An 80s classic re-examined

THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS was a film that came out in 1987. I do not remember the first time I saw it, but I love the film and have watched it numerous times. It's a quintissential 80s film that could not be made relevent today. It is a snapshot of life in the office world in one of the bigest cities in the world. New York. It is also a look at how greed and the pursuit of money was a big deal in the 80s and that in the world of big business anything can happen.

However, though I love the film, when you watch it as often as I have you begin to notice things that you may not notice on a first or even 2nd viewing. I will be discussing that today. For those who have not seen it, ALOT OF SPOILERS! Be warned.

Today I make the pronouncement that there are only two characters in the film who are good. And they aren't the main characters.

BRANTLEY FOSTER: is played by the always great Michael J. Fox, who I love. During the 80s he was on fire. This film was right up his alley, it is not quite, but a close approximation to Alex P. Keaton, the role he played on the tv show Family Ties for years. Except Brantley (yes that is his name)is a farm boy who studied hard to make lots of money in the big city. He graduates college, gets a job and an apartment in New York and heads out. His apartment is, pardon my French, a shithole. But he doesn't care, he sees it as a starting point. The next day he goes into work and is summarily fired, hostile take-over 90% of the employees are let go, including Brantley, he sees this as another challenge. After job hunting with no success he gives in and visits his distant Uncle Howard Prescott (who I will cover soon). He convinces Howard to give him a job, and he gets one in the mailroom. This is where the movie takes off and you begin to realize that Brantley, though a country boy who persevers is actually doing bad things. Now in the film, Brantley is our hero, and during his first week on the job he is commandeered to drive an executives wife home from shopping. He overhears her conversation about her husband cheating on her. He begins to flirt with her in hopes of making her feel good. Instead he ends up in bed with her. Now here is the beginning of the bad, he just committed adultery, now it doesn't matter that the wife's husband is a cheater, but he willingly goes along with it. Now some could make the case that this is just the wife getting back at her philandering husband, and that may be so, but it is still cheating and cheating is wrong. Right after it is over, Brantley discovers the woman's husband is home, and he spies him from afar, It's Uncle Howard, making the woman he had the affair with Aunt Vera Prescott (will talk about her soon as well). He wants to end the affair, but she keeps pursuing him, and he keeps falling for it. Until he meets Christy Wills who is an executive at the same company he works at. We learn she is having an affair with someone! And that someone is dadada Howard Prescott.

HOWARD PRESCOTT: is played by Richard Jenkins, and as we learn above he is a philandering husband who married into the company he is the CEO of. Vera is the daughter of the founder and Howard made his way in by wooing her. And it worked. Now he is a cheater and a philanderer but he really makes no excuses for it, unlike Brantley our hero who appears to be wracked with guilt though continues to cheat. There is something else that Brantley does that makes him unlikable, but I will cover that soon. Instead let's get back to the big business end. So Howard discovers that there may be an attempted hostile takeover of his company so he has his staff to devise a way to stop this, though since he is the bad guy, he seems genuinely disturbed that someone is possibly going to take over, but he also has in the back of his head, a thought that he may be able to hold onto his job and salary so he may not try that hard to discourage a hostile takeover. Jenkins is oily perfection and is also able to give Howard a very likable personality as well, even though he is a cheater and a liar. He even talks Brantley into helping him with his plot to woo Christy, even though Brantley does not know yet that Christy is the one he is having the affair with. Brantley is trying to woo Christy on his own. How does he do this being a mere mailboy. He lies...

BRANTLEY FOSTER IS A LIAR: While doing his mailroom deliveries he discovers that someone has been released. The office has been cleared out and is empty. Brantley goes in to see what he really wants, an office like this. He sits at the desk and just imagines what could be, when the phone rings. He picks it up and it is a customer. Brantley uses his schooling to solve a problem and decides to create a new identity as a new employee hired to be in this office. So he creates Carlton Whitfield. Now prior to all of this, during his free time Brantley was looking into how the business works in hopes he could get promoted out of the mailroom and into an office. Plus while working in the mailroom, his trainer Melrose (again I will discuss soon) tells him that the company is so disorganized, and Brantley discovers this as well while doing his research, so he decides to create this character while still doing his mailroom duties. So now he has to be mailrom Brantley and executive Carlton, and he pulls it off... mostly. But my main point is, no matter how good Brantley is, he was not hired to do that job, he is lying to everyone in the company about what he is doing and where he is. As usual we are supposed to be cheering him on because under the guise of Carlton he is trying to save the company from a hostile takeover, but he is a liar! Our hero is a cheater and a liar. And on top of that he is lying to Christy who he genuinely seems to love.

