Thursday, March 24, 2016
2
In this hybrid of confinement, tension and absurdist gore, The Hateful Eight very much resembles John Carpenter's The Thing.
1
It quickly became clear to me in thinking about Tarantino that in order to truly reckon with his late career, one would need to undertake a serious examination of exploitation cinema. That means a long, hard look at the dynamics of sexualized violence, at the meanings of gore, at the emancipatory possibilities of revenge. That means watching Ilsa She-Devil of the SS and I Spit on Your Grave. Another time maybe.
Thursday, March 17, 2016
4
It bears mentioning that Mobray is not actually the hangman of Red Rock and is, rather, a member of the Domergue gang and a cold-blooded murderer. And that his name is not actually Oswaldo Mobray, it is English Pete Hicox. Is it problematic to attribute narrative and political meaning to a quote about the nature of justice made by a murderer playing the part of an officer of the law? Yes it is. More on this below.
3
I mean, Warren is an exceptionally complex character. This is a man who recognizes that all of the promises that America has made to black people have been broken, even the ones implied by granting him a blue uniform. He understands that his freedom as a black man has been made possible only through an act of tremendous, sustained violence--the Civil War. And so for him to escape a Confederate prison camp by setting it ablaze, killing dozens of men, many of them Union soldiers, in the process, or to torture and kill the southern soldier--who, by the way, had made the trek to Warren's Wyoming home in order to make good on a Confederate bounty against the Major's life--well these are no great stretch of the moral imagination. He is only obeying the logic of his own survival. In his heartbreaking lie about possessing a personal letter from Abraham Lincoln, Warren reveals his most important piece of wisdom. In a world as defiled as this one, any promise, any trust, is only as good as the guile and force that backs it up. It's to Tarantino's and Jackson's credit, I believe, that they so accurately identify the injustice and violence that shape Warren's world and yet refuse him the righteousness, the innocence, of victimhood. Or rather, he is a victim of politics and history but is still hateful.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Mighty MKP
Over the past few weeks, I've looked at a lot of photos of Molly Pryor. Some of them come from a life I recognize: Molly with Jessica and Sam, looking perfectly composed in the middle of a completely unchained New Year's Eve party; Molly talking with her hands; Molly giving me a headlock in front of a jukebox. Others are from a past I've only heard tell of: riding on her dad's shoulders on a hike; wearing long hair, a hollow body bass guitar and an adolescent scowl. But one of them distills the Molly that I knew. She is 15 years old. Her face is in 3/4 profile; she is looking sideways at the camera and giving that enigmatic, close-mouthed Molly Pryor smile. That face in the picture is both impossibly young and preternaturally old. Her smile is generous and radiant but also wry and withholding, like she's thinking of something a little sad and a little funny, some small, telling irony that she's keeping to herself.
The Molly I met six years later wore that same wise/cherubic face and flashed that same smile. What smote me about her then were the exact things that everyone who knows her remarks upon. There was that easy laugh. There was her willingness to speak incredibly frankly about how much she cared about everything--music, movies, art and most especially the people that she loved. There was that romantic streak, her elaborate, rapturous plans, her readiness to spin stories of an arcadian south, a warmer, earthier place, a place worth escaping to. And she was so generous. Countless times, she brought me food and bought me drinks. She taught me to love Journey. She made me accompany her to the Dovshenko films at Lincoln Center. She talked the drummer of the Strokes out of his t-shirt and gave it to me.
There was also her obstinance and her quick, sharp tongue. I have yet to meet another person as given to grand judgements--and so regally heedless of the strong possibility that she would change her mind tomorrow--as Molly Pryor. Here is, for instance, a hopelessly incomplete list of things Molly has called bullshit on: bands with female singers; the Staten Island Yankees; the Decemberists (the band not the anarchists, though I'm sure she'd call bullshit on them too, if given the chance); Agnes Varda; the weather; eggs; Patti Smith (and she loved Patti Smith); France; brunch (!); so much more. And all of these delivered with an exaggerated Tennessee twang and a smirk. Her proclamations were often hilarious or absurd, but they conveyed a sense of real mastery and presence. They announced a forceful spirit. They said: I am willing to take up space, to alter the weather of reality.
Molly was mercurial: sometimes warm and ecstatic, sometimes sharp and short. She had a great capacity for pleasure and joy but could also be impatient and difficult to please. She was easygoing; she was demanding. She was open to every idea and experience; she was absurdly stubborn. Her nostalgia masked, I think, great pain. Her veneer of confidence papered over her insecurity. Her romanticism was a symptom of a simmering dissatisfaction with the world as it was. Molly was, as she herself might have drawled, a whole lotta woman.
* * *
In those days we--she and Jeff and Heidi and I and many others--went to shows. We spent long weeknights in dark bars. We listened to records. We watched Tarkovsky films in her dorm room while she distractedly wrote art history papers ('A' papers, mind you--this woman had some serious intellect, though she was always cagey in revealing it). Among the many things that stops my heart and short-circuits my brain now is the impossible fact that what began this way, with such joy and promise and youthful pain could possibly have ended so catastrophically. How Molly and Jeff and I watching movies in that ridiculous East Harlem housing project could possibly have contorted itself into the awful phone conversations that Jeff and I had last week. How something so young could have become so old. How such a vibrant, forceful person could possibly be gone.
I don't know nearly enough about the last two years of Molly's life. I do know that they were dark, darker than I ever guessed possible. I didn't know how her worst qualities had hardened and metastasized and her best qualities had become so deeply buried. I didn't know how broken and worn her body had become.
In this ignorance, in the silence and distance that I allowed to exist between us, I was not the friend to her that I meant to be or that I should have been. I did not repay her for all that she added to my life. She did not make this easy for any of us, of course. She declined invitations, answered earnest questions with small talk or outright lies, responded to concern with silence. And, of course, no one knew how high the stakes were. We thought we had years to renew our relationships and to heal ourselves. The sudden realization of how desperate her life had become, of the finality of our estrangement, of how we all failed her and she failed us...it is just so bitter, I can barely swallow.
