In season five, episode twenty of M*A*S*H, there is a short scene in which Hawkeye contemplates the foot. This has always stuck with me specifically because not only does it have nothing to do with the plot of the episode, it’s an abstraction so inane that it’s effectively nothing. He’s not talking about the War, or analysing the character of people around him, or even really talking about medicine – he’s just saying the foot is neat. This does speak to Hawkeye’s character – he’s very intelligent, easily bored, and loves the sound of his own voice, so when completely at rest, he’ll analyse the most minute thing around him, even if it means analysing the foot.
This has become a very strong influence on my fiction writing. TV Tropes refers to this kind of scene as a Seinfeldian Conversation, because that show popularised the idea of sitcom characters having analytical conversations about inane topics; around the same time, the films of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith brought the idea of pop culture analysis into genre works. Even by the standards of these three works, a meditation on feet (something Tarantino only does visually) is a bit extreme.
What I’ve found with big writing projects is that it really is about the generation of a lot of text. That’s a fairly unromantic take on the process of writing, but it’s a necessary and helpful one; a small project like a short story, a comic strip, or a pop culture essay has its own difficulties, but none of them come from having to ask “what will I write about next?” because that’s the start of the process. For example, this week’s essay was originally going to be about Jordan Peele before I realised my premise was wrong, tossed it aside, and decided “I’m going to write about the foot scene from M*A*S*H”, and now the whole thing is flowing pretty easily.
With a longer work, one is constantly assaulted by the question of what to write about next; for reasons of pacing, plotting, even character (there are options you know you have that the character wouldn’t take), one can find oneself blocked. Character is the essential forward element of any story (usually, one is more likely to know what a character would do than what they wouldn’t), genre is extremely helpful too – you write a crime story, you have a list of crimes of punishments at the handy.
But I’ve also found having characters verbalize my brainstorming or analysis a la Hawkeye tends to solve two problems at once – the characters solve the plot problem in the moment, and I have upped the wordcount of my writing. It’s essentially putting what would otherwise be notes in the mouths of the characters, and from the perspective of the audience, they’re seeing a character perform an action. Very rarely is it ever as abstract as Hawkeye’s foot preoccupation, but it’s the same principle. It helps when you’re writing to get somewhere as opposed to start somewhere – when your writing aims to provoke more writing; within this scene alone, Hawkeye’s blathering leads to an incredibly funny pair of lines:
“Alright, you sold me. I’ll take a pair in my size.”
“There are none in your size.”
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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A bunch of games I played and how they make me feel.
Yeah, I'll take a fucked up concept with everything on it, please.
Being meta without winking at the audience.
Department of
Conversation
Hawkeye’s tendency to blather becomes a plot point in the fourth season episode “Hawkeye,” where he’s been in a jeep accident and gotten concussed and filibusters to stay awake. Even though the Korean family that helped him after the accident doesn’t speak a word of English. Him rambling about the foot is small potatoes after that, if maybe more fun because of the punch line.
His opposable thumbs monolouge in that episode is pretty great. He also goes on about “tushes” in an episode. I think Hawkeye really wants to host a science show on PBS after the war.
Genuinely one of my favourite episodes of the show. “The love, I’ll leave with you” is a great line.
Recently I wrote a poem about Yukio Mishima and the musical Pippin BEFORE trying to write an essay about the same subject, then realized everything I’d wanted to say about them I’d put into the poem. Sometimes brevity is not the soul of wit and sometimes you’ve said everything in a single page.
What did we watch?
The Singing Detective Episode 2 – Dennis Potter strikes me as unusually good at writing about misogyny in the same way Roth is, understanding their problem while also embodying it. Nothing here passes the Bechdel Test yet Marlowe’s mother is terribly sympathetic, she’s clearly deeply depressed and unhappy living in the Forest of Dean, and nobody, especially her husband, knows what to do with THAT fact. The therapist’s description of Marlowe also nails the idea of a guy who is deeply uncomfortable with women and with sex while being obsessed with both, and in denial of that fact. Michael Gambon it should be noted is incredible under layers of makeup and largely being unable to turn or move much at all, getting across how much his character is a prisoner in his own body, albeit still a sardonic asshole.
