Zachary Pincus-Roth.com

Guy Movie Weekend: "3:10 to Yuma," "Eastern Promises," "Into the Wild"

"3:10 to Yuma," which I saw on Friday, is indeed, as a quote from one of the reviews puts it, a Western that plays like an action film. I'm not a huge fan of Westerns, perhaps because I've seen many of them on the small screen. Even "Unforgiven," which I saw with my dad in the theater, left us both kind of stupefied as to how it gained such critical acclaim. I don't remember much about it, except for a vague idea that there was a lot of killing and I didn't believe the characters would really be motivated to do all that killing. Though I do remember liking "Dances with Wolves," though hard-core Western fans would probably laugh at "Dances with Wolves."

I took a chance on "3:10" because I like Russell Crowe and Christian Bale and I enjoyed James Mangold's last film, "Walk the Line," and I was not disappointed. While watching both films, you know where you're going, but you're happy to be along for the ride. In "Walk the Line," you knew Johnny Cash had to shape up before June would like him, and in "3:10," you know Crowe and Bale will get closer, bridging the gap between good guy and villain. But it plays out so naturally that I was totally sucked in.

I saw "Eastern Promises" because I really liked "A History of Violence," the last David Cronenberg-Viggo Mortensen collaboration. Both have this slow, brooding pace, and both are about innocent characters coming into contact with a dark underworld. But "Eastern Promises," has too much underworld, not enough innocence. It's a bit too dark for me, literally and figuratively, as it's set in these dark London streets, and it involves a baby in danger.  The much-hyped naked fight scene was amusing and exciting but not shockingly amazing. And while mystery of Viggo Mortensen's character's  kept me in it, things didn't quite move along quickly enough.

To be honest, I was nervous about seeing "Into the Wild" -- since I knew it was almost two and a half hours and I knew it focused on only one person, I was worried I would be bored. Plus, I was worried it would hit too close to home, and that I'd be jealous of this guy -- not jealous of his specific adventure, but jealous generally of someone who was willing to just pick up and leave his familiar world and go on his own adventure. And worried that since the movie was boring, I wouldn't be sucked into the movie, and would instead be alone with my thoughts of jealousy.

When I finally saw the movie on Sunday, while it turned out that these worries weren't unfounded, I enjoyed the experience overall. It was slow at times, especially towards beginning. And it hit close to home, and got me all caught up in thinking about my life, and whether I'm living it to the fullest, and whether I should pick up and go out and have an adventure by driving to Costa Rica, or flying to Africa, etc. etc. And having those thoughts and going through that line of thinking was a little frustrating, but also at times felt a little relaxing, and a bit necessary. Watching "Into the Wild" felt a bit like sitting in Yom Kippur services -- the movie prompts your mind to wander off and think about how what you're watching relates to your life, what you could be doing with your life, ways to improve your life.

And despite being a true story, it impressively hits all the literary points that make sense for it to hit. I read the  movie as being about the balance between pursuing your own path and connecting to other people, and in each adventure, the main character confronts a different aspect of that main theme. In one he confronts hippies, who are pursuing their own path that, while unconventional, still involves togetherness as opposed to isolation. In another he confronts the idea that his pursuit of isolation means giving up romance. In another he meets a man who's isolation has been forced upon him by his family's death. Eventually, in his pursuit of living life to the fullest by isolating himself in nature, he actually learns the value of connection to others. It's a really great story. It's kind of like "The Wizard of Oz."

Yom Kippur

On Yom Kippur I went to mornign services at the Laugh Factory, the comedy club on Sunset Boulevard, where they've had free services every year for the last 25 years. Everyone lined up outside until they started letting people in at a little before 11:00. They filled the whole place, and a couple people had to sit on the steps. I'm not sure where the rabbi came from, but he was very good, very professional. The cantor was from another temple, so I'm not sure why she was at the Laugh Factory. The prayerbook wasn't a real book -- it was copied pages put together by rings, like those packets of articles we got for classes in college. But in the back of the book it actually said it was commissioned a few years ago specifically for the Laugh Factory's services. It was a reformed service, with lots of English, even more than I'm used to.

There was no real comedy, except for one moment, when the rabbi and the cantor started talking about how the Torah portion was about goats. At one point, the rabbi started to end the conversation, but then, perhaps emboldened the comedy club setting, he continued, asking the cantor to tell the story of how at her temple, the rabbi actually brought a couple of goats for Yom Kippur.

It was rather amusing to have services in the same place where Michael Richards made his  famous racist tirade not too long ago. And behind the stage is a backdrop that looks like a rainbow and says "Laugh Factory" on it. But overall a good experience. Especially since I hate having to deal getting tickets to services, and paying ridiculous amounts of money, which you have to do if you don't belong to the temple, or even at a place like UCLA if you're not a student.

Vegas, Weekend 2 of 2: "Spamalot"

During my second weekend in Vegas, I saw three shows: "Ka" at the MGM Grand and "Mystere" at the Treasure Island, both from the mega-theater-circus company Cirque du Soleil, and "Spamalot" at the Wynn.

I'll first comment on "Spamalot" and leave the others for another post. When I first saw "Spamalot" on Broadway, I had high expectations, since I loved the original movie on which it's based ("Monty Python and the Holy Grail") and loved the people involved in the stage version, namely the co-writer Eric Idle, the actors Hank Azaria and David Hyde Pierce, and the director Mike Nichols. I end up having a great time but I didn't laugh as much as I thought I would. I enjoyed recognizing the sketches I knew so well from the film, and especially enjoyed how the crowd collectively recognized them by whopping and cheering. But actually seeing the sketch that I knew so well — even though it was actors in the flesh onstage — wasn't so thrilling.

I enjoyed how in some places, the stage version did manage to add its own extra theatrical take on the material that fit with the Python sense of humor, such as the addition of the song "Not Yet Dead" to the "Bring out your dead" sketch from the film, and little bits such as in the middle of a song when someone rolls a wagon of hay across the stage and the cast yells "Hey!" Other additions don't seem to fit as well. The Broadway satire — such as "The Song That Goes Like This" and "You Won't Succeed on Broadway" — felt less Python and more Mel Brooks.

In Vegas, I didn't have the same high expectations, which is perhaps why I think I laughed more per hour than I did at the Broadway version. Like the Cirque shows, "Spamalot," runs only an hour and a half without intermission — down from about two hours, fifteen minutes on Broadway. At first glance, the only parts I could tell were missing from the Vegas version were the amusing song "All for One" that the knights sing early on, and the sketch with the two guards guarding the effeminate Prince Herbert. I didn't much miss whatever is missing, though I would happily have sat for 45 minutes longer and seen more.

The cast, as expected, doesn't the nail the comedy as well as the Broadway cast did, though John O'Hurley (J. Peterman on "Seinfeld") is genius casting as King Arthur, and I hadn't heard of Nikki Crawford but she executed The Lady of the Lake role almost perfectly. More interesting is how some parts of the show work better in Vegas than they do on Broadway and others to work not as well, simply because of the city in which the theater is located. The "Knights of the Round Table" song resonates better in Vegas simply because it satirizes Vegas itself. The audience participation at the end of the show perfectly fits the Vegas sensibility. But the song "You Won't Succeed on Broadway" — as in the lyric "You won't succeed on Broadway if you don't have any Jews" — felt very out of place. How many Jews are in the audience? How many audience members even know any Jews? Even if there were people who would understand why this song was funny, I was nervous that many of them wouldn't. At one point in the show, a throwaway reference to "Another Hundred People" that got no laughs in Vegas (and big laughs on Broadway) could easily have been cut. Most of the audience didn't seem to recognize The Lady of the Lake's Liza Minnelli impression, the reason — or result — being that Crawford didn't quite dive into it head first the way Sara Ramirez did on Broadway.