I didn't know but I should have known. I should have tried but I did not know I had to try. I should have tried anyway.
If I could speak with Molly today, I would tell her that I loved her and then I would beg her forgiveness.
* * *
I have been trying to conjure up some kind of defining memory of Molly. Instead I am deluged. There are specific moments that rise to the surface, of course, but they are like white caps on an ocean, welling up, cresting and sinking back into the great expanse of that life and those years.
We are all at a baseball game, or riding the cyclone. We are wasting whole Sundays at 'ino. We are performing acrobatics in an Austin hotel room. We at the Bulgarian disco, all of us arm-in-arm, absorbed into the heaving, sweaty mass. We are seeing a noise band in a parking lot, or lazing in the park with gigantic styrofoam beers or watching the night from a rooftop. We are screaming and dancing until the floor shakes, or careening down the Coney Island boardwalk like holy fools. We are tearing through Greenpoint on the 4th of July, running over the Pulaski bridge and through the alleys and warehouses, our hearts exploding out our faces. We are watching the sky crack open and rain light, like the city and the darkness and the humming night were celebrating us, were singing our praises and were awed by us, by our joy and our shrieks and our great love, the beautiful children that we were.
* * *
Here's one. It is the first winter of our friendship, back when 5th avenue felt like a distant land, Molly and I are stumbling through Park Slope. Anyone who has ever lived in New York knows the feeling. A party has gone on too long and you are a little too drunk. It has become impossibly late. You have walked for blocks to the subway and have waited too long for a train that arrives out of some sick dream. It is too cold or it is too hot. Your molecules have become heavy. Your face feels like a concrete mask.
We sit on the train for the long ride uptown. Without a word, Molly lies down and closes her eyes. She places her head on my thigh. She slips her first two fingers through one of my belt loops. We spend the entire ride this way, she curled up, head on my lap, tiny hand hooked on my waist. Neither of us move or speak. It is so quiet and so still.
Something melted away, something dissolved. It was like some great veil had been lifted and I saw her for the first time, unprotected by her layer of strength and knowingness. I glimpsed something very delicate and small, something that needed care. It broke my heart; it breaks my heart.
I was in love with her. Like so many artifacts of my early twenties, it was absurd and irrational and, I believed then, hopeless. But now I realize that it wasn't hopeless at all. In all of those moments, all of those tiny gestures, all of those gorgeous memories, in the supreme blessing of a friendship with this beautiful, generous, stubborn woman, this magnificent secret of a person; in all of those things, in the fullness of an entire life--that love was requited. I thought that those fingers on my belt loop and that head on my lap were a vision of an impossible happiness. But I was wrong; they were happiness itself. Thanks friend. I miss you terribly.
The Molly I met six years later wore that same wise/cherubic face and flashed that same smile. What smote me about her then were the exact things that everyone who knows her remarks upon. There was that easy laugh. There was her willingness to speak incredibly frankly about how much she cared about everything--music, movies, art and most especially the people that she loved. There was that romantic streak, her elaborate, rapturous plans, her readiness to spin stories of an arcadian south, a warmer, earthier place, a place worth escaping to. And she was so generous. Countless times, she brought me food and bought me drinks. She taught me to love Journey. She made me accompany her to the Dovshenko films at Lincoln Center. She talked the drummer of the Strokes out of his t-shirt and gave it to me.
There was also her obstinance and her quick, sharp tongue. I have yet to meet another person as given to grand judgements--and so regally heedless of the strong possibility that she would change her mind tomorrow--as Molly Pryor. Here is, for instance, a hopelessly incomplete list of things Molly has called bullshit on: bands with female singers; the Staten Island Yankees; the Decemberists (the band not the anarchists, though I'm sure she'd call bullshit on them too, if given the chance); Agnes Varda; the weather; eggs; Patti Smith (and she loved Patti Smith); France; brunch (!); so much more. And all of these delivered with an exaggerated Tennessee twang and a smirk. Her proclamations were often hilarious or absurd, but they conveyed a sense of real mastery and presence. They announced a forceful spirit. They said: I am willing to take up space, to alter the weather of reality.
Molly was mercurial: sometimes warm and ecstatic, sometimes sharp and short. She had a great capacity for pleasure and joy but could also be impatient and difficult to please. She was easygoing; she was demanding. She was open to every idea and experience; she was absurdly stubborn. Her nostalgia masked, I think, great pain. Her veneer of confidence papered over her insecurity. Her romanticism was a symptom of a simmering dissatisfaction with the world as it was. Molly was, as she herself might have drawled, a whole lotta woman.
* * *
In those days we--she and Jeff and Heidi and I and many others--went to shows. We spent long weeknights in dark bars. We listened to records. We watched Tarkovsky films in her dorm room while she distractedly wrote art history papers ('A' papers, mind you--this woman had some serious intellect, though she was always cagey in revealing it). Among the many things that stops my heart and short-circuits my brain now is the impossible fact that what began this way, with such joy and promise and youthful pain could possibly have ended so catastrophically. How Molly and Jeff and I watching movies in that ridiculous East Harlem housing project could possibly have contorted itself into the awful phone conversations that Jeff and I had last week. How something so young could have become so old. How such a vibrant, forceful person could possibly be gone.
I don't know nearly enough about the last two years of Molly's life. I do know that they were dark, darker than I ever guessed possible. I didn't know how her worst qualities had hardened and metastasized and her best qualities had become so deeply buried. I didn't know how broken and worn her body had become.
