I Bought a Zoo, and So Should You

Today I published an article about Cameron Crowe's latest film, We Bought a Zoo, on FirstShowing.net. But I didn't get to say all that I truly wanted to. As it is, I push the boundries of personal admisson over there, so I'm going to append a bit more of a personal coda to the piece here, instead. For context, here's a bit from the piece linked above:

"We bought a zoo!" It's a line exclaimed by precocious, cherry-haired Rosie throughout the film to anyone in earshot. Strangers. Animals. Herself. And every time, her voice is pure. It's the embodiment of optimism. It'sjoy. Complete, unadulterated joy. There's a reason—sure, among more obvious ones—We Bought a Zoo is titled as such. It's that line. But, really, it's the emotion that line evokes. That joy. Cameron Crowe is a filmmaker who is able to capture, personify, and epitomize emotion better than most other filmmakers. Emotion is his currency. And he doles it out with impunity. 

So, for someone like myself whose life is lived—more often than not to a fault—through emotion rather than logic, Crowe hits a sweet spot that few others, if any, can touch. He gets me, and I him. I think he even wrote a line about completing something or other one time that still holds true...

What I'm hemming and hawing about here is that I'd always rather feel something deeply, feel something honestly that is flawed rather than admire something from a distance that, while beautiful and perfect, is abstinent. We Bought a Zoo is flawed. But it is so joyous, soulful, and lovely that I couldn't care less.

But now that I'm out of the theater, wiped away the tears, and downloaded Jonsi's score and deleted every other track on my iPhone, it's the film's flaws that are just sort of floating there in front of my face like dust caught in the sun. But let me try and look past the dust to the sun a bit first.

...

I suppose I'm so frustrated with this film because its flaws are so small yet so visible and even more fixable. The way it made me feel is the way I feel when watching my favorite movies. The way I felt in the theater, though, just didn't carry over as I drove home. The film should have been—could have been—amazing with a few tweaks, less over-writing, less contrivance. And I'm saying this while still feeling my love for it.

Most of the film is so assured, trusting itself as it thrives in emotion born of its mostly fantastic characters that feel real even if there's no way they are, expressing emotion in ways that feel even more real. (It doesn't hurt that Crowe pulled some truly phenomenal performances from his actors, young and seasoned alike. Elle Fanning is especially exceptional. She's a beacon on screen. The film's brightest spot.) Yet, can it be that all of that just isn't good enough? You know what, I'm going to take a page out of the Mee playbook: I'm going to take Cameron Crowe's hand and cross party lines. I'm going to buy a zoo and damn the consequences. Hell, I've already bought the zoo. Feels good, man. Feels like joy.

What I didn't say, above, is how directly I connected with Dylan, Benjamin Mee's son. I was an angry kid. I couldn't control it and, most of the time, I didn't even know I was flying off the handle when I so obviously was. I punched holes in drywall, tried to punch holes in concrete, tore my larnyx and ruined my voice for screaming.

There's a VHS tape of my sister and me just as we arrive at a cabin our family rented for our vacation in North Carolina; I was to be the audience's—inevitably me, twenty years later—tour guide through the cabin. I showed the bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and original hardwood banisters like a realtor selling for his right to live. My sister, though, she always wanted to be involved. She wanted to be there for it, right there in the middle, no matter what it was. I love that about her, now. But then, despite the grain and failing tracking of the VHS, you can see the anger setting on my face like concrete over top a coffin. Thinking about it makes me cringe. Watching it makes me recoil.

What did I have to be so angry about? Dylan lost his mother, lost his friends, was moved from the city to a run-down zoo in the middle of nowhere... I didn't have any of that fuel. But seeing Dylan there on screen, I felt his anger so deeply. His cynicism. His frustration.