One interesting source of appeal was that in this city of kitsch and superficiality and false facades, a city that felt so foreign, it was nice to see people appreciating theater, and the same theater I appreciated back in New York. I don't mean this to come across as a snotty, prosthelytizing, "everyone should love theater since it's real and everything else is superficial" point of view. I think it's more that in this strange, foreign city, it's comforting to see people who enjoy this same little niche part of the entertainment world that I do -- similar to the feeling I get when I see people going to the theater in L.A.

Vegas, Weekend 1 of 2

I was in Las Vegas this past weekend with my parents, staying at the MGM Grand “Signature” wing, and I’m returning next weekend to stay at The Mirage with some friends. Some observations:

At the New York, New York casino, the fake trees have electrical outlets in them. The fake Hudson Street intersects with the fake 42nd Street, whereas in real life the two streets are many blocks apart. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There’s a lot of obvious things to criticize in Las Vegas – the $165 Cirque du Soleil tickets, the way-overpriced food, the odds against you at the casinos, etc. But my two complaints are very specific.

First, with all the effort the casinos put into creating themes like the Venetian, Paris and Planet Hollywood, and with all the money these places have to throw around, the themes are carried out with the absolute lowest level of creativity possible. These places never resist a chance to trade style and coherence for schlock.

All these themed casinos use the same generic slot machines. Why not have the slot machines match the theme? In the New York, New York, for example, there’s a set of Elvis-themed slot machines with a huge Elvis sign on the wall above them. Does Elvis have any special connection to NYC that a gazillion other people don’t have? Plus, the icons on the slots were the same as on all the others – “Bar,” “7,” etc. Except there was one that said “Elvis.”  Still, that set of slot machines were really popular. Who really says to himselg, “I want to use the Elvis slots!”

Despite its beautiful indoor mall, The Venetian’s hotel portion, on the exterior, looks unremarkable. And at the mall — including the truly amazing Piazza San Marco, where we ate dinner — there are lots of fake facades with windows. Why not kill two birds with one stone and put some real hotel rooms behind those windows? I’m sure at least some people would want those rooms — those people might actually feel like they’re in Venice (or at least fake Venice) as opposed to feeling like they’re in a big generic rectangular prism like in every other hotel on earth.

At the NY, NY, there’s a fake Brooklyn Bridge right in front of the casino, running parallel to the street – why not have the Brooklyn Bridge cross the street to the take you to other hotels? It could replace the nondescript bridge that's spanning the street currently. That would make it a functioning bridge – thus more integral to the location, as opposed to just window dressing. And it would complete the NY, NY theme, since the Brooklyn Bridge takes you out of Manhattan to somewhere else, like this bridge would with NY, NY. Plus there’s an ad for Zumanity (NY, NY’s Cirque du Soleil show) on top of the Brooklyn Bridge — not that I usually care about marring a fake landmark, but there are like fifteen other bigger Zumanity ads within sight of that ad.

On the inside, the NY, NY casino looks way too similar to the casino at the Paris. Many of the facades and restaurants look nothing like the ones in NY. Though there’s a catch — a particularly bland NY, NY casino concoction like “Broadway Burger” actually wouldn’t be out of place in one particular area of the real NYC — 42nd Street, since 42nd Street actually looks a lot like Las Vegas. Similarly, the theme of the MGM Grand is supposedly “Hollywood,” though it came out more like “Hollywood Boulevard” (a little L.A. joke — I’m learning).

My second complaint is that gambling has become way too mechanized. At the MGM Grand, my high roller mom traded $20 for quarters and gave them out to us to use them periodically in slots at various casinos. But except for the MGM, none of casinos’ slots even took quarters. You could put in dollar bills or a casino card type thing (and maybe credit cards, I forget). And many of them didn’t even have the pull-down bar – you could only push the button to make the wheel spin. And here’s the kicker – when you won, the quarters didn't fall into the tray. No quarters, no clinking noises. You just got a printed voucher for $5.50, which is what my brother got when he won, and you had to trade it in for money at some window somewhere. After you take the quarters and the lever out of the equation, all you have is a big machine that takes your money. And people still sit at these things and play all day long! Ridiculous. You might as well just put in your ATM card and wire the money straight to Steve Wynn.

Even at some roulette wheels, you couldn’t go up to the table with the wheel to make your bets – there were a bunch of TV screens around the table about six feet away from it, and you'd sit at one of them, put in your card, and push the screen to make your bets. My dad pointed out that psychologically, it makes it easier to bet, since it’s a private decision, instead of a public one, and all you have to do is touch a button, instead of counting out chips and putting them down.

I know you don’t go to Las Vegas for class, charm and understatement, but even in the context of the ridiculousness, some things could be improved with just a few creative touches. I guess one good thing to come out of the trip is that when I go back to L.A., I won’t need to get any more change for the laundry.

Earthquake

I just felt my first earthquake, or what I assume was my first earthquake. I was sitting on the couch and it started shaking and I realized the building was shaking. It only lasted about three seconds, the electricity stayed on and my brother didn't even wake up. My first instinct was the get out of the apartment. By the time I got to the door, it was over. But for three seconds I was pretty freaked out.

"Talk to Me," "Simpsons," "Zorro in Hell," "Bourne Ultimatum"

A summary of my entertainment the last week:

Last Friday I saw "Talk to Me," a movie about Washington, DC ex-con-turned-DJ Petey Greene, played by Don Cheadle. I wasn't familiar with Greene, since he was an icon in DC before I was born, but I enjoyed learning about his story. I thought it was smart that the film focused on his relationship with his manager-producer Dewey Hughes (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a clean-cut guy who functioned better in a white world better than Petey did, but was less rebelliious and less able to relate to the black community and tell it like it was. Both of them played off each other and inspired each other in a way that really made sense.

Last Saturday I saw "The Simpsons Movie." I laughed throughout and I felt like the story was a great idea -- it's uses the premise of the show and takes it to its next logical step and about as far as it can go. Homer, the stand-in for the all-American bumbling dad, is typically a screw-up, but this time his screwing-up leads to an environmental problem of epic proportions. It also literalizes the idea of Springfield's insular nature by literally putting Springfield in a bubble and addressing whether the all-American family even likes living there. There feels like there's a lot of meaning there for the popular culture philosophers to chew on.

This past Thursday I saw "Zorro in Hell," the latest show from Culture Clash, a long-running L.A. theater troupe and L.A. The show was a comedy about a playwright who goes to an old hotel to research the origins of the Zorro legend and comes across various crazy characters. A lot of broad comedy -- the first act ended with the protagonist getting sodomized by a grizzly bear -- and a lot of the lines would end with a joke that involved a contemporary L.A. or pop culuture reference, such as Lindsay Lohan or the mayor's recent sex scandal. It reminded me of a college comedy group with a bit of Actors Gang-like agitprop thrown in relating to images of Latinos, Governor Schwarzenegger and other issues. Neither the comedy nor the story were exactly my cup of tea but the audience was laughing the whole time. I feel like there's no New York equivalent -- perhaps something like "Forbidden Broadway" or the Chicago City Limits, (neither of which I've seen), but with a bit more theater street cred. I feel like in New York there's no way something this silly and this  meandering would be able to get staged in a theater of 500 seats.

