Monday, May 19, 2008
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Invasion '78: Beyond Bipartisan Politics
A few weeks ago, John Kenneth Muir wrote a pair of blog posts about Jack Finney’s classic sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers and the 1956 movie adaptation Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mr. Muir promised to tackle the entire series – four feature films based on the same source novel – but he’s been a little preoccupied lately, writing his own sci-fi series (The House Between), so I thought I’d help him along. In all fairness, I should note that John has already written about the 1978 remake to Invasion of the Body Snatchers in his book Horror Films of the 1970s. So if you don’t care for my thoughts on the subject, you know where to go next…
From my perspective, Invasion of the Body Snatchers became a series in 1993, with the release of Abel Ferrara's screen adaptation. It is not the kind of series that I was familiar with as a child of the 80s – a Hollywood franchise spitting out formulaic sequels. Instead, it is a constantly evolving myth along the lines of George Romero’s Dead series, where new characters and new perspectives consistently overwhelm the basic plot. But that almost wasn’t the case.
Producer Robert Solo bought the sequel rights to Don Siegel’s original film in the early 1970s, when big-budget science-fiction films and remakes of low-budget horror films were practically unheard of. His initial plan was to tell the same story with updated special effects. Luckily, writer W.D. Richter and director Philip Kaufman had other plans. They didn’t want to remake the original film; they wanted to “re-imagine” it, creating a “variation on the original theme.” Today, this distinction is a running gag – every writer, producer and director in Hollywood uses the word “re-imagination” as an excuse to make money off of someone else’s older, better ideas – but “re-imagination” is nevertheless an apt way to characterize Invasion ’78. In Kaufman’s film, the people, places, and pods have evolved just as much as the special effects… giving the already-famous story a new subtext.
Donald Sutherland fills Kevin McCarthy’s shoes as Dr. Bennell (now named Matthew instead of Miles), and he’s much closer to Finney’s original conception of the character: passionate and goofy enough to be in stark contrast with the emotionless pod people. One of the most effective scenes in the film comes when he and Elizabeth Driscoll (played by beautiful girl-next-door Brooke Adams) are having a late-night dinner; Matthew’s main goal in this scene is to make Elizabeth happy, for her sake rather than his own. When she laughs, we can’t help but love them both. Likewise, we gradually learn to love their eccentric friends Jack and Nancy Bellicec, because they’re considerate and idealistic and… well, fun. In short: The film does a masterful job of emphasizing that the struggle between these characters and the pods is a struggle between the human and dehumanizing aspects of the everyday world they live in.
In the original film, the soulless menace invaded small-town America, corrupting the general industriousness of the people who lived there... turning them into single-minded slobs who don't spend money. By contrast, the remake is set in the city of San Francisco, where business is booming. The filmmakers thought it would be more appropriate to locate paranoia in a contemporary urban landscape, where people are so busy and distracted that they’re unlikely to notice subtle personality changes in their loved ones, let alone their neighbors. By setting the film in San Francisco, the filmmakers also updated the theme of Finney’s book and Siegel’s film: the idea that the American Dream is being slowly corrupted from the inside. San Francisco was known throughout the 60s as a counterculture enclave, but the movement had subsided by 1978. Many “hippies” had become “yuppies” (or, in the parlance of this film, “pods”); peace and love have been replaced by money and power. In this case, industriousness is not being rooted out of humanity. Rather, it seems to be causing the loss of humanity.
When Matthew attempts to warn the government that businessmen are destroying humanity, he learns that they government has already been overrun. What American moviegoer in 1978 would be surprised by that? The system is corrupt and the individual doesn't stand a chance of changing it. In the end of the film, the takeover is complete. The implication is that American life in 1978, even after those embarrassing blunders known as Vietnam and Watergate, was not so different from life during the McCarthy era. Capitalism is king. The “pods” have won.
