The Social Network

Spoiler alert-o-meter: Mild to medium spoiler alerts ahead.

Week 2. There are a lot of ideas in David Fincher’s latest film, The Social Network, as least as many as there were in the head of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg when he was a sophomore at Harvard in 2003. The movie covers the year Mark took Harvard’s campus-only student connection network, the Face Book, into the invite-only world of juried friendship known today as Facebook. One year. It’s incredible how quickly the landscape, attitude, and texture of online communication exponentially changes.

The film breathlessly takes us from the early decisions Mark makes regarding how and why he does what he does, to the many repercussions of creating Facebook out of someone else’s idea, and turning it into a powerhouse of social networking, where friends yeah or neah your inclusion into their world. 

When we first meet Mark (a transformative performance by Jesse Eisenberg) he tries and fails to relate with his girlfriend (Mara Rooney). He appears to have no emotions, or at least all the wrong ones. He can’t read social situations, and is totally blindsided when she breaks ups with him. Jealousy, anger, and frustration get blended into a potent cocktail, and when you consider that all these generation-defining characters are college-age and just above, it’s no surprise these youthful emotions are central to the movie.

Mark has a best friend, Eduardo (Andrew Garfield), a fellow student and outcast who provides early seed money for Mark's venture. Mark's jealousy flairs when Eduardo is chosen to join an exclusive Harvard club, one that won’t consider him. Other objects of his jealousy take the form of the blond, althletic Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler (both played by acter Armie Hammer), seniors at Harvard, and expert rowers who consider themselves specimens of Harvard ethics.

The twins hire Mark to expand their idea for a social network on Harvard’s campus. Mark listens to their ideas, then goes off and writes his own code for a similar site. When his site, The Facebook, goes live, the twins find out about it nearly two days later after hundreds of students have already joined. They have been beaten to the gate. In the lightning-fast world of hype and the Internet, getting there first means everything. And since Mark essentially wrote all his own code, he believes he did not stealing anything.

The story is told as a flashback originating from the deposition sessions for lawsuits sparked by Mark's actions. The twins end up suing, after much ethical debate, and a useless, but humorous visit to then Harvard president Lawrence Summers. Mark, with steely countenance and an utter okayness in himself and what he has done, says to the twins during their deposition: “If you were the inventors of Facebook, then you would have invented Facebook.” Point taken. Ultimately the twins did not, and, according to this version of real-life events, Mark did.

Mark has lots of help. Including the guy who started Napster, Sean Parker. Played by Justin Timberlake, Parker is a cocky, overly self assured young man who has some good ideas, but more important he has contacts with money men. He also has the wide and deep vision which Eduardo does not. While Eduardo is dutifully and busily trying to find advertisers to monetize the burgeoning site (which Mark is totally against because it would make a cool site very uncool), Parker helps take The Facebook (which he rechristens Facebook) out of Harvard and into other schools. He subsequently moves Mark out to Palo Alto and helps him secure venture capital which is where the real money comes from. Friends (even Facebook friends) be damned.

The second lawsuit concerns Eduardo, who we find out later gets kicked out of the Facebook family, albeit legally since he signed papers he never read. Throughout the film Eduardo is Mark's only true friend. Sean Parker may get Mark laid but Eduardo was always a sounding board and a good guy. Since it's not all about money for Mark, we have to assume Eduardo's ouster is a reflection of Mark's deep-seeded jealousy.

While the film is constructed within the framework of legal maneuvers and the legalese of who did what to whom when, it is mainly concerned with the brilliant young men who want to make a mark. There is a bemused detachment to the presentation, a feeling of marching just behind the action. We are not necessarily part of the action, but, like Eduardo and the Winklevoss twins, we are stragglers trying always to keep up.

When Mark spouts computer-language speak as fast as he can to keep up with ever-shifting brain, the audience can only marvel. Maybe that’s the point—those who aren’t fast enough for the business of the Internet have no business attempting to tame it. And those who are blessed with fleet ideas and C++ get there first. The music by Trent Rezner keeps things atmospheric, always marching, and slightly ominous. Reminding viewers to stay on their toes, and that nothing is quite as it appears.

