What will I be? The Monkey’s Uncle, of course.

It’s a new month, and we are inarguably approaching the end of the year now. (Not that we aren’t always technically approaching it–go with me, here). This year passed faster than any I can remember. Seriously, it boggles the mind. I’m almost tempted to believe that some cosmic calendar is going to reset next year, and that what we’ve experienced this year is the final gravitation whipping towards this cycle’s conclusion (big, big “almost”).

Highlights of recent months:

Keeping very busy, with two extremely rewarding day jobs (without getting into specifics, one of them involves using my Japanese again, which is a source of constant delight, and as for the other–I work Wednesdays now! Trust me when I say that’s marvelous news).

The other week I got to attend the first public screening of the first two episodes of a new web-type-series written and directed by a friend and featuring Yours Truly! (More on that when it has a home, online or elsewhere). The project was fantastic to work on and they put it together extremely well. I can’t wait to get my hands on my own copy (hint hint, Mike).

Other news: I got a new power supply for my keyboard! Trust me once again that this is excellent news. No struggling artist needs the added melodrama of wiggling the AC adapter around in every socket in the house, and then rubber banding/stacking objects against/twisting into weird shapes/otherwise jerryrigging it to stay put so your keyboard stays on.

Having recently managed to locate some free time, I’ve gotten to:

–see Eddie Izzard, with my brother

–see Cinematic Titanic do their thing live, with my sister

–see The Museum of Jurassic Technology, with Stephen (all three of the above are amazing experiences which I cannot recommend highly enough, although you probably can’t get company as good as mine, brag brag brag)

–Pay money for “Where The Wild Things Are” and see “G. I. Joe” for free, which is just as it ought to be. (At a free showing, none of your dastardly movie-hopping).

(Side-note about G. I. Joe: Was I hallucinating, or did that movie pass The Bechdel Test? I find that both hilarious and awesome. Unless the two characters I’m thinking of did not actually exchange any words while beating each other up, in which case Fail.)

I also may have managed to squeak a few comics and word-type-books in there, so expect further blatherings to follow.

In addition to my various ramblings, I have a lovely announcement to make!

The Continuing Adventures of Anne and Jack

is now viewable in its entirety online!

http://vimeo.com/6638790

(Link included explicitly for easier cut/pasting!)

I’m incredibly proud of what we did on this movie and that I got to be a part of it (really put the “playing” in “playing a part”). If you like 1930’s screwball, Indiana Jones and musicals, and you always wanted to see them all happen at the same time in an epic 25-minute thesis film, have I got a treat for you!

Credit and adoration as always to Josh Goldman, evil mastermind-in-chief on this one.

So before I got crazy distracted, I was going to share some other things that were great this week.

Awesome things:

I watched a little more Arrested Development (I’m nearly as behind on getting to that as I was on Iron Giant, yeesh), and saw the new “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.” According to my roommate, Dee (the girl on It’s Always Sunny) was originally intended to be the straight man to the rest of the characters’ crazies. Apparently they started writing and went “No way, she’s just as crazy as the rest of them!” I consider that a huge part of what makes that show so great, and a victory for feminism. We want equal rights when it comes to everything: equal pay, equal division of household labor, and an equal right to be insane on a sitcom about insane people. (Now, granted, it’s four guys and a girl and therefore fails the Bechdel test a lot, but hey, Rome: Not Built in a Day. I’ll take what I can get.)

Another awesome thing:

–Luigi Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of an Author.”
I read this play in college and remember loving it but finding it somewhat hard to wrap my head around. I can no longer quite fathom why I would’ve thought that; I reread it for the first time this week and it now seems both wonderful and very straightforward (maybe I was very sleep-deprived in college?)

It’s a great play and recommended reading for everyone, especially if you care about stories, writing, acting, directing or the theatre itself.

A quote I especially liked:

“When a character is born he immediately assumes such an independence even of his own author that everyone can imagine him in scores of situations that his author hadn’t even thought of putting him in, and he sometimes acquires a meaning that his author never dreamed of giving him.”