In this ignorance, in the silence and distance that I allowed to exist between us, I was not the friend to her that I meant to be or that I should have been. I did not repay her for all that she added to my life. She did not make this easy for any of us, of course. She declined invitations, answered earnest questions with small talk or outright lies, responded to concern with silence. And, of course, no one knew how high the stakes were. We thought we had years to renew our relationships and to heal ourselves. The sudden realization of how desperate her life had become, of the finality of our estrangement, of how we all failed her and she failed us...it is just so bitter, I can barely swallow.
I didn't know but I should have known. I should have tried but I did not know I had to try. I should have tried anyway.
If I could speak with Molly today, I would tell her that I loved her and then I would beg her forgiveness.
* * *
I have been trying to conjure up some kind of defining memory of Molly. Instead I am deluged. There are specific moments that rise to the surface, of course, but they are like white caps on an ocean, welling up, cresting and sinking back into the great expanse of that life and those years.
We are all at a baseball game, or riding the cyclone. We are wasting whole Sundays at 'ino. We are performing acrobatics in an Austin hotel room. We at the Bulgarian disco, all of us arm-in-arm, absorbed into the heaving, sweaty mass. We are seeing a noise band in a parking lot, or lazing in the park with gigantic styrofoam beers or watching the night from a rooftop. We are screaming and dancing until the floor shakes, or careening down the Coney Island boardwalk like holy fools. We are tearing through Greenpoint on the 4th of July, running over the Pulaski bridge and through the alleys and warehouses, our hearts exploding out our faces. We are watching the sky crack open and rain light, like the city and the darkness and the humming night were celebrating us, were singing our praises and were awed by us, by our joy and our shrieks and our great love, the beautiful children that we were.
* * *
Here's one. It is the first winter of our friendship, back when 5th avenue felt like a distant land, Molly and I are stumbling through Park Slope. Anyone who has ever lived in New York knows the feeling. A party has gone on too long and you are a little too drunk. It has become impossibly late. You have walked for blocks to the subway and have waited too long for a train that arrives out of some sick dream. It is too cold or it is too hot. Your molecules have become heavy. Your face feels like a concrete mask.
We sit on the train for the long ride uptown. Without a word, Molly lies down and closes her eyes. She places her head on my thigh. She slips her first two fingers through one of my belt loops. We spend the entire ride this way, she curled up, head on my lap, tiny hand hooked on my waist. Neither of us move or speak. It is so quiet and so still.
Something melted away, something dissolved. It was like some great veil had been lifted and I saw her for the first time, unprotected by her layer of strength and knowingness. I glimpsed something very delicate and small, something that needed care. It broke my heart; it breaks my heart.
I was in love with her. Like so many artifacts of my early twenties, it was absurd and irrational and, I believed then, hopeless. But now I realize that it wasn't hopeless at all. In all of those moments, all of those tiny gestures, all of those gorgeous memories, in the supreme blessing of a friendship with this beautiful, generous, stubborn woman, this magnificent secret of a person; in all of those things, in the fullness of an entire life--that love was requited. I thought that those fingers on my belt loop and that head on my lap were a vision of an impossible happiness. But I was wrong; they were happiness itself. Thanks friend. I miss you terribly.
Friday, June 22, 2012
1
For the record, in my opinion, Vedder's voice is a gorgeous, once-in-a-generation instrument. Deep without being unapproachable, possessing just the right amount of grain. It can sound huge and strong when he's singing quietly, intimate when he's at full roar. All this was evident from the beginning but became more so when he ditched the histrionics.
Friday, June 15, 2012
5
These are Vs. (1993), Vitalogy (1994) and No Code (1996), all of which are pretty interesting and have moments of real greatness. If you ask me, Vitalogy is the best of these, not necessarily because it contains more good songs than the others but because in its noisy, cluttered production, in its stylistic ecumenicism, in its emotional ambivalence, it best reflects the band's conflicted relationship with themselves and their own success. Along with Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac, it is one of the last truly strange records made by a huge rock band, one of the last that actively interrogates the bizarre act of using commercial art to communicate with millions of people.
2
Of course sincere feeling doesn't disqualify something from being camp. Far from it. The question always is: do you read a given performance on the level of its original (or what you might call "intended") emotional or aesthetic context? Or do you read it ironically, on the basis of the unintended hilarity that those overwrought aesthetics produce, as with camp? With Pearl Jam, the answer for me is somehow both.
4
From the fall of 1991 until the end of 1992, Vedder took the concept of the stage dive to its endgame. He would climb on any structure that could be climbed--scaffolding, lighting rigs, whatever--finding the highest point in the venue, putting himself in intentional serious danger, terrifying everybody. (It is not known whether this practice subconsciously influenced my mid-2000's taste for drunkenly climbing trees. This habit once left me hanging upside-down by my knees, pants torn, in a friend's parents' suburban New Jersey home in the middle of winter. Eventually, cooler heads prevailed.) He would then, if at all possible, launch himself from that spot into the crowd. (This whole ritual is immortalized in the video for "Evenflow".) Every subsequent stage dive has seemed to me pale and canned by comparison.
Thursday, June 14, 2012
3
Pearl Jam's performance at Atlanta's Fox Theater on April 3, 1994 is considered by many to be the best show they ever played. It wasn't one of my primary examples because a) it takes place after the band's early, so-happy-to-be-playing-music ecstatic freak-out phase and because b) because there's no video of it.
