Way back in March, I wrote about silence in Breaking Bad. From there, the work grew a bit and I'll be presenting on some of the ways nonverbal communication is used in the show at the upcoming (I leave in a couple of hours) Popular Culture/American Culture Associations in the South conference. It's a juicy topic and I have limited time, so I really can only touch on a few highlights, including the Heisenberg hat and Hector Salamanca's "bell of doom." I'm really looking forward to this - it's always a lively conference and I come home flush with new ideas.
I'm also fortunate to be presenting on a themed panel - sometimes the panels are a little random and it's always nice to be part of a session that has a clear through-line. Seriously - check this out:
First, David Lavery, one of the howitzer-sized big guns of television studies, presents on "Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad, and Television Creativity." That's followed by Jeffrey D. Frame presenting on "Walt’s Wake: Chemical Disincorporation and the Break Down of Breaking Bad’s Secondary Characters." My beloved co-author, Ensley F. Guffey, will present on "Buying the House: Place in Breaking Bad" and then I wrap things up with "Pregnant Pauses: The Uses of Nonverbal Communication in Breaking Bad."
This is on Friday morning, so here's hoping the conference attendees are properly caffeinated!
Among the items in my luggage this year are a stack of flyers I'll be using to hawk JOSS IN JUNE!, which is a one-day conference devoted to exploring the work of Joss Whedon that I'm co-convening at my school in (you guessed it) June. Interested? C'mon, you know you are! After all, The Avengers was just released for home viewing yesterday! The deadline for proposals is January 1, so you have plenty of time. Of course, you can always just attend and not present, if that's what floats your boat. Check out the link, and then contact me for details.
In baseball, the relationship and trust between a catcher and a pitcher is not to be underestimated.* Sure, the pitcher gets most of the glory, but without a good catcher crouched at the plate calling the pitches, you got nothing. Trouble with the Curve doesn't concern itself with that, but that's about the only relationship that isn't given quality screen time in this movie. At its heart, Curve is about change and resistance. Do we take a chance and trust our guts and and hearts, or do we cover ourselves up with gruffness and BlackBerry messages and hope to God that we never have to be honest about anything that really matters? One's easy and the other's worthwhile. But the choice isn't easy.
The film features four strong characters - Gus (Clint Eastwood), an aging baseball scout with failing eyesight; Mickey (Amy Adams), his nearly estranged daughter who's on the fast track to become partner at a high-powered law firm; Johnny (Justin Timberlake), a pitcher Gus signed to the big leagues but who blew out his arm and is trying to figure out his next move; and Pete (John Goodman), who's head of scouting for the Atlanta Braves and therefore, Gus' boss. Seeing these four onscreen is a pure delight.
It's good that these characters are drawn with such detail and nuance, because the rest of the Curve is populated with characters taken straight from the Stock Character Warehouse, which is my major complaint. Curve is a fairy-tale baseball movie in which the good are rewarded and the jerks get their well-deserved comeuppance and I'll admit I took great satisfaction is seeing the worthy elevated and the windbags deflated. Yeah, yeah - we both know life doesn't really work that way (not often, at any rate), but it's still great fun to see. And watching Justin Timberlake clog in some dive of a bar was nearly worth the price of admission. And it seems to be true that Clint Eastwood pictures need to feature either a gun, a horse, or both. (Note: this one has no guns.)
Clint Eastwood has had a career that makes strong men faint. He's lasted longer in a business that is constantly scanning the horizon for the next big thing than just about anyone and he's done it with grace and style. Look - Clint's career predates my entire life by more than a decade - his first credited appearance was as "Jonesey" in Francis in the Navy in the mid 1950s. (That same year, he was "Jennings" in something called Revenge of the Creature proving that we all gotta start somewhere, I suppose.) He's given us the Man with No Name, he's been Dirty Harry, and ohmyheaven, he reclaimed the Western in 1992 with Unforgiven. He knows jazz and gave us the wonderful Charlie Parker biopic Bird. He's a talent to be reckoned with. In Curve, he seems to be enjoying his status of Elder Curmudgeon of Hollywood and this is a worthy movie. As Johnny reminds us, to get to that magic .300 batting average which denotes Big League talent, you have to be willing to strike out 7 out of 10 times. Johnny's talking about far more than baseball and that's a lesson that Gus hasn't learned and therefore was one he couldn't pass on to his daughter.
Trouble with the Curve isn't as funny as Bull Durham or as touching as Field of Dreams, but it's a nice addition to the collection of baseball movies that remind viewers of just why America chose the devilishly-hard task of hitting a round ball with a round bat as our national game.
*One of the best songs ever about this is Eddie From Ohio's "Catchers Drummers Anchormen" - check out the lyrics by clicking on the title. And if you don't catch the song's reference to "with a wave of his arms/He kept it fair," check outthis link. Ah, baseball - you break my heart and make it soar at the same time.
One of the standout elements of Breaking Bad is the show's use of humor. I maintain that without the lightness added by funny moments, Breaking Bad would simply collapse under the weight of its own shock, horror, and despair. Certainly disposing of a person you've killed by dissolving them into human sludge isn't funny.
But add a couple of guys hosing human goo off each other in kiddie pools and you've got comedy gold!
"We never covered this in chemistry class, Mr. White."
OK, that isn't quite true. Often the humor in Breaking Bad is darkdarkdark. Even so, it still provides leavening for the pumpernickel-dark narrative bread that makes up so much of Walter White's downward spiral.
