Escape From Tomorrow, some people call it that Disneyland movie, everyone should call it that Disneyland movie that sucks

“Hi Mr. Disneyland representative (we’ll call him Mr. Dr), we’d like to film a movie here,” said the writer/director.

            “Sure, let’s see the script and see what kind of movie it is. Huh, father loses job while on vacation at Disneyland, ignores family to stare at teenage French girls to the point that his wife is uncomfortable and irritated, then the father has an affair – “

            “Or does he!” Mr. Dr looks at the writer/director from over the top of his glasses for a moment and then continues to read silently to himself before finishing the script and placing it down on his desk. He looks at the writer/director, and the producer or whoever lost the bet to present the movie to Mr. Dr.

            “What happens at the end?”

            “What do you mean?” The writer/director is trying to hide the fact that he’s not trying all that hard to hide his smiling.

            “I mean what is that ending all about?” The writer/director grins like an idiot and answers with:

            “What do you think it’s about?”

        Mr. Dr sighs and think of probably many other more important things he has on his schedule for the day. He says that they cannot film that movie in the park.

            “Because you are so close minded!” The writer/director yells. “You must have such a tight grip on movies shot here that it kills the creativity that you feign to support!”

            Mr. Dr. pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes for a moment while he shakes his head and says, “No, this movie is horrible, that’s why.” He opens his eyes and looks to the men before him. “It doesn’t even portray the park in a negative light. What you present here as the inner-workings of the park is complete fantasy and so obviously fantastical that it makes you look idiotic if you think we would be offended or even threatened by anything presented in this movie. As a bit of a part-time writer, though, I do take offense to your lack of detail in the main character whose mental instability you have reduced to being nothing more than a horny old man who pines for two young French girls at the risk of his children’s safety. It is offensive, you taking the idea of a man’s mental breakdown while in a theme park, and making it completely and utterly pointless.”

            The writer/director, missing the point, responds with: “Then if you will not allow us to film in the park, I will film without you knowing about it, using guerilla style filmmaking, and then I will tell everyone that’s how I filmed it!”

            Mr. Dr says with a shrug, “I don’t care.” Then, when really thinking about it, he adds: “Actually, I bet that will be the most interesting thing about this movie and that will be the only reason anyone would be interested in it. You go ahead, idiot, film your movie and we’ll pretend like we don’t know you, which is how your family and friends will act after this is released.”

            That’s how I imagine it went down. I cannot believe I fell for it, but I did. I heard about this movie so I thought I’d check it out and boy oh boy was it dull. The idea that it was trying to put to film was mildly interesting but it’s like the people making the film did not have the nerve to go all the way with it.

            This movie is such a waste of time that it’s really not even funny – though if the movie had been funny it maybe wouldn’t have been such a waste of time.

Vincent D'Onofrio is Kingpin in Netflix's new original Daredevil series

The actor is on the left, the character is on the right.

This officially makes me excited for Daredevil to appear on Netflix. The movie actor God that is Vincent D’Onofrio will be in the Netflix original Daredevil series as Kingpin. Now if they can just put a moment in the show that gives him the opportunity to say the word: “Sugar” I would seriously lose my shit.

           

            Normally it’s a concern when a show replaces the showrunner, but it sure seems like with the replacement the show is starting to move. Of course all of this could have already been in the works, but I like to think that Netflix wasn’t happy so they put a new guy in charge and that new guy has brought about all the advancement with casting the show.

            I’m normally a glass half empty type of guy, but when it comes to Netflix original shows I tend to think and hope and expect the best and have not been let down so far (I’m not counting OITNB).

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Eddie Murphy made me nostalgic for my younger years and my friend Jason who I don't see much anymore, and Richard Pryor made me nostalgic for being young and watching The Toy with my family.

I Liked It

I am a child of the 80’s, a white suburban child of the 80’s, I went to a private catholic school, and I believe it was the 5^th grade when I met my best friend Jason. Jason’s mom was white, but he was black and tall for his age, and I was very short for my age and he and I hit it off right away. Jason’s mom worked her ass off for him to grow up and go to school where he did and because of that she wasn’t around much. Jason and I never got into much trouble mostly because we never got caught.

            I bring this all up for the sole reason that were it not for Jason I truly believe I would not have ever seen Eddie Murphy’s Delirious, much less at the age of 12, nor would I have had any clue as to who the NWA were. I don’t know how Jason even heard about it all as he was also an owner of a Tiffany cassette (though I do honestly believe he had it only because the majority of the people he hung out with had it and liked it). He was also a fan of Guns N’ Roses and he probably liked those guys as much as he enjoyed NWA. Either way he lived in both worlds, and being his friend and spending as much time around him as I did, I ended up living in both worlds as well. I remember he stayed the night at my house one night and we stayed up late and listened to an NWA cassette as low as possible so that we didn’t wake my parents but loud enough that we could just barely hear it even with our ears pressed to the speakers of the little player.

            Jason was and still is – though I don’t talk to him much anymore – my best friend and had a huge part in making me who I am today; my odd sense of humor and eclectic selection of music and movies, pretty much he helped me become the oddity that I am now.

            These were the sort of things I was thinking about while watching Eddie Murphy’s Delirious. I remember both Jason and I laughing hysterically while watching the VHS one weekend at his house. The mom throwing shoes at her kids was especially a big hit with us, as was the ice cream bit. I remembered bits and pieces of Delirious, but the first thing I took note was how it started. It had the look and feel of a VHS movie, almost a home movie feel as we follow Eddie Murphy on the tour bus and stuff, