"J.U.L." Shaun Patrick/Stewbottum

This was really nice. Well made and I think you guys have a great sense of humor. the timing of the actors was nice as well.

I think the only thing I would have wanted a little more of, is empathy with the dad. I felt he was a little too clownish and I wanted to see just a hair more depth to him.

But this is on my mind a lot lately in working on my own comedies, straddling the border between too much and just enough. So maybe I'm projecting :)
 
Thanks for the comments, desperatecomfort! I think WilderWorks will chime in on the screenwriting side and the whole straddling the line between too much and just enough.

Either way, I just wanted to say something about the father. What I really liked about the original idea was the fact that the father had no real redeeming qualities. He just isn't likable and I think that fit nicely in the whole parody of the inspirational/feel good 'family bands together to overcome an obstacle' genre we were going for.

It's interesting how things change, though, once an actor brings a character to life. We let Marc run with the character and I think that definitely changes things a bit. Yeah, it's probably hard to empathize with him but, I think, the father character is certainly more likable on screen than he was in script form.
 
For the first 1/4 of this film, I was in love. I thought the shot selection, pacing, acting and dialogue were spot on. It unraveled a bit for me once the villain showed up and I was starting to wish it didn't have any "superhero" baggage to carry with it. I agree with desperatecomfort that it needed to build a little more empathy for the Dad (it didn't help that he was suddenly dropping the F-bomb on his kids). I think it would have played better if he was the ultimate lovable, sensitive & naive man who constantly gets crapped on in life.

Overall I enjoyed this very much. The "Just Us League" shirts was a brilliant gag and I love the son putting it on wrong.
 
Hmm. This is pandora's box, here... Lots of thoughts. Lots of strands in the ol' Duder's head. Bear with me.

First thought: some of the same incidents being cited as examples of things folks lost sympathy over are the same that build it for others. Me? I love people who mean well, but are absolutely ill-equipped to handle their situation. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't feel unprepared and overwhelmed in life, so it seems more true. I love Walter Mathau in "The Bad News Bears," I love Al Pacino in "Heat," I love Bad Santa, Dewy Finn, Schmidt. Nasty, ill-equipped human beings who just keep trying. They're the heroes I relate to. The more nasty, ill-tempered, and unprepared, the more I recognize them and relate. That's the humanity I know! When Dad flips at the kids -- that's when I see a person I know! That's when I recognize a real person, in over his head. A guy who's trying, and blowing it.

So, I guess it's a matter of taste. I love the dumb lug. I love him, and think he probably deserves to be blown up. Just like me, and everyone I know. Sinners all, eh? In short, I guess I love him because he's unlovable.

Second thought: having established that I do feel sympathy for him, this point is purely academic. These aren't feature films, and I don't think sympathy for the lead should be a requirement. That's one of the freedoms of the short. You don't have to live with these people for two hours, so you have the chance, and therefore, the responsibility, to tell stories you couldn't tell in two hours. And that's my goal: what story can I tell that NEEDS to be five or six minutes? How can I make the form imposed upon the story (by the rules) seem naturally necessary to the story? How can I tell a story that *is* five minutes, not condensed to five minutes? Not a sample?

And my last thought? To be honest, I don't have sympathy for a single other character in the whole festival. I've watched a lot of shorts in my life, and I can't think of any five minute character that I actually felt sincere, unique sympathy for -- unless that sympathy came from the recognition of a common archetype. Now, there are some of those archetypes in this contest that did evoke sympathy from me, but it wasn't the character, it was the familiarity of the character, and all the baggage it carried.

However, I don't respond to the traditional comicbook "hero," as you've probably figured out. Therefore, sacrifices, tough-guys, moral giants -- they don't resonate with me. I don't know that world in my daily life. I know people who aspire to that (like Dad), but I don't know anyone who achieves it. So, I put in a hero that my sort can recognize and invest in -- a loser, trying his damndest, but messing it up. And I put him up against that fanciful hero stuff, and let it play out. He loses, gets his ass kicked, but doesn't lose his belief in his own completely ridiculous, semi-dillusional goals.

And that's the best any of us can do. :)
 
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WilderWorks said:
Nasty, ill-equipped human beings who just keep trying. They're the heroes I relate to. ... When Dad flips at the kids -- that's when I see a person I know!
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OK - the thing that didn't work for me was in relation to this. Not the concept of it - but more the execution of it. When the dad shows up, I wasn't thinking he was a nasty person at all. Just the opposite. Ill-equipped may describe him, but the kids were the nasty part. Then he starts screaming at them in the car. (which distorts badly, btw) I didn't buy that. I laughed - but I'm not sure it was for the right reasons. The character and the performance didn't seem consistent for me and that's one of the problems I have figuring this one out. From the time they're captured, on - I just wasn't with it.

Is this character's "change" that he stands up to fight? You mentioned that you can't think of 5 characters out of the fest that you had sympathy for, and that may be the case - but for this story, I think that is a needed element. You mention a lot of "nasty" hollywood movie characters, but I don't see the resemblence here.

I do understand what you are saying about "these are the characters we know - live with". And I like the ill-equipped part of the dad character. But the combination of character choices didn't work for me in the writing of his lines, or the delivery of them.

Then the fight scene just didn't seem to have relevance. Why were they captured and thrown in the hallway with a bunch of others?

Pardon my "thinking out loud" here. This isn't meant as a harsh criticism, but more like someone trying to figure out what didn't work for them as a viewer.
 
Thanks for the thoughts. This is the nature of comedy: some people won't share the sense of humor.

If we truely sympathized with the Dad, if we sympathized at all with the kids (god forbid!), it wouldn't be a send-up of a family-bands-together movie at all -- it would be a family-bands-together movie. I do NOT want to make one of those, I want to lovingly mock one. That would be like sympathizing with Inspector Clausau in The Pink Panther series. He's our hero because we love watching him screw up everything and piss everyone off. We love watching him fail spectacularly. We love what a bumbler he is because he makes us laugh, because he never gives up, never sees how ridiculous he is, not because he's a guy we're emotionally invested in. We love that he DOESN'T change. (If you're emotionally invested in him, you should seek help).

In this, the Dad's a ridiculous jackass, the kids are humorously exaggerated brats, and their silly bonding tactic lands them in hot water, where they STILL fail to band together to overcome it, and in the end, they get blown up. The team loses in the end of "The Bad News Bears," because it's a send-up of those awful inspiring-coach movies. The kids stay nasty and they lose and we laugh and I love it. They lose in J.U.L because it's a quick send-up of family-banding-together movies. It's not about sympathy. It's about funny.

(Though, as I mentioned before, the Dad's belief in love is admirable, if it's sincere).

So, why are they captured, thrown in a hall, and beaten up? Because the Dad wanted to bring the family together with a ridiculous scheme of pretending they were a superhero family. It backfired, he was mistaken for a real hero. And when the genre and Dad imagines that they should band together to overcome, he gets his butt kicked. Every punch is a punchline, and thank god, I've watched it work that way! Then, when he claims that he's at least learned a moral lesson, they get blown up. That's funny. If you don't think it's funny, sorry. Again, that's the nature of comedy. And if you try to shave off the mean edges, you end up with the sort of crap Hollywood usually calls comedy.

I couldn't make it any clearer that it was a comedy and a send-up: it opens with a shot to the crotch. :)
 
WilderWorks said:
I'm going to make an odd comment, which will likely get me run out of town on a rail. I think your movie and mine, J.U.L, are polar opposites, and a perfect demonstration of how taste really *does* affect the regard these movies are held in. Yours involves a heartfelt sacrifice made for a needy child. Ours says that heartfelt gestures, particularly for needy children, are ridiculously funny movie moments, because they're so false.

This occurred to me because, let me be honest, I laughed aloud when the child is on the couch dying. It was just too much. To me, it was an exaggeration worthy of Kids in the Hall film shorts. HOWEVER, at the same time, the audience at large invested in that archetype, and that's a success. Meanwhile, they wanted our film to invest in the same archetype, the one that it's sending up, and they had problems with it because they wanted to get what they expected. I find that fascinating.

For me and my sort, it takes a long time, and a lot of film, to build up to that sort of moment (the child dying). It takes even longer to build up to a heartfelt self-sacrifice. Six minutes, some of which are spent in an alley-fight, just can't do it. It's so sentimental and so quickly mind-blowingly dramatic, my reaction is laughter. And that's the truth. I hope you will take it in the spirit of honesty and open discussion that it's offered.

So, I congratulate you on having found your audience. But I must express my sincere critique: there's another half of the audience, like me, that find this sort of thing maudlin, and the transition from superhero to dying child an example of humorous bathos. I don't think this sort of story is appropriate for this length of format, and that a lot of its emotional success is dependent on the archetypal baggage that the audience brings to it, which means it isn't saying anything new about life, or critiquing any of the lies we're told about it. It's trotting out the familiar morality play and harkening to our existing investment in it.

Thus, my critique is a purely writerly one. Tell me something true (drama), or point out a lie (comedy). Otherwise, when you make a play at profound, I'm going to laugh.

(EDIT & PS: Yours is CERTAINLY not the only example of this problem that I have, but it's the most important, and the most likely to get the matter throught about and discussed)
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I posted this on JDS's Bone Hand thread, but it's certainly relevent here. It's something I'm thinking a lot about right now, as a result of the circumstances of these discussions, and I would love thoughts on it.
 
Oh yeah, by the way, curse you for coming up with a character called the "Bombamatrix" before I did. Love it. :)

I don't think I meant I wanted more sympathy for him, but just a little more full human being. He felt a hair 2-dimensional. I know it's 5 minutes, but that's all I was saying. In the movies you mentioned, those characters are certainly not LIKEABLE, but they are believable human beings.

But I am being SUPER nit-picky here. Which is a testament to how well done your movie was, to be splitting hairs like this.

I hope you don't think I'm coming down on it, but I think it's really interesting to dig into what makes comedy work, what's subjective, what's not, etc. Because comedy's so hard, in my opinion, I'm always trying to pick it apart to see the mechanics of it.

Not to thread-jack, but you should go check out some of my comedy. Be interested to see what you think, because I definitely have an off-kilter sense of humor like you guys do. I just started a thread for our latest one at:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=60660
 
Hopefully, no one will take the above bait to make this thread longer. I don't feel that it's obvious what you are "sending up" at all. Defend it all you want - I was trying to point out that the character is not consistent. Anyone who is going to start F-Bombing his kids, would have slapped them when he got hit in the crotch. What's honest about that discrepancy?
 
Okay. I'm drawing the line there. If you think a dirty mouth and physical violence are the same thing, you're flatly mistaken. Just because you curse doesn't mean you would be violent. Some people use them, some people don't. In the words of the great Mark Twain, "Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer" It doesn't say anything about the person except the sort of language they like to use. I gladly accept all sorts of criticism, but I won't take a little salty language equated with someone being a bad person. After all, my dear old mother has a dirty mouth. And was the perfect mother all the same. Your assumption that bad language makes a bad person is buying into one of the most ridiculous, puritanical pieces of bull I could ever target.

But I think Misery targetted that: "The language, it lacks nobility." And if you don't know the scene I'm referring to, go rent it. It's CLASSIC, and makes my point better than I can. Langauge and behavior are not equal.
 
Desperatecomfort, thanks for your clarification.

I think you're right: the father ideally would have more depth. I'd personally like to know exactly what happened between him and his wife, and why he doesn't have a better relationship with his kids. I probably wouldn't sympathize with either of these factors, but yes, they might let us know why he's so dependent on this self-help methodology. It's a good point, and I wish I'd found a way to make it fit. I think that got sacrificed to have some fun in the world of the superheroes, but its absense is felt.
 
I only think it got sacrificed to the 5-6 minute rule. Just a time contraint I think, which is totally natural.

But I look forward to seeing more from you guys.
 
desperatecomfort said:
Not to thread-jack, but you should go check out some of my comedy. Be interested to see what you think, because I definitely have an off-kilter sense of humor like you guys do. I just started a thread for our latest one at:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=60660
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No worries. I checked out Man Hole Part 1 awhile back and quite liked it. I will check out episodes 2-3 in the next couple of days. Thanks for the comments.
 
Funny stuff.

I really admire the resourcefulness in the Bominatrix costume, and the sound bed where the hostages were added the the feel of the location and production value.

I was also impressed that you were able to finesse the shutterspeed and exposure to get that dark downlit look with the shuttery action fight movement.

Thanks for making this one, guys.
 
WilderWorks said:
Okay. I'm drawing the line there. If you think a dirty mouth and physical violence are the same thing, you're flatly mistaken. Just because you curse doesn't mean you would be violent.
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You take criticism so well. Thanks for the joyous exchange of ideas. That's what I really respect about about this thread. <Insert more sarcasm here>
 
mrpunch said:
You take criticism so well. Thanks for the joyous exchange of ideas. That's what I really respect about about this thread. <Insert more sarcasm here>
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:sigh: I actually think the level of discussion over the father character was pretty good--I believe Blaine was the first one to voice objections over the f-bomb and whot not. Either way, mrpunch, WilderWorks wasn't attacking you--just defending his point and I think the point extended beyond the movie. Anyway, thanks for the comments...sorry you feel that way.
 
Shaun Patrick said:
I believe Blaine was the first one to voice objections over the f-bomb and whot not.
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Actually, I was following up on a couple of earlier posts. Let me say first and foremost, I have absolutely no problems with the use of the f-bomb or ****, if you prefer. My problem was trying to reconcile the "tough" language coming from what had been set up (to my way of thinking) as a wimp. Again, it was the guy whose wife had left him (no surprise at all seeing the way you built the character) for another man taking a shot to the 'nads with not so much as a "why I oughta" and then later the outburst in the car. For me, it didn't quite ring true. But then again, perhaps I'm coming from a different"set" of experiences. It is your character inhabiting the world you created for him, therefore you have the right to portray him as you please. Your use of language didn't feel like it was there for shock value, which is what I felt was the case in a highly rated film from SciFest. For me, any language is acceptable as long as it fits the character and situation. I respect the fact that you made your choices. I might have handled it differently, however, it's your story you're telling, not mine.

I think the whole thing about the language has been blown way out of proportion. Having made my opinion clear (or so I thought) I really didn't want to come back and talk further about it. But then I didn't want to come off as the language police, either. Language, nudity or any other adult themes do not bother me as long as they serve the story. Having listened to WilderWorks lengthy explanations of the thought process behind his choices, I respect his choices. I still differ on how I would have made them; by this, again I mean reconciling the bat scene to the outburst in the minivan scene. But if that's the only complaint I have about you film, it seems somewhat trivial.

It was a good short that rated near the top of my ballot. It wouldn't surprise me to find that it at the top several ballots. It was very well done. Overall, I have enjoyed it more with subsequent viewings.

Just my
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:)
 
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Yeah, I didn't mean to single you out Blaine...I was just pointing out to mrpunch that the discussion over the father character/f-bomb had been civil/constructive.

Thanks again for your comments and I'm glad you dug the film!
 
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