It speaks directly to our fanfiction age, as far as I’m concerned, and to how, although I’m all in favor of creators’ rights, especially insofar as they afford those creators a material living, we have a ridiculous idea that characters and stories begin and end with what you wrote and what you meant when you wrote it. Tell it to Odysseus and King Arthur, bub.

One more thing of Awesome:

I also read “Janes in Love,” the second volume of the P.L.A.I.N. Janes series of graphic novels about teen girls who do art subversively. It continues to delight. I’m old-fashioned and boring in my love of having every plot detail wrapped up and every character arc matching and resolved, and that only mostly happens in the book, but I really enjoyed it, the major stuff developed nicely, and I’m just happy a book like it exists (not to get all “It’s not how well the bear dances” about it, but I am happy to have a wider scope emerging in American comics). I wonder what my more anti-establishment friends would think of the subversive public art group applying for grants? It’s presented as a big positive, and I can’t say I really disagree, although second-hand cynicism would suggest that future volumes will cover the once-revolutionary institution become bloated under its own weight. That’s not what the book’s about, though–it’s about the transformative power of art in the everyday, and I can never argue with that.

So after a very long (but rewarding) work week last week, I had a bit of a breather this week.

Among the highlights of the week:
I finally saw “The Iron Giant!”

I’ve known I needed to see it for years (at the store I told someone I’d finally seen it and they said, “You hadn’t seen The Iron Giant? You’re fired!”), but happily it’s one of those movies that deserves its reputation (it does not deserve its relative obscurity outside of people-who-love-cartoons circles, but it does deserve its place of honor in those circles, to be specific). For those who may not remember about it, it was a film by Brad Bird, of future Incredibles/Pixar fame. So, yes, it was very good. There may have been some weepiness (“Superman….”).

On a different note–very different, because I realize Iron Giant wasn’t even Pixar, predates most of Pixar, has nothing to do with what I’m about to say other than making me think about it.

Pixar’s feature films, as far as I can figure:
Toy Story
A Bug’s Life
Toy Story 2
Monsters, Inc.
Finding Nemo
The Incredibles
Cars
Ratatouille
WALL-E
Up

That list contains 10 films. Three I haven’t seen (Toy Story 2, A Bug’s Life, Cars) and SEVEN I COMPLETELY LOVED. Yes, if you’re counting at home, that is a 100% “movies Amy thinks are amazing” rate. It’s unbelievable, it’s an achievement maybe on par with the Disney Little Mermaid-to-Lion King run (except that those hit during my childhood and can therefore never really be outdone).

Just one problem. Not a single one, to the best of my knowledge, is about a girl. Sure, there are excellent female characters in there–Dory from Finding Nemo, Elastigirl from The Incredibles, just to name two whom I love. You could argue that The Incredibles is really an ensemble piece, but if you had to pick a protagonist, the person whose journey we see most of, in whose head we spend the most time, who has the primary conflicts with the villain and major changes of heart, it sure wouldn’t be Helen. Nor would you be likely to say, when asked “What is Finding Nemo about?” “Oh, it’s a heartwarming story about a forgetful fish who helps some other fish.”

I’m not the first person to notice this, but I’d always brushed it off a bit, as no big deal. And it’s not the end of the world. It doesn’t change how I feel about the movies, it doesn’t dampen my enthusiasm for any upcoming projects (just to make sure I was being fair, I snuck a peek at the imdb page for the next one, 1906. I don’t actually want to know too much about it, because going into Pixar movies blind is one of my joys now, but the first four words of the synopsis are “A young man discovers.” Sigh.)

Here’s the thing. I’m not trying to control Pixar’s creativity. I don’t want to limit the stories they tell. But there’s nothing in the world that says I can’t point out the stories they are rather markedly not telling. 10 movies (okay, 9, no sense counting Toy Story against them twice). In a perfect world, somewhere around half would have female leads. I would be happy with 4 girls, 5 boys. I’d be happy with 3 girls, 6 boys. I might not be complaining if there were even 1 girl and 8 boys. But that’s not what we have. We have 9 of 9 movies (soon to be ten of ten) about boys and men. No, not every movie has to showcase every perspective. It’s impossible. I don’t want anyone forcing themselves into unnatural positions for the sake of ideals and statistics, obviously. But you know what? We’re ten movies in. It’s time to start thinking about this. These are incredibly creative people telling some of the best stories of our time, in my opinion. Don’t tell me they can’t handle it.

