Graduate from college with dreams as big as your bank account is small. Flee to the west coast in pursuit of the clichéd Hollywood dream. Move in with your best friend of the opposite sex, your ultimate sidekick in this romanticized pursuit of fame and fortune. Laugh when your friends poke fun at the absurdity of the situation. “When you’re both famous, we better get cool stuff!” they’ll demand as you pack up your few belongings and prepare for the cross country drive. “You guys are totally going to hook up,” they’ll nag jokingly. Roll your eyes and summon a gag. Assure your friends that that will never, ever happen.

Forfeit your own bathroom and sign a year lease on the east side of the city to minimize your monthly rent. Adjust to your new surroundings and the rules that follow from living with a boy. Start removing your hair from the shower drain and throwing your tampons away with utmost discretion. Demand he put the seat down after every use. Assemble a home together, furnished with flea market bargains and neglected street side treasures. Paint the walls, hang some posters, invest in a teapot and other basic kitchen accessories. Spend your weeks glued to the common room floor (you can’t afford a couch or a desk just yet). Crank out writing samples and encourage one another to make moves in the direction of their dreams. Go out together on the weekends. Attempt to wingman each other. Realize your bi-gendered duo is utterly ineffective in the hunt for love. Settle at a table with just the two of you, finish a couple of whiskeys, and return home to your respective bedrooms.

Eventually start to make friends. Laugh when they voice suspicion about your living situation. Insist, time and time again, that your friendship is entirely platonic. Note crushes you’ve had on each other’s friends. Tell the tale of summers past when your best friend manically picked up the pieces of your heart after it had been stomped to pieces by your first love. Follow up with the tale of how you did the same when your best girlfriend in the world broke his. Emphasize the fact that he dated your very best girlfriend. Watch as the conversation is immediately put to rest.

Reminisce about “the good ol’ days” of college over ramen noodles and dispensary weed. Familiarize yourself with every detail of your roommate’s feelings and behaviors. Reveal to him every detail of yours. Find comfort in the strength and exclusivity of your friendship. Spend most nights at home watching Frasier on your brand new, thirsted couch. Feel home sick and decide to cuddle. While in his arms, verbalize how silly your friends are to think your friendship could be anything more. Mean it. Gage the reaction of your roommate and confirm he means it too.

Repeat your actions for several months. Continue to write and drink whiskey together. Do everything in your power to make each other happy in this big, sprawled out, and increasingly lonely city. Continue to snuggle together. Commiserate over your inexplicable winter blues that occur, despite the pristine LA weather. Allow yourselves to intertwine tighter and tighter. Talk about your past. Talk about your future. Talk about anything and everything in between.

Return from work one night feeling particularly lonely. Go for a walk with your roommate and elaborate on your current state of mind. Find out that he feels lonely too. Comfort yourselves with whiskey, pot, and a sitcom streamed from Hulu (who can afford cable?). Agree to cuddle once more. Feel suddenly aware of your roommate’s tight hold around your body. Carefully grab for his hand and allow your tangled fists to rest gently against your chest. Feel his heart beat pounding against your back. Wonder if he can feel yours.

Remember the last time you hooked up with a friend and the disaster that followed. Dismiss it. Remember the meaningful relationship he had with your best girlfriend. Dismiss that as well. Take a deep breath and turn to face each other.

Wake up and talk about the night before. Laugh it off as a silly one-time thing. Promise not to tell a soul. 

Do it again… and again… and again.

 Let every initiated cuddle turn into more. Each night, joke about the crassness of your decisions. Stop going out with your friends in favor of staying in together. Text and email incessantly throughout the day.

Do not acknowledge the number of waking and sleeping hours spent communicating or hanging out one-on-one. Never acknowledge the pain this would cause your best girlfriend if she were ever to find out. Never, ever acknowledge that this is the closest you’ve felt to a boy in years.

 Spend an entire Saturday laughing, kissing and rolling around in bed.

Ignore all calls and text messages and decide to order in to avoid leaving the couch.

“This has to stop,” he’ll say mid make-out, catching you entirely off guard.

“You’re totally right,” you’ll agree, fumbling to hide your disappointment.

He’ll ask if you’re okay. You’ll tell him of course and ask back, to which he’ll reply the same.

“I really care about you and all, but it’s probably best to quit while that is still the case,” you’ll say playfully, alluding to your legendary inability to care for the same boy for more than a week.

“Good,” He’ll say, sounding disconcertingly relieved. “I mean, we’re 23 years old… and it’s just sex. Plus, let’s be honest, you and I would never, ever work out.”

Smile as he kisses you on the head and retreats to his room. Feel your heart sink to the pit of your stomach as he closes the door.

Start dating other people and encourage him to do the same. Act happy for each other and laugh at the crazies you encounter time and time again. Feel relieved when he acknowledges the insignificance of the girls he goes out with. Make certain he knows you feel the same about your varying flavors of the week.

“I think I met someone,” he’ll announce after a long day of work.

“Oooooh tell me more!” You’ll probe, focusing intently on stabilizing your voice inflections.

“She’s an actress on the film I’m working on. We’re going out tonight. I’m nervous,” he’ll state.

Help him dress and wish him well on his date. Wait up on the couch in anticipation of what would surely be another disappointing dinner with a vapid, LA local.

