Mindshot: The Graduate/Citizen Kane

Movies are full of life lessons.  

Just yesterday, upon my freshman viewing of Hitch, I learned that the guy should move 90% of the way for a first kiss, and then hold it.  Apparently the 90/10 rule is important.  Non-observance of this rudimentary criterion is surely why none of my past relationships have had swell-like third acts.

One gentleman who certainly didn't discipline himself to the 90% precept, was the one, Mr. Benjamin Braddock.

Young Ben, manipulated by the powers-that-be to take out the daughter of his mistress on a date, has decided to be cruel.  He pays no attention to the beautiful, naive girl, choosing rather to beeline through crowds, hiding his inner angst behind a large pair of sunglasses and a too-cool-for-school expressionless mug.  Then the cruelty.  He takes her to a strip club.  She cries.

This impressionable, clearly demeaned young lady rushes out of that damnable place.  Ben, perhaps finally exhibiting some kernel of remorse, chases after the girl.  He catches her.  She asks to go home.  He asks her to stop crying.  She won't.  She can't.  And so then naturally the thing to do to ease the tension is to kiss her, right?  Apparently.  After the snog, everything is hunky-dory, and the two little love birds are free for the moment to connect with one another in a personal, soul-mateish fashion.  It's all so sickly sweet... because he went the whole hog outside of the strip club.

Perhaps I am just a schmuck, but I've never eased out of any tense moment by slopping on a quick make-out scene, nor have I ever watched this successfully take place in my real world.  In the world that I dwell within, I feel like there's a pretty decent chance I'm getting pepper sprayed as soon as I enter that 91% realm unannounced.

The Graduate was based on a novel by a dude, adapted into a screenplay by two other dudes, and directed by another dude entirely.  The whole layout of the scene strikes me as a male chauvinistic wet dream.  Ben Braddock is able to solve the moment's riddle by giving the girl what she clearly really wants: strong physical affection! 

So then I wondered; if The Graduate is on the boundaries in the male spectrum of romantic pipe-dreams, what would the female version of that look like? 

I found my answer with Charlotte Bronte.

In Jane Eyre, the sterling Edward Rochester has, for ages, treated the humble, plain, and passionately loving Jane Eyre as nothing more than a mere friend.  Jane has been led to believe that Edward here is wooing some stupid rich dingbat who's lineage is something very glittery indeed.  Glitter was very important to 19th century Brits.  Mr. Rochester comes to Jane one afternoon to inform her that her services (Jane tutors Edward's daughter) are no longer needed.  She is free to leave Edward's abode.  This, understandably, leaves Jane in shambles.  Edward plays the fool, inquiring as to why Jane could ever be so bent out of shape.  Jane capitulates.  She confesses her devotion to the man.  His reply is to ask her to marry him.  This statement confuses Jane.  She asks why Edward had ignored her and flirted so much with that other haughty vixen.  Edward admits,

Jane, to make you as in love with me, as I am in love with you.

And the women in the room swoon.  Don't you see?  When men treat women poorly, it's just because they are testing their love!  Us men folk don't want to show our vulnerabilities, so we hide it behind deception and cruelty!  Yep-yep-yep!  Hip, hip, hooray!!!

Jane Eyre, as well as The Graduate, appear to me to be two sides of the same coin.  This is perhaps an Achilles' heel for story.  Under the story universe, our dear protagonists have these predispositions to activism.  Very seldomly are characters sketched out through passive decisions (my apologies to the cast of Driving Miss Daisy).  No, good storytelling requires a confluence of acts of boldness.

Life, perhaps, is story with long bits of inaction mixed in.  Those moments of inaction stay with us.  They define us too. 

Even (or especially) in the realm of romance, I find those illustrations of passiveness, of 10%ness rather than 90ness, as particularly true and poignant.  Enter Citizen Kane.

Whilst trying to uncover the mystery of Rosebud, Mr. Franklin chooses to interview Charles Foster Kane's right hand man, Mr. Bernstein.  Bernstein has no idea where the iconic word comes from, or why it would be Kane's dying word.  Then Bernstein, hired his whole life as a problem solver, hypothesizes that perhaps Rosebud represented something Kane lost.  He goes on;

A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl. 

  

Perhaps it is our actions that dictate the story of our lives, but it is our acts of passivity that continue to haunt us.

