Composable Thumbs

Directed by Richard Wong

Written by H.P. Mendoza

Starring Parry Shen, Lynn Chen, Sheetal Sheth, Kerry McCrohan

Yes, We're Open is probably the most honest sex comedy that I have ever seen.

This is a quality that is apparent from the opening shot all the way to the end and is one of the film's strongest features.  The characters do not feel like characters but rather real people living in a real world.  Sylvia (Lynn Chen) and Luke’s (Parry Shen) pervasive and clinging desire to prove to everyone that they are a modern couple is a more honest character flaw/hook than the generic and typical longing to be liked or loved by others.  Sylvia and Luke both seek a “cooler” form of affection and respect from their peers…friends that they malignantly dump on the moment they are without their company.

The acting feels fresh and the characters feel real both in performance and dialogue.  Characters are playful and consistent when it comes to their language.  Because the primary focus of the film is on Luke and Sylvia’s mutually envious desire to be in a open relationship we spend an significant amount of time looking very deeply inward on both of them and the more we look, the less we like them.  This, I assume and hope, is completely intentional.

The supporting characters serve as moral barometers for Luke and Sylvia.  The just-married couple is sweet and loving and fairly traditional though they are given a great opportunity to turn Luke and Sylvia's world over.

(Photo of the writer, director, and stars of Yes, We're Open from it's red carpet premiere as the SFIAAFF Centerpiece presentation at the beautiful Castro Theatre on Sunday, March 11th)

Ronald (Kerry McCrohan) and Elena (Sheetal Sheth) are an open-relationship couple that Luke and Sylvia meet and try (in vain) to "out-modern."  Story-wise the characters do not have the depth of Luke and Sylvia and it is left to the audience to figure out whether their relationship is as free of drama and regret as they let on.

And yet YWO is miles above any other romantic/sex comedy of recent times because it refuses to compromise or weigh itself with conventionalty.

Just like Richard Wong and H.P. Mendoza's previous collaborations, (Colma: The Musical and Fruit Fly) the film features an un-glamorous and fairly normal depiction of San Francisco.  There are no landmark scenes and the Gen-Y characters would never be caught dead around Union Square or, god forbid, FiDi.  Our couples do not live in large (and non-existent) SF homes but small Victorian flats shuffled throughout the Richmond.  They haunt the Mission and wear the same clothes they’ve been wearing since college.  Green Apple Books and the Alemany Flea Market are where they hang out on the weekends.  There is a sense of aged and used things that is completely lost on the characters.  Luke works from home, Elena works at a non-profit and Ronald is a chef and not just any chef but a product of the food-porn movement.  He prepares a dinner of eclectic and contrasting tastes just as you would read being talked about on any SF food blog.

Spoiler alert:  This is a sex comedy without nudity (but a lot of sex).  In many ways the film benefits from not having any nudity.  This is a sex comedy but not a film about sex.  As a film it becomes very important to figure out whether it will show nudity or not.  To not show nudity does take away a little bit of the honesty that it shines in BUT also changes the film for the viewer so that the act of sex becomes less important than its repercussions and the emotional impact.  This is not a sex comedy like “American Pie” where the entire plot is built upon characters trying to have sex but rather the idea of sex, the fantasy of casual sex.

Comedy-wise, the film is mostly a situational comedy full of farce and absurdity...which works completely in its favor of revealing how shallow and awkward the characters are.  And yet, just like Fruit Fly, it's the cameo/supporting roles that are given the funniest and most memorable laughs.

The camera and photography work continues to look amazing.  The “look” of the film is consistent with “Fruit Fly” but almost seems to be a little more colorful and vibrant.  I felt like there was a lot less playfulness with camera angles but more exploration of close-ups and shallow focus shots.  The Green Apple sequence stood out for me as a remarkable echo of the choreography of Richard Wong's musical work.  It’s a beautiful scene and it’s unlike any other in the film.  Cheers to the director and cinematographer.

The film doesn’t force drama onto the audience.  Actually I had very little emotional investment in the characters but that is mostly because I did not identify with the main characters.  What I mean is that the film doesn’t feel the need to make hyper-drama.  The characters barely argue.  We don’t have the over-the-top scene where characters threaten to leave or hurt each other or someone goes out and does something really horrible to themselves or others.  Nobody dies or gets a disease or has a dying father.  Emotionally the film is rather uplifting and also just very funny.  None of the characters even shed a tear and the film dialogue closes with a monologue.

Yes, We’re Open is a funny and honest film about the difference between who we are and who we think we want to be.

Written and directed (and so much more) by H.P. Mendoza.