Feel foolish when the clock strikes 3 a.m. and he has not returned. Acknowledge that he’s not coming home and put yourself to bed. 

Feel regret thrust chills through your body. Cry. Remember that you can’t tell a soul about your situation. Cry harder. Ignore phone calls from your best girlfriend asking how you’re doing and initiating a visit west. Remind yourself what a terrible friend you are. Cry yourself to sleep.

Pretend not to have noticed when your roommate returns home the next morning. Act happy for him when, night after night, he continues to stay over at her place. Act cavalier when he begins breaking plans with you in favor of her. Get pings of excitement when you receive a new text. Feel embarrassed when you realize it’s not from him. Stop writing. Stop eating. Start sleeping with boys you care little about. Perfect a facade of happiness when your roommate is present. Take drugs and have more sex when he’s not. Do everything thinkable in the realm of self-destruction in a desperate attempt to numb your senses. Fail miserably.

Meet her. See firsthand how smart, beautiful and sophisticated she really is. Envy her knowledge of your roommate’s musical taste and love of old films. Tell her how happy you are to finally meet her and how you look forward to being great friends.

Remember that, at the end of the day, he’s your best friend in the world and deserves to be happy. Bury your feelings to the best of your ability, and pay your sixth month of rent.

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Okay, listen. I know everyone and their mother has been talking about Lena Dunham’s new show, Girls, on HBO. Nary a day goes by without having to read some outraged or heartwarming op-ed on some blog. (Add this one to the list.) The attention is not just limited to the Internet either. This past weekend I went to a friend’s housewarming party and got into four different conversations about Girls and what it meant and why it was being criticized and blah blah blah. (Granted, this was a party full of New York media types, so our antennas were naturally  up.) So look, let me just say a few words on  it and then I’ll be done. Promise.

To my understanding, there are 3 major reasons why Girls is attracting such intense media coverage.

1. It’s a show starring a bunch of vaginas

Anytime something comes out that’s centered around the female experience (Sex and the City, Bridesmaids), it naturally garners a bunch of attention because, well gee, I don’t know. Maybe because Hollywood is still just a giant boys club and it’s a freaking victory when something that doesn’t involve explosions and poop jokes manages to make it through. (And let’s face it, Girls probably gained major traction when Judd Apatow signed on. Who knows if it would’ve made it through without his endorsement. I feel like even now you need the help of a man to get something female-driven up and running which is infinitely depressing.) And not only is Girls a show about, well, girls, it’s created by and starring a woman who doesn’t fit the Hollywood mold. I remember first seeing Tiny Furniture in the theaters and almost gasping when I saw Lena Dunham’s naked body. And it wasn’t because it was hideous and terrifying. It’s because it was a body that looked like mine. It was a body that I’ve seen numerous times before and even slept with (well minus the lady parts). I just had never seen it before on the big screen.  It was then that I realized what a little asshole Hollywood had been to me. The fact that I was so shocked at the  mere sight of seeing a real body made me realize just how long I had been force fed BS images of unrealistic ones. So not only is Girls a show about women (during a time when many execs still believe that women don’t go to the movies or watch TV), it’s by a REAL feminist woman with a real body. (And let’s not kid ourselves here. As quirky and brilliant as Kristen Wiig is, she still had to be very thin in Bridesmaids.) I guarantee you if someone like Harrison Ford’s son made a show called Boys about he and all of his privileged friends, it would not be under the same scrutiny Girls is. Since so few (read: almost none) progressive female shows actually make it on the air, the ones that do are put under a magnifying glass. They need to speak for all the voices that didn’t make it through, which is a totally unfair and unrealistic expectation to put on something that’s just one person’s voice.

2. The issue of privilege

People seem to take issue with the fact that Lena Dunham was born into a well-to-do family, went to an expensive liberal arts college, and has chosen to capture this kind of #whitegirlproblems brand of entitlement in her work. And OMG, the people she casted are all spawns of wealthy parents. I couldn’t possibly watch these women pretend to struggle knowing that they came from cushy backgrounds! Um, but hi, it’s called ACTING?! People seem to have confused Girls with being a reality show when it’s actually scripted television. I don’t care if Allison Williams was riding a golden camel in Dubai and eating duck before she got casted as a down-and-out twentysomething. All  I care about is if she does a good job. And guess what?! She does. They all do! When Charlize Theron was casted as a serial killer in Monster, were we not able to have a suspension of disbelief? We weren’t watching her live in destitute poverty and murdering people being like “Um, LOL. Yeah right. This isn’t believable because IRL Charlize Theron is rich and totes doesn’t kill people!” That’s what acting’s all about: playing someone different than who you are. What was Dunham supposed to do? Cast starving artists in a bid for authenticity? Give me a break. This is what filmmaking and TV is all about. People write about the world they know and/or inhabit and make something from it. Filmmakers like Woody Allen and Spike Lee make films on some variations of the same topics over and over. It’s what they know and they do a good job of it. But they’ve never been under the scrutiny that Lena’s been under. No one’s telling Woody Allen to make a movie about the orphans in Nigeria or asking Spike Lee to make a movie about housewives in Brentwood. They exist in very specific realms, just like most artists do. Lena is just writing what she knows. All she should be judged on is whether or not she’s doing it well. (And most criticisms of Girls don’t dispute the fact that Lena is funny and talented. They just take issue with the privilege which is just foolish, in my opinion.) People have scapegoated her as being a part of this larger issue about a lack of diversity in TV and film. But don’t blame Lena for writing about her experiences and getting a TV show out of it. Blame the networks for being too fearful to air a show about real poverty or a show that doesn’t star exclusively white people. They believe that people just won’t want to watch stuff like that so they never greenlight the projects. It’s disgusting and sad, but it really has nothing to do with Dunham.

