The biggest problem here, in my opinion, is using some really good actors in a very small way, just as people interviewed in the film-within-the-film, the documentary about Bernadette's career.  I'm just going to say it, Megan Mullally and Steve Zahn were criminally underused in that regard.  Also, despite what it looks like, that's NOT Harry Shearer in disguise as the weird British game-show producer.  Bottom line, this film didn't really make waves at the box office, or get any major nominations except for one Golden Globe nom, but in this new pandemic world, with so many creative people out there wondering how to move themselves forward after a fallow period, I say it's worth a look.  Check it out on Hulu or rent it on the other streaming services if you can.

Also starring Cate Blanchett (last heard in "How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World"), Billy Crudup (last seen in "20th Century Women"), Emma Nelson, Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Welcome to Me"), Judy Greer (last seen in "The 15:17 to Paris"), Troian Bellisario, Zoe Chao, Laurence Fishburne (last seen in "John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum"), Claudia Doumit, Katelyn Statton, David Paymer (last seen in "In Good Company"), Steve Zahn (last seen in "Captain Fantastic"), Megan Mullally (last seen in "Lemon"), Richard Robichaux (last seen in "Ocean's 8"), Kate Burton (last seen in "127 Hours"), Johannes Haukur Johannesson (last seen in "The Good Liar"), Kathryn Feeney, Bruce Curtis.

RATING: 6 out of 10 repurposed pairs of bifocals

Wonderstruck

Year 12, Day 226 - 8/13/20 - Movie #3,629

BEFORE: Since coming off this year's documentary chain and easing back into fiction films, my first three choices all share something in common, and that is that they're non-linear, to some degree.  Or "stream of consciousness", as the description for "A Single Man" clarified.  Sometimes I just say "overly flashback-y", it's all really the same thing.  I tried very hard last year to keep track of all the films I watched that (over)-used this technique, and it was a LOT of them - but then I made a mistake and accidentally deleted the blog file I was using, and this was also the file I was using to keep track of how many appearances each actor had, it was a terrible loss.  It took me days to re-create that file before the end of the year, and I even got busted for looking up actors on the IMDB during work hours, which might be one reason why I have one job right now, and not two.  But that's neither here nor there.  The point is, with the Blogspot interface, it's too easy to accidentally drag one file on top of another and replace it, which shouldn't be possible, if you ask me.  This year I have a back-up file of my actors' appearances, just in case - the end of this year is fast approaching, and I have to be ready.

Julianne Moore carries over from "A Single Man".

THE PLOT: The tale of two children separated by fifty years - in 1927 Rose searches for the actress whose life she chronicles in her scrapbook, and in 1977 Ben runs away from home to find his father.

AFTER: A rare SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen "Wonderstruck", because there's just no way for me to talk about this movie today without mentioning details that get revealed slowly, over time, in this one.

This film is from 2017, and if you remember, that was a big year for films with "Wonder" in the title - there was "Wonder", with Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson, which I watched earlier this year, also "Wonder Wheel", "Wonder Woman", and "Professor Marston & the Wonder Women". I'm pretty sure this is the last film from that year that qualifies.  I've avoided this one the longest not just because of the split-timeline / flashbacky nature of the film, but also it seems to rely heavily on child actors, and that's a big gamble.  Once in a while you find a child actor who's really capable and believable, but it's a rare thing - most child actors are terrible at disappearing into a role and therefore coming across as sincere.  I don't know why that is, or perhaps it's why my perception of child actors makes it that way, but it's where I find myself.  I was braced for the worst here, given that most children just don't have the emotional depth for acting - perhaps it's something that comes with experience, and kids just don't have that?

For the most part, my concerns were warranted - at nearly every turn, with the way that kids deliver dialogue, I was always, ALWAYS aware that they were saying lines.  Acting should be close to invisible, it's not just about talking, it's about BEING, and a good adult actor knows how to BE somebody else, not think about what they're saying or how they're saying it, and sort of let the character take over.  Losing yourself in the role, or else not caring how something is said, and just letting it flow.  Most kids can't do it, but I'll admit there are rare exceptions.  But there's an interesting twist here, which affects the dialogue in over half the film.

Today we're toggling between two storylines, one set in 1927 and the other set in 1977.  And the 1927 scenes are presented in black and white, and without recorded sound.  Which is interesting because that's the way that films were presented back then, before recorded voices were added to film stock, though with music that was often played live in the theater.  At first I resisted this presentation in a modern film very strongly, because even though our cinematic records of this time appear this way, it's not an accurate depiction of real life then.  There was color in the world prior to the 1930's, and people's voices made sound, even if we have no recordings of it.  But we're all so accustomed to learning about the 1920's through old films, that it's very easy to think of those times that same way - without color and without sound.  You may watch a modern film that's set in the 1920's, like "Once Upon a Time in America", for example, and feel a bit of a disconnect, but I believe that New York City was a colorful, loud, vibrant place, even back then.

I (eventually) got used to this film's depiction of 1927, but it wasn't easy - and for several reasons, that storyline seemed very hard to follow.  Even the old films from that time had dialogue, only you had to read it on big cards that popped up every so often, which ultimately clears everything up about what someone just said, but also takes you out of the reality of the movie for a few seconds while you read it.  What also justifies this in "Wonderstruck", however, is the fact that the lead character is a deaf girl, so she's not hearing what anyone is saying, and it's almost like we're in her noiseless, non-verbal world with her.  But several times she's able to communicate with others by writing things down, only this had drawbacks, too - the words we need to read are not big, bold ones on title cards, but instead from pen on paper, and most of the time, I wasn't able to read the exchanged messages in time.

What I could read was very, very hokey - however.  The girl writes "Help" on a little paper boat and sets it sailing out to sea, or she writes "Where do I belong?" on another boat and, umm, well, I couldn't really see the point of putting that boat where she did.  As a matter of fact, a lot of the 1927 scenes are either extremely corny or sentimental - again, that matches what we know about the decade through short films from the time, but I'm not sure it matches real life.

At the same time (only it's not the same time at all) another child, recently orphaned Ben, in 1977 suffers hearing loss after an accident, and then runs away from home to find his father - and from the earlier scenes between him and his mother, all he knows about is father is that his mother wouldn't tell him anything.  There must be a reason for this, but like Ben, we're completely in the dark about this - perhaps this is how it should be, and therefore we're as curious and desperate to find the answers as he is.  But I've got issues with the sequence of events here, if I suddenly lost my hearing I'm not sure that would be the most logical time to run away from home to find someone I've never met.  Especially when all the evidence about that person is so old, and flimsy, and questionable.  Is it likely that a 10-year-old boy would have the ability to travel from Michigan to New York City on his own, after recently losing his hearing?  It's a bit of a stretch, I think.

Meanwhile (only it's not meanwhile at all, it's fifty years earlier) the girl, Rose, also runs away from home, also arrives in New York, and tracks down the acclaimed actress, Lillian Mayhew.  Throughout the journey we don't really know why she's trying to visit this actress, though we eventually do learn the why and the implications of this.  (I'm attempting to preserve SOME of this story's secrets, but honestly, it's not very easy.)  All we really need to know is that Rose felt unhappy living with her father, and after running away she eventually lived with her brother, but the film didn't feel the need to even mention that she HAD a brother until that information became important, because that's just how this story is being told, the director kept his cards very close to his vest, as they say, and all along, we the audience are being spoon-fed tiny bits of information, but only when necessary.