After the movie I mentioned to Liz that there were few female characters, and only one in a position of power and decision-making (Eduardo's lawyer). The girls in the movie are spurned girlfriends, partying college girls, or shrill club sluts. Is this a reflection on the writers (Aaron Sorkin did the screenplay, based on the book The Accidental Billionaires, by Ben Mezrich) or on the characters who fuel the story? Boys playing at men. Boys who have an arrested adolescent approach to feelings and love, and think girls are no deeper or meaningful than the latest issue of Maxim. (Sorkin talks about this subject here.) There are also no parents around--except for the twins' father, fleetingly. So where did these precocious rug rats learn their ethics? On the debate team? The Internet?

Toward the end of the film, Sean Parker is arrested at a house party where there are drugs and underage girls. He seems small now, scared, pimply. In his pockets, instead of a bag of cocaine and money, the police find his asthma inhaler. These accidental billionaires are all adolescent bravado, playing at being rich and popular. The Social Network brings this microcosm of a specific moment in the very short history of social networking and makes fun, engrossing, and throuroughly realistic. Even if we can never be sure how it all really went down.



Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase, Tuesday night bargain show. Price $6.00. Viewed with Liz.
Snacks—mixed nuts

Coming Attractions:

The Dilemma. Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connolly, Winona Ryder. Directed by Ron Howard. This could also be called, "Where Starlets Go After They Turn 35." All I can think is that Jennifer and Winona, who can be wonderful actresses, take these types of supporting roles because there are no other roles offered. Both actresses are relegated to wife roles. Winona plays a woman who cheats on her husband (James) but is discovered by his best friend (Vaughn). So, the movie’s dilemma is, should Vaughn tell his best friend his wife’s cheating. Regardless, it’s great to see Winona Ryder in a mainstream movie again.

The Tourist. Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie. “Revolves around Frank, an American tourist visiting Italy to mend a broken heart. Elise is an extraordinary woman who deliberately crosses his path.” Is she a spy? Is he? Nothing is as it seems…

I Am Number 4. Looks like a cheesy videogame. More of a teaser for the movie than a preview. Maybe it’s an early version of the trailer. Or, there’s trouble in the editing room as the producers figure out what kind of movie they’ve been saddled with.

Love and Other Drugs. Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway. It’s a rom-com. Liz said, “It’s weird to see Jake Gyllenhaal smile.” He plays a slick salesman who falls for a beautiful free spirit. So, maybe we’re not supposed to trust his smile.

How do you know? Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson. Directed by James L. Brooks. All star cast, big director. What could go wrong? It looks entertaining enough, but Brooks has had a very spotty record in the last decade and what he thinks is funny hasn’t been since the late-80s. Still, great cast. Looks cute and honest. Promises to be a large-ish Christmas movie.

The Town

Week 1. The Town, directed by Ben Affleck, is smart. We know this because the hardened bank robbers who make short work of those banks and armored cars in Cambridge, the North End, and other Boston-area locations pay attention to detail. In the opening bank robbery, the cell phones of everyone in the bank are collected, dumped into a candy bowl, and covered with water. It’s that kind of detail that needs paying attention to, because today’s movie audience for a bank robbery, a hatchet murder, a quirky romance, high tech corporate espionage, or a comic book adaptation knows all the answers already. So a good director won’t give the audience a reason to ask questions, or time to think of them.

The Town is isn’t quite short, shrewd, or fast enough not to give the audience time or reason to ask, but it’s a sturdy, enjoyable ride, and refreshing in the way that The Friends of Eddie Coyle was probably a blast of something new almost forty years ago. The Town is nothing new, but you don’t always recognize the used parts, and that’s good.

Ben Affleck plays Doug, a recovering alcoholic, working stiff from Charlestown, MA., and bank robber. It’s in his blood. His father (gravitas: supplied by Chris Cooper) is doing some time up in a New Hampshire prison for robbing banks, but before he went away he passed his knowledge to Doug.

