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More docs--god, I love Netflix streaming
I have again been watching many documentaries.
Video Games: Behind the Fun and Game On!
After seeing the video game exhibit, I wanted to see a documentary on the history of video games. Netflix watch instantly had two choices: the first a history channel special, the second an MSNBC special. Both were about forty minutes. Though I wouldn't advise it, watching them back to back was interesting. Cause they both followed the same progression of events, used the same examples, and talked to the same video game historians (who you could watch go bald in between the two). But the MSNBC special had five times more content, and they talked to all the actual people--the inventor of the first TV console, several people involved with Pong, including the marketer and the programmer, the American presidents of Nintendo and Sega when their consoles were released. The History Channel filled the rest of their time with new age-y bloviating from the narrator.
So what I'm saying is, if you want just a precis of the history of video games, watch Game On! It's not terribly deep or intelligent programming, but it'll give you an overview. (And did you know, the release of Donkey Kong forced the Japanese government to mint more 100 yen coins?)
Special When Lit
This is a documentary on pinball that I watched...cause. Cause Netflix pulled it up based on the video game docs. I've never had any real relationship to pinball. I feel about it the same way that I feel about Super Smash Brothers--there's too much stuff going on, I have no idea why anything's happening, and then I give up.
What strikes me about pinball, is that when it was popular (and most of the modern players and collectors were kids when there were pinball arcades everywhere), it was the perfect medium for a particular type of nerd. One who utterly fails at human interaction and doesn't really like people, but still wants to be admired by them. Cause I pinball machine in a bar was designed to draw attention to it when the player does well. This was mentioned over and over and over by enthusiasts as a main motivating factor. That there's nothing like having everyone in the area know you just did something cool. So it's something for an introvert to do in public that gives them the positive benefits of social interaction without having to talk to anyone or look them in the eye.
A weird little sidenote in the doc is a dude called the Pingeek, who has made it his life's work to video every existing, workable pinball machine being played. There are thousands of different ones in existence, so if you are a completist, like so many nerds, it's impossible to own them all. So he videotapes them, and then sells the DVDs at pinball cons, which is apparently enough for a living. The doc shows him giving a demo at a con and, man, I can't think of anything more boring than a slightly shaky video of someone playing pinball for an hour, but I totally understand the impulse for people whose obsession this is. So I say, rock on, Pingeek.
Revolution OS
This is a documentary about Linux. Or rather, the open source movement. For subject material that is inherently technical, it was interesting. Though I wish they'd had a little more technical detail, since I'm not sure I actually understand how the different Linux companies actually work.
The most amusing thing about the doc is Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU project, who is clearly on this quest to make people know that what they call Linux is actually mostly GNU. But he's a hippy free spirit, so his pleas are kind of like that guy in Office Space asking for cake. I mean, there's a certain irony here. His whole idea is that software should be free and available to everyone. And his software got adapted by somebody else, and then everybody knew it by that other dude's name, and he can't actually demand that he get credit cause that would violate his hippy principles, but it clearly rankles.
No, actually, the most amusing thing is this doc was shot in 2000 and released in 2001. So it is entirely shaped around the LinuxWorld convention in 2000 and the IPOs of Redhat Linux and VA Linux Systems, both of which broke substantial records. So the doc is all, Linux is the future! Look how succesful it is! But then, between its completion and its release, the dotcom bubble burst, so there are two title cards at the end saying that both Redhat and VA's shares crashed, and VA went out of business. But these title cards are completely incongruous, as they are contravening evidence to the rest of the film, but the filmmaker had no time to do anything more than mention that oh yeah, this happened.
Comedian
I remember seeing the very funny trailer for this back when it released. But the trailer doesn't really explain what the movie is. Jerry Seinfeld, after his HBO special, decided to retire all of his material. So this movie is the process of him building new material. And it is painful. Early in the movie, you see him completely lose his train of thought in a comedy club, which is funny, and then just excruciating, as he can't get it back. He then switches to asking the audience if there are any people who want to be stand-up comedians. At a few cheers, he said, "Well then pay attention, cause this is what it is. I mean, you can't get bigger than me."