Some may find the toggling between the two storylines to be a bit too much - I sure did.  Sometimes one story would only advance for a minute, or maybe even 30 seconds, before cutting back to the other story, where perhaps the other kid was in the same NYC location, or doing something similar.  All this goes towards creating the illusion that the stories are happening simultaneously, which they are certainly NOT, or at least connected, which they may or may not be.  Trying to guess WHETHER they are connected, or if so, HOW they are connected is really the main task here - and because so much information is withheld at every juncture, somebody really didn't want anyone to be certain about this until it was absolutely necessary.

Both children visit the Natural History Museum, for example.  They look at some of the same exhibits.  OK, maybe that's possible, but is it LIKELY?  I found myself debating whether this whole this was way too coincidental, or whether receiving the answer to the puzzle, in retrospect, explains all of the coincidences which came before.  Honestly, I'm still not sure if the end here justify the means, and I'll say no more about it.  As far as the museum thing is concerned, two NYC museums are prominently featured in the story - in addition to the Natural History Museum, the Queens Museum of Art is shown, and one particular exhibit there plays a prominent role.  Again, I don't want to say too much here but once museums open up again, I'm really not that far from this museum in Flushing, Queens and I'd love to pay it a visit.

But how about this for a coincidence?  I planned this chain weeks ago, maybe even months ago, and I ended up watching a film about two deaf characters on the day that I went to pick up my own hearing aid.  It's one thing when I schedule a film with a cameo of Jerry Garcia on the anniversary of his death, but it's a completely different feeling when something in a film intersects or collides with something going on in my personal life.  It's a little eerie, slightly creepy sometimes.  Now, I'd set this appointment up last month, I've been seeing various doctors and medical professionals in the ENT and audiology fields for over two years, and for various reasons, despite definite diagnoses of hearing loss in my right ear, I didn't get to any actual solution until today.

The first audiologist sent me to a hearing aid provider my insurance wouldn't cover, then I saw a doctor who wanted to operate on my middle ear, which freaked me out, then an entire medical conglomerate changed affiliations and wouldn't take my insurance any more, so I had to start over.  I switched over to Mt. Sinai during the pandemic, and this time I stuck with it, saw two doctors and a hearing-aid specialist, and now I've got a hearing aid.  Bluetooth compatible, I can adjust the settings via an app on my phone, plus music and phone calls can go straight to my hearing aid.  So far so good, it's mostly just like having an ear bud in place all day long.  The sound is somewhat artificial, but that kind of beats hearing nothing in one ear.

And if movie theaters & Broadway shows ever open up again, there's a setting on my hearing aid that can pick up the signals directly from the movie screen or from the stage production, assuming the theater is broadcasting a signal for the hearing-impaired.  So I know it's only Day 1 with the hearing aid, but already there seem to be a ton of positives for taking this step, and not much of a downside.  I'm lucky that I still have hearing out of the left ear, so if the hearing aid's on the fritz or I don't have the settings right, I can still hear, but I'm hearing better when it's in place, so there's that.  I've been compensating for the hearing loss for the last couple of years (moving the phone to the left ear, for example) so despite all the testing, I didn't really know how bad the hearing loss was until I got the hearing aid in place and heard what I was missing.  I can't compensate for the hearing loss, but at least I can amplify sound now so I can hear what's around me better - in the same way that a crutch won't replace your leg, but it can make walking easier.  Now I've got to test it out on some movies.

NITPICK POINT: I just completely missed the point of having that female character, Janet (?) dressed up in Ben's mother's clothes.  What the heck was the point of this?  At some point I just felt this movie withheld too much information, and this is one of several things that could have been explained better, but just wasn't.  Who was this girl, Ben's cousin?  I don't even know.  Where did she live, and why was she in a different house from where she was supposed to be, and why was she dressing up like somebody else?  It's just a weird non sequitur, I guess.  If you want to be vague about the 1927 scenes, that's fine, but this extraneous character doesn't play into the mystery at all, so we should at least have been told who she was and what the heck she was doing.  There were several things I apparently missed, like WHY exactly Rose's father was mad at her, or WHY somebody needs to go to Minnesota just to figure out what wolves look like, but this whole Janet thing was probably the worst offense of non-storytelling.

Also starring Oakes Fegley (last seen in "Pete's Dragon"), Millicent Simmonds (last seen in "A Quiet Place"), Michelle Williams (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Jaden Michael (last seen in "Paterson"), Raul Torres, Tom Noonan (last seen in "Anomalisa"), Cory Michael Smith (last seen in "First Man"), James Urbaniak (last heard in "Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay"), Amy Hargreaves (last seen in "Shame"), Damian Young (last seen in "Everybody's Fine"), Morgan Turner (last seen in "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle"), Lauren Ridloff, Anthony Natale, Carole Addabbo, Howard Seago, John P. McGinty, John Boyd (last seen in "The Notorious Bettie Page").

RATING: 4 out of 10 shooting stars (which could become meteorites - OHH!! now I get it.)

A Single Man

Year 12, Day 225 - 8/12/20 - Movie #3,628

BEFORE: This year's not over yet, there's still a long way to go.  72 more films after tonight before I can even start about thinking about next year, if there is a next year, if the world is still around and if movies are still a thing.  Who the heck knows any more?  But there are 140 days left to watch those 72 movies, and that's too close to one every two days.  I can't live like that, rationing out my movies - I'd rather sprint toward the finish line, and then have almost two months of activity in November and December.  But now I have a plan, so it's x number of movies in August, and another x number of movies in September, because I know where I need to be on October 1, and how many steps it's going to take to get there.

Knowing the steps for the rest of the year, and the links that I believe will get me there, necessitated moving a couple romance- or relationship-based films out of the February plan.  This is one of them, there'll be another in three days' time.  I'm crossing my fingers hoping that these moves don't make next February's chain impossible - at some point in my late-2020 break I'll have to reassess the 2021 romance chain, to see if the holes can be repaired, and if so, how best to patch them.  Eh, the romance list was too long anyway, if I have to shorten it next year based on the linking, that's not the worst thing in the world.  But if I have two perfect years in a row, it's going to be tough to come off of that train and start watching movies at random again.  If I don't I'll never get to the miscellaneous documentaries and time-travel films that don't link up with anything else.  C'est la vie.

Colin Firth carries over from "Greed".

THE PLOT: An English professor, one year after the sudden death of his boyfriend, is unable to cope with his typical days in 1960's Los Angeles.

AFTER: OK, time to make some more connections, beyond the fact that Colin Firth appeared in "Greed", in a cameo as one of the recorded birthday greetings for Sir Richard McCreadie - though IMDB hasn't made the full update yet, based on my suggestions.  Actually, I just checked, and they declined it - God forbid they take the time to WATCH the movie to investigate the things I report.  Geez, don't they know me by now?  They took a couple hundred of my other submissions last week, but they're holding fast on Colin Firth and Ben Stiller being in "Greed"?  What the hell?

