"Paper Boys, The Movie:" A review

On the recommendation of a friend, I took a date to see the premier of this low-budget indie here in Atlanta. The film was called "Paper Boys." My expectations were already low after reading the filmmakers' "manifesto" of the film on its official site. I expected some sort of synopsis of the film, but instead I got this:

“Paper Boys” is a coming-of-age film in the strictest sense but more; it is an exploration of a microcosm of young door-to-door newspaper salesmen who are closer than most families in many regards. A truly ensemble piece, the film revolves around a common problem for teens which most often feels unique but isn’t, dysfunctional, non-traditional family. Add to this violence, psychological abuse, confusion over sexuality and a fierce awareness of one’s own economic standing, the main character turns to drugs and finds himself in a tailspin while his friends have no idea how to handle it.

False bravado and hyper-sexuality amplified by drugs and painful circumstances, gives us a recipe for a rich juxtaposition of comedy and potential tragedy. The soundtrack creates a relentless ride which leaves one emotionally exhausted from laughter and tears.

Um, what does this even mean? Trust me, everybody may have been "exhausted" by the time this thing was over, but it wasn't emotional. And nobody was moved to either laughter or tears, though I witnessed a number of people move from their seats to the exit less than half-way through.

My expectations were also heavily tempered by the trailer, which is terrible in and of itself, and which you can find here.

Basically, Paper Boys is a series of excruciatingly long and drawn-out scenes of a group of moronic, unlikeable douche bags saying uninteresting, "getting dumber as I listen" things to one another for what seems like 4 hours. Imagine the biggest idiots you know. Now imagine you are forced to follow these guys around for several days. Now imagine that the dumb shit these guys say in an attempt to sound smart is backed by some film-score-sounding sentimentalist music to add a sense of importance or drama to what they say. That's Paper Boys.

The movie is apparently supposed to be about a group of guys who sell newspaper subscriptions door-to-door around the Atlanta area. A group of high school kids knock on doors and sell the papers. A group of slightly older idiots (who, I guess, do this for a living?) organize the high school boys into troupes who are pitted against each other for the most sales. Its all a big homoerotic bonding experience, as the filmmaker spends plenty of time on gratuitous shots of large groups of sweaty high-school boys piling into cars together, grabbing their crotches, and mentioning how they think they might be gay. I noticed that a lot of these young men came to the premier with their parents, and several left early. I have a feeling that maybe their parents didn't realize they had signed their sons up to appear in this thinly-veiled soft core gay porno film. Sorry mom and dad!

The main conflict involves this one kid who went into drug rehab and met a girl there who killed herself. He's "haunted" by this, or whatever, apparently. His dad was abusive. And he has some African-American blood in him, and this apparently causes him to have low self-esteem. (A fact we learn in a conversation that begins, "You know how Steve and I are always joking that I'm black in all the right places? Well, its true.") So, yeah, he does some drugs and gets depressed a fakes a suicide in the end. Why, its really not clear. The whole thing is really stupid. The whole thing seems like it was written and shot by a kid in high-school who watches too much MTV reality shows and fashions his own basis sensations of angst and confusion as something profound and film-worthy. Thing is, actually put it on film and show it to an audience, and it becomes apparent that these sensations are not, in fact, extraordinary or interesting or film-worthy in the least.

Beyond the stupidness of the plot, the writing was capital-t Terrible. One guy keeps saying he's invisible for no reason. One guy dumbly quotes Shakespeare in moments where we are clearly supposed to be impressed by the literary reference. The characters deliver one bad cock-and-sex joke after another, none of them funny, not even in a "so offensive its funny" kind of way.  They sound like junior high kids trying to come up with dirty things to say, and, yeah, they're "dirty," but not clever or shocking or anything else to elicit a reaction other than "get me out of here." We are left with no sense that any character is likable or even amusing or interesting in any way. 

