The Hollywood Bowles

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The Rise and Fall of The Comic Book Movie

Scott Bowles

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December 3, 2023

Every once in a while, when I’m zombie-flipping TV stations, I’ll come across a channel playing Iron Man. Sometimes not far from my cameo about 45 minutes in. I can’t help but watch. Vanity, thy name is Bowles.

I also can’t help but watch because it’s the moment comic book films proved their might to Hollywood — and thus marked the point of their inexorable decline, corruption, and glorious farewell to moviemaking as we knew it for more than a century. Perhaps for history.

I just submitted my ballot for nominations this year for best film, actor, actress, supporting chimp, yaddy. And I struggled to find five Best Picture candidates.

The MPAA will have to select TEN from an arid, fractured cinematic landscape catastrophized by a writers/actors strike and left bone-dry from a pandemic that may turn movies into the Broadway of the Like & Subscribe generation: A pleasant, expensive distraction for those wealthy enough to spend that much money and three hours’ attention to a single storyline. 

Iron Man, which turned 15 this year, wasn’t long, not that expensive ((less than $150 million), and very much a risky bet for Paramount Pictures, which produced the Robert Downey Jr. movie. I certainly didn’t think much of it when the studio asked if I wanted a cameo in the film, directed by Jon Favreau, a guy I’d interviewed before. 

My response: Sure, but can I interview the cast — including Downey, fresh off a drug scandal, and Jeff Bridges, fresh off being the greatest actor of his generation — for the paper? I guess I’ll be a newspaperman longer than newspapers. 

Paramount and Marvel agreed, and we set a date. In addition to the celebrity interviews as a piece, I offered my managing editor a first-person piece on being an extra in a Hollywood comic-book movie. 

My editor said the genre was a risky bet, and declined the first-person story. Asshole barely ran a piece on the stars. 

But fuck him. Here’s the story I would have written:

Not only was I going to get Downey and Bridges for the story, but Stan Lee, the Marvel Comics legend, would be on hand for his trademark cameo. As fate would have it, our scenes were back-to-back.

I dispensed with the interviews and began my scene — as a guy doing an interview.

The scene was at Disney Hall, which bristled with activity. A red carpet rolled, cameras were positioned and dozens of extras playing a press gaggled murmured and primped. Several asked what a reporter does on a red carpet; I said struggle.

But not tonight. “I guess we better rehearse,” Bridges said to me. It was a career highlight in a job that’s had a few.

We rehearsed the bit: Bridges, Playing Obadiah Stain, discussing the altruism of Stark Industries, with me nodding doped monkey.

What struck me about filmmaking was the time required. We must have spent an hour and a million dollars filming a scene that lasted 15 seconds. It remains a craftsman’s trade, but making movies cannot continue at that pace and cost if it hopes to see 2030.

Hollywood could use a hero about now.

So Happy Birthday, Tony Stark. I think I know your candle wish.

Deja Viewed: Mad Men

Scott Bowles

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August 19, 2022


Ask Google ”What are the greatest television shows of all time?”, and she’ll promptly display a horizontal bank of names, with corresponding photos. There’s no number to designate rank, but if one were to read left to right, the first ten would look as follows:

The Sopranos; The Wire; Breaking Bad; Fargo; Oz; Mad Men; The Shield; Deadwood; True Detective; and Better Call Saul.

Two things stand out on the list. One, Vince Gilligan created two of them, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Two, they all have crime and death at the core of their story lines.

Except Mad Men.

If anything, the story line of Mad Men should barely constitute a daytime soap opera, let alone a prime-time drama: A New York advertising executive in the 1960’s struggles with alcohol, womanizing and a spiraling All-American family life, in that order.

The show, which turns 15 this year, would offer no murder plot, no gang syndicate, no crime, really, to speak of besides the white collar variety. The only significant death happened before the show’s first episode. These Mad Men were racist, sexist, and as poetically merciless as The Sopranos or The Wire in their worldview of America as fading corporate sellout.