Right, I'm getting off track - "Greed" was a film about a fashion designer/mogul, and "A Single Man" was directed by a fashion designer, Tom Ford.  He used to be the creative director at Gucci and Yves St. Laurent, before also directing some films, including "Nocturnal Animals".  "A Single Man" was his first feature, based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood.  It's about a gay English lit professor in the early 1960's, named George Falconer - apparently the character had no last name in the novel, but Tom Ford gave him one, the same last name as Ian Falconer, someone (his first lover?) he met while attending college in NYC.  There may be some crossover here between the movie's plot and the director's life, I'm therefore guessing - it's OK, there's been quite a bit of that happening this year, like with "The Tree of Life" and "Little Women".

I'm out of my comfort zone, like I was with "Call Me By Your Name", but that's OK, too - I don't have to be gay to watch a movie about a gay man, I'm secure enough in my orientation that I can watch this just to gain some understanding about experiences that are outside my own. And of course I fully understand that the 1960's were a very different time, some people mistakenly thought that homosexual men couldn't possibly form a partnership bond that was equivalent to the more common ones between men and women, and now we know that's a bunch of hooey.  Anyway, there are plenty of straight relationships that go belly-up for any number of reasons, so even comparing the two, or suggesting that one is better than the other, or more sacred somehow, is also a load of rubbish.

We meet George Falconer about a year after his partner, Jim, died in a car crash, and even though George wasn't there with him when it happened, he still has vivid dreams about the incident, or what he imagined the incident to look like.  The couple's two dogs also either died or were lost in the crash, so essentially, George has lost his whole family, but each day he wakes up from the car-crash dream, gets dressed, puts on a brave face and teaches his classes, and nobody is aware of the pain that he's gone through, and is still going through.  Well, there's his female friend Charlotte, who he apparently had a relationship with years ago, and that friendship helps pull him through, too.

We follow George through the day, however the day is also full of flashbacks and time-jumping, which we see as George remembers key moments from the relationship with Jim, or the dreaded phone call he received from Jim's cousin that told him about the crash, and that the funeral would be "family only", therefore he shouldn't attend.  It's a bracing reminder in this modern age that things weren't always the way they are now, that gay relationships were, for a long time, wrongly considered less valid or less real.

Unfortunately, Charlotte can't seem to understand this point, either, because she mistakenly assumes that now that Jim is out of the picture, George will eventually find his way back to her, then she won't be so alone either, now that her husband has left her and her son is off to college.  Charlotte sees the person she wants George to be, not the person that he is, but of course she's got a vested interest in regarding him this way - but he's always going to keep her at arm's length as long as there are young Spanish men at the liquor store who look a bit like James Dean, and also shirtless men with well-defined abs playing tennis on the college campus.

Eventually we realize that George is putting his affairs in order, getting certain items from his safe deposit box, leaving notes about what suit and tie he wants to be buried in, and also making sure that he's got bullets for his gun.  You know, the everyday errands.  But he can't quite seem to go through with the suicide, so one may wonder how many times he's gone through this little ritual.  Postponing your suicide because you can't quite find a comfortable position on the bed is a little bit like when they disinfect the arm of a murderer sentenced to die - in a few minutes, it's just not going to matter.  But George keeps finding one reason after another to (literally) not pull that trigger.  Perhaps the attempt is some weird form of therapy, that puts him in touch with how close death always is, even if we're not aware of it.

Instead, it seems like there's a burgeoning relationship between George and one of his male students, which I'm pretty sure is against any college's rules, for both straight and gay teachers.  But perhaps it does happen, or did back in the 1960's, I mean, if they can't love each other openly in society, then they're going to keep it a secret anyway, right?  No spoilers here about the ending, I promise, but really, it sort of hearkens back to that line from "The Shawshank Redemption" - "Get busy livin', or get busy dyin'."

Also starring Julianne Moore (last seen in "Seventh Son"), Nicholas Hoult (last seen in "Tolkien"), Matthew Goode (last seen in "The Lookout"), Jon Kortajarena, Paulette Lamori, Ryan Simpkins (last seen in "The House"), Ginnifer Goodwin (last seen in "Mona Lisa Smile"), Teddy Sears, Paul Butler, Aaron Sanders, Lee Pace (last seen in "Captain Marvel"), Erin Daniels (last seen in "The Sitter"), Aline Weber, Keri Lynn Pratt, Adam Shapiro (last seen in "Steve Jobs"), Marlene Martinez, Nicole Steinwedell and the voices of Jon Hamm (last seen in "Between Two Ferns: The Movie"), John F. Kennedy (last seen in "Muscle Shoals") with archive footage of Janet Leigh (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead")

RATING: 5 out of 10 moments of clarity

Greed

Year 12, Day 224 - 8/11/20 - Movie #3,627

BEFORE: One of my all-time favorite movies while growing up was "Time Bandits", directed by Terry Gilliam, and I think I liked that movie before I was even old enough to understand Monty Python's Flying Circus, except I knew a couple routines via audio that ran on the Dr. Demento radio show.  One week Dr. D. interviewed Terry Gilliam, who was promoting "Time Bandits", and I decided I had to go and see it, and it changed my life - plus it had the guy who was inside R2D2 in it, also some other little people who later turned up as Ewoks in "Return of the Jedi".  But that's not important - the film's about a young British boy who hooks up with six time-traveling dwarves, and they bounce back and forth through time-holes, meet Robin Hood and Agamemnon and sail on the Titanic, before they battle the ultimate Evil in the time of legends.

They use a map of all the time-holes, which they stole from the Supreme Being, and that's really my inspiration when I link movies together.  I am a traveler of both time and space, using actors as the link between movies - the trouble is, there's not really a map that tells me where to go, I just follow my nose and sometimes make a plan, and the only real rules I follow are my own.  And sometimes the plan gets stuck, often because not every film has complete credits listed in the IMDB, and this problem is especially bad when it comes to documentaries.

So, I've learned to keep a pen and notepad near my recliner, in case I notice somebody (or somebodies, if it's a particularly eventful night) not listed in the credits who really should have been.  I'm trying to make the map easier for any travelers that should come this way again, even though I don't think anybody else is walking the same roads as me, or even would want to.  But just in case, I believe that everybody who appears in a film, even if that was a really minor role, even if it's just in archive footage, should receive credit.  Everyone owns their own image, right?  At least for now, so let's always give credit where credit is due.

But I fear somebody at the IMDB curses me out when I go on a documentary credits-fixing binge.  I added 68 credits for "Fyre Fraud", for example, because that film used a ton of clips and archive footage. I added 29 credits for "Whitney", 27 for "David Crosby: Remember My Name", 25 for "Echo in the Canyon" and 33 for "Down in the Flood: Bob Dylan, the Band & the Basement Tapes".