I’ve been thinking about a passage I read recently in Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States”, in which he tries to sum up the last 50 years of American politics: “The United States was trying, in the postwar [WWII] decade, to create a national consensus – excluding the radicals, who could not support a foreign policy aimed at suppressing revolution – of conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, around the policies of cold war and anti-Communism. Such a coalition could best be created by a liberal Democratic President, who aggressive policy abroad would be supported by conservatives, and whose welfare programs at home (Truman’s “Fair Deal”) would be attractive to liberals. If, in addition, liberals and traditional Democrats could – the memory of the war was still fresh – support a foreign policy against “aggression,” the radical-liberal bloc created by World War II would be broken up. And perhaps, if the anti-Communist mood became strong enough, liberals could support repressive moves at home in which ordinary times would be seen as violating the liberal tradition of tolerance.”
Zinn argues convincingly that this is the “new normal” we live with: Democratic and Republican administrations alike consistently carry out the will of big business (the biggest being the “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower first warned us about in 1961) rather than the will of the common citizen. It’s only fitting that the third feature film adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel (released in 1993) should deal directly with the military-industrial complex.
I don’t mean to suggest that Kaufman’s remake is any more politically motivated than Siegel’s original film or Finney’s book... it’s just irresistible to mine the Body Snatchers stories for political subtext. But like its predecessor, Invasion ’78 can also be read as an “anti-ism movie” – a movie about the human condition that simply reminds us (as individuals) to be aware of our surroundings, to think for ourselves, and to always continue to think critically in a culture where media, government and big business are constantly telling us what to believe. Screenwriter W.D. Richter has said that, if the film has any kind of message for the audience, the message is “don’t sleep." That’s a message that continued to pop up in horror films throughout the 1980s and beyond... including Abel Ferrara's The Body Snatchers (1993).
On that note, I’m going to pass the microphone back to John Muir…
From my perspective, Invasion of the Body Snatchers became a series in 1993, with the release of Abel Ferrara's screen adaptation. It is not the kind of series that I was familiar with as a child of the 80s – a Hollywood franchise spitting out formulaic sequels. Instead, it is a constantly evolving myth along the lines of George Romero’s Dead series, where new characters and new perspectives consistently overwhelm the basic plot. But that almost wasn’t the case.
Producer Robert Solo bought the sequel rights to Don Siegel’s original film in the early 1970s, when big-budget science-fiction films and remakes of low-budget horror films were practically unheard of. His initial plan was to tell the same story with updated special effects. Luckily, writer W.D. Richter and director Philip Kaufman had other plans. They didn’t want to remake the original film; they wanted to “re-imagine” it, creating a “variation on the original theme.” Today, this distinction is a running gag – every writer, producer and director in Hollywood uses the word “re-imagination” as an excuse to make money off of someone else’s older, better ideas – but “re-imagination” is nevertheless an apt way to characterize Invasion ’78. In Kaufman’s film, the people, places, and pods have evolved just as much as the special effects… giving the already-famous story a new subtext.
Donald Sutherland fills Kevin McCarthy’s shoes as Dr. Bennell (now named Matthew instead of Miles), and he’s much closer to Finney’s original conception of the character: passionate and goofy enough to be in stark contrast with the emotionless pod people. One of the most effective scenes in the film comes when he and Elizabeth Driscoll (played by beautiful girl-next-door Brooke Adams) are having a late-night dinner; Matthew’s main goal in this scene is to make Elizabeth happy, for her sake rather than his own. When she laughs, we can’t help but love them both. Likewise, we gradually learn to love their eccentric friends Jack and Nancy Bellicec, because they’re considerate and idealistic and… well, fun. In short: The film does a masterful job of emphasizing that the struggle between these characters and the pods is a struggle between the human and dehumanizing aspects of the everyday world they live in.
In the original film, the soulless menace invaded small-town America, corrupting the general industriousness of the people who lived there... turning them into single-minded slobs who don't spend money. By contrast, the remake is set in the city of San Francisco, where business is booming. The filmmakers thought it would be more appropriate to locate paranoia in a contemporary urban landscape, where people are so busy and distracted that they’re unlikely to notice subtle personality changes in their loved ones, let alone their neighbors. By setting the film in San Francisco, the filmmakers also updated the theme of Finney’s book and Siegel’s film: the idea that the American Dream is being slowly corrupted from the inside. San Francisco was known throughout the 60s as a counterculture enclave, but the movement had subsided by 1978. Many “hippies” had become “yuppies” (or, in the parlance of this film, “pods”); peace and love have been replaced by money and power. In this case, industriousness is not being rooted out of humanity. Rather, it seems to be causing the loss of humanity.
When Matthew attempts to warn the government that businessmen are destroying humanity, he learns that they government has already been overrun. What American moviegoer in 1978 would be surprised by that? The system is corrupt and the individual doesn't stand a chance of changing it. In the end of the film, the takeover is complete. The implication is that American life in 1978, even after those embarrassing blunders known as Vietnam and Watergate, was not so different from life during the McCarthy era. Capitalism is king. The “pods” have won.
I’ve been thinking about a passage I read recently in Howard Zinn’s book “A People’s History of the United States”, in which he tries to sum up the last 50 years of American politics: “The United States was trying, in the postwar [WWII] decade, to create a national consensus – excluding the radicals, who could not support a foreign policy aimed at suppressing revolution – of conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, around the policies of cold war and anti-Communism. Such a coalition could best be created by a liberal Democratic President, who aggressive policy abroad would be supported by conservatives, and whose welfare programs at home (Truman’s “Fair Deal”) would be attractive to liberals. If, in addition, liberals and traditional Democrats could – the memory of the war was still fresh – support a foreign policy against “aggression,” the radical-liberal bloc created by World War II would be broken up. And perhaps, if the anti-Communist mood became strong enough, liberals could support repressive moves at home in which ordinary times would be seen as violating the liberal tradition of tolerance.”
Zinn argues convincingly that this is the “new normal” we live with: Democratic and Republican administrations alike consistently carry out the will of big business (the biggest being the “military-industrial complex” that President Eisenhower first warned us about in 1961) rather than the will of the common citizen. It’s only fitting that the third feature film adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel (released in 1993) should deal directly with the military-industrial complex.
I don’t mean to suggest that Kaufman’s remake is any more politically motivated than Siegel’s original film or Finney’s book... it’s just irresistible to mine the Body Snatchers stories for political subtext. But like its predecessor, Invasion ’78 can also be read as an “anti-ism movie” – a movie about the human condition that simply reminds us (as individuals) to be aware of our surroundings, to think for ourselves, and to always continue to think critically in a culture where media, government and big business are constantly telling us what to believe. Screenwriter W.D. Richter has said that, if the film has any kind of message for the audience, the message is “don’t sleep." That’s a message that continued to pop up in horror films throughout the 1980s and beyond... including Abel Ferrara's The Body Snatchers (1993).
On that note, I’m going to pass the microphone back to John Muir…
Monday, May 05, 2008
The Future?
"On the surface, race has been and is still being put forth as an overriding issue that needs to be addressed as a prerequisite for social change. In fact, although it seems to loom as a large problem, race as an issue is again a symptom of capitalism. Of course, on a paltry level and among the relatively powerless, race does play a part in social structure (the racist cop, the bigoted landlord, etc.), pitting segments of the population against each other. But revolutionary change requires class analysis that drives appropriate actions and eliminates race as a mitigating factor." - Jonathan Jackson Jr.
“What then can give rise to a true spirit of peace on earth? Not commandments and not practical experience. Like all human progress, the love of peace must come from knowledge. All living knowledge as opposed to academic knowledge can have but one object. The knowledge may be seen and formulated by thousands in a thousand different ways, but it must always embody one truth. It is the knowledge of the living substance in us, in each of us, in you and me, of the secret magic, the secret godliness that each of us bears within him. It is the knowledge that, starting from this innermost point, we can at all times transcend all pairs of opposites, transforming white into black, evil into good, night into day. The Indians call it ‘Atman,’ the Chinese ‘Tao’; Christians call it ‘grace.’ Where that supreme knowledge is present (as in Jesus, Buddha, Plato, or Lao-tzu), a threshold is crossed beyond which miracles begin. There war and enmity cease. We can read of it in the New Testament and in the discourses of Gautama. Anyone who is so inclined can laugh at it and call it ‘introverted rubbish,’ but to one who has experience it his enemy becomes a brother, death becomes birth, disgrace honor, calamity good fortune. Each thing on earth discloses itself twofold, as ‘of this world’ and ‘not of this world.’ But ‘this world’ means what is ‘outside us.’ Everything that is outside us can become enemy, danger, fear and death. The light dawns with the experience that this entire ‘outward’ world is not only an object of our perception but at the same time the creation of our soul, with the transformation of all outward into inward things, of the world into the self.”
- Herman Hesse, Summer 1918
Sunday, May 04, 2008
El Pueblo de Los Angeles
Despite numerous posts about the history of Los Angeles, I’ve somehow managed to overlook its oldest neighborhood. So yesterday we headed for El Pueblo de Los Angeles – a small, multicultural enclave on the north end of downtown.
This neighborhood on the banks of the L.A. River was founded in 1781 – on orders from the Spanish king – by a group of families from the San Gabriel Mission. The settlers consisted of 11 men, 11 women, and 22 children of Spanish, African and “mulatto” descent. They called their new home “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre El Rio Porciuncula” (“The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels over the Porciuncula River”). Initially, the town was clustered around the Old Plaza Catholic Church, which still stands on the west side of North Main Street. Later, the focus shifted to nearby Olvera Street, the heart of the Mexican community and site of this weekend’s Cinco de Mayo festivities.
The main tourist attraction in the neighborhood is the Avila Adobe, the oldest residence in Los Angeles – built in 1818 (nearly a decade before Mexico won its independence from Spain) by Mexican cattle rancher Don Francisco Avila. Avila’s descendants lived in the house until 1868 – with the exception of a short period of time during the Mexican-American War, when it was used as a U.S. military headquarters. The house passed through a number of hands in the following decades, and was eventually abandoned and condemned in the late 1920s. It was slowly brought back to life in the following decade, when it became a center of activity for the Mexican community.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the area surrounding the Avila Adobe (downtown Los Angeles) as open grazing land. A few weeks ago, we visited Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach, and I had a hard enough time imagining that area without all the roads and houses. The docent told us that Los Cerritos was a full day’s ride (by horse) from El Pueblo de Los Angeles, and that there was very little in between the two ranches. This is hard to fathom in a city of 4 million people. Still, there’s something magical about standing in the courtyards outside these two old houses – the walls are just high enough that you find your mind drifting into the past.
Not far from the Avila Adobe are several other historic landmarks: the Pelanconi House (the oldest brick house in Los Angeles, built in 1850), Pico House (the first luxury hotel in Los Angeles, finished in 1870), and the first Los Angeles fire station (built in 1884). On the other side of Alameda Street are the Post Office Terminal Annex, where author Charles Bukowski worked for many years, and Union Station, known to movie geeks like me as the futuristic police station in Ridley Scott’s movie “Blade Runner.”
El Pueblo de Los Angeles - 1869 (photo from of the Los Angeles Public Library)
Old Plaza Catholic Church
Olvera Street
Avila Adobe
Los Cerritos
Pelanconi House
Pico House
Fire House #1
Bukowski’s Post Office
Union Station
filming area inside Union Station
This neighborhood on the banks of the L.A. River was founded in 1781 – on orders from the Spanish king – by a group of families from the San Gabriel Mission. The settlers consisted of 11 men, 11 women, and 22 children of Spanish, African and “mulatto” descent. They called their new home “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora Reina de los Ángeles sobre El Rio Porciuncula” (“The Town of Our Lady Queen of the Angels over the Porciuncula River”). Initially, the town was clustered around the Old Plaza Catholic Church, which still stands on the west side of North Main Street. Later, the focus shifted to nearby Olvera Street, the heart of the Mexican community and site of this weekend’s Cinco de Mayo festivities.
The main tourist attraction in the neighborhood is the Avila Adobe, the oldest residence in Los Angeles – built in 1818 (nearly a decade before Mexico won its independence from Spain) by Mexican cattle rancher Don Francisco Avila. Avila’s descendants lived in the house until 1868 – with the exception of a short period of time during the Mexican-American War, when it was used as a U.S. military headquarters. The house passed through a number of hands in the following decades, and was eventually abandoned and condemned in the late 1920s. It was slowly brought back to life in the following decade, when it became a center of activity for the Mexican community.
Today, it’s hard to imagine the area surrounding the Avila Adobe (downtown Los Angeles) as open grazing land. A few weeks ago, we visited Rancho Los Cerritos in Long Beach, and I had a hard enough time imagining that area without all the roads and houses. The docent told us that Los Cerritos was a full day’s ride (by horse) from El Pueblo de Los Angeles, and that there was very little in between the two ranches. This is hard to fathom in a city of 4 million people. Still, there’s something magical about standing in the courtyards outside these two old houses – the walls are just high enough that you find your mind drifting into the past.
Not far from the Avila Adobe are several other historic landmarks: the Pelanconi House (the oldest brick house in Los Angeles, built in 1850), Pico House (the first luxury hotel in Los Angeles, finished in 1870), and the first Los Angeles fire station (built in 1884). On the other side of Alameda Street are the Post Office Terminal Annex, where author Charles Bukowski worked for many years, and Union Station, known to movie geeks like me as the futuristic police station in Ridley Scott’s movie “Blade Runner.”
El Pueblo de Los Angeles - 1869 (photo from of the Los Angeles Public Library)
Old Plaza Catholic Church
Olvera Street
Avila Adobe
Los Cerritos
Pelanconi House
Pico House
Fire House #1
Bukowski’s Post Office
Union Station
filming area inside Union Station
John Carpenter's L.A.
Try as I might, I just can’t get through a day of exploring Los Angeles without tracking down a few filming locations. After Union Station, we headed south to get a peek at the seedier side of downtown Los Angeles popularized by filmmaker John Carpenter in the 1980s. Carpenter loves L.A. – as evidenced by the fact that many of his films have been shot in a variety of locations throughout the city: “Assault on Precinct 13” in South Central and Venice Beach, “Halloween” in South Pasadena and Hollywood, “Christine” in Oak Park and East Los Angeles. “Escape from New York” was shot on location in St. Louis(!), but the opening sequence (at the detention center) was shot right here at the Sepulveda Dam. “The Fog” takes place on the coast above San Francisco, but one key scene at the beginning of the film was shot at Laurel Canyon Country Store in Hollywood. (For more details, see Horror's Hallowed Grounds.)
“Big Trouble in Little China” also takes place in San Francisco, but one significant location from the film (Egg Shen's loft, with fire poles leading to the Chinese underworld) sits right on the edge of L.A.’s Skid Row. Fire house #23 on 5th Street also allegedly provided interiors for “Ghostbusters.” Unlike some of the other historic fire stations in downtown L.A., this one has not undergone any renovations – which isn’t too surprising, given its location. Fire house #23 sits just a few doors down from the New Los Angeles Mission and across the street from San Julian Park: the ill-reputed heart of Skid Row. This is not a terribly inviting neighborhood, though an article by Dana Goodyear in the May 5 issue of The New Yorker magazine says that the recent filming of a big-budget movie (“The Soloist” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx) in this neighborhood is part of a dramatic gentrification.
