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Under discussion:

Roger & Me  (1989)

Jerry Maguire  (1996)

Chasing Amy  (1997)

The Sixth Sense  (1999)

Unbreakable  (2000)

Vanilla Sky  (2001)

Bowling For Columbine  (2002)

Signs  (2002)

Jersey Girl  (2004)

The Village  (2004)

Elizabethtown  (2005)

The Daily Show [TV Series]  (1996)

The Happening  (2008)

Zack & Miri Make a Porno  (2008)

While watching Zack and Miri Make a Porno, it is possible to occasionally forget that you are watching a Kevin Smith movie. Mainly because he doesn’t show up in the film, a rare and appreciated move for the guy who has played “Silent Bob” in 6 out of the 8 theatrical releases he’s directed. Then there’s the cast that is involved, which makes Z&M seem like the offspring of Judd Apatow and John Waters. But there are a number of things that do make it clearly a Smith joint, such as the obligatory employment of Jason Mewes — in the role he was born to play, even moreso than “Jay” — and the potentially pitying use of Jeff Anderson, who may have been the only actor to agree to receiving that accidental Hot Carl.

And then there’s the most recognizable element: Smith’s inability let the poop jokes go in order to concentrate on his characters, and the relationships between them. It’s the filmmaker’s Achilles heel, and it’s one of five we at SpoutBlog have noticed are holding back the esteem of five would-be better directors.

Director: Kevin Smith

Achilles Heel: Interest in sex and shit over character and story

Contrast often creates comedy, and in Z&M Smith acquires some of his best, most shock-inspired laughs when two significantly saccharine moments are interrupted by some incredibly foul scenarios. But despite the comedic benefit of pushing the contrived rom-com plot points to the back burner in favor of scat and scrotum, Smith proves that he doesn’t really care about what is going on with his characters, and so neither may his audience. The irony is that one of the major themes in Z&M is the triumph of love over meaningless sex, yet Smith doesn’t love his characters; he simply uses them as tools for his tasteless jokes and gags. And he’s been doing this since the beginning, though he has made two distinct attempts at giving more attention to characters than crudeness (Chasing Amy; Jersey Girl), which resulted in differing effectiveness. After eight features, it seems to actually be best for him to continue concentrating on the sex and shit and leave all his need to be sweet behind. Unfortunately, he’s too nice a guy to go completely balls out (like his friend Mewes), and anyway if he left all care for his characters behind, he’ll just seem like a second-rate John Waters.

Director: Michael Moore

Achilles Heel: Self-satisfying need to be comedic and important

When Michael Moore began making documentaries, his brand of first-person, subjective non-fiction narrative was fresh and satisfying as far as the subject matter of Roger & Me is concerned. And his comedic touch was much appreciated, because he seemed more humorist than activist. But as he kept expanding his scope to more objective issues that are more important or significant to his audience, and as he seemed to become more interested in changing the world, he should have put the jokes up on the shelf, to some extent anyway. Compared to something like The Daily Show, Moore’s films are more intent on presenting an argument than comedy, and they’re sold as more documentary than The Daily Show is sold as actual news. Therefore, Moore should make up his mind. He’s good at humor, and he’s also good at serious documentary — look at a lot of the stuff in Bowling for Columbine in which Moore’s need for self-importance is pulled back. He can keep on mixing the two together, but he’s not going to win any arguments when he’s twisting facts for the benefit of a gag.

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Achilles Heel: Last-minute reveals

There’s nothing wrong with twist endings, or twists in general. But the way Shyamalan works them, they come off as punch lines to really long jokes. And most of the time, such as with Signs, The Village and The Happening, the whole movie ends up a joke (in the bad sense) in retrospect after knowing. Even The Sixth Sense, which does still have its supporters (and its Oscar nomination clout), is difficult to rewatch once you’re conscious of how it ends. Shyamalan’s best film, Unbreakable, disappointed many for having a relatively anticlimactic ending, but that’s because the twist wasn’t as much of a reveal as it was a logical direction for the story. Shyamalan should go back to that sort of reveal while also learning that a story (and movie) should be more about the road than the destination.

Director: Cameron Crowe

Achilles Heel: Writing manic, pixie dream girls as female leads

Watching a film by Cameron Crowe, it’s possible to wonder just how he sees his own leading lady, rocker Nancy Wilson. Is she a dumb, obnoxiously flaky girl, like most of the female leads in his movies? Does she say cute but idiotic things like “We peaked on the phone,” “You had me at hello,” and “I’ll tell you in another life, when we are both cats”? I doubt she’s anything like those female characters from Elizabethtown, Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky, because otherwise Crowe wouldn’t have been married to her for 22 years. He would have realized after a week that she’s only exciting from a distance, or for as long as an interesting story arc that will later be nestled into one’s past, because she’s too insane, too desperate, too irritating, and not dependable enough to stick with. It might be interesting to see a sequel to any one of Crowe’s films, because it’s hard to believe any of the couples he’s written have lasted long past the credits.

Director: Uwe Boll

Achilles Heel: Doesn’t care what anybody thinks of his movies

It’s understandable that true artists don’t need to please anyone but themselves. But even Boll would likely agree that he’s no artist. So, then is he an entertainer? Nope, he’s not that either, because he clearly isn’t interested in pleasing his audience with entertaining movies. It’s doubtful that Boll could be a good let alone great filmmaker if he started listening to his critics and improved on his flaws. However, by learning from his mistakes he could at least make action movies that could pass with the standard of Hollywood fare these days. Maybe that’s not what he wants. It would surely keep him out of the public consciousness to no longer be “the worst living filmmaker in the world.” But one day the money is going to run out for his brand of film production, and if he truly wants to be a movie director, he’ll have to eventually display some kind of talent for the work.

