Hitting the I-Spot: Summer Movies

by Adam Haynes

I believe in the myths of projection to such an extent, the extremity of my faith has made me quite deranged – a junkie of the church of voyeurism.

For someone of my condition, summer has always been a particularly holy season. My heathen peers tend to discuss the summer cinema in terms of either good or bad. This is a pointless and blasphemous exercise.

Summer movies are beyond good and evil. They are about making an IMPACT, pure and simple.

At this point in the season, we have two categories of Big Hollywood Product to choose from: the Muscle Tit Death Epic and the Fantastic Freak Out. Both were born a little over twenty years ago when the three elements which make up the cinematic philosopher’s stone were discovered: Rocky, Star Wars, and Jaws. Never before had IMPACT been created on such a level! No longer did intellectualism muddy the material. Finally – the formula for gold!

Was this the creation of IMPACT? No, it was not. Current IMPACT is merely the final amalgamation of what was nearly perfected by long-dead German composer Wagner, who saw his operas as psychodramatic (not his word) vessels in which the culture could pour out their collective needs and at the same time be united through their emotional participation. Thankfully, special effects and camera angles have replaced the singing.

To the junkie all this means is, Sun now burn me! Humidity now drown me! I need Muscle Tit Death! I need Fantastic Freak Out! Impact! Impact! – Which makes it all the more tragic because so far this season every Hollywood Blockbuster really has sucked. All the Muscle Tit Death Epics, Con Air, Speed 2, Face/Off and all the Fantastic Freak Out Epics, The Lost World, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Batman and Robin, and Men In Black have not even come close to hitting the I-spot. Even Face/Off and Men In Black, which weren’t total shit like the rest, still didn’t push the Wagner/Amblin Thing far enough to get anything close to good summer IMPACT. UHH! (Remember, IMPACT has nothing to do with quality: The Rock was as well made and interesting as a domestic car commercial yet it had IMPACT. The first Batman out and out sucked, sucked, but still it had IMPACT GALORE!)

So I’m bugging out, compulsively sweating, and chewing my nails – jonesing for that IMPACT. Got a weird taste in my mouth related to withdrawal. Need communion. Gotta do something, can’t stay at home. .. Time to check out the Counter Programming.

Along with Big Hollywood Blockbusters, every summer season also offers an assortment of smaller movies because 1) distributors have obligations with the exhibitors to supply product and 2) there is always a chance that audiences sometimes get beaten over the head with too much of the Wagner/Amblin Thing so they go to something which is totally different, and 3) These movies usually are deemed by the distributors unreleasable – so what do they have to loose? Viva Dead Poets Society, Ghost, Bull Durham, Rain Man! These movies have the capacity to pick up the wounded zeitgeist gestalt and run that fucking ball into the ultimate end zone of WHAT IS NEEDED. UHH! IMPACT!

So the starved addict staggers over to the multiplex to check out the screening of the new film by Steve Oedekerk (he did the sequel to Ace Ventura), Nothing To Lose. Everything about this movie screamed that it was loaded with FEEL GOOD COUNTERIMPACT. Low concept: a yuppie played by Tim Robbins finds his wife fucking his boss and then kidnaps a carjacker played by Martin Lawrence and then they both have a very low key character-driven adventure. Perfect – all the right elements for a good summer counter- program. The casting of Robbins is great. He is so gifted, and gives the light material just enough edge and complexity to counter balance the A.D.D. comedy style of Lawrence, who in turn keeps Robbins from ever seeming too bland. Right on. The script is okay, nothing flashy, nothing too cute, or too smart or too stupid (well, there is a scene with a spider that is too stupid, but Bull Durham had that corny “rain out” scene, so this is acceptable). Alas though, NO IMPACT. Nothing. If you have a weird feeling in your stomach when the credits roll, it just ain’t there.

So now I’m getting really desperate. This is bad, very bad – code RED and the fever’s getting worse. Gotta do something, last resort, no choice. Time to hit the methadone. Time to go see an art film.

This last option is particularly dire because the art film’s version of the summer season starts in the fall, so all the distributors intentionally keep their best product for then and release their road kill trash now knowing no one really watches art films in the summer anyway. Almost never has an art film in the summer accomplished IMPACT. But still, a good excuse to waste time in church until the second coming, right? Wrong.

I checked out Box Of Moonlight because Tom DiCillo’s last movie, Living In Oblivion, artfully made fun of both bad art films and Brad Pitt. This time out, DiCillo couldn’t have done worse. John Turturro plays a Chicago yuppie who drives around the back- woods of Militia America and hooks up with a young man dressed exactly like Davy Crockett (Sam Rockwell) named Kid. Everything is wrong. The surreal stuff doesn’t work. The tone is off. The film is trying to be a statement on the modern state of the country or something but DiCillo has to take easy shots at everything so when he asks us to eventually buy into a sort of Northern Exposure freedom feeling he ends up with nothing. The writing is bad. The plot devices are student filmish (my most extreme condemnation). The only real dramatic tension is homoerotic and it is annoyingly ignored because DiCillo is too busy trying so hard to make LARGE COOL STATEMENTS. Even if the STATEMENTS are well-presented, such things are the antithesis of IMPACT.

I feel doomed. Is the end upon us? Does the utter lack of IMPACT so far this summer mean that IMPACT is now dead and I will be forced to stay at home and watch HBO 2, oozing pestilence from malnourished sores wondering what sins I committed to bring this upon myself? Maybe I’m just growing up…

No! I’m just dehydrated and strung out, that’s all. New movies come out every week and IMPACT could be in any one of them. I still haven’t seen Contact yet, or Air Force One. And then there’s August, when the season winds down with the Paranoia Tit Death Epics. I can’t wait to see Conspiracy Theory. I love Paranoia Tit Death! I need Paranoia Tit Death!