That Mad Men managed the transcendent feat bloodlessly makes the show arguably the highest TV achievement ever.

Embodying that malaise is adman Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a creative arts director who doesn’t buy the American Dream because he sells it on TV and magazines. Well.

If Tony Soprano is the Washington on the Rushmore of Hollywood’s iconic TV anti-heroes, Don Draper is its Lincoln. Creator Matthew Weiner, who served as a producer on Sopranos, created his greatest anti-hero since, well, Tony Soprano. Instead of a Mafia don, we get a Madison Don.

But make no mistake: a sharp suit does not soften the ugly edges of the character draped in it. This anti-hero is as much anti as hero, maybe more. Tony and Don both depart the series smiling, but at least you knew Tony was smiling at the image of his family. The frustrating beauty of Mad Men is you can never really tell if a character is being honest — or selling an image they honestly want to be.

One way to measure a show’s IQ is to count how many times a character has a facial reaction NOT seen by the other characters in the scene, particularly dramas. Mad Men specialized in the unshared epiphany.

What may ultimately set Mad Men apart among TV historians is its sense of history. Set from 1959 to 1970, Mad Men feigns being a show about the 60’s. But it really chronicles the birth — and death — of the Baby Boomer generation. We watch with Don & Partners as events such as the Kennedy and King assassinations and the Civil Rights movement leave our heroes crippled and dog paddling in a rising corporate tide. But like Breaking Bad, it’s all black comedy, many times laugh out loud. Even the final scene is so droll you won’t know if you’ve been won over or flim-flammed.

Which is Mad Men’s ultimate point. Are you loved and happy, or playing someone who is? Is there a difference?

Seasons 1, 5 and 7 are the show’s best, in that order. The First for its novelty; Fifth for its Conradian Hero’s Arc, and the Seventh for Hero’s Return. Lady Lazarus, the 8th episode of season 5, may be Mad Men’s best episode, period. Written by Weiner, Lazarus is the show at its narrative and artistic zenith — with a stunning final two minutes that rival any two final minutes. Period.

Combine the show’s needle drops (from the Beatles to the Stones to Frank and Nancy Sinatra) with its meticulous attention to historical detail, and you have, essentially, Ken Burns with dramatic flair.

Sold

A Brave New Cosmos

Scott Bowles

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June 1, 2022


Everything Everywhere All At Once is a flash bang of a film. One might even call it a big bang.

You’re sitting in your dark, cool theater seat — the first you’ve taken since the pandemic — and Bang! The movie explodes in action and exposition, and doesn’t give a damn if you can keep up with the cosmology and quantum physics and action and raw emotion that ripples through the most original and profound film in more than a decade.

Think The Matrix meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, as directed by Christopher Nolan.

But even those comparisons are unfair, because Everything acknowledges and bows openly to its cinematic origins. Then it bows to the universe’s origins, which it embraces like Stephen Hawking on crack.

From the multiverse to quantum entanglement, Everything packs a silly kung fu movie into a story that may be as scientifically sound as the Hubble telescope. And still focuses the story into a narrative singularity — accessible, yet still awe inspiring.

The plot is a trifling, disposable matter: Michelle Yeoh plays Evelyn Wang, an aging laundromat owner trying to juggle tiny receipts, big customer complaints and a family that includes a judgmental father and rebellious daughter. After an unintended peek into another dimension, Evelyn learns she must face down an existential intergalactic threat.

It’s pablum. But as Everything points out, insignificant moments are the only things that DON’T exist in reality — particularly in the multiverses we build for ourselves in a world sinking into a black hole of digital chatter. Everything reveals itself as a poignant drama about finding your place in the world only after nearly dazzling us too much with dazzling concepts and computer effects. At 2 hours 19 minutes, the frenzy numbs a bit before it pierces.

Everything looks much bigger than it is. The film, which cost about $25 million, underscores what Hollywood used to be: audacious, loud and opinionated — and hustling a shoestring budget. Maybe that’s why it drew Oscar-caliber talent including Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis, unrecognizable under makeup as an oppressive tax auditor.