The show took place during one of the band's darker phases. They were overwhelmed by the crush of their outrageous fame, furious at the culture industry's exploitation of their music and its intrusion into their private lives. And that fury is present in every almost every moment of the show. The band is loose and expansive and totally ripping. Vedder is in a frenzy of anger and maybe even grief. It's kind of stunning actually. Check out their rendition of "Blood", off of Vs.:
And here's "Porch":
The show took place during one of the band's darker phases. They were overwhelmed by the crush of their outrageous fame, furious at the culture industry's exploitation of their music and its intrusion into their private lives. And that fury is present in every almost every moment of the show. The band is loose and expansive and totally ripping. Vedder is in a frenzy of anger and maybe even grief. It's kind of stunning actually. Check out their rendition of "Blood", off of Vs.:
And here's "Porch":
Friday, November 11, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
2
In Rita, Diane has created a helpless creature badly in need of rescuing. And Betty, with her comic benevolence is more than capable of that rescue. It hardly bears mentioning that this picture bears little relation to the sordid waking reality.
This is partly pathetic in that it grotesquely aggrandizes both Camilla/Rita's vulnerability and Diane/Betty's devoted selflessness. But it also reveals that Diane has a deep desire to care for another human being, to be a better person. And this, I think, is maybe the most poignant element of this very sad movie. Diane's attempts at human connection and her great, unreal vision of a better world are answered with cruelty and contempt.
This is partly pathetic in that it grotesquely aggrandizes both Camilla/Rita's vulnerability and Diane/Betty's devoted selflessness. But it also reveals that Diane has a deep desire to care for another human being, to be a better person. And this, I think, is maybe the most poignant element of this very sad movie. Diane's attempts at human connection and her great, unreal vision of a better world are answered with cruelty and contempt.
1
They do even more than that. Two of the most moving moments in the film--the lip-synced "Crying" performance and Betty's audition--are shown be essentially contrived. In the first, a mechanical reproduction replaces an authentic human voice. In the second, Betty and her leathery potential co-star conjure an incredibly intense performance out of the least compelling setting possible: a drab casting room full of snarky Hollywood hacks. The scene's artificiality is laid bare--it is a meaningless audition, a scene-within-a-scene from a movie that we know will probably never be made.
Lynch has declared many times that the initial stages of the creative process are essentially passive. One simply waits, he says, for an idea to arrive, as if from outside of oneself. This is more like a vision (or a dream) than an expressive welling up of one's inner world. Once it does arrive, what remains is the sometimes tedious, often joyous practicality of recreating and communicating that vision. The artist is first a medium and then a technician. (I must apologize to Lynch here for attempting to re-translate his film back into language. Sorry.)
Nevertheless, successful works of art belie the artificiality of their creation; they induce intense emotions, they enfold us, trance-like, into an authentic, sensible world. And this, I think, is one of Mulholland Drive's important themes: the roots of artistic expression are impersonal and contrived, but this contrivance does not make art any less expressive. It is an illusion; it is magic in the best sense of the word.
Lynch has declared many times that the initial stages of the creative process are essentially passive. One simply waits, he says, for an idea to arrive, as if from outside of oneself. This is more like a vision (or a dream) than an expressive welling up of one's inner world. Once it does arrive, what remains is the sometimes tedious, often joyous practicality of recreating and communicating that vision. The artist is first a medium and then a technician. (I must apologize to Lynch here for attempting to re-translate his film back into language. Sorry.)
Nevertheless, successful works of art belie the artificiality of their creation; they induce intense emotions, they enfold us, trance-like, into an authentic, sensible world. And this, I think, is one of Mulholland Drive's important themes: the roots of artistic expression are impersonal and contrived, but this contrivance does not make art any less expressive. It is an illusion; it is magic in the best sense of the word.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Sonics. The Sonics.
There are lots of ways of being bad in the NBA, and in the last week, which featured back-to-back home Wolves losses to powers like Charlotte and Seattle (that’s 130 losses between the three of them—this season!), I got a pretty close look at many of them. In Seattle we have the “bewilderingly constructed” bad team (the Knicks are the prime example of this). The Sonics are partially designed around a 19-year-old phenom and partially around semi-good holdovers from their last good Ray Allen-led squad. They manage to synthesize two lethal NBA archetypes: the disillusioned veteran, tugged along by his own dull inertia and the clueless youngster who gets by solely on his own talent. The Bobcats are the prototypical “ravaged by injuries” bad team. They have playing without three of their preseason starters—Sean May, Adam Morrison and Gerald Wallace—and are forced to scrape by with role players and reserves at most spots.
That brings us to our Timberwolves, the classic “talented-but-inexperienced” bad team. Such teams often play well in some stretches and then appallingly badly in others. They often seem to be equally competitive against good teams and bad. They have a poor feel for the rhythm of the game, often missing opportunities and suddenly becoming listless and ragged at the most inopportune moments (like, say, the last five minutes of the game). I’ve defended the Wolves’ honor once or twice based on the fact that they are a likeable, generally entertaining team with a ton of upside. And while I’d gladly take this team over a few others with more wins (those disastrous Knicks, or even the Sonics and Bobcats, this week’s results notwithstanding) there’s absolutely no contesting the fact that they have lost 47 of their 60 games. Wow, when you put it like that it’s kind of depressing.
Against Seattle, the Wolves started the game in one of those aforementioned malaises and then ended on one of those aforementioned missed opportunities. It all added up to a rather heartbreaking overtime loss, but the game was a pretty exciting, competitive contest between two legit NBA teams.
One of the great surprises of that game was Kevin Durant. Purely because he scores a relatively large amount of points per game (19.5) he is the favorite for rookie-of the year honors. But those points have come at the expense of many, many bad misses, many forced shots, many possessions where his teammates do not see the ball—he’s shooting only 40% for the year and, though he takes a whole lot of them, only makes 29% of his three pointers.
A few things were evident from seeing him in person. First of all, he is very tall (6’11” and very young (barely 19). The fact that is a very junior member of a men’s club is reflected in his little-brotherly demeanor. He slumps his shoulders and kind of shuffles/swaggers in a very teenage way. And he carries that sullen, recognizably adolescent, almost embarrassed scowl—the look that says its bearer is both incredibly self-conscious but also totally oblivious to being noticed by anybody. He seemed to be pretty clueless whenever he did not have the ball, sort of floating around waiting for a pass, halfheartedly setting screens when it suited him. And on defense the less said the better. I’m pretty sure that he never once adopted anything approximating the kind of defensive stance that they teach you at all levels of basketball. That should do it.