3. Bitches be jealous

A lot of this criticism is rooted in envy. People are jealous that, at the tender age of 25, she’s already made two movies and a TV show while most people her age are still struggling. Yes, Lena did have a leg up on a lot of twentysomethings because of her privileged background. She had the luxury of moving back into her parents house and working on her scripts. I’m assuming that she didn’t have to get a barista job. But you know what? She worked her ass off. She made two web series, Delusional Downtown Divas and Tight Shots, and wrote two movies, Tiny Furniture and Creative Nonfiction, all while basically still in college. You know what I was doing in college? Coke and Bravo marathons. Lena saw her good fortune and took advantage of it. How could you penalize her for that? There are so many privileged kids who  don’t do anything. That’s the real shame. So my advice? Use Lena’s success as a motivator. MAKE SOMETHING instead of sitting idly by, feeling pissed that everyone is eclipsing you. Make your mark. Jealousy is the most useless emotion ever. It won’t get you anywhere besides writing a mean post on your personal blog about how much Girls sucks. If you don’t like what you’re seeing, make something you would want to see.

ANNNNNDDD I’m done. This has been your obligatory Girls blog post for the day.

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Let’s have this conversation one more time. Note that I didn’t say one last time because this won’t be the last time it’s had. But because it’s that time of year (which is to say, there is a month and there is a day), let’s talk one more time about racism, the fundamentals of Hollywood and whether one can amend the other.

During the 84^th Annual Academy Awards, The Artist swept a majority of the night’s biggest awards, with similarly nostalgia-obsessed Hugo nabbing most of the technical statues. It was, however, Octavia Spencer’s win for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in The Help that stuck out. Not because the win wasn’t deserved, or out of any ill will towards Ms. Spencer (a tremendous actress that deserves recognition, but for what exactly we’ll discuss later). What struck me was the reaction, the standing ovation the room gave, that continued for a good 30-seconds after Ms. Spencer arrived on stage, was given the award, was given a moment to digest, and even given some time to fully take in the fact that a lot of people were standing up and all of them were clapping for her.

What a treat! What a delightful night it must have been for Ms. Spencer! Still, the question: what was everyone standing up for? It is of course wrong, impolite, questionable and probably not entirely accurate to say that it was simply because she was a black woman who won a major award, but the reality is that I do believe everyone in that room stood up because Ms. Spencer is a black woman who won a major award.

It comes down to the question of just what exactly Hollywood’s relationship with race currently is, how it is evolving, if at all, and where exactly the Academy fits in. The glass ceiling was broken in 2001 with easily the single most political night in the Academy’s history, which saw Sidney Poitier receive a much deserved lifetime achievement award in the same night as Denzel Washington and Halle Berry’s Oscar wins — the latter being the first African American female to win a leading actress Oscar. Before that fateful night, we saw an average of one Oscar handed out to a person of color every nine years. After that night we’d see four additional African Americans nab acting trophies in less than six.

These are of course abstractions — a numbers game to end all numbers games. But the Academy is a strategic bunch, and what has often been called Hollywood’s most self-congratulatory night has now begun to celebrate the importance of the celebration. The problem is that the Oscars aren’t merely a distraction, but rather emblematic of the problem.

Ms. Spencer is far from an isolated case regarding Hollywood’s still-tumultuous relationship with race. Perhaps the most recent and overt example in some time was prompted by George Lucas, who went on the talk show circuit in early January to both promote his new film, Red Tails, and lambast the industry for making it so damn hard to make. He is, after all, George Lucas. He did, after all, help shepherd the return of the studio system. And they do, after all, owe him everything from a beautiful newborn to funding any film he wants to make. His experience of racial struggle (irony actively avoided) has lead to support from all sides, including cultural intellectual Cornell West, who urged his twitter followers to “#occupyredtails on opening weekend.”

Two separate events — Spencer’s standing ovation and Lucas’ difficult production — held as prime examples of just how complex the issue of race is in Hollywood. The reality is that Hollywood has found a remarkable middle ground in being able to divert any debate regarding racism on screen by using up their quota to cover films that tackle, you guessed it, racism itself. And come time, they applaud the artists encouragingly, as if they have just successfully completed an obstacle course — which, or course, they have.

Hollywood’s reasoning is that we, the viewers, dictate just what does and doesn’t get made — all that hard work is, in the end, kindly, for us. This is what happens when an industry is built on demographic obsession. Is Hollywood racist? No. Not overtly. What Hollywood does is simply perpetrate the advantage that white people have. The fact is that it is the white male who dictates what does and doesn’t get made, or who does and doesn’t get a standing ovation — it’s Mulvey’s monster having penetrated the industry just as it did the apparatus.