How does this relate to my linking?  Well, for one thing, it would have made my linking much easier if the credits were already THERE, but they weren't, so no use crying over spilled milk.  If I had known that so many famous people appeared in "Fyre Fraud" (again, via archive footage) that film would have been like the giant time-hole at the middle of the "Time Bandits" map, it could have led me anywhere, everywhere!  But that in itself isn't really a good thing, because it actually gives me TOO MANY choices, and the linking works best when there's just a few.  So that was a good reason to end with the other documentary, "Fyre" - fewer cameos, fewer choices, this helps me narrow the focus.

For a long while, I was going to take advantage of the footage in "Fyre" with comedian Ron Funches on the Conan O'Brien show, as I noticed him appearing in a few other films on my list, like "Trolls World Tour", also "Once Upon a Time in Venice" and "Killing Hasselhoff", which just came to Netflix.  OK, I can work with that, so I set up a chain that would lead me out of the Summer Concert Series, and could get quite quickly to "Bill & Ted Face the Music", which at the time was set for an early August release.  Then, of course, that early August release got moved to an early September release, because there are still knuckleheads in the South who can't figure out that wearing a face-mask is a good thing, and will help get movie theaters to open up sooner!

OK, relax, deep breath, suddenly my chain was no good, and I had to adapt it, but I didn't want to tear the whole thing down and rebuild something new - so I found a way to flip a chunk of the chain.  This has been my best solution last year and this year when problems arise, look for an actor that appears in several other films, and maybe there's a way to turn a part of the chain around so it works better.  Thankfully this proved to be the case, and I flipped around about 18 movies at one go, and everything not only re-connected in the new order, but I saw that I now had the option to drop "Bill & Ted" if it doesn't get released on time, or is too expensive On Demand, and the chain will just close up around it, no worries. Then I just needed to find a new way out of the documentary chain, and there was one movie that connected "Fyre" to the other end of the flipped-around section, and that film is "Greed".

Against all reasonably-expected odds, model Shanina Shaik carries over from "Fyre", and I'll get back to Ron Funches in a couple of weeks.  Only now that I've added "Greed", which is costing me $5.99 on iTunes, I have to drop something, and I think it will be "Trolls World Tour", which is also still going for $5.99.  So sorry, but a choice between a comedy with Steve Coogan and a silly stupid animated movie for kids - really, that's a no-brainer.  I'll watch "Trolls World Tour" when it's free (or relatively free on premium cable or Netflix/Hulu), and not before.

THE PLOT: Satire about the world of the super-rich.

AFTER: I'm really happy with the way this turned out, because what better way to follow a film about millennials getting ripped off by a corrupt businessman and going to a festival on an island, than with a film about a corrupt businessman having his birthday party on an island, and trying to get a bunch of celebrities and influencers to come and join him?  You see the connection, right?  Damn, I (almost) don't care that this one's costing me $6 to rent.  Watch, next week I bet they'll lower the rental price to $2.99, with my luck.

This isn't a documentary, but somebody did an equally bad job keeping track of the cast - I had the IMDB open on my phone, as I usually do, and I couldn't find some of the major characters listed.  How can I play "Hey, who's THAT guy?" while I watch if nobody submitted a final cast list to the IMDB?  There were many people listed in the end credits who are not on the IMDB, so I just submitted an update - this includes several celebrities who did cameos, uncredited of course, but they're mentioned on Wikipedia, so why not on the IMDB, also?  I can't promise they'll all make it to the IMDB, but I do what I can, I try to leave the movie world in a slightly better condition than the one I find it in.

That's kind of the opposite of what millionaires do, according to "Greed". I've seen this sort of thing before, hell, I saw this sort of thing last month, in "The Laundromat".  The rich keep getting richer, and how do they do it?  It's not really a mystery, they've all just figured out ways to make the poor people poorer.  Now, in the old days, you did that by making a superior product, something that everyone just HAS to have - a better car, a better video-game, a better novel, a better movie - and supposedly the world would then beat a path to your door.  But then after the Baby Boomers came a generation that just didn't want to work that hard, so they started looking for shorcuts.  "Hey, what if we have our phones made in China, that'll be cheaper, and instead of raising our prices, we'll make more profit on the manufacturing.  Ah, who are we kidding, we'll probably raise our prices, too, and we'll make money on both ends!"  Then the clothing jobs went to Sri Lanka, the customer service jobs went to India, and the animation jobs went to Korea.  A few years later, unemployment rates in America were through the roof - gee, I wonder why?

Sir Richard McCreadie is presented here as a case in point - he's somehow become a billionaire, or at least a multi-millionaire, by failing upwards.  Nearly every fashion business he's ever run has gone bankrupt, or if they didn't then he sold them off for ten times what he paid for them.  He's British, but it's not hard to draw a line from "Greedy" McCreadie to George W. Bush (who somehow failed at running a baseball team and an oil company before being allowed to run Texas, then the country) and of course Trump (failed businesses include Trump Air, Trump Steaks, Trump Casinos, Trump University, the Trump Foundation, and the U.S.).  So McCreadie is a stand-in for British billionaire Sir Philip Green, but also for incompetent billionaires everywhere.

I'd never heard of Philip Green before, but he got rich by buying up discount clothing, discount clothing stores, and discount clothing brands.  Then he'd have the clothes cleaned (maybe), wrapped in plastic as if they were new, and he'd sell them at "70% off" of some ridiculously inflated price, making people think they were getting a great deal, only they were probably still over-paying for crappy clothes.  McCreadie is similarly hooked on "The Art of the Deal" - Green eventually had enough money to buy Arcadia Group, which owned a number of High Street fashion chains, then sold the company to his wife, who conveniently was a resident of Monaco, a country with no income tax.  Get the picture?  Green remained as CEO (drawing a big salary, I'd wager) but became involved in philanthropic pursuits, most likely as a tax dodge, but that also got him the "Sir" in front of his name.  For his 50th birthday, Green flew 200 guests to Cyprus for a three-day toga party, where guests were serenaded by Tom Jones and Rod Stewart.  Meanwhile, Arcadia Group has faced allegations of poor working conditions at the sweatshops in Mauritius where the clothing is made.

Obviously that's the inspiration here, as "Greed" tries to cover the story of a very similar multi-millionaire, but unfortunately from too many angles.  The film is decidedly non-linear, bouncing back and forth through young McCreadie's life and career, from him ripping off other school students with magic tricks to the early business deals where he low-balled everyone to the planning stages for his blowout 60th birthday party on Mykonos, complete with a mini-Colosseum that's still being built just days before the party. (Great, it's the Fyre Festival all over again.). McCreadie is obsessed with the 2000 film "Gladiator" and quotes it frequently, but he's also so out of touch that he identifies with Russell Crowe's Maximus character, when the truth is that he's really much more of a Commodus.  Meanwhile, there are Syrian refugees that are living on the beach, right where all the party guests will be able to see them, and this simply won't do.

More complications - Nick, Sir Richard's biographer, arrives on the scene in Mykonos to document the party, and this leads us back-hopping through time as Sir Richard had previously interviewed his friends and family, plus he was there in the courtroom as a Select Committee (whatever that is) took Sir Richard to task for his business practices.  McCreadie defends himself by pointing out that all the big companies are exploiting all the tax loopholes with offshore holdings and charity donations that offset their profits, and he's not wrong.  How much tax does Google pay?  Or Microsoft, or Amazon? They've all got accountants working to get that number down to zero, and where does that lead?  Just like with the jobs, one day we're going to wake up and realize that the U.S. government has no money, because various laws and loopholes have allowed all of these companies to lower their taxes again and again.

