The 2011 Muchacho Movie Rankings: Part 2... The Golden Muchachos

I’m back for Part 2 of my 2011 Movie Blog Extravaganza! Also known as the less intense and overwhelming portion.

In Part 1, you may recall that I talked forever about a lot of movies. Some good, some bad, but most importantly, I talked a lot.

Part 2 will concentrate on the Golden Muchacho Awards. They’re basically like the Oscars, but way more prestigious, and far more fictional.

Let’s Get Started!

Best Supporting Actor:
Patton Oswalt, Young Adult
Okay, so I hated this movie a lot, but Patton Oswalt somehow rose above the fray to put in one of the better performances of the year, supporting or not. I would have enjoyed hanging out with him in his garage, drinking Jawa Juice or whatever it was he was making in those barrels.

Honorable Mentions:
Simon Pegg, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol
Ryan Gosling, Crazy Stupid Love
TJ Miller, Our Idiot Brother\

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Aziz Ansari, 30 Minutes or Less

Best Supporting Actress
Anna Kendrick, 50/50
I believe Ms. Kendrick is now a 2 time winner of this award. It’s possible I’m not totally rational when it comes to her, because I find her totally fascinating, and really really talented. In any case, I thought she was excellent in this movie, as the reluctant love interest. She managed to play the character’s struggle between all of these conflicting emotions so well, and so believably. I mean… I would not have wanted her as my therapist, but that may have kinda been the point.

Honorable Mentions:
Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
Bryce Dallas Howard, 50/50
Judi Dench, My Week with Marilyn

Maggie Smith, Harry Potter 7 pt. 2

Elle Fanning, Super 8

Weirdest Performance, Female and Male Respectively

Carla Gallo, We Bought a Zoo – A truly bizarre performance and an equally strangely written role. Gallo tends to play relatively likeable characters, but this one wasn’t at all. It was so weird. I didn’t understand the animosity she had, and it just seemed horned in to create some sort of drama.

Mickey Rourke, Immortals – Man… this dude is totally crazy. I mean, I get that he was playing this crazy horrible villain, but he kept spitting on the ground and into things. Big pieces of fruit or whatever he was eating. It was so clearly a character choice he was making that was just strange.

Biggest Waste of Good Actors

Pirates of the Caribbean – Depp, McShane, and Rush in the worst movie of the year.. This is the CLEAR winner. There are no runners up.

Best Looking Cast

Crazy Stupid Love – This movie wins just by sheer volume of attractive people. Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Julianne Moore, and Marisa Tomei. I mean… That’s some good looking dramedy.?

50/50 – Bryce Dallas Howard and Anna Kendrick.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig

Captain America – Chris Evans and Hayley Atwell.
X-Men – January Jonesm Jennifer Lawrence, and Fassbender.
Drive – Gosling and Carey Mulligan

I refuse to list Twilight, because that’s literally the only goal of the producers of this movie, and they still fail. I won’t even go into how the vampires are supposed to be the most beautiful creatures on Earth, and um… Not even close. Did you see how butchered Maggie Grace was? Yikes.

Toughest Scene to Watch

Water for Elephants – The beating of the elephant. There’s only one other possible choice, and I’ll mention that too, but this one was the only scene that I literally had to look away. I don’t know how they did it, but that was some super disturbing, super realistic animal cruelty. Don’t want to see it ever again.

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Rape of Lisbeth / Lisbeth gets her revenge. I mean… I don’t want to spoil it for people, but the horrible rape scene, followed by the subsequent revenge was pretty damned disturbing.  I’ll just say that while it was sort of enjoyable to see Lisbeth give that pervy guy a violent comeuppance, when she shoved that giant silver thing up his ass, and then kicked it. I’m certain the whole theater shuddered at once. That was rough.

Best Individual Scene – Comedy-

Bridesmaids – The Dress Shop Scene. If you haven’t seen it, my describing it to you will just seem gross. Just know that it was really fucking hilarious.

Best Individual Scene – Drama
50/50 – Pre-Surgery. The scene when Joseph Gordon Levitt is heading into surgery, and his fear and anxiety starts bubbling to the surface. A really powerful scene, excellently acted.

Best Actor

Joseph Gordon Levitt – 50/50

Look… This was a man’s performance. He hit every note, and he did it with subtlety and seeming ease. There was nothing showy about it, and it was kind of easy to get lost in the shuffle of bigger name performances this year, but for my money, JGL makes a potentially saccharine, manipulative role and squeezes every bit of humor and pathos out of it. He has 4 or 5 amazing scenes in this movie. Seriously, people. Buy it on BluRay and sit down and watch it. It’s just an excellent movie anchored by a really excellent performance by its lead.

Honorable Mentions
George Clooney, The Descendants
Brad Pitt, Moneyball
Steve Carell, Crazy Stupid Love

Matt Damon, We Bought a Zoo
Daniel Radcliffe, Harry Potter 7

Best Actress
Michelle Williams, My Week with Marilyn

Nobody touches it. She was so good, and so sad as Marilyn Monroe. I mean… I’ve talked a lot in other places about how I see a difference between the biopics where the actor impersonates a person (Ray and Monster as two highly lauded examples) and where the actor plays the person without doing an impression (Walk the Line). I much prefer the latter to the former since impressions seem gimmicky. There are occasional movies where the impression is so good, and so deep that you forget you’re not watching the real person. (Man on the Moon is my favorite of these.). Well.. Michelle Williams can be added to this list. And for the record, Jim Carrey was robbed.

Honorable Mentions
Carey Mulligan, Drive
Kristin Wiig, Bridesmaids

Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Legendary

This blog is not about these guys.

I've had this topic rolling around in my head for a month and a half, so here we go.