Aside from the sheer horror of this reality, the real problem is the disconnect between the industry as it is and the industry as it could be. The industry views itself as a ‘response’ to the culture, as opposed to a tool used to alter it. It is built on statistical analysis: if white people see movies about other white people, they will keep making movies about white people. If white people don’t see movies about black people, they will never make movies about black people, and honestly how rude of you to ask. The Oscars, consequently, become a Band-Aid for a bullet wound, a way to momentarily ignore the strides that the industry refuses to make by congratulating the few — and the louder they clap, the more it’ll drown out the groans.

With such a decline of democracy in society and such an increase of democracy in the culture, it would be naive to understate that the culture essentially now dictates the society. The problem is that the industry need not think they can only reflect the culture; they need to acknowledge that, should they so choose, they could fundamentally alter it. We are a visual society who thrives on repetition: tell us something enough and we’ll believe it. Sell us something enough, and we’ll buy it. Everyone knows this, including the industry itself. So why, when it comes to issues of race, does cinema suddenly backtrack and see film not as something with the power to progress, but something that is merely “giving the people what they want.” Isn’t “telling the people what they want” the true barometer of corporate success?

Is the difficult production of Red Tails racist? No, it’s just bad business. Is The Help a racist film? No. But it’s telling. It’s telling about the chief audience that Hollywood cares about, and how one can only break through if they grapple with race performativity and directly, or are an actor of color so oversaturated (think Morgan Freeman, who I believe is now viewed by SAG as literally “a prop”) that the audience is not threatened or shamed, because they’re watching through the lens of someone familiar as opposed to merely a man of color (whose own rise to A-list prominence is always, in the back of ones mind, worthy of applause since “it must have been so difficult.”)

When Octavia Spencer gets a standing ovation during the Oscars for a role that was not difficult to play, in a film that was not difficult to make, it says everything you need to know. Racism implies an intended disenfranchisement: that we long for a hierarchy that puts some above others for reasons made increasingly irrelevant over time. But what we have now is the desire for equality through the perimeters of difficulty. The applause, as a result, becomes congratulatory for everyone but Ms. Spencer. Because what they are truly celebrating is momentary progress in the abstract. Things aren’t post-racial in the sense that “everything is resolved and we’re now all playing the same game.” They’re post-racial in that, “we may have a home field advantage, but not only are you guys allowed onto the field, you are commended for having made it at all.”

Now that’s progress.

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I never realized before that freeways come to an end; they just flow back into real streets like nothing ever happened, like you were never going 80 at 4 AM next to a 16-wheeler, thinking about your ex. The glow of movies on big screens? This entire city is basking in that glow. That glow can carry you home over and under passes and through seemingly endless ritzy and rickety neighborhoods. The hills — Silver Lake, Hollywood, whatever all those other ones are — they wink at you. They glitter and glint and make you feel like you’re in on the joke; that you’re living in a feature film.

The cafes are always full of people, any time of day. Many of them are working on things: screenplays, events, stories. That, or they are actors doing a very good job pretending to work on things, when really they are just studying you, waiting to see what they can borrow from your character and use. It is okay to spend 5 dollars on tea or coffee, even 10: it is the price you pay for not having an office and wearing sandals to work in February. It is also the price of being the source of audition material.

Everyone here is playing some kind of character; if anything, the city requires that you reinvent yourself upon entry. You may have been a straight-A straight-edge goody-two-shoes in your hometown, but here, history doesn’t hold as much weight. You can be a flaky floozy with blond highlights dressed in filmy white dresses and turquoise stones, looking out at the world hazily from beneath a floppy brimmed hat. You can be a total sh-t-kicker who wears leather jackets with scraped up elbows from motorcycle accidents and runs her mouth at inopportune moments. You can be a screenwriter-photographer-director-writer’s girlfriend, a jaded intellectual who sneaks peeks at Entertainment magazine when no one is looking, a muse. Not only can you; you should.

There are usually lemons or limes or avocados growing somewhere close to your house; you can pick them when you’re leaving parties drunk and let them roll around in your purse, and make lemonade or Key Lime pie or guacamole with them the next day, leaving the bottom of your bag smelling like citrusy leather.  You can also tell by squeezing an avocado in between your fingers when it is ripe and when it is rotten. You can taste it if you want to, if you really need proof that even such a perfect fruit can go bad, but you know the second you touch it if it is still edible. The same tends to go for your interactions with people.

You can be all different kinds of beautiful here; beautiful because you stick out, because your skin is light instead of dark, your hair is dark instead of light; or beautiful because you blend in, all sand and sun and sea-colored. You can dip the tips of your hair in sunshine, tattoo your skin, pierce your ears, put your name on lists for exclusive parties and teeter through the doors in heels and sequins and silk. You can give in to the vanity of the place and no one will scoff at you; they’re being their own hot selves. You will never have seen so many beautiful people in a Target before.

Someone once told me that your ability to survive in Los Angeles is based on a very simple formula. You need to get into bed at night and be able to hold what you’ve done that day up against your dreams and feel like they match up, and you need to be getting laid. If you lack one, or worse, both of those things, you have every right to get back on the freeway and leave.

