Come to the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker

Hey folks, This blog is going to remain up, but I won't be adding to it any more. To say there's some baggage here would be the great white shark of understatements.

HOWEVER...I do not wish to leave you all alone to face the End Times with nothing to read. So come on over to the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker, and get the updates on me, my life, the dog, and all of the ins and out of bunker life. Lots of stuff going on and things to see. Please join me. 

Top 5 Horror Movies of the 1990s

This decade, preceded by the plastic 1980s, and let down by the promise of peace that accompanied the end of the Cold War, was a cynical and increasingly angry time. The emergence of the World Wide Web was a profound thing as fans began to congregate online in AOL chat rooms and on message boards. eBay became a going concern, and a lot of movies, once thought to be nigh-impossible to track down, were suddenly just a few mouse clicks and a credit card number away. Computers were The Hot New Thing, and this was reflected in a lot of films. 

By the end of the decade, whatever goodwill the end of the Cold War generated was all used up us and most of us had figured out that the fix was in, and we were the suckers. With Communism over and done with in the early 1990s, America needed a new enemy. When one didn’t appear readily, we decided to make a new enemy; it was us. And like the hit song from the 1990s, we were our own worst enemy, to boot.

As much as Jurassic Park, with its computer-generated and animated dinosaurs, was a watershed moment in filmmaking, CGI had a ways to go. That didn’t stop people from using it, badly, for most of the decade, until Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop improved the process dramatically to create believable characters that seemed real in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Conversely, a number of horror movies during this time were overly reliant on CGI to their detriment, while other filmmakers managed to work around the limitations of the technique or, in more than one case, jettisoned it in favor of good old-fashioned practical effects.

What makes the movies in this decade so hit-or-miss is the studios themselves. The venerable movie maniac franchises continued to thunder along under their own weight, and other companies, with star dust in their eyes, started remaking older films, slickly produced, but not very well thought out. There were also a number of smaller studios and even smaller movies that were wildly entertaining as B-movies, but weren’t scary or even very serious. Nevertheless, some innovations and interesting things developed, maybe even as a response to the naked and unashamed cash grab, that made the list below.

Stir of Echoes (1999)

Kevin Bacon is a blue-collar guy living with his wife and son in a suburb of Chicago. His wacky sister-in-law hypnotizes him at a party, and she tells him to be more open-minded, which turns out to mean, “now I can see ghosts and visions of past traumas.” This psychic ability runs in the family; their son has it, too. And wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that something horrible happened in the house before Kevin Bacon’s family moved in, and the spirit won’t rest (and neither will Kevin Bacon and his son) until the mystery is solved.

This movie often gets overlooked because it sits on the same tree branch as The Sixth Sense, which came out the same year. While not as gimmicky and as “gotcha” as the former, Stir of Echoes does offer up its own kind of disturbing scares, and in a wide variety, too: Jump scares, creep-outs, gross-outs, and even a creepy kid all conspire to make this movie greater than the sum of its parts.

David Koepp wrote the adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel (first published in the late 1950s) and directed the film as well. Matheson is a much-revered author for his various contributions to literature, television and film, mostly in the realm of fantasy, horror and science fiction, and Koepp was interested in paying him homage. As such, it has some changes from the book, but in the updating, it plays on some serious fears that were a part of the decade, including violence towards women and teenagers with guns. If you notice any familiar beats in this movie that you feel are a bit overused, you should know that Matheson is the one who first introduced those beats, and not the other way around.

 

Event Horizon (1997)

A salvage crew (in space) is tasked with the recovery of an experimental spacecraft called the Event Horizon, thought to be lost during its maiden voyage. It’s carrying a gravity drive that can fold space, and would be invaluable technology, if they can ever figure out what went wrong. The drive’s inventor joins the crew of the Lewis & Clark (that’s the ship’s name, I swear), all jaded hands at the wheel, and sure enough, they find the ship, and a big mystery with it. What happened? Where’d everyone go? What’s with all of the blood, anyway? The engineer inventor, played by Sam Neill, has his own agenda, and it doesn’t exactly line up with the rest of the crew, who are just in it for the bucks. And as these tensions mount, things begin to go horribly wrong with the routine salvage operation.

This rare gem of a movie turns a derelict ship into a haunted house, complete with ghosts and cultists and things from other dimensions. I’ll even forgive the capricious use of CGI to render a bunch of floating debris, all shiny and crisp, inside the ship because it would have looked just as bad if it was done with blue screen and traveling mattes. Thankfully, they get the gravity turned back on quick enough and you don’t have to spend a lot of time wondering if the movie was shot for a 3-D release (it wasn’t. The CGI is just that bad).

The cast is great, all character actors you’ll recognize, from Lawrence Fishburn to Sam Neill, in the only other interesting role he ever took after Jurassic Park. The movie itself, however, had a storied and torturous gestation process, with an auteur director (Paul W.S. Anderson), studio interference, multiple rewrites, and in the end, a patchwork film that no one was happy with. All that being said, this movie scratches a lot of itches and isn’t quite like anything else in the 1990s.

Panned when it was initially released, the film was marketed as science fiction, but make no mistake, it’s a horror flick, wearing a lot of influences on its sleeves, like sponsor patches on a NASCAR driver’s leather jacket. One of the things that isn’t readily known about the movie is that “the warp” concept of traveling through space was lifted straight out of Warhammer 40,000, so much so that Games Workshop fans consider it as part of the overall 40K universe.

The Prophesy (1995)

An L.A. police detective gets drawn into a weird web of mysteries; a dead body with no eyes, an expanded bible with additional chapters in Revelations about a second war of the heavens, body snatching, and what may or may not be a possessed child. It’s enough to make the detective, who was a seminary student, until he lost his faith, question everything he knows. And when the archangel Gabriel shows up, played by Christopher Walken, well...you know...you’re in...for one hell...of a movie.

The 1990s saw the apex of Christopher Walken’s career, and this movie showcases Walken at his most Walken-esque. His turn as Gabriel is exactly what you’d think it to be, and then it’s even creepier on top of that. Unsurprisingly, he’s got the best lines of dialogue in the movie, but he’s not the only big-name actor: Eric Stoltz and Viggo Mortenson also co-star, along with Virginia Madsen.

In truth, this isn’t the scariest movie of the decade, not by a damn sight. But it’s got a really unique story, some effectively creepy moments, and it’s one of those "idea" movies you keep thinking about after you’ve seen it. Despite being something of a flop in the theaters, it subsequently spawned four sequels. It never needed them. You can watch the first movie and feel like you got a complete experiences, and owing much to the quality of what came after, I’d take that advice.

 

Scream II (1997)

Two years have passed since Sydney Prescott survived the ordeal of the Ghostface killer. She’s now in college, with a new life, some new friends, and a few old ones. Everything should be perfect, but...Ghostface is back, cutting a gory swath through campus, even as the sensationalized events of the movie Stab, based on the real-life incident play out in the background.