CHRISTY WILLS: played by Helen Slater in all her lisping glory is the only female exec at the company, so of course Howard goes after her and ends up having an affair with her which again makes it another character who is not a good role model. She knows he's married and justifies her actions by saying that they appear to be breaking up so it's ok to step in. Of course Howard let's Brantley know later he has no intention of leaving his wife. So you can call her naive if you want but she knows what she is doing and she knows it is wrong. Of course by the time we see her in the film she seems to be getting sick of this relationship and as soon as Brantley shows up (as Carlton) she decides to stop seeing Howard so she can be a good girlfriend to a guy with no baggage that she knows of. Slater is good as Christy but there is just something about her that rubs me the wrong way and I think she is the weakest part of the film.

VERA PRESCOTT: played by Margaret Whitten (who you may remember as the bitchy owner of the Cleveland Indians in Major League, another film she is brillant in) Here Vera is a wronged woman, she knows her husband is having affairs left and right and has caught them a number of times, but she hails from old money and strong family bonds that force her to stay in the marriage though she knows she is being treated badly. In one of her early scenes she sets up her feelings toward her husband, she says he is better looking now then when they were married. Which means she still has feelings for her husband but cannot pique his interest, so again another reason why she stays with him. When she meets Brantley he is driving her home in a limo and she has no idea he is her nephew. He overhears her phone conversation and soon strikes up a regular conversation with her where, under the guise of a compliment, one I believe he truly means, he tells her he wishes when he gets to be her husband's age (still not knowing that she is married to Howard) that he can wake up every morning to a woman like her. This piques her interest and she starts an affair with him. So again another person is doing a bad thing that makes them not a role model, though in this case it is more of a way to release all the pain she is enduring by beating her husband at his own game. She soon learns who Brantley is, but still continues an affair with him. And once Brantley starts seeing Christy he tries to break it off, but just like Howard who continues to pursue Christy, she pursues Brantley. But she also wants to help him because she sees he is very bright, so she sets up meetings with high profile businessmen who are friends with her and Brantley starts to charm them, he becomes a protege. Because perhaps she sees that he could run her father's company better then Howard, or after Howard retires. Either way she tries to help him reach his potential.

SO WHERE ARE THE GOOD GUYS?: In movies like this it is the supporting cast that ends up being the voice of reason, or the true friends of the main characters. In this film two of the supporting players are the good guys. Melrose played by John Pankow is the first good guy. He trains Brantley in his mailroom duties and befriends him. Showing him around the offices, giving him the rules of the business world. Mailroom staff does not interact with the salespeople. Thats just the way it is. But when Brantley starts moonlighting as Carlton, Brantley leaves Melrose in the lurch. But Melrose does not abandon Brantley. And when Brantley almost gets caught in the act of moonlighting as Carlton, Melrose steps in and helps his friend. In the end after Brantley gets caught in his moonlighting act. Brantley gets Melrose to help him pull off one more con to save the business and he does. In the end he gets promoted to the board of directors. So Melrose just being himself and helping out when asked Succeeds.

DON'T UNDERESTIMATE THE SECRETARY:  Jean played by Carol Ann Susi is the other good guy. A secretary in the secretarial pool who gets selected to help out new exec Carlton Whitfield. And she does her job very well. When Brantley is busted for his dual identity she does not retreat to the secretarial pool she jumps in full force with one last con Brantley has to save the day in spite of the fact that if it fails she will more than likely be fired. In the end she too gets a seat on the board a reward for being a loyal employee. More employees should be like that.

SO WHAT HAPPENS IN THE END? Brantley is cleaning out his desk after his lie is revealed in a crazy bedroom farce scene at the Prescott's house, He gets fired and Howard is planning on allowing the takeover of  Vera's fathers business to occur. Christy has been fired as well and her and Brantley are bickering but soon fall back in love with each other. That gives Brantley enough push to try one last con with the help of Melrose, Jean, and Christy. And his ace in the hole. Vera, who with her relationships with various businessmen is able to pull off Brantley's con the hostile takeover of the company trying to take over Vera's father's business.  And the good guys win and Howard loses. All is right with the world. It is a fun film, and I can keep watching it all the time because the actors do a knock out job. But when you start looking at the story as I did you see some weird things. But don't worry. Check out how Gary Ross directs it. It is a fantastic picture to look at with all the cool angles and use of 80s pop music. Highly reccommended if you can get past the story. 