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So I’m watching Somewhere on HBO and I’m thinking: really? This is the vision of debauched Hollywood?  Where is Harvey Keitel’s Bad Lieutenant or the over-the-topness of Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond?  In Lost in Translation (I know a lot of people like this film but I found it underwhelming even if quite beautiful and, at times, exquisite), Bill Murray might not give us a whole lot but his face, his posture, speak to a richness of experience and character — the romance of being an individual. In Bad Lieutenant, Keitel is, as the kids say but don’t understand, epic: he’s the stuff of myth.

But Stephen Dorff’s Johnny Marco? He is so, well, bland. He’s so everyday. In fact, there is nothing extraordinary about him — he doesn’t dress flamboyantly; he doesn’t have odd taste in sex (the strippers, well, they are odd but they just reiterate the banality of consumption); he doesn’t throw fits or tantrums. He’s just like you and me, only famous.

Fame, here, is not well earned.  He’s not an amazing  musician (he’s ok at Guitar Hero); he’s not a great actor lost in his characters.  He is basically on American Idol or a viral YouTube video or he won Survivor. There is nothing fundamentally extraordinary about our stars today. It’s all so, well, banal.

This, alas, is what the film gives us — the banality of consumption.  Sofia Coppola is not, and could not be, Billy Wilder or Abel Ferrara. She is the spawn of a new age, even if she comes from old school royalty (can you imagine Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in one of Sofia Coppola’s films?) The stars of today are, indeed, so well behaved.  It’s to the point where when Tom Cruise gets a little nutty and jumps on a couch, he’s considered wacky.

Now look at Cassvates, Faulk, and Ben Gazzara:

Or Abel Ferrara on Conan — he is lit beyond belief, bigger and more deranged than the Spectacle (even if constituting it — it’s the constitution of the unattainable, of the excessive):

The decadence of yesteryear no longer glitters with either promise or romance. We are always already watched, always already judged. Throughout Somewhere, Dorff screws beautiful women simply because he can. It is neither depraved nor decadent. The girls are beautiful. They all seem to have fun when screwing. And yet it remains banal, a non-event, a blip on the radar.

Compare Coppola’s Dorff to the silly Vincent Chase of Entourage. The promise of Entourage is naive, the promise of Hollywood from the 30s with a hip hop beat: fame and fortune and women women women! Ain’t this the life, boys? Johnny Marco is Vince in 10 years: pussy is pussy, there to be had just like everything else, so what?

Somewhere is banal, no doubt.  But that is precisely what makes it so beautiful, so pitch perfect: it is of the banal, the beauty and banality of the banal.  There’s no ugliness.  Reviews of the film claim it’s just beautiful people kvetching (I don’t think they used the word “kvetch,” however). But that’s the point — there is no ugliness.  Dorff is the star of a new day and while the romance, and fundamental enigma, of the individual has disappeared, our loneliness has not. The extraordinariness of the ordinary has vanished but that doesn’t mean we don’t get lonely — or that there’s no beauty.

Coppola’s challenge here is monumental precisely because she doesn’t have monuments to reckon.

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image – Somewhere

Have a weird, random dream job that would only exist in a Hollywood script. You’re a product tester of…products, or a “GLAMOROUS” dog walker, or a super chic editor of Chic Magazine located in Loveless Metropolitan City, U.S.A. Your job is your life. In the office, you’re an assertive smart woman but at home, when no one is looking, you open a bottle of wine and become The Sad Wine-Drinking Single Woman. It’s all so terrible. You really feel sympathy watching the fun, sassy career woman dissolve into mush when there’s no hard, throbbing penis greeting her at the door. “Wait, YOU don’t have it all? I’m so confused. The KT Turnstall song and the DVF dress you wore to work today indicated otherwise. Now, I’m interested…”

Have a quirky single sexually-active best friend who drinks a lot and tells you to go out and find a man, dammit! Sometimes she even talks about penises really loud when you’re at brunch and everyone stares. OMG, she’s so inappropriate and wild but, like, don’t you just love her? She’s the funny kooky friend everyone loves to be around! Whenever you get invited to dinner parties, the host asks you, “Can you bring your crazy friend? SHE’S SO FUNNY!” So you do. You bring her and she livens up the whole evening with her antics. These women are married, which means they’re boring and have no zest for life (Incidentally, the goal of this film is for you to join them and be happily married and boring too but whatevs!), so when this free-spirit energy comes barreling through a home where love and monogamy lives, it’s a special treat for everyone! “Look at her, girls! She’s single and saying funny things!”

Be smarter than the average woman. In case you didn’t already know, the average woman is a retarded psycho. They fall for womanizing jerks and get cruelly dumped but it’s okay because they’re nuts and sort of deserve it. Not you though! You’re smarter than that! When you meet your love interest — the womanizing player — you let him know that you’re not one of the slutty, stupid girls he’s used to sleeping with. You’re on to his game! You won’t be won over that easily. Wait, he has amazing eyes though. And you’re so tired of being alone. Maybe one date with a misogynistic jerk won’t hurt. Farewell bottle of wine…

This is when you stop being the strong, single independent woman and start to lose your mind. You put on a good front there for a second, showing this man that you were smarter than all the other girls, but now that you’re developing a crush, you’ve become One Of Them. Some may diagnose you with a case of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, but nope! You’re just a girl who’s falling in love! Do the following things to show that you’re happy: Dance embarrassingly along to hip-hop in your kitchen alone while in your underwear, gesticulate wildly, call your crazy friend for advice, widen your eyes repeatedly, talk very fast, become a spaz and fall (hilariously) down the stairs, and start to question every aspect of the relationship and/ or yourself. Take down your ratty ponytail (YOU WERE SO UGLY BEFORE WHEN YOU WERE SINGLE, OMG) and get glam.