Then there's Amanda, one of McCreadie's personal assistants, whose mother once worked in one of those Sri Lankan sweatshops that made clothes for his discount fashion lines.  It turns out that his great business deals really undermined the sweatshops, which then had to cut costs by paying their workers less, and, well, let's just say it didn't end well.  It turns out that actions do have consequences, and Sir Richard is one of those guys who rolled a snowball down a mountain, without thinking about what the effect would be to the people living in the quaint village below.  Amanda realizes as she's putting on her Greek slave costume for the party that it's not really a costume at all, in her own way she's become a slave working for the emperor, and that there's no way out, this is the way it's always been, despite her best efforts to change things.

Sir Richard's family arrives for the party, and then we see how complicated that part of his life is.  His ex-wife has a new boyfriend, who may be even younger than his own girlfriend, but seeing as he's signed off so much money to his wife (who, like Tina Green, officially lives in Monaco) did they ever really split up, or was it just another tax dodge?  Did they both just decide they wanted to sleep with other people?  It feels like there's something still there, so what's the deal?  Hey, are we sure that the Amazon CEO's divorce was real, or was it just another excuse to get more money out of the company's coffers and into hers?  Again, somebody get me Michael Moore on the phone.  Sir Richard's daughter Lily is starring in a reality show, so she's constantly being filmed during (scripted) private moments with her boyfriend, and she seems very confused about whether she's playing a character in this show that's somehow real but not real. (Why am I not surprised?  The Kardashians probably have the same problem every day.). And his son Finn has taken the opportunity while in Greece to learn about the tragedy of Oedipus, who killed his own father and slept with his mother.  OK, nothing to worry about there.  Later on, we meet Richard's older son, Adrian, who the writers couldn't even bother to make interesting in any way.

Through it all, as the timeline jumps around but still draws closer and closer to the impending party (much like the Fyre documentaries, we're shown title cards in giant fonts that read "THREE DAYS BEFORE THE PARTY" - which keep reminding us to stay tuned, because eventually something might happen.  And it does, but it's telegraphed so poorly, it's ridiculous.  If you don't see the tragedy coming here, then you've never encountered foreshadowing before, or maybe you don't get how movies work.  It's all RIGHT THERE, in everything that's said about the party plans and what might go wrong, only like the Fyre Festival, nobody puts a stop to it when they have the chance.  But by this time, we've all grown to hate Sir Richard for, well, everything he's ever done, so really, it couldn't possibly happen to a nicer guy.  Still, a little subtlety here would have gone a long way - but instead we're bombarded by stats before the closing credits regarding global economic disparity.  What's sad is that this is the only way to reach some people who refuse to watch documentaries, I suppose.  Perhaps a pound of sugar will help the medicine go down.

There are funny bits along the way, to be sure, because Steve Coogan is Steve Coogan and I've come to appreciate him for that.  He's great when he loses his cool, even though he's also acting like a prick at the same time.  And at least for once I know he's playing a character here who isn't also part him, when we get into "The Trip" movies or even "Tristram Shandy" (all of which came from director Michael Winterbottom, as did "Greed") then sometimes I don't know where Steve Coogan the actor stops and Steve Coogan the character starts.  After all that, I wonder sometimes if Steve even knows.

Lingering questions - is that really Keith Richards, near the end?  Considering how the Sir Richard curses him out for being late for the party, while also poking fun at how OLD he is ("I'm paying him $10,000 a wrinkle!" I don't think Keith necessarily would have gone for this.  Plus, he's not seen in close-up, and also drunk, stumbling down some stairs - not good for the image.  In a very funny earlier bit, there are several celebrity lookalikes hired to appear at this party (including one of George Michael, who's not even alive any more!) so I'm guessing this is just another celebrity impersonator.  Or is it?  Either way, if it's at all questionable, I'm glad I didn't end my documentary series with "Muscle Shoals" and use Keith Richards as the link back to fiction films. Wikipedia seems to believe that's really Keith in "Greed", but something tells me no dice.

"Sic semper tyrannis" is what I keep telling myself - we've seen the eventual fall of so many corporate fatcats and sexual abusers in the last few years, but are we really making progress, or is it always just the tip of the iceberg?  Is "cancel culture" getting out of hand, or does it represent the change that was long overdue?  I honestly don't know.  Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, the Enron guys, the Wells Fargo executives, Elliot Spitzer, Anthony Wiener, Jerry Sandusky, Lance Armstrong, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Bill Cosby, Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Larry Nassar, The Panama Papers, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, the Catholic Church - whew, I'm exhausted and I feel like maybe I barely even scratched the surface there.  I'm really hopeful about the current investigations into the NRA, but when the hell is it going to be Trump's turn?  He's weathered like 100 times more scandals than anybody else, but nothing ever seems to stick. I keep telling myself it's coming, but I just can't take any more disappointment on this front.

Also starring Steve Coogan (last seen in "The Professor and the Madman"), Isla Fisher (last seen in "Hot Rod"), Jamie Blackley (last seen in "Snow White and the Huntsman"), David Mitchell, Sophie Cookson (last seen in "Kingsman: The Golden Circle"), Shirley Henderson (last seen in "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story"), Jack Shepherd (ditto), Ollie Locke, Asa Butterfield (last seen in "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children"), Dinita Gohil (last seen in "The Snowman"), Sarah Solemani (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), Enzo Cilenti (ditto), Richard Rycroft (ditto), Manolis Emmanouel, Asim Chaudhry, Pearl Mackie, Tim Key (last seen in "I Give It a Year"), Jonny Sweet (last seen in "Johnny English Strikes Again"), Caroline Flack, Paul Higgins, Miles Jupp (last seen in "The Legend of Tarzan"), Michael Simkins (last seen in "The Iron Lady"), Matt Bentley, Christophe de Choisy, Paul Ritter, Richard Betts, Suranga Ranawaka, Andrew Penfold, Robert Lamberti,

with cameos from Stephen Fry (last seen in "The Con Is On"), Pixie Lott, Ben Stiller (last seen in "Envy"), Colin Firth (last seen in "1917"), Keira Knightley (last seen in "The Borrowers" (2011)), Chris Martin, James Blunt, and Keith Richards (maybe?) (last seen in "Muscle Shoals")

RATING: 6 out of 10 Bulgarian carpenters

Fyre

Year 12, Day 223 - 8/10/20 - Movie #3,626

BEFORE: Yep, one documentary about the Fyre Festival is not enough.  Just think about how many pandemic documentaries are probably in production right now!  When life gives you lemons, I guess...  But it might be important to look at this disaster from a couple of different angles.  This one was on track to be the first doc about Fyre on the scene, but then what was planned as a Hulu series got turned into a solitary movie, so "Fyre Fraud" got released on Hulu just four days before this one hit Netflix.  Interesting...