LOST without you

So LOST ended yesterday, on what I would say a high note, but there was still some questions as to the ending. Let me do a little background on my Lost habits. I watched the first season in it's entirety and half of the second season, missed the third season, except for the final episode, I caught up reading synopsises on various websites, watched half the 4th season, and all of the 5th and sixth. I own all the DVD sets except season 5 which I hope to get this week and season 6 which does not come out until 8/24. So I have followed it pretty regularly and I was very happy with the endings of the different relationships in this final episode but the final 10 minutes or so were a bit strange, though I loved them and I have a general idea what it is about.

SPOILERS BELOW

So the sideways flashes were just sort of a Limbo, heaven's waiting room as it were, and then when someone eventually gave in to it, they remembered everything that happened on the island and then went and waited for the others to arrive. As Christian Shepard stated to Jack, everything that happened on the island happened, some people died early and were just waiting in Limbo until they decided to let go or needed to help someone let go. Some lived long lives, some died early, but in the end they all went to one place to be together and move on to the next level. And some were not ready to leave their limbo, or decided to stay like Ben who didn't want to leave his limbo, or he felt he did not deserve to go. That seems to be the gist that most people are reading into it.

It makes it into a great ending to a series that still has a ton of questions that need to be answered, but this show was about the people on the island and not what the island was. I will miss the show and I hope to catch up on all the episodes I missed. Lost was great and it will be missed.

Greatish Performances: Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka

"What is this Wonka? Some kind of funhouse?" "Why? Having Fun?"

Back before Blogs were the big thing I used to write what I called an email column, which I guess was a predecessor to a Blog. I wrote movie reviews and other things of interest to me and sent them out as emails to some people, Family and friends mostly. One of the columns I used to write was one called Greatish Performances, which I think I stole from Movieline or EW or Premiere or one of the myriad of movie magazines I used to read. They would take a performance from an actor or actress and just focus on that, not really getting into a review of the film or TV show they wrote about, but a review of a great performance. I have decided to bring that back.

I was flipping the remote around the other day and caught the classic 70s musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. This happens to be one of my favorite films and the main reason why is the utter insanity that is Gene Wilder in this film. The funny thing is he does not appear until about 45 minutes in because you have to set up the storyline, 5 lucky kids get a chance to get to see Wonka's chocolate factory. Wonka having been a recluse for so long finally appears walking with a cane very slowly and looking very old, then the cane gets stuck and Wilder falls but he rolls and stands up, not old and weak at all, just very deceptive, and the start of his deception. While you spend more time with him you can't believe anything he says or does he's the greatest con man in the world and you love him.

Wilder plays him with a sparkle in his eye, as if he is having the time of his life. This film is weird enough that it gives him license to go out of his head and he does and he is fabulous. Be it the heartfelt singing he does about Pure Imagination, or his insane glee about Augustus Gloop getting stuck in a pipe, or Violet Beaureguard turning into a blueberry, or best of all Veruca Salt getting dropped into the garbage chute. He loves that this horrible children are getting their just desserts, and on top of that he even messes with their parents who are enabling their children's bad habits. It's a fun, sly little act that Wilder nails. He acts like every bizarre thing that happens in his factory is perfectly normal and you love it.

Wilder is loads better then Johnny Depp's portrayal in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, though if Wilder's performance did not exist, Depp's would be a good start, but Depp's was just a little out there for me. His Wonka was a kooky recluse, Wilder looked like he was just biding his time and having fun. And you will enjoy his performance as well.

Iron Man 2 The Sequel

It's been over a week since My wife and I saw Iron Man 2. I've let it digest in and have decided to write my review. Real quick, those who know me, know I am a huge movie geek as well as a Comic Book geek, so I always have special places in my hearts for Comic Book movies, yes even the bad ones. That being said. I really liked it, but didn't love it. SPOILERS BELOW!!!

The first one was an instant classic because as a lot of reviewers have said it focused more on the characters and not the CGI, but in this one you need to surpass the first one with huge set pieces and awesome effects. I get it, and that works, but I feel some of the characters got short shrift, especially Pepper Potts played by Gwenyth Paltrow. She was quite a force in the first one, this one she gets an interesting promotion and they really don't touch on it that much. Don Cheadle steps into the role of James Rhodes and again his character is just kind of there, though he does have a few quick ass scenes as War Machine. Scarlett Johannssen plays the Black Widow, and again gets very few scenes, though like Cheadle, she gets a kick-ass fight scene in full Black Widow regalia, and she is awesome. I wish we could have seen more of her as well. Instead we get a lot of Robert Downey JR., Mickey Rourke, and Sam Rockwell.