I saw Rent at the University of Cincinnati's College Conservatory of Music. (That's CCM to you and me).

My love and personal feelings about Rent are well documented on this blog, and in previous incarnations, so I was predisposed to loving it. Or maybe I wasn't? I think I wanted to love it, but I think that actual love was much less a given.

I certainly did find it moving, and beautiful, and full of heart. I was definitely weeping like a fucking baby through most of Act 2. I really did love it. It was one of those experiences where I wanted to commiserate with anyone and everyone about every little detail, so I started checking out the reviews, and...many of them just merely liked it, (but with reservations). Some of them didn't like it. I couldn't believe it! They said things about how the show wasn't gritty enough, or raw enough, or real enough or something. Clearly I disagreed, but I also started wondering if maybe the reaction was inevitable. Perhaps CCM saddled itself with an impossible task.

I start to think about how Rent, for many people of my generation, exists in this sort of otherworldly level of reverence... It's the signature musical of my formative years. It's like West Side Story for people who were teens in the late 50s, or Hair for kids from the early 70s. There have been very few musicals in history that have held the same importance for the people who saw it as Rent did during it's Broadway run. Hell... The Office just used "Seasons of Love" in the most recent episode.

Rent captured a particular part of our culture unlike any other theatre piece in my lifetime. Some may have been "better", but none were more iconic. Rent combined many of the ideals of the mid-Nineties artist life, and the still very, very real plight of the AIDS epidemic (three of the main characters have it). It also had the added publicity and notoriety of the extremely sad, tragic death of writer and composer Jonathan Larson, who died the night before opening.

Oh... and it's also, more than anything, beautiful and visceral and memorable.

Okay, so it's great and all those things I've talked about, but why did CCM have no chance?

Because, I believe that some things are, for many people, untouchable. You can't remake The Godfather. When an actor plays Colonel Jessup in the stage version of A Few Good Men, they have to be compared with Nicholson. People could make amazing covers of Yesterday, but it will never be The Beatles. In each of these cases, the public knowledge and sentiment for the original makes it impossible to truly be measured independently.

Every musical theatre nerd has a copy of the original cast recording of Rent. Every single one. You ask most buffs to name the actors in that cast, and they come up with them in short order. Quicker than any other show of the time. It's like naming the 76 Cincinnati Reds for a baseball fan.

Every Tom Collins singing "I'll Cover You" will be compared to Jesse L. Martin. The little inflections of every Roger and Mimi will be compared (usually negatively) to Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin Vega's rendition of "Light My Candle". Idina Menzel is the gold standard for "Over the Moon". That's just the way it is.

I think Mia Gentile, who played Maureen at CCM, is better than Idina Menzel. I'm not forgetting who Idina Menzel is. It doesn't make that original, Tony winning performance, any less iconic or spectacular. It certainly doesn't diminish her performance as Elphaba in Wicked. But yeah... i said it. Mia Gentile can sing the ever-loving shit out of that music, is exceptionally well trained, and just rocked it from moment one.

Max Chernin's performance during "I'll Cover You" made me cry like a little tiny baby. This doesn't make that one track on disc 2 of the original cast recording any less worn out. I've had to replace my copy of Rent two times. This is owed in no small part to Jesse L. Martin's heartbreaking performance. That said.. If I remove my sentiment, Max absolutely crushes his performance, and no amount of nostalgia for singing that song along wtih Jesse L will change that.

I'm not saying that this was a better production than the original Broadway... What I'm saying is that I don't think people have the ability to separate their very personal feelings for this particularly personal show that means so much to so many of them.

The thing is, though... as great as that original production was, I wonder if maybe people haven't... I dunno... Made it even better in their heads. Is it possible that what people consider grit is really just Daphne Rubin Vega not being that great a singer? (OH, NO I DIDN'T!!) Is it possible that Adam Pascal really does kind of sound a little wooden, if you're listening real hard? (OH, YES I DID!).

The thing is... it doesn't matter. The original cast of Rent is untouchable. It's impossible to separate the Legend from the Reality anymore. So... Basically, no matter the artistry of the CCM production (or any other), the people who choose to view any new production in the kaleidoscope of the original can never be good enough. To be honest... I've seen Rent three times in Cincinnati, and this was the first where I actually thought that even someday the specter of the original could potentially be pushed enough aside to view it independently. The two tour productions I'd seen before were both good, but not great. Not productions I'd wanna see again.

I'd have gone to see CCM's show over and over.

Can anyone think of other untouchable performances or productions? Does Gus Van Whatshisface's remake of Psycho make you angry?

PS: Apparently I've mentioned Rent so much I have a tag for it.

I see a lot of movies.

Happy New Year, Faithful Readers!

One of my favorite things I did this past year on my blog was track each and every movie I saw in the theaters, and rank them as they came in. I was always curious as to how many movies I saw, and I was also sort of interested in seeing how I'd rank movies if I had a continuous flow-chart sort of thing where I listed them.

I'm very pleased with how it turned out, and I will definitely be starting a new list for 2011 soon.

So... Without further ado, a look back at the best and worst from my perspective, based only on the movies I saw.

Best Actress:
For me this comes down to three.
Natalie Portman in Black Swan is likely going to win the Oscar, and she definitely would be deserving. I didn't totally love the movie, overall. It felt... kind of unfocused. It seemed like it was trying to be different things. That doesn't make her performance any less incredible. She killed it.
Anna Kendrick in Up in the Air. I know that technically this was a 2009 movie, but I saw it in 2010, and it didn't get wide release until then. So there. Anyway, she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for this movie, and really I think she was robbed.
Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit. Ten minutes into this movie I knew this girl's performance was special. She was totally badass and she stood toe to toe with Jeff Bridges, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, and Matt Damon and made them all have to rise to her level. She rocks.