The Rehearsal – S1E2 through 4- somewhere Baudrillard has a giant erection, this is increasingly funny and also sometimes bone-chilling, with The Fielder Method being a form of stalking that is in fact called out as such. Very similar to Synecdoche, New York without that main character’s sometimes unbearable neurosis. I would describe myself as depressive while also finding a lot of depressive art kind of annoying and one-note, and The Rehearsal hits notes of despair and horror that don’t call to attention to it. Plus it’s very funny.
Showed my boyfriend the first three or four episodes of Hacks and they thought it was marvellous and laughed their ass off – a lot of “oh Ava, honey, no” comments. It does put into perspective how Ava does and does not change; aside from the fact that she’s a functional human being now, she’s much more joyful and clear-headed. On the other hand, she’s never not gonna make cringe-worthy jokes. And I have to say, the basics of the show land immediately – the dialogue, the creative one-off characters, the rich plotting. The difference has been increasing creativity in content (no characters like our favourite Jewish hypercompetent receptionist yet).
(Otherwise I’ve had an insanely busy weekend for me)
Wait til they get to S3 where at one key moment I yelled to no one in particular, “Ava, no, you are a messy bitch!”
Live Music – took a trip to see a friend’s band from my city play a gig with a friend’s band from another city. Good music, good company, good times.
Woo live music! Woo friendship!
Woooooooo good times!!
Pontypool — what in god’s name are you blathering about? A rewatch and still excellent, a weakness — it’s not really clear how the virus works — is a strength, this is not a metaphor. Or maybe it can be a lot of metaphors. Zombies are famously flexible in this regard but with the complete breakdown of language, who knows? Supposedly the novel this is adapted from is far more nuts and author Tony Burgess really narrows the focus for his adaptation, and Bruce McDonald mostly sticks to the one location of a radio studio while restlessly moving within it, it’s a welcome contrast to a lot of fixed-camera compositions I feel have become the norm now. And while Lisa Houle and Georgina Reilly are very good as a producer and assistant producer (and Reilly gets a heartbreaking moment that leads to horrifying ones) this is Stephen McHattie’s show, his voice is scotch-worn mellifluous and his cadence is magnificent, a going-downhill DJ who still has the juice and might be the narrator for the end of the world. The post-credits scene is very weird and I love it, it is the movie following the idea of forgetting understanding all the way to the end. Goodbye to language.
I should revisit this one, it’s such a fun, creepy concept.
I think you can make the criticism that it doesn’t dig into the concept as much as it could have — the narrow focus around the studio again, as opposed to what’s happening outside, the general confusion over what is happening — but that ultimately becomes a plus for me. But this is why McHattie is so crucial, without a real understanding of plot you need something else to hold onto and boy does he deliver.
“For greater safety, please avoid the English language. Please do not translate this message.”
I was surprisingly hit-or-miss on the rest of this and should go back to it for reappraisal, but that’s genuinely one of my favorite OH SHIT moments in cinema.
McHattie reading that aloud is so great, and the larger Canadian-ness of this with regards to language(s) gives the movie some fun subtext an American flick wouldn’t have. I talked about this above but I can see the vibe of this and the lack of resolution/coherence being off-putting, it’s easy to imagine another version that is more straightforward (and the last act doesn’t quite make its explanations work); to me it’s about the unsettling mood that seems really Canadian to me in its pessimism and extremely dark but understated humor (the first reveal of the Arnie in the Sky character is quite funny, the second is some rough chuckles indeed). And McHattie is the god damn man.
McHattie isn’t the lead of course in A History of Violence but immediately creates such a menacing dude. “We said COFFEE!” Should give this a rewatch.
The Swimmer – Suburbanite ad man Burt Lancaster shows up at a friend’s pool for a dip and realizes that he could “swim” from them to his house, going from pool to pool. Of course, it’s more walking than swimming, and things are really not what they seem. Lancaster is very good as man on the edge of a total breakdown, and the production values are great (Marvin Hamlisch does the score and a DP named David Quaid really does stellar work). But the film being something of an allegory doesn’t actually occur to me, and only becomes clear after I read half a dozen articles about it. So I wouldn’t say this is entirely successful in telling the story. But the point is very clear as we follow Burt from house to house, and from absolute certainty to utter despair. Solid cast that includes Diana Muldaur in her prime, Joan Rivers in her first movie role, and a flock of character actors.