The main character is among the worse of the actors (he's the one whose addicted to drugs). He delivers every line in a completely flat monotone, so his "sad," "doped up," "happy," "pensive," etc. moments all come across as exactly the same emotion. There are very few female cast, and when they do appear, its in a lowest-common-denominator "hot slutty chick" kind of role, something for one of the male characters to ogle or have sex with ("no means yes, yes means anal" says one paperboy to another, in reference to his perfectly nice date; a 30-something Asian stripper with a tattoo welcomes one door-to-door salesman into her house, with a "daddy's not home" gesture, following which the salesman high-fives the air or something). 

This movie was so bad. You could feel it in the audience too. Nobody laughed ever, even at lines and scenes that were clearly intended to be funny. People left. It was like we were all just sitting there while a stream of cliches and non-sequiturs, packaged as a "heartrending coming-of-age story" or something, slithered out of the screen onto our unsuspecting faces. The whole thing kind of makes me sad, actually. Clearly, a lot of people put a lot of time and effort into this thing. The lesson here is that no amount of money, time, or effort can make up for lame fundamentals: without a solid idea, solid writing, and solid acting, you end up with a shit sandwich like Paper Boys: The Movie.

Los Angeles

The wifey and I spent last weekend in Los Angeles. Two good friends were getting married, and, besides, we needed an excuse to get on an airplane. The city defied and exceeded my expectations. Upon going to visit a new big city, I often experience some degree of stress over the difficulty of navigating the place. New York is especially prone to this. Its something that I almost welcome: the challenge of deciphering some massive algorithm that is a major metropolitan area.

But LA was different. And maybe this has mostly to do with the general area where we stayed. We spent all our time on the coast, in the Venice Beach / Santa Monica area. Our hotel was there, the Getty museum was there, the wedding was there. Perfect. So we didn't venture into downtown, where we would have been forced to deal with (I'm sure) the worst of the traffic and the possibly-confusing roadways. Instead, it was all driving down curvy, well-reflector'ed coastlines, slight buzz in mind, nice rental car factory system booming in our ears, glad to be somewhere exciting and different.

The Getty is the best museum. The art is good too. I especially enjoyed seeing several prominent Monets. Impressionism has been possibly my favorite style of "historical" art since, in high school, the High Museum here in Atlanta had all the great works on a traveling exhibit, and we took a field trip there, and suddenly I thought to myself, "holy shit, art." But back to the museum part. And by museum, I mean the building, the surroundings, the place. This is a piece of elaborate and perfect modern architecture set atop a mountain with a panoramic view of all of Los Angeles and the lush green mountains that surround it, and filled with thoughtful well-kept walk-through gardens, fountains, and the like. This was a surreal and wonderful place to spend a morning, and then an afternoon.

And then there's Venice Beach. We stayed in a bed and breakfast that I learned about from a Google search. The building is among the first homes built in the borough of Venice, and was the home of one of the guys who started Venice Beach. Turns out the whole area was the brainchild of this mad entrepreneur who wanted to build a Coney Island-like area for travelers and revelers (read: tourists) from 'cross the world. There is the beach-and-boardwalk, with its various amusements, hot dog stands, muscle men, medical marijuana dispensaries, and street performers, and then there is the residential area. The residences (the expensive ones, at least) are built along a series of canals (that's part of the whole "Venice" name). These are exorbitant, architecturally compelling structures filled with wealthy people of all sorts. We wondered whether our favorite movie stars were sitting inside any of them, but realized that, no, probably just doctors, lawyers, businessmen, and that sort of thing.

The wedding was in an area called Topango, a community of California hippies-who-got-wealthy. The whole community sits on top of a mountain that looks over the Santa Monica and Malibu shores, bordering a state park. Apparently (apparently!) you can smoke marijuana there out in public and nobody will bother you, because they probably just smoked some themselves. The wedding was, of course, lovely, the icing on the cake of the whole trip. Dedicating a whole evening to showering your attention on two people who you really like is always a nice thing to do. It was a small, close-friends-and-family type event. Those are the best weddings, in my experience.