Honorable Mention:
Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs

Best Actor:
I mean... I don't think there were any truly transcendent performances by men this year.
Jeff Bridges in True Grit was great, and I firmly believe the guy makes a case for 2 wins in a row, after Crazy Heart last year. I wasn't the fan of DiCaprio's performance in Inception that many were. I felt like Joseph Levitt was better. Gyllenhall is good in Love and Other Drugs. Jesse Eisenberg is good in The Social Network. Just... I don't think anyone really stands out more than the others. I think I'm gonna have to go with Clooney in Up in the Air. Best movie of the year in the non-Animated category. He was great. And he has mastered the "The same but different" thing. I loved that movie.

Worst Actress:
Jennifer Aniston in The Bounty Hunter. There's really no contest here.

Worst Actor:
Gerard Butler in The Bounty Hunter or, as much as I hate to say it... Will Arnett in When in Rome. I've talked about how much disdain I have for Gerard Butler before. He's horrid in every possible way. It makes me super sad, though, to report that Will Arnett's schtick is getting old. He was awesome as Gob Bluth. He was funnier than anyone knows in Lets Go to Prison. But as funny as the guy is, he's limited, and it seems that his limits have been reached. Sad.

Best Performance in a Shitty Movie:
I'm gonna go with Stanley Tucci in The Lovely Bones. I probably wouldn't go so far as to call The Lovely Bones shitty, but it did solidly fall in the lower half of my list. Stanley Tucci is generally awesome, and almost always excellent. I don't know what it is about him, but he's always awesome. He was awesome in Burlesque too. His performance as a terrifying serial killer was one of the creepiest things I saw all year.

Worst Performance in a Good Movie:
Man... I mean.. maybe Nicholas Cage in Kick Ass? Or Nicholas Cage in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. Hard to say. And funny enough, Good Old Nic Cage kicks ass in both of these movies. I can't think of anyone better in either role, and he is SO, SOOO bad. It's like an effing M.C. Ecsher painting.

Best Cameos:
TIE: The Rock and Samuel L. Jackson in The Other Guys. One of the most drop-dead hilarious bits in any movie this year, and I can't say any more or else I'll spoil it.

Non-Disney movie I'm Most Likely to Buy on Blue Ray:
This eliminates Toy Story 3, Tangled, and The Sorcerer's Apprentice, so... I think I'd be really torn between Kick Ass and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. There were definitely better movies. Up in the Air, True Grit, Inception. Still... knowing my personal tastes in at-home-viewing, I think I'd be fairly unlikely to regularly watch those heavier flicks. Kick-Ass and Scott Pilgrim are both total nerd dreams, and a ton of fun. That's pretty much what I like. Something not too deep. These weren't deep, but they were a blast. If forced to choose, I go with Kick-Ass.

Worst Picture:
I don't know... I think I'd have a hard time thinking of a worse movie than The Bounty Hunter. Not just this year, but ever. I mean... I know it's not the worst movie ever *cough* Titanic *cough*, but it is really, really bad. Not even a close second on this list. Daybreakers, my 2nd lowest rated movie features a fairly entertaining premise and a fairly entertaining performance by Willem Defoe. They can't save it from Ethan Hawke, but it wasn't a travesty. The Bounty Hunter was a travesty.

Best Picture:
Generally, I think it was a strong year for movies in the "good but not great" range, but not nearly as strong on the high end. If I had to vote for Best Picture of the movies I saw, I'd be hard-pressed not to give it to Toy Story 3, which will never ever win. It was the best movie I saw all year. It was hilarious and deeply emotional. It had a great story. It was beautiful to watch. It was definitely the most great of any of the really good movies I saw this year.

Now, on to 2011.

Hoarders (The Disney Version)

Good lord people. It's been over 4 months since I've blogged about Disney. FOUR MONTHS. How in the hell can that be?

This cannot stand.

When I played Lennie in "Of Mice and Men", as I started to develop my character, I found myself picking things up off the ground and stuffing them in my pockets. I would see a piece of straw. Into my pocket. A mouse? In my pocket. Pretty much anything. I decided that Lennie, if he had money, would just be a compulsive hoarder of goods (and not-so-goods)... Piling things up in his house and pissing George right-the-hell off.

The Tofu Muchacha has said I sort of have the same inclinations to some degree.. hopefully never to the extent of those poor people being capitalized upon on television, but you know... I like stuff. I'm a bit sentimental. I like to revisit things from my past from time to time.

I have often found myself day dreaming about what I'd do with a time machine. Obviously, I'd use it to make myself rich in some way. I've considered how I'd go about it... Would I buy up huge parcels of land, and then wait until the sprawl-binge of the 70s and 80s and sell it off for gigantic profit? Would I buy houses in affluent areas of Cincinnati for 15 thousand dollars each back in 1920 and sell them off one-by-one today for a million each? Would I acquire rare baseball cards and autographs and lock them away in a safe (to let them age naturally, but safely), uncover them all, and then have a big lucrative auction of my dozens of Babe Ruth signed baseballs and Jimmy Foxx signed bats and whatnot?

The answer to all of these is, of course, yes.

But... what would I keep? What obscure piece of history would I hoard for myself? My thoughts always comes back to Disney related memorabilia. I have these big elaborate fantasies about meeting a 21 year old Walt Disney and just quietly working for him at the Hyperion Studios or giving him a pep-talk after Pat Powers screwed him out of Oswald the Rabbit. So...

In honor of my hoarding tendencies, my elaborate Disney-related day dreams, and my lack of a Disney post for a good long while... I bring you...

5 Pieces of Disney History I'd want For My Very Own...
(assuming unlimited space and money... obviously).

1) The original multi-plane camera. (Pictured above)
I mean... it's a god-damned monstrosity of a thing. I'd obviously need to have like a whole room dedicated to Bertha. (That's what I'd name it.) I don't draw, really, so the odds of me actually using the thing are pretty much nil. That said... It's one of the most important developments in animation ever. Without it you wouldn't have Snow White or anything that came after it. I've discussed it before, but as a refresher... The multi-plane camera was a machine Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks invented to provide multiple layers in their animation. The first animation released that used the multi-plane camera was called The Old Mill. Anyway, it represented a huge visual leap in animation... taking it further away from amusement and closer to art. I'd LOVE to have that thing. Good ol' Bertha.


2) The original blue-print for Disneyland
Let me count the reasons this would be fucking awesome to have... 1) A blue print and a map are essentially the same thing, and I collect antique maps. 2) It would look amazing hanging in the Disney Room in my mansion. 3) Disneyland represented a quantum leap in family entertainment. The way people vacationed changed forever. The theme park was born. 3) The original blue print for Disneyland is the embodiment of the birth of my favorite place in the world. An honorable mention would be the original concept art for the park.


3) The original sound reel for Steamboat Willie
I started thinking that I'd want something from the early days of Mickey Mouse. A lot of folks would want an original print of Steamboat Willie, and who could blame them? Well... I've never been much of a traditionalist, and in college I did a ton of sound designs and scoring for the theatre productions. Creating a really good sound design is pretty cool... I'd venture to say that there's never been a cooler sound design than the original Steamboat Willie. Once again, Walt was on the forefront of the technology (my biggest argument against the people who resist change at Disney World). We all know the history of Steamboat Willie, and how it was the first animated film to have fully synced sound. Having the original sound reel would be killer.


4) The Tiki-Room Parrot in the above picture:
I am not like... a huge fan of The Enchanted Tiki Room or anything, but I do like it a lot. That's not really the point though. Walt Disney was a huge lover of technology and was kind of obsessed with toys and robotics and one of his favorite features of Disneyland was that it was a showcase for things like audio-animatronics and things like that. This particular Parrot is special, because Walt used it in a feature about the Tiki Room on his television show. Choose a reason I'd want it? Original animatronics from Disney. Direct connection to Walt Disney. Disneyland in its youth. It's more emblematic than specific to this piece.


5) Walt's drawing table from Hyperion/Laugh-o-Grams
What more could a person want? It's Walt's drawing table.... I mean.. He created Mickey Mouse. He created Oswald the Rabbit and Donald Duck and Goofy and Chip and Dale and a million other characters we've all grown up with. He created a dynasty of entertainment. He invented the modern theme park. He introduced depth and sound to animation. He's my hero. Any everything he did was all started at that drawing table. It'd be like the writing desk where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. It'd be like the easel Picasso used while painting Guernica.

Looking at my list, I can't help but note that all of these are historical pieces. Things instrumental in creating the Disney that I have come to love. Oh man... I could think about it all day..

What things from history would you want?

A True Awakening

The Tofu Muchacha and I saw Spring Awakening on Thursday (as you know from my Friday blog). To say that I was highly anticipating it would be putting it mildly. I discovered the soundtrack last year, late... I know, and pretty much was captivated. There have been other shows where I've fallen in love with the music well before I'd seen the show... Parade, A New Brain (still never seen it), Children of Eden. For some reason, this one felt a little different. The music is seemingly disconnected… the lyrics more complex. It's a little hard to figure out what's happening in the story just by listening. Maybe on the surface, that's not a good thing, but I think that ultimately it's one of the qualities that makes the show so fantastic. I'll get to that in a bit.

I've probably listened to the album about a hundred times in the last 8 months. The things that typically draw me to musical scores aren't that prevalent. There's no ballad that I want to sing over and over. In fact, there aren't really any solos at all. Still, the music is magnetic. It's spell-binding. Despite the fact the plot isn't carried by the lyrics, I was forced to listen hard, they made me want to know more. I ended up doing a ton of internet searching for plot summaries and video clips, scarfing up whatever I could find.

All of that is sort of "set-up" to explain how spectacularly I was looking forward to seeing it. I could just say... a shitload.

The set is there with no curtain. There's a simple center "staging" area with the band and piano upstage. The stage right and left sides are flanked by "bleachers" with audience members filling in most of the seats. The only construction is an upstage wall filled with odds and ends, almost like an old TGI Fridays on crack. The lights... they come from everywhere. Seriously everywhere.

You know… I'm not going to go through the whole thing. I could. I can remember every moment like I've seen it a dozen times.

What I want to focus on is that I've seen a lot of pieces of theater in my life. I've seen good, bad, weird, funny, sexy, dumb. Literally hundreds of productions at dozens of theaters performed by thousands of actors, and very few of them have stunned me. Very few have made my heart beat fast.

Spring Awakening stunned me. My heart fluttered throughout. I sat watching choice after choice, performance after performance and I couldn't believe how creative and how breathtaking every single moment was. Maybe the best way to put it is that it made the unexpected choice at every chance.

It's not a big show in the way Wicked or Ragtime are BIG shows. There are only 14 or so performers. There's very little in terms of large set pieces and showy tech. About the extent of it is the hayloft that rises on ropes out of the floor, and the chair on the wall that Melchior uses. Slight movement takes the focus. The incredible staging. Every moment is meticulously planned and perfectly executed. Fully committed.

I think what strikes me the most as I watch is that this show could have been done incredibly traditionally... With a curtain and set pieces and body mics throughout. It would have been watchable. I mean... People fucking LOVE Wicked. It's not like there hasn't been success with more linear, more old school productions of late. The public isn't demanding more avant garde theatre. For the most part the most popular shows are the revivals and things like Mamma Mia and Legally Blonde and Spamalot. And please... don't take that as I slight. I fully support the need for shows like Wicked and Shrek. They're wildly entertaining, and people need to be wildly entertained. Spring Awakening is probably too dark for mass appeal. Actually… to call Spring Awakening "dark" would be like calling the Grand Canyon "deep". It's not for everyone, but I think that's what I loved about it the most.

Not that I need to like things outside the mainstream. I’m not some emo poseur who can’t enjoy a good comedy. That's definitely not it. I just fucking love that the people who sat down to conceive this show saw two paths and took the truer one. The one that takes this incredibly dark show to a place that may not necessarily appeal to everyone, but the place that would ring the deeper emotional toll.

They do so many interesting things I never would have thought of… The singers alternate between traditional body mics and pulling hand-held mics from seemingly nowhere. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the differences are... why the different mics are used at different places, and I think it has something to do with how the characters are feeling. If they are singing about their feelings, or what they're singing about is something internal, they use the hand mics. I honestly don't know... the fact that I have to think about it at all makes incredibly excited.

Then there's the use of lighting. In school, there was a lot of discussion about lighting design being there to subtly lead the audience to feel something. It helps convey emotion. Lights slightly intensify or fade to lead the audience to the place you want. This show sort of ignores that notion completely and goes the exact opposite direction. The lights are overt. Bright REDS when Ilse and Martha sing "The Dark I Know Well". Greens and blues other times. When Wendla and Melchior sleep together at the end of the first act, and the cast is singing "I believe", the lights warm them, and all of these hidden lights throughout the backdrop and hanging from the ceiling light blueish to give this notion that the stars are lighting their way. It's incredibly beautiful. And then later, when Melchior is at his darkest point, the absence of those same lights shines as glaringly as if they were there. The holes in the wall where the lights would normally be shining show as black chasms more than you'd ever noticed them previously.

The choreography by Bill T. Jones is... perfect. It might give Jerome Robbins an absolute fucking coronary, but he'd watch it and say that it couldn't be more perfect to convey the pain, and angst, and anguish, and chaos of being a teenager. He's a modern dance guy, so there aren't a lot of straight lines. There's a lot of jumping and stamping of feet. A lot of flailing legs. It all makes perfect sense. It a way it seems like chaos, but every twitch of a foot feels perfectly placed. Intentional. Not in the way that every piece of choreography in every show is intentional. I know it is. There was a feeling I had that every movement, despite how busy it is, had it’s exact place.

Remember way back in that first paragraph where I'd said it was cool that when I first listened to the music I didn't know exactly what was happening in the story? I went into the performance on Thursday knowing pretty much every word of every song. It was truly amazing to watch how they all fit in. The lyrics that I didn't totally understand before became completely clear. They're not straightforward. They aren't simple. But they are beautiful, and they compliment the emotions of the characters completely. I guess the best example of this comes with the song "Touch Me". The lyrics are sexy and mysterious, and I didn't understand how they fit. Then I saw the show and it makes perfect sense as the embodiment of what Melchior imagines sex is like. There are so many moments like that in the show.

I know this blog is extremely gushy. I know that's not my style. It's just so rare that I come away with something that know I'll never forget. I left the show completely energized. I wanted to see it again immediately. I've seen Les Mis once. I've never seen Wicked and while I’d like to, I’m not going to fight the masses to get there.

I want to see this one again. Like... right now. I can see myself tracking where the tour goes and seeing if it comes close again. I am hungry for another dose of it.

I can honestly say, looking back at the shows I've seen and the performances I've witnessed that only a very small handful changed the way I view performing or art.

When I saw Windy City at Footlighters in 1992, I remember thinking that I'd never be as excited. The set was one-of-a-kind. The performances were excellent. The experience of putting it together was one that I'll never forget, and I only helped build the set.

When I saw the original cast of Ragtime in Toronto the Summer before it went to Broadway, I remember thinking that I'd never see another production so complete both in performance, tech, and musicality.

When I saw Mystere, the Cirque du Soleil show, I remember being moved for the first time by simple (well... incredibly difficult, but simply constructed) movement. The magnitude and scope of it just blew me away.

When I saw A Piece of My Heart my freshman year at Wright State it made me excited to be starting my life in theatre. It made me want to create something that prompted the raw emotion we felt in the audience that night.

Spring Awakening can be added to that list. I can't recall watching anything so different and yet successful at every innovation. Every choice was perfect. It's hard to imagine seeing anything to hit such a chord again.

But then... it showed me that I could still see something new.

Ignorance in Perpetuity

Sometime very soon, I'll post a full blog about my opinions of Spring Awakening, which I saw for the first time last night. I can say honestly that it was one of the more profound theatre-going experiences I've had. Hold that thought, though.

People left at intermission.

I have some issues with this. Allow me to expand...

Excluding illness or emergency, I don't understand how any person can leave any show. Ever. I recognize that not every show is everyone's bag. That is fine. That is understandable. I've sat through a whole lot of shows that I didn't particularly enjoy. What I don't understand is having enough disregard for art and the artist that you can't at least have the courtesy to view the whole work.

This is different for movies and books and television. It's even different for art like photography or painting or other "gallery" type art. Those pieces don't have the one thing that makes live theatre unique... the fact of it being LIVE. The artists are there, creating in person. They see you leave. They see the tears and emotions of the audience. The book is already printed. The television show has already been filmed. There's always the chance of picking it up the book again when you feel better prepared, or Netflixing the movie if you change your mind. The beauty of a play is that it's fleeting. It's never exactly the same. You may see another production of Spring Awakening some time in the future, but it will never have the exact same resonance as it would in that moment. It's a one-off.

And yes... that's a concept that is vaguely esoteric and possibly not everyone's cup of tea, so let me break it down for you in a simpler way.

These people on the stage, whether it's a show like Spring Awakening or a show like Barefoot in the Park... these people are sweating for your entertainment. These people are working hard, doing their jobs, to create art. Much like you go to a mechanic and let them finish working on your car before you drive off the lot, you owe it to yourself to allow these people to complete their job before you evaluate the value of their work.

I personally would not PAY to see Mamma Mia. I just don't think it's that interesting, and I don't think it's that fun... but I know that were I to go see it, I'd be there til the end. The people on the stage are owed that tiny modicum of courtesy. That's really all it comes down to. Respect.

There's another factor at play here, though, and it bothers me far more than the public's general lack of respect.

I know of people who left just because the play and subject matter were "darker" than they expected. There are a couple of things wrong with this, as far as I'm concerned....

1) My understanding is that all season ticket holders were notified prior to purchasing tickets for this show that it was of an adult nature, and included dark subject matter. They were even given the opportunity to purchase a package without this show in it.

2) Even if they somehow missed the notification, there were all of the following signs that this show may not be Legally Blonde-esque:
a) The poster looks like this: Note the teenagers being all sexual and whatnot. Note the decided lack of frilly colors and text. Red and black doesn't exactly indicate a freewheeling ride through the flowers. Let's look at the Legally Blonde poster for counter reference:

Note the Reese Witherspoon lookalike. Note the cute little puppy. Note the smile. These things are not accidents.
B) If you missed the notice and the poster, you also had giant signs in the lobby with MORE WARNINGS. Adult themes. Adult Language. Sexual Content. Partial Nudity.
C) If you missed all of those things, the fucking shirts they were selling in the lobby literally said the words "You're Fucked" on the back.

I mean... come on people.

And so the fuck what? Are you saying that you literally can't sit through a musical that isn't the toe-tapping, rollicking good time that is Singin' in the Rain? You're so vapid and unable to feel any sort of emotion aside from "Giggle giggle" that you won't even allow yourself to be challenged.

On the way out, I heard a man say "I didn't like that play. It was different."

I'm dead serious. Like... his only reason that he didn't like it was that it wasn't just like fucking Oklahoma, which (excuse me for saying so) is pretty fucking disturbing in its own right. Judd is KILLED. There are fires and attempted rapes. It wasn't the feel-good hit of 1952 everyone has glossed t. I mean... West Side Story is about a gang war and murder. Carousel is about robbery and murder and morality. It's possible that Spring Awakening is a bit more overt in its telling, but it's no darker than The Who's Tommy (drugs, sex, child molestation) or Ragtime (murder, sex, racism, terrorism, child slavery) or Les Mis (Prostitution, murder, theft, identity fraud, war, grave robbery) or Rent (Prostitution, homosexuality, drugs, sex).

I wonder if it would have been more palatable to the elitist, ignorant snobs who essentially discarded this as a bunch of Gen Y Tripe if they'd realized that it was based on a German book written in 1891. Would that give it more resonance with the over washed masses? With the delicate, over-shielded philistines that just simply couldn't watch this "dark" show.

I really could go on all day about it, but I want to get to post about the show itself, and not about how I don't understand the mentality of these dickfaces who spend the money to sit in the front, but don't have a single inkling that what they're seeing might be more than just the status of their ticket stub. What's the old saying?

You can put a pig in a dress, but it's still just a fucking pig.

The only solace I can take away from the whole business is that there is a great irony hidden here, in this particular case...

The theme of Spring Awakening is that you can't hide from the dirty parts of life, because they're there whether you acknowledge them or not.

The people who left the show were doing exactly that. Hiding from the dirty parts.

My Blue Jacket

I miss Blue Jacket.

Blue Jacket, the Epic Outdoor Drama ran for over 25 seasons and closed "temporarily"after the 2007 season, and has since had First Frontier, the producing company declare bancrupcy, essentially rendering the show dead for at least the time being. New DNA testing showing that Blue Jacket himself wasn't blah blah blah basically renders the show dated. Of course, the money and the legitimacy of blood or whatever completely misses the point and the message, and does nothing to diminish the memories.

In the Spring of 2001, as a Drama Major at Thomas More College, I found myself looking for an acting gig for the Summer to come. I'd auditioned already at the place where I'd worked the year prior, and I would have been content to go back there, but due to some upheaval with the organization, they were slow in getting contracts out, and I didn't want to risk not working. So, I drove to Xenia, Ohio with my best friend at the time, Melissa Depenbrock (now Dortch... She met David while at Blue Jacket) who was returning to Blue Jacket for her 2nd Summer and first as the Head Equestrian. I auditioned in a small office, and was offered the role of Captain Arbuckle later that week. I'd still not heard from the other theater, so I accepted.

I mean... I was a chubby, nerdy dude who was going far, far out of his comfort zone to do an outdoor drama where I'd have to, among other things, ride horses bareback, learn stage combat, roll around in the dirt (my sworn enemy), and not be able to rely on my one true strength at the time as a performer, my singing.

I'd done outdoor drama, but there's a big difference in difficulty level between trying not to swallow a mosquito in the middle of singing a high A and doing everything you can to squeeze with your knees to a horse that suddenly doesn't recognize a puddle and let's be honest, I wasn't the best rider that ever walked down the pike. That run-on sentence doesn't convey even half of the anxiety I felt about this new endeavor. This was truly guerrilla theatre. Like..the crawling through the woods on your belly with a gun....LITERALLY...type of theatre.

If you'd have told me after my first day, when it poured rain the whole time, and Johnny Mac (from Chicago), who was doing the fight direction that year (the one year when Rat didn't do it, I guess), had us doing pushups on stage and running and soaking and gasping for life.... If you'd have told me then that I'd be writing a blog now about how it was my favorite time I've ever spent in theater, I'd have slapped you square in the face. Looking back, I wish I had more of those days.

In many ways, it was the best Summer of my life. Certainly the free-est. Definitely not the purest. But let me tell you... the people I met there have been with me perpetually since.

I'm terrible about keeping in touch, with even my closest friends, but I know that Mike Mangione would greet me with a hug and a hearty "SHAWNEE!!" if I ran into him on the street.

In fact, that very idea was shown to be true a couple of weeks ago when I ran into my old friends Tanner and Samantha Thompson at a Bengals game. Tanner and Samantha met at Blue Jacket too. I'm welling up now, but I'm hard pressed to think of a single moment where I was greeted as warmly as I was when I told Tanner to take off that fucking Colts jersey. In true Tanner fashion, he just laughed and smiled and they both gave me big 'ol hugs.

The thing is... I know that would be true for anyone I worked with that Summer (and the next when I went back as a mid-season replacement). I've never had a working experience where I felt like I was part of a family as I did trodding the sand at Ceasar's Ford. And I actually worked FOR family for 4 years.

That first Summer I was there was historically wet at Blue Jacket. We had several rain outs. The creek overflowed for a week once and the horses could barely get across from the pasture. It rained for so many days in rehearsals that for the brief moments when it was dry, you could sense the entire place just sucking in the sunlight. Our Blue Jacket cast shirts that season featured a drenched horse (Bucky). I bought 2.

So anyway... the other day I was on Facebook and I saw that another Blue Jacket alumnus, Spencer Burton (who was 12! that first Summer) had been up to the site and took some photos, posting them on his page. I'll admit they hit me pretty hard... not all at once, but slowly. The images creeping into my thoughts at the oddest times.

The Tofu Muchacha and I had planned on going antique shopping anyway for a show that I'm doing props for, so I suggested we drive up to Yellow Springs and make a day. Thinking that we could stop at the site for ourselves to see that old place I loved so much. I just felt like I needed to see it.

Appropriately, it was raining when we got there.

I can't tell you how remarkably sad the whole experience made me. Sad for a lot of reasons.

I think back to those Summers. To the times that made me laugh (just about all of them) and the times that made me cry (the others).

I think about getting a riding lesson from Keith Conway, who basically summed up his technique by.... ahem... humping the withers (of Jack or Bud, I'm sure) and saying "ya just gotta goooo with it."

I think about learning about a culture much older and storied than ours, and being inspired by the simple beauty of the Shawnee. What little I had the capacity to truly understand. A 3 day pow-wow just isn't enough is all I'm saying.

I think about spending the Summer being killed at centerstage by Black Fish (Cliff Jenkins) (and subsequently being peed on by Willow more than a few times) outside the burning fort at the end of Act 1.

I remember the deep sadness we all felt when the surprise foal we were so amazed to find in the pasture one day died the next..

I made friends with a horse named Ace, who to this day is still probably my favorite living creature. The one with the gentlest soul. If I had the money and the resource, I would have bought him in a heartbeat. I wonder where he is now, seeing as horses don't have Facebook... or do they?

And then, with all of those things in mind.... With the nights at Sure Shots and the days in the tennis courts at Stone Bridge learning to fight with Rat and Mike Mangione, and the many, many backstage tours I did with Tom Small, and the seeming hours it took to clean those damned guns every week. Thinking about all of those things, I hopped the low rise fence at the main gate (the actor's entrance is so overgrown that aside from the indent in the road, it's hard to tell anything was ever there) and I made my way toward the theater.

The parking lot, and all of that land that once housed our torch throwing practices is a wild field again. The space next to the picnic area, where there once were tables, was now waist high grass. The screens enclosing the meal building are torn and falling.

The theater itself reminded me of one of those movies like "I am Legend" or "28 Days Later" where a bustling place had been abandoned quickly, with it's inhabitants thinking they'd be back soon. The concession stand sign was still mostly intact, with items and prices still listed. The old, familiar tours sign still shows that the next tour starts at 5:00. Everything is boarded up, but for the most part, it looks like aside from some extra debris and weeds, that it could be cleaned up in a particularly taxing rehearsal tech week.

I walked into the theater from the top on the stage left, audience right side. The cry room still labeled. I felt like I wanted to go in there for a minute.
The stage itself is basically unchanged. There's definitely grass growing where no self-respecting A.T. would have allowed it to grow. Clearwater's rock is obscured and hard to see. The buildings, especially building B were looking the worse for wear, but if I squinted real hard, I could see Death Rider at center stage. I could hear that familiar voice over... "This Sacred ground..."I could detail the whole time I spent there (only about an hour) and the things I showed Tofu Muchacha. The 5 million places I pointed out to her...

"That's where I died every night...oh and there...and there."

"Here's where Ceasar fell at the end of Act 1"

"The acoustics here are amazing....listen!"

"There used to be a bat that lived down there in the tunnel. He was our friend."

"Here's where I fell off of Morgan during riding call."

The saddest moment for me came toward the end when I decided to walk to the pasture. The bridge probably wasn't safe anymore, but I did anyway. The path so clear that we could navigate it in the dark was gone...just a hint of a direction...a familiar footstep or two to guide the way. I'd wanted to go in and visit Clyde the horse by the medicine wheel. I'd wanted to go pat Ace's old post.

I'm not a religious person, but the spirit of that place has always hit me more than anywhere I've ever been. I can honestly say that through my first 22 years, the place I'd felt the most at peace, and the most at home was picking the hooves of those horses in that pasture. I readily admit that I have no horse knowledge aside from what I picked up there 2nd hand. I readily admit I may have been the worst rider in the history of the world, but I loved that pasture.