It is karate with a pinkie, kung fu with a pocket pup, pyrotechnics with polygons. And it nearly sets the screen ablaze with its brashness.

So as Hollywood crows over the box office haul of a colossus like Top Gun: Maverick, Everything will control its own delightful corner of the universe.

Now THAT’S a reason to have hope for moviemaking. Everywhere, all at once.

Dear Healthy People

Scott Bowles

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April 1, 2022



Dear Healthy People,

My, how our knickers got into a twist after the Academy Awards Sunday, which may go down as the liveliest memorial service of the 21st Century. Funerals can get testy.

But that’s not the takeaway from the slap-happy ceremony. This is: Enough with the bogus indignation over jokes about medical ailments.

And let’s be clear: That’s what alopecia is. An ailment. An embarrassing inconvenience, like acne. It’s not a disease. It’s not fatal. It’s not even painful. I would literally give my eyesight to be blessed with that ”illness.” And my illness pales to that of many. I too, have no right to complain.

But I read a column in USA Today by some psychology professor who argued that joking about illness or infirmity is ”punching down.”

Wrong. What’s punching down is highlighting how an illness makes you stand out as a person.

I was diabetic when I was 13. I LOVED humor about being diabetic. Close friends would joke that I could bring needles to school and not get busted for being a burnout. Now, that joke would get you expelled.

Will Smith wasn’t defending his wife’s health. He wasn’t defending his wife. He was defending nothing but his own insecurities — shamefully.

Healthy people, who gave that behavior a standing ovation, miss the point. The ill don’t want a cone of silence or deference. We want to be included in the humor. We want to be just like you.

I don’t expect healthy people to know what it’s like being sick. I’m not sure I know, and I’ve been at it a half-century.

So, please, stop pretending that you do. That is what offends.

Pam, Tommy and Ted Lasso: The Lyrical Arts

Scott Bowles

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February 9, 2022


The pandemic has become the Black Plague to film. But it sure does love good TV.

Witness the latest television shows to dominate not only America’s nightly ratings, but its nightly chatter on social media (perhaps a more vital audience): Ted Lasso, Pam & Tommy and The Beatles: Get Back.

They seem starkly unique in audience, tone and subject matter. Lasso is a wonderful comedy that imagines Ned Flanders managing The Bad News Bears. Pam & Tommy is what a Paul Thomas Anderson TV show would look like: emotional depth drenched in Southern California sunshine. And Get Back is simply a nine hour jam session with the biggest band ever.

But all share a single chord: All are lyrical art.

Lyrical art has a breezy, wispy feel to it, which is why it is found most often in comedy — and more than ever on the small screen. The Beatles are obvious, but Lasso and Pamelaunderscore how television, particularly, flourishes as nearly every other form of entertainment falters during COVID. 

Pam & Tommy lures audiences with a promise of details behind the homemade porn tape that became a household porn name. But it’s really about the death of the glam ’80’s and rise of the grunge 90’s, as told through the prism of pop music and culture. From Primal Scream to Nine Inch Nails to Dusty Springfield, the Hulu series employs needle drops as deft as Anderson’s Boogie Nights, which the show cannily resembles only three episodes in.

Lasso, meanwhile, has already won over audiences. critics and awards circles after only two seasons. And while it’s a great Apple show, it’s also clear why NBC gets a creative credit before every episode: It’s based on NBC Sports show characters — and is a lyrical larceny of the great show Community.

In the second episode of that series, the show used Aimee Mann’s heartbreaking lamentation Give Up to black comedy perfection. A decade later, Lasso uses the same song to make a scene shatteringly heartfelt.

And that’s the key to lyrical art: It understands the fluidity of music — particularly older music. Directors are buying classic music rights like Jeff Bezos buys phallic rocket ships. Look at the soundtracks to today’s comic book movies: Marvel Studios is the best thing to happen to album rockers since FM radio.  Guardians of the Galaxy became known for its 80’s mix tape. Iron Man didn’t fly in a metal suit, but on Ozzy Osbourne’s metal voice.