Tame the misogynistic jerk into a nice guy with only slight misogynistic tendencies. After all, you can’t change a man completely. Now you just find his sexism to be super endearing. Have his male bro friends tease him for becoming whipped. When a man becomes tender and sweet, he is humiliated by everyone around him. It’s really weird and #dark. You celebrate men for mistreating women and condemn them when they change their ways. Um, k.

Have a moment when the man’s whole credibility goes into question. He’s lying to you about something. Maybe he’s actually your ex-boyfriend from high school who’s been made unrecognizable with plastic surgery? Or maybe he’s a Mormon? IDK. Regain your power for a moment and dump him.

Get back together four scenes later after a lot of begging and pleading. All of the misunderstandings are cleared up with some paper-thin excuse, or maybe you’ve just been tasered and your memory has been erased. Whatever the reason, you get back together and suddenly revert back to the powerful woman you were in the beginning but with a boyfriend. Because women can have it all! Because of feminism! Because of… wait, where’s your glass of wine? Can someone put on that song “Hot In Herre”?

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image – The Ugly Truth

]]> http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/how-to-be-a-single-woman-in-a-mainstream-romantic-comedy/feed/ 19 http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/war-horse-animal-movies-and-ridiculousness/ http://thoughtcatalog.com/2012/war-horse-animal-movies-and-ridiculousness/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:30:05 +0000 Brian Donovan http://thoughtcatalog.com/?p=77184

There is a movie called AirBud, about a dog who can play basketball. Of course, I don’t need to tell you that, you’re probably already a fan. I mean, who could resist a tale about a young boy who adopts a homeless puppy, learns the dog is a wiz at human athletics, then teams up with the pup to win his high school’s basketball championship? It’s charming, it’s dramatic, it’s a story we can all relate to. In fact, there’s an entire series of Air Bud films: Air Bud 2, Golden Receiver (football pun); Air Bud 3, World Pup (soccer pun); and Air Bud 4: Air Bud Spikes Back (simultaneous volleyball and Star Wars pun). Sports fans still marvel at Bo Jackson, an athlete so gifted he could play professional baseball and football simultaneously – well, Bud can do all that AND lick his own balls. So, how about we start giving Bud the attention he is due, eh? Why am I telling you this? Because War Horse, the heart-tingling Hollywood epic that’s considered a favorite for a Best Picture nomination is Air Bud as interpreted by Steven Spielberg. And it’s about time everyone knows it.

The essential appeal to the Air Bud franchise is that there is a dog that can do things humans can do. War Horse is the same, exactly the same, in fact, except War Horse isn’t a dog, and Steven Spielberg can cast better supporting actors. War Horse is a tale about a young boy whose father buys a homeless horse (covering his tracks, Spielberg has changed Bud’s name to Joey), learns the horse is a wiz at gardening and human comprehension, then teams up with Joey to save his family’s farm. Sound familiar? Were the film in the capable hands of Air Bud director Charles Martin Smith, it would’ve ended there. But Spielberg being who he is, he had to push things. Not only does Joey save the farm, but he goes on to give a dying girl a reason to live, fight gallantly for both France AND Germany in the first World War, remind both sides of their humanity which no doubt results in the ultimate cease fire, have a (possibly gay) love affair with another horse, and ultimately return to his boy owner, now a man, and help him convince his taciturn father that it is OK to love. Can Joey shoot a free throw with his snout? We may never know. But that other stuff is pretty damn impressive.

Every scene in War Horse is built the same: create a scenario where an almost God-like person saves the day… then replace that person with a horse. It’s manipulative beyond belief, and at a certain point you wonder what might be left for this great horse to accomplish. Can he cure cancer? Perform a c-section of human twins? Present himself as a viable Republican candidate for the Presidency? These are the questions you expect from a movie about a dog playing sports (“The audience is gonna lose it when when Bud saves the winning goal with his tail!”) — but not from the guy who made Schindler’s List.

The most memorable example begins with Joey hauling missiles for the German army with his (possibly gay) horse mate, Topthorn. The two met when they were both serving in the French army, and remained close after being captured by the Germans. Sadly, Topthorn has contracted an unknown horse disease, and is having trouble pulling the missiles that the brutish Germans so insist upon moving about. When a particularly barbaric German tells Topthorn to get to the front of the cavalcade, Joey immediately stands up for (possibly gay) companion. He neighs, pounds the dirt, and does that thing where horses stand up on their hind legs and move their front hooves around in a circle. Joey convinces the Germans that he is stronger and more capable than Topthorn, and takes over the greuling lead role for his (possibly gay) partner. Topthorn returns to the back of the march where he can get some much needed rest. It’s heartwarming and of course, completely ridiculous. You could easily see this happening with a person. A brave, powerful person who’s heart was as strong as his back. Maybe Russell Crowe. Or Elizabeth Taylor. And that’s what makes the scene seem like such a good idea. We’d love to watch a human perform such a valiant act, imagine how great it would be with a horse! The exact same principle that was no doubt going through the Air Bud screenwriter’s mind as he scripted the final game-winning jumpshot as performed by a canine.