Andor, “The Messenger” – The third arc begins, with Cassian on Yavin but still under Luthien’s thumb. More to come Sunday and after I watch parts two and three. What’s here is good – Dan Gilroy scripts this arc for his brother.
The Avengers, “How to Succeed…at Murder” – Businessmen are being murdered across England, and Peel and Steed are needed to get to the truth. Which is that secretaries are taking over since the only way to smash the glass ceiling is first create accounting systems only they understand, and then murder. Only the ringleader is actually a male ventriloquist controlling a female puppet? Entertaining up to a point, but ends up being sexist.
MASH, “Big Mac” – The base all aflutter as word comes that General MacArthur is coming to thank them for their stalwart work. Comedy ensues. A simple idea that leads to a lot of good gags start to finish. But seeing this as an adult with a lot more understanding MacArthur makes a lot of the gags so much funnier. (Mac visiting the base would of course put this episode in the first ten months of the war, which is rather unlikely, but such things were never the show’s strong suit.)
Kojak, “And Justice for All”- Several junkies die from bad smack, and no one in the police but Kojak cares enough to to prioritize getting the junk off the street by scaring off dealers over finding the source of the junk. Which happens at the moment a white shoe law firm is wooing Kojak to be its chief investigator. And Kojak actually accepts the job before he both remembers why he’s doing what he does, and discovers that the law firm is pretty compromised. A solid hour in the Kojak vein, that is definitely copaganda in showing us the best cop possible, but also not entirely copaganda when it’s made clear that the system is still uncaring and stacked against the underclasses. An interesting tightrope to walk. Guests include George Wyner as a weak willed DA, and Rudy Bond in a rather small part as a janitor.
Love The Swimmer. Obligatory YOTM link: https://www.the-solute.com/year-of-the-month-tom-vomas-morton-on-the-swimmer/
The distinctive atmosphere of it definitely pulled me in more than the allegory I think. The (very short) story it was adapted from is well worth a read if you haven’t already.
I’ve read the story but never seen the movie.
The Worst Person in the World
Beautiful, smart, funny, sad slice-of-life film that’s one woman’s (somewhat belated) coming of age story. This is the kind of thing I would love to write up for Streaming Shuffle–I’ve seen this a couple times now, and it’s legitimately one of my favorite movies of the last few years–but I never know how to talk about it any kind of interesting, coherent way. Maybe I’ll take the Red Rocket route at some point and zero in on a single scene? Whatever, my point is that this is a lovely movie about art, self-centeredness, love, and slowly becoming yourself while the other people you’ve been are still around, and so are the people who shaped you.
Also, Norway seems very pretty.
That Man from Rio
For Movie Club. As we established in discussion, the genre here is “romp” or “madcap,” as opposed to the more specific “comedy” or “spoof.” Its goal is to give you an entertaining, breezy, lighthearted time, and it does that well, mashing-up a kind of everyman-in-over-his-head adventure plot with some James Bond aesthetics and casting Jean-Paul Belmondo as a reasonably capable but increasingly frazzled man on a quest to rescue his girlfriend. The gradual reveal of the romantic neuroticism Belmondo is (barely) keeping concealed underneath his superficial tough guy facade was one of my favorite parts of the movie; actually, whenever the action catches a breath, Belmondo is usually charming. (This was a relief for me after hating Breathless so much; it’s nice to like this guy for a change. I should revisit Breathless.)
Revenge of the Ninja
I watched this with a friend, and we both realized shortly before cuing it up that we had actually (separately) seen it before, but we’d both forgotten most of it. There’s a reason for that–this is maybe more competently made than Ninja III: The Domination, but it feels like more of a slog. It lacks drive, and it doesn’t have enough compensating weirdness. You would think, then, that it doesn’t have a woman doing pantsless ninja fights and almost suffering a Bond-esque hot tub fate, or that it never turns into a ninja slasher movie, or that Sho Kosugi’s tiny son doesn’t get to kick a surprising amount of grown-up ass, but while all of this does happen, somehow it still never felt like it got into gear. I blame the non-Kosugi actors, some of whom are turning in the most stilted performances I’ve ever seen.
