Developing today’s strip was interesting. From concept to completion, Jared was over my shoulder videotaping the whole thing. He was gathering his B-role for the Theater Hopper Documentary.
I was sweating bullets Sunday night waiting for him to come over and gather this footage. I had been creatively constipated all day and had no idea what I was doing for today’s strip. In the end it boiled down to “Okay, what movies are out there? Formula 51? What’s that? Sam Jackson? Okay. Formula 51, how can I make that funny. Formula 409! Okay, run with it.”
I think I worked out in the end. You only need to look at what happens to Jared in the last panel to know why.
When in doubt, go for the sight gag.
I think things will be very interesting when the documentary will be finished. As I mentioned before, a film festival is what spurred this whole thing and Jared has until Nov. 1 to gather all the film, make all the edits and submit it. We’ll see what happens after that.
The festival isn’t until January 9 and I think we’ll probably wait to see how it fares in front of a panel of judges before we make it available on the site. Unless, of course, there is lots of interest.
We’ll be sure to keep you updated as the production progresses.
Today’s strip was stripped almost verbatim from a conversation Jared and I had at lunch earlier in the week. He wasn’t as blunt as he is in the punchline, but I could tell he was thinking it!
The strip might give the impression that I’ve grown tired of Samuel L. Jackson’s choice of characters or that I don’t want to see S.W.A.T. this weekend. Nothing could be further from the truth. I actually enjoy his performances a great deal. It’s fun to watch an actor who seems like he’s really enjoying himself.
Still, you can’t deny the observation. There seems to be less carefully crafted character work in his cannon post-Pulp Fiction than there was before it.
Sure there are some interesting stretches like The Red Violin or The Cavemen’s Valentine, but most of his mainstream work stays close to the Jules Winnfield template.
I wonder if a breakout role like that is more of a luxury or a burden? Does the public expect a certain level of outlandishness from Jackson having come to be familiar with him through that signature role? Is he anything like that in real life, or is he more even-tempered?
Either way, I enjoy watching him on screen and find him a fascinating actor. Much like Christopher Walken or Jack Nicholson, we let him get away with so much more because his charisma is more interesting to watch than anything he could craft on screen. It’s rare and a real treat.
I wanted to thank everyone again for keeping Theater Hopper in the Top 10 at TWC. I’m thankful we’ve been able to make it last. The competition has been really stiff the last few days.
I also wanted to thank all the people who sent me congratulations for Theater Hopper’s first year. Stepping back for a minute, it really is an accomplishment. But the thanks should go to you guys for being so supportive.
Brian Carroll from Instant Classic sent me an excellent piece of artwork to commemorate the occasion and it has found a home on the Bonus Materials page. You should really take a look at it. I’m very proud of it – mostly for what it symbolizes: The great friends I’ve made from doing this strip.
There are also three new pieces of fan art, sent in from a week or two ago when I was asking for guest strips. I ran out of spots to display them on the front page, but that’s not a reason to hide this work away from the public! All three strips are quality and appreciate the effort that went into every one of them!
I can’t tell if my rendition of Samuel L. Jackson looks authentic or if I’ve somehow confused him with Scatman Crothers. And if you’re old enough to remember Scatman Crothers, then you get a gold star for the day.
In any case, vote for Theater Hopper at Webcomic List for a detailed shot of the coveted “Backslappy!”
I seriously have no idea where the idea for today’s comic came from. We’re kind of in a weird limbo in the moment when it comes to new movies. Labor Day has come and gone. Summer is officially/unofficially “over” and there are no more blockbusters choking up the multiplexes.
However, instead of being treated to the bountiful harvest of early-Oscar contenders, studios are dumping off their duds in hopes that no one will notice.
Scanning the list of new releases this weekend and seeing Jackson co-star alongside Eugene Levy and Eugene Levy’s eyebrows in The Man, I kind of rolled my eyes at the thought of Jackson playing ANOTHER tough-talkin’ – but smooth as silk – heavyweight in another sub-par movie.
Don’t get me wrong. Jackson’s been in a lot of great movies. But he’s been in his fair share of stinkers, too. Basic, anyone?
But then it kind of occurred to me. No matter how many times Jackson delivers a variation of the same performance – you know the one where he tilts his head down and gazes with laser-like intensity under his brow before growling his lines and then exploding like a volcanic torrent – we LOVE that stuff. We NEED that stuff. Samuel L. Jackson is the bomb.
Jackson is like De Niro was maybe a decade ago. Delivering these totally compelling, simmering performances and each one barely distinguishable from the last. But it’s okay because despite the fact that he’s hammering that one note, what a sweet note it is.