Stars Anna Ishida, Rick Burkhardt, and Jeannie Barroga.

I Am A Ghost is a brilliant entry into the horror/independent/experimental genre.  Not only is it wholly original but it features a spectacular and bold narrative device that is only accomplished because of the talent of its filmmaker.  The camera and photography work is meticulous and precise in a manner evocative of Eraserhead or The Shining.

Like many great horror films the camera is a character in the film and is crucial in telling the story effectively..  The film also works brilliantly because of the talent of Anna Ishida (who plays Emily) who quite literally carries the entire film as she is only one of two actors that appear in the film.  Her performance is electrifying and intense and if it wasn’t, the film wouldn’t work.  If the audience is not completely focused on her the film doesn’t work.  And it does work.  The film very appropriately gives us the biggest punch at the end when the culmination of the story and character and emotion and psychology of the film all hit their highest point.  This is a crucial fixture of horror and ghost films that has actually become lost in so many recent years.  The last horror film that I saw that weighed upon my psych so heavily was The Descent and that film is just utter chilling horror.  The horror in I Am A Ghost is not a fear or shock kind of horror so much as a dread of pain and of the unknown.  In a typical horror film we have living characters who become afraid to die…which is normal.  The horror typically comes from a fear of the unknown which is manifest in a person usually.  The unknown Mike Myers or the legendary but ultimately unknowable Jason Voorhies.  And yet, in Friday, the 13^th especially, we also fear this manifestation because we (the character and the audience) to some degree know that this horror is a product of our own actions or behaviors.  We created the monster and now we must atone.  This is a trope of horror stories and films since the dawn of the dead (get it?).  And this framework completely exists in I Am A Ghost only not so apparently.  Yes, Emily is dead but she still has a very real fear of the “unknown” as it exists in her world/story.

Now back to the camera as a feature of the narrative.  Again, many great horror films use the camera as a device/character to pull the audience in.  Kubrick used the camera in The Shining to literally trick the audience and make them disoriented…thus ratcheting up the effectiveness of the horror.  In I Am A Ghost the camera is being used masterfully.  The construction and usage of an ever-shifting perspective effectively adds to the tension of the film.  It is difficult to elaborate without providing spoilers but my reading of the film tells me that there are at least 4 different perspectives used in the film, each stylistically different and unique.

The use of actual “horror” in the film is used sparingly as well it should be.  This is not the popcorn roller-coaster ride that conventional horror films rely upon.  "We need an action scene or chase scene every 5 minutes because people will get bored."  This is a slow and tense build-up that picks up speed and rushes to a climax to the very end.

The music of the film is elegiac and haunting.  Atmospheric and other-worldy and couldn’t be more different, stylistically, than any of director/writer/composer H.P. Mendoza's previous work that I have heard.

The film is 73 minutes and nobody who understands horror will say that the film is too long or too short.

I am really happy to finally see a new horror film that is so entertaining and well done.

As for H.P. Mendoza, the film is commonly qualified as a "departure" from his previous fare of whimsical musical comedies (see Colma: The Musical and Fruit Fly) though stripped of the song and dance numbers the character and story is as complex and uncompromising as any of Mendoza's films.

Tonight is actually the 3rd and final scheduled screening for I Am A Ghost as part of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival though I have a strong feeling there will be other theatrical opportunities to see this film across the country.

Oh yeah...I started using Twitter so I can see what all the kids are talking about.

If you would like to read more of my inanity please follow:

@1nvisib0 on Twitter.

FUNNY BONE: The Comedy Code

A new series for the blog in which I journalize my experiences taking stand-up comedy classes at the San Francisco Comedy College, seeing young and new comics working on their craft, exploring the art of making comedy, and profess my love of specific comedians.

The Backstory: I know I’m not being original when I say that I love comedy. Who doesn’t? But there also weren’t a lot of kids like me in school. You know the ones. Not the class clowns. But perhaps the guy who sort of autistically recited entire episodes of Ren and Stimpy during recess as one-man shows. The guy who used to go to school repeating what comedy routines that his older siblings would bring home: Bob Nelson, Chris Rock, George Carlin, Sam Kinison, Bill Cosby...etc.

(Raise your right nostril if you can recite this entire cartoon word-for-word)

And again, I wasn’t doing this because I was the class clown. I wasn’t. I had such a non-life even back then that it felt normal to watch a stand-up special over and over until I had it down well enough to just sort of start doing it in front of classmates. I don’t remember being prompted to do this. I think I just started doing it for one friend and then others would gather round. More like a freakshow than a performance artist.

Anyway…I definitely became less funny as I got older but I still watched as much comedy as I could and up until a year ago nobody knew that I had always wanted to be a stand-up comedian. Nobody knew because I never imagined that it was something that I could do.

One of the people that discovered this is my future sister-in-law (my fiance’s sister) who also had an itch regarding stand-up comedy.

I turned 30 in January and I’ve lived a fairly boring and uneventful life full of pragmatism and well...with a stick up my ass, to be blunt. So I was surprised that she had decided to buy, as a birthday gift, us admission into a beginning stand-up comedy class at the San Francisco Comedy College. Also because I’d never heard of the San Francisco Comedy College.

It was funny because I’ve wanted to do the thing that scares me the most and live with a little more impulsiveness but apparently I needed someone to give me a push.

And it does scare me. As of this writing I haven’t actually performed in front of an audience. I’m in the class now and will be performing soon and it terrifies me.

For some reason I absolutely hate having my picture taken. I don’t know when it started because my parents have photo albums full of me being happy, optimistic, and young. I always made faces, much to my father’s chagrin, but as I got older I realized that I wasn’t making faces to be funny but to hide myself in the picture.

(No, I'm not drunk.  I just make this face when I see the camera come out.  My dad has photo albums full of this sort of crap)

I don’t like being in pictures and I definitely don’t enjoy being in front of a camera and being recorded and hearing my own voice.

My fiancé points out that this is strange given that I was in band and in musicals when I was younger but I think being in band in high school and performing in a few musicals is nowhere near as terrifying as standing up by yourself in front of a room full of strangers and trying to make them all laugh at your insane personal thoughts.

So right now I’m writing jokes and working up the courage to do this.

I mentioned Bob Nelson earlier because he was an early comedian that is still very vivid in my mind and most people have probably never heard of him.

I have no idea where to get any of his stand-up but I do know that he became very religious and his website advertises that he is a very clean comedian. The comedian I saw as a kid wasn’t filthy in the way that Louis C.K. or Sarah Silverman can be filthy but he had a few jokes that could be considered PG-13. But he was a great performer and his show felt like a one-man play with Bob interacting with the set and props to be completely entertaining and funny to my young mind. In one bit he sticks his head out of a second-story window with a baseball hat on his head and calls out for his “Ma.”

“Ma. There’s no toilet paper in here. Ma.”

He waits a while for a response.

“OK. I’m gonna use my sock again. The green one that has a hole in it.”

He also did this strange bit where he would roam the stage as a gorilla and chase another one of his own characters through the set which prompted me to run around the playground like a gorilla.

It never netted me a girlfriend but I bet a lot of those girls remember that weird Asian kid that entertained them during lunch.

Here's the link to Bob's website.  You can book him for your event.

http://www.bobnelson.com/index.html/

Next time on FUNNY BONE, “The First Day of School”

I have decided to end the RACE series for now.

Watching Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films became exhausting and unrewarding and I'd frankly rather spend my days being a little more productive than reviewing and analyzing 80 year old Asian-sploitation films.

I will likely use this research going forward to propose and transgress some of the messages, themes, and characterizations that I have witnessed across the 11 films that I watched (I couldn't bring myself to even write-up the last three that I watched but they are "Mr. Moto Takes a Chance" and "Mysterious Mr. Moto," and "Charlie Chan in Shanghai.")

Thank you for reading and look forward to more entertaining and illuminating posts in the future as I venture into the frightening land of learning stand-up comedy.

In memoriam of the RACE series I present a youtube video:

The 10 Most Racist Moments in TV

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMvfEdTUO6Q

Charlie Chan in Egypt features one of the most racist characterizations ever put on film.

Charlie Chan is sent to Egypt to investigate a dig site of an Egyptian tomb. The lead archaeologist has gone missing and some of the artifacts have turned up in other museums already. Charlie Chan isn’t accompanied by his son but we get the next best thing, Stepin Fetchit. This may actually be the first time I have ever actually seen the character on screen. Before that, I had merely known about the character. His reputation preceded him, so to speak.