Airplane!
This time I tried to pick my favorite joke, and I think I couldn’t even narrow it down further than a top five.
Any time I hear/read someone asking “what can we make of this?” my mind immediately answers “a hat, a brooch, a pterodactyl.” Which rules! Perhaps Airplane! is a forerunner of Pontypool, presenting absurdity as a way to short-circuit the dead language of cliche.
Yeah Revenge of the Ninja is definitely the most Normal of the trilogy. I found it genuinely enjoyable on a martial arts level but lacking on a zany good times level, which is maybe more important.
Think the “drinking problem” because it’s just so stupid – yet I don’t think the joke had been made before, so it’s automatically genius – but tough call. The guy stuck in the cab with the meter made me laugh really hard the last time too.
The drinking problem was one of my top candidates! It’s so gloriously dumb, and I reference it all the time. And good call on that poor guy in the cab–Ted ducking back to turn the meter on is already hilarious, and then the reveal that he’s been waiting the whole time has to be one of my favorite callbacks of all time.
I watched it with my little brother and it made me wonder which gags are not going to stand the test of time just in terms of tech/70’s life alone, like the Tupperware party and really the very idea of a taxi cab.
The gag that has made me laugh the hardest is the flashback dogfight/crash footage morphing into the ridiculous early airplanes eating it, just fucking destroys me.
I’m going to put in a vote for the rear projection driving scene, although I often think of the news debate show where someone argues for letting everybody on the plane die (“They bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into, I say let ’em crash!”).
The Phoenician Scheme – A Wes Anderson project through and through, which is to say you know generally what you’re going to get but you have no idea exactly what you’re going to get. The dry humor and the gorgeous design should not be taken for granted. Benicio del Toro has never been better and the relatively unknown Mia (Winslet) Threapleton is a wonderful addition to the ensemble of Anderson regulars having fun. The Ploughgirl was delighted to see Alan of Barbie in a key role. It seem impossible that we’re treated to a bauble of this kind every other year. I’m considering it mid-tier Wes, but that’s what I thought about Asteroid City on first watch and now I’ve revised that one up quite a ways. I don’t forsee this one getting quite so rich as it stews, but we’ll see.
That Man from Rio – At the behest of one John Anderson. An action/comedy with a remarkable breathless pace (even less expected for being produced in the early 60s). The final twenty minutes have overt Spielberg influence but he surely was taking notes well before we start positioning statues in ancient jungle burial sites. A delightful, light film that’s never as ridiculous as the spoof it’s described to be, but definitely has a light touch that makes for a breezy watch – plus some ridiculous and wonderful stunts.
I should perhaps revisit Asteroid City, but what I really want to rewatch is The French Dispatch to see if I love it as much the second time through.
I sometimes get tired of Bill Murray, but I loved his small role here.
The Phonecian Scheme — Hey, did you know there’s a new Wes Anderson movie out that seemed to pass under the radar? Well there is, and it’s pretty good!
I have noted previously in this space that Anderson’s most recent efforts seemed a little light for me, without the emotional depth of what I think of as his best work (Moonrise Kingdom, The French Dispatch, The Life Acquatic). Asteroid City had a lot to like but felt a little airy, and the Dahl sketches were fine but existed on nothing more than the surface level. And this continues in that trend, but it’s somehow more forgivable. It’s a gentle story of a rapprochement between a larger than life business magnate (Benicio del Toro) and his estranged daughter, a novitiate nun (Mia Threapleton) as they travel around the Middle East encountering strange characters on elaborate sets. There’s nothing like the emotional investigation of, for instance, the Jeffrey Wright section of The French Dispatch here (the comparison invited here by Wright’s appearance as a ship captain), and the climactic confrontation with the villain is just the wrong side of too goofy. But the movie is funny throughout, with a great, cartoonish, performance by del Toro and another great but more grounded turn by Threapleton. (When you see this and say to yourself, “Who is this girl? I’ve never seen her in anything but she looks and sounds so familiar!” It’s because she’s Kate Winslet’s daughter.) Michael Cera is also very funny as del Toro’s secretary/Threapleton’s love interest, with Anderson keeping a leash on Cera’s absurdist tendencies. It’s a real charmer so long as you don’t go in expecting something with the heft of Anderson’s middle period.
