Steve Jobs: R. iPeace

The impact and influence of the life of Steve Jobs can not be over estimated.  Not only did he change the face of technology, commercialism, and capitalism as we know it, he has along with Bill Gates fundamentally changed the way human beings live and coexist on this planet in the 20th and 21st centuries.  The influence of computer technology on our personal lives today would have been unheard of a mere thirty years ago.  It will likely be decades, perhaps even centuries, before we can fully perceive the wide reach of his influence.  He will likely stand in history next to William Randolph Hearst, Alexander Graham Bell, and Henry Ford on the shortlist of individuals who have had the greatest impact on our daily lives, for better or for worse.

You Don't Pass Through Fire to Get to Heaven

I decided to upload a couple of my old film class essays.  This is one I did last year on Judd Apatow's Funny People.

Judd Apatow’s film Funny People questions why comedians are, in Apatow’s opinion, generally unhappy people.  The film centres on two comedians, a veteran stand-up comedian and comedy movie star named George Simmons (Adam Sandler) who has been diagnosed with terminal leukemia, and a young aspiring stand-up comedian named Ira Wright (Seth Rogen).  The film portrays life as a comedian through these two characters and their relationship with one another, with Ira serving as George’s hired assistant and writer, while George acts as a sort of mentor to Ira.  It is through these characters, and the many other comedians in their lives, that Apatow explores the idea of comedians as unhappy individuals. 

The film ultimately views comedy and the use of humour as a defence mechanism used by people to cope with their unhappiness, and that the people who excel in comedy are able to do so because of the pain they experience.  Humour is viewed as something that comes to people who are already unhappy; comedy is a reaction to their unhappiness.  The topics and themes of the comedy produced by the characters in the film have their origins in the things that make them unhappy.  The notion of comedy as a reaction to unhappiness is demonstrated in Funny People through the comedy of George, Ira, and the other comedians around them, as well as the way the characters themselves act in real life when they are not performing comedy.  Ultimately, Apatow presents comedy as a way of coping with and distancing oneself from unhappiness.

           

The stand-up comedy of the characters in the film is related to the same things they are unhappy about.  The characters themselves may not be entirely aware of this, but it is clear that the things that inspire them to write comedy are the same things that make them unhappy.  Ira’s stand-up material illustrates this very well.  Many of his jokes are direct reflections of his own insecurity.  He is not confident in his relationships with women, and as a result, much of his comedy is about his inability to successfully pursue romantic relationships with women.  Many of his jokes also make reference to his own perception of himself as being romantically and sexually unattractive.  He calls himself down in a way by constantly referencing his own habits that are somewhat looked down upon by the general public, like masturbation and flatulence.  His comedic persona that he has developed in his routine is a reflection of how he sees himself, and this self-image is not a flattering one.  His seemingly playful self-deprecating humour ultimately paints a darker portrait of a deeply insecure young man who is unhappy and lacking self-confidence.  This is an insecurity that permeates Ira’s life much more deeply than he hints at in his act, and it affects him in more ways than just his relationships with women.  Ira is deeply insecure about himself as a comedian; he has a great passion for comedy, but he is not as successful as he would like to be.  At the beginning of the film, he is still not being paid for performing his act, and audiences do not seem to be responding positively to his material.  This pain is strengthened by the sense of competition felt amongst Ira and his roommates, Leo Koenig (Jonah Hill) and Mark Taylor Jackson (Jason Schwartzman), both of whom are having considerably more success in their careers than him.  Later in the film, it is revealed that Ira’s insecurity reaches back to childhood, when he was ridiculed and embarrassed by the mispronunciation of his birth surname, Weiner (actually pronounced “whiner” as opposed to the common misnomer “weener”).  Ira’s embarrassment over his surname was so profound that he was actually driven to change his name to Wright.  He also discusses his parents’ divorce and their hateful relationship with one another.  Ira suggests that he may feel a certain degree of guilt about his parents’ divorce, or that he perhaps feels devalued in the eyes of his parents by the experience, when he says to George, “My mom thinks that my dad is the devil; I’m not sure what that makes me, technically.”  Although he makes the statement like an offhand joke, it is extremely revealing about Ira and how he views himself.  When Ira tells his childhood stories to George, George hints that these are likely what drove Ira to become a comedian in the first place.