Billy McFarland carries over from "Fyre Fraud", as do several other persons of interest.

THE PLOT: An exclusive behind the scenes look at the infamous unraveling of the Fyre music festival.

AFTER: Another thing that's interesting is the list of the producers and executive producers of this film - some of the names are shared with the people being interviewed.  Hmm... it seems this film was produced by the fine folks at FuckJerry Media, which was the company promoting Fyre at the time.  Now, "producer" is a funny title, it could mean a lot of different things - sometimes it means someone who raised money or financed the film directly, other times it's someone who was very hands-on and instrumental to the entire film on a daily basis, and sometimes it's just a title given to someone for no reason, in exchange for some other service.

Here it sure looks like the fine folks at FuckJerry Media were trying to get their side of the story out there, whether that's truthful or not, I can't say, but my guess is that their business may have suffered some after the disaster that was Fyre Festival, and they felt they needed to get the story straight.  These particular people who were both producers and interview subjects spend a fair amount of time distancing themselves from Billy McFarland, or else they claim now that they tried VERY HARD to get Billy to realize the impending disaster, and implored him to cancel the festival and refund all the money.  Right, sure they did - I'm sure all of Billy's employees had the best interest of every single paying customer at heart, meanwhile they were cashing their own paychecks, right?  And now all they see is permanent damage if they don't clear the air, you can bet they don't want to put "Fyre Festival" on their company's list of accomplishments, so they're trying to put some spin on the narrative instead.

I'm sorry, guys, "We were only following orders" didn't work for the Nazi concentration camp guards, so it's probably not going to work for you.  If the whole lesson of Fyre is that "mistakes were made", everybody has to own their own part of those mistakes.  Notice how every interview subject here makes a point of saying that they spoke to the FBI during the ensuing investigation - right, because that's what you do when the FBI comes to talk to you.  Because if you DON'T talk to the FBI, well now they REALLY want to talk to you, and they're going to find a way to make that happen.  I'm not saying Billy McFarland is a saint, far from it, he's a con artist and a piece of millennial garbage, but every single one of these FuckJerry people talked to the FBI to save their own skin and point their fingers at Billy.

Of course, as they say, the fish stinks from the head on down, so Billy McFarland's in jail, and he's now prevented from ever being a corporate officer or director, lifetime ban.  I don't think he'll even be allowed to coach Little League when he gets out, but we'll see.  Still, there's a LOT of blame to go around.  What about Ja Rule?  He downplayed the accusations of "fraud" in a post-festival meeting, but admitted there was "false advertising" - which is also known as "fraud".  There's a class-action suit that awarded millions to festival-goers, but how is Billy ever going to raise the money to pay that off, if he can never work as a highly-paid CEO or corporate officer?  Ohh, the irony.

A crowdfunding campaign raised over $200,000 to pay that Bahamian caterer, who was never paid by Fyre, so that's something.  I guess with Billy always moving money around, taking the money meant for THIS thing and using it to pay THAT thing instead, I guess the caterer was the last link in the chain?  They also brought in $2 million's worth of alcohol, without realizing that they had to pay a huge import fee to bring that in to the Bahamas, almost $900,000.  And you don't want to KNOW what they had to do to get the Evian water through customs.  The U.S. marshals auctioned off the Fyre-branded merchandise like t-shirts, with the money going to festival victims.  Side question, did those little girls who sang at Trump's inauguration ever get paid?  Can someone look into this?  Hello, Michael Moore?

I don't think it's that uncommon to use money raised for one thing to do another - I've worked on a couple of Kickstarter campaigns, and near the end of the process, there are often a lot of costs involved with fulfilling the rewards, making the DVDs, postage, mailing supplies, that sort of thing.  And by that point, the money raised by the crowdfunding campaign to make the movie has all been spent - I definitely requested putting aside a couple thousand to cover reward fulfillment, but it just wasn't possible, all the money was needed to pay the studio bills and cover the production costs.  So, when it was time to mail out the rewards, the postage had to come from somewhere else - so we needed to land a new project to finish paying for the last project.  Billy McFarland, I feel your pain. (Sort of - I don't condone wire fraud or stock fraud or booking Blink-182 as your headliner.).

Really, this is the same chain of events as "Fyre Fraud", only viewed through a different lens - obviously that's one that tried to be very apologetic toward FuckJerry Media and other employees/producers/potential defendants.  Does "Fyre Fraud" display more objectivity?  Yeah, probably.  Should this film be subtitled "The Greatest Party That Never Happened" or "Let's Throw Billy McFarland Under the Bus"?  Again, he probably belongs there anyway, but you didn't have to give him a push.

On one level, I get it - even events that DO eventually come together to be awesome may go through that awkward phase during development where nobody's really sure, maybe it's gonna happen, maybe it's not, it might rain, something might catch on fire, there might be food poisoning, but we're just going to put our heads down and hope for the best.  But in this case people KNEW that the dumpster was going to catch on fire, and perhaps they didn't do enough to stop the guy with the match.  Or, you know, maybe have the fire department on standby, whatever.  There were things that could have been done - festival insurance could have been bought (it wasn't), people could have been warned (they weren't) and those influencers could have stated more clearly that their posts were advertisements (umm, of course they didn't.). Those models and actresses then made up for their involvement by agreeing to donate their fees to charity.  (Ah, but did they?  Can I see some paperwork on that?)

The right way to run a festival, it turns out, is to start really small.  Did Coachella or Lollapalooza or Burning Man become well-attended media sensation destinations overnight?  Nah, it took a few years.  San Diego Comic-Con started in ONE ROOM in a hotel 40 years ago, and then grew each year until it had over 120,000 attendees.  (Pre-pandemic, of course, this year they had zero attendees because the convention center was being used to house homeless people.). But my point is, you start small and you do what you can do, and then if there's a small profit made, you roll that into making next year's event a little bigger, a little better, a few more vendors and a few more restrooms.  You don't go from zero to super-deluxe in your first year, that's impossible, especially if you dick around for 8 months and only leave yourself a few weeks to, you know, start actually making some arrangements.  Just saying.

The B.S. at the end is quite unbelievable - one FuckJerry sympathizer says that the Fyre Festival DID happen - only it was months before the failed concert, when they shot that promotional video with the bikini models running down the beach and feeding each other grapes on a boat.  Is this guy serious?  Dude, that wasn't a festival, that was just a promo shoot - you DO know the difference, right?  There were no bands, no stages, no crowd of paying guests, how can you say that the Fyre Festival "happened"?  I want some of whatever this guy was smoking, I guess if this guy went out to dinner at a restaurant and you showed him a picture of the food, that would be same as eating the meal, right?  Only it's not as satisfying, is it, dickwad?

Watch whichever Fyre documentary you want, just be aware that one of them is clearly propaganda.

Well, that's going to wrap up my Summer Music Concert (and Documentary) chain.  I'm sorry if it wasn't up to your standards, but then again, the circumstances were beyond my control.  You really should have upgraded to my Deluxe V.I.P. package, which would at least have come with a cheese sandwich.  All the influencers did it, and they're all happy and satisfied and thin and gorgeous, don't you want to be like them?