But, I have to say, I did not expect at all the things I saw when he got the ball in his hands; it was strange, at those moments, to see him transcend the awkward teenager, gain a ferocity and sense of purpose. He has that quality shared by only the most phenomenally gifted athletes: the ability to perform incredibly difficult physical tasks at high speed and with intoxicating fluidity—as if you are watching in both fast and slow motion. He may be a pure novice at the NBA game but, I’m telling you—and this is something I did not fully appreciate until I saw him up close—Kevin Durant is a magnificently talented basketball player.
Real Bobcats in the Sack
The Charlotte game, on the other hand, was a total mess. The lack of Wallace on the Bobcats’ side and Corey Brewer and Rashad McCants on Minnesota’s side (concussion, thigh bruise and flu, respectively), three fairly dynamic and/or energetic players, led to a bland, spiritless game. The two teams seemed to have entered into, as Coach Wittman put it, a “non-aggression pact,” playing the kind of stolid, isolation-oriented offense and tired-looking defense that has given the pro game an undeserved bad name. Nonetheless, the Wolves managed to keep it close until the fourth quarter, mostly because of Sebastian Telfair’s aggressiveness at the point (6 of 11 from the floor, with nine assists). The big problem was on the defensive end where almost every player was terrible all game. The Wolves’ guards were constantly beaten off the dribble by the Bobcats’ Earl Boykins and Raymond Felton, particularly on pick-and-roll situations. Compounding the problem, the Wolves’ big men did not show aggressively and the rest of the team failed both to help quickly on the dribbler and to rotate to open shooters. The result was a constant stream of open looks and a good shooting night for Charlotte (51.4% from the floor and 10-20 from 3) and, most importantly, a huge advantage in free throws. The Bobcats made 23-29 while the Wolves only attempted nine, hitting five. By my math, that pretty much accounts for the entire margin of victory. Considering that there were almost no established stars on either team, the Wolves can’t really use the old excuse that their youth and anonymity was a prejudicing factor for the refs. They simply played much less aggressively than the other team, on both ends of the floor. As the Wolves began to shy away from driving to the basket, relying instead on contested jumpers, the Bobcats consistently exploited their opponents’ lackluster defense, getting to the rim and drawing fouls. The Wolves were close for much of the game, but at no point did they play like they deserved to win.
Puke + Cry
Part of the Wolves’ break-in-the action entertainment all year has been this weird, righteous spectacle involving various war veterans, rescue workers, victims of over-the-top violence or illness, and other assorted heroes. They are given tickets and jerseys; they are trotted out in front of the crowd to have their harrowing story raucously told by the PA announcer; they are given a terrifically pious standing ovation. My previous fave had been a sullen family of five who had been terrorized in their own home by unknown masked assailants for an evening. The Charlotte game, though, sported the most monstrously sympathetic, most Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-y hero yet. “Little Nick” (that’s what the back of his jersey said) was a perfectly adorable, tow-headed eight-year-old who had suffered some horrendous illness which had caused him to undergo 15 surgeries, after which he (heroically) decided to have his legs amputated so he could, in the PA guy’s lilting tones “run and play with his friends.” Sob. Smile.
I’ll tell you, it is mesmerizing and terrifying and hilarious (you know the kind of panicky, vomitous hilarity I’m talking about—like how it feels to watch TV news pundits smirk and quip their way through topics that actually effect real people) to watch people willingly sacrifice their most sacred, personal stories to us insatiable, impatient professional spectators. To have those stories blithely processed—not on TV; right before your eyes—into a brief, forgettable commercial advertising the so charitable heart of a pro basketball team and its simply compassion-soaked fans. I’ll say it again: a commercial.
That brings us to our Timberwolves, the classic “talented-but-inexperienced” bad team. Such teams often play well in some stretches and then appallingly badly in others. They often seem to be equally competitive against good teams and bad. They have a poor feel for the rhythm of the game, often missing opportunities and suddenly becoming listless and ragged at the most inopportune moments (like, say, the last five minutes of the game). I’ve defended the Wolves’ honor once or twice based on the fact that they are a likeable, generally entertaining team with a ton of upside. And while I’d gladly take this team over a few others with more wins (those disastrous Knicks, or even the Sonics and Bobcats, this week’s results notwithstanding) there’s absolutely no contesting the fact that they have lost 47 of their 60 games. Wow, when you put it like that it’s kind of depressing.
Against Seattle, the Wolves started the game in one of those aforementioned malaises and then ended on one of those aforementioned missed opportunities. It all added up to a rather heartbreaking overtime loss, but the game was a pretty exciting, competitive contest between two legit NBA teams.
One of the great surprises of that game was Kevin Durant. Purely because he scores a relatively large amount of points per game (19.5) he is the favorite for rookie-of the year honors. But those points have come at the expense of many, many bad misses, many forced shots, many possessions where his teammates do not see the ball—he’s shooting only 40% for the year and, though he takes a whole lot of them, only makes 29% of his three pointers.
A few things were evident from seeing him in person. First of all, he is very tall (6’11” and very young (barely 19). The fact that is a very junior member of a men’s club is reflected in his little-brotherly demeanor. He slumps his shoulders and kind of shuffles/swaggers in a very teenage way. And he carries that sullen, recognizably adolescent, almost embarrassed scowl—the look that says its bearer is both incredibly self-conscious but also totally oblivious to being noticed by anybody. He seemed to be pretty clueless whenever he did not have the ball, sort of floating around waiting for a pass, halfheartedly setting screens when it suited him. And on defense the less said the better. I’m pretty sure that he never once adopted anything approximating the kind of defensive stance that they teach you at all levels of basketball. That should do it.