Everyone that was still alive at the end of Scream is back for this one and you’ll likely not see who the killer is this time, either. But it’s an answer to the mystery that works within the story. And the blood! Everything is cranked up to eleven with this movie, and that includes the satire. Not content to be a meta-critique on slasher horror, Scream 2 takes some potshots at celebrity culture and the 24-hour news cycle for good measure.

There are not a lot of sequels that made the other top 5 lists, but Scream 2 is one of the few that maintains the emotional and intellectual drive of the first movie; if anything, it’s even more self-aware than the inaugural outing. And since sequels are such a part of the horror genre, there are rules for them, too, as Randy again explains. The genre conventions hold, even as they are being discussed. One of the few times you can watch a sequel and get as much out of it as the first movie.  

 

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

Three college students head out into the woods with video cameras to film a documentary about a local bit of folklore, the Blair Witch. They disappeared. Later, their video camera was recovered and the tapes show the students at the beginning of their adventure, along with the strange things that plague their group when they cross into the woods.

Some films are timeless, and others are rooted in their time and place. The Blair Witch Project could not have been made at any other time because it is so specific to the level of technology used to create it and the zeitgeist from whence its inspiration comes. The movie begins with the declaration that “this is a true story” and then we go to video camera footage, and a new genre is born. This is the movie from which the term “found footage” originated, and it was so revelatory that the next ten movies that came out in that format were scored for using it; it was that big a deal.

I wish everyone could see this movie as I first did; it was an Academy Award screener, on VHS cassette, and I watched it on a square, boxy TV in a darkened room with six other people. There’s something about watching video tape on a video tape that adds a lot of authenticity to the movie, so much so that we all went searching afterward, just to make sure it really was faked.

The Rise of Skywalker with medium-sized spoilers, casually thrown hither and yon

I’ve been reluctant to try and set my thoughts down on paper about the ending of the Skywalker Dysfunctional Family Drama, also known colloquially as The Star Wars Saga. I knew I would need to write about it, but I didn’t have any idea how I was going to get into it. Then a funny thing happened as I was recovering from my surgical procedure; I realized we were at the Fin-de-Siecle of sorts.

After all, it’s not every year that several major franchises wrap up long-time over-arching storylines, is it? We didn’t really celebrate the actual 21st century event horizon, since we were all too busy making sure Y2K didn’t happen. And then 2001 sucked all of the oxygen out of the room and, without getting off on a tangent, knocked us back into the 1980s in a lot of ways that we are only now seeing come to light.

All of the last 20 years feels like a virtual reality simulator designed by Cold War scientists to simulate what the Matrix was trying to provide us with; a reality fraught with strife, held together with flashes of popular culture, and an ever-expanding arsenal of shitty things to react to so that we stay miserable and jaded.

It’s fitting, really, that the last six movies in the Star Wars saga should be completed during these dark times.

My FenCon Toastmasters Speech

From FenCon's Facebook Feed. It's Finn at the Finish!

Several of my non-geeky friends have asked me what a Toastmaster does at a convention, and moreover, why I got to be one. I told them that it was a mainly ceremonial position, part greeter, part genial host, and ideally someone with a bit of verve and aplomb. When I get to that part about verve, they all go, "Ooh, okay, now it makes sense."

They have also asked me if I have to make a toast. I then tell them that it's not a toast, but rather some toast. They don't get that joke, and I've stopped trying to explain it to them. But they are curious as to what kind of speech I gave.

So, for those that didn't make it this year, here's what I said, more or less.

Hey, Toxic Fans! Get Off My Lawn!

I've had it with these fair-weather Johnny-Come-Lately 4Chan Troglodytes and their mouth-breathing screeds that get slurped up by every nearly-news outlet and then sent back out into the aether to clog up my feed, pushing the puppy pics and the food selfies out of Facebook's algorithm. Knock it off, you assholes.

Of course, I'm speaking about the latest Teapot Tempest: the She-Hulk announcement that Disney made over the weekend. Oh, there was also an announcement about a Moon Knight show, but none of the Innsmouth-Tainted Stumblebums of Twitter are talking about that, nosireebob. It's all about the She-Hulk show, and how Disney is RUINING the world with its Feminist Agenda by turning the Hulk into a woman just to appease the Femi-nazis and the democrats, all of whom only want to kill babies and steal money from hard working Americans, and by the way, Trump rules and you suck, and oh yeah, Marvel isn't ever getting another penny from me.

Top 5 Favorite Long Form TV Series

This is a new category, brought on by the fact that we are certainly in the midst of a Television Renaissance as the medium has grown and expanded to now include shows that are longer than a mini-series but still have an ending, however nebulous it may be. These “Netflix” shows are really just the next phase of what cable networks like HBO and Showtime have been doing for twenty years now. The difference is that, instead of willingly placing oneself apart from the rest of the content providers (“It’s not TV…it’s HBO”) now everyone is on a level playing field thanks to a more egalitarian distribution system. This competition has been the best thing for show creators, the networks, and the fans, as amazing shows with oddball premises that wouldn’t have found a voice in 1998 are now among the most eagerly anticipated events of 2018. And a lot of these shows are horror and fantasy and science fiction and sometimes a mix of all that and more.

Bullet Journaling is Saving My Ass

This could also be my Trapper
notebook from 1984 to 1988. 

One of the ways that I’ve been dealing with the last few months is with measured distraction. I started drawing again, after a decade or more of inactivity, and that's been very pleasant.Of course, I’ve also been blogging like a helicopter mom in an unfamiliar school district. I even started a second blog for discussing my lifelong relationship with tabletop gaming, if you haven't seen me mention it yet.

But I started doing something else that I have been reading about for a while called Bullet Journaling, ostensibly to help me keep track of all the appointments and scheduling we needed to do. However, I found out that there’s a lot more I can do with bullet journaling, and quite frankly, it has saved my ass.

Intellectual Property Homesick Blues, Part 3: You Kids Get Your Banthas Off My Lawn

Now this tag line is actually
truthful. It was forever ago.

Part One is Here: Rocky and Bullwinkle
Part Two is Here: Solo

Solo came out last week, and it landed like the proverbial turd in the punchbowl as the intelligencia—ahem, excuse me—I mean fandom—savaged the movie for not being necessary, and also not being what they wanted it to be, a state of being that can only exist in the intellectual miasma of the Internet. I’m speaking, of course, about the vocal minority, out in force, clutching their lightsabers and calling for the resignation of Kathleen Kennedy for “ruining Star Wars.”

Mind you, I’m not talking about people with legitimate problems with the movie. If you don’t like the lack of tension, the uneven pacing, the need to self-reference other movies in ham-fisted ways, I’ve got no problem with that, because while I just don’t particularly care about those concerns, I freely acknowledge that they are there and you are right.