Under discussion:

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters  (2007)

Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade  (2007)

Two films about old-school arcade games premiered within a few days of each other in Park City in 2007. One was at Sundance, the other was at Slamdance. Guess which one you’ve never heard of? Ironically, it’s the one from Sundance. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters was the success story when these two films unintentionally butted heads, and the sad thing is that the other movie, Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade, is a much better film. But chances are you’ll never get to see it.

Director Lincoln Ruchti and his producer Mark Verrechia set out to make a documentary not just about the height and popularity of the arcade gaming world back in the early 1980s, but specifically about a photo from a 1982 issue of Life magazine (at the top of the post — click for a bigger version). Right there in the center there is a lineup of classic video games with their record holders perched behind them and a bevy of cheerleaders in front. When they saw that image, they knew they had their movie.

The next several months were spent contacting people, tracking down names, leads, old arcade locations, all in an effort to locate these gamers. They succeeded in finding most of them, including Billy Mitchell and Twin Galaxies head referee / enthusiast Walter Day. Using archival footage along with modern day interviews, Chasing Ghosts really puts a human face to the players of the video game industry during a snapshot moment in the 1980s. It doesn’t attempt to go into game development, but just focuses on the people who played the games, and why they went after these high scores.

I could wax poetic about this for paragraphs, but if you’re really interested, you can read the review I wrote over at Joystiq last year. Instead of reviewing the film all over again, I want to focus on why it’s a better movie. One reason is that Ruchti and Verrechia’s film really shows you these characters, features appealing visuals, a killer 80s soundtrack, and a blend of nostalgia that uses Peter Hirschberg’s amazing CGI animations of the games and their cabinets in order to let the laymen know how some of these games were played. Even though these are completely faked (read: CGI) images of games that are almost 30 years old, they somehow feel completely tangible. You can almost reach out and drop a quarter in.

On the flipside of that quarter is the fact that director Seth Gordon played extremely fast and loose with the editing in The King of Kong. In fact, he made it seem like Billy and Steve were bitter rivals, and that Billy would avoid Steve in public. The truth of the matter is that they had appeared in public together before, played games in public, and even given interviews together. There are plenty of moments in the movie where you find yourself thinking, “Geez, this Billy Mitchell guy is a real douche.” Unfortunately, most of those moments were created with a few mouse clicks, deftly removing scenes that would have told you otherwise.

Now, Seth Gordon and his producer Ed Cunningham claim that some of these meetings happened before they started making the movie, in 2004, which would be forgivable. However, there’s a created scene in the film where it looks like Billy drives up to a restaurant and refuses to come in because Steve’s inside. According to Walter Day, Billy and his family actually came in and even spoke to Steve. The more you read about the way the film was put together, the more it unravels.

While Billy Mitchell is indeed in Chasing Ghosts, he’s not portrayed like the arrogant asshole you see in The King of Kong. In fact, if you go to the Twin Galaxies website, Walter basically breaks down the inconsistencies and at least provides his view and recollection of the events. Seth and Ed have their own FAQ on the website for their film, but they don’t address anything other than the 2004 meeting of Billy and Steve at the Classic Gaming Expo. Someone needs to get in here with yet another documentary crew and stage an intervention. As long as it’s not Michael Moore, I’d support it.

Now, this isn’t to say that The King of Kong isn’t an entertaining movie, because it is. My buddy Jon Gibson of I am 8 bit and Totally Nerdcore fame provides one of the commentaries on the DVD, and he sent me a copy. I’ve watched it several times, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy parts of it. Steve Wiebe is probably the nicest guy in the world, and some of the other characters like Brian Kuh and his repetitive “We’ve got a Donkey Kong kill screen coming up!” line is priceless. Hell, there’s even a t-shirt immortalizing it. It just didn’t hold up for me initially when I saw it after Chasing Ghosts, and once I started hearing about the controversy, my interest has been waning quickly.

On paper, Kong sounds much more exciting. Two rivals, one an arrogant jerk, and the other a likeable everyman square off against each other for the high score of Donkey Kong? It sounds like a Will Ferrell movie idea that Judd Apatow scribbled on a cocktail napkin somewhere. In fact, a few months after the movie was screened at Slamdance, New Line announced that they were going to produce a scripted version of the doc. Truly bizarre. Although, we’ve heard nothing since then, and it looks like it fizzled out in development. Billy and Steve continue to appear at gaming events and play Donkey Kong, though.

A worse byproduct of that proposed adaptation gone wrong is that it probably helped stomp Chasing Ghosts out of existence. I spoke with director Lincoln Ruchti at the Los Angeles premiere of the film last year, and he said that they were close to making a DVD deal with a company, but so far nothing has been announced. The website for the film is a bit out of date, with no news of a release on DVD or anywhere else. It’s unfortunate because it’s a far superior film (even without Steve Wiebe) that explores a brief history of the popularity of arcades while showing the lives, then and now, of many of the high score holders, including Mitchell and uber-ref Day.

Ruchti told me that several people weren’t happy with the way they were portrayed in The King of Kong, and if you see Chasing Ghosts it’s easy to see why. The only trouble is, you may never have the opportunity to see it. If The King of Kong is as close as you can get to this story, just realize that you’re only scratching the surface of the characters. Pixar wunderkind Andrew Stanton saw Chasing Ghosts at Sundance that same year, and flew some of the crew up for a private screening for Pixar employees. Time Out New York film writer Stephen Garrett says in his review of Kong that Ghosts explores the gaming subculture a lot better. Hopefully this movie will be out in some form, even if it’s online, and you can see for yourself. Until then, I’ll try and step off this soapbox. Just one more game, I promise.