Or maybe I’m talking out of my ass. All I know is that I wish someone would award me with “The Backslappy.”
Like John Irving or Alan Moore, Steven King is one of those writers who can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to the translation of his ideas to a visual medium. For every Misery, there’s a Thinner. One could argue that the best Stephen King adaptation contained the least amount of his vision. Stanley Kubrick’s version of The Shining stands a a beacon of psychological horror.
Maybe there’s less to be said about the filmmaker’s role in these adaptations as there is to say about King’s choice in subject matter. 1408 – originally a short story about a haunted hotel room – is another great piece of psychological horror that stands just below The Shining in it’s effectiveness.
In 1408 (on 2-disc DVD on October 2), John Cusack stars at Mike Enslin, a jaded author who abandons his wife after the death of their daughter writing travel novels about haunted hotels. He has become jaded in his travels and is thoroughly convinced that there is no such thing as an afterlife.
After another unsuccessful trip, he receives a mysterious postcard from The Dolphin Hotel in New York with the foreboding warning “Don’t enter 1408.” Intrigued, Mike begins to do research about the room’s grisly past.
It isn’t long before Mike is in New York squaring off against Samuel L. Jackson as the hotel manager Gerald Olin doing everything in his power to prevent Mike from staying in room 1408. He offers to upgrade him to the penthouse, bribes him with an $800 bottle of cognac and even gives him complete access to the hotels files on all the guests who’ve perished in the room so he will write his story and leave.
Jackson delivers an expertly grim performance as Olin. But only do the production diaries (an extra on the DVD) reveal the genius of his casting.
As written, Olin was a short, chubby white man of European descent. It was Quentin Tarantino who first suggested Jackson when he was given first pass at the script. An interview with Cusack summarizes things quite well. “If a English bellhop tells you ‘Don’t go in the room.’ you’re gonna go in the room. But if Sam Jackson says ‘Don’t go in the room.’ you DON’T want to go in the room. He’s a good crypt keeper. If it’s enough to scare Sam, it’s gonna scare you. So he gives it a kind of existential street cred.”
For all intents and purposes, the movie is being held up almost entirely by Cusack’s talent. Trapped in 1408, he is given nothing to interact with except the environment. As the room starts taking the shames of his past and using them as weapons against him, there is only Cusack there to convince you of the harrowing plunge into his own mind.
The first half of the film is effectively terrifying as director Mikael Håfström squeezes every last drop of tension from the commonplace surroundings of 1408 to keep you on edge. In what the film refers to as “the banality of evil,” you feel more fear waiting for something to leap out from the shadows than you do when things finally come off the rails and the haunted room starts to throw everything it has at our hero. To put it another way, after watching this movie you’ll never feel the same about “We’ve Only Just Begun” by The Carpenters ever again.
I have a great deal of respect for this film. Not just for the performances or it’s director, but for the expert production design and effects work. Again, the production diaries reveal a great deal of 1408’s secrets and exactly what went into making such a confined space work in a horror setting.
Additional extras on the DVD are standard fare. Deleted scenes, webisodes, trailers and commentary from the writers and director. The film comes with both the theatrical cut and the extended directors cut with an alternate ending. I won’t spoil it for you, but the alternate ending isn’t much different from the original. It just adds an extra joy-buzzer jolt. So including it to add value to the purchase is somewhat superfluous. Cleverly, the packaging comes with fake postcards from The Dolphin inviting guests to stay in the room of the dammed.
Ultimately, 1408 probably will not stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a film like The Shining, but Stephen King should be proud of the adaptation nonetheless. It is great entertainment that represents him well.
So first things first… About Friday’s comic.
I know, I know. I totally dropped the ball and I feel terrible about it. Basically, I had a conflict at work with a last minute project that soaked up all of my time Thursday and Friday that prevented me from getting a comic online. But the time I had any free time left, it was practically Saturday and I thought I was just better off shelving the comic until today. I should have been in closer communication with you guys and I’m sorry.
If you’ve been following Theater Hopper for any length of time, you know I take this kind of thing pretty seriously. I’m not one of those guys who is going to flake out on your an update “whenever I get around to it.” I treat this gig seriously and I take it as a serious commitment.
With that said, let’s talk about today’s comic.
I might be getting myself in trouble again trying to tackle racial content (even after apologizing for making lame attempts in the past). But I don’t think I’m picking up on anything outlined in the plot synopsis of Lakeview Terrace that the producers of the film didn’t want us to discuss. They pretty much announce it in the trailer when Patrick Wilson’s uptight white neighbor character talks to his lawyer about what he can do to protect his family from the increasingly aggressive neighbor played by Samuel L. Jackson.