No, I’m talking about these guys here, the Poisonous Minority that seems to be infecting all levels and areas of popular culture these days.  I find this unfathomable in the extreme, and if you’re one of the people who have been arguing for this, sit back, because you need to hear what I have to say. Everyone comfortable? Got your fingers poised over the keys, ready to ragequit? Okay, here it goes:

You’re now officially too old for Star Wars. There. I said it.

Intellectual Property Homesick Blues, Part 2: Solo

I will be the first one to admit that I was one of the people who wondered, aloud, why we were getting a Young Han Solo movie, wherein we see how in one five-minute train ride sequence he picked up all of his quirks, habits, and signature moves, and then he goes and rescues his father from the Nazis.

Then I watched Solo and when it was revealed that they were going to rob a train, I laughed out loud. There is nothing more epochal, more character building, apparently, than running along the top of a moving train. Who knew?

Intellectual Property Homesick Blues, Part 1: Rocky and Bullwinkle

In a quiet moment of intersectionality, I watched the re-imagining of the legendary Rocky and Bullwinkle series on Amazon Prime just prior to the opening of Solo. And I realized something about not just the venerable Star Wars franchise, but also the even more venerable Rocky and Bullwinkle franchise; in a world where intellectual property is, essentially, immortal, it’s completely unrealistic to expect that these properties would remain timeless (as opposed to timely). By extension, there are a lot of people complaining about the movie (or the TV show) that they didn’t get and wondering implicitly (and explicitly) why things can’t be like they always have been.

The Children of Generation X, Part 5: Avengers: Infinity War Does Not Owe You a Hug

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.
Part 3 is here.
Part 4 is here.

With a full week of cash, insane press junkets, and stunned golf claps under its belt, Avengers: Infinity War has shattered box office records and fan's expectations alike. Most people, including the critics, have correctly focused on the sheer logistics of pulling off a movie that runs two-and-a-half hours and feels like half that time. From a technical standpoint, as well as the deep level of satisfaction (and a lot of other emotions) that this movie generated, it deserves everything it gets.

Along with that came the click bait stories, the bottom feeding websites, and the cascade of fan theories. Oh, God, give me strength. The obligatory Easter Eggs lists have swollen like poisonous mushrooms in slime, and proliferate in much the same way. Some of these digital remoras have a really loose definition of what constitutes an Easter Egg. Many of these guys are just listing things in the hopes that you notice how much they know about comic books. It's embarrassing.

The fan theories on how this is all going to be resolved are worse, much worse. By my estimate, there are at least six possible loopholes and handholds that COULD be used, if one were so inclined, in the next movie. But let me be clear about this: no one is under any obligation to use anything I noticed as an audience member. In fact, there is a really good chance that the plot points on which the next movie rests will have little or nothing to do with how the gang gets out of this mess.

This is a real problem in our New Digital Age; we are all so interested in "calling it," to prove how media-savvy we are, and since we're all just one screenplay away from immortality anyway, why not be continually auditioning for the job with every word we write or speak? Here's why not.

1. It's annoying as hell. We get it. You're very clever. Now shut up. No one likes the person that guesses the mystery before anyone else. Even professional writers like to turn their brain off whenever they can. Be like them.

2. Why are you spending so much time trying to figure this out? It's a movie. You're not Jack Bauer. There is no life or death struggle going on, here. Not everything has to be a battle of wits. Especially this.

3. When you're wrong, you tend to get a little...what's the word? Unhinged. Don't look at me like that. You know what I'm talking about. *Cough*StarWars*Cough*LastJedi*Cough* Lots of people have lost their mind lately because some movies didn't meet their expectations, and by that I mean, they didn't conform to any extant fan-theories about who so-and-so was or what so-and-so would do. As a result of all the pissing and moaning, you poisoned the experience for a lot of people. And it comes off as being extremely entitled.

In short, don't be that person, okay? I know you care. We all care. We care deeply. But this is entertainment, and it's supposed to be fun. Idle speculation is great, but when you lock in your answers and start trying to prove your thesis with video clips and badly formed leaps in logic, then let me suggest that you've gone too far.

I can hear some of you starting in with, "But Mark, you don't get to tell me how to interact with media! That's my fandom!" Pfft, whatever. I disagree that being a public nuisance constitutes "fan activity," but okay, let me offer you a compromise, one that you can still put on YouTube or your personal platform, that will get you just as many clicks, and seem even more impressive when you pull it off. If you're committed to pre-ruining the movie for yourself and others by hammering down whatever whackadoo theories you might have that will wind up as plot points in Untitled Avengers Movie 4, then do it this way: start your camera rolling and talk briefly about your intention to Kreskin the movie. Write your predictions down on a piece of paper, fold it and seal it in an envelope. Then mail that envelope to yourself so that there is a legible day and date in the cancellation. Leave the envelope sealed until next May. Then you can open the letter up on camera and read or show your predictions to an amazed audience, who will praise you for your clearly brilliant thinking, and then someone in the audience will offer you a scriptwriting job at Marvel Studios. Because everyone knows, that's how it works.

Mind you, I'm not saying to be uncritical of a movie just because it's got super heroes in it. After 19 great Marvel films and, well, a handful of pretty good DC movies, and with all of that baggage in the rear view mirror, the bar has certainly been raised. These resolutions have to make sense within their created worlds. If the resolution to the massive cliffhanger isn't sufficiently satisfying, by all means, have a go at it. But if any of your sentences are some variation of, "Well, I didn't like it because X solution would have been better," then that's not valid criticism.

It's time for everyone to take a deep breath and a step back and realize that these movies, designed to entertain, aren't created for one person. They are created for a wide audience, and sometimes, your personal pet peeves may be triggered because the Russo Brothers don't know what bothers you, and I suspect, don't care, either. Their yardstick for success is not your yardstick of quality. Your only obligation to any media presented is whether or not to watch it and evaluate it fairly. Pro-tip: comparing it to the movie in your head is not a fair comparison.

So if you're going to be unfair and biased, say that right up front. Don't presume to speak for anyone other than yourself. And if you intend to say something more interesting about the movie than, "I liked the special effects," then you have to leave statements like "What they SHOULD have done" out of the discussion. If you're really so media-savvy, prove it by not having a nuclear meltdown next year because "they got something wrong."

The Children of Generation X, Part 4: A Spoilers-Laden Look at Avengers: Infinity War

Just in case the title didn't clue you in, this review contains massive honking spoilers and should not be read until you've seen Avenger: Infinity War. Or, unless Jeff from the office blabbed everything on social media and you've thrown up your hands in disgust. This, by the way, is why you don't get invited to Trivia Night, Jeff. You've got no filter. You can't keep your mouth shut. Why do you do that, Jeff? Why?

Okay, given the large amounts of words spent last week on the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it seemed weird to not discuss part one of its ten-year culmination. I outlined my thesis in Part 1, talked about what I liked about the MCU in Part 2, and threw some non-critical caveats around in Part 3. How does it all stack up against this movie?

Spoilers ahead!

The Children of Generation X, Part 3: How to Get Along with Your New Step-Dad

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.

So, here we are, on the eve of Avenger: Infinity War. The culmination of the entire MCU to date. Except, it really isn’t it. It’s the first half of the culmination, right? The movie is a two-parter, with a minimum of two guaranteed cliffhangers in the middle, and potentially two or three more. Everyone (and I do mean everyone) online with any kind of media presence or any kind of click-bait site is wildly speculating about who is going to live, and who is going to die, and what it all means, and will they, and won’t they, or what they have already gotten wrong, or what they likely will get wrong, and blah blah blah blah blah. It's tempting to start clicking and reading, but please don't. Not until you hear me out. I don't know much, but I know these things to be true, and they will help you with your tossing and turning at night. Here’s what you all need to know before you get your knickers in a twist: 

The deal with Fox isn’t done, yet. They have a lot to work out and it may not all go through. It may be only partially go through. But we don’t really know (and won’t know) until 2019 when the courts decide how much of Fox’s Intellectual Property Disney gets to acquire. That will affect a lot of things, such as how much more money they can dangle in front of Downey, Jr., Evans, and Hemsworth to stay on for one more movie. Everyone has a boat payment to make. Everyone is for sale.

It ain’t over ‘til it’s over. With apologies to Yogi Berra, this movie is only the first half of the film. We have to wait a whole year to really see the entire 5-hour megamovie. And while I’m very excited to see what they came up with, I also know it’s going to end just when things are at their most bleak. So, there’s no way I’m pinning all of my hopes and dreams on this movie—and neither should you.

The Infinity Gauntlet Reshapes Reality. In other words, not only does this first movie not really matter (because whatever gets done can get undone later), but whoever puts on the gauntlet gets to reset the clock and dial it all back to zero. Or not. Or somewhere in-between. We won’t know how the MCU shakes out until 2019. A year away. Why do you think they’ve been so tight-lipped about what movies come next? It’s because they don’t know.

Until the suits sit down in a boardroom with a bunch of lawyers, and all of the contracts are negotiated, there is zero point in speculating about what comes next, who lives, who dies, and how it all ends up. Anything can happen. But it’ll happen legally first, and then get handed down by the studio: “This is what you have to work with. Make it work.” And I’m sure Feige will do what he did the first time around. He’ll make lemonade out of lemons if he has to. At best, I’m betting he’s got a few contingency plans mapped out. But they don’t get to pick them until the courts sign off on Disney’s acquisition. Fan-Nattering online is just that. Just say no to the clickbait speculation sites. 

This isn’t about comics anymore. When you kvetch, write a letter, or even tweet your displeasure, you’re not talking to an editor and a creative team. You’re talking to a cavalcade of accountants and lawyers in suits, all of whom do not care about this material in the slightest beyond what its earning potential is for the company. Always remember that, and you’ll see how meaningless the online chatter really is.

As much as no one is talking about it, this franchise does not exist creatively any more. It exists as intellectual property belonging to a megalithic corporation specializing in global entertainment, brand name recognition, and the most savvy and targeted marketing strategies in the world. That’s Disney. That’s who they are. And what comes later in Phase 4 and Phase 5 and on down the road will be negotiated by lawyers in suits, with contracts, and licensing. It’s just how it is, now. I don’t want to think about it, but the best part of the MCU may well be over and done with. I hope not, but I’m not naïve, and you shouldn't be, either.

I’m going to watch Avengers: Infinity War for the spectacle it surely will be. I’m going to appreciate all these great actors in roles I’ve come to love interacting and bouncing off of one another. That’s going to be a lot of fun. And I’m bracing myself for when the movie goes dark, because that’s surely coming, too.

Remember: There's always
Ant-Man and the Wasp!

We cannot judge the movie on its own merits because it’s like turning Casablanca off in the middle of the film and surmising how it’s all going to end. “Oh, looks like Rick and Elsa get back together again! Awesome!” You wouldn’t do that, and you can’t do that. Certainly not to Casablanca, but also to any story. And I don’t think it’ll be possible to evaluate this film until 2019, when we can see it all together in one giant five-hour butt-numbing binge.

Going into the weekend, please take all of this into consideration. Don’t click on every negative review you read. In fact, you can skip the gushing ones, too. You can’t possibly be on the fence about the movie. You’re either going to watch it, or you’re not. Just temper your own expectations down and you’ll be fine. It’ll be worth the price of admission just to see if they can pull off something of this logistical complexity. Given Marvel’s track record, my feeling is that they will.

Lost In Space and Your Entertainment Dollar

So, we just got ten hours of a new Lost in Space show on Netflix. And seemingly out of nowhere, too. I mean, we didn't even have time to be properly outraged about how it shouldn't be remade because the original was so good...I mean, outraged about how it shouldn't be remade because the original was so bad...oh wait. We totally all did. The Internet had op-ed pieces about that very thing within minutes of the announcement.

Oh, golly, the hand-wringing! The fretting! The derision and snark!

Worst. Idea. Ever.

And then when it finally dropped, here came the reviews. I saw a lot of passing commentary on social media. About how it was well-done and the cast was great. How it was horribly done and everyone was out of character. How it was surprising and engaging. How it was deeply flawed with flat, hackneyed premises. How it broke down some barriers in a quiet and clever way. How the science was just so outrageously bad it was hard to pay attention. It was about about about about...

We are all talking about Lost in Space, right?

This show, here?

In Space, Every Day is Easter Sunday.

And this horrible, suck-ass movie, here?

"Oh, the Pain" is right, Gary Oldman. What were you thinking?

But some of y'all have a problem with Netflix. Okay, whatever.

Look, I can't fix what I believe to be real and pervasive problems within the SF/F communities. I can't fix the myriad of dysfunctions that have plagued us for generations and even though the strictures that once shunted us off into a sub-culture have been largely removed by the whole of society, we all still feel that we need to be shoved into our locker--no, make that--we feel more comfortable back in our locker, like a prisoner who goes wire-happy or the monster in The Crate from Creepshow.

So I'm not going to address the people who are upset at the high-tech hand waving in this show but don't have a problem with any version of Star Trek. I'm not going to address the people who pooh-poohed the plot holes but are wildly uncritical of Doctor Who. I'm not going to address the people who thought the movie was better, because they are wrong and there's no helping them.

Instead, let's look at the platform. Netflix. Here's a quick overview with rough numbers. Y'all seem to like numbers, so here you go:

Deluxe Streaming Service costs $14 bucks a month. You get everything. But you can't watch it all. You have to sleep. So, let's assume that you get about 18 hours' worth of content on Netflix a day. That's pretty generous and assumes you're a shut-in with a colostomy bag. But it's possible.

18 hours times 30 days is 540 hours, total. Divide $14.00 across 540 hours and you are paying .025 cents an hour. Literally two and a half cents. Your ten hour binge of Lost in Space costs a whopping quarter. Two bits. A shave and a haircut by any other name would still seem so cheap. Even if you were somehow the only person in the world not using Netflix and you signed up just for this show, your cost would still be $1.40 per episode. You can't buy a comic book for that price.

So, what exactly was your problem, again? Yeah, that's what I kinda thought.

Look, if you want to say something interesting or thoughtful about the new Lost in Space, I'm all for that. But if you want to truck out the same old tired bucket of tar and feathers that you use for everything you don't like for fill-in-the-blank reason, do us all a favor and instead, drop a quarter in your piggy bank. Do it every time you'd like to kvetch about the media you're willingly consuming. At the end of the year, take those quarters and go buy yourself a nice dinner at your favorite restaurant and call it even. That way, you get something out of all of your personal discomfort, and I don't have to see the same thing written over and over again, ad nauseum.

When Rick and Morty Don’t Get the Star Wars Movie They Want

So, by now, you’ve seen the latest Internet dust-up. No, it’s not over health care, or the massive tax break for the rich, or the ongoing cockroach cluster that is the American Media sex scandal, or the fact that Disney is now an Intellectual Property Monopoly unto itself. It’s not about food, or oil, or governmental overreach, or Russia, or corporate culture run amok.

It’s about Star Wars.

Luke looks a little dark in this poster.
I wonder what they could have been
trying to convey with that?

Yeah, you heard me, Star Wars. The 8^th chapter in the seemingly interminable saga of the Skywalker Dysfunctional Family, the 9^th movie in 40 years. And we’re not done with it. That is, most of us aren’t done. We’re waiting patiently for Episode 9, when the trilogy of trilogies is complete. We’re even going to sit through a Han Solo movie that no one asked for, while we wait.

But some of you—and let’s be clear about this: it’s a vocal minority, and we know that now, don’t we?—some of you feel as though you didn’t get something you were promised. And what exactly was that, hmmm? You were promised a movie that advanced a storyline that has been in motion—glacial, inexorable motion—since 1977. And you got it, in spades. Two-and-a-half hours’ worth of space fights, lightsabers, starships, and obligatory ancillary merchandise out the wazoo. So has it always been, and so shall it ever be.

So, what’s your problem?

Ben Shapiro’s Laundry List of complaints—many of which fall into the round file alongside stuff like “You wouldn’t hear the explosions in space, duh!” but it also includes a jab at the "Social Justice Warrior" message in the movie, as well. And this bit of incisive journalism about the unanswered questions plot holes in the movie, and, as writer/artist Jamal Igle notes, none of which are plot holes.  Gerry Conway’s political repositioning of the movie certainly accounted for some of the uproar. Apparently, Star Wars should never be about something, unless that something is friendships and space ships and laser swords. Darren Yohan went the opposite way and justified everychoice made in the movie.

The Teaser Poster. That red and white
color scheme that ran through the
posters? That was intentional. I
wonder what they could have been
trying to convey with that?

So, there was, once again, a gulf of difference between the fans and the critics. But was there? My evidence is anecdotal, largely empirical, and wouldn’t hold up in court, but since I own a movie theater that is playing Star Wars: The Last Jedi, I have the luxury of asking my audience—passionate Star Wars fans, the lot of them—what they thought. Here’s their general consensus:

Most of them found one thing to not like, or question, or say, “I’d rather they...”. But then they hasten to add, “But I loved it. It was fantastic!” Now, this certainly may be partially due to the glow of having just seen the movie, but I’ve got repeat customers in week two who are only liking it more as they come out of the theater.

This isn’t all fans, of course. Many folks I know didn’t like the movie, for what I’d consider to be articulate, concrete, and specific reasons. A few of them are even mad about it. After all, for some of us, this would be considered yet another disappointment, after (just to pull one out of a hat) Episode I: the Phantom Menace.

For one fan, though, it was too much to bear. He started a petition on Change.org to get enough signatures so that Disney would strike the movie from the Star Wars canon. As of this writing, it has over 59,000 signatures and counting.

I am not joking. I wish I was.

Novelist and screenwriter Chris Cargill fairly Mjolnir-ed the nail on the head thusly on Twitter:

C. Robert Cargill‏ @Massawyrm Dec 20
There has been a gawdawful Holiday Special, two unwatchable Ewok feature films, three reviled special editions, three despised prequels, a complete embarrassment of a feature length animated Clone Wars movie... ...but Episode VIII is where you draw the line canonically? Huh.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about the guy who started this whole thing, Henry Walsh. After the story went viral, and he started getting death threats (because, see, that’s what happens when stories go viral—they explode and their spores get all over everyone and this trigger mutations and that’s how you get more trolls, get it?), he rolled back his statement. Here’s the quote from the newsweek article: 

"Hey guys I need to be honest here," Walsh wrote on Tuesday. "I put this petition up because I was upset and I was on strong pain medication."  Walsh, who is from Avondale Estates, Georgia, explained that he was recently in a car accident, and was "frustrated and medicated" when he created the campaign. "It was a bad idea at the time and I feel that we are pooling our efforts in not a healthy direction." 

Walsh recommended everyone who signed his petition (46,394 people and counting) check out other, more pressing issues on Change.org. "I couldn't get the help on GoFundMe to help pay for my surgery, and yet *this* gets this kind of attention," he wrote. 

Then, in a second update on Wednesday, Walsh announced he would update the petition every day to highlight a new cause, starting with A Force For Change, a fundraising effort by Star Wars fans, currently raising money for Unicef Kid Power and Starlight Children's Foundation. 

Walsh added that he still really hates The Last Jedi.

In a follow up article, on a website closer to home, he added to the story:

 Walsh said he tried to rein it in, telling people to devote their energies to helping someone who needed it and reminding them of the petition’s humorous intentions. That made things even worse. 

“The people supporting the petition decided I was a sell out and Disney had bought me off,” he said. “I wish Disney had bought me off. I could use the money." 

Walsh has had a tough year. An accident left him wheelchair bound and he moved to Avondale Estates to find treatment for his condition and get back on his feet. He said when he saw the movie – the longest “Star Wars” film ever made – he was in physical pain due to sitting up the whole time. 

After the film, he was venting online when someone suggested he write the petition as Professor Walsh, a persona he used when he wrote for the “Star Wars” fan site, “Ask a Jedi.”

“I was hired to be controversial, so we created the Professor Walsh persona, which is like if you take me and ratchet me up to 11,” he said. “Professor Walsh was always highly critical and aggressive in a critique.” 

He said when he created the petition, “At the time I was really frustrated with the film. It was, ‘Hey, let’s do this. It will be great. We’ll get 20 or 30 people and it’s gonna be a laugh and that’s it.'” 