Of course, un-lyricsizing your art has the opposite effect. No Country for Old Men has no soundtrack, making the violence more squeamish. They went diametrically with O’ Brother Where Art Thou? and Inside Llewyn Davis.

It’s hard to define lyrical art. Harold and Maude and The Graduate are lyrical. Blade Runner has great music, but is not is not lyrical. Quentin Tarantino is a lyrical director. Christopher Nolan is not. All are outstanding.

Perhaps lyrical art meets the porn definition; You can’t put it into words, but you know rhythm when you see it. And it goes like this:

‘Licorice Pizza:’ Paul Thomas Anderson’s Gooey L.A. Valentine

Scott Bowles

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December 14, 2021

Paul Thomas Anderson is to the San Fernando Valley what Woody Allen is to Manhattan — without the creepiness.

Sure, Quentin Tarantino grew up here. Chinatown is here. And Hollywood has one address.

But Anderson represents the sprawling, tacky heart of the Valley. Half Stanley Kubrick, half strip shopping mall, Anderson is the avatar for the 21st Century California filmmaker. And ‘Licorice Pizza’ the 21st Century California movie, tye-dyed in nostalgia for an era that may or may not have existed. But its appeal undeniably did.

In a way, ‘Pizza’ is the embodiment of nostalgia without sentiment, capturing a time and place in the 1970s when Nixon was on TV, Vin Scully called Dodger games on radio, gas lines formed because of shortages, and a boss could brazenly slap the behind of his female employee without fear of repercussions.

At its core, the movie is a peculiar love story, one involving Gary (Cooper Hoffman, the son of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman), who’s about to turn 16, and the older Alana (Alana Haim, of the rock band), who finds direction in an otherwise unfocused life thanks to Gary’s get-rich-quick schemes, which include peddling water beds.

A few actual ’70s characters find their way into the pair’s Hollywood-heavy plot, with Bradley Cooper portraying producer Jon Peters as a wildly flamboyant lunatic who actually purchases one of the beds. Sean Penn also turns up as an actor (the name is changed, but only slightly) full of strange stories, although it’s not entirely clear that he can separate reality from his movies.

‘Licorice Pizza’ really doesn’t have much of a plot; instead its a ‘Dazed and Confused’ style series of loosely connected episodes, in a way that becomes more obvious during the second half. Nor does it really address some of the nagging questions about Alana, whose periodic tantrums are among the film’s only poorly written scenes.

Those disclaimers aside, for the most part Anderson (who has directed a number of Haim videos since his last film, “Phantom Thread”) has delivered another highly entertaining movie, capturing a very particular time but also the enduring and universal nature of relationships developing in the most unexpected ways.

The title, incidentally, comes from a chain of record stores that were popular in the ’70s but no longer exist — a fitting symbol of the desire to give this bygone era another spin.

Anderson, the director of ‘Boogie Nights’ and ‘There Will Be Blood,’ has made perhaps his most sentimental film yet. More importantly, ‘Licorice Pizza’ is a movie Hollywood desperately sought mid-pandemic: one with heart.

‘Finch’: Not Exactly Best In Show

Scott Bowles

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November 11, 2021


Finch wants desperately to be a good boy.

It learned all the movies it wanted to be. Rain Man; 2001: A Space Odyssey; E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. It had a beloved breed in Tom Hanks, who established his canine flick bonafides with Turner and Hooch. He won a couple Oscars, too.

But Finch ultimately is a good argument for why the MPAA needs its ratings system fixed. Because while it is rated PG-13, Finch is not a movie for audiences 13 and older. I’d say 16 and under.

How else to describe Apple’s latest film? It feels like Castaway met Wall-E and they went off to raise My Dog Skip — without the originality of any. Finch decaffeinates and sanitizes so many crucial scenes you’d think Disney made it (right down to physical comedy that’s just plain Goofy).

Hanks reprises the deserted-island role he made so memorable in Castaway. This time, the universe wants his character dead by solar flare, which has already wiped out most of the planet. Rightfully concerned that his irradiated days are numbered, Finch builds a robot to care for his dog.