Concerning the Moral Fate of Fictitious Peoples

I was stumbling about the local Blockbuster in La Mirada on what I can only presume was a slow Tuesday night some years back.  As is my nature, I spent as much time thumbing through pictures of movies at the store then I would actually watching whatever fateful film I eventually linked my evening destiny with.  My attention at once was consumed by this exquisite poster:

Hard Candy was, from what I had heard, a twisting, nail-biter of an indie thriller.  And 'Little Red' as the bait for a wolf was such an alluring image.  Even the title exuded a piece of work that was worth its weight.  Despite my infamous proclivity to rent a film based on its cover art, I had some reservations of this Hard Candy.  For one, I am of the nature that I find it almost impossible to suck a confectionery into oblivion.  I always bite.  I never get past the third lick.

My other reservation was that I had overheard a vicious rumor that this film could be firmly planted in the 'torture porn' sub-category of film.  The likes of films like Hostel appeared to be invoking a new wave of low-budget gag-on-your-own-tongue filmmaking.  I did not then, nor now, desire to give any security to the continual procreation of those 'dark arts'.  Being bound by deep indecision, I called my dear friend for help and comfort in the throes of such a difficult decision on an otherwise epicless Tuesday night.

I write all this to get to my main subject: the honorable Alex Carpenter.  Around this time period, circa 2006ish, Mr. Carpenter and I were enjoying the apex of our friendship.  A couple months prior to this particular phone call, while building a loft bed as part of our daily regimen at our summer job, Alex had humbly admitted some seeds of weakness in his character.  Rather than confront the issue, I sought instead to push upon him my lens of near perfection upon his brow.  I didn't want to know about his shortcomings.  For my sake, he needed to remain sinless in my eyes.  Nevertheless, he had confessed to me, and my response was an ill-timed, "Alex, your the most righteous man our age I know."  I retell this tale to stress the moral authority that my friend's words had on me.  Furthermore, I knew him to be a man who had already watched Hard Candy.  He would know whether it would feed my soul on this drabby weeknight.

The short answer was that it was perhaps best to avoid the film, though the longer answer had hints that Alex was curious as to how I would perceive the film.  But desiring to be a righteous man, (like Alex in this old pic beyond reproach on the right) I took the ascetic route and began to traverse through other titles, leaving Hard Candy to its own bear trap.                    

My ability to not force my tender little soul into a forced feeding of supposed castration (as had been hinted to me concerning the content of the film) was availing.  In the fall of 2007, perhaps a year give or take after the Blockbuster night, Alex and I came together to forge an idea onto paper.

We conjured up one feature length draft of The Signal Station.  This was to be a simple construct revolving around four individuals searching for an extraterrestrial signal at an isolated look-out station.  When they do discover a signal, the four would play out a chess match of intricate desires and manipulations.  The big theme was to be associated with answering the question of, 'Why do we feel alone?' Finding a signal from the cosmos was to offer a distinct hope to every distinct individual.  We were building the Citizen Kane of alien flicks; a rosebud of the cosmos.

What happens next?

We made the lazy decision as screenwriters to collaborate on the first draft in an independent manner.  I would write ten pages, and Alex would write the next.  Whatever would happen, would happen.  We'd worry about cohesion in subsequent drafts.

Well, dear friends, I believe Alex Carpenter went off the beaten path.  I blame him for our divergent trajectory.  The concept was never conceived to involve anything more than four people in a room.  Suddenly, somewhere around page 35 or so, Alex started involving others.  And then there were other others.  Before I knew it, I was writing about blowing up buildings, and hiding in secret bunkers from secret societies.  What a rush!  However engrossing it was to be writing a screenplay that I had no control over, I did feel like we lost our goal.  The story could never again be about four people in a room.

Hard Candy is nothing more than two people in a room.  I know this because I watched it for the first time today. 

As its intricate, Sleuth-like plot spiraled to its convoluted conclusion, I couldn't stop comparing it to The Signal Station.  True, pedophilia and vengeance seemingly has little to do with aliens and isolation, but my brains just won't stop trying to make them be about the same stuff.  I'm not talking about the script we finished with, but rather, that 'Citizen Kane of the SETI program' idea.

The ultimate psychological question is this: why did Alex change our concept?

What was the difference between Alex and I?  I was the naive lad who had not yet let his eyes intake Hard Candy.  My imagination was innocent on this front.  Alex had knowledge.