Also starring Seth Crossno, Ben Meiselas, Vickie Segar, Calvin Wells (all carrying over from "Fyre Fraud"), Gabrielle Bluestone, Michael Ciccarelli, C.C. Clarke, Columbo, Mark Crawford, Shiyuan Deng, Martin Howell, Jillionaire, Brett Kincaid, Kindo, Andy King, Justin Liao, Mdavid Low, Stacy Miller, Mark Musters, James Ohliger, Mick Purzycki, Adam Renna, Mary Ann Rolle, Luca Sabatini, Samuel Trost, Keith van der Linde, Marc Weinstein,

with archive footage of Ja Rule, Hailey Bieber, Bella Hadid, Chanel Iman, Carola Jain, Kendall Jenner, Alyssa Lynch, Grant Margolin, Conan O'Brien, Shanina Shaik, Bill Spadea (all carrying over from "Fyre Fraud"), Alessandra Ambrosio, Jason Bell, Rose Bertram, Larry Bird, Ron Funches (last heard in "Trolls"), Elsa Hosk, Magic Johnson, Jessica Nutt, Gisela Oliveira, Emily Ratajkowski, Lais Ribiero, Andy Richter (last seen in "Girlfriend's Day"), Angelo Roefaro, Frank Tribble Jr., Cassandra Lee Walker, Gerri Willis.

RATING: 4 out of 10 useless RFID wristbands

Fyre Fraud

Year 12, Day 222 - 8/9/20 - Movie #3,625

BEFORE: OK, time to wrap up the Summer Music Concert (and Documentary) series - I did warn you that it wasn't going to end well.  I ended up going mostly chronologically, so this is where we find ourselves, with a documentary about the biggest (non-) concert event/failure in recent memory.  I've had this on the list for a while, because my wife watched it (or one of the two docs about this, I'm not sure which) and recommended it to me.  I always say I don't take recommendations, it's not true, I make exceptions for my wife and my best friend and maybe my boss, but since I have my own agenda it usually takes a long while for me to get to them.

A very quick "This Day in Music History", because it's the anniversary of Whitney Houston's birth in 1963, and the anniversary of Jerry Garcia's death in 1995.  There's footage of Jerry Garcia in this film, according to the IMDB, so that's why I took a few days off.  I still remember the day he died, not because I'm that big of a fan, but because I was on a camping trip with my first wife and some friends, and the news went around about Jerry dying, so there was sort of a Grateful Dead sing-along out in the woods that night - probably the best thing about that trip, which was otherwise a disaster, and I don't think I've been camping since.

Otis Redding carries over from "Muscle Shoals" - and if this film hadn't still been on Hulu, I had another back-up link standing by just in case, I'm going to see Keith Richards again in a couple of days...

THE PLOT: Concert promoters and rapper Ja Rule advertise a high-end festival experience that faily spectacularly when they don't plan for infrastructure to support the venue, artists and guests.

AFTER: OK, I sort of remember the Fyre Festival being in the news back in 2017, something about it not living up to expectations, and there not being enough accommodations for everyone, and there were photos of sub-standard cheese sandwiches being passed off as "gourmet meals", but honestly, I had no idea of the extent of failure here.  So my first thought, as a casual observer, is something like "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" and I'm so glad I didn't care enough at the time to investigate this further.  But if I didn't plan to attend Woodstock 25, I certainly wasn't going to take part in something like this, where the (scheduled to appear) headliner was Blink-182.  Maybe we'll go out to Jones Beach for one concert a year, if it's an act from the 1980's playing the revival circuit.

And the Fyre Festival then became the ultimate symbol of bad planning and unfortunate circumstances coming together, and it stayed that way until exceeded by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which there are NO concerts at all except virtual ones, plus no political rallies, no attended sporting events, no book readings, no museum tours, no beer festivals, etc.  There are supposed to be no big parties taking place either, but every week or so somebody sneaks in an underground party that gets busted on the news.  Not helping, guys.  But the larger question remains - is it better to put on a terrible concert, or no concerts at all?

So the first documentary (second one to follow tomorrow) about this failed music festival comes into my life against the backdrop of a global pandemic, at a time when I'm also trying to write a book about my experiences at Comic-Con, and this has created sort of a perfect storm of disaster running around my brain, and that leads to a night of Oops! All Stress Dreams, as one might imagine.  In the middle of my nighttime imaginations I find myself back at my old job, or in a convention center that's somehow also a casino, and I keep walking around the place looking for the entrance, or once I get in, I can't find that restaurant I really like, but there's no time anyway because I've got to get back to my booth before something goes wrong, and I could get there by driving this van full of people, only I haven't driven a vehicle in years so I'm not even sure I remember how.  Meanwhile the convention's closing and the restaurant lines are getting longer and I'm probably going to get fired for my terrible performance.  Welcome to my brain, when my guard is down during the night it's just not a good place to be.

During the day, I can remind myself that I'm mostly proud of my convention experiences, I never set out to defraud anyone or even sell anybody a DVD that they might not want, I've got a great record for customer service, and I do my best to make sure our customers are satisfied.  And then maybe I can take a step back, review my attitude and state my position clearly for the record, which is: "Suck it up, millennials."  I mean really, learn to take it on the chin, you people are young, supposedly resilient, when you go to a bad concert or you get suckered into a vacation experience that turns out to be a scam, that's a learning opportunity, OK?  Come talk to me after you've had a bad camping trip that pretty much seals the deal on your first marriage.  I'll be all ears after you've had to carry four heavy boxes by yourself to the UPS Store after working at a convention for five days.  Or you slip on some ice and face-plant into a mud puddle on your way to your wife's office Christmas party.  Until then, I don't want to hear it.  You had a bad day, you flew to the Bahamas for a concert and a luxury suite only to find out there was no concert and no luxury suite.  (also no bed, no food, no toilets, no medical facilities, no cell phone reception and no refunds). Boo frickin' hoo.

You pick yourself up, dust yourself off and you go on with your life, a little bit poorer and just maybe a little bit smarter, or at least a little less dumb.  But no, you're going to get on your Instagrams and your Snapchats and complain about how inconvenienced you were, aren't you?  This is what I expect from a generation that always got participation trophies, and never learned the sting of disappointment.  We never had jobs like "media influencer" or "YouTube celebrity" when I was coming up, honestly are those even real jobs?  But what do you do for WORK?  Who's the ultimate representative for this generation, Kendall Jenner?  Someone who never worked a god-damned day in her life, who's had everything she ever wanted just handed over to her?  Admit it, you all want to be her, or get with her, or both.  She's the real con artist here, because everybody keeps giving her money for doing nothing.

Billy McFarland is a con artist, that's for sure.  But he's not in jail for putting on a bad concert or for taking advantage of millennials, nor should he.  If the youngs were stupid enough to give him their money for premium tickets and accommodations at Fyre Festival, when everything being offered sounded WAY too good to be true, then, really, that's on them.  And again, that's a generation where most of its members could use a good kick in the teeth, because that's what experience feels like.  Yes, it hurts, but now you'll know better next time, won't you?  No, McFarland's in jail for all the other shady things he pulled to raise money to help SAVE the concert, like wire fraud and stock manipulation, bigger and bigger schemes to raise money for the concert expenses after both failing to plan - or was it planning to fail?