Doug seems like a good guy. He’s relatively smart, or at least knows smart when he sees it. He’s shagging the town pump and family friend, Krista, played by TV actress Blake Lively (in a performance that made me forget I’ve seen her someplace before—and announces a new Ellen Barkin for 2010). On Doug’s team is Krista’s brother, Jim, effectively played by Jeremy Renner. Jim’s quick with a gun and would rather not leave witnesses, but what are you gonna do? Shoot everyone? Rounding out the team are two other guys, one an electronics expert who learned his stuff working for local phone company Vericom. Replace com with zon and you’ve Massachusetts phone company Verizon.

During the robbery that opens the movie, the gang takes a hostage and gets away with the loot. The hostage is a beautiful bank teller, Claire, played by the lovely Rebecca Hall who brings an understated naturalness to the role. After the gang lets her go (she’s blind folded the whole time), Jim insists on cleaning up this loose end, thinking she'll somehow give away their identities. Doug tails her, makes contact, and falls for her. Meanwhile, the Boston branch of the FBI, manifested by Jon Hamm (sans any Boston accent -- and that’s a good thing) uses Claire to finally get close enough to try to take the gang down.

Doug wants different life away from the streets of The Town. He'll take down one last score (or two, but who’s counting?) and leave town with Claire. I never forget I’m watching Ben Affleck, but that’s okay because he’s fun to watch, inherently likeable. But as director and star, Affleck gives all the showy moments to Jeremy Renner, who really plays a menacing character well. Renner does what he can, saddled with a character who “can’t go back to prison” after doing nine years for killing a man (for the sake of Doug—thanks for nothing).

There’s an armored car robbery and subsequent high speed chase through the streets of the North End that is impressive, and the final shootout/showdown underneath and outside of Fenway Park is pretty breathless. But the action scenes were shot as if from across the street, where Affleck’s direction must have been “Zoom in. No zoom out.” Lots of movement but no real pace or logic. Which seems to be the way chase/action scenes have been shot for the past 10-15 years.

William Friedkin shot one of the best chase scenes for The French Connection, where the camera was put in the front seat of the car, and out on the street and sidewalk—where you’re either driving or about to get hit. Then George Miller amped it up in Mad Max, put the camera down by the bumper and drove cars as fast as they could, so now you’re a neighboring car angling for supremacy, or you’re a poor slob wrapped around a bumper. For today’s movies it seems like the cameras get a lot of coverage (or, maybe not enough) and these action scenes are literally created in post-production, with the result generally an unintelligible mess. Film is a language--learn it.

Pete Postlethwaite shows up as the gang’s boss, the guy who Doug’s father worked for back in the day. Pete is an actor who just needs to show up for things to get real. He’s got a great face, and he’s always pissed off. And you do not want Pete Postlethwaite mad at you.

Doug (ben’s character) possesses, if not the smarts, at least the knowledge about robbing banks. But the jobs these guys pull off are so slick and professional, I just don’t buy that these four neighborhood guys could pull it together to make these heists. Do these kinds of sophisticated, coordinated jobs really go down in Boston? Anywhere? Charlestown, MA. apparently breeds more bank robbers than anyplace else in the country, yet most of the robberies on the local news involve extremely dimwitted young men who can barely find the exit when they’re done playing stick-up.

It would have been nice if the Doug character showed more intellect, more—hell I’ll say it—more Good Will Hunting savantness for me to believe he’s the ringleader and the brains behind this operation. Even if Pete Postlethwaite’s pulling the strings, somebody has to execute the plan, and I just don’t see these guys doing it.

Oddly distracting for me were the exterior scenes shot in Boston. Especially in the beginning when the gang rob a bank in Harvard Square. I couldn’t help but try to recognize the locations. That’s part of the fun of living near Boston where many movies have been shot in the past decade thanks to tax breaks. And the location shooting adds a layer of authenticity that a movie like this needs. Adding to the local connection, the movie is an adaptation of local author Chuck Hogan's book Prince of Thieves. 

If you miss the crime dramas of the ‘70s, then I recommend The Town.

Stats:

Theater location: Lowell Showcase. Saturday afternoon matinee. Price: 8.50. Viewed solo.

