Fulfilling a dying friend's request...Star Wars style

Fanboys ««½
PG-13, 90m., 2008

Cast & Credits: Sam Huntington (Eric), Chris Marquette (Linus), Dan Fogler (Hutch), Jay Baruchel (Windows), Kristen Bell (Zoe), David Denman (Chaz), Christopher McDonald (Big Chuck), Seth Rogen (Admiral Seasholtz/Alien/Roach), Danny Trejo (The Chief), Ethan Suplee (Harry Knowles), Billy Dee Williams (Judge Reinhold), William Shatner (Himself), Carrie Fisher (Doctor), Kevin Smith (Himself), Jason Mewes (Himself), Ray Park (THX Security Guard #2). Screenplay by Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg based on a story by Ernest Cline and Dan Pulick. Directed by Kyle Newman.



Fanboys is a humorous but often times, unnecessarily raunchy look at how die-hard fans of the now classic Star Wars trilogy (Star Wars-1977, The Empire Strikes Back 1980, Return of the Jedi-1983) excitedly prepared themselves for the new prequel, Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Menace, the year before its premiere May 19, 1999.

To be more precise, the story focuses on a group of childhood buddies, Eric (Sam Huntington), Hutch (Dan Fogler), Windows (Jay Baruchel), and Zoe (Kristen Bell) who take their dying friend, Linus (Chris Marquette) on a cross country trip to George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch near Nicasio, California with plans to break in and steal a copy of Star Wars – Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

I have to admit given the amount of hype created when Lucas announced plans to return to Star Wars territory in the mid-1990s, I would not be surprised if, and I am not going to hesitate in saying this, some deranged fans did perhaps dream of breaking into Skywalker Ranch to get their hands on a bootleg copy of Episode I.

Such a story would have probably made headlines in the entertainment industry if it turned out some devoted fans acomplished such a feat. The only reason as to why they did it was to fulfill a dying friend and fan’s wish to see a long awaited film that he knows he would not be around to see with everyone else a year later. On that aspect, George Lucas could be like The Wizard of Oz, granting that dying fan’s final wish. I don’t think he would have said no much less prosecute the group for trespassing once he had heard the reason. The drive-by media probably would not have been too kind.

I can understand the fan’s excitement back then given that how much of a fan I was of the original trilogy when I was in grade school. When Kenner, now known as Hasbro, announced in 1996 that they were returning to producing Star Wars figures and toys, I saw it as a chance to relive my youth again, given that I no longer owned any of the original figures and toys. I was not so much excited that Lucas would finally get to telling the background story of how Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader as I was being given the opportunity to get my hands on all those original trilogy toys I missed since Kenner stopped making them in the mid-1980s.

Even I couldn’t keep myself from escaping the hype in May 1999. It was like embracing “the Dark Side” of mass marketing. The week before Phantom Menace’s premiere, I stood in line for four hours at the Galaxy 9 theater in Garland, Texas along with everyone else waiting to buy advance tickets for myself and several co-workers for an early screening on May 19. I can’t recall if anyone was dressed up as any Star Wars characters but I can say that to my disappointment, I saw no women wearing Princess Leia’s slavegirl oufit from Return of the Jedi people can now buy for less than $100 to wear on Halloween, or to fulfill some male or female’s erotic private bedroom fantasies.

Fanboys is at its best when it parodies the gangs' dedication to Star Wars acting out Jedi-mind tricks and arguing about the characters from the original trilogy. When Linus (Marquette) argues with Eric (Huntington) how gross it was for Leia to passionately kiss Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, the other retorts back that Luke didn’t know Leia was his sister until Return of the Jedi. The most memorable argument is a discussion on how Harrison Ford has never made a bad movie in his career as they pass by a billboard sign advertising his film, Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), on their way to California.

The most clever moments are not so much the cameos from former Star Wars vets Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams, and Ray Park but how the characters utter dialogue from the original trilogy that fits in with their current situation. When Eric unexpectedly shows up at a Halloween party in an early scene, Hutch jokingly utters the line Billy Dee Williams' Lando Calrissian said to Ford's Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.

“You’ve got a lot of guts coming here, after what you pulled,” Hutch says.

What I wouldn't give to get the opportunity to use this line on an ex-friend of mine who moved out of state last year and didn't bother to leave me a forwarding address should he decide, for no reason, to pop back into my life. Moreover, I'm not so sure I'd be too friendly about it either.

The downside of Fanboys is it doesn’t quite achieve the emotional core I was looking for given that much of the story has to do with the dying friend's quest to see Episode I with all his friends before the public does.