I will go back to Los Angeles, and soon, I hope. I hear promise that the weather is almost always perfect there. We picked the one weekend of rain and wind (and, despite that, the weather was really, really nice somehow) and I'll take that as a reason why I just have to go back. Until then.

Jonathan Krohn: Atlanta's biggest disappointment

Some weeks ago, I wrote about a little chap named Tarak McClain, who was featured on NPR's "This I Believe" for a little ditty he wrote regurgitating various liberal cliches that he had heard from his Northern Californian parents. My point was not that young McClain was not quite clever in his own right, but simply that, children will often repeat the political views their parents espouse, in their most basic forms, and those who share those political views will see the whole exercise as some inspirational insight into the truth of these views. If a kid says it, so the logic goes, there must be some very pure truth to it.

Anyway, the political right is equally guilty of this. I present to you this shining example of kids-say-the-darndest thing politics. And, yeah, this one is for more nauseating than the NPR kid. If only because he so well imitates the speak of his talk radio idols. And, of course, everyone cheers at the sound of hearing their views repeated back to them, from the mouth of babes.

A Trilli

As I am listening to the radio today, I hear the news that Obama is proposing spending something like 6 trillion dollars over the next 3 years. That is an unbelievable number. I almost think this plan will meet less opposition than the recent 900 billion dollar stimulus. If only because of the new number's sheer unfathomability. Something about "billions" seems more conceivable than "trillions." The opposition will be blown over by the sheer magnitude of this proposal. The momentum behind it is huge. Obama has political capital and he's using it. Using it and hoping to generate wonderful things out of it. Things that will continue to pay him dividends into the future. And grow, not diminish his capital.

Much like the theory behind the spending plan itself, no?

The "forgotten class" nightmare

There's a reoccurring dream that I have whenever I find myself in a new, unfamiliar situation, with new, overwhelming responsibilities. I remember the exact time that I first had this dream. As an elementary school student, I attended a very small, Christian school, in which I progressed through grades one through six with the same group of 8-10 others. We had one teacher who taught us every subject. We had one classroom that we stayed in all day. And we all kept our books in our desks. This was a very simple upbringing.

When the time for middle school came, I switched to a slightly larger school, though by no means the largest in town. Suddenly, I was confronted with the responsibilities of switching classes, switching teachers for each different subject. I kept all my books in a locker, which was out in the hall amongst a series of other lockers, where I had to go and switch out my books before each class. I had to keep up with the different assignments in each different class. And each day, I had to navigate my way through a sea of other kids just to get to class, to break, to lunch.

One night during my first week of middle school, I was kept up by this half-dreaming, half-waking fear that I had forgotten one of my classes. That I had been going through my day, trying to keep up with all my different classes, all my different books, but one had fallen through the cracks. I was gripped by an anxiety over forgetting something. And having some irreparable harm take place as a result: failing a class, for example, suffering a great humiliation. I have had this same dream reoccur on at least four different occasions, and I can name each one of them. But I'll start by mentioning the most recent example, which happened last night.

Prior to starting my current job at a small, fairly high-volume plaintiffs' litigation firm, I worked for the state government for a number of years. That job did not involve a lot of client contact, out-of-office experience, or a diverse range of responsibilities. I essentially took in cases as they came, evaluated those cases by reviewing the record and researching the law, wrote memos and briefs, and handed them off to a supervisor. It was a peaceful, if not monotonous, existence. I often found myself craving excitement, worldly contact, and dramatics. And I got all of that in my current job.

Now, I am in a very different position. Having had a certain degree of experience already, I was placed into a fairly high-responsibility, low-training position. I manage my own cases, am the primary contact for many clients, draft all my pleadings, write all my own correspondence, attend hearings, negotiate settlement, and do basically everything that is required to take a piece of litigation from start to finish. At present, I am managing at least 20 cases, and I am the primary working attorney on at least half of those. To say the least, this new set of responsibilities has been challenging. Overwhelming is a better word. And its all compounded by the fact that many of my new responsibilities are things that are completely new to me. For example, I never conducted discovery at my old position, and this is something that has proved to be time-consuming and at times very complicated.