But not everyone got the joke, he said. 

“Funny thing about ideas on the internet,” he said. “It seems, not everyone realizes things aren’t supposed to be super serious.”

But, see, here’s where Henry Walsh got it wrong, so very wrong. He knew exactly what this would do. I am not unsympathetic to his situation, okay? As one of the people on www.askajedi.com, he was an authority on Star Wars, especially the Expanded Universe...you remember, all of that stuff that was the first thing to go when Walt Disney bought George Lucas’ hot mess? That stuff. So, this guy, who was a big deal, a decent writer as far as fan-scholars go, and someone who had all of the answers, suddenly had no answers.

Then he got hit (literally and figuratively) with a couple of tragedies; things that would have thrown any of us into a real funk. And he didn’t have any (or enough, or the right kind of) insurance to cover the cost of his surgeries. So he started a GoFundMe campaign, and it didn’t exactly light the world on fire. But he never thought to go back to his old stomping grounds and say, “Hey, all of you Jedi fanatics, I need a little help, here.” He could have done so easily, even though the site no longer seems to be regularly updated, I’m positive this kid is online in other Star Wars forums. He could have asked for what he needed, and I’ll bet you some Star Wars fans who GET it would very likely have gladly dropped a donation to help him get a brace so he could have mobility back. Because that’s what a Star Wars fan would do, as the hundreds of non-profit Star Wars charity groups across the country would tell you.

But he didn’t do that. Instead, he decided to pull a Rick and Morty and pitch a hissy fit about the Szechuan Sauce. 

Now I’m not going to aim this directly at Henry, because again, I am sympathetic to his medical condition, and the effects of pain killers, and also I understand about stupid lapses in judgment on the Internet. Also, I appreciate his efforts to back off of his original stance and highlight other groups that need help and support on gofundme and change.org.

This next part is aimed at the 59,000 and counting Star Wars fans who signed that ridiculous petition: just who the hell do you think you are, anyway?

I’ve spoken before about fans taking ownership of the Star Wars movies, but there’s a big difference between a director monkeying around with a film and changing fundamental characters and endings, years after we all decided we liked them just fine the way they were, and a group of fans who are acting like middle management at a dog food company, rejecting a commercial proposal because it doesn’t hit the right notes for them. “Yeah, no, we were thinking of something just like the old Chuck Wagon ads, but not exactly that, but basically that, even though they are old and we’ve all seen them before. We’re going to need you to take this back and rework it. We don’t quite know what we want; we’ll let you know when we see it.”

Um, that’s not how this works, y’all. I can’t believe I’m defending Walt Disney, Inc,. here, but this is exactly the movie they wanted to put out. I’m sorry that two full years of rampant speculation and countless hours—no, make that weeks—spent on the Interwebs, explaining the reasons for your theory as to who Rey’s parents were in detail—with frames from the film, to back it all up—all of the arguments, friendly and otherwise, about Kylo Ren, Snope, The First Order, all of it—well, I’m sorry that none of that fan-activity amounted to diddly-squat. You weren’t, in fact, the first person to figure it out. No one figured it out. The slate has been wiped clean. The Etch-a-Sketch has been turned over and shaken. Too bad, so sad.

And if that’s why you’re so pissed—that none of your guesses were correct—then you’ve got the same pants to get happy in, Rick and Morty, because you have clearly and completely missed the point of Star Wars, watching movies, and I daresay, interacting with people.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

By the time I was a teenager, in the 1980s, I was used to being lied to by authority figures. My first political scandal I remember was Watergate, and “I am not a crook!” hung in the American Lexicon for at least twenty years or so. Two fingers up, jowls shaking, say that phrase, and people go “NIXON!” So, between Saturday Night Live, Mad Magazine (I was too young for National Lampoon—good thing, too, or I would have been insufferable), a slew of post-modern films designed to challenge accepted narratives, The Iran-Contra scandal, “Read My Lips: NO NEW TAXES!” and oh, GOD, what else? I stopped trusting adults as soon as I hit puberty and never looked back.

This did include—and moreover should have included—Lucas’ plans to make six more Star Wars movies. We should have stopped after Return of the Jedi. I see that, now. I didn’t believe Lucas when he said he was done. Well, I did at the time, but when the re-mastered digitally-enhanced Special Editions were released for the 25^th anniversary, I began to think maybe he was going back on his end of the bargain. And boy, did he!

Most of ya’ll weren’t around to see the reactions from Generation X. We were just like you, if we can be perfectly honest about it. We were pissed. Pissed about all of it. Especially The Phantom Menace. I’m sure most of you have seen “the Fandom Edit” version, where some enterprising young pirate cut all of the Jar Jar Binks scenes out of the movie. And can you blame him? We weren’t over Greedo shooting first—that was still being hotly debated—and now here comes this new Star Wars, for a new generation (Lucas mentioned his kids several times in the interviews before the world “turned against him” and he shut himself off from the fans).

But it blew over. The second Prequel (the one I like to call “the apology”) was at least watchable, if not enjoyable. And that last one—well, see, we knew how the story was going to turn out, so there was zero suspense, zero tension, and zero surprise, unless you count Mace Windu getting killed, or Darth Annie slaughtering all of the young Jedi children like he killed all of the Tusken Raiders who kidnapped his mother in the previous film. But whatever. We had to come to grips with the notion that Star Wars was not "ours" anymore, because there were eager dads showing the movie to their kids, hooking them on Darth Maul, lightsaber fights, the toys, the collectibles, all of it. Lots of dads got to vaguely relive their wonder years with their kids in tow.

And we made a kind of peace with this new trilogy. We had to, for one simple reason: the franchise wasn't ours to monkey around with. It belonged to Lucas, and he made that abundantly clear when he decided to release the Special Editions with all of their nonsense. He did it even as he had growing contempt for his fans. There's a lot of spite in the prequels, an almost "because I said so!" vibe. Daddy was mad at us. And for a while, we were mad at him right back.

But then we shrugged and said, “yeah, well, I’m just not going to buy them when the come out.,” or “I’ll own them, for the set, but I’ll never watch them.” Whatever it was you did or said to get you over the hump. The six movies, such as they were, represented a complete arc. The birth, life, transformation and redemption of Darth Vader. It was not what we were promised. But if you stepped back and looked at it as a complete thing, it held up as someone’s vision, if not the original idea. And if you’ll notice, that’s where Lucas stopped. 

There's your Must-Have Christmas
item for 2017. See? Star Wars will
never really let you down. And now,
neither will Walt Disney, Inc. 

Then Lucas sold it all to Disney for two billion dollars and laughed all the way to the bank. And who can blame him? I’m sue he was sick to death about hearing how he invented the modern blockbuster and doomed the planet to an early extinction event at the same time. How Star Wars revolutionized an industry and inspired a generation and the prequels were the worst thing to happen to filmmaking since Howard the Duck.