Coming Attractions:

The Company Men. Another Ben Affleck movie with Chris Cooper, along with Maria Bello, Tommy Lee Jones, and Kevin Costner. More Boston locations. About white collar workers who lose their jobs and learn some wit and wisdom from blue collar nimrod Costner. Looks pretty good, although, like many trailers, appears to show the entire arc of the story.

The Fighter. Shot in Lowell, so of course I’ll be seeing this one. About Mickey Ward, the boxer from our mean streets. Story seems very conventional, following the sports underdog template: athlete has potential, has personal problems, loses his first shot, overcomes adversity, gets a second shot. On the plus side it's directed by David O. Russell.

Next Katherine Heigel flop. This movie releases this Friday I think, yet I’ve seen previews for it so many times I feel like it’s already hit theaters, tanked, and is now getting a quick-turnaround DVD-release.

Cat Fish. I hadn’t been interested in this documentary until I saw the trailer. Now I’m intrigued.

Unreliable Narrator Goes to the Movies

As I announced on Thursday, UN is getting an extreme makeover*. Starting next week I will write about a movie a week for a year.

Before you click away in disgust, let me explain:

When I was a kid, I went to the local movie theater every weekend—often on Friday nights—to see whichever new movie was out that week. I loved the gestalt of movie going. The one-sheet posters in the lobby and out front. The lobby cards (photos of scenes from the movie—which I haven’t seen used in years). The smell of the lobby: gum, popcorn, butter: both fresh and stale. Waiting in line at the concession stand to buy Pom Poms, Milk Duds, Twizzlers, or popcorn, and a large Pepsi.

Every movie was a hoot—the good and the bad. Movies were an event. Each week was a small Christmas. Going to a movie combined many of my favorite things—candy, soda, friends, and getting out of the house without adult supervision. Going to the movies was, ultimately, a celebration of the mighty Friday night when school was over for the week and the weekend lay ahead, unadorned (until Sunday afternoon when I had to buckle down and do my homework).

This weekly devotion to movies was planted early. The first movie I saw in a theater that I remember was a David Niven movie from the late '60s called The Brain. The theater was in Manhattan. Why were we all there? The whole family? Mom, dad, me, my three older sisters? In a building that was many blocks long and as tall as the tallest skyscraper. The inside of the theater seemed many stories high, the aisles as long as a football field, the screen stretched wide and convex.

My sister, Cindy, loved movies and shared this love with me. She took me to see The Sting, which I didn’t really understand. Was it funny? Scary? Sad? What happened at the end? I didn’t get it. That didn’t stop me from loving movies, and the experience of movie-going. She took me to see all the disaster movies I could stomach: The Towering Inferno, Airport ‘77, Earthquake. She was excited to take me to see Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I begged her to drive me and my obnoxious friends to see the King Kong remake. The one with Jeff Bridges. And Jessica Lange! Va va voom!

When The Exorcist came out there was a furor in the mainstream media. The trailer played on TV and it was the most frightening thing I ever saw. Or heard, since I hid behind the couch or ran out of the room when it came on. That movie, and the ideas behind it which I never understood when I was growing up, just twisted through my malleable young mind and gave me nightmares for months. In a weird way, that experience of thinking about a movie so hard that it affected the way I thought solidified my attraction, my repulsion, my non-stop love affair with movies.

So much so that when I graduated high school I went to film school. I learned all about how films were made. I learned how to shoot and edit and light and direct actors. I learned that an extension cord is called a stinger. I crewed on student films and struggled to write a script for my senior thesis. And I watched a lot of films (no longer movies, but films). Deconstructing and reconstructing films was an unforgettable experience.

I didn’t consider it at the time, but it also scraped away the mystery of the movies. When I moved to Los Angeles for 16 months in 1990-91, I learned more about the business of the movies. In L.A., Hollywood is front page news, not relegated to just the Calendar or Arts section. It wore me down. It ruined that initial little-kid excitement I felt growing up. Movies had been larger than life. Now they were just a business. I didn’t last long out there.

That was twenty years ago. I still watch a lot of movies. Mostly I watch movies on DVD. I go to the theater occasionally. But very seldom catch that movie-fever feeling I had as a kid. I’m not blaming film school, or Los Angeles. There is no blame, because there is no problem. I learned what I wanted out of both experiences, and met some great people, made lifelong friends, some of whom are still in the business of making movies. But this last point brings me back to my first point.