It’s a Father’s Day blockbuster! I’m generally delighted by the appearance of every Anderson Company Player, but none are so good at investing in their character while keeping them within the boundaries of an Anderson performance as Wright, which is why his small role is a bit of a disappointment (although I could listen to his introduction delivery where he greets and calls every single person on screen “man” within about ten seconds on a loop). I thought Threapleton was pretty great, although probably because of her round face with dagger eyes I couldn’t help thinking this must have been passed on by Florence Pugh.
She is certainly in the Pugh mold.
“none are so good at investing in their character while keeping them within the boundaries of an Anderson performance as Wright” — I haven’t seen this yet but this is a great description of how Wright is working with Anderson, obviously he’s phenomenal in French Dispatch but I really love his general in Asteroid City too, his speech at the convention is pushing the Anderson modes of enthusiasm and resignation into places they do not otherwise get while still, as you note, remaining within the boundaries of the larger project.
The Accountant
First time. Great camaraderie and silliness from Ben Affleck and Joe Bernthal, shame the main plot is dour nonsense and the action is weak John Wick-lite stuff. It was fun to watch by the end, after my wife went into full “What the hell is this movie!?” mode for the last hour and we just riffed on it. Also, I hardly remember the first movie and it didn’t help when trying ot make sense of, for instance, the X-Men showing up repeatedly in this.
the rehearsal, through the end of season 2.
Very funny that hbo gave nathan fielder money for that yet Danny McBride couldn’t even get money for a single michael jackson song. (Though the MJ estate may have other reasons for not cooperating with hbo).
Everything about this is perfect. What makes it work is commitment. No one has ever been more committed to the bit. He’s willing to take the bit to its logical conclusion, way further than anyone else would. This also ties into the subplot about masking, neurodivergence, and the human condition. How much do we fake who we are to get along? What if we try play acting who we really are instead of a fake? If you’re play acting who you are instead of a fake, are you still play acting?
Genuinely no idea where he goes for season 3.
High Potential, through the end of s1.
– way too many victims here had it coming. Of the 12 cases solved, there’s a guy doing elder abuse and catfishing, an AI exec with an app for making deepfakes of real people, an elizabeth holmes-esque medical device fraudster whose fake treatments ruined a kid’s life, a rich wife-beater, and an exotic animal smuggler.
– we got a mortiarty type for her now. They don’t catch him but he’s gonna strike again and he enjoys toying with her.
Doctor Who , s1e2-5. Got the 6 year old watching these, and it’s the perfect level of scary for her. Huge win. Eccleston can turn on a dime from scary to chipper, in a way that is a little psychopathic. The final confrontation with lady cassandra and her gruesome demise is peak doctor who.
Looking forward to the season after this one, my friend described it as the best depiction of autistic learning he’d seen and how easily people get frustrated with us when we can’t grasp certain tasks.
what’s very funny is this could apply to all 3 shows.
(A few weeks ago when The Last of US was on my wife said of Ellie “is she supposed to read as neurodivergent?” and I said “her special interest is revenge.” Then she said “actually she reminds me of you.” Anyway, either neurodivergence is having a big moment on TV or I’m just gravitating towards it for reasons that I do not know much like Nathan Fielder does not know).
(I don’t think Olson actually scans as neurodivergent on High Potential. They’ve kinda forgotten the central conceit about how Olson could never hold a steady job despite her intellect. I want to see some maladaptive behavior in season 2! Put her on coke and opium like the real sherlock!)
Yesterday was Father’s Day, and I inadvertently watched what has to be on the Mount Rushmore of Dad Movies: The Hunt for Red October. For a movie that’s over 2 hours it moves quickly and even though it cuts between 4 different subs, you never get confused as to who is who and what is what. Suspension of disbelief will help a lot when you try to picture Sean Connery as a Russian sub commander, but I did enjoy his performance. The constantly moving camera by John McTiernan keeps the suspense at a high level through out. Directing Die Hard and this movie is a very impressive one-two punch. It’s on Paramount Plus.
I really liked it when I rewatched it earlier this year. The thing I hadn’t noticed before is how every character on every side is doing what they can to avoid an escalation *except* Connery, who doesn’t give a shit.