What I found interesting about it is the way he and other comedians talked about their act. Because the "act" is both a piece of writing and a piece of performance, and it's a piece of writing that needs to get, well, democratically voted upon. There's this common understanding among comedians that there is no way for a comedian, even an experienced professional, to tell if a joke is good without an audience. Seinfeld spends the whole movie touring and hitting podunk comedy clubs because that is the only way he can write. He has to keep performing and refining and practicing in front of every sort of crowd in every sort of venue to have any confidence in his act.
He's talking to Jay Leno at one point, and Leno is horrified that Seinfeld's retired his material. Leno says that he's still afraid that he'll end up out of a job and have nothing but his act. Your act is what feeds you and clothes you, and you always have it in the back of your head, and you have to keep performing it or you'll lose it. It was interesting to hear the comics talking about their "act" as a singular, monolithic thing. The sum total of all the material they've ever written and performed. And you have to keep performing it to keep that vast database at your fingertips, so that if you ever need to, you can pull any of it out. Leno talks about how he can tell when Seinfeld is pausing to remember the next bit in his new act--and Seinfeld says that it does take an incredibly long time for those transitions to get easy.
The only equivalent I can think of is for touring musicians. The "act" is the equivalent of the repetoire. If you don't keep rotating through all of it, you lose it. And if you're someone who relies on that for income--yeah, I can understand Leno's fear.
But it's such a different way of writing than happens in books. I've also been listening to interviews with screenwriters, who say they can't tell if what they've written is good until they have people come in and read it. Some of them bring in friends to do readings regularly as they work. We talk about killing your children when you write--it seems to me that there's no more brutal and honest a way of doing that than as a stand-up comic. Cause if the material doesn't work, it doesn't work. No matter how much you love it, if you're any good, you have to let it go. I can't help but feel that a lot of novel writers' writing could be improved by similar trials.
Video Games: Behind the Fun and Game On!
After seeing the video game exhibit, I wanted to see a documentary on the history of video games. Netflix watch instantly had two choices: the first a history channel special, the second an MSNBC special. Both were about forty minutes. Though I wouldn't advise it, watching them back to back was interesting. Cause they both followed the same progression of events, used the same examples, and talked to the same video game historians (who you could watch go bald in between the two). But the MSNBC special had five times more content, and they talked to all the actual people--the inventor of the first TV console, several people involved with Pong, including the marketer and the programmer, the American presidents of Nintendo and Sega when their consoles were released. The History Channel filled the rest of their time with new age-y bloviating from the narrator.
So what I'm saying is, if you want just a precis of the history of video games, watch Game On! It's not terribly deep or intelligent programming, but it'll give you an overview. (And did you know, the release of Donkey Kong forced the Japanese government to mint more 100 yen coins?)
Special When Lit
This is a documentary on pinball that I watched...cause. Cause Netflix pulled it up based on the video game docs. I've never had any real relationship to pinball. I feel about it the same way that I feel about Super Smash Brothers--there's too much stuff going on, I have no idea why anything's happening, and then I give up.
What strikes me about pinball, is that when it was popular (and most of the modern players and collectors were kids when there were pinball arcades everywhere), it was the perfect medium for a particular type of nerd. One who utterly fails at human interaction and doesn't really like people, but still wants to be admired by them. Cause I pinball machine in a bar was designed to draw attention to it when the player does well. This was mentioned over and over and over by enthusiasts as a main motivating factor. That there's nothing like having everyone in the area know you just did something cool. So it's something for an introvert to do in public that gives them the positive benefits of social interaction without having to talk to anyone or look them in the eye.