For this to work with a horse, however, Joey would have to speak human, speak German human, love another horse, be braver than pretty much every person alive, and be able to do that thing where horses stand up on their hind legs and move their front hooves around in a circle. It’s fun and all, but it’s also deeply formulaic. And manipulative. And cynical about the state of modern audiences. In short, it sucks. And it’s the sort of thing we accept from maudlin movies we let our kids watch while we’re making dinner, but not really the thing of celebrated Oscar contenders. We can still tell the difference, but I’m starting to get the feeling that maybe Steven Spielberg can’t.

It is only fair to point that War Horse was not Steve’s creation alone. It’s based on a children’s book (surprise, surprise), and its subsequent adaptation as a Broadway and London theater sensation. So there’s more than one person to blame. But just because they were doing it, doesn’t mean you had to too, Steven. In the end, I’m not sure what’s more disappointing, that a great director is adopting the approach of a preposterous series of children’s movies, or that he’s going to get an Oscar nomination for it. Am I going overboard? I thought maybe I was. That is until I read this Twitter review from one of today’s great critical minds…

Now I know it was crap for sure.

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• Host Billy Crystal will sing a song about The Artistset to Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence,” which will fade into another song called “Luck be a Lady with a Dragon Tattoo.” His monologue will include the joke, “War Horse was faster than Harvey Weinstein at a buffet.” There will be laughter and sustained applause.
• In one of the tightest races of the evening, Elizabeth Taylor will beat Sidney Lumet in the category Most Applause In An ‘In Memoriam’ Montage. In her speech, she will thank her agent, “the big man upstairs,” and “my darling, Richard.” Lumet will insist to reporters that, “it’s an honor just to be nominated.”
• This Ain’t The Flintstones: A XXX Parodywill be shut out of all the major categories, with the possible exceptions of Art Direction and Costume Design.
• The show will go over-budget, and the final half-hour will be a re-run of the Golden Globe Awards. Nobody will notice.
• Billy Crystal’s monologue will contain satanic messages if played backwards.
• In a new category introduced to boost ratings, five elderly stars will compete for a chance to be sacrificed onstage and included in the evening’s ‘In Memoriam’ montage. In another tight race, Mickey Rooney will narrowly defeat Kirk Douglas.
• Billy Crystal will once again perform his legendary Sammy Davis Jr. impersonation, complete with blackface. There will be sustained applause.
• An Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement will be awarded to Nick Swarsdon for his performance in Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star. He will thank “the Hollywood dream factory, for letting me be a part of your dreams.” The sheer force of applause will deafen some of the Academy’s older members, and cause the upper balcony to collapse.
• The winner of Best Short Documentary will reveal crucial information about where Al Qaeda plans to strike next. Entire nation will be taking a bathroom break.
• In honor of The Artist, Lauren Bacall will present a montage celebrating great moments from silent cinema. Her Teleprompter script will include the passage, “When I started out in the silent days, Bogie and I used only our faces to reach the audiences’ hearts.” At least half of the clips will be colorized.
• While presenting Best Score, Jake Gyllenhaal will read from the teleprompter that, “Music can transport us to another world — a world of cinematic dreams.” He will slit his own throat out of abject shame, causing a brief commercial break and reshuffling of some of the categories.
• Every entertainment journalists across the country will coincidentally write the headline, “Will The Artistbe silent at the Oscars?” This will trigger a chain-reaction that will end all molecular movement in their bodies, causing death and devastation from coast to coast.
• Jim Carrey will introduce a montage of “Oscar’s Wackiest Goofs, Gaffes and Blunders!” Will simply be a replay of the entire 1957 ceremony, when Around the World in Eighty Dayswon.
• Halfway through, Billy Crystal will be replaced by Robin Williams. Nobody will notice.
• F-cking. Oh. My. God. There will be soooo muuuuuch f-cking.
• Best Picture will be a four-way race between The Descendants, The Artist, Midnight in Paris, and the trailer for The Three Stooges (2012). While the Stooges trailer will not win the big prize, Will Sasso will receive Best Actor for his turn as Curly, and Kate Upton will take Best Supporting Actress in a landslide for her performance as “Nun In A Bikini.”

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The Dark Knight Rises

You know that friend of yours who wants to tell you about a new movie, and you ask them not to, but they insist what they’re describing isn’t important to the plot, even though it’s a shot by shot description of the ending? Do you have a friend like that?

I have a friend like that, and when he’s not around, I have the internet. Boy does the internet love ruining movies.

Let me put this very simply: I really enjoyed The Dark Knight. It was by far one of the best films I’ve seen in years, and I’m pretty sure I’m not alone on that, so naturally, I’m excited to see The Dark Knight Rises. But lately I can’t visit a blog, go to a news site, or even glance at my Facebook feed for two seconds without somebody posting a picture from the movie or describing scenes in intricate detail.