I'm often called a cynic, still. Usually, it's when I walk out of a movie theatre. There's nothing I love more than feeling deeply. Feeling honestly and purely. But there's nothing I do better than analyze. I can't not see flaws. I can't not fix them, even if fixing them happens only in my mind. I can see how frustrating it must be for those around me when all they want to do is express how wonderful something was or how truly awesome this one thing made them feel... while I physically, literally can't not talk about what was wrong around those things. But it's never from a place of malice. It's because I want it, whatever it is, to be better. And I think it, whatever it is, can be better! I don't think that sounds like something a cynic would say. Or maybe it's exactly what a cynic would say.

This internal gladiatorship is why We Bought a Zoo has me so conflicted. It's a film that, no matter how real it is, it feels like it kills cynicism. Dead. Gone. Joy and optimism and idealism win, once and for all. And I felt that there in the theatre. But, here I am... saying it can be better...

Maybe it's me that can be better. All I know is that I don't feel like a cynic. And I totally want to buy a zoo.

"We bought a zoo!" It's a line exclaimed by precocious, cherry-haired Rosie throughout the film to anyone in earshot. Strangers. Animals. Herself. And every time, her voice is pure. It's the embodiment of optimism. It'sjoy. Complete, unadulterated joy. There's a reason—sure, among more obvious ones—We Bought a Zoo is titled as such. It's that line. But, really, it's the emotion that line evokes. That joy. Cameron Crowe is a filmmaker who is able to capture, personify, and epitomize emotion better than most other filmmakers. Emotion is his currency. And he doles it out with impunity.

So, for someone like myself whose life is lived—more often than not to a fault—through emotion rather than logic, Crowe hits a sweet spot that few others, if any, can touch. He gets me, and I him. I think he even wrote a line about completing something or other one time that still holds true...

What I'm hemming and hawing about here is that I'd always rather feel something deeply, feel somethinghonestly that is flawed rather than admire something from a distance that, while beautiful and perfect, is abstinent. We Bought a Zoo is flawed. But it is so joyous, soulful, and lovely that I couldn't care less.

But now that I'm out of the theater, wiped away the tears, and downloaded Jonsi's score and deleted every other track on my iPhone, it's the film's flaws that are just sort of floating there in front of my face like dust caught in the sun.

...

I suppose I'm so frustrated with this film because its flaws are so small yet so visible and even more fixable. The way it made me feel is the way I feel when watching my favorite movies. The way I felt in the theater, though, just didn't carry over as I drove home. The film should have been—could have been—amazing with a few tweaks, less over-writing, less contrivance. And I'm saying this while still feeling my love for it.

Most of the film is so assured, trusting itself as it thrives in emotion born of its mostly fantastic characters that feel real even if there's no way they are, expressing emotion in ways that feel even more real. (It doesn't hurt that Crowe pulled some truly phenomenal performances from his actors, young and seasoned alike. Elle Fanning is especially exceptional. She's a beacon on screen. The film's brightest spot.) Yet, can it be that all of that just isn't good enough? You know what, I'm going to take a page out of the Mee playbook: I'm going to take Cameron Crowe's hand and cross party lines. I'm going to buy a zoo and damn the consequences. Hell, I've already bought the zoo. Feels good, man. Feels like joy.

Our Community Script #savecommunity

A year—shit, or was it two—or so ago, my writing partner, David Sigurani, and I wrote a spec script for the fan-favorite, always admirable NBC comedy, Community. Now that Community has been put on "hold" and has all but been travelled to the farm upstate where it can run free with the likes of Pushing Daisies, Traffic Light, Firefly, Lone Star, Kings, and the like, David and I thought it was time to dust off the ol' .PDF and share it with the rest of our Greendale peers. 

We hope you all enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed writing it. And, hey, if in five years when Netflix decides to defrost the then long-since-cryogenically frozen Community, David and I will be ready. But not in a creepy way. Like, a totally inncocent, in no way still-wearing-a-Human-Being-unitard-under-all-of-our-outfits-like-Spider-Man-but-way-less-cool kind of way.

So, here it is: "The Human Portrait," a spec episode of Community, written by Brandon Lee Tenney & David Sigurani. Pop! Pop!

 

Community - "The Human Portrait"

An All-Dialog Beginning

"So, that's it?"

  "That's it."

"Just like that?"

"Try not to think about it like that. In those terms. You understand how it's been up here, it's not black and white--"

"Apparently not, no. What other terms though? Yesterday I'm here... tomorrow? Enlighten me."

"Come on, Jack, don't--"

"Jackson."

"Jackson--"

"You're grinding my goddamned bones to dust. That's what you're doing, Brian. Everything I've fucking worked for. I pioneered this, in on the ground floor. And for what?"

"For what? You just said for what. We wouldn't be up here, doing what we're doing today, if not for you."

"That supposed to make me feel better? Don't fucking flatter me. What happened? Am I that irrelevant?"

"Of course not. Jackson, you know damn well what happened. You know how it's been up here. There are directions we should've been exploring six months ago. Directions, if I recall correctly, that you were unwilling to entertain."

"Is this the part where I beg for my job? 'I'll come back, I'll be a good boy, I'll do what I'm told, it won't happen again, honest--'"

"No, it's already too late for that."

"What then?"

"You're not honestly worried about finding work, are you?"

"'Course not. Some ozone filtered sun will be a fucking godsend."

"Then what?"

"When's the next shuttle?"

"That's the kicker--"

"This is the kicker? Oh, good. Now that I know this is the kicker, I think I can get my head to touch all the way to my knees."

"Three months."

"Three months?:

"Three months."

"Three fucking goddamned months? What the fuck am I supposed to do up here for three months without a project to work on, without security clearance, without motherfucking pay? We're on the Moon, Brian. You remember the Moon, right?"

"Your severance is good through your time here, plus an additional three."

"How generous of you."

"Think of it as a vacation. You've been up here for four years. There has to be a book you've wanted to read."

"A vacation. Like working at a five-star beach resort and vacationing under the boardwalk on the goddamned Jersey shore. Besides, I fucking hate to read."

"You've got a goddamned mouth on you. That didn't help your case."

"Fuck you, Brian."

"Three months, Jack."

"So, that's it, then."

"That's it."

Pirates of Culture

It's dangerous, in my opinion—and since these are my words coming to you via my forum, that phrase shouldn't even be necessary—when someone chooses not to exchange money for art. It's more dangerous, still, when one derides another or judges them negatively for doing just that, exchanging money for art. Further still is the opinion that art is worth no compensation at all.

I hope to be paid for my art—these words you're reading may, one day, someday, not be free—so I've been known to take this sentiment (too) personally from time to time to always.

Of course, when I say art, I mean to say any and all artistic endevours: drawing and painting, sculpting and dancing, poetry, prose, sequential storytelling, filmmaking, and all things music alike. To me, all of the above are worth money. Because all of the above, and those pursuits I haven't even listed, are worth preserving. Art is who we humans are. Art is culture. And culture is us. 

But without a demand for art, art dwindles. It'll always exist, sure. No one commissioned the caves at Lascaux. But without a fostering of demand, those without the means to create now may never have the possibility of the means later; so their art is lost before it's had a chance to grow. What the diminishing of art begets is the genocide of artisitc potential.

So, when I buy an album from a band I particulary enjoy or pay to see a film from a writer or director I admire or purchase a painting from a local artist whose works affects me, I'm not only supporting those artists individually, I'm supporting art on a macro level. I'm supporting art culture. I'm supporting the potential, the possibility of more artists like them. Those artists who sit with their guitar in their lap or stare at a blank canvas and say, yes, this is viable. I can do this. It won't be easy, but I choose to try. Because there is someone out there right now who is doing what I want to do and they have support. I'm supporting the license to try.

Perhaps all of the above is a bit lofty an idea to ponder each time you're clicking Buy Album in iTunes.

Especially when this generation—my generation—are the digital pirates of culture. It's so damned easy. Too damned easy. I guarantee I could not spend a cent on art if I didn't want to and still experience and imbibe just as much as those who choose to pay. The Internet is a vast sea of immediate availability. And, sadly, the experience of piracy is often much more pleasurable than the compensated alternative.

Movies are available without fine print and advertising and menus. It's just the movie. It's what I expect. It's what I want. And only what I want.

Television shows are available without commercials. Even via online, paid streaming services that solve the problem of immediacy and anywhere availability, the pirated option is just easier. A universal file format. The ability to play a show anywhere on anything.

Comic books are higher quality and readable anywhere on any device.

Music, well, like the rest of that above, is free.

So, while some attempt to solve the piracy issue by bringing compensated outlets of art delivery as close to their no-holds-barred, high-seas antitheses, I say it's not the method or the practice that needs to be changed; it's the mindset.

It's that dangerous opinion that art, because all I know it to be is free, immediate, and everywhere, is worth only that: nothing at all.

Fostering a love for art and its importance is what's, well, important. Shifting the paradigm so the question isn't Why should I pay for art? but Why wouldn't I pay for art? 

Did you torrent their latest album? No. Because I want there to be another latest album after this one.

Why would you buy that? Because it's beautiful. And I want her to make more things that are beautiful.

Did you see that, I just downloaded it last night? And so you may never see anything like it again because of it.

The opinion that art is a luxury and that it's lesser and other and unimportant is wrong. I've utilized the more artistic-centric aspects of my education far more than important subjects like mathematics. There's a calculator on my phone. Google can teach me how to balance an equation or find the circumference of a circle. But neither my phone nor Google can cause me to feel the importance of Cormac McCarthy's words or Kate Beaton's sequential humor or the potential of some unnamed, unrecognized, possibly unborn artist.

Unfortunately, compliments and Likes just aren't enough in the way of compensation and recognition. Capitalism remains our overlord. So it's with money with which we must speak. Money toward representation in our government that will choose not to limit artistic programs in public schools. Money toward artistic centers in your city where this sentiment can be fostered after our kids leave the school where their artistic programs were cut. Money toward those kids who became local artists. Money toward local artists who became our culture.

And, if not with money—because the consumption of art can be expensive—then perhaps speak with time. The time it takes to say a word of encouragement and provide someone the potential to make great art. Because it's the potential for art that's most important. Without the potential for art, we cease to exist. 

For nothing speaks more about a culture than its art.

Art is the definition of one's culture. One's culture, the reason for one's art.

Though, there is an episode of Doctor Who I missed last week. And I did want to see that Kristen Wiig movie when it was out... just never got around to it...

...I wonder if they're both online. Maybe I'll pick up a few of DC's New 52 while I'm there.

Political Apathy, Political Anger

During my junior and senior years of high school, I anchored Mustang News Network's daily, morning news program. I reported upcoming events, sports scores, the day's lunch menu, and the odd human-interest story around campus—usually involving our cheerleaders. (Always involving our cheerleaders.) And, often, I was joined by a co-anchor. She and I were and remain friends. I attended her wedding two years ago. Flew from my home in California to Florida for it. During the summer. Florida's summer. 

However, then, we rarely agreed on… much of anything. 

Especially politics. The one topic, above all else, that we were forbidden to debate on air. The one topic, above all else, that, with all our teenaged wisdom and cunning, we attempted to debate on air most often.

I was no stranger to receiving calls from teachers and administrators after broadcasts regarding my editorializing and sensationalizing and, most often, my inappropriate appearance—I've had tattoos since I was eighteen, one of which was visible on the inside of my left bicep during broadcasts. Oh, and I've had my ears pierced since fifth grade and gauged since I was fifteen. To those teachers and administrators who weren't familiar with my excellent academic performance and thoughtful, straight-laced personality, I was an… undesirable.

So, during the 2004 presidential election, it should have been no surprise that both my co-anchor's and my fervor would reach its crescendo. The first election either of us could participate in. The first moment our voices could be heard. Our time to take part in a tradition at our nation's very heart; the very reason for our nation's existence.

Sadly, we were two among thousands. Thousands who fit the stereotype of the youth vote perfectly. Apathetic, ignorant, and puppets of their parents. I suppose I, and she, were also puppets to a point. Products of our environment. But more the Scarecrow after he's bestowed a brain rather than before.

And then I wore a John Kerry t-shirt on air. And then I was called to the principal's office while still on air. And I was told that without equal promotional time given to each candidate on air, my t-shirt is in violation of the law. Not the rules, but the law. Me, a teenaged anchor of a close-circuited high school news program, breaking the law because my t-shirt was giving unfair promotional time to a presidential candidate. Uh huh, sure.

That next day, I wore the shirt again. And sitting beside me, my co-anchor wore a George W. Bush t-shirt. Equal time. Equal promotion. We didn't debate or even mention our attire. We read the news, signed off, and, quite pleased with ourselves, walked from the studio to the adjacent classroom where we were forbidden to do that ever again lest we be replaced entirely.

It's only taken me seven years to become disenchanted with politics writ large to the point of that same apathy my classmates showed during the very zenith of my own political interest when I sat behind that news desk donning my support quite literally on my sleeve. 

And I hate it. I hate that I feel more strongly about my apathy than I do about the reason for my apathy. 

And even more so, I hate that the only thing I feel more than apathy is anger. But it's impotent anger. It's useless.

I can't even laugh at shows like The Daily Show or The Colbert Report anymore because the jokes are no longer funny because they're true. They're infuriating because they're so fucking real.

I feel underrepresented, misrepresented, not represented at all. And in a representative democracy, isn't that the fucking point? Especially when they guy I voted for is seated at the top.

But, like most of the elected officials currently in office right now, I don't have any answers. I don't know what to do. Our political system isn't about doing what's right for the people. It isn't about representation. It's a battle of morals. A war of ideals. A church of extremists and fanatics that speak the loudest and say the most and overwhelm the majority. How did the outliers become the mean?

Perhaps I'm naive, but isn't the whole point of our government to compromise? Do we not elect those who we feel will represent us most, send them to speak on our behalf, and trust that they will do their best to compromise in our favor in the pursuit of progress? Differing viewpoints leading to new, different ideas leading to compromised progress for the good of the nation as a whole. Not as a party. Not as a group. Not as one side or the other. Progress for us all, together.

Is not progress the whole point?

Though, I am not unable to see the reasons why political and social progress is at a standstill.

Both parties are so well branded that to step outside their brand in the pursuit of compromise is to betray itself, its constituents, its ideal. Both operate on fear. They're backed against a wall. And that fear turns everything to black and white, fight or flight. So we're left with absolutes. We're left with closed ears and closed minds.

But I'm guilty of the same thing. I recognize that. In the simplest of terms: I think I'm right. When I listen to Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann or Sarah Palin speak, I know I'm right. Scientifically, logically, objectively, I am right when it comes to their "opinions," their false knowledge about science. It's maddening and infuriating I'm so right. The very idea that they can argue with facts. With scientifically proven facts. The fact that they use the word theory incorrectly when in a scientific context. The fact that they are able to turn logic and proven science into pejoratives, into rallying points for ignorance. 

I know I'm right in dismissing that. In closing my ears. My mind.

But it's the very government that I'm speaking of that provides them the unalienable right to dismiss me. To know that they are right. To close their ears and minds. It's for this same government that I fight.

And so it goes. The unanswerable question. The unpassable impasse.

Suppose I'll just continue to hope—while the other side continues to pray—that those elected, those with power, those who act as our representation will be better than me. Better than them. Better than us. That they'll act on our behalf. That they'll act for us, not because of us or in reaction to us or for fear of us.

That compromise is achievable and necessary and important.

That change is possible.

Yeah, right.