While those plot details might be trickled out in an adult drama. Finch vomits forth those irresistible plot points almost by the first half hour. From poster to trailer to opening scene, Finch wears its cliches proudly and telegraphs its messages as clearly as Morse, which is almost a charm in itself.

Because there’s no hating Finch. I wept during it, but almost furiously so: It’s like a rescue shelter commercial set to Sarah McLachlan: Either don’t watch or get a tissue, because your heartstrings are going to be mercilessly plucked.

And it’s hard not to watch anything Tom Hanks does, even when it’s just him, a CGI robot and a rescue dog named Seamus, a terrier mix who looks a lot like my rescue mix. I was ready to love Finch. I wanted to love Finch.

But then Finch started misbehaving. For starters, Seamus plays a dog named Goodyear. Goodyear? The film gives some contrivance for Goodyear’s name, but come on: At least know a good dog name. You know, one that a dog would recognize and wouldn’t sound like product placement. Say, Seamus.

And for the robot, Jeff (again, ??). The movie quickly establishes that Jeff has only 72% of the information about the world that our hero, Finch (Hanks), meant to upload. A sudden dust and radiation storm cut the upload short, propelling our band into a wacky road trip.

There are many details to follow in the movie, but it’s all downhill from premise.

Or maybe not. Perhaps Apple, Disney and all major studios trying to stay in business view movies not for their teenager-and-older subject matter, but for their teenage-and-older consumer matter.

Because the movie ratings system is a grim numbers game, as the Motion Picture Association of America has confused its ratings as a seal of approval from the film industry — or a specific movie.

Your movie have smoking in it? PG rating. More than two “fucks?” You got yourself an R rating, buster. Showing pubis, or, worse, showing it in a sexual context? You’re flirting with an X rating — a death rating outside a particular demographic.

So why don’t we in the media get out of that absurd system? Can we not tell audiences who the movie is for, in terms of subject matter, instead of using Hollywood’s definition of age-appropriate viewing, which is a consumer-based metric?

Because Finch is a fine family film, full of fine lessons about friendship, family and the meaning of consciousness.

I just expected it in an adult film.

The Death of the Plot Twist

Scott Bowles

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November 8, 2021


Spoiler alerts have become to movies what the Surgeon General’s warning became to smoking: a perfunctory caution before ill-advised behavior.

Remember plot twists in movies? The stunning revelations in films such as Psycho, The Crying Game and The Sixth Sense? Good times.

And getting rarer. When was the last time you were surprised by a movie’s plot?

Studios are trying to maintain the mystery: In the ad frenzy promoting Daniel Craig’s final film as James Bond, No Time To Die, trailers exclaimed (and still do) “You won’t believe the ending!”

Perhaps. Unless you read the Wikipedia entry for the movie. It spelled out the ending in detail — on the movie’s opening weekend.

This is the new rule, not the exception, in Hollywood’s click-bait reality. Movie reviews and plot secrets air on social media the day a movie opens, if not before. Some YouTube movie critiques are ad-libbed on cell phones outside the theater that just aired the film.

And it’s not only the ending. The Eternals, Disney’s latest comic-book entry, led all moves this weekend with a respectable $70 million in the U.S. — only in theaters.

But for those who enjoy Marvel’s trademark end-credits for their cameos and plot clues, bad news: Wikipedia listed that as well. Twice, actually: Eternals had a mid-end-credit scene, too. Both were duly described.

This poses a conundrum for an industry that must tease a film without giving away away too much. Studios are already laboring to sell kids on the theatrical experience itself, no small task in a pandemic. That job becomes tougher without intrigue.

So what fate, the movie twist? Already, fans are calling on fellow cinephiles to be more discreet.

Studios are asking reviewers sign agreements that they will not write on social media about a movie before their reviews. And more film reviews and analyses can be found on YouTube with a “NO SPOILERS” guarantee.

But for now, it’s up to the viewer to provide the suspension of disbelief. And surprise

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