A weird little sidenote in the doc is a dude called the Pingeek, who has made it his life's work to video every existing, workable pinball machine being played. There are thousands of different ones in existence, so if you are a completist, like so many nerds, it's impossible to own them all. So he videotapes them, and then sells the DVDs at pinball cons, which is apparently enough for a living. The doc shows him giving a demo at a con and, man, I can't think of anything more boring than a slightly shaky video of someone playing pinball for an hour, but I totally understand the impulse for people whose obsession this is. So I say, rock on, Pingeek.
Revolution OS
This is a documentary about Linux. Or rather, the open source movement. For subject material that is inherently technical, it was interesting. Though I wish they'd had a little more technical detail, since I'm not sure I actually understand how the different Linux companies actually work.
The most amusing thing about the doc is Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU project, who is clearly on this quest to make people know that what they call Linux is actually mostly GNU. But he's a hippy free spirit, so his pleas are kind of like that guy in Office Space asking for cake. I mean, there's a certain irony here. His whole idea is that software should be free and available to everyone. And his software got adapted by somebody else, and then everybody knew it by that other dude's name, and he can't actually demand that he get credit cause that would violate his hippy principles, but it clearly rankles.
No, actually, the most amusing thing is this doc was shot in 2000 and released in 2001. So it is entirely shaped around the LinuxWorld convention in 2000 and the IPOs of Redhat Linux and VA Linux Systems, both of which broke substantial records. So the doc is all, Linux is the future! Look how succesful it is! But then, between its completion and its release, the dotcom bubble burst, so there are two title cards at the end saying that both Redhat and VA's shares crashed, and VA went out of business. But these title cards are completely incongruous, as they are contravening evidence to the rest of the film, but the filmmaker had no time to do anything more than mention that oh yeah, this happened.
Comedian
I remember seeing the very funny trailer for this back when it released. But the trailer doesn't really explain what the movie is. Jerry Seinfeld, after his HBO special, decided to retire all of his material. So this movie is the process of him building new material. And it is painful. Early in the movie, you see him completely lose his train of thought in a comedy club, which is funny, and then just excruciating, as he can't get it back. He then switches to asking the audience if there are any people who want to be stand-up comedians. At a few cheers, he said, "Well then pay attention, cause this is what it is. I mean, you can't get bigger than me."
What I found interesting about it is the way he and other comedians talked about their act. Because the "act" is both a piece of writing and a piece of performance, and it's a piece of writing that needs to get, well, democratically voted upon. There's this common understanding among comedians that there is no way for a comedian, even an experienced professional, to tell if a joke is good without an audience. Seinfeld spends the whole movie touring and hitting podunk comedy clubs because that is the only way he can write. He has to keep performing and refining and practicing in front of every sort of crowd in every sort of venue to have any confidence in his act.
He's talking to Jay Leno at one point, and Leno is horrified that Seinfeld's retired his material. Leno says that he's still afraid that he'll end up out of a job and have nothing but his act. Your act is what feeds you and clothes you, and you always have it in the back of your head, and you have to keep performing it or you'll lose it. It was interesting to hear the comics talking about their "act" as a singular, monolithic thing. The sum total of all the material they've ever written and performed. And you have to keep performing it to keep that vast database at your fingertips, so that if you ever need to, you can pull any of it out. Leno talks about how he can tell when Seinfeld is pausing to remember the next bit in his new act--and Seinfeld says that it does take an incredibly long time for those transitions to get easy.
The only equivalent I can think of is for touring musicians. The "act" is the equivalent of the repetoire. If you don't keep rotating through all of it, you lose it. And if you're someone who relies on that for income--yeah, I can understand Leno's fear.
But it's such a different way of writing than happens in books. I've also been listening to interviews with screenwriters, who say they can't tell if what they've written is good until they have people come in and read it. Some of them bring in friends to do readings regularly as they work. We talk about killing your children when you write--it seems to me that there's no more brutal and honest a way of doing that than as a stand-up comic. Cause if the material doesn't work, it doesn't work. No matter how much you love it, if you're any good, you have to let it go. I can't help but feel that a lot of novel writers' writing could be improved by similar trials.