I wonder if people who remember standing in line the summers of 77’, 80’ and 83’to see the original trilogy when the films were showing on less than 1,000 screens nationwide and waited in line to buy tickets to see Phantom Menace was like a nostalgic return back to yesteyear?

Such a notion may just be what Fanboys is all about as echoed by Linus near the end to Eric who he hadn’t kept in touch with for three years. Maybe it wasn’t about the chance to see Episode I before everyone else does, Linus says. The cross country trip was more about getting back together again as a group of buddies all of whom shared a common interest. Perhaps that was the point of waiting in line with so many others that day to get tickets for Episode I.

At least that’s the message I got from watching Fanboys. I have to say from 1996 to May 1999, collecting Star Wars merchandise was like a return back to yesteryear. Those years were, to quote a familiar line from the original trilogy, “Before the Dark Times” before learning that the prequels were not as good as the original trilogy.

Up until May 19, 1999, this was a happier time when not a single fan dared ask their friends the dreaded question about Episode I, “What if the movie sucks?”

©4/25/09

ER ends and so too perhaps are the days of memorable long running dramas on the major networks

“So that’s it?” said the character Ernest Borgnine portrayed on the final episode of NBC’s ER which aired April 2. Like so many memorable guest stars that included Alan Alda, Ray Liotta, and Don Cheadle the medical drama featured over its 15-year-run, Borgnine played an elderly husband who stood vigil at his dying wife’s bedside asking Dr. Tony Gates (John Stamos) that question when she passed away.

The answer to that question, though, may not just apply to that character’s situation or the end of NBC’s long running medical drama where 16.2 million viewers tuned in for the finale, but an end to noteworthy shows the three big networks (NBC, ABC, CBS), ok, four when you include Fox, have to offer.

Sure viewers are still tuning into The Simpsons, and the never ending Law & Order and CSI franchises and Lost. I suppose when it comes to soap opera dramas, or should I say trashy soap opera silliness, viewers still have Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters, and Grey’s Anatomy on ABC to look forward to.

When I say “noteworthy dramas”, however, I am talking about my own personal favorite long running shows like Chicago Hope, Homicide: Life On the Street, NYPD Blue, St. Elsewhere and, though I stopped watching years ago as the entire original cast was replaced by newcomers, ER.

Yes I admit when mentioning these shows, I claim personal bias thanks in part to the characters I enjoyed watching who went through a variety of personal problems while on the job. There is no denying they weren’t memorable. I found, for example, television’s best police detectives were the fiery volcanic mountains of anger, negativity, and perfectionism Andre Braugher and Dennis Franz displayed in Homicide: Life On the Street (1993-1999) and NYPD Blue (1993-2005).

As for St. Elsewhere (1982-1988) and Chicago Hope (1994-2000), the brilliant, ego driven, self absorbed surgeons William Daniels and Mandy Patinkin played on the series were my favorite characters. I admit I have a fond weakness for TV characters who are complete assholes and make other people’s lives in the workplace miserable. They are the villains who made some of these shows worth watching. Such was the reason why I couldn’t get enough of Paul McCrane’s Dr. Robert “Rocket” Romano on ER. When a helicopter crashed on him thus ending the life of his character in the series’ 10th season, I am certain I was the only one in mourning.

These programs offered the dramatic equivalent of what viewers are watching today on the cable networks. Since the late 90s, their favorite characters have been a mobster going through a midlife crisis and wonder if he really got whacked in the final episode in The Sopranos (1999-2007), women obsessed with sex, fashion, and high heels in Sex and the City (1998-2004), and whether or not the remains of the human race will finally reach Earth and evade the cyborg Cylons forever in the reincarnated Battlestar Galactica (2004-2009).

Today’s popular dramas are the ones on cable where viewers are interested in are the high stakes deals of an immoral litigator played by Glenn Close in Damages, the daily struggles of a firefighter (Dennis Leary) in Rescue Me on FX, and the life of a chemistry teacher turned criminal in Breaking Bad on AMCtv. Vampires are the latest characters hungry for warm flesh as opposed to mobsters in True Blood on HBO. Even the animated half hour series, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, has been a ratings success for The Cartoon Network.

Such is the kind of material the major networks used to air and are now ignoring at an alarming pace. Why else do you think the high school sports drama, Friday Night Lights, almost got axed by NBC? Thanks to DirecTV, the show was saved and has recently been renewed for two more seasons on its satellite network before airing on the peacock. The trouble is it is only 13 episodes per season versus the usual twenty plus.