But, I have to say, I did not expect at all the things I saw when he got the ball in his hands; it was strange, at those moments, to see him transcend the awkward teenager, gain a ferocity and sense of purpose. He has that quality shared by only the most phenomenally gifted athletes: the ability to perform incredibly difficult physical tasks at high speed and with intoxicating fluidity—as if you are watching in both fast and slow motion. He may be a pure novice at the NBA game but, I’m telling you—and this is something I did not fully appreciate until I saw him up close—Kevin Durant is a magnificently talented basketball player.
Real Bobcats in the Sack
The Charlotte game, on the other hand, was a total mess. The lack of Wallace on the Bobcats’ side and Corey Brewer and Rashad McCants on Minnesota’s side (concussion, thigh bruise and flu, respectively), three fairly dynamic and/or energetic players, led to a bland, spiritless game. The two teams seemed to have entered into, as Coach Wittman put it, a “non-aggression pact,” playing the kind of stolid, isolation-oriented offense and tired-looking defense that has given the pro game an undeserved bad name. Nonetheless, the Wolves managed to keep it close until the fourth quarter, mostly because of Sebastian Telfair’s aggressiveness at the point (6 of 11 from the floor, with nine assists). The big problem was on the defensive end where almost every player was terrible all game. The Wolves’ guards were constantly beaten off the dribble by the Bobcats’ Earl Boykins and Raymond Felton, particularly on pick-and-roll situations. Compounding the problem, the Wolves’ big men did not show aggressively and the rest of the team failed both to help quickly on the dribbler and to rotate to open shooters. The result was a constant stream of open looks and a good shooting night for Charlotte (51.4% from the floor and 10-20 from 3) and, most importantly, a huge advantage in free throws. The Bobcats made 23-29 while the Wolves only attempted nine, hitting five. By my math, that pretty much accounts for the entire margin of victory. Considering that there were almost no established stars on either team, the Wolves can’t really use the old excuse that their youth and anonymity was a prejudicing factor for the refs. They simply played much less aggressively than the other team, on both ends of the floor. As the Wolves began to shy away from driving to the basket, relying instead on contested jumpers, the Bobcats consistently exploited their opponents’ lackluster defense, getting to the rim and drawing fouls. The Wolves were close for much of the game, but at no point did they play like they deserved to win.
Puke + Cry
Part of the Wolves’ break-in-the action entertainment all year has been this weird, righteous spectacle involving various war veterans, rescue workers, victims of over-the-top violence or illness, and other assorted heroes. They are given tickets and jerseys; they are trotted out in front of the crowd to have their harrowing story raucously told by the PA announcer; they are given a terrifically pious standing ovation. My previous fave had been a sullen family of five who had been terrorized in their own home by unknown masked assailants for an evening. The Charlotte game, though, sported the most monstrously sympathetic, most Extreme Makeover: Home Edition-y hero yet. “Little Nick” (that’s what the back of his jersey said) was a perfectly adorable, tow-headed eight-year-old who had suffered some horrendous illness which had caused him to undergo 15 surgeries, after which he (heroically) decided to have his legs amputated so he could, in the PA guy’s lilting tones “run and play with his friends.” Sob. Smile.
I’ll tell you, it is mesmerizing and terrifying and hilarious (you know the kind of panicky, vomitous hilarity I’m talking about—like how it feels to watch TV news pundits smirk and quip their way through topics that actually effect real people) to watch people willingly sacrifice their most sacred, personal stories to us insatiable, impatient professional spectators. To have those stories blithely processed—not on TV; right before your eyes—into a brief, forgettable commercial advertising the so charitable heart of a pro basketball team and its simply compassion-soaked fans. I’ll say it again: a commercial.
Shadows on the Sun
I must admit that I have slightly mixed feelings about the Timberwolves 117-107 victory over the Suns on Wednesday night. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for the Wolves; they’ve officially got their first winning streak of the year and in the last week they’ve gone 2-1 against three playoff teams (and really, they should’ve won that third one). Things are really looking up and Randy Foye isn’t even scrimmaging yet. But—and I realize that this is a rather embarrassing thing to say about sports for a grown man who, you know, reads books and stuff—I have a deep and emotional investment in the Phoenix Suns. This next bit right kind of turned into a bit of a digression. If you don’t really care what I lose sleep over (totally understandable), you can just skip this section and go straight to the part where I actually, like, talk about the game.
When they shocked the league in 2004-2005, first by signing Steve Nash and then by dominating the regular season with a 62-20 record, Phoenix seemed to be an anarchic assault on the NBA’s conventional wisdom. While, for at least a decade, teams had been built on the premise that patience and discipline were the cardinal virtues of offense, the Suns relentlessly ran the break with what seemed like chaotic abandon, not appearing to care much for defense, firing up the first open shot (preferably a three) to come their way.
Their lineup was just as radical, employing three perimeter players and no traditional big man. The “center” position was reimagined nightly by the audaciously explosive Amare Stoudemire, a 6’10”, 22-year-old manchild/supernova who seemed to just brim with a ruthless desire to fucking dunk on everybody.