It doesn't take much to see where this is going: Last night, I had the dream again. But it was a variation of the dream from middle school. This is the dream that I've had since college. In this version of the dream, it is very near to the end of a college semester. I have many classes for which I am preparing for final exams or preparing some final paper. As I'm going through everything I have to do, I realize that there is one class that I've been enrolled in all year, to which I started going at the beginning of the semester, but which I've since forgotten about and haven't attended at all for a long period of time. This is a feeling of complete helplessness. I try frantically to think of what to do: is there any way to salvage this? Is it possible to start showing up now and hope that I haven't missed too much? But in my dream, this question is never resolved: I wake up from a feeling of complete helplessness, complete loss. I've let something fall through the cracks and now there's nothing I can do about it.

The dream represents the ultimate fear of a young litigator. Or of anyone who is suddenly confronted with more responsibilities than they know how to handle. The other three times that I remember having the dream (or something very similar) are once when I started high school, once when I started college, and then again when I started law school. Looking back, each of these things seems progressively easier, but, at the time I started them, the challenges they presented were entirely new and entirely terrifying. There were so many new things to remember, and it seemed impossible really not to forget to do something. In the litigation context, this fear is especially acute, due to the added dynamic of hard, statutorily-prescribed deadlines.

I spoke today with a couple of slightly more seasoned attorneys at my firm, and, much to my surprise, they both had experienced the same dream at some point in time. I neglected to ask if the dream followed the beginning of their experience as litigators, but I can't help but think that this is the case. There is a certain common horror of responsibility that we all feel, and this is manifest in our dreams. It makes one wonder why we ever take on such responsibilities at all? What drives us to do something that fundamentally terrifies us? For some, it is probably a sense of duty. For others, a sense of ambition. For most, probably some combination of both. That, and then there is the sweet and eventual moment when you realize you've finally become comfortable with your new responsibilities, and your anxieties can rest. Perhaps that is truly the thing we crave: simple, sweet, well-deserved release. 

This kid does not believe any of these things

Before I start on this venomous rant, let me make two disclaimers. First, I love NPR. Second, I consider myself, on most social issues, politically liberal. But, there is one thing I can't stand: and that is cliche. Another thing I can't stand is self-congratulation. And ANOTHER thing I can't stand is when kids regurgitate political slogans they've heard their parents recite ad nauseum, and the parents and their friends fawn over the kid for being so insightful and opinionated (and at such a young age!) This, my friends, is obnoxious. If people just kept it to themselves, that would be one thing, but when they force me to listen to it in the morning while I'm trying to enjoy my breakfast, that, my friends, is something different.

Now, I submit to you one of the most trite, cliche, obnoxious, self-congratulatory things I have ever heard on NPR. In this edition of the already-sometimes-eye-roll-inducing "This I Believe" series, a young tike named Tarak McLain rattles off every politically and socially "progressive" cliche he's ever heard his parents proclaim. Here is the link to the page with a full transcript. You can hear the audio by clicking on the "Listen now" button. Prepare to vomit.

Let's just go through a couple of these precious little tidbits. Highlights include, "I believe God is in everything," "I believe hate is a cause for love," "I believe we should help the Arctic and rainforest animals" (I mean, really!), "I believe we live best in a community." Now, one reason I know that this is bullshit is because, when I was 7 years' old, I spent a lot of time with my Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh-loving dad, and, during that time, my "This I Believe" would have probably sounded something like, "I believe I should say no to drugs," "I believe Democrats are stinky," "I believe the Soviet Union is the evil empire." And I would have said that, too, on tape, and it would have been sent to the Rush Limbaugh show, and Republican adults everywhere would be fawning all over this insightful and intelligent kid who had decided to adopt political conservativism all on his own (and at such a young age!). And how obnoxious would that have been!