And finally, last night I saw "The Bourne Ultimatum," which was incredibly exciting while it was happenign but I'm sure I'll forget everything about it a week from now. All I remember about "The Bourne Supremacy" is Matt Damon running through a plaza in Berlin, and I think that's because I saw it in the trailers over and over.

The DMV

Today I had my first trip to the California DMV, which was, surprisingly, a breeze. I arrived for an 11:10 appointment. In California you can make an appointment even for non-driving test tasks, though you still have to wait in the same queue as everyone else, though for not as long.

I went to the desk, they gave me a number, and about ten minutes later my number was called and I went up the counter. I was getting everything done at once -- transfer of ownership papers for the car I bought used, renewal of the car's registration, my new California driver's license, and my voter registration. The woman behind the counter had nails so long that her fingertips never made contact with the keyboard. Not the ideal trait for someone whose main responsibility is spelling people's names correctly.

After an eye test, I went across the room to take my photo for the license. There's a mirror to make sure you look ok, but seeing as I had woken up about an hour ago with no shower, the mirror wasn't going to help me much.

Then onto the test, which was tough. Much tougher than those joke tests in NY and MD that I was used to. Around 30 questions and I could only miss six (if you're renewing your license, you can only miss three). There were questions like "how fast can you drive in a school zone: 15 mph (my answer), 20 mph, or 25 mph (the right answer)." Whenever I guessed I picked the most cautious answer. I figured that most of the questions try to find out if you're irresponsible. Only a few of the questions try to find out if you're an idiot.

The woman correcting my test was the same long-nailed woman from before, but she had moved windows. She informed me that in my photo I looked "heavier" than in my New York licence photo but that's ok because in California they like people who are "muscular" and "wear tennis shoes." Noticing my birthdate, she asked if I'm "nice," because Scorpios are "bitches" and she named Hillary Clinton and Roseanne Barr as examples.

Anyway, I walked into the parking lot feeling so great that I had gotten all that bureaucratic stuff done. Especially after my saga in New York where I let my license expire and had to take the driving test again. I felt so good that I didn't even care when I realized that there was a $47 parking ticket on my windshield, for being parked overnight on the street cleaning side of the street. My third parking ticket in three months. I knew that spot was too good to be true.

Rain

Last night I experienced my first L.A. rain, while I was walking from the parking lot to the movie theater to see "Hairspray." The rain was rather lame. Barely a drizzle.

"Hairspray" was great, though. The main actress, Nikki Blonsky, was extremely watchable and the way they staged her songs, with her singing in a world of her own as everyone else just walked by her, completely oblivious, totally drew me in and showed you how special the character was. I was not so hot on John Travolta, who was completely unconvincing as a woman and in the role in general. None of the characters really had a chance to breathe the way they do in the stage version, which is about 45 minutes longer and has more actual dialogue, and funnier dialogue as well A lot of the characters felt underwritten -- Travolta's, Christopher Walken's and especially Amanda Bynes' as the best friend. But overall a very fun experience.

My Car

I now have a car! My first car ever. A dark green 2000 Honda Accord. I picked it up on Thursday from the guy who sold it to me, Farry, a USC undergrad business student who has to go back to Indonesia. Farry kept it in an underground lot and had it washed on the outside and inside before he gave it to me. The first night I had it, I kept it outside. The next day, there’s dirt all over it. Plus a bird pooped on the back bumper and two other birds pooped on top of it. So does that mean that at the end of the year, you have 1,000 poop stains? Do the birds know which car is new?

Now that I have my own car, I want to keep it sparkling. I vow that there will be no trash lying around the floor and in various compartments and orifices like in everyone else’s cars. We’ll see how long that lasts. I see these cars that have been ruined by the sun, and I want to put mine in the garage. So I put it in the garage the second night. But it’s a pain to get in and out of there. I might just keep it outside, especially since Nathaniel might want to keep his car in the garage since he just had to pay for the sap to be removed from his car’s roof, and his car is smaller so it’s easier to get in and out of the garage. I guess growing up we never put our cars in the garage and we never cared and they never looked too horrible.

One strange thing is that this Accord has a V6 engine. Does anyone really need six cylinders? It feels a little jerkier than I’m used to after driving my brother’s Scion, which has very little pickup. With a V6, you tap on the gas the tiniest bit and you jerk forward. It feels a little awkward and clumsy while driving through all the stops and starts of residential streets. I feel like I’m going to hit someone. I assume I’ll get used to it. And on the highway or when you’re merging in front of cars, it’s nice to have.

One thing I like is that the car has side airbags — 2000 was the first year they were ever offered on an Accord. I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a used car in my price range with these new head airbags and side curtain airbags but I figured I’d get the best level of safety I could. And my parents have drummed the idea of safety into me since childhood, when my mom wouldn’t let my friends and I double-buckle. Plus, this car buying can drive you nuts on the safety issue – what if I’m cheap and don’t get a car with side airbags and as a result I get seriously injured in an accident? It’s kind of scary. Though I guess my parents are still driving their old 1999 Toyota Avalon with no side airbags. Whenever I talked to anybody about this, they seemed to wonder why I cared about side airbags, or about safety features at all. And on Craigslist, it’s very hard to find cars with side airbags, even though they’ve been optional on many models for many years. I’m not sure why you wouldn’t take the option. This issue reminds me of the issue of buckling your seatbelt in a cab – no one does it, but it seems incredibly stupid not to, especially after this Jon Corzine accident where clearly his not wearing a seatbelt led to more serious injuries.

"Chalk"

Last night I saw “Chalk,” this mockumentary that follows the lives of fictional teachers who work together, which I heard about on NPR. It wasn't bad, a good idea and I do tend to like movies that take place in schools, though I felt it could have been funnier and better-executed, and the characters could have been given more time to be more fully fleshed out. The main part that annoyed me was that they had a dream sequence in it, where one teacher dreams he’s dancing with another, and they show it. But it’s a mockumentary! They’re supposed to be using the documentary format, and documentaries don’t typically have dream sequences because you can’t exactly document someone’s dream on film. And then the filmmakers did a Q&A after and touted that dream sequence as something the actors did while fooling around and the filmmakers thought it was hilarious and put it in. Yuk. Violates all rules of mockumentary.

First day in Los Angeles

I just got into L.A. today. I didn’t sleep all night last night while packing, so I slept on the plane a bit, since and then I saw the movie “The Holiday,” with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz on my personal TV screen. I wasn’t sure if I should see it — it was the best option, but I was thinking that instead I should maybe read the book “Story” by Robert McKee, the screenwriter’s bible — isn’t that what I should be reading on my big trip to L.A., instead of some mediocre movie? But I decided I’m a fan of romantic comedies and the movie’s director, Nancy Meyers, so why not. And at the beginning of the movie, my mind was wandering, but it ended up being unexpectedly relevant and moving, given my current situation. Basically Cameron Diaz meets Kate Winslet in a house-swapping vacation website and Cameron goes to Kate’s house in the English countryside middle of nowhere while Kate goes to Cameron’s house in L.A. In the Kate story, she’s discovering LA and meets this old (fictional) screenwriter who used to be really famous, and eventually encourages him to agree to have this big Writers Guild event honoring him, and he’s very moved by it, and it is pretty moving, and of course, it happened to relate to my new life as a writer in L.A. By the end of the movie, we were flying over L.A. and I was watching the sunset, not recognizing any parts of the city.