“There’s not much you can do,” says the lawyer. “Plus, he has the color issue on his side. And that color… happens to be… BLUE!”
*GASP!* He’s a cop!
The fact of the matter is, this movie would lose half of it’s steam if the cop played by Jackson were of any other ethnicity BUT black. If it was an Asian actor in the role, it would have been just another lame home-invasion thriller.
I’m not saying that the race card being thrown into the mix makes the movie better. I’m just saying… “Buyer Beware.” This film was directed by Neil LaBute who – as a screenwriter – never found a painful social hypocrisy he didn’t feel like shining a great big spotlight on. If you’ve seen In The Company of Men, you know what I’m talking about.
Some people might find LaBute’s predilection for highlighting these issues commendable. I find them exploitative. Not that I expect LaBute to spoon feed us any kind of resolution, but his movies have a habit of parading the most ugly aspects of human beings in front of us and he lets them sit there for us to make a judgment about them. I think the passivity he displaces toward these characters reflects a greater indifference to their attitudes and behavior, which is just as much of an endorsement as anything else. To put it another way, “If you don’t condemn it, you must endorse it.”
Maybe I take LaBute’s work a little too personally because of how uncomfortable it makes me feel. Again, one could argue that his tactics are working. Because what would I have to feel uncomfortable about otherwise?
But I counter that I think his work is not there to evolve any level of discourse. I think his work exists to provoke. I think his work represents a need to hide something ugly within himself, so he uses characters with far more vile traits to hide behind.
Just my two cents. For what it’s worth.
We’ll likely get into these discussions and more at 9:00 PM CST during our weekly recording of The Triple Feature podcast – which you can now access through http://www.thetriplefeature.com
Keep in mind that we are also accepting questions from listeners about anything and everything. You can send us questions about this week’s movies, films we’re looking forward to or even questions about our comics. Send your inquiries to group@thetriplefeature.com and we’ll do our best to answer them on-air.
That does it for me! Thanks again for your patience this week and come back to the site later today for an important announcement regarding the donation drive!
I think the title for today’s strip is quite possibly the biggest groaner in 6-plus years of Theater Hopper. It’s delicious. I love it.
I was thinking about The Day The Earth Stood Still and the quote I took from Owen Gliberman’s review from Entertainment Weekly that I grabbed last week. Y’know, the one about how Keanu Reeves “seems to be trying to wriggle out of the charge that he’s a flat actor by acting flat on purpose.”
The more I got to thinking about it, the more I decided that it was kind of an unfair stigma. I mean, there are plenty of actors who only have one or two moves and audiences love them for it. Maybe Reeves inate sense of distance is something that makes him unknowable to some audiences – and that makes him interesting or sexy. There are dozens of different reasons why people gravitate toward one actor and not another.
Look at my interest in Will Ferrell. Some people might find that inconcievable. And, truthfully, I can see it from their perspective. He plays a lot of the same roles, he does a lot of the same tricks. But, for me, it’s all about his line delivery. Earlier this year in Step Brothers when he’s burying John C. Reily and states simply, “I’m burying you!” just the emphasis he puts on “burying” puts me in stitches every time.
I’m weird.
I didn’t see TDTESS this weekend. I couldn’t bring myself to it. The whole movie looks big, dumb and loud. Reviews didn’t help, either. Especially those that claimed it was heavy-handed.
TDTESS is the THIRD movie I can think of off the top of my head in recent months that has promoted some kind of environmental message or made eco-terrorists the bad guys. First it was Quantum of Solace, then it was Transporter 3. Now (instead of nuclear proliferation), Reeves as the alien ambassador Klaatu has come to warn the human race to clean up the environment… or else! It turns out WE’RE the villains! *GASP!*
What I really wanted to see this weekend was Milk, but Cami and I didn’t get the chance. I’m bummed because I think we’re going to be talking about it on The Triple Feature tonight and I really wanted to participate. Gordon saw it last week and was chomping at the bit to talk about it. I’ve seen him posting across social networking sites all last week chatting it up, so I know he’s ready to go. My birthday is on Sunday. Maybe we can snare a babysitter this weekend and check it out then.
Until then, don’t forget to tune in to The Triple Feature tonight and do my best to either moderate or keep up. As always, we record live at 9:00 PM CST. Be there and ask questions in real-time. Or, if you have a Skype connection and a microphone, call us yourself and ask it!
That’s it for now. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you here on Wednesday!