In the film, Charlie Chan seeks the murderer of the archaeologist. Like most murder-mysteries money is involved and like most murder-mysteries, everyone is a suspect. Finally we have Charlie Chan in an exotic location and it makes sense. We get to see the dig site and a bunch of fabricated Egyptian artifacts. We even get to see some of the actual discovery. Chan goes into Cairo and is overwhelmed by a fez-wearing merchant/shady man. This film has all the marks of a great adventure and then it has to make it really uncomfortable by making the second scene of the movie focus on the fez-wearing merchant who speaks in a heavy “Egyptian?” accent and Stepin Fetchit, who speaks in a range that microphones just do not pick up well for some reason. All of his audio is strangely blown out and his mumbling broken English make for dialogue that is unintelligible. For those who don’t know, Stepin Fetchit is the character played by Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry. A former vaudeville performer who became an icon of films from the 1920s-1950s. His character was uffish, lazy, cowardly, alcoholic, narcoleptic, narcotic, slow, greedy, and pretty much every other unredeeming quality in a person. While not a “bad” person, there was not one respectable aspect to his character. Of course, he made lots of money playing this character and not only has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame but was awarded an NAACP Image Award for his career. But his character did exist at a time when it was acceptable to portray blacks and African-Americans in a very limited capacity. I believe he is supposed to be Egyptian in the film but it wasn’t entirely clear. He spends the film shuffling about, driving Chan around, smoking from a hookah, and being ridiculously cowardly every time he must escort Chan into the Egyptian tomb. He doesn’t dance in the film. Between him and Chan the English language has never been more violated. The Chan character seems to have improved a bit in this entry. Perhaps public demand asked that Chan behave more human than in his previous films. Don’t be too assured though. He’s still a cold, unfeeling Asian robot. But he does exhibit some general behavior that the rest of the world calls, “nice.”

I don't really know how to end this analysis so here's a new production photo from the upcoming The Hobbit.

I have a dog.

She looks like this:

She’s a small dog which means she’s also the kind of dog that barks at unexpected noises and people…such as when the mailman comes or when people stop and talk to her on the street.

This morning I was drinking my coffee, doing my morning internet surfing, and listening to Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens and Fran Walsh on the Two Towers commentary track…you know…Thursday.

Then I heard a strange “thud” as if someone had just thrown a newspaper against the front door. The dog immediately had a fit of barking to which I responded with a polite “shutthehellup!” and went on with my business since we do not have any newspaper subscriptions and when the random free Examiner shows up it’s always on the driveway as only a master paperboy could deliver a paper all the way to our front door.

And so my morning continued with no more thought of it.

Then I took the dog out for a walk only about an hour ago. It was an uneventful walk but a funeral procession did slowly pass by as we walked up the great hill that most of Millbrae residents live upon.

When we got back I noticed a strange leaf on our porch which gave me pause. I halted the dog on the leash and moved forward slowly.

It was…

You guessed it.

A dead bird.

It looked like this:

After coraling the dog inside (who did not notice the bird at all because, as I have always suspected, she has a fake plastic nose), I immediately scooped it up with a trowel and sealed it within two plastic bags and tossed it into the garbage. Aside from the nasty morbid sense of death outside of my house, I didn’t want the local raccoons, possums, and cats to think this was an excellent place to find free food.

Then I began to think back to this morning and remembered that I did hear something hit the house.

Sure enough I looked up to see evidence right on the front window:

We have a large map of Middle-Earth on the wall facing the window so perhaps the bird was trying to go to Mordor…though it did not know the way.

It was only 16 months ago that I purchased my first car.  Before that I had never owned a car.  In fact, I didn't even have a driver's license up until 5 years ago.  And yet last month I found myself involved in the painful task of having to sell my first car through craigslist.

Now, to be sure, I've certainly used craigslist before and have made a few purchases/sells through the service in my lifetime but nothing like a car.

My car, a 2001 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, had begun to have serious engine problems and it was determined that, save for replacing the engine, it would be a good idea to simply sell the car.

So I posted an ad and received a flood of e-mails in response.  Most of them had to do with purchasing the car.  Most did not.  I was asking $2300 and made it clear in my post that the car would likely need the engine replaced if you wanted it to run.

In this image the body of the e-mail had no text at all.  Apparently everything I needed to know was in the subject...

...including terrible grammar and spelling.

Unfortunately this would not be the last time I would have to read an e-mail from the illiterate.

One interested buyer actually contacted me three times but always with the same message:

Now call me skeptical but why would a person offer me $3,000 without ever seeing the car.  I agree that perhaps he feels the car is worth more but nobody willingly hands out extra money.  Had he offered me my asking price I might have been more inclined to respond.

As a rule, I decided I would not respond to anyone who couldn't even form a complete sentence.  It wasn't a matter of being snobby.  Just a matter of filtering out was is/was likely a scam or some terrible phishing practice to acquire my e-mail/telephone number.  Which meant I couldn't respond to this:

which also confused me because I was seeing one name associated with the e-mail and then another name in the e-mail.  And again, he was offering $500 more.  "ill" not be responding to this e-mail thx.

I also received this:

which was missing a crucial NOUN although I think I know what it was.

And this:

Of course, not every e-mail was as unintelligible.

One was so eloquent and moving that I got a screencap of it.  Have a look:

I'm really glad that this person reminded me that Jesus will come back for me.  That was comforting.  If only he would come back for my Jeep I'd have one less problem in my life.  Seriously though what is the point of this e-mail?  Doesn't this count as "contacting" seller for other reasons?

On the opposite side of the coin I received this e-mail that...if I read correctly, was meant to be interpreted as an insult:

Yes, you certainly told me.  Boy is my face blue, stranger from craigslist.

Now, i have a lot of free time but trolling craigslist ads to send poorly written and vague insults?  That takes commitment.

And what would a craigslist response be without a little sex:

Notice that the associated name is "Sexy Girl" and her e-mail address includes "69."  So either this "girl" is 52 years old OR she likes 69 so much that she puts it in her e-mail address.  Or IT'S A TRAP!

At least she composed a very long run-on sentence.

Those are the best of them.  I ended up shopping the car to about 4 different guys and only two actually made offers that weren't completely insulting.

I ended up selling it to some kid from Sacramento who has a shop.  He drove down with his dad and two other guys and they hauled it away on a trailer hitch.  I didn't get $2,300 but I got enough to justify the 16 months I got to drive it around and look cool.

Hopefully I will never have to sell a car through craigslist again.

Both Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto were Fox properties and yet Mr. Moto produced far less films than Charlie Chan. Of course, chronologically, Mr. Moto was created because Chan’s creator Earl Derr Biggers died. So Mr. Moto films were not made until 1937…well after the height of Warner Oland’s Chan run and in a strange series of events, created this bastard child of a film.

But let’s start with the film. Mr. Moto’s Gamble is the third Moto film and puts Mr. Moto as a sort of police detective instructor who attends a big boxing match only to witness a murder as one of the boxers falls dead during the match. The case is on as Moto sets out to prove it was murder before the next big match. Was it the opposing boxer? The manager? The trainer? The Bookie? Luckily Moto has help from a few friends including Lee Chan, Charlie Chan’s son, in the only cross-over between the two characters. This film already felt strange before I knew it’s backstory. Moto is now a teacher, leading a class of amateur detectives (and it is not clear whether they are simply in police academy, already officers, or just amateur PIs), he is slow in his investigation and the film takes place over what has to be at least 2-3 months. Also Lee Chan and another classmate are given a drawn out storyline that really goes nowhere and only serves to prolong the 70-minute film. Luckily, Moto uses all his brains to solve the mystery and bring the guilty to justice.

But let’s analyze the backstory. As I mentioned, Chan and Moto were both Fox properties at the time with Moto as the newer version of Chan. Moto was very sly and cunning. Moto got into fights and chases. Moto was “Moto-vated” (HA HA HA!) as a private investigator to preserve Asian cultural artifacts by taking on cases of smuggling. In many ways, as strange as the character was, he was more developed than even Chan, who had over a dozen films to become human but remained a cold, emotionless Chinaman.

The original script was Charlie Chan at the Ringside and had Charlie Chan investigating a murder during a boxing match. Yet Warner Oland was contending with personal demons. He was in the middle of a divorce and was drinking a lot. It’s not clear which came first. So on the first day of production Warner Oland doesn’t even show up. On the second day he claims that the studio is a health hazard and refuses to return to work. The studio and SAG going into negotiations while production is halted. In a fairly absurd trick, the studio actually paints over the Studio 6 signage to read, “Studio 7” in a hoax to make Warner believe they had moved production to another studio. And he believed it. He returned and had no idea that he was in fact still in the same studio. But production halted the next day when Warner cited health reasons again and decided to take an impromptu holiday. Fox and SAG resumed negotiations and somehow ended up signing Warner onto an extended contract for three more pictures BUT at the same time Fox had decided to resume production with Moto as the lead. Warner eventually made his way to his homeland Sweden and lived there for several months before contracting bronchial pneumonia and dying in August of 1938, 8 months after the first day of production and 4 months after his divorce from his wife. As production of what was now “Mr Moto’s Gamble” began script revisions were obviously needed. Primarily, the name Charlie Chan was replaced with Mr. Moto and the opening scene was created to account for Moto’s presence in the film as well as Lee Chan’s. Other than that the plot remained as did most of Chan’s dialogue…which accounts for why the film felt so strange for a Moto film. Not only is Moto slow and methodical but uses Chan’s made-up Chinese phrases several times during the film. Something that he nary used in his previous accounts. Moto still proves to be more human and compassionate than Chan but still relegates his assistants to menial tasks if not worse.

All in all, the film felt very weak for a Moto film. The boxing coverage was well executed but Moto was too much Chan.