I’m going to watch a movie a week for a year and write about it. Mostly new movies. These will be more than reviews. I’ll write about the entire experience. I’ll mention who I went to the movie with. And the theater I saw the movie in. And the trailers they showed. There may be spoiler alerts because what’s a discussion about a movie if you don’t include the entire enchilada?

But, finally, I’m doing this because I want to catch that feeling I had when I went to the movies and it was like celebrating a birthday and opening gifts and dating the hottest girl in school. Why did going to the movies change? And why do I not care about 95% of the movies that get released, when as a kid I was egalitarian? Did I get big, or did the pictures get small?

Give me a year and I’ll give you 52 movies. We’ll find out together.

* Note: I will still post about literature, books, publishing, and writing if something strikes me. So, like a book featuring multiple narrators, not all of whom you sympathize with: if there's a post you're not enjoying, wait a couple days next one.

Big Announcement, Big Changes

October 4th is my two-year anniversary writing this blog. My first post talked about a class I had just finished at Grub Street. Two years later I'm still talking about taking classes and writing and books and publishing. For the most part. Which is great. And I plan to continue writing about writing, but just not on this blog. 

Why keep a blog? It is standard publishing-business wisdom that a writer trying to make it in the cut-throat lit world must keep an active blog, keeping a high profile up and running continuously. So, that's what I've been doing. And I love keeping a blog, but feel I've covered, in two years, about all I can say about my little world of literary without starting to get redundant.

And if we're talking audience, I've averaged about 20 views a day for a good long time, and don't see that changing. So switching it up at this point isn't going to break a lot of lit hearts. Besides, as my regular readers probably know, I post over at Beyond the Margins once every couple of weeks. I'm lucky and grateful to be a part of that blog and am finding more often than not I save my tastiest morsels for that outlet.

But I love Unreliable Narrator, and am glad I started it when I did and have kept it going, because it's a wonderful feeling to look back over two year's worth of posts and see the bulk of writing that continues to accumulate. I had no idea I could turn the fiction side of me off so cleanly, and push aside my technical writer brain, for these brief spells. It's been a challenge to write in these chunked blocks of essays.

Unreliable Narrator has never been about the daily life of a writer. I've never felt comfortable spilling my guts on an internationally accessible forum. I did not use UN to talk closely about my current writing projects ("Dear UN, today really sucked because chapter 3 is not going well. I'm having trouble with Claude, my new talking horse character, and also I can't seem to describe how maple syrup flows, or how one chainsaws a branch. I wonder if I should write in third person instead of first? That flashback I wrote last week about Claude's bad time with the nuns back in parochial school is taking on a life of its own, and could be the start of a screenplay or a pilot."), although there are writing blogs that have that focus, which is well and good.

But I am of the mind that after you start talking to everyone you know about your current project, the air starts getting let out of the proverbial first-draft tires, and soon you can't help thinking what everyone is thinking about your writing. I'd rather go off in a corner and write for a few years, then start showing it to people, and then start worrying about what people think about it.

So. I'm trying something different with UN. Starting in a couple days the format will change, temporarily. For one year I will be writing about a topic other than literature (for the most part, there will be days when I will just have to share some writer/book/pub thing with y'all). What's that other thing? I'll announce it soon. While I whip up a tasty post about why I want to write about that topic, and the concept behind the switch. Yes, there's a concept, an idea. Or as they say in the publishing world, a platform. My blog is soon to have a platform.

October is Literary Festival Time -- 2010 Edition

If you live in Massachusetts, and are a reader or writer, then it's a good time of year. Over the next month there are no fewer than three festivals geared toward book lovers and writers. The following is a run down of the upcoming events.

Jack Kerouac Literary Festival
Where: Downtown Lowell, MA
When: Sept 30-Oct 3
Cost: Most events are free, although donations for some events encouraged

This is an annual event here in Lowell, although this year the festival is touted as new and expanded. The Jack Kerouac Lit Festival boasts a great line up of authors and speakers including Alan Lightman, Jay Atkinson, Russell Banks, Andre Dubus III, Ann Hood, Tom Perrotta, and Anita Shreve.