Moving to L.A. — moving to a new place in general — feels stranger than expected. Who do I see tomorrow? The next day? Do I hang out with people I know already from college or other places who happen to live here? Is it possible to join someone’s group of friends? What makes them decide to let me in? If can’t join a group, how do new groups of friends get formed? Back in New York, what did I do, if anything, to help new New Yorkers adjust to life in a new place? Looking back, I think my own experience being new in New York was pretty easy – my roommates were college friends, I had college and high school friends all around town. And I had lived in the city the previous summer. In L.A., I don’t know any bars. I don’t even know an acceptable place to go to dinner. If I suggest a dinner place, how do I know what that place’s true reputation is. Even if it looks good in a guidebook, maybe it’s actually so touristy or crowded or played out that no one I know would ever go there.

My Top 10 Shows of 2006

My belated list, in alphabetical order:

Awake and Sing!
Who thought this stodgy chestnut would be so moving?

A Chorus Line
As exciting, if not more so, than the first time I saw it, which was the first time I saw a Broadway show.

The Clean House
I thought Sarah Ruhl couldn't possibly be as good as people said she was, until I saw her very funny play.

Company
This could be what my life is like in 8 years. Or sooner.

The Drowsy Chaperone
The Broadway production couldn't possibly top the surprise of seeing such a hilarious reading of this show at the National Alliance for Musical Theater Festival years ago. But the Broadway version was superbly executed. It's not only funny, it captures the passion of being a fan of something and watching it or listening to it over and over again.

The History Boys
I loved this show, as many people did. But, I would be dishonest if I I have two major problems, both of which seem small, but they really irked me. One: why would these students stand for being molested by their teacher while riding with him on his motorcycle? Wouldn't they say something to someone? From my perspective, Alan Bennett's assumption that they would accept this pedophilia seems to wildly overestimate the homoeroticism of an all-boys school. Two: the Indian guys (two of them, the night I saw it) said nothing during the entire play. As a result, I refuse to be swept along with the feel-good chummy togetherness of these guys that the play and the marketing of the play are pushing. You can't tell us that you've created a group but then leave certain people out of it completely. And it would benefit the play to get a perspective from students that come from another culture.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore
I was a bit disappointed after seeing this at the Atlantic, except for the last few scenes, which were riveting (see my article in Slate). I had more fun watching it on Broadway and hearing 800  people shrieking and laughing at the same time.

Red Light Winter
Rarely do I see plays about people my age that ring true, and plays that are this creepy and chilling.

Stuff Happens
Regardless of what was true and what wasn't in David Hare's account of the Bush Administration during the months before the Iraq War, it simply told a great story.

Voyage (Part One of The Coast of Utopia)
I thought maybe I was fooling myself when I said in the past that I enjoyed Tom Stoppard's plays, as opposed to merely appreciating their intelligence. But I actually really enjoyed myself here and couldn't wait to see the next two parts. It was so great to see characters, especially young characters, speaking so passionately about something, as epitomized by Billy Crudup's climactic speech.

Honorable mention: The Trip to Bountiful, The Seven, Hell House, Les Miserables, The Pajama Game

"Company" on Broadway

I saw the new Broadway production of "Company" in its pre-Broadway stop in Cincinnati. I loved the production but was more overwhelmed by my giddiness at hearing these songs that I knew so well on stage for the first time in my life. I enjoyed the D.A. Pennebaker documentary about the making of the cast recording, in which Sondheim advises his actors on the pronunciation of every minute syllable and everyone grows weary waiting for the prickly Elaine Stritch to stop screwing up "The Ladies Who Lunch." And I will admit to purposefully rigging my iPod so that it plays "Another Hundred People" as I walk through Grand Central Station.

Also adding to my pleasure was my sense of accomplishment at my travel arrangements, timed perfectly, involving a  a flight to Cincinnati and, after the show, an overnight Greyhound bus to Cleveland to visit my brother at Oberlin. There was a sense of adventure in leaving New York and finding, here in the Midwestern wilderness, such a sleek production at such a friendly regional theater, where the lobby was swarming with people. At a theater. Here, in Cincinnati! Where they eat chili on a bed of spaghetti! That was my dinner, at Skyline Chili, which is famous for this stuff. But why eat spaghetti with chili when they have cookies, brownies, sandwiches, soups, all available at snack bar in the massive, bright theater lobby? And you could eat it sitting at a table! To someone like me who every night at 7:55 can be found outside a theater wolfing down my tuna salad sandwich from Cafe Europa, this is a revelation.

And on your way into the theater there's a basket of cough drops, for your convenience. No more having to unwrap them beforehand, like the voice always tells you to do. Where are you supposed to store those naked cough drops, I wonder? Stick them in the pages of your Playbill? Line them up on your arm wrest? Lick them all, stick them all together and attach the lump to the seat in front of you? I have no clue. But still, the voice keeps telling us to unwrap them, and people who have never heard the voice always laugh.

But anyway, when I saw this same production of "Company" on Broadway on Nov. 27, I was just as impressed as I was in Cincinnati. Sure, the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park had its benefits — a gorgeous thrust stage, and the "stadium seating"-style house in which the rows of seats rose at such an angle that much of the audience was looking down at the actors from above. The setup allowed the staging to be much more dynamic — the actors moved upstage, downstage, and every which way — than it was in the traditional proscenium Ethel Barrymore Theater where the show is Broadway. But while watching the show for the second time, on Broadway, I had some insights about the show that I didn't have in Cincinnati. I had the joy of discovering that the director John Doyle's technique of having the actors play the instruments, which was used to great success in "Sweeney Todd" on Broadway last season, was completely justified.

First, there's the pleasure of seeing instruments played. Too often in musicals, orchestras feel like disembodied noises piped in from god knows where, even when the orchestra's in the pit. At "Company," not only can you see the guy's fingers  tinkering away on the trumpet, you can hear the music directionally (especially on Broadway, where I sat much closer, and where the traditional proscenium stage caused the performers to be placed along a more horizontal line, left-to-right). The trumpet is over there so the trumpet noise comes from over there, and the piano is over there so the piano comes from over there, and oh look, there's someone hitting the triangle, and oh look...it's a really simple thing, but it adds to the enjoyment. Even a lot of pure music performances, like rock concerts, can't give you the same experience.

There are other pleasures, like the three women performing "You Can Drive a Person Crazy" on saxophones. But Doyle's technique isn't only enjoyable, it is a justified way of approaching the material. To me, watching the actors playing their own instruments added to the show's general sense of uncertainty These actors weren't accompanied by the comforting sound of the pit orchestra, and the conductor telling them what to do. The situation reinforces the sense that these characters are fending for themselves when it comes to love and urban life. They're out of their element, they're living in a city in which even the people who seem the most well-adjusted can be secretly lonely, carrying secret burdens, and where no one really knows how to deal with love. This interpretation may sound overly thought-out and metaphorical but that's truly what I felt while watching the actors play the instruments in this production of "Company," which will no doubt end up as one of my top shows of the year.

