On 1-18-08, 2-3-08, and All Points in Between

I had originally planned to open this post with a brief (and probably uninteresting) digression about how, whenever I delay posting for any short but appreciable length of time -- say, a few days -- I inevitably end up with far more to write about than I originally intended and, as a result, end up not with focused posts but melanges of casual observations and recent anecdotes.

Then, as I tried to think up my (usually unsuccessfully) witty title, I realized that I'd ended said title with a preposition. Which reminds me of perhaps one of the funniest exchanges ever shared by another person. Let's go back there, shall we?

The time is Summer 2007. Ruben Pope, my illustrious former roommate, is spending the summer in Princeton working at A Little Taste of Cuba, his beloved cigar shop, and doing undisclosed research at the Firestone Library. During one such trip, he approaches a gentleman working there and asks about the location of a book that's he's seeking, saying to the gentleman, "Where's this book at?"

The gentleman, clearly either miffed, smarmy, or generally displeased with his lot in life, looks disdainfully at Ruben and replies, "You know, if you go to Princeton, you should know that it's improper to end your sentences with a preposition."

At which point the ever-industrious Mr. Pope, thinking with a quickness as yet unseen in his collegiate academic pursuits, considers the comment for a moment and replies, "Where's this book at...

[beat]

"...Fucker?"

And...scene.

And this is why, despite all I may say when confronted with unfiltered, uncensored memories, I do miss the company of Ruben Pope.

Moving on.

So, if you spend any time at all in the online realm, you're familiar with a little movie called Cloverfield. Several people on a message board I frequent have been following this film since the first then-untitled trailer was screened before Transformers back in July. For the past six months, the film has been hyped not in traditional media outlets but through a viral marketing campaign that has built an exhaustive back story on teh Intarwebs.

Now that everyone's up to speed, it's time to start wondering (rightly so) why I would care. After all, one look at the trailer or the official website would make it perfectly clear that this is A MONSTER MOVIE. Which probably also means it's A SCARY MOVIE. And Dave does neither of these things.

Okay, maybe that's not entirely true. But as a certifiably ginormous pussy, neither of these are really in my field of typical immersion. The last time I indulged myself in a monster film was the abhorrent 1998 Godzilla, and the scariest thing about that flick was Matthew Broderick's misguided belief that it would reinvigorate his movie career. As for horror, I was able to sit (willingly, in fact) through both Saw and Saw II, the former because of the influence of online marketing and the latter because I, like so many other fans, thought it might actually be similar to the first one and not become merely an exercise in how gorily one could depict various demises. (As you may have noticed, I do not include Saw III or Saw IV in this list -- guess I was wrong about that please-be-more-than-just-torture-porn thing.) And over the years, a few flicks that some might consider horror films (the works of M. Night Shyamalan, for instance) have also ranked among my favorites.

But the fact is that I avoid horror films because I'm afraid of getting scared. It all stems back to fourth grade when I, the curious but naïve soul that I was, decided to watch the ABC miniseries The Langoliers, based on a Stephen King novella. At the time, I thought I was being really brave by watching something that I figured would scare me, but I was intrigued and wondered how bad it could possibly be. Then, without ever having seen the end of either of the two parts, I learned very quickly the first lesson of proper evil-creature horror films: withholding the sight of the monsters as long as possible makes the film scarier because the viewer's imagination has to fill in, and they'll picture something far more frightening than anything you could put on screen.

Son of a bitch, were they right.

I spent roughly the next two weeks having trouble sleeping, constantly checking under my bed and behind the closet doors for any semblance of what I figured were ghastly, horrific, demonic creatures. (After all, they moved lightning-quick and devoured you whole...gotta get them before they get you, right?) It wasn't until years later, watching the miniseries rerun on the Sci-Fi Channel, that I actually saw the Langoliers and put my nightmarish imagination to rest. Granted, if I'd known at nine years old that what I was fearing was essentially a flying meatball with a Mickey Mouse-shaped mouth and teeth that rotated around said mouth like a chainsaw -- all of which was rendered in typically cheesy circa-1994 television special effects -- it probably would have still fueled my nightmares. But seeing it so far down the line was mostly laughable.

Yet the damage was done, and I'd branded myself a horror-film sissy. So why did my fascination with horror continue? And why did I, even after insisting that I wanted nothing to do with it, even consider seeing Cloverfield? Better yet, why do I still do? Even reading through online spoilers (including an exhaustive and ultimately successful search for an image of the monster), I still want to actually experience this film. For reasons that boggle my mind, especially as I read through the reviews.

See, I thought the online marketing angle was pretty nifty, but from the start I was skeptical of a few things -- most potently, I wondered how a barely-90-minute film, consisting almost exclusively of "found footage" taken by the people on the ground at the moment of the attack, could manage to include the elaborate back story constructed online. What I've learned is...it doesn't. There's no reasoning or explanation to be had in the film, and this frustrates me for a number of reasons, but for one especially strong one above all.

I wrote a seminar paper last semester on Coheed and Cambria, and how the unfolding of the story across multiple media could contribute to new literacies and engage new potentialities in storytelling. That description may seem like a bullshit pose to explain away writing a paper on a rock band, but I do truly believe in the potentialities that are being examined by the band. And when you see a marketing campaign like the one behind Cloverfield, you can't help but think that this is a game-changing, market-breaking new wave in storytelling.

But it's not. It's not because the Coheed and Cambria story relies on multiple media in order to tell its complete story. Cloverfield, on the other hand, limits its story to what appears on the screen, with the marketing behind it being only a mythology. It's not so important where the monster came from or why it's attacking New York or what will happen after the credits roll -- that's not the story. The story is about the people and what appears on the tape. To me, that's cheating the diligent thinker out of the time invested in the story developing in the online world, a story that seems far more interesting and in-depth than a simple oh-no-it's-coming-run-for-your-lives monster flick. This seemed like a brilliant opportunity for moviemaking to move beyond the silver screen, but instead it's only innovative in a technical sense. Why does the film itself have to separate itself so distinctly from the truly fascinating storytelling it was engaging in through the alternate media? Why couldn't it have played into what we learned online, instead of being so limited and so liminal?

Granted, I still haven't seen Cloverfield. And I'm still debating whether or not I want to. But what I see happening here is that the film will create a desire only for plot revelations and images of the monster. And once those two are satiated, I doubt many people will share my enthusiasm for wanting to immerse themselves in this experience, an experience that may be new but is far from being truly groundbreaking.

I sigh, heartily.

But then I remember that the New York Giants have, somehow, against all odds, made their way into Super Bowl XLII. And I think about Eli Manning and how desperately he must be looking for redemption after the Giants' incredible Week 17 performance. I think about how sick and tired I am (and most of the people I know are) of New England (read: Boston) succeeding in pretty much every sport. I think about how due that pompous fuck Tom Brady is for a fall, and about how everyone is already predicting that the Patriots will coast to victory, and how no one will suspect the Giants to be able to do much of anything in two weeks.

And I think about how utterly dangerous that makes the Giants. And how primed it makes them to be the ones to take down the Patriot machine.

And I think it's going to be a hell of a game, and a long two weeks waiting for it to be played.