Downey I get, he is Iron Man and the main focus of the story SHOULD be on him as it is. He gets some great plot points as he should and the focus is on him. By the way he nails the role and is the perfect actor for it. If only he was slightly younger.

Rourke and Rockwell are the villains and I get they need some time as well, but if that is the case, don't introduce the Black Widow, or get Pepper involved more in the plot. As villains I was slightly disappointed in Rourke's Whiplash. He does not wear the Whiplash costume, though his electric Whips rock. He uses am ARC device like Iron man, and in the final battle he is in a metal suit. Look Iron Man has a lot of villains who are not in Armor, and I realize also that you don't want the villains to wear garish suits, but it is a comic book movie and this is the character. If you wanted another metallic villain you could have had Rourke still be Russian, but he could be the Crimson Dynamo and that would logically lead to having Black Widow in there as well since she is Russian too. But they didn't do that.

Rockwell as Justin Hammer is done a lot better and is closer to the comic book character. And I guess that is where some of my criticism lies. I have got to get it into my head that these movies are not adaptations of the comics, but are using the characters. So keeping that in mind the film is great and gets people interested in the characters so they may check them out in the comics. And that is all I really ask. Go see it you will enjoy it. It is a big Summer Event Film. ENJOY!

Death in Comics Revisited

On the eve of Free Comic Book Day I am revisiting one of my previous blogs about death in comics. My last post was about a year ago and a lot has changed. DC did a storyline called Blackest Night where all the dead people in the DC universe were re-animated and they attacked friends and families to feed on their emotions. When the story was done {SPOILER WARNING} the above 12 super-heroes and super-villains were brought back to life. Why these 12 and not anymore is an on-going story that is occuring in the Brightest Day series which will last through the rest of the year. But I'm ok with this. The way writer brought them back was quite clever and the fact that it was only these 12 makes it an interesting story that is yet to be told why they lived. What I like also is that these 12 are all having trouble trying to get back to living after being dead for so long which is fairly realistic. According to DC this is also the beginning of Dead means dead, which means the heroes and villains that did not live probably will not be coming back soon, but who knows. However DC has decided to continue killing, case in point little Lian Harper. She is an 8 year old girl who is the daughter of the hero Speedy/Red Arrow/Arsenal/Roy Harper and the villain Cheshire. In a storyline that preceeded Blackest Night they destroyed Roy's home town of Star City and killed is daughter. Now he is going through hell because he also just got his arm tore off as well. So Death is still around and this time it is effecting non heroes. And I don't like this. Not only because it is an 8 year old girl, that is the main reason, but also Roy Harper is a second tier-third tier hero who is not that interesting. He was addicted to drugs in the 70s which lead to a great Green Lantern/Green Arrow story. Green Arrow is his former partner and mentor, and surrogate father. But when they made him have a kid with a known female assassin and villain that made the story interesting, also focusing on the travails of a single parent super hero which is very interesting to me. Now he is a non-entity, even without an arm. Comics tend to not like to have heroes have interesting things, single parent, or in the case of Spider man let's dissolve his marriage in a magic way so they never remember being married.(That I will save for another Blog)

On another note Captain America is now back in the land of the living and Batman will be starting his return in May. Oh and Jean Grey may be back for a third time. AWESOME!!! Sarcasm...

End of Days

It's been a while since I've blogged, been busy with my new son. My wife however has taken up the slack with her blog. Anyway I finally had something I wanted to talk about. 2012. If you don't know, December 20, 2012 is when the Mayan calendar ends. Now some people believe that is sign that the end of the world will occur on that day, and scientists and theologists, and climatologists have all gone on record discussing what could happen. Now if that was all that date was known for it would not be such a big deal, but I have also learned that our sun will be in the exact center of the Milky way on that date, again could be a coincidence. I have also heard of an astronomical alignment at that time as well. And then I just heard that the Jewish Calendar supposedly ends at that time as well. So that leaves me scratching my head. Now I don't want the world to end because my daughter will have just turned 6, and my son will be 3. That is not enough time for them to live their life. On top of that I will only have been with my wife for 12 years which again is not enough to be with the woman I love. But I have to admit I am slightly intrigued by what could actually happen, so of course I have been watching all of these shows about 2012 and the end of days.