One of the lighter elements would be Saul Goodman. Saul is pretty much the walking definition of "shyster," although he's also a really good attorney who zealously advocates for his clients. (Incidentally, the problem is not that his clients are drug dealers, sleazeballs, and other skating-the-edge types, but that Saul actively helps them advance their schemes and plots.) But Saul's appearance on screen lets loyal viewers know that we're in for a few light moments. He dresses like he's auditioning for Guys & Dolls, his office is a cartoon, his dialogue is laced with funny bits ("Hey, whoa! You're a Chatty Cathy today!" to Skyler when she's beginning to talk too much on an unsecured phone line), and he doesn't hesitate to put his own interests first, as when he insists Walt and Jesse put $5 in his pocket before he talks, so everything's covered by attorney-client privilege, despite the fact that the two have clumsily kidnapped him and are threatening him with grievous bodily harm.
Gilligan & Company know a fundamental truth - we can only handle so much darkness before the giggles begin to well up inside us. Knowing that is one reason we can not only accompany Walt on his journey into damnation, but cheerfully pack a picnic for the trip.
As a movie fan, I'm sometimes surprised at how tricky it can be to make a movie about, well - movies. Maybe it's the fear of too many "in jokes" that the crowd won't get, or maybe it's the fact that Hollywood often seems to have the attention span of a hyperactive gnat, but this is a genre of movies that seems to be pretty thin. Mind you, often movies in this category are transcendent. Altman's The Player is worth renting just for the opening shot (listen for the reference to Welles' Touch of Evil then go rent that) and I'll watch Singin' in the Rain just for O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" sequence.
So why'd it take me the better part of a year to see Scorsese's Hugo? I have no answer, aside from the fact that the film was only at my local theater for a week, if that, when it was in big-screen release. Ah, Hugo. This was simply a lovely film. It helps if you have an appreciation for what it might have been like for the early pioneers of film, but even if you think silents are dull and boring (I disagree with you there, by the way), Hugo is a film to love. Parts of the story are based on true events - which in and of itself is a sad thing. We so often demand simple stories that immerse us in spectacle, but keep actual emotional content safely at arm's length. Imagine, just for a moment, that you have never, ever seen a movie. You've never seen images flicker and move on a screen in a darkened theater. Then this technology comes along and suddenly, people are making stories that move. For the price of a ticket, you can go to the bottom of the sea or to the moon (remember, it would be another seventy years before we actually knew what the moon looked like from human experience).
I fear we live in a cynical age which is often marked by being too cool to care - we've seen it all and done most of it and really, who cares? Hugo makes you consider what it's like to care. Imagine going broke to the point of selling your life's work which is then melted down for scrap. Imagine being an abandoned child trying desperately to stay hidden. Then imagine finding refuge in a dim movie house. Imagine being able to show that to your first friend.
The secret is the human ability to connect. Movies have the power to do many things - and help us form many connections - and Scorsese knows this. With Hugo, he created a beautifully crafted Valentine to the power of movies and to those who know the secret of this power, whether they are makers of movies or watchers of them.
Terry Pratchett captured this same sense of marvel in his Discworld novel Moving Pictures. You know those primitive tribes who refuse to be photographed because of their fear that doing so might capture their soul? Well, what if there's some sort of magic in making movies - and that magic wants to come into our world? I've been a Pratchett fan since I was urged to read The Truth about seven years ago. Pratchett writes great, complex fantasy novels that take place in a world that isn't nearly as nasty as Martin's Game of Thrones world (don't yell at me; I've read four of them, but I'm taking a break. The random violence and misogyny got to me, even though I'm pretty sure it's there to make a point). The Discworld is for people who enjoy sharp satire and clever writing - if that's you, go check out his work. He has a new novel that's just come out - Dickens-based, from the title. Not Discworld, but Pratchett's always worth a read.
Just as Georges Melies' silent films are worth a look. From 1904 - The Mermaid
Well, well, well - for the first time since high summer, I don't have a new Breaking Bad episode to recap and speculate upon. I can deal with that - "Gliding Over All" left me with plenty to chew on - but I will admit to wishing that it wasn't going to be the better part of an ENTIRE YEAR before I learn how Walt goes from serenely watching his children play around the backyard pool to buying a heavy machine gun in the men's room of a Denny's on his birthday.
Damn you, Gilligan! (An oath I'm sure Skipper wanted to scream to the skies from time to time on that island, by the way.)
So what's going on in the meantime? Wanna Cook? The Unofficial Companion Guide to Breaking Bad continues to take shape. The first three seasons are drafted and my co-author and I are taking a short break to prepare papers for presentation at the annual Popular/American Culture Association in the South conference, which is due to be held in Nashville, TN at the end of September. Ensley F. Guffey will be presenting on how Breaking Bad uses space and place (think of the transformations the house we first see Jesse living in goes through to become Jesse's house as Jesse himself transforms) and I'll be presenting on how the show uses nonverbal communication (think dingdingdingding along with creepy-crawly Cousins, among other examples). It'll take us until the conference to put these ideas down on paper and prepare our clips, so Season Four won't really get rolling into draft form until early October.
I have to say, I think you're going to be pleased with the final book. Wanna Cook? was always planned to be far more than a recap or episode summary guide. The book is full of notes about ongoing themes in Breaking Bad, camera shots, episode titles, and lots of extras about everything from Pablo Escobar and money laundering to Ted's heated floor and Walt Whitman.
We both plan on continuing our weekly posts about Breaking Bad - you can find "Meth Monday" over at Ensley's site and I hope you'll keep coming back here for "Walter White Wednesday." There's plenty for us to talk about!
Throughout the run of Breaking Bad, fans of the show have put together some amazing fan-work centered around the show - here's a link to a re-imagining of the opening credits that I think is well worth a look! Maybe this will help tide you over until we get our answers about Walt, Hank, Jesse, and the rest!