What's really happening here, I submit, is a demonstration of the truism that people like the hear their own beliefs regurgitated aloud. This is the premise behind conservative talk radio: the hosts seldom offer challenging insights; rather, they simply repeat ad nauseum the same conservative precepts over and over again. The average NPR user, on the other hand, is more apprehensive about his or her news coverage coming across as overtly partisan. If there was just some guy on the air saying "God is in trees; save the rainforests; stop the war," we'd all feel a little uncomfortable; we'd feel like we were being too partisan. But if a kid says it, well then that's just precious!

This isn't to say that kids aren't capable of having political insights. Of course, they are, and some more than others. But, if an adult had sent in this tape of himself rattling off one generic liberal maxim after the other, the folks at NPR would have thrown it in the trash and certainly would never have aired it. Why? Because it offers no insights. Its just a series of bumper-sticker like slogans, and people think its cute because a kid says it. Its things like this that most undermine the political left. Of course, its not unique to the left. The right experiences its own self-righteousness and self-reference. But there is something uniquely annoying about the parent who sends in this tape of their kid reciting the family's favorite cliches, along with a description of their kid as one who "collects and hands out food to the homeless and raises money for orphans and impoverished schools," and who "reads about the world's religions and listens to public radio." Being a proud parent is one thing. But this requires some real self-aggrandizement to try and convince the entire market for NPR that you've raised the perfect progressive messiah. I'm sure this is a great little guy and all, but come on, mom and dad, get over yourselves.

With this kind of parenting, I bet the kid grows up to be a Neocon.

Celebration time is over

I write the following as a supporter of Barack Obama. In a big way. I, like many other people in my generation, have found great inspiration in our new president. We have for too long felt alienated from our own identity as Americans. So comfortable we had become in being outsiders in our own country, we forgot that we ever wanted to be Americans in the first place. But then there was a presidential candidate with whom we could truly identify. Someone who seemed a bit like us, but, at the same time, seemed genuinely presidential. And then he won.

Without a doubt, this is cause for celebration. And there was much celebration, and rightly so, when the final results came in on that first week in November. But, as the hype surrounding the inaugural festivities has built and built, I have found myself frequently annoyed. Maybe its just a sense of burn-out: after advocating so vigorously for Obama the candidate for such an extended period of time, perhaps I'm just worn out of talking about him. But there's a little something more. And that is the feeling that, now that the campaign is won, the time for unbridled advocacy and unqualified support has ended. Obama is no longer a long-shot candidate, a figure representing the hope for something new. Tomorrow, he will be the President of the United States. And our task should shift from that of vigorous campaigners to that of skeptical, demanding citizens.

In fact, the level of ecstasy that some feel as a result of the Obama presidency is one of his greatest potential pitfalls. "The bigger they are, the harder they fall," is a maxim that sums up this concern. Unless his supporters can sober up a bit, both in their own expectations and in the expectations they create in the minds of others, we face the possibility of an unusually strong backlash when trouble emerges. And, inevitably, it will. No leader can completely avoid crisis. No man is infallible, and Obama will, without a doubt, make mistakes. There will be low points. The true test of his presidency will be his resilience, his ability to recover from mistakes and to keep moving forward. So betting it all on a perfect and dream-like next 8 is a bad move.

If I were on the Obama team, my advice would be to start tamping down expectations, and hard. One way to do this would be to forgo all of the spectacular inauguration activities. I saw that a conservative friend of mine had posted on his facebook status something like "I can't believe we're spending $100 million on an inauguration during a recession." And, you know, this was a little annoying to me, just because I know his feelings are rooted in some sort of Rush Limbaugh mind frame, but, at the same time, that sentiment is one that a lot of average Americans could probably identify with. There's a certain obvious truth to it. Perhaps a little bit of modesty, a bit of sobriety are in order. What if, after the swearing in, Obama said "Thank you for all the praise, but the time for inspirational speeches is over, here's the economic bill I want Congress to pass this week." What a way to both calm people's enormously high expectations and to transition from the picture-perfect image of the campaign and into what will certainly be a much rougher, much clumsier 4 years as president. Its going to happen sooner or later. Why not capture the opportunity to manage that moment on your own terms?