What did we play?
Finished Cocoon. Already mentioned last week that this is a game from the designer of Limbo and Inside – those games do a good job telling a weird story as well as being interesting, puzzling adventures. This one had cool puzzles and world-building but I felt like the ending was a bit of a shrug. Enjoying experience though for sure.
Still hooked on Balatro. Amazing how such a simple concept can be so endlessly compelling.
D and D called on account of a very sick DM, who caught the current cold-with-sinus-infection sweeping the nation. Next game TBD as she is on vacation shortly. Hopefully with the cold going away first.
I don’t play Dragon Age, but my wife is in her second play-through of Veilguard, and she is not entirely happy. Oh, obviously she is enjoying it if she’s on a second go-round, but she is really not happy with one major NPC character arc, and with a fair number of smaller things. She says that the game went through a degree of development hell, and that it shows.
Restarted Tametsi, since I’m all out of non-procedurally-generated Hexcells. Tametsi is more challenging but also less aesthetically pleasing, so it always takes second place, but it’s still an incredible pure puzzler, with a ton of variety in its designs. I’ve probably recounted this before, but when I originally bought it on Steam, it was categorized not only as a puzzle but also as psychological horror, which led to a first run where I was constantly waiting for the puzzle titles to turn disturbing or for uncanny inter-puzzle sequences to appear.
Turns out, it was probably just a tongue-in-cheek joke by someone who, like me, is not naturally great at the game and finds the sound it makes when you trigger a mine to be inordinately distressing. But I have to say, going through this expecting it to turn X-Files at any moment really added something, and the memories of that playthrough still linger in an appealingly spooky way.
I’m not sure I’ll ever go back to Tametsi but I have fond memories of it taking up my mental space when I was stressing out pre-house-move last year and needed a distraction. It really does get brutally difficult but in a way I found oddly comforting.
It’s exactly the kind of mentally occupying time-suck that’s perfect for when things are stressful.
Burnout Paradise Remastered on Nintendo Switch
A few more runs this week. Hit a lot of new billboards and won several events, so many that I wondered if I picked up an earlier save file but no, it just cliked that way. I also unlocked a couple of new cars: it’s always great to see them streaking across the city, stop whatever I was doing, chase them down and take them down, then resume driving around the city.
Mega Man X3 – Mega Man X Legacy Collection on Nintendo Switch
Finished getting the upgrades, beat the Doppler end stages and the final boss this week. The upgrades were quite frustrating, because there are four that you can only choose one from, but if you pick it up you can’t pick any of the other three and you don’t know what they are, so you can get stuck with one you might not have wanted to on your first run. Also, the design in the first end stages and bosses* is not very fun. I must say though, they really nailed the sprite art on the final boss, Sigma. Graphically the game is a nice sendoff to the SNES. And it controls great too. Shame there’s so many design designs holding it back and making it more frustrating and esoteric than it ought to be.
*One of the smartest things the first Mega Man X did was not to put the Maverick rematches all together like the NES games did. That way they could design the levels around them, and it made it more unpredictable and fun. That’s why it was very disappointing to see Mega Man X2 return to the gauntlet format and it’s a bummer to see them do it again in X3.
I finished that Shadowrun SNES playthrough. Then a couple of nights ago I decided to see how quickly I could get through the game if I used the debug room. (Fun fact: The debug room wasn’t discovered until at least 20 years after the fact, with an interview with the developers mentioned that there was a way to access it but they didn’t remember exactly how, and then intrepid gamers figured it out.) You still have to trigger certain plot events to advance, so you can’t just max power up and go to the endgame, but part of the fun was trying to figure out how to do as little as possible and still get there.
Unfortunately, you can skip the early parts but not much else– can’t get to Aneki without beating the Volcano; can’t beat the Volcano without the Jester Spirit (well, I think you can, but it’s a lot harder); can’t beat the Jester Spirit without clearing Dark Blade; can’t unlock Dark Blade without beating the Rat Shaman and talking to Kitsune; can’t talk to Kitsune without beating the Rust Stilettos… and even if you could beat Drake without the Jester Spirit, you’d still need to unlock Dark Blade just to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor.