My Open Letter to Yankee Fans

I admit this is the rant of a biased, bitter, cantankerous Mets fan. But Yankee fans, you still need to hear this:

There's nothing wrong with you rooting for your team and being happy when they win. But you don't deserve to be upset when they lose, nor particularly hungry for any more championships. Why? Because there's not a Yankee fan alive who isn't completely set already if the team fails to claim another World Series for the rest of his or her life. So I insist: cheer, be happy. If they win again, it's nice, like using a 20% off coupon at Bed Bath & Beyond; but certainly nothing to get worked up over. If they lose: shrug, mope for ten seconds, then try to decide which of your 5 (5!) World Series DVDs you're gonna pop in and go on living your lives.

My inspiration to write this little piece stems from a Twitter conversation I had just yesterday with a Yankee fan friend of mine. He tweeted that the Yankees topping the Orioles was a "fitting finish." My reply was that the underdog Orioles defeating the team that literally proclaims itself to be "top of the heap" after every home win would be fitting, not the team with the most titles advancing to the next round. 

And this, by the way, is an ironclad point that speaks to our human evolution; what we define as just. An upstart team with a manager who was once fired by the Yankees knocking them out of the playoffs: that's a feel-good story! The perennial powerhouse defeating a team no one gave a chance to in April in the first round? Nobody wants to see THAT movie. If the Yankees beating the Orioles yesterday was "fitting," then so is a movie about the 2008 financial collapse where the banks are portrayed as the victimized protagonists. One team controls 25% of all the World Series Championships. Not exactly Occupy Wall Street numbers, but as close as you're getting in sports.

My friend then went on to argue that whenever the Yankees lose, Yankee fans have to deal with (whimper) every single other fan-base hating on them. So basically every year that ends without a title is a tragedy? Well boo-fucking-hoo! This is just the newest version of Yankee fan entitlement, which has run rampant the past few decades. You'll hear on New York sports radio or ESPN this notion that a championship is expected every year. I'm surprised this sentiment has never been called out for just how obnoxious it is. Championships are not to be expected, they are to be hoped for, dreamt of. Also, doesn't this perceived "us against the world"/victimized mentality of Yankee fans simply prove my point about the victory not being "fitting"? If no one but Yankee fans are rooting for that outcome, how could it possibly be good drama?

Some may say that I would act the exact same way if I were in their shoes, but I actually have proof that I wouldn't. Y'see, my favorite football team is the New York Giants, who've won 2 Super Bowls in the past 5 years. I am not exaggerating when I say I do not particularly care if they don't win another Super Bowl for the next 20 years. I've been alive for 4 and have adult memories of 2, so I'm good. This is because I hold my sports fandom to a very high standard, one that recognizes the value of a championship and is not driven by a greed to hoard them. Every professional sport is better off when a new team wins every year, and I'll believe that till I die.

All I ask of you Yankee fans (with absolutely ZERO expectation of follow-through) is this: OWN IT. Be happy your team wins, but concede that dramatically, it's a complete injustice. Appreciate Derek Jeter properly, knowing full well he'd be gone by now if your late owner didn't shell out significantly more than any sane person would be willing to pay for his skill-set. And most importantly, look back on your past championships fondly, not as merely as part of a manic collection that must build, build, build...

I wasn't lucky enough to have been an adult in the 1960s or 80s, when the Mets ruled New York (in attendance & cultural popularity). All I have is the hope that I live to see another fine era for the franchise. If I get to see the Mets even win a single championship, I know I'd recognize my good fortune enough to appreciate it graciously.

The Tree of... Huh?

With the Academy Awards fast approaching, Terrance Malick's The Tree of Life has emerged as a strong contender for Best Picture. Oscar Blog InContention's Kris Tapley wrote as convincing an argument for the film winning the award as one might find.

  

While I respect his opinion and find it perfectly valid, it is also completely wrong; The Tree of Life is an undeniably bad film. It is guilty of a number of filmmaking infractions, any of which individually render a film painful to watch, nevermind in aggregate. 

The violations...

1.) There is NO narrative structure. Nothing ever happens to set any semblance of a story into motion. There are no character arcs. Any scene could conceivably be placed anywhere in the film; no scene is begotten by the previous, nor begets the one that follows. The film moves from scenes of the grown protagonist to his childhood and back again, the only common bond being that we're seeing the same people over and over again. What happens in one scene has absolutely no effect on the next, nor deals with the consequences (which are few) of the prior.

2.) (Whispering) Voiceover. One of the immutable laws of filmmaking: any movie relying largely on VO is weak by definition. Stories are told by the juxtaposition of images, the cuts, not disembodied voices. In this case, when the director adds the staggeringly pretentious element of recording all the dropped-in dialogue in barely (if at all) discernible whispers, it descends to an unprecedented low.

3.) Running Time. If you're going to make us sit and watch for 2 hours & 19 minutes, at least let us feel like you needed all that time to get your point across. I estimate roughly 30 to 45 minutes of TOL could've been cut and it would've still achieved what it set out to do... whatever that is. Case in point: The Dark Knight ran 13 minutes longer and The Godfather 36, however both earned and warranted our attention for the entire duration.

And most importantly...

4.) It was a TOTAL cop-out. There is absolutely no consensus between those who viewed TOL as to the simple question of what happens. To ask ten different people who saw the film, "what's it about?" is to receive ten different answers. The story (in this case, a term used very loosely) is left completely up to interpretation. The director fails in the most literal sense of his job; he fails to direct the audience through his film. This is not to be confused with complexity; it is nothing more than ambiguity. Films that are complex bring everyone to the same point, leaving the journey up for analysis and questioning. This film doesn't even commit to where we end up.

If I were to guess, I'd say Malick winged it. He didn't know exactly where this was going on-set, and what we have is what he came up with in the editing room.

As to the assertion that this is "art," therein lies a whole different issue. Filmmaking is a craft; it's never supposed to be art. Y'know what though? I could see The Tree of Life working better as a walk-through installation than it does as a film.

*****

So now you see, factual evidence as to why this is a bad film. But film criticism is subjective, right? How can someone's opinion be wrong? Because it can be. I direct you to the late Gene Siskel, who put it best when he said "There is a point when a personal opinion shades off into an error of fact. When you say The Valachi Papers is a better film than The Godfather, you are wrong." (I've never seen The Valachi Papers, but I'm pretty sure Siskel nails it here.) Likewise, there are people of the opinion that dinosaurs walked the earth with man. Their opinions too, are wrong.

But if I'm correct, why then is TOL praised at all? Some people, like Roger Ebert, were reminded of their own childhoods in the 1950s; victims of their own nostalgia. Master screenwriter William Goldman once said that some movies are "medicinal," meaning that people like them because they think they should. Because of Terrance Malick's reputation, I think a lot of people were psychologically predisposed to liking this movie because they believed liking it made them deep and intellectual. (It doesn't.)

The Tree of Life is what Adaptation would've been had Charlie Kaufman not done us all the service of writing himself into the screenplay: flowing, digressive prose with no real purpose. It is vague, noncommittal and devoid of plot. It's also perfectly okay to like it. 

Hey, I like some bad movies too. I just always acknowledge they are as such.

(Note: This was written in response to my general feelings about the movie, not in particular as a backlash to Kris Tapley's column. Admittedly, reading his piece did ignite a fire in me to write something, but it is in no way intended to be directed at him. I've actually met Kris on a few occasions and hold no ill-will against him.)