With ER gone, so too is the next big long running drama to look forward to every week on network television.

You got to go to cable to find that where FX, AMCtv, Sci-Fi, and HBO reign supreme over the kinds of programming Fox, ABC, CBS, and NBC used to offer.

©4/5/09

First Lady Michelle Obama "trash"? Tammy Bruce says yes-I say no

I admit the comment uttered by radio talk show host Tammy Bruce, subbing for Laura Ingram March 23 on WBAP sounded humorous, if not a little shocking, when she referred to First Lady Michelle Obama as “trash in the White House.”

What I found humorous was when Bruce compared Michelle Obama’s comments to a grade school class about how her classmates made fun of her in grade school for wanting to get good grades and talking like a “white girl” comparing her with the nitrus oxide kid seen on www.youtube.com who was drugged out after visiting the dentist crying, “Is this going to be forever?”

“No, it’s not going to be forever, Nitrus Oxide kid,” Bruce mockingly said. “It’s not.”

This was followed by Bruce calling the First Lady, “You know what we've got? We've got trash in the White House. Trash is a thing that is color blind, it can cross all eco-socionomic kind of categories, you can work on Wall Street or work at the Wal-Mart. Trash are people who use other people to get things, who patronize others, who consider you bitter and clingy.”

I found all this funny, at first that is. Reading over Bruce’s comments and then listening to Michelle Obama’s comments to the grade school kids a couple more times the next night when the liberal drive-by media picked up on it, I started asking myself what is the point Bruce is trying to make? I found it to be the racist equivalent of shock jock Don Imus’ comments back in 2007 when he referred to members of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hos.”

The comment was not funny but insulting and uncalled for.

After reading over Bruce’s comment, I thought to myself, “This doesn’t describe Michelle Obama.” If anyone comes to mind who is "trash", it’s Bernard Madoff, the disgraced financier currently sitting in jail awaiting a 150-year prison sentence this June in a 20-year Ponzi scheme which supposedly earned him up to $65 billion.

Madoff is trash. But Michelle Obama? As much as it pains me to fight for the side of a liberal, I have to say no, she is not. I admit I don’t care the least for this president and I take great pride in what President Obama referred to in his election victory speech last November at being called “those Americans” whose support he has yet to earn. He didn’t win my vote and like Rush Limbaugh, I want this president to fail. I can offer a number of reasons why I think what President Obama is doing is bad for the country versus the disgrace of calling the First Lady “Trash in the White House.”

I really have no idea what Bruce, who on her website, www.tammybruce.com describes herself in the very first line of her biography as “an openly gay, pro-choice, gun owning, pro-death penalty, voted-for-President Bush authentic feminist” is trying to say.

Listening to a clip Bruce played of Michelle Obama speaking to the grade school class, I fail to see where Bruce is coming from.

“Getting good grades was always important to me and it wasn’t because my parents were hounding me or that they had the expectation,” Michelle Obama said. “It was something that I wanted for myself. I wanted an A and I didn’t care whether it was cool 'cause I remember there were kids around my neighborhood who would say, “Ohhh, you talk funny. You talk like a white girl." I heard that growing up my whole life. I was like, I don’t even know what that means but you know what, I am still getting my A.”

Ok. So what’s wrong with that? I may be wrong in what the First Lady was telling those grade school kids but all she is saying is she wasn’t going to allow the criticisms of fellow students who say she talks like "a white girl" and keeping that from getting straight A's.

Why should Michelle Obama lower her own expectations because of what other people think of her or how she talks? Why should anyone for that matter?

Tammy Bruce is like MSNBC host, Rick Santelli, whose on air rant in February about responsible home owners taking up the slack for irresponsible ones who don’t pay their mortgages when it comes to President Obama's stimulus package got national attention. I haven’t heard anything controversial from Santelli since. I suspect I won’t hear anything controversial from Bruce any time soon either. Like Santelli, I never heard of Tammy Bruce until now.

I don’t agree with her comment, but at least she has the balls to say what’s on her mind, even if it doesn’t make sense.

Thankfully though, I heard no other conservative commentators discuss Bruce’s comments on their shows in the days following. They were all too busy interviewing and promoting talk show host’s Mark R. Levin’s new book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, which has been selling out at bookstores since its release March 24. I still haven’t been able to get a copy.

I suspect Levin’s new book will offer far more constructive arguments about revitalizing the conservative movement versus a female conservative pro-gay talk show host who calls the First Lady “trash in the White House.”

At least I have heard of Mark Levin.

©4/5/09