Shanked - Pt. 4

It had rained Sunday night, and I almost slipped on the dark marble floors of the Main Building as I rushed up the stairs to my anthropology class. The halls were filled with students – made-up JAPS in designer loungewear talking on their cellphones; bed-headed bluebloods nursing giant cups of coffee and trying to deduce who went home with the remnants of Saturday night’s eightball; perpetually stressed grad students self-consciously making their way through the gaggle of philistines they were charged with educating. The student body was relatively small, and after a year most of the faces were familiar. With my hoodie up, my headphones on, and a strained look on my face, I was consciously hoping to avoid conversation, and aside from a nod to the fat dude who lived across the hall freshman year I made it to class anonymously.

Intro to Anthropology was held in a large auditorium on the third floor. I walked in a few minutes late, just after Professor Wilkinson had begun his lecture. I made a beeline for the back of the room, jogging up the stairs two at a time. My head was down, but I was certain that everyone was staring at me. I found a seat on the aisle, next to a stoner chick.

Last Friday, when I came to class wearing a coat and tie in accordance with team tradition, I had savored the attention. I knew that all of the guys in the room were comforting themselves with the knowledge that I was only a kicker, but I also knew that the girls they were sitting next to had a more rudimentary understanding of the hierarchy of football positions – I was dressed up before game day, which meant that I was a football player, which meant that it might be in their best interests to meet me. Now, as I settled into my seat and watched the guys whisper to the girls and glance in my direction, I knew that even the most sports-ignorant listener would get the picture: that’s the guy who lost the game.

That’s the shitty thing about being a kicker is that everyone else on the team (aside from maybe the long snapper) is assured of their alpha dog status regardless of the team’s record. **** might go for 22 yards, zero touchdowns and five interceptions, but at the end of the day he’s still the quarterback, and the girls still want to tickle his prostate. My precarious place on the ladder, on the other hand, is wholly dependent on performance. If I’m making badass kicks, I am grudgingly granted some of the perks afforded to the Division I football player. But after a crucial miss, I am not only no longer a football player in the eyes of most, I am demoted to a position on par with the guy got caught masturbating in the photography section of the library.

Appropriately enough, the day’s lecture was devoted to the social habits of gorillas. I tuned in just after Wilkinson had cracked the day’s first lame joke, judging by the forced laughter that replaced the Neil Young I had been listening to. With his thick beard, L.L. Bean outfit, bushy gray hair, and condescending tone, Wilkinson was a vulgar caricature of the boho lifestyle. Twenty years ago, when he was a fresh-faced wunderkind with a few groundbreaking articles under his belt, he probably had the coeds in a state of perpetual arousal, but the eagerness he once devoted to his work had been diverted to simply winning the respect of increasingly skeptical students. His use of the vernacular may have impressed students back in the late 70s, but nowadays it was simply wack.

Still, the urgency with which he described the love mother gorillas felt for their offspring reminded me that he cared deeply about the subject, which is more than I could say of most professors. I tried to pay attention and take notes, as much to avoid the looks of my classmates as to keep up with the lecture. After a minute, my notes evolved into an uninteresting doodle of overlapping triangles, and I started thinking about practice. My grades were pretty good, but during football season I found that any academic thinking was inevitably polluted with worries about botched snaps, bad wind conditions, and sideline tirades. Whenever my report card arrived in the mail, my father reminded me that every year Harvard Law reduced the points granted to legacy applicants. This might have disturbed me, had I shared my father’s certainty that I was destined to take over his practice. As it was, I couldn’t think much beyond next Saturday.

A half-hour into the lecture, Wilkinson dimmed the lights and pulled down the projector for a Nova documentary about Jane Goodall. I had watched it with my mother when I was 12, so I put my head down on the tiny writing desk that was attached to the ancient wooden chair and dozed off. The narrator’s soothing voice rumbled through the room, up the chair, and into my body, and I savored 40 minutes of thoughtless repose. I was roused by the lights, and slowly filed out of the room behind my groggy classmates.

“Mr. Kempton! May I have a word?”