Then 2010 started. So far this year we have had massive snow storms, two major earthquakes, one so bad that it changed the earth's rotation slightly, the other was devastating. Then we have Volcanoes in Iceland, Tornadoes in the Midwest and now a massive oil spill which is destroying sea life and heading for the coast. Which leads me to predict that someone will be hit with a devastating hurricane this summer or fall. I am not wishing this on anyone, but all signs are pointing to it. Put on top of that all the murders and death that has been going on and it makes you wonder if the end of days is actually starting now and will be climaxing on 12/20/2012. People are saying massive meteor could hit us, gamma rays, and who knows maybe it will be a man-made event such has a nuclear war. All I know is that this year has had an amazing amount of natural disasters, as well as a lot more hatred in the world and maybe just maybe the clock has started ticking on the End of Days. Only time will tell...

As we in America settle in to celebrate the birth of our nation, I would like to talk about death for a moment. But not in a downer type of way, more along the lines of a concern.

For years death has been fluid in soap operas and tv shows. It's used as a game changer and a way to create buzz. But we all know in alot of cases, Soap operas especially that death is never an end and soon enough the death will be undone and the character who was killed will be back shortly. But we have given it a free pass since it's entertainment. But now it is starting to permeate into comic books again.

In the old days of comics when a character died, they were dead. Examples are Bucky, Captain America's partner. Uncle Ben- Spiderman's uncle. Then death continued into the 70s and 80s. This time the victims are Jean Grey-Phoenix from the X-men, Barry Allen Flash, Supergirl, Robin 2- Jason Todd who was actually picked to die by a gimmick. You called an 800 number to see if you wanted him to live or die after an encounter with the Joker. They fans spoke and they wanted Todd dead. But then a funny thing happened. Phoenix came back to life.

In a strange story that took place about 3-4 years after her original death, Jean Grey was brought back to life and the stage was set for more returns. During the 90s comics became a hot property and many people were buying comics because they thought they would be valuable. So to keep up that apperance both Marvel and DC (the Big Two comic companies) threw everything they could into the stores and it was eaten up. A good example, The Death of Superman.

Superman had been around for 50 years and the comic creators decided they wanted to try something, so they killed him. What followed was media blitzes and huge sales. SO now it was cool to create these kinds of stories. Fans and non-fans went to comic stores and bought up everything they could in hopes they would be valuable. But roughly aboyut 6 months later, they brought back Superman in another huge media blitz that again made them a ton of money. So now it was cool to kill super heroes because it was guaranteed media blitzes and huge paydays. But soon the bottom fell out of the industry and it took some time to recover. Now it was a niche market. The speculators who were burned by this refused to get caught up in the media blitz again. Until Marvel decided to Kill Captain America.

It seems appropriate that the symbol of America was killed during a time of turmoil in the US. The recession was just starting to hit, an unpopular president was still in office, and things seemed to be getting worse for America. That was 2 years ago. It is also approriate that him imminent return begins the same week as Independence day, and America though still gripped in a recession is starting to have some hope with a new president in office. But again it turns Death into a joke, especially with who replaced Captain America. The aforementioned Bucky who apparently was not dead to begin with again! But the one difference this time around is that the story was actually good. It was not the writers decisison to turn it into a media blitz, Marvel did that on it's own, making a big deal about the death of Captain America and drawing the fans and non fans into the stores again. And now a few weeks earlier when it was announced Cap was returning the media blitz happened again.

This is just the most recent example. The fans of comics who read them are now inundated with the return of characters who were long thought dead. Supergirl, alive again, Barry Allen the Flash, alive again. Plus with less fanfare in the mainstream public, many other characters were killed only to return soon after. Wonder Woman was killed, she returned, Superboy (a different one not young Clark Kent) dead, now alive, Kid Flash, dead now alive again, Green Lantern Hal Jordan was killed only to return to life again. Norman Osborn, Harry Osborn over at Marvel, both dead now alive, and the list goes on. It is now a joke when they say such and so is going to die. Big deal he/she will be back before you know it.

Case in point Batman Bruce Wayne. He was recently "killed" in a big story in DC, and replaced by his first sidekick Dick Grayson who was the original Robin. The story is good, but we all know Batman will be back soon.

Finally the main reason for all this cyncism about Batman and Captain America. They both have movies coming up and you can bet the Comic Companies do not want these supposed dead characters to be dead when the films come out. How else will you be able to exploit them again?