We're never really going to be sure about that question, because to know the answer you need to know the man, and he's elusive as all heck.  Did he genuinely believe that this concert was going to happen?  Doesn't every event in its formative stage sort of seem like it might not come together, and then at the last minute, maybe sort of comes together?  Sure, you can make a schedule, create a budget, do a cost-analysis, crowdfund some money, hire a promotions team, get insurance and clearances, and still be unsure that the event's going to be a success.  Or, alternately, you can do NONE of those things and really, aren't you in the same exact place, not completely sure if the event's going to happen?  Right now we're waiting to hear about New York Comic Con in October - it hasn't been officially cancelled yet, so it's technically in limbo.  I've filled out paperwork for a booth in Artists' Alley, but my company hasn't paid for it yet, so will it happen?  We still don't know what the virus numbers will be in October, so if the event gets the green light, how much time will we have to prepare?  How many people will still want to attend?  Will the event be successful or even profitable?  Right now, nobody knows.

I know, I know, that's hardly the same thing because the NY Comic-Con is a real event, there's no fraud going on.  I'd be worried if they took our money for the booth and had a "no refunds" policy, but that's just not the case.  But the way that McFarland kept needing more money, bigger schemes to pay off his previous mistakes, it sort of reminded me of the way the San Diego Con used to work, we'd make maybe $4,000 in cash at our booth, then on the last day we'd have to put down a $1,500 deposit on next year's booth, and that really felt like it was eating into our profits, because it was.  Even if the next year we cleared $5,000, putting down $1,750 as a deposit for the next year, plus paying for flights, hotels, shipping, etc. that $5,000 could disappear very quickly.  So what was the point?  The only way to finally make some money, I determined, was to stop going, stop putting down a deposit on next year's booth, and keep all the money made from the booth.  This meant, essentially, getting off the hamster wheel and stopping the madness.

The Fyre Festival can still serve a purpose, provided that the millennials are willing to take it as a symbol of generational wrongdoing and try to learn a few things about personal responsibility.  At least do a little bit of research before you book that vacation!  But also, look at where FOMO gets you - you were all so willing to throw away a bunch of money that you didn't work for to have an "experience" that was more hype than reality.  You could have just stayed home and lit that money on fire, at least that would have been slightly entertaining.  Your grandparents probably went to Woodstock, where there was no food, no sanitary facilities, and everybody got rained on and covered in mud - but do you ever hear even ONE person complain about it?  No, they all say it was a fantastic experience, one of the best moments of their lives.  Well, to be fair, they did have a real concert, and the music was all great, except Sha Na Na was playing for some reason.

But, the conditions at Woodstock were terrible - they all went through it, they learned from it, everybody was looking for peace and love.  If the National Guard had come in and tear-gassed everyone, rounded up all the hippies and beat them, they would have endured that too, because hey, they can still tell their kids they saw Jimi Hendrix play "The Star Spangled Banner" live before transitioning into "Purple Haze".  I dig the current protest movements, which really started with the women's marches after Trump got elected, and then of course the Black Lives Matter protests came on strong this year.  As for the ce-web-rities and influencers who can't be bothered to march and just want to complain about the cheese sandwiches at Fyre Festival, sell it to somebody who's buying.  And get a real job while you're at it.

As for Billy McFarland, he's no different from Martin Shkreli or Aubrey McClendon or the Enron guys or Donald Trump.  It's all same shit, different day - if they're not looking for the fast-track to success via raising the price of pharmaceuticals, then it's cornering the market on the next Wu-Tang clan album.  If Trump Steaks and Trump Air fail, try Trump University and the Trump Foundation.  Jail's too good for these scammers, every single one of them.  Time to drain the swamp FOR REAL this time, get rid of the people who said they were going to drain the swamp, because all they really wanted to do was to have more of the swamp for themselves.  Live your life according to a few basic principles - 50% of everything you read on the web isn't real, 75% of your e-mail is going to be spam, and if anything sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

Also starring Billy McFarland, Ja Rule, Oren Aks, Emily Boehm, Nick Botero, Dave Brooks, Seth Crossno, Jesse Eisinger, Anastasia Eremenko, Daniel "Skywalker" Goldstein, Bella Hadid, Jake Horowitz, Delroy Jackson, Randall Jackson, Maria Konnikova, Ben Meiselas, Austin Mills, Polly Mosendz, Donald Porsutt, Vickie Segar, Michael Swaigen, Jia Tolentino, Ava Turnquest, Felix Vargas, Calvin Wells,

with archive footage of Aziz Ansari (last seen in "What's Your Number?", Rick Astley, Beyoncé (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Hailey Bieber (last seen in "Ocean's 8"), Kendall Jenner (ditto), Kim Kardashian West (ditto), Osama bin Laden (last seen in "Vice"), Richard Branson (last seen in "Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine"), Steve Carell (last seen in "Beautiful Boy"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2019)), Barry Corbin (last seen in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), Macaulay Culkin (last seen in "Leaving Neverland"), Pete Davidson (last heard in "The Angry Birds Movie 2"), Johnny Depp (last heard in "Sherlock Gnomes"), DJ EFN, Diplo (last seen in "22 Jump Street"), Pablo Escobar, Jimmy Fallon (last seen in "Whitney"), Jerry Garcia (last seen in "Sound City"), Paul Giamatti (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Elizabeth Holmes (last seen in "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley"), Chanel Iman, Bob Jain, Carola Jain, Jay-Z (last seen in "Quincy"), Kris Jenner, Taran Killam (last seen in "Night School"), Jimmy Kimmel (last heard in "Teen Titans GO! to the Movies"), Jennifer Lawrence (last seen in "X-Men: Dark Phoenix"), Major Lazer, Lil Yachty (last seen in "Long Shot"), Jennifer Lopez (last seen in "Hustlers"), Alyssa Lynch, Grant Margolin, Dave Matthews (last seen in "You Don't Mess With the Zohan"), Aubrey McClendon, Matthew McConnaughey (last seen in "Frailty"), Kate McKinnon (last seen in "The Spy Who Dumped Me"), Trevor Noah, N.O.R.E., Barack Obama (last seen in "Hitsville: The Making of Motown"), Conan O'Brien (last seen in "The Last Laugh" (2016)), Erielle Reshef, Charlie Rose (last seen in "They'll Love Me When I'm Dead"), Morley Safer (last seen in "Morning Glory"), Ben Schwartz (last seen in "How to Be a Latin Lover"), Peter Scolari (last seen in "Dean"), Shanina Shaik, Shepard Smith (last seen in "Bombshell"), Bill Spadea, Elliot Tebele, Donald Trump (last heard in "The Leisure Seeker"), Kanye West, Wendy Williams (last seen in "Fahrenheit 11/9"), Rainn Wilson (last seen in "Shimmer Lake"), Mark Zuckerberg.

RATING: 6 out of 10 rescue flights out of the Bahamas