There will be lots of readings, films, panel discussions, walking tours, and other events. The cobblestone streets and industrial mill architecture in and around downtown Lowell really lend a great atmosphere for this crowd-pleasing event.

Highlights include:

• Historical Kerouac pubs tour (Friday night starting at the Worthen House tavern)
• Poetry and street prose competition
• Dennis McNally's presentation on Kerouac and the American Bohemian
• A walk in Doctor Sax's woods led by Margarita Turcotte
• Children's book illustrators event, featuring David Macaulay, Chris VanAllsburg, David Wiesner, Christopher Bing, Kelly Murphy, and Matt Tavares.
• "Art and Commerce" panel discussion, featuring Anita Shreve, Ann Hood, and Tom Perrotta.

Boston Book Festival
Where: Copley Square, Boston
When: Saturday, October 16th
Cost: Most events are free

In only its second year, the Boston Book Festival (BBF) promises to convene plenty of talent for a single day of packed events. I attended last year and the hardest part is deciding which event to view at any one time since there are multiple events for each time slot. But, how else can you do it? There is a great variety, so if you're a fiction writer or reader, then you can choose a fiction reading over a memoir reading. While the schedule hasn't been set, click here to see a description of each planned event.

Speakers and authors slated to show include Atul Gawande, Stacy Schiff, Nick Flynn, Joyce Carol Oates (keynote), Chip Kidd, Bill Bryson, David Shields, Daphne Kalotay, Michelle Hoover, Gish Jen, Ann Hood, Joshua Ferris, Tom Perrotta, Dennis Lehane, A.M. Homes, and many more. And be on the lookout for fellow Beyond the Marginer and Drum founder Henriette Lazaridis Power who will be hosting the Fiction: Time and Place and Fiction: the Web of Relationship events.

Highlights include:

• Writer idol: Have a professional actor perform the first page of your manuscript, then stick around while a panel of four judges that includes agents and editors let you know what they think. Presented by Grub Street. I attended this one last year, and it's actually a great way to get some immediate feedback on your first page, to find out whether it's working or not working, and why. And you also get an idea of what kind of writing agents and editors are seeking.
• Guided open mic. With Steve Almond. Get on up there and read five minutes of your story, novel, or what have you, then see what Mr. Almond has to say about it, in terms of performance and reading choice.
• Antique book appraisal. Bring in your rare and antique books, maps and ephemera for appraisal by  respected industry experts. Sponsored by the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair.
• The Book Revue: An evening of music and words. Features Nick Flynn, Kristin Hersh, Dean Wareham, and Joe Pernice.
• Lots of booths representing literary magazines and book publishers. Great place to pick up stuff that's often hard to find elsewhere.

Concord Festival of Authors

Where: Concord, MA

When: October 20 - November 7, 2010 (2 weeks, people!)

Cost: Most events are free

The Concord Festival of Authors has been around for years. And for the past few years some of the events were held in Lowell. Unfortunately this year not a one will grace city limits. I suppose it makes sense if you're a festival with Concord in the title. It was never the Concord and Lowell festival. Still, it will be missed here in town.

This year's lineup offers up the usual stellar cast of authors who just want to talk about books and writing and publishing. Is that so wrong? Authors scheduled to appear include: Gish Jen, Brunonia Barry, Jon Katz, Andrew J. Bacevich, Nathanial Philbrick, Iris Gomez, Rusty Barnes, Tara Masih, Pauline Maier, David Macaulay, and Stace Budzko among others.

Highlights include:

• Hoaxes, Frauds, and Forgeries. Panel discussion.
• New Literary Voices 2010. Four emerging fiction writers (including Iris Gomez) discuss and read from their work.
• Flash Fiction Panel. Discussion to answer the question, what is flash fiction. Features Rusty Barnes with whom I've studied at Grub Street. And yes, he knows much about flash fiction.
• Publishing a Book in the Digital Age, panel discussion.
• Community Reading Series. Poetry reading sponsored by The Concord Poetry Center.