Stranger Than Fiction

I saw this movie tonight. A movie like this is too complex to be condensed into a one-sentence message. But of the movie's many ideas and messages about life, literature, etc., the one I like is this: people's lives often get stuck on certain tracks, and they should take some time to stop, look around, and appreciate the  people around them and the everyday pleasures in life.

The clearest example of this is obviously Will Ferrell's character. At first he's living life on a strict schedule with his head buried in receipts and tax forms and rarely has a chance to find friends or girlfriends, and he eventually learns to loosen up a bit and appreciate the people around him.

But what's most interesting is that other characters learn a similar lesson. Emma Thompson's character, a novelist, is also set in her path -- sitting alone, unreachable to her fans, writing these brilliant yet misanthropic books in which the protagonists always die. To get inspiration for her novel, she goes to an emergency room to observe other people in pain, but realizes that the people there aren't unfortunate enough, and demands to see people who are "not going to make it" -- all the while not displaying a trace of empathy. But once she meets Will Ferrell's character -- the protagonist of her new book -- she realizes that she's been spending too much time thinking about characters and too little time thinking about real life people. In fact, she had treated other people as if they were mere characters. Eventually, she opens up to a friendship with her assistant (Queen Latifah) and in the end she visits a professor (Dustin Hoffman) who's infatuated with her work and always writes to her but never hears back.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's character seems most at peace with appreciating small, everyday pleasures. She gives up Harvard Law School to open a bakery. Someone like me -- because of the career-driven environment  in which I grew up -- is more likely to become a lawyer than a baker. But while watching that scene where Gyllenhaal gives Will Ferrell freshly-baked cookies at the end of his hard day of auditing, baking cookies seems like the noblest profession in the world.

What about Dustin Hoffman's character? What does it mean that he's a life guard at the university pool while Will Ferrell's character actually saves a life? I suppose it underscores the fact that Hoffman's character is in an ivory tower, where people don't die except in the books on their shelves. He analyzes fictional characters and writers who are dead or don't want to talk to him, and doesn't accomplish any heroics or creativity of his own. At first, when Ferrell's character asks him for help, he says he has a busy schedule. But eventually, though his interactions with Ferrell's character, he learns the importance of interacting with real people, and that he can affect real people's lives.

Here's how I relate to these ideas (especially as they relate to Thompson and Gyllenhaal's characters): Sometimes I have ridiculously high ambitions -- ambitions to write amazing movies, plays and TV shows, to write books and essays that express great intellectual ideas, to do this all while making enough money to live in a luxurious apartment and travel the world. And I feel like little things -- going to the grocery store, taking the subway, interacting with shop clerks, charging my cell phone, etc. -- only take time away from time I could be spending my achieving larger career goals.  I have no time to bake cookies. Especially since I tend to believe that I could achieve creative success if only I could devote enough time towards that goal. And any time spent doing other things is only shortening the time in my life that I have to devote to creative endeavors. These are clearly dangerous thoughts, because in the long run, it's not healthy to see so many things in your life as  annoying obstacles standing in the way of your grand ambitions. (Also, the people who know me know that I don't actually put my money where my mouth is and spend that much time writing plays, TV shows, essays, or anything particularly creative).

The fact that the film's director, Marc Forster (who also directed "Finding Neverland," my favorite movie of 2004) and screenwriter, Zach Helm, are have created such a great film, makes their message all the more convincing. They've demonstrated that it's possible to achieve a great creative endeavor -- this film -- while also believing that the little everyday things in life are important. I'm not sure whether Forster and Helm actually conduct their lives that way. But I would imagine Helm does -- there's a Vanity Fair article about Helm, which I haven't read, but apparently it talks about how he wrote a personal manifesto  in which he made various vows: he won't take a job just for money, he won't take a job rewriting someone else's work, etc. I haven't read the article yet, but I would imagine Helm has a pretty well-adjusted life.

"Friday Night Lights" Premiere

The image that sums up "Fright Night Lights" for me was when the scene changed and we saw a panning shot moving down a rural road, taken from a car that was driving by a car dealership. I immediately thought it was a commercial. But instead it was just another scene. And as the camera drove by the dealership it showed hundreds of people walking into it for its grand opening celebration, which doubled as a pep rally for the football team.

It's usually no compliment to compare a TV show to a commercial, but my point is that it was unexpected. Where else on TV do you see a panning shot that's from a perspective of a car? Where on TV do you see rural settings? Where did they get all these extras? And it feels so genuine that the football team holds a pep rally at a car dealership opening -- nothing flashy, no car wash with cheerleaders in bikinis.

I expected a lot from this show. I was a huge fan of Buzz BIssinger's book, his account of his year following a football-obsessed Odessa, Texas high school in the late 1980s. I also liked the film by Peter Berg, who also created the television show. And except for a few gripes, the first episode did not disappoint.

The lighting is low and the interiors look as you'd expect the interiors in a poor, rural Texas town to look. Berg isn't showy about the handheld camera, but uses just enough to create a kind of cinema verite effect that you hardly ever see on television. The cinematography makes this show feel more genuine than just about other film-like TV shows, including "Lost" (which isn't supposed to look that real, since there's supposed to be an element of fantasy).

The coach, played by Kyle Chandler, has much more subtlety than your typical in-your-face fictional high school football coach. He's a calming presence, off-setting the fervor of the town football fans. You sense that he feels pressure, that he feels an incredible burden to win, even without him talking about it.

The football scenes, were, of course, spectacular. I was disappointed that they had to create such an implausible comeback story for their first game -- the starting quarterback gets injured and the backup leads them to victory on the last play. But I guess that's what'll bring the viewers back next week.

One problem is that when a show looks so naturalistic, the forced moments pop out at you even more than they would in, say, a screwball David E. Kelley drama. For instance, the coach's daughter is reading "Moby Dick" and gives this incredibly belabored speech to her dad about how the book parallels the town, in that they're all chasing this big whale, the state championship.

You'd think they could get along fine with one town skeptic, but there's another -- the friend of the backup quarterback, who reluctantly drives the backup to practice every day. Then there's the coach, who already has some perspective on the whole craziness. If there's too much commentary, there's a risk of becoming preachy.

The show is a very loose adaptation of the book, and I have issues with some of the character choices. In the book, the running back Boobie Miles is this tragic figure, the showboat with incredible talent who gets injured beyond repair and then quits the team (and now gives lectures to kids on the dangers of putting too much faith in the possibility of a pro football career, or so I hear). Therefore, his equivalent in the show, Smash, isn't nearly as compelling. The show shifts the tragedy to the star quarterback, who injures himself in the first game, putting an incredible burden on the backup QB, who was, before the injury, no more than an errand boy. That's a much more obvious way to go than injuring the running back, but perhaps it raises the stakes. I wonder why the show got rid of the guys from the book who played the less showy positions, like Ivory Christian, who wanted to be a minister (the religiousness shows up in Smash), and Brian Chavez, who was a smart guy (he went to Harvard) but a killer on the field.

Despite this nitpicking, I'm still excited for next week. I'll clearly be watching way too much TV this fall. Check back for my comments on other shows.

'Avenue Q' Book on Amazon

The book that I'm writing about "Avenue Q" is up on Amazon. Check it out here.

"The Office" Season Finale

You heard it here first: last night's season finale of "The Office" will win a Emmy for the episode's writer, Steve Carell, and will seal the deal for Carell's best actor trophy and the show's best comedy series victory. Or at least it better, because the show won't be any good next year. Or will it?

During the office's casino night, the paper salesman Jim finally confessed to his love for the receptionist Pam. She was understandably taken aback and essentially expressed her loyalty for her blowhard fiance Roy. Later, however, just as she appears to confess to her mom over the phone that she's in love with Jim Jim walks in and kisses her, and she doesn't pull away.

The first rule of sitcoms is to never break the sexual tension between the two central love interests. This rule always makes me think of the show "Anything But Love," with Richard Lewis and Jamie Lee Curtis, which my parents watched when I was a kid. The two characters worked at a magazine and their desks were right next to each other. One night they did it, and my parents got very upset, because there went the show. On the "Anything But Love" entry on the web site Jump The Shark, "They did it" was the most oft-cited reason for the show's going downhill.

I always figured "The Office" would never break the rule until the end of the series. The Jim and Pam tension was the driving force of the show, and the show can't exist without it. It isn't a mere "I have a big crush on you" kind of tension. Jim's love for Pam represents far more than just romance. He's a charismatic, funny guy with great leadership ability whose talents are wasted on this meaningless job. His yearning for Pam is just part of his yearning for a better life in general, and is representative of the same yearning that exists in every character on the show, and everyone in the real world who works in a similar monotonous office job. I'd imagine that if Pam were to leave Roy for Jim, Jim would take her the hell away from Scranton and they'd find better jobs somewhere else, or start a business together.

During the show's first season, which ran only six episodes, I thought it was too over-the-top, especially compared to the original British version of the show. The office boss Michael Scott, played by Carell, was more of an overt misfit than his British counterpart David Brent. His social and professional incompetence was so ludicrous that the show appeared to be using him for easy jokes. But during the second season I've realized that the show has simply established its own world with slightly different rules than those of the British version, and it has stuck to them. Michael's ineptitude is exaggerated but  he still rings true as a character. The underlings have more of a backbone than they do in the British version, and they respond to their boss with a commensurate amount of eye-rolling and rebellion. I've even warmed up to Michael's assistant Dwight. I'm still unsure as to whether he measures up to his British equivalent, the relentlessly earnest, humorless Gareth, but I like how Dwight's wide-eyed streak allows him to loosen up.

Last night's finale is a prime example of the show's brilliance, from the way poker shark wannabe Kevin says "all in" to Ryan ordering a drink so ridiculous that it could only be for Kelly to Angela slapping Dwight, which causes them both to smile. Plus, the scenes with Pam and Jim were riveting, even as they made me want to cringe and hide behind my hands.

The writers know the sexual tension rule, so why did they break it? Perhaps the Pam-Jim tension had built up so much that it would have been unrealistic to keep it going any longer without a confrontation. Everyone in the office could tell that Pam was way more compatible with Jim than she was with Roy. Jim already had a near-miss when Pam found out about his feelings but Jim passed them off as a phase that was now long-gone.

Pam will surely deem the kiss a mistake and things will be very awkward for a while. But the kiss will have given Jim enough hope that the relationship could work out that he'll call off transferring offices to another city, which he had been considering. The next big issue will be Pam's impending wedding, during which Jim is scheduled to be on vacation. She'll probably push it back, or Roy will, since Roy until recently refused to set a date.

Whatever happens, let's hope the producers can find a way to make the show last a few more seasons. The British version only lasted for two and was still considered a smash, but that won't exactly fly on American television. And we'd like to see more.

I Can't Understand You, But Have An Oscar

It must be disconcerting for acting students learning how to enunciate properly to see the top honor in their profession go to performers doing the exact opposite. Three of the five best actor nominees this year -- Terrence Howard in "Hustle and Flow," Heath Ledger in "Brokeback Mountain" and  the winner, Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Capote" -- gave performances in which their dialogue was, at times, barely audible.

Making the case for this trend is complicated, because lack of enunciation is closely interlinked with another, more oft-proven Oscar bias -- mental disability. One might argue, for instance, that Oscar-nominated mumblers playing characters with disabilities, like Sean Penn in "I Am Sam," Billy Bob Thornton in "Sling Blade," Russell Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind" and Robert DeNiro in "Awakenings," should be discounted from this trend. But you might also argue that if, for whatever reason, the actor had used his normal voice, the performance would not have been Oscar-nominated or as highly-praised.

Plus, many other mumbling nominees have played characters unaffected by mental illness, such as  Benicio Del Toro in "Traffic," Jamie Foxx in "Ray," Tim Robbins in "Mystic River," Dustin Hoffman's Robert Evans impersonation in "Wag the Dog," Johnny Depp's Keith Richards routine in "Pirates of the Caribbean," and of course, if we want to go back further, Marlon Brando in "The Godfather." Ray Charles was blind, but don't tell me Foxx's unintelligible jabbering had nothing to do with his Oscar.

This trend could lead to the same conclusion as the disability bias: Our deep dark secret is that no matter how many times we rave about a performance, our internal barometer of acting quality is, in fact, so bad that we need these incredibly salient signs to tip us off as to what's good.

But let's not jump to conclusions just yet. While judging a play, I rarely have a strong reaction to an actor's performance. I react more to the writing or the overall concept. But of the handful of performances that do stand out in my mind, many of them, such as Thornton in "Sling Blade," Crowe in "A Beautiful Mind," Mary-Louise Parker in the stage version of "Proof" and Robert Downey, Jr. in "Ally McBeal," involve some form of low-talking.

And Hoffman, Ledger and Howard deserve their nominations. Their whispy line readings not only add to their characters' eccentricity but put them at a distance from both the audience and the others around them. The lack of enunciation helps make their characters appear confident, mysterious and vulnerable  -- required traits of any good performance.

My top 10 shows of the year

So everyone else has their tyear-end top 10 lists, and I figure that after seeing 117 shows this year, I'm entitled to my own. They're fun to make. And making this list led me to learn a lot about what I like. Even after watching all those Off and Off Off Broadway  shows, when it comes down to it, I prefer Broadway. So be it.

1. The Light in the Piazza
Some people hate this musical, but I’ll stand behind it till the end. The mentally disabled daughter makes more sense than people think, and she must, since this show moved me more than anything I’ve seen this year. Some critics thought the music was too high-brow, but I thought it was a revelation – complex, catchy, touching, everything. Just put the CD in and listen to it again.

2. The Pillowman
How often does theater actually scare me? How often does a moment in a play cause an entire Broadway audience to shriek and jump back in its seats? I’m thinking of the one where that girl suddenly sits up in bed with her arms stretched forward like a zombie. That’s what theater should be. And remember when she enters splattered in green paint? The whole thing was utterly original. Billy Crudup and company get extra points for reciting a story on stage – one of my pet peeves – without boring me. And I’ll watch Jeff Goldblum in anything.

3. Billy Elliot
You know how at the end of most musicals, we smile and nod at the pleasant lesson we’ve learned, and maybe we realize how banal that lesson is, but we just think, “Well, that’s what a musical does”? Like at the end of “Hairspray,” we learn the lesson of racial equality, a lesson that most Americans learned decades, if not centuries, ago? Well forget all that. “Billy Elliot” tackles genuinely complex emotional questions. Should a family support something so frivolous as Billy’s dance lessons when a miner’s strike has rendered them virtually penniless? What place does art have in a small town – in a world, even – where most people can’t even find food for their families?

4. Two Gentlemen of Verona
I heard hardly any chatter about this Public Theater revival in Central Park this summer, but someone should laud John Guare and Galt McDermott for their brilliantly goofy, groovy, juvenile and ultimately hilarious early 1970s musical send-up of Shakespeare. Guare isn’t a lyricist by trade, but his rough-around-the-edges style fits perfectly. As with “Hair,” McDermott manages to be catchy without making “catchy” a bad word. Renee Elise Goldsberry, who played the Duke’s daughter, was fantastic, not afraid at all to go over the top along with the material.

5. Brooklyn Boy
Not one Tony nomination? Come on. Where are the Jews on Broadway when you need them? This play was masterful at demonstrating how the place in which you grow up affects you later in life.

6. Glengarry Glen Ross
Yes, an excellent, starry production, but it’s such a fun play that it’d be hard to ruin. I liked Alec Baldwin’s recent “Saturday Night Live” sendup, in which he intimidates Santa’s elves with the phrase “Always Be Cobbling.”

7. Sweeney Todd
Yes, a clever production, but it’s such a fantastic musical that even if the audience played the instruments, I’d still love it. It could have been even creepier – I loved the few moments when Patti LuPone recited her lines with a bitter monotone, but she spent most of time hamming it up like a typical Mrs. Lovett.

8. Doubt
It’s nice to see something so well-structured that it makes playwriting look easy. It’s just Person A accusing Person B of something, and Person B denying it. And that’s enough to set off fireworks. Go figure.

9. Hurlyburly
A little long, but playwright David Rabe, director Scott Elliott and the performers somehow took a cliché – Hollywood types who are clearly full of shit but don’t know it – and made it fresh and exciting again through crackling dialogue and brilliant performances ranging from understated to manic.

10. Spamalot
I didn’t laugh out loud as much as I thought I would, and not much is cutting edge. But Idle, Nichols and Co. still managed to successfully translate the Python style onto the stage. Like I always recall the dancers shouting “hey!” as a guy walks by with a wheelbarrow full of hay. The show’s also clever commentary on the Vegas-ization of Broadway. And when it comes right down to it, what musical would you most want to see again? Though maybe that’s because tickets are so hard to come by.

Honorable Mention: “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” “Jersey Boys,” “Naked Girl on the Appian Way,” “Abigail’s Party.” “Primo,” “Mr. Marmalade,” “Steel Magnolias,” “Romance”

Enclosed spaces

Jean-Paul Sartre said that he never felt more liberated than when he was trapped in a Nazi prison camp. Not that the place was a picnic, and Sartre was clearly of the antiauthoritarian sort. But the concept of achieving freedom through spatial constraint rings true, and it’s the reason why I’ve always had a fondness for "enclosed space" movies (a euphemism I use because it sounds much less sexually-tinged than "prison and prep school films"). Therefore, predictably, I’m a fan of the most recent pop culture example of this genre, The Terminal.

Tom Hanks plays Viktor Navorski, a visitor to New York from the fictional nation of Krakozhia. The country has a coup while his flight is in the air, and technicalities in U.S. immigration law force Viktor to live inside the international terminal at J.F.K. Airport for almost a year.

I would argue that what makes the movie artistically successful (despite its flaws) is that it takes place in an enclosed space, and what makes it very "of-the-moment," as many critics have indicated, stems from this enclosure.

First of all, other enclosed space stories abound in pop culture these days. In the upcoming Collateral, Tom Cruise plays a hit man who one night forces a taxi driver to take him from job to job. The Los Angeles Times called it a "No Exit noir," referring to the Sartre play that depicts hell as a waiting room (the director Michael Mann told the Times that 37 minutes of the film are inside the cab). Writer-director M. Night Shyamalan’s new film The Village" is about an isolated 19th Century Pennsylvania town in which the elders restrict the residents from entering the surrounding woods, for fear of disturbing the villainous, red-hooded creatures who live there. Fox’s new show The Jury depicts average citizens deciding cases while locked in a room. In October a revival of the classic jury play Twelve Angry Men opens on Broadway. And, of course, the most successful long-running reality series – The Real World, Big Brother, Survivor, and The Bachelor – more or less confine contestants to a house, a house, a remote location, and a mansion, respectively.

The small thrills of enclosed space drama come when the characters have to be resourceful. Who can forget when the prisoners in The Great Escape disposed of the dirt from their escape tunnels out the bottom of their pant legs? My favorite moment in Apollo 13 is when the scientists on the ground throw every object inside the spacecraft onto a table and attempt to construct an oxygen-creation device. Similarly, Tom Hanks’s character in The Terminal – like his characters in Apollo 13 and Cast Away – is forced to improvise, returning luggage carts and working construction to pay for food. The appeal of these moments stems from our primal ability to make something from nothing, to create societies that are both self-contained and self-sustaining.

The ultimate irony of the film, is how Victor, like Sartre, indirectly benefits from his spatial restrictions. In New York City he'd be another lost soul wandering the streets alone. In the terminal he makes friends though unavoidable contact with the same people each day. He’s conveniently available to do favors. Eventually he becomes a hero, sparking the jealousy of Stanley Tucci’s immigration officer, who is trying to break out of his own middle management hell.

Sartre’s existentialism argues that we all have freedom of choice, and that our ultimate responsibility for our lives is a burden we must endure. This would explain why we sometimes constrain ourselves or watch other people do so. For example, many of us devote much of our leisure time – not to mention an entire section of our newspaper – to sports, an activity that is comforting mainly because it’s constrained by space and rules. Think of the Sabbath and other traditions, religious and otherwise.

But such constraint is absent today more than ever. A new book by Swarthmore Psychology professor Barry Schwartz called The Paradox of Choice argues that the number of consumer options – in markets from jeans to health insurance – have expanded tremendously. As a result, people are unhappier, because they regret their decisions or are so paralyzed they won’t make a decision at all. In the new book The Progress Paradox, New Republic Senior Editor Gregg Easterbrook argues that this "choice anxiety" is one reason why, compared to previous generations, Americans today have more luxuries but are less happy.

One reason for this expansion of options is that, as a result of technology, distance and space are not as limiting as they once were – a phenomenon otherwise known as globalization. Nowhere is globalization more evident than in The Terminal’s title location, as weary New York businessmen on their way to investigate an emerging market in China rush past foreign tourists eating Americanized international food from Sbarro or Baja Fresh.

In the 20th century, after America reached the West Coast, it had the will and the resources to expand beyond its borders, both politically and culturally. The film refers to this exportation of culture (spoiler coming) when it reveals that Viktor came to New York because his Krakozhian father was an ardent fan of jazz, an American genre with its roots in spatial constraint – slavery – that requires improvisation within restrictions of key, rhythm, and melody. But America’s expansion has also, of course, both inspired and angered enough outsiders to beget the immigration and homeland security bureaucracy that is the source of the film’s conflict.

This bureaucracy is embodied by Tucci’s character, who attempts to rid Viktor from the terminal in order to avoid having to look after the poor guy. And here, out of this entanglement of criss-crossing themes, we have arrived at the film’s ultimate statement, a variation on a slogan from another summer movie. As opposed to the captive Viktor and his presumably post-Communist Eastern European country, America is feeling Sartre’s existential burden: with great freedom comes great responsibility.