But Nash was, and is, the visionary center of the team. He carves up the floor in unprecedented ways, creating and then exploiting strange new passing angles with his seemingly meandering (but always purposeful) forays through the lane. He gently coaxes a defense into confusion—heads turned, eyes googly—and when the pass finally comes, it is usually just before or just after it is expected. The result is usually somehow both fantastical and blindingly obvious—an lob to the guy who just set the pick; a wide open three; a behind-the-back left handed pass to a teammate standing, magically, all alone under the hoop. Nash was the only Sun who seemed to accord with a traditional archetype: that of the point guard/floor general, the playmaker who, through his uncanny logic and vision, enables the entire process
A few years on, it’s become apparent that the Suns were always a bit more conventional and systematic than most thought. In fact—as it is, finally, with most revolutions I guess—the Suns were more nostalgic than revolutionary, throwbacks to the Lakers-Celtics era of relentless speed and fluid passing (with a few modern twists: the reliance on the three-point shot, the 6’10” super-athlete) before Michael Jordan’s singular genius changed the style paradigm for a generation (and, as a reaction to both movements, the majority of teams turned to brutal, suffocating defense and half-court monotony). It’s basic basketball: the pick-and-roll, ball movement, the well-spaced floor and consistent, aggressive defense (you might laugh at that one, but check their defensive efficiency last year). It’s just that the Suns do it with astounding speed and creativity, revealing that even the most predictable play can bloom in myriad astonishing ways. At their best, the Suns illustrate what is so outrageously awesome about the NBA, the synthesis between stolid “play the right way” purism and highlight reel individualism: that real team basketball at its best actually enables individual creativity and expression, gives it structure and context. That this delicate balance can fulfill ends both pragmatic, communal (i.e. wins) and also aesthetic or personal—little trifles like, y’know, joy or beauty.
So that’s why I’ve got my heart so deep into the Suns, because I can’t stand the thought that this team could be written off just because they haven’t yet won a title. That their approach to the game could ever be deemed inferior to that of the Spurs’ passionless and methodical conservatism. I know this is American pro sports and the cult of quantifiable success is invincible, but I think it would be a tragedy of this group fell by the wayside, recognized only for being “entertaining,” that venerable backhanded compliment that implies style, sure, but no substance. As if outright victory were the only marker of substance; as if style itself were not substance.
Thus, the slightly sour taste in my mouth as the Suns played with none of their customary verve in losing to the Wolves. Not to minimize the home team’s accomplishment—they played with energy and confidence the entire game—but Phoenix, playing for the fifth time in seven nights, looked fatigued, showing only flashes of their customary pace and fluidity. After the game Nash lamented that his team played with “not enough pride, not enough consistency,” that they were practicing complacence (he claimed, convincingly, not to care about the standings, which currently say that his team is the best in the Western Conference. Instead, he was concerned about “building good habits.” This almost cavalier attitude toward the traditional signposts of success, this favoring of process over result, is vintage Nash). He and Stoudemire, both played well—Nash had 16 assists and 21 points while Stoudemire hit an outrageous 14 of 16 shots for 33 points—but Shawn Marion was a total no-show, taking only three shots in 32 minutes and pulling in just three rebounds, a full seven below his average. To be fair to Marion, his teammates did not fare much better on the glass. Minnesota out-rebounded Phoenix 48-26; in a stat that you will almost never see in a professional game, they gathered 22 offensive rebounds to only 23 defensive boards for the Suns. Realize that this means that Minnesota rebounded nearly half of their own missed shots. Allowing a team to rebound its own miss is functionally the same as a turnover; you are literally giving a team an extra possession. And, predictably, the Suns’ generosity (or lack of effort, or the Wolves’ tenacity, or a combination) translated directly into points for the Wolves, 26 to be exact.
Big Al Jefferson had a bananas game. He went 15-29 for a career-high 39 points along with 15 rebounds, eight of them on offense. The Suns’ game plan was to move Jefferson toward the center of the court, preventing him from using his quickness on the baseline but he repeatedly blew by Stoudemire with a baseline spin move and Phoenix’s double teams and weakside help were a step late all night. And yet, somehow, he finished the game -4 (that is, the Wolves were outscored by four when he was on the floor) while backups like Craig Smith Antoine Walker and Corey Brewer were all at least +11. The biggest reason for this weird disparity is that, when the Suns were on offense, Stoudemire utterly abused Jefferson. He may not be quite the freakish athlete that he once was (although he is certainly a more polished basketball player having improved his ballhandling and shooting) but when he plays off of Nash Stoudemire is nearly unstoppable. He made big Al look slow and helpless.
With that matchup a wash, it was incumbent on the Wolves’ bench to take advantage when the Suns’ best players were not on the floor. And take advantage they did; Minnesota’s game-breaking 28-7 first half run (from which Phoenix never recovered) came almost entirely in play between the two teams’ second units, when Jefferson, Nash and Stoudemire were out of the game and Leandro Barbosa was playing point guard. Barbosa is incredibly fast and a dynamic scorer, but he has not yet shown (and may never show) that he can consistently run Phoenix’s offense. (Barbosa was -18, the worst on either team, while Nash led Phoenix with +6). The Suns are normally able to overcome the shaky stretch when Nash sits but against Minnesota the hole was too deep and they just weren’t able, or willing to expend the defensive effort. Nonetheless, this was a huge accomplishment for the Wolves and especially for Jefferson. In the fourth quarter, when Phoenix looked ready to make a final push, when their offense finally began to flow, finding easy threes and dunks, it was Jefferson’s commanding play that held them off.
When they shocked the league in 2004-2005, first by signing Steve Nash and then by dominating the regular season with a 62-20 record, Phoenix seemed to be an anarchic assault on the NBA’s conventional wisdom. While, for at least a decade, teams had been built on the premise that patience and discipline were the cardinal virtues of offense, the Suns relentlessly ran the break with what seemed like chaotic abandon, not appearing to care much for defense, firing up the first open shot (preferably a three) to come their way.
Their lineup was just as radical, employing three perimeter players and no traditional big man. The “center” position was reimagined nightly by the audaciously explosive Amare Stoudemire, a 6’10”, 22-year-old manchild/supernova who seemed to just brim with a ruthless desire to fucking dunk on everybody.