           

George has issues from childhood that also make appearances in his comedy.  He tells many jokes about his troubled relationship with his father.  The jokes are often about his father showing obvious dislike for George.  In reality, George speaks a great deal off-stage about his relationship with his father.  George feels he is a disappointment to his father and that his father doesn’t respect him as a comedian or as a man.  George also hints that his father may have been abusive.  Although Apatow briefly shows a sort of reconciliation between George and his father, the scene appears in a montage where George is attempting to reconnect with people in his life before he succumbs to his illness; despite the seeming heartfelt and sincere reconciliation that George has with his father, the other events in the montage show George unable to reconnect with a lot of people, many of whom are comedians who are too self-involved to really sympathize with George.  At the end of the montage, George expresses a great deal of regret for the way things have turned out when he says to Ira, “I played it all wrong.”  The montage, and the scenes following it, also deals with his regret over the dissolution of his relationship with his former fiancée, Laura (Leslie Mann).  George wishes that their relationship had never ended and that the two were still together.  This desire manifests itself in George’s stand-up, when he makes frequent reference to his single life, the “one that got away”, and the fact that he does not have children.  In one very telling stand-up routine, he jokes about his married friends who encourage him to pursue a romantic relationship, whereas he would sooner spend his life with his riches and material wealth.  This reflects one of the central factors of George’s depression; he is an immensely wealthy person, but his wealth brings him no happiness and he is ultimately alone.  As the home video that opens the film illustrates, George was much happier as a young man when, even as a poor and struggling comedian, he still had meaningful friendships and relationships with other people.  George also tells many jokes about aging and death, which is an obvious reflection of his fears about his illness and impending death.  One other important element he jokes about that is essential to understanding George’s character is his lack of belief in God.  In his time of struggle, he feels utterly alone because he has absolutely no one to turn to, no faith or positive philosophy to comfort him.

           

Outside of George and Ira’s stand-up, there are instances in which both characters use humour to cope with unhappiness or intense emotions.  One such scene takes place when Laura comes to visit George after learning that he is dying.  When Laura confesses to George that he was the love of her life, she grasps his hand, in tears.  George then makes a joke about her large hands, saying, “They always made my penis look small.”  Although she laughs at the joke and he somewhat cheers her up, the joke is very telling about George.  When sharing this incredibly emotional and intimate moment with Laura, he is unable to deal with the intimacy of the moment and makes the joke because it is the only way he can lessen its impact.  A similar event takes place when Dr. Lars (Torsten Voges) gives George and Ira the news that George’s condition is worsening.  George proceeds to jokingly mock Lars for his accent, telling him that it makes him seem scary.  Even when Lars makes his discomfort about the jokes obvious, George continues to berate him with jokes, and Ira even joins in a little.  This seems like a strange time for George to begin telling jokes, but he is unable to react any other way; the severity of the moment is so intense that George can only respond with humour, because it is his only weapon against his suffering.  The same is true of Ira in this situation.  Ira also hides behind humour when he is attempting to ask Daisy Danby (Aubrey Plaza) out on a date and embarrasses himself.

           

The film views unhappiness not just as a potential cause for comedy, but as an essential ingredient to it.  Comedy’s dependence on unhappiness is illustrated through characters like Mark Taylor Jackson and Randy Springs (Aziz Ansari).  These characters are the most successful of the small-time comedians in the film; audiences respond well to Randy’s stand-up, and Mark is the star of a sitcom on NBC titled Yo, Teach! for which he is paid $25,000 a week.  Randy and Mark, when compared to Ira as peers, are considerably happier and more confident than Ira.  They are enjoying their success and are optimistic about their direction in life.  However, the comedy produced by these characters is not of the same calibre as that of visibly unhappier characters like Ira, George, Leo, and Daisy.  Randy’s stand-up, while popular, is depicted as being somewhat witless, focusing more on his wacky behaviour than actual jokes or comedy.  Mark’s sitcom is viewed by the other characters as being formulaic and uninventive, resorting to lowest-common-denominator sitcom structures rather than taking risks to be funny.  Even though these characters are more successful and, ultimately, happier than the central characters, they are less talented as comedians because they do not experience the pain that Apatow views as necessary for understanding comedy.

           

Funny People’s main theme of comedy as a product of unhappiness ultimately views the pain suffered by the main characters as more than just an inspiration for their comedy, but as an ingredient essential to the genesis of all brave and meaningful humour.  Even though the film ends on an optimistic note, the ending is modest and the neurosis and personal struggles of the characters are still present to the end.  Even as their lives and careers are on an upswing, their improvement seems to come more from an acceptance of their mental and emotional states rather than a successful triumph over those feelings.  Judd Apatow makes the theme of comedy’s essence of unhappiness resonate deeply with the stand-up comedy, contrast amongst characters, and character interactions that populate the film.

From the Demented Mind of a Movie Freak

Recently I was driving from my home to the pharmacy to get a prescription filled.  I live in the rural areas surrounding Winnipeg, about 15 minutes outside of the city limits, so I have a little bit of a drive before I reach any sign of civilization.  On this drive, I noticed that I was the only person driving into the city.  In fact, I couldn't see any cars in front of or behind me anywhere in the southbound lanes of the highway.  The northbound lanes leading outside the city, however, had a long line of cars stretching to both ends of visibility.

Now, every time I witness this phenomenon, it makes me incredibly nervous.  I'd never been able to figure out why, but from a pretty early age (probably seven) it always unsettled me.  Now as a young adult, when I encounter the lonely lane I find myself frantically scanning the radio channels for news of some terrifying disaster that all in the city are fleeing, so as to ensure that I don't drive myself straight into the middle of it.  I don't really have any logic to justify this paranoia, but it is present nevertheless.  Any explanation always escaped me up until this last encounter, when the bizarre origin of the fear suddenly came to me.

A few hours before leaving for the pharmacy, I had flipped on the television to find that the movie Independence Day was playing on one of the twenty-four hour movie channels.  I thought I'd turn it on, since I never miss the opportunity to see Will Smith's famous "Welcome to Earf" line.  As I flicked on the channel, I saw the image of a massive traffic jam of cars trying to exit the city as the alien ship loomed over the Empire State Building.  The lane going towards the city had only one vehicle, driven by Jeff Goldblum and Judd Hirsch.  Hirsch looks at the traffic jam and bemuses, "Everyone's trying to get out of New York, we're the only schmucks trying to get in."

As I reached for my radio dial a couple of hours later in the car, I stopped.  It all made sense now.  My parents had bought me Independence Day on VHS when it was released on home video in 1997.  I spent a good chunk of my childhood watching it.  I spent most of my childhood watching movies.  I was always obsessed with them, and the ones I owned got heavy rotation when I couldn't convince my mom to drive me to the video store to rent Spaceballs or The Incredible Journey.

And it was only then, as I realized what a profound effect that a way-too-literal interpretation of Independence Day had on me, that I began to contemplate how the movies I'd seen as a kid have shaped me into the person I am today.

When I think back on my earliest memories, many of them are of movies.  I have a handful of very early memories, from way younger than most people can remember.  I remember the birth of my sister, at which time I would have been 21 months old.  I also remember my 2nd birthday a few months later, when my dad took me to see Sesame Street Live at the old Winnipeg arena.  I have some very vague memories of the Muppets on stage, but what I remember most vividly is the bathroom at the old arena, with the gross trough urinal.  After that, my earliest memory is my first trip to the movie theater.

It wasn't much longer after the Muppets show, since I was still two years old.  My mom took me to see a re-release of Pinocchio at the theater in Garden City Mall.  I'm not sure if it was my first time seeing the movie; we had a massive collection of Disney films on VHS that grew incrementally from my birth until the age of about eight.  Pinocchio may have been in that collection before I saw it in the theater, but the experience had a huge impact on me.  I remember the sheer enormity of the images on screen.  In that theater that now seems so tiny, the tiny two-year-old me looked up at the towering screen and marveled at its size without any conception of how much that experience would influence my life.  I wasn't overwhelmed by the giant images on screen; I was absorbed by them.  What was happening on screen seemed to be the only thing in the world.  They weren't just entropic images in a room with chairs and people and popcorn and a sticky floor.  Those extra things weren't even there.  There was just the movie, and it was magic.

A year or so later, when my sister turned two, my mom took us to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in the theater.  The detail I remember most about that movie is how much it scared me.  I remember Pinocchio being scary too.  But when I look back on the movies I loved as a kid, especially in my first five years, the ones that have stuck with me and I still love today are the ones that scared the bejeesus out of me.  A lot of those early Disney films are really horrifying.  The little boys turning into donkeys in Pinocchio, the Queen ordering her huntsman to cut out Snow White's heart, the circus workers abusing the animals in Dumbo, and the cruel villains in The Rescuers are just a few examples of things that really made my stomach drop as a young child.  Another big one was The Wizard of Oz.  The movie has an otherworldly atmosphere, with the aged sepia and surreal Technicolor making the whole thing feel more like a dream then a movie.  Plus, there are plenty of terrifying story points, like the Wicked Witch, the tornado, and the flying monkeys that really gave me goosebumps (and to be honest, still do).

Among the large collection of animated movies on VHS in my house, there was a small handful of live-action films that my parents had bought for themselves.  The ones that I remember most vividly is Back to the Future.  It is to this day my favourite movie of all time.  We had the whole trilogy and I watched them endlessly.  I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, I would find a movie I liked and watch it over and over again, every day, for weeks.  Back to the Future easily got played the most out of any of the tapes in the house.  When I say I have seen BTTF at least a hundred times, it isn't an exaggeration.  If anything, it's a low estimate.  There were months long periods where I would watch it every day, and those periods were many.  Since falling out of the habit of daily viewings (later than most, at around age 12), I've always made a point of watching all three at least once a year, along with Lawrence of Arabia.

To this day, I have the entire movie memorized.  Not just dialogue, but shots, music cues, everything.  I can tell you the exact moment in Earth Angel (the scene starts at 0:21) that Alan Silvestri's score kicks in and drowns out the band playing the song, and the exact moment that the song swells back up again, and Silvestri's score syncs up with the band and the two pieces become one, the strings lifting the music of The Starlighters and Marvin Berry's vocals to a beautiful and triumphant crescendo.  It's my favourite piece of film scoring ever.  I don't know if I've ever seen a more effective use of music in a scene, and as cheesy and cliche as this sounds, every time I hear it I feel a warmth and comfort in my heart that almost nothing else in life gives me.  When they parodied the scene on Family Guy and Brian sang Earth Angel, I actually cried while watching it, simply because it made me realize my love for that movie, and that scene in particular.

I feel like BTTF really had a profound influence on who I am.  I looked up to the characters in that movie.  I see a lot of myself in George and Marty McFly.  Both characters have a creative endeavour (writing or music) that they excel in, but both lack the self confidence to carry out their dreams to pursue their creativity.  Both are neurotic and unsure of themselves.  I also feel a weird affinity to Doc Brown.  I looked up to him so much as a kid.  He was so smart and I admired his intelligence.  It made me want to be as smart as he was, and made me push hard to do well in school, and to try and read and learn as much as I possibly could.

Every time I see the film, I genuinely feel like I'm seeing a part of my soul depicted on screen.  I've seen movies since then, especially in my adult life, that have made me feel this too.  I remember viewings of Raging Bull, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and 2001: A Space Odyssey when I felt like the film I was watching was made especially for me.  But no other film has persisted with me the way BTTF has. I've been watching it since I was born, and I only grow fonder of it as time grows on.  Unlike so many movies I grew out of, BTTF gets better every time I watch it.  So many other movies of that era seem dated.  Their cheesy 80s synth soundtracks and teen romance feel contrived and untimely when experienced today.  But Back to the Future is perfect.  When Huey Lewis and the News come skipping onto the soundtrack, they absolutely belong there.  When George and Lorraine kiss on the dance floor, it's real love.

I think it's for these reasons that film remains the most important creative force in my life.  Even though I'm much more active in music, music is like a reflex to me.  It's like breathing, I can't not do it.  Even if I tried not to play music, I would instinctively pick up an instrument.  But film is the rejuvenating art that constantly brings new thoughts and ideas and feelings into my life and inspires me to create.  I thought I had discovered a new obsession in high school when I decided I wanted to go to film school after I graduated.  But only now, in an incidental drive to the pharmacy, do I realize that film has always been the greatest source of happiness for me.  And I hope it always will be.