The coverage has been ridiculous. Day after day there are stories about costumes, set pieces, vehicles, casting choices, and locations, and the film nerds eat it up, never satiated with how much they know about the movie. It’s become so ubiquitous that I have to avert my eyes every time they show another picture. No, I don’t want to know what Bane’s makeup looks like, I didn’t even want to know that Bane was in the film. This is a serious issue people!

Now perhaps you think I’m being too much of a purist or a neurotic, but consider this: there is so much information online that I can imagine viewers bringing a clipboard to the movie to make sure everything they read about is there. “There’s the costume – check. There’s that scene from the trailer – check. There’s Anne Hathaway in leather – check.” (I’ll be honest, seeing the last example didn’t bother me that much.)

Audiences are deconstructing the film before even seeing it. I can appreciate piquing your interest with tidbits of information, but no film has ever been enhanced by knowing about it beforehand. The idea is to watch the movie in its linear assembled form. That’s what story telling is, so if you want to get the most out of your Dark Knight Rises experience, it’s best to simply let Christopher Nolan tell you the story. Trust me, he knows what he’s doing.

Now I have a very cynical theory as to why people are reaching for so many details. You see, The Dark Knight was an incredible film. It was so good in fact, that audiences (myself included) have a hard time seeing how Nolan can improve upon it, but that’s just it. All those people overindulging in revealing tidbits are subconsciously destroying their own movie-watching experience. They don’t want it to be as good, so they won’t let it be as good. How can you enjoy a film when you know so much about it? Every new detail acquired destroys a little more of the surprise, which is partially where a film’s power comes from, and by knowing its secrets, its twists and turns and visions, we feel like we have taken away some of that power.

Sure, that last paragraph was a little dramatic, but do you do this with other arts? Are you desperate to know what font the new Jonathan Franzen novel is in? Do you want to hear random base chords from the upcoming Arcade Fire album?  Is it essential to read exactly how many bubbles there are in Dale Chihuly’s latest glass installation? (A weird example.) No, you don’t need or want to know any of these things, so stop doing it with The Dark Knight Rises.

I realize people will argue that the production is releasing these details to generate buzz, and that sopping them up is only natural, and in a way, that’s completely right. But does it really take the power of an overactive marketing department to make you want to see The Dark Knight Rises? Isn’t it enough to know that the movie merely exists, and will be out soon? That’s all I need.

There are blogs I’ve temporarily stopped reading because they are showing too many pictures. There are Facebook friends whose status updates no longer appear in my news feed because of their incessant reporting. And in rare moments of frustration, I’ve even thought of keeping a roofie next to my computer, so if I accidentally see something from the film, I won’t remember anything. (That’s what they do for prostate exams!)

So please internet, stop reporting so much on The Dark Knight Rises. You can see it when it comes out. Go report on something else, like the latest Katherine Heigl film. I hear she plays a bounty hunter!

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While everyone, including Sir Hamm himself, has long since accepted that Jon Hamm doesn’t actually exist — he is simply a fleshy pink vessel for one Don Draper — it does not stop the man who embodies such a character from being some serious, serious husband material. While, no, technically you will not be marrying Don Draper, you can rest assured that you are marrying a man both sexy and intuitive enough to bring to life such an incredible character (and make us lust for him, despite his apparent lack of a soul).

And as Jonnycakes has demonstrated with his appearances on SNL and films like Bridesmaids, he’s no stranger to a little low-brow comedy when the occasion calls for it. If you’re not currently aware of a little gem called “Jon Hamm’s John Ham,” I respectfully request you head on over to your nearest video website and check it out. And while you may spend your deliriously happy matrimonial years insisting he wear a suit and drink rye on the rocks, there is nothing that Mr. Hamm won’t do to make you happy. I promise.

Name: Jon Hamm

Age: 40 (Damn, he looks good.)

Occupation: Bringer back of all things tailored, restrained, and delightfully devoid of conscience.

Description: Hamm, having gotten his start in small movie roles way back when, as well as being a brief acting teacher for the world’s luckiest 8th-grade class, finally struck Hollywood gold as the delectable anti-hero of Mad Men. He is also, it must unfortunately be added, one-half of what seems to be a stable, loving marriage to actress and screenwriter, Jennifer Westfeldt. We can only assume, though, that anyone cool enough to snag the Hammburgler is someone more than cool enough to share.

Benefits to Marriage: While marriage to Hamm would clearly include invites and cred at all the most exclusive Hollywood parties where people come from miles away to fawn over his performance, his depth, and his shiny little side-part, it would also involve a lot of cuddling. Something about that hard-wrought role where he has to pretend not to care (as well as those adorable glimpses into his range which show that he most certainly does) would likely leave JonJon with a dire need to spoon. You could be that lucky little spoon. That could be you.

Drawbacks: He is clearly contractually obligated to have simulated sex with about 1903982308 gorgeous women per episode, so let’s hope you’re not the jealous type.

You Must Be: Willing to travel, comfortable with the smell of herbal cigarettes, and not made uncomfortable with him being in the same room as Christina Hendricks.

The Dowry Jon Brings: 100 acres of the most strong cornfields in southern California, 76 potbellied sows, a large barn ready to be painted by a loving couple, and 134 cartons of fake Lucky Strikes.

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