Sadly, the pasture was unreachable. I made it to the gate, which was totally covered in weeds and high grass, and I managed to snap a photo or two, just so I could remember it again later. It would have been no use to climb... the growth was more than I could manage.

We made our way back to the front... I was this close to crying the whole time. I felt unfinished. I felt restless. Then I spied something that gave me a slight bit of comfort as I left, and I felt compelled to take one last photo...It's hard for me to acknowledge any belief in fate and spirits and guides, but I can't help but feel like that path I took (of the many I could have taken) and that sideways glance (of the many I could have taken) was meant to lead me to that seat. To say goodbye to Ace one last time, and to take with me a small piece of his spirit.

As I sit typing this in the middle of the night, waiting for some dumb work issue to resolve before I can go to bed, I am crying.

The funniest thing is that I likely wasn't all that memorable to that place full of memorable characters. I certainly didn't have the same impact of Petey Fitzkee who spent more time playing Blue Jacket himself than any other person, and who still has ghost pains of performing around 8 on a Summer's night... (I read the article in the Dayton Daily News) . I didn't meet the person I love there like Tanner and Sammy, or Mel and David, or Pete and Tara, (or a thousand others).

I likely barely made a dent in that place, and yet when I really allow myself to admit it, it's possible that those 2 seasons dented me more than almost any other experiences I've had. (Not counting the actual dent in my shin from when Pancho kicked me while I was riding Ace). Certainly I had some memorable, treasured times there.

I'm writing this post as a catharsis, so please excuse the ramble. I've left it largely unedited, which likely makes it largely unreadable for most. I hope someone "Googling" Blue Jacket will come across this and smile knowing that a minor cog like me was, over a Summer and some change, so greatly impacted. I hope some of the people who have more history than I do there will know how much their contribution to Blue Jacket meant to me, and to know how much the loss of the institution grieves me.

I called this post "My Blue Jacket", because this is just my own personal take on a the tragic loss of a friend... of a family... something bigger than any of the single people who spent their Summers in the mist of the evening.

I hope it comes back one day. I hope that one day is soon. In any case, I'll never forget it. Not ever.

I leave you with the words of Rusty Mundell, the playwright:

This sacred ground, which you call your land, never belonged to you, fellow-man. It has always belonged to the Great Creator.

Look at the earth around you. Do you think it has anything to say?

Look at the forest and at the stone. What stories do they have?

Listen to the stream nearby... singing lost songs to lost children. Do you hear the earth?

It tells you that the Great Creator put it here in order to offer his children all that grows upon it. The Great Creator put it here...and from its womb...he made man.

...You killed us, and we fled before your numbers and your power, until we came to this sacred ground.

Do you hear it? Do you not hear the ground say that this is so?

Additional Adornments

Hey Folks!

Remember me? Well... I'm sorry to have been so quiet all these many weeks (I know how hard it must have been for everyone.)

Here are some of the things I did, some of which have inspired me to think about blogging.

-- I opened and closed another show. This one went really, really well. The audiences seemed to really love it. The cast was fantastic to work with. My dad directed the show, which is a rare treat for me. The Tofu Muchacha ushered many a night. It was an excellent time.

-- My sister's 21st birthday present from my parents was a trip to Las Vegas. I tagged along. For a week. Maybe a week is too long. I'll be discussing this and other Vegas topics in a Vegas blog coming soon. Maybe even tomorrow. We'll see.

-- I started another show. This one is a classic... Romeo and Juliet. I'm playing Lord Capulet... Yes, I'm a little young, I suppose, but since it's a love story about 13 year olds getting married, I'm pretty sure my ripe-old-age of 29 isn't really that insane. What is insane is my complete and utter disregard for the fact that I really need to learn my effing lines. Like... whoa.

-- Oh... and I got a new tattoo... Well... not NEW exactly. I had an Icon Mickey tattoo on my leg. Sort of looked like this:

So you at least get the idea. It was basically just Mickey...floating there. I ripped this picture from a picture you'll see later, so it's not taken straight on, so don't worry; the Mickey is symmetrical.

I just felt like it was too lonely..too floating in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to give it context. So I started thinking about how I'd fix it up. You know...fancy it up a bit. Give it some class.

I got the initial tattoo in May of 2006 and in the span of this last 3 years I've grown to truly admire Walt Disney, so I knew I wanted to honor him in some way in the update. I thought about his birthday, but that's dumb. I thought about going crazy fancy with like a silhouette of Walt himself all looming over the mouse, but that would be expensive and sounds better in my head than it could ever be in real life. I settled, after a while on his initials in that classic Disney script. It took me a while to find the font, but here it is:I also wanted to sort of frame it up and give it some texture. I had it in my head that I just wanted sort of a simple antiqued metal look. Like wrought iron. Kinda like this:


Not the big flower, but that leaf really appeals to me. I love the texture and coloration of it, and I felt it would nicely incorporate into the green and black too.

So I came up with a general design that I gave to the artist so that he knew kinda the shape and general idea of what I was looking for:


I didn't really like the leaves in this one, or how it connected at the top, but it got the idea of it across pretty well...

After talking it over with him, and looking at pictures, and after an hour of work on my leg, we came to this: Pretty fantastic, no? I'm super pleased with how it came out. The guy that did it, Jake Lewis (of Queen City Tattoos in Milford, OH) is an exceptionally talented guy. He did my fish tattoo last year too. I highly recommend him for any of your tattooing needs.

Here are some further pictures of the process, for your enjoyment.

Jake working on the leg.


The Collection of Inks.


Jake wiping the excess ink away.


My bloody, not yet wiped, completed tattoo.

P.S.: A special prize for the person who can guess where the leaves came from...

P.P.S: Photos courtesy of The Tofu Muchacha