Dean and Sheen

While I was in New Hampshire volunteering for Howard Dean, I saw him speak at the Palace Theater in Manchester the day before the primary. At the end of his speech, a married couple, both doctors, came on stage to wish him well and present him with a stethoscope. Dean, surprised at their sudden appearance, tripped on his reply: "This campaign is nothing if not scripted," he said, provoking titters in the press section, before he corrected himself.

Also appearing with Dean that day was Martin Sheen, a guy who knows a thing or two about scripted presidential campaigns. Sheen’s endorsement of Dean amused many West Wing fans, who pointed out that Sheen’s alter ego, President Josiah "Jed" Bartlett, was a progressive governor of New Hampshire while Dean was the same for the neighboring state of Vermont.

On this occasion, the lines between Sheen and Bartlett were even blurrier, as the pair happened to be in Bartlett’s home state, casting Sheen in the role of the token local politician (albeit a fictional one) that the presidential candidate appears with on a campaign pit stop. (The previous day Sheen even stumped for Dean at Josiah Bartlett Elementary School in Bartlett, N.H.) They also looked similar, standing on stage side by side. Sheen is five-seven and Dean is five-eight and both look like stout former wrestlers (which Dean is), lending credence to both Dean and Bartlett’s pugnacity.

Their physical similarity betrays the fact that there is much more to this Bartlett-Dean resemblance than meets the eye. And now that Dean has dropped out of the race, Bartlett’s primary campaign can serve as an instructional reminder of how Dean does and does not resemble creator Aaron Sorkin’s vision of a dream president.

Bartlett’s resemblance to Dean is especially evident in a West Wing episode I recently saw rerun on Bravo entitled "In the Shadow of Two Gunmen, Part II." It’s mainly about the surgery on Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman (Bradley Whitford) to repair a bullet wound, but it includes flashbacks to Bartlett’s primary campaign.

Bartlett has no war to rail against or Internet to utilize, but, like Dean, he comes out of nowhere, riding the wave of his progressive message from obscurity to frontrunner (Bartlett’s arc does, to his benefit, come later in the election cycle than Dean’s did). Bartlett’s staffers tell him that a win in Illinois – a valuable midwestern primary right before the California and New York contests – will put him over the hump. Similarly, Dean made last week’s Wisconsin primary – which was two weeks before the New York and California "Super Tuesday" – his make-or-break state.

On the day of the Illinois vote, Bartlett throws a tantrum when his acceptance speech, written by Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe), refers to "my opponent" rather than using his actual name. The incident mirrors three aspects of the popular perception of Dean: his temper, his blunt speaking style, and his aversion to being handled by his staff.

Afterwards, Josh turns to Bartlett’s wife (Stockard Channing), who justifies her husband’s actions, saying, "He doesn’t like to be handled." "I think if he looks around, he’ll see that no one is handling him," Josh says. She replies, "He’s not ready yet."

The stories of how Bartlett’s staffers join the campaign are Dean-like as well. During the primaries, Josh, then a Congressional staffer, sees Bartlett speak and immediately heads to Sam’s law firm where he interrupts Sam’s important meeting, knocking on the conference room window with a "This is the guy" look on his face. Sam promptly leaves the meeting and they join the Bartlett campaign together, much like the Deaniacs who dropped everything to join the thousands of out-of-state volunteers in Iowa and New Hampshire. Later, Donna Moss (Janel Moloney) walks into the New Hampshire headquarters and tries to convince Josh to make her his assistant. Josh correctly guesses that her boyfriend, who she dropped out of college to support, just broke up with her, He says, "This can’t be a place for people to come to find their confidence and start over." She says: "Why not?" Donna’s story seems oddly parallel to the stories in the New York Times Magazine article about how Dean’s webheads left for Vermont after similar unlucky-in-love experiences.

True, the number of such instances was probably not as high as the Dean campaign’s mythical status would lead us to believe. But the campaign structure as a whole did have a very personal feel, as evidenced by the cheery blog postings, the network of volunteers and precinct captains, the support groups with names like "Deadheads for Dean," and "Howards for Howard," the Meetups that reportedly resembled therapy sessions, and generally the amount of freedom given to those at the bottom of the hierarchy.

Plus, Dean himself, more than any other candidate I can remember, let his personal traits show through. Even Bill Clinton, who suffered the ultimate clash between the personal and the political, was so exceedingly charming and hyper-ambitious, with sexual exploits so bizarre, that he didn’t seem human. Dean and his wife Judy, on the other hand, seemed down-to-earth enough to be my parents.

The relationship between the political and the personal is the main theme of much fo Sorkin’s body of work. Michael Douglas’s President Andrew Shepherd in the Sorkin-written "The American President" dodges the threat of election-year character attacks after his wife dies, but he suffers through them once he begins courting the lobbyist played by Annette Bening. When Bartlett’s daughter Zoey returns home after getting kidnapped, he chooses to give the speech that speechwriter Will Bailey (Joshua Molina) wrote in case she didn’t come back alive, one that acknowledges that he’s had a rough few days, rather than one that tries to rally the nation with false optimism. Even in the Sorkin-scripted "A Few Good Men," official navy regulations clash with the unofficial code that ensures that the men get along with one another.

Such conflicts are, of course, what make all good drama tick. Using a fictional president of the United States raises the stakes and brings in the political junkies, but it’s the human element that keeps the audience in their seats and tuning in each week. This is the reason why Dean, the most human of all the 2004 candidates, made such good fodder for news.

And, as with Shepherd in "The American President," it’s Bartlett’s humanity that makes him a better candidate and president. His devotion to those around him parallels his devotion to the American people.

At the end of the episode, before Bartlett gives his acceptance speech in Illinois, he detours over to O’Hare Airport to visit Josh, who’s about to leave for his father’s funeral. Bartlett gives his condolences, apologizes for treating the staff so badly, and even offers to accompany his dumbfounded staffer, who is impressed that Bartlett even remembers his name.

After Josh gets on the plane, Bartlett turns to Leo and says, "I’m ready."

This turn of Bartlett’s – which, the show suggests, leads to his victory in both the primaries and the general election – seems to be the turn that Dean didn’t make. I’m not nearly qualified to evaluate Dean’s relationship with his staff, but pundits have noted that Dean did not let himself be handled until it was too late. He shared many attributes of Sorkin’s dream candidate: a progressive, populist reformer, with a praise-worthy professional background (Dean is a doctor, Bartlett has a PhD in economics), who, in my opinion at least, was motivated far more by moral urgency and than by opportunism. But what Bartlett had, and what Dean did not, is a sense of how to take his message and polish it for a national audience.

As Bartlett and his entourage turn to leave the airport, we hear a voiceover of what is presumably his acceptance speech at the convention. It sounds oddly reminiscent of a certain now-infamous portion of Dean’s Iowa concession speech, but in this case, instead of listing states, Bartlett reminds us that American Revolution was fought by an alliance "of farmers and workers, of cobblers and tinsmiths, of statesmen and students, of mothers and wives, of men and boys." The voiceover perfectly drives home his populist message, as we see him striding triumphantly through O’Hare, surrounded by his staff, receiving the occasional congrats from passersby.

Howard Dean could only wish his campaign had been as well-scripted.