Last evening I had the pleasure of having dinner at a neighbor's house, an informal bbq with about 5 or so couples - where I had an interesting, mildly alcohol-induced conversation with another neighbor, Josh Latta (he was there with his wife Beth Kargel) who lives on Valley Bluff. Josh is an interesting guy, with many of the same interests as myself: toy collector, movie and music buff, and writes/draws/produces comics (his website is here). It seems I have many friends that share those same interests - funny how that happens. Even funnier is that Josh and I had never met prior to he and Beth's buying a house in the neighborhood, though we had both similar interests and many of the same friends and acquaintances. In any case, the conversation started with something innocuous - I asked if he had seen the FF trailer for Rise of the Silver Surfer - he said he had but hadn't seen the first movie, and was it any good?
That led to a discussion about Marvel movies, comics, the latest Spider Man installment in particular and the value of DVDs. He shares my fondness for DVDs because of all the extra content, and probably (though this didn't come up in conversation), watches all the extras before the movie when he buys a DVD. This got me thinking today - is that normal or is it something relegated to the uber-geek? My normal behavior is to buy a "deluxe" DVD, even though it's not at the bargain price of the other newest releases, just so I can gaze in wonder at the extras (usually on an extras disc). Latest case in point, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven Director's Cut - this DVD features a 194 minute cut of an already long film, that I originally caught around Christmas time during it's release. When I first saw the film, I liked it but thought there were some story issues that I'm happy to report have been resolved in this new extended cut. Also, both the extras and the commentary tracks of this film are outstanding and far exceeded my expectations - but enough about that and back to the conversation from last night...
Josh and I ruminated about Spider Man, then the Fantastic Four (first movie) and got on the subject of the western - which naturally brought us to Jodorowsky's El Topo (don't ask but somehow we both got there - alcohol is a great memory lubricant - I believe it had something to do with Brotherhood of the Wolf AKA Le Pacte Des Loups or it may have worked it's way from David Lynch's Dune back to Jodorowsky's failed attempt at a Dune movie - I really don't remember). El Topo is one of those films you have to watch to get - trying to explain the scenes just doesn't work and negates entirely the impact of seeing them on screen. Jodorowsky was this amazing director that most won't have much familiarity with - my first encounter was in reading reprints of the Incal, written by Jodorowsky and illustrated by the great French Illustrator Moebius (Jean Girard). I was and still am in thrall with the work of Moebius, and there was some mention of Jodorowski's film work and a reference to an attempt at Frank Herbert's Dune in the Incal volume - being a huge Dune fan (the book, as the David Lynch effort hadn't yet been released), this perked my interest more and drove me to do some research on Jodorowsky.
Alejandro Jodorowsky was born in 1929 in Chile - my understanding is that his Russian father was the first Rabbi in that country - more can be discovered in this excellent Wikipedia post. In any case, it was a few years before I first saw El Topo - I actually caught Holy Mountain on the Playboy channel when I was in college - this rather bizarre movie got me totally hooked - it was either the Spanish Aztec invasion scene reenacted in Lizards and Toads, or the protagonist waking up in the middle of a field full of copies of himself cruciform as the Christ that did it for me. I found some images of his work on the failed Dune project and mentioning that Jodorowsky had worked on a failed Dune project brought the conversation with Josh back around to DVDs and how the extras made them so worthwhile - recently I purchased the Dune Extended Edition which has the Alan Smithee "extras" and cut scenes that many had the burden of watching on TV as part of a week long mini-series (not to be confused with the new Dune mini-series done on SciFi - those were actually quite good - this was actually a recut of the film where nearly an hour of scenes that were originally edited were put back in to extend the movie and make up for some scenes cut for television audiences). I already owned the original David Lynch cut on DVD so buying this Extended Edition only underlines the whole DVD Extras thing mentioned before - buying another copy of something you already have, just to view another version and see some extras you hadn't already seen - that's pretty geeky.
Our next conversation centered around comic books and how they weren't what they used to be - I know - big "groan" from you reading. I hear all the time how this book is so great, or that back has this thing in it that's so great, etc. But what I'm talking about, and what Josh also agreed to, was that the whole comic book experience has changed so much that much that made them so endearing has been lost. When I was a kid, reading comics was like magic - there simply wasn't any medium that took graphic form, added action through panels, and left a bit to the imagination to bring everything to life. Movies are very "in your face" and you either take the action as presented or not (if it's not, the movie is usually bad). There isn't much room for imagination - and the subject matter when we were both younger had to do with good vs bad, doing "right" and being heroes. As movies and other media became more popular, comics transitioned into something else entirely, I guess to "keep up." Writing went to crap and it was all about the art - usually these incomprehensible panels that stretched longitudinally across the page making it difficult to figure out the action, but boy were those panels pretty!
It took the advent of the indie comic - books that relied on storytelling above imagery (not that the images were ugly, they most often were very beautiful - but the emphasis was on the story) like Chester Brown's "Yummy Fur," the Hernandez Bros "Love and Rockets," Dan Clowes' "Eight Ball," Pete Bagge's "Buddy" and Jim Woodring's "Frank" just to name a few. Those comics were the saving grace, instilling a sense of story back into comics along the lines of Carl Bark's Donald and Scrooge - you really cared about the characters and felt strong emotions as the action happened across the page. There was an effort to involve the reader and a welcome and return of the imagination as ingredient to a successful story telling. But back to Josh and my conversation - much of that indie effort seems to be gone as of today. There are some exceptions, but what happened to that huge movement to publish for the sake of publishing, those honest, autobiographical stories that were about real people and situations that would rip you apart when you read them? They seem to be gone.
Enough rambling for now...
-- John
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