But Nash was, and is, the visionary center of the team. He carves up the floor in unprecedented ways, creating and then exploiting strange new passing angles with his seemingly meandering (but always purposeful) forays through the lane. He gently coaxes a defense into confusion—heads turned, eyes googly—and when the pass finally comes, it is usually just before or just after it is expected. The result is usually somehow both fantastical and blindingly obvious—an lob to the guy who just set the pick; a wide open three; a behind-the-back left handed pass to a teammate standing, magically, all alone under the hoop. Nash was the only Sun who seemed to accord with a traditional archetype: that of the point guard/floor general, the playmaker who, through his uncanny logic and vision, enables the entire process
A few years on, it’s become apparent that the Suns were always a bit more conventional and systematic than most thought. In fact—as it is, finally, with most revolutions I guess—the Suns were more nostalgic than revolutionary, throwbacks to the Lakers-Celtics era of relentless speed and fluid passing (with a few modern twists: the reliance on the three-point shot, the 6’10” super-athlete) before Michael Jordan’s singular genius changed the style paradigm for a generation (and, as a reaction to both movements, the majority of teams turned to brutal, suffocating defense and half-court monotony). It’s basic basketball: the pick-and-roll, ball movement, the well-spaced floor and consistent, aggressive defense (you might laugh at that one, but check their defensive efficiency last year). It’s just that the Suns do it with astounding speed and creativity, revealing that even the most predictable play can bloom in myriad astonishing ways. At their best, the Suns illustrate what is so outrageously awesome about the NBA, the synthesis between stolid “play the right way” purism and highlight reel individualism: that real team basketball at its best actually enables individual creativity and expression, gives it structure and context. That this delicate balance can fulfill ends both pragmatic, communal (i.e. wins) and also aesthetic or personal—little trifles like, y’know, joy or beauty.
So that’s why I’ve got my heart so deep into the Suns, because I can’t stand the thought that this team could be written off just because they haven’t yet won a title. That their approach to the game could ever be deemed inferior to that of the Spurs’ passionless and methodical conservatism. I know this is American pro sports and the cult of quantifiable success is invincible, but I think it would be a tragedy of this group fell by the wayside, recognized only for being “entertaining,” that venerable backhanded compliment that implies style, sure, but no substance. As if outright victory were the only marker of substance; as if style itself were not substance.
Thus, the slightly sour taste in my mouth as the Suns played with none of their customary verve in losing to the Wolves. Not to minimize the home team’s accomplishment—they played with energy and confidence the entire game—but Phoenix, playing for the fifth time in seven nights, looked fatigued, showing only flashes of their customary pace and fluidity. After the game Nash lamented that his team played with “not enough pride, not enough consistency,” that they were practicing complacence (he claimed, convincingly, not to care about the standings, which currently say that his team is the best in the Western Conference. Instead, he was concerned about “building good habits.” This almost cavalier attitude toward the traditional signposts of success, this favoring of process over result, is vintage Nash). He and Stoudemire, both played well—Nash had 16 assists and 21 points while Stoudemire hit an outrageous 14 of 16 shots for 33 points—but Shawn Marion was a total no-show, taking only three shots in 32 minutes and pulling in just three rebounds, a full seven below his average. To be fair to Marion, his teammates did not fare much better on the glass. Minnesota out-rebounded Phoenix 48-26; in a stat that you will almost never see in a professional game, they gathered 22 offensive rebounds to only 23 defensive boards for the Suns. Realize that this means that Minnesota rebounded nearly half of their own missed shots. Allowing a team to rebound its own miss is functionally the same as a turnover; you are literally giving a team an extra possession. And, predictably, the Suns’ generosity (or lack of effort, or the Wolves’ tenacity, or a combination) translated directly into points for the Wolves, 26 to be exact.
Big Al Jefferson had a bananas game. He went 15-29 for a career-high 39 points along with 15 rebounds, eight of them on offense. The Suns’ game plan was to move Jefferson toward the center of the court, preventing him from using his quickness on the baseline but he repeatedly blew by Stoudemire with a baseline spin move and Phoenix’s double teams and weakside help were a step late all night. And yet, somehow, he finished the game -4 (that is, the Wolves were outscored by four when he was on the floor) while backups like Craig Smith Antoine Walker and Corey Brewer were all at least +11. The biggest reason for this weird disparity is that, when the Suns were on offense, Stoudemire utterly abused Jefferson. He may not be quite the freakish athlete that he once was (although he is certainly a more polished basketball player having improved his ballhandling and shooting) but when he plays off of Nash Stoudemire is nearly unstoppable. He made big Al look slow and helpless.
With that matchup a wash, it was incumbent on the Wolves’ bench to take advantage when the Suns’ best players were not on the floor. And take advantage they did; Minnesota’s game-breaking 28-7 first half run (from which Phoenix never recovered) came almost entirely in play between the two teams’ second units, when Jefferson, Nash and Stoudemire were out of the game and Leandro Barbosa was playing point guard. Barbosa is incredibly fast and a dynamic scorer, but he has not yet shown (and may never show) that he can consistently run Phoenix’s offense. (Barbosa was -18, the worst on either team, while Nash led Phoenix with +6). The Suns are normally able to overcome the shaky stretch when Nash sits but against Minnesota the hole was too deep and they just weren’t able, or willing to expend the defensive effort. Nonetheless, this was a huge accomplishment for the Wolves and especially for Jefferson. In the fourth quarter, when Phoenix looked ready to make a final push, when their offense finally began to flow, finding easy threes and dunks, it was Jefferson’s commanding play that held them off.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
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I can't say I'm so self-assured that I don't have stinging pangs of insecurity when I read somebody snarkily trashing the very things I found most affecting about a movie. Makes me really doubt my own judgment. And, in some cases, I guess, rightly so. "American Beauty," for instance. But: onward.
3
By consumerist/technological/visual culture's totalitarian mediation, maybe? Or by our ever-increasing cynicism and isolation?
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