So, this new Disney-backed trilogy is announced, and since everyone didn’t like the prequels, let’s get the original gang back together. Only, you didn’t like that, because it was too much like the other one. So, now, the new one comes out, and it completely upsets the apple carts, and you’re crying like four-year-old with a scraped knee. Unbelievable.

There is nothing in this movie that is any dumber, any more illogical, any less make-sense-able, any stretching of the imagination to the breaking point that is in ANY of the other Star Wars movies. Leia’s little floating stunt? You didn’t like that? Midi-Chlorians, asshole. In fact, that should be the counter for everything you don’t like about The Last Jedi, from Porgs on down. Midi-freaking-chlorians. Give me strength.

This reminds me of something from the Simpsons:

Close enough, right?

Writer and Director Rian Johnson has given us all a gift. He took all of the stuff that didn’t make sense, that you didn’t like, that you spent months of your life trying to work out in your head so that it made sense, and he swept the table clean. There are no more Legos on the board, now. And what he replaced it with really set some of you off. If your explanation for why you're so mad includes the word "agenda," then you're a nickel-plated imbecile. 

There was a comedian, Greg Davis, in the 1980s, who had a character he called “the Punk Rock Magician,” and it was a silly gag, really. He put on a fake mohawk and held up things like a rubber chicken with a nail in its heads and say, in an affected cockney accent, Iss an eelooosion!” and when people laughed, he’d yell, “Fuck Yew!” More than once in the routine, he’s grab the mic, lean out across it like Johnny Rotten, and say, “I’m fewlin’ you an’ you don’ like it!” Boy, do you NOT like it. But that’s okay. You’ll settle in, just as we did. And are doing. After all, this isn’t the first time we’ve been lied to. We’re Generation X. Our zeitgeist is held together with half-truths, lies, and fabrications of all kinds. Welcome to adulthood, y’all.

Episode 9, the last one, in two years’ time, will finally, after 43 years, put an end to Lucas’s nine-movie odyssey. Ambitious in 1977 to the point of ridicule, but now a completely doable thing. And we are going to watch that movie with fresh eyes, and no idea what’s coming. No more Luke, Leia, and Han. I hope Chewie takes the droids and flies into the sun. Let’s just end this thing. It’s gone on for too long. 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m excited for the movie. I want to see it end. I think the world that Lucas created still has life in it. And I want to see new movies set in that world. Whether we go back a thousand years to the Old Republic and find out how the Jedi and the Sith separated, or whether we go forward from the remnants of Episode 9 (I hope it’s the former), I’m looking forward to new characters and new stories that don't take forty-three years and three generations to wrap up. But first, we have to clear this embarrassing clunker of a promise—a stack of lies and deceptions—out of the way so there will be an end to it all and you can let go of it. That’s what youfans want, even if you’re going to hate it so much that you’ll only watch it three times, instead of your usual five.

From the Vanity Fair photo shoot.
Still gets me every time. 

Maybe at the end of all of this, we can apply a little perspective and think that maybe, just maybe, this whole shebang was little more than a sleight-of-hand trick that we watched so much we figured out how it was done. We keep wanting the magic, but we can see how the trick works. We can’t have it both ways.

Here’s the final link. It’s the only one that really matters. It’s Henry Walsh’s GoFundMe page. If you can spare anything, please help him out. As a fellow Star Wars fan. Regardless of whether or not he liked Episode 8. Let’s be the people that Ben Kenobi and Yoda would have approved of. Do what you can, if you can do anything. No hate. Just love. Positive messages only. https://www.gofundme.com/help-me-get-a-prosthetic-brace

The Alamo Draft House Gordian Knot

Note: I'm only posting this to give some context to my reactions regarding the massive scandal the Alamo Drafthouse Finds itself Embroiled in involving, among others, Devin Faraci and now Harry Knowles. If you don't care about any of this, or don't know the players involved, feel free to skip it all.

The first time I saw Harry Knowles was at a City Wide Garage Sale in the mid-1990s. We were walking around and looking for geeky junk and my friend pointed to their set-up and said, “Buyer Beware.”

“What?” Their set-up had a lot of interesting things on it. Some movie memorabilia, including Lobby Cards, which I was really into at the time.

“They have a reputation for selling reproductions and knock-offs as originals. And when you tell them about it, they refund your money, but put the shit back out on the table. We call them ‘Buyer Beware.’”

Good to know, I thought.

I later learned their names, and sure enough, they had a reputation around Austin amongst the other dealers and collectors in the Geek Secondary Market; the comic shops, record shops, weekend warrior dealers, etc. In other words, in a world of sharks, they were the sharks other people were careful to avoid.

Some time after that, they came into the comic shop where I worked; scratch that, they swaggered in. Their whole demeanor was one of “prove it,” and they were very careful to inspect us, what we were selling, and the look of the store. (Long Story Short: we’d taken over the business from long-time owners and made a few changes to the place—for those of you keeping up, it was the beginning of Austin Books, Mk.II).

They eventually made some small talk with us, bought some supplies (the go-to move for anyone casing a new store) and bid us adieu. Thereafter, we’d see them approximately once a year, as they checked in on us and looked for, well, I don’t know what, exactly, but they always made small purchases and that was it.

It was several years later (after I left the store, moved away, and moved back) that they made an appearance one day. Harry was excited. He’d just started a website, see? And he gleefully told me about some spy he knew from LA that sent him pictures of...you know, I don’t even remember what—but that he ran them and the studio was sooooo pissed at him, and he was just, you know, a fan, sharing pictures, and it wasn’t HIS fault if they weren’t supposed to be released, how did HE know? He then told me I should come check out the site.

I did.

It was terrible. Badly written, weirdly personal, not at all professional, distractingly disingenuous, and full of some real sycophantic, nearly slavish praise, for everything Harry was writing. It didn’t make sense to me.

I knew that his dad had tenuous connections to “Hollywood,” in that he worked on some films that were made in Texas, but they made way more of this connection than maybe a guy who worked, uncredited, in the prop department, fully deserved. Even before Austin became a Mecca Hot Spot for Texas filmmakers, it was always a quiet underground for Texas filmmakers, and actors. I wasn’t impressed.

Harry’s rep was largely folded around his father’s credits, such as they were, and so sure, they probably did know some folks behind the scenes working on movies. Again, I say, so what? Someone snaps pics of the actor on the set and you publish them. Basically, the same thing the National Enquirer does.

To borrow a quote from another,
better movie, "Uh, not really, no."

I hate-read the site for a while, trying to get a handle on it. And I was reading just at the right time read about Harry’s visit to the set of Armageddon, wherein they walked him around, and he got to meet Bruce Willis in his space suit, and he spent time at the craft services table, and on and on and on, but nothing really about the movie. Just his impressions of stuff. It was really amateurish, wide-eyed, wonderment. There were several of those travelogues, and they were all very embarrassing. On one of these trips, he split his pants on the set—and then stuck around after. Zero pride. Zero filters.