My supposition of Alex's awareness: you put two people in a room, and give them something to compete over, and the situation becomes impossible to redeem.  There will be blood, and it won't end with the words 'happily ever after'.  How can the story ever end well for all its characters?  Double that number; put four people in a room with competitive motives, and you've got a massacre on your hands.

Those characters we plopped down into The Signal Station, these people, we liked these people.  We created them -- they were our responsibility...  and the construct we created was destined to damn them.  Our four creations were doomed to destroy each other, just as the two souls in Hard Candy will. 

In changing the script, in writing all these external forces onto our people, Alex was saving them.  At very least, he was giving them an outlet to find salvation.  And that's what happened, that's how the story poured out.  With the entrance of outside forces, one goal arose amongst our four individuals in that signal station.  Our characters quit fighting each other and worked for an end that would see them struggle towards a universal light.

My friend Alex Carpenter is a righteous man after all, for he saves his own creation.  He is his chidren's keeper.

Until today I've felt regret about how our little script turned out.  Until today I wanted to uncover our own 'rosebud'... that is, until I watched Hard Candy.

The 9 Most Influential Films of My Life: #4

There I am, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror.

I'm upset.  I'm angry.  I'm confused...  I'm sixteen.

Just hours earlier I had experienced the rite-of-passage that is the mullet haircut.  I gloriously accepted the work in the front, party in the back haircut to live up to a dare.  As soon as my father's eyes caught a glimpse of the awe-inducing dew, I was told the party was over.  In the morning an American barber would see to it that the beast in back would be tamed.  My mullet magnificence stayed with me for less than twelve hours.

I'm sixteen experiencing all the general self-identity issues that every teenager must walk through.  I don't fit in.  I'm socially awkward.  I've just taken my SAT, and I don't have a clue as to where I want to go to school, how I'm going to pay for it, or what the heck I want to study.

Mother comes to knock on the bathroom door.  She knows I'm upset.  Teenagers aren't the best at hiding their emotions. What is it, Mom?  She asks if there's anything she can do for me.

Then, suddenly, like some sort of angelic vision, it came to me.  Indeed, there was something she could do for me.  I needed a ride to the video store.  I had faintly heard of far-off rumors of the greatness of "Citizen Kane", but my movie knowledge didn't go much past the names of the (at that time) five James Bond actors.  Kane was supposedly the greatest film ever put to celluloid.  Could it be true?  And if it was true, what on earth did the greatest movie ever made look like?  Did it have dinosaurs? (See Most Influential Film #5)  What was this stuff made of that it could be so unanimously heralded as the best of the best?

In my high school angst this question suddenly seemed important to me.  Maybe the greatest movie ever made would give me some insight into how life works.  Maybe the answer to the mystery of Rosebud would also serve as the answer to my seemingly pointless life?

Orson Welles depicted a man's life on film.  All of it.  Welles squeezed out the goo from one man's destiny to get to its rich center.

The story of Charles Foster Kane, for me, is one of the most romantic stories ever told.It may be tragedy.  It may be indulgent melodrama,  but it is full -- to the brim. Be careful -- lest it spill over!

Kane works because it speaks to all of one man's life and only one man.  I think it may be the closest we can hope to get in this life of a Godly P.O.V.  Kane's life is a single theme.  That's the spirit of it.  Whatever you think of the film, be it boring, confusing, lack-luster; whatever it may be, it's all okay.  It's okay because it is complete in its focus of thematicizing a human life. 

I've been told that "Citizen Kane" was once planned to be entitled, "American".  If it would have ended up that way, sure, it'd still be awesome, but perhaps it would grow too big for its britches.  When we try to fit the life of Charles Foster Kane (or William Randolph Hearst, if you prefer) into an analogy for the average American, or for humanity in general, we lose the very stuff that makes Kane great.  One man's story is good enough, we don't have to muddle the waters by adding philosophical bloviation to it.

I watched "Citizen Kane" as a sixteen year old, and knew forthrightly that this was a sublime work unmatched by any other creation of fiction my eyes had yet subjected my brain to view.  The ramifications would be deep.

After Kane came my life.  The experience gave me faith that I could sculpt my life to match a single theme.  My very breath itself could, nay, must become cinematic.  My life was to be as valuable as the story it told.  I could have a theme of my very own; a sensation, a deep inner feeling that validated and individualized my very existence. 

So I went out in search of a story for my life.