I halted my retreat and looked up at Wilkinson. How did he know who I was? I moved awkwardly over to the table he was standing behind. He continued gathering his papers as the last students exited and I waited nervously in front of him. This was the first time I had ever spoken one-on-one with a professor.

“Hello,” he said, still focused on his papers.

“Um, hi.”

“You know, I don’t usually watch football – Animal Planet’s more my speed – but I did happen to catch the very end of Saturday’s game, and as soon as you stepped on the pitch I recognized you from class.”

“Uh, yep. That was me.”

Apparently this guy was a bigger asshole than I originally thought.

“So as soon as I saw your name on the screen I put it together with the very insightful paper I had just finished comparing silverback mating habits with the local bar scene. Very creative.”

Aging hippies like Wilkinson always dig it when you subvert academic convention and integrate real-life experience into your work. I just think it’s groovy to free-associate for 15 minutes and net a solid B+.

“Yeah, well, I just thought I’d try a different approach.”

“I’m glad you did. Most of your peers are less adventurous.”

“Hmm…” OK, he had provided the embattled kicker with a ray of sunshine. Could I leave now?

“Anyway, I’m sure it must be tough during times like this, but if you ever want to talk my door is open. I find college athletics fascinating –from an anthropological standpoint. Maybe we could find a way to integrate this experience into your final project.”

“I’ll definitely think about it… I better go – practice is about to start.”

“Certainly. Keep up the good work.”

I ran out of the Main Building and across the quad, barely making it to the locker room in time.

Hubris and the Beast

With a budget of $207 million, a director can buy many things: an A-list cast, mind-blowing effects, a servicable script, massive buzz and, in the case of Peter Jackson’s King Kong, enough film stock (or its digital equivalent) to wow the audience into submission. Given the financial and artistic success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, which enjoyed an equally absurd budget, Jackson and his backers can be forgiven their faith in bigger, faster, and more. However, in the case of that Academy Award-winning venture, Jackson repressed his inner auteur and played craftsman to Tolkien’s architect, faithfully transferring the fantasy epic from the page to the screen. Although Jackson credits the original Kong as a huge personal influence, he apparently feels little devotion to its creators, Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace. Utilizing beauty’s primal lure and its attendant dangers as his thematic foundation, Jackson heaps on layers of visual artistry, literary allusion, meta-bullshit, and technological showmanship, resulting in a movie that is enjoyable but not great, and too long by an hour.

The original King Kong tells the story of the filmmaker Carl Denham, the dashing sailor Jack Driscoll, and the beautiful actress Ann Darrow, who are traveling to Skull Island in search of an exotic location for filming. What they find is Kong, an oversized gorilla who has the native population trembling in their loincloths. Lured by her pasty beauty, Kong captures Ann and strikes a blow for the wild and hirsute. Not to be outdone, Jack rescues Ann, and Carl brings a temporarily subdued Kong back to New York City, where he meets a grisly end atop the Empire State Building.

Jackson’s basic story is faithful to the original, with a few telling modifications: Denham’s sleaze factor is ratcheted up, the better to showcase Jack Black’s manic humor; Jack Driscoll is a writer, not a sailor (such a conventionally macho hero would threaten Jackson’s free-spending fanboys); and a small sub-cast of supporting players (including a plucky runaway, soft-hearted first mate, salty chef, etc.) has been tacked on to provide the comic relief and easy emotional involvement that anchor every blockbuster, even those helmed by world-renowned directors.

None of the human performances are particularly memorable, which is unsurprising considering the 8,000 lbs. gorilla in the room. Jack Black’s hyperkinetic condescension wins a few laughs, but he is constrained by a rigid character arc that leaves little wiggle room. Naomi Watts delivers an admirable performance, but it is a shame that Jackson is unable to exploit the celluloid-melting sexuality she exhibited in Mulholland Drive. And Adrien Brody… has a big nose. Sorry, Brodster, but you’re not winning another Oscar unless Polanski decides to cast you as himself in an upcoming project exploring Hollywood greed, sixties fanaticism, and statutory rape.