A few blocks north, on San Pedro Street, I snapped a photo of a new condo development in the warehouse district – proof, I suppose, of the influx of new money into "Central City East." As I eyeballed the construction site, I couldn’t help thinking of the tent city in Carpenter’s 1988 film “They Live.” That film got a lot of mileage out of juxtaposing the homeless settlement with L.A.’s nearby skyscrapers – a none-too-subtle comment on class conflict in Reagan-era America. (The more things change, the more they stay the same…)
A few more blocks to the north, San Pedro becomes Judge John Aliso Street. This is where the homeless masses converged and surrounded the heroes of Carpenter’s apocalyptic film “Prince of Darkness.” Several scenes in the film were shot at the San Fernando Mission in the northern part of the Valley, while others were shot at nearby USC (Carpenter’s alma mater), but the bulk of the action takes place at a small church downtown. Inside the church (now the Union Center for the Arts), a team of religious scholars and scientists struggle to unlock the secrets of a canister filled with Liquid Evil. Outside, Alice Cooper prepares a gang of Skid Row slashers for an unholy siege. In Carpenter’s Los Angeles, the disenfranchised underclass is in league with a demon that’s poised to take over the world. If that doesn’t drive you out of downtown, nothing will.
Escape from Sepulveda Dam
Big Trouble in Skid Row
They Live on San Pedro Street (the "tent city" on John Carpenter's film was actually constructed on the other side of the financial district, near the corner of Beverly and 2nd Street, but you get the idea...)
Union Center for the Prince of Darkness
This is the dark alley where Alice Cooper and his droogies intimidated the heroes of John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness."
“Big Trouble in Little China” also takes place in San Francisco, but one significant location from the film (Egg Shen's loft, with fire poles leading to the Chinese underworld) sits right on the edge of L.A.’s Skid Row. Fire house #23 on 5th Street also allegedly provided interiors for “Ghostbusters.” Unlike some of the other historic fire stations in downtown L.A., this one has not undergone any renovations – which isn’t too surprising, given its location. Fire house #23 sits just a few doors down from the New Los Angeles Mission and across the street from San Julian Park: the ill-reputed heart of Skid Row. This is not a terribly inviting neighborhood, though an article by Dana Goodyear in the May 5 issue of The New Yorker magazine says that the recent filming of a big-budget movie (“The Soloist” starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx) in this neighborhood is part of a dramatic gentrification.
A few blocks north, on San Pedro Street, I snapped a photo of a new condo development in the warehouse district – proof, I suppose, of the influx of new money into "Central City East." As I eyeballed the construction site, I couldn’t help thinking of the tent city in Carpenter’s 1988 film “They Live.” That film got a lot of mileage out of juxtaposing the homeless settlement with L.A.’s nearby skyscrapers – a none-too-subtle comment on class conflict in Reagan-era America. (The more things change, the more they stay the same…)
A few more blocks to the north, San Pedro becomes Judge John Aliso Street. This is where the homeless masses converged and surrounded the heroes of Carpenter’s apocalyptic film “Prince of Darkness.” Several scenes in the film were shot at the San Fernando Mission in the northern part of the Valley, while others were shot at nearby USC (Carpenter’s alma mater), but the bulk of the action takes place at a small church downtown. Inside the church (now the Union Center for the Arts), a team of religious scholars and scientists struggle to unlock the secrets of a canister filled with Liquid Evil. Outside, Alice Cooper prepares a gang of Skid Row slashers for an unholy siege. In Carpenter’s Los Angeles, the disenfranchised underclass is in league with a demon that’s poised to take over the world. If that doesn’t drive you out of downtown, nothing will.
Escape from Sepulveda Dam
Big Trouble in Skid Row
They Live on San Pedro Street (the "tent city" on John Carpenter's film was actually constructed on the other side of the financial district, near the corner of Beverly and 2nd Street, but you get the idea...)
Union Center for the Prince of Darkness
This is the dark alley where Alice Cooper and his droogies intimidated the heroes of John Carpenter's "Prince of Darkness."
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