*(Yes, I was thrilled to death that one of the leads of “Up” was old and one was Asian. I thought it was an astonishing victory for the inclusion of underrepresented groups in mainstream culture, and I love them for it. My love for that movie was so overwhelming I even overlooked the inclusion of bits like “Didn’t your Dad teach you how to put up a tent?” “My Dad’s not around.” Well, clearly there is no one who could possibly have taught you about tents, then, since your mother would spontaneously combust if put in the woods!)

Pixar. This is my glove. This is me whacking you with it. Step up to the plate and give us some girls. I know you’re good enough.

(But I’m not going to boycott your movies or anything, what, do I hate happiness now?)

Many ups and a few downs for the last few months:

First things first: Down: I recently lost my Grandfather. He was an amazing man and will be much missed.  I had a deeply lovely family visit following the event and heard many remarkable stories. My Grand-dad lived a ridiculously narratively fulfilling life.

We’ll just take a pause here to put some space between the most serious business and the silliness that is the rest of my life.

Up: Comic-con! I returned last night from a fantastic con weekend. I also got to stay an unexpected extra day and shoot a promo with Lloyd Kaufman for the music video I was in last winter (plus the extra day enabled me to come back and find the booth for The Guild, failure to find which was my only disappointment from Saturday).

I finally attended my first actual panel at the Con, on Harvey Kurtzman. Interesting and educational! The panelists were assuming everyone there was already a diehard; I hope they would’ve been excited to know we went because I saw the book on him come in to the store last week and we wanted to go to a panel and learn something. My resolution to make real, multi-day plans for a comic-con someday so I can wait in line for more panels grows ever stronger.

My whole Con experience was lovely; my cousin lives in San Diego and was gracious enough to offer us crash space at the last minute (because that’s when I asked), so we were in nicer digs than a large proportion of our fellow attendees. Saturday night we had dinner with a bunch of the LMU crew I love so much from the two student films I’ve done over there. During the day on Saturday we handed out flyers in the morning (which is harder than it looks) for a brilliant new webseries called Cabonauts by Hayden Black, whom I’ve been lucky enough to befriend at the store.  It was wonderful to be able to help (and, you know, meet Nichelle Nichols. HOLY COW).

Up: I spent several months of this spring (months during which I coincidentally did not blog) working on a major project as a freelance Japanese translator! It was fantastic, fulfilling, and somewhat stressful. A few years without constant deadlines, you forget how tricky the durn things are. I also drank Chai Tea Latte in quantities such that I had better hope it’s not a carcinogen.

Up: I spent part of last month on another terrifically fun project, a new webseries by my friend Mike. Workplace comedy, inspired lunacy, etc. He ran an extremely impressive ship, we knocked out the first two episodes in a weekend and an evening. It was tons of fun and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.

Down: My acting class moved to Santa Monica, so I’ll be spending yet more quality time with my car.

Big up: It moved because we’ve officially merged in to become the scene study class for the Workshop with Jeffrey Tambor! I’ll still be studying primarily with Elizabeth Payne, the brilliant and inspiring teacher I’ve been with since I came to LA, but we’ll also be studying with Jeffrey, about which I am extremely excited and certainly not at all nervous (if I stop being nervous when good things happen, go ahead and declare me dead).

So that’s about the size of it: I have a little more family travel coming up that I’m intensely looking forward to, a lot of rehearsing to do, and it looks like tutoring season is starting back up, so the plate grows ever fuller, but of course I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I have now finally read my Brontës. Jane Eyre was amazing but Wuthering Heights was, well, that it wasn’t what I was expecting worked very much in its favor, since I spent most of the book going “Really? These are the leads? This is the structure? Wait, you mean this person is dead? I have literally no idea where this is going.” It certainly succeeded insofar as I was neglecting other life objectives to get to the end, but I’m fairly certain the book demands a few more readings. I’m grateful I got to read it so relatively fresh to it, though–the mentions of Cathy and Heathcliff and love on the moors really don’t let you know what you’re in for. So it’s a mixed review, I guess, but I have a strong feeling the spell creeps over you with every reading (and I definitely need one more where I don’t just believe the opinions of the narrator the whole time).

In comics, I’m finally reading Criminal: Ohmygoshwow. Read my first Alex Robinson (author of Box Office Poison): his semi-recent short book, “Too Cool To Be Forgotten.” File it under ‘Don’t read this at work unless you can cover the sniffles really quickly.’ (So, yes, it was very good. Wish some of the plot threads had come back or been resolved, but absolutely satisfied with the ultimate direction)

I also recently made perhaps the greatest book purchase I will ever make: at a used book store near the UCB Theatre, I picked up a book with the following fascinating spine: On top, “History of Prostitution” by W.W. Sanger, M.D. On the bottom: “Eugenics Publishing Company.” How can you walk away from that? It has a certain trainwreck quality. The book, as it turns out, is even better than I’d hoped. It is a 1937 printing of an 1897 volume containing a massive sociological study from the 1850s(!) on the current state of prostitution in America and around the world. The joys of this book are endless (and much better than the mere shock value I was expecting from the spine). For instance, the full title page reads:

THE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION

ITS EXTENT, CAUSES AND EFFECTS THROUGHOUT THE WORLD

by

WILLIAM W. SANGER, M.D.

RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, BLACKWELL’S ISLAND, NEW YORK CITY; MEMBER OF THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE; LATE ONE OF THE PHYSICIANS TO THE MARINE HOSPITAL, QUARANTINE, NEW YORK, ETC., ETC., ETC.

WITH NUMEROUS EDITORIAL NOTES AND AN APPENDIX

“To such grievances as society cannot readily cure, it usually forbids utterance on pain of its scorn; this scorn being only a sort of tinseled cloak to its deformed weakness.” –CURRER BELL, Shirley.

New Edition

NEW YORK

EUGENICS PUBLISHING COMPANY

First of all, Currer Bell=Charlotte Brontë, so link up there, as Eddie Izzard would say. Secondly, three ETC’s! That’s a truly impressive degree of ETC! Thirdly, Blackwell’s Island? Awesome!

The pleasures of the book are various: first, the survey of world history and contemporary geography according to a New Yorker in the 1850’s is priceless. The section on Japan, which can be found in the chapter “Semi-Civilized Nations,” begins as follows:

“The recent connection established by American enterprise with the semi-fabulous empire of Japan (the Zipangi of Columbus) makes the institutions of that country more than usually interesting. From the earliest accounts of the Dutch and Jesuit writers to the present time, we know that the Japanese, like the Chinese, have attained a high degree of civilization, and among both, the vices which, in the present experience of mankind, seem the accompaniments of that improvement, have been developed in a remarkable degree.”

A few paragraphs down: “The most recent traveler (for those who composed Commodore Perry’s expedition can hardly be said to come under that denomination) is Captain Golownin, and he had opportunities for close observation not equaled since the times of the early writers. He was commander of the Russian sloop-of-war Diana, and visited the Japanese empire in 1811.”

This Captain apparently proceeds to get himself captured by the Japanese for two years, owing to “the duplicity of the Japanese, who are adepts in all the political arts of lying and hypocrisy” and who apparently had “an old grudge to settle with the Russians on account of injuries done them by certain individuals of that nation.”

This book runs to over 700 pages, and it is filled to the brim with not only hilarious historical racism and sexism, but with startling insights and glimpses of the beginnings of great things. The bulk of the book, what I called a sociological study, is a stunningly extensive survey of prostitution in New York City. Sanger apparently conducted interviews with 2000 prostitutes in New York City between 1855 and 1858, and there are endless charts and tables of their responses on everything from disease status to father’s employment to average income.  Sociology as we know it did not yet exist when he did this; it seems like this study in itself must form a part of the very development of the concept.

One of the most interesting sections, and one of the real beauties of this book, is when Sanger delves into the previous occupations of the prostitutes and their answers when asked why they do what they do. Sanger, it turns out, can be a passionate advocate for women. His lens is still one of his time; his severe discussion of the Crime of Seduction depends on the acceptance of concepts like a woman’s virtue being an irretrievable loss, and the idea that, you know, that matters. However, there is a distinct humanitarianism at its heart. He absolutely condemns the Crime of Seduction, because in his social milieu the negative consequences of this loss of virtue are very real, and he argues eloquently that the women he’s interviewing are the best proof of it, many of them having been cast out by their communities after a love affair. Sanger also seems to feel that if seduction is a crime, the seducer is the real criminal, and although the attendant protestations regarding the inevitable absolute dependence of a woman in love on the word of her man are a little hilarious, the point he’s trying to make is that men reckless enough to love ‘em and leave ‘em ought to be held responsible for their actions.  (How hilarious? “But how to account for the participation of the female in the crime? Simply by viewing it as an idolatry of devotion…. As soon as this conviction of a mutual love possesses her mind, as soon as her heart responds to its magic touch, she lives in a new atmosphere; her individuality is lost; her thoughts revert only to her lover” (493))

In all seriousness, Sanger develops a remarkable premise in the course of his study: he finds that the complete absence of work for women that will actually pay enough to sustain them is a major social ill. A man well over a century ahead of his time, as it turns out. He believes incarceration does nothing to reform the prostitutes of his day and in fact hurts by preventing them from seeking out medical help.

Coverage of this book will have to extend over many more posts, because there is simply too much good stuff. The mayor of Newark, New Jersey responds to Sanger’s inquiries with the declaration that there are no prostitutes in his town because everyone just goes up to New York (Sanger’s skeptical response is priceless).

Random excerpts from the rest: “The city of New York contains, at this day, venereal infection sufficient to contaminate all the male population of the United States in a very short space of time” (645).

“It may be assumed as an almost invariable rule, that courtesans in all countries are in the habit of using alcoholic stimulants to a greater or lesser degree, in order to maintain that artificial state of excitement which is indispensably necessary to their calling” (541).

“Undoubtedly there are cases where the woman is the seducer, but these are so rare as to be hardly worth mentioning” (495).

The charms of the world and historical survey that makes up the first half of the book may wear thin, since much of it is frankly offensive to read now (ask him about the morals of the Turks!), but there’s much, much more to discover as I make my way around the volume in skips and jumps.

I just hope writing extensively on this doesn’t permanently weird my Google search terms.

When it's time to Boogie, we will always Boogie Hard.

Pretty straightforward: I hope John C. Reilly’s coded message treats him kindly as he shakes his groove thing.

I guess she wouldn't like it?

This one’s a little stranger–I mean, come on, Moms are pretty cool these days, I bet they wouldn’t mind Anchorman. But maybe Ms. Applegate’s Mom is really traditional? Nice of Christina’s subliminal message to look out for her like this.

Find a way?

This is, of course, the most disturbing. Warnings should be issued to all Los Angeles pet stores, should Bruce Willis attempt to fulfill his programming before we can get him to film a movie called “Live Happily Ever After.”

Busy month! Time seems to accelerate when you move to Los Angeles, anybody else notice that?

Two big announcements that haven’t made it up here yet:

“Intervention” made its big-screen debut at the Extreme Filmmaker 48-Hour Film Festival

Friday, March 20th, 7:00pm at Raleigh Studios.  If you missed it (which you almost certainly did, since I only found out a few days in advance and didn’t publish it here), you can still watch it at this link or at director Craig Kuehne’s website. It was wonderful to see it on the big screen; I’m very proud of how it turned out and it was well received at the festival. It was also great to see everyone again.  The writers, most of the cast and Craig were all there and are a lovely, lovely bunch.

Announcing: “Rhythm and Crime”

What have I been doing lately, you ask? Other than all the glamorous premieres? Why, yakking about Watchmen and watching Battlestar Galactica, of course. Oh, besides that?

Hard at work on a new and incredibly exciting project! I had the great good fortune to be cast in another student thesis film at LMU, reuniting with much of the crew from Anne and Jack and written and directed by one Franz Schmutzer. This one’s a jazz-noir tale, and I’m the jazz part, making this, by my reckoning, my fifth original musical since coming to Los Angeles. Which is a fact as ridiculous as it is amazing.

I worried after Anne and Jack that I might never find a project that was more fun to be involved with, but while I can’t choose between my babies, I can say that the greatest single quality I appreciated in Anne and Jack is operating here just as strongly; making films for the love of it, the sheer joy of filming, say, a three-goon fight scene which is also a song or a moody jazz number to be cross cut with a gun battle.

I just came off of a brilliant but incredibly exhausting weekend of filming on Rhythm and Crime. We’ve only got one more day (in April) and then we’ll be in post. I just can’t get over how lucky I am to get to do this, and how great it is that Franz (who shot and helped edit Anne and Jack) isn’t unbelievably sick of seeing my face!

I’ll update, of course, as progress continues, but overall, I’m riding a lovely acting high. The more you do it, the more you want to do it. And I’m doing a scene from Bringing Up Baby in my acting class right now. No one should have this much fun.

Every time I drive the ramp that connects the 134 East to the 2 North, I take my life in my hands. It’s not that my speed is unsafe as I race up and around the gentle arc. It’s not that the drivers around me are unpredictable as we curve north towards the hills. It’s that as I take the ramp upwards, I pass over and spiral around the homes and businesses of Glendale. Green hills rise on three sides of me with little red houses like berries on bushes. A mysterious white building with a winged roof glints in the sun and before I know it I’m trying to counts the sides of its roof and stare at the valley spread out behind me and gaze into the approaching community, crouched on the knees of the mountains. And I’m going 60 miles an hour through the air on an overpass built with the grace of a Disney ride.

It’s a little distracting.

Setting aside the fact that in the first half hour of the Oscars (all I caught on TV–I’m filling in the rest online), I got to see Anne Hathaway and Amy Adams as honorees and Tina Fey presenting, making it feel like a very good year to be a nerdy/good girl aspiring actress, we narrow our focus to Anne Hathaway. I haven’t actually seen the Princess Diaries; I pretty much love her for looking normal, seeming sweet, and charming the pants off me in Devil Wears Prada.

(Sidenote: I once read an interview with Adrian Grenier in which a magazine asked him a question about chivalry in a really obvious “say something swoony” bid, and he instead responded by explaining that he thought the notion of chivalry put women in a subordinate position and he wasn’t comfortable with it. Or something to that effect. Add him, Anne and Meryl, and I went in to Devil with a whole lotta goodwill. But nice try with that “It’s important because this color has a name” speech, movie.)

I was entirely delighted with what I saw of the Oscars (the first half hour), especially the unbeatable opening number (I’ve been singing “The Reader… I haven’t seen the Reader” to people for two days), and I entirely loved Anne Hathaway in said number, but my favorite moment of the night for her is the one I just watched online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P552i5xx8ww&feature=related

At 5:12 in this video, we see the announcement of the Oscar, and Anne Hathaway does this huge, emphatic head nod, like she just went “F YEAH Kate Winslet!” She’s still polished and elegant, but it’s a completely unfussy, convincingly spontaneous gesture. I feel like you could hang out with Anne Hathaway. I feel like even at the Oscars, you’re just hanging out with Anne Hathaway. She’s like my Jimmy Stewart, all carrying my self-image into extraordinary situations and behaving as I can only hope I would behave.

Good show.

(P.S. Dear Hugh Jackman, you are delightful. Thank you for being so awesome. I’m sorry the musical medley number was so odd, because I know we see eye to eye on this “musicals are back” issue.)