It was around this time that his “reviews” began to take on these glowing tones. You should have heard him gush about Armageddon, a film that might have been somewhat entertaining, but was nowhere near the emotional, cathartic experience he made it out to be. He was duly excoriated on the site, which brought his defenders running to say, “you don’t know, you don’t understand, you can’t do any better, etc.” It was appalling. I kept thinking to myself, “How is it that Hollywood is taking this guy seriously?”

I wrote about it, in an early email article that I was sending around—the first version of Finn’s Wake, back when I had an AOL address. And oh, God, did I get blowback. See, I was one of the ones who just didn’t get it. I didn’t know anything. I was not privy to any of the great plans, great deals, great schemes that Harry was planning on giving the world, all for us, and by tearing him down, I was a real asshole. What had they ever done to me?

Nothing, frankly. But the Knowles, as a group, were sketchy when I first saw them, they acted sketchy every time I interacted with them, and now they were profiting from being sketchy online. Oh, and the kid couldn’t write. Not well. It bothered me that his reviews were more about Harry than why a movie was or wasn’t good. It went beyond subjective. It was wildly inconsistent, because he back tracked, issued second reviews that nullified the first review, and demonstrated over and over that he was not above being wined and dined in exchange for saying nice things. Voice a criticism and his jackbooted-thugs-online followers piled on with hateful, spiteful, and cheerfully horrible attacks. It just wasn’t an interaction I was interested in having, especially not on a daily basis. So, I tuned out and stopped watching the tire fire.

The last time I saw him in the store was around the time that Dean Devlin’s new Godzilla movie was about to drop. Harry was bragging to me that “Dean kept trying to get me to say nice things about the lead actress in the movie, who, you know, he’s dating right now, but I’m not gonna...I mean, hey man, I’ve got some standards, here. I can’t just...you know, because we’re friends, and all...”

After telling me that story, they bought some comic book supplies and left.

Faraci at SDCC from 2007. Exactly how I pictured him.

By that time, I was reading CHUD, a Georgia-based movie fan site, this one dedicated to Horror movies. The Wild West mentality was in full swing over there, as well. One of the biggest shit-stirrers was a Journeyman Asshole named Devin Faraci, a man who seemed dedicated to taking his Asshole Credentials to the Professional level. He was, if nothing else, a better writer than Harry, but he had a style of analysis that I have come to think of as Khan-textualizing. You know the quote. “You’ve managed to kill just about everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you Keep. Missing. The Target.”

That’s Faraci’s film commentary. Impressive. Showy. Makes good points. Always screws up the landing. He can’t stick the dismount. He always devolves into some petulant version of his own worst personality quirks, and manages to alienate careful readers. If, like most people reading on the Internet, you read the first few paragraphs and skim the rest, he comes off as a genius. But it’s in the skim where the Emperor Has No Clothes.

Apparently, though, he could talk a good game, because he next showed up at Badass Cinema. Later, it became Birth. Death. Movies. In both cases, it was hard to get past his now weapons-grade asshole-ish behavior. I never met him in person, but I am positive it would have been very hard to not have a go at him after all of the hateful shit he wrote online over the years.

Around this time, the Alamo Draft House was becoming a thing. To die-hard movie fans, their "No Texting" policy was a godsend. They were militant about it, and with good reason: it was a real problem in Austin, a tech-savvy city, at the time. It probably still is. But whatever, it was this place that was just not like the corporate-driven multiplexes. They "got it." My first experience with the Draft House was going to a midnight show of the movie Shaft. The ticket price included a 40 oz. malt liquor. Genius. And the place was paaaaaaaacked full of scruffy guys with unkempt beards, all singing the theme from Shaft, and I realized that not only had I found my people, but my place to watch movies.

This is purely from the standpoint of the outsider looking in. I have dealt with the Draft House professionally at BookPeople before on several occasions where we cross-promoted events, and me and my business partner Steve got to sit down with co-founder Tim League and talk to him about the perils of running a movie theater. He gave us some good advice. Probably doesn't even remember meeting me, and wouldn't recognize me to this day.

But I was never cool enough to be at any of these parties. Always had to work during FantasticFest. Didn't WANT to go to the Butt-Numb-A-Thon (see above). Never an insider. Never really wanted to be. Mostly because of the people I saw in those orbits that I wanted nothing to do with. Not when there were so many other people I could be working with that I did like, that weren't assholes. 

It was—again—weird to me that Tim would want to partner with both Harry and Devin. But they brought with them a certain extra value, in the form of loyal followers and large platforms from which to promote the Alamo Draft House. I just assumed at the time that it was a smart decision by League to use them to get the word out about the cool things the Draft House was doing.

I got busy doing my own stuff. I had zero interest in dealing with either of these people, and they were the people that I would need to deal with if I wanted to be involved in the Austin Film Community in some way other than as a fan. So, that’s what I did. Years later, folks finally began to question what Harry was doing. In a massive, two-part takedown, Film Threat flayed Harry for all of the things, and more, that I saw wrong with the site (Part 1 here, Part 2 here). Vindication was great, but by then, Knowles was worth 700K a year. And laughing all the way to the bank. It just felt like a scam from the get-go. Sketchy. Buyer Beware.

I’m only posting this because folks have wondered at my glee regarding these recent allegations. It’s more than mere schadenfreude on my part. It turned out, no one liked Devin Faraci at all, but because he held some weird perceived power, and people thought they had to kow-tow to him, they let him be an asshole instead of blowing the whistle and ordering him out of the pool.

I think it comes down to this: I don’t like bullies and I don’t like assholes. And I never have. I saw these guys for what they were from the start. I don’t think it merits a victory lap, per se, but I am very pleased to know that my gut-instincts were correct. I have since stopped doubting myself, relying on my ability to size people and things up accordingly, and it’s just good to know that I’ve had that ability for longer than I thought.

As for the Alamo Draft House, well, I really hope Tim can make the necessary changes to ensure this doesn't happen again. I think he can, and it's not that hard to do, in the grand scheme. My advice to him, step one, is to not associate yourself with sketchy people and assholes. That's a really good start.

Now both of these guys are “getting help” and I hope they do. They have apologies to make, and a lot of bad shit to atone for, and it’s not up to me whether or not they are forgiven. But—and let me say this out loud—even if they are forgiven, it would be a grievous mistake to re-install them anywhere close to where they were. Leopards do not change their spots. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. Even sober, even with 12-step programs completed, even with apologies made, and victims forgiving...even if all of that were to happen, my gut tells me they’d still be sketchy, still be an asshole. And this time, I’m trusting my gut.

Minor Edit: correcting the location of CHUD.