But what about Kong? Well, he’s visually spectacular. Fresh from their success in Middle-earth, Jackson and his Weta Digital crew are in top form. Just as Gollum was one of LOTR’s most convincing characters, Kong’s appearance, movements, and facial expressions are completely natural (thanks in part to Andy Serkis, who “played” both Gollum and Kong). Introduced as a symbol of primordial rage, Kong soon wins us over with his dog-like loyalty to Ann. At the film’s conclusion, the character we are most deeply invested in is Kong, but we are left wanting more. Kong is cute, Kong has feelings, and Kong is treated like shit, but we already knew that, and Jackson promised a bigger payoff. Perhaps he should have followed the path blazed by Gus Van Sant in his remake of Psycho, and simply recreated the original King Kong scene-for-scene, spicing things up with the latest special effects. Unfortunately, the technological and conceptual ambition that served LOTR so well makes for a bloated Kong.

Watching the new Kong’s special effects sequences is like being stuck on a roller coaster – the first go-round is exhilarating, the second run is a chance to catch your breath and take in the thrill of it all, but by the third trip you’ve had enough and just want to use the bathroom. The scope and realism of Jackson’s world, from Depression-era New York City (which is almost entirely computer-generated) to Skull Island, is absolutely breathtaking. Any action junkie short on time should show up for the movie’s middle hour, which includes a dinosaur stampede filmed at mach three and a wrestling match between Kong and a T-Rex that would make Hulk Hogan wince. Unfortunately, Jackson doesn’t know when to quit. After arriving at Skull Island, the audience is subjected to a near-constant barrage of action, much of which does little to advance the plot. Particularly gratuitous is a disgusting insect scene which is fun but completely unnecessary. And while even the most jaded New Yorker will gasp at the amazing urban vistas that are the backdrop to Kong’s iconic ending, Jackson sacrifices intensity and concision in order to show off his creation, leading the audience to wish that the biplane gunners had better aim.

Jackson’s most egregious artistic liberties stem from his desire to position King Kong as a thinking man’s blockbuster. Kong is a movie about a man making a movie, so a few winks and nudges are to be expected. However, after the conceit has been introduced, it is up to the audience to follow through. The steady stream of inside jokes and portentous gestures soon becomes insulting. Even more unsettling is Kong’s cheap references to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Just as Jimmy, the scrappy runaway, steals a copy of Conrad’s masterpiece from the New York Public Library thinking he’s in for a straightforward adventure tale, Jackson’s snarky and half-assed appropriation reveals the folly of his attempt to reinvent such a historically significant film. Jackson envisions his Kong as a modern-day fable concerning the wild and its perils, but what he unintentionally reveals, and what Marlow would surely have told him, is that some things are better left alone.

After the Collector’s Edition DVD has been released and the last gorilla figurine has disappeared from the bargain bin, Peter Jackson’s King Kong will be compared not to the original film, which was far more important, but to other big budget blockbusters – Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park, for instance. Both films are set on islands (in the case of Kong, Skull Island and the equally perilous Manhattan) and concerned with man’s inability to tame nature. But where Jackson takes a simple story and bulks it up, Spielberg reduces a more complex story to its essential parts. Both movies are special effects showcases, but Spielberg never lets the dinosaurs overshadow his characters – for all of its bluster, no scene in Kong is more frightening than the one in Jurassic Park where the kids are trapped in the kitchen with two angry velociraptors. It may be unfair to compare any mainstream director to Spielberg, but Jackson brings it upon himself. Now that he’s one of the big boys, Jackson needs to take a page from the Great One’s playbook and keep his popcorn flicks and his prestige pictures on different reels.

Am I going to be kicked out of Williamsburg?

The foot in the foreground? Mine. In the background? A certain Mr. Martin, whom some of you may know. I feel so violated.

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What is it with these flip-flop guys where they’re so smug and toe proud? They’re like those small-dicked men at the nude beach that want to come over, put a towel down on the chair next to you, and tell you about the giant turtle they saw. Get your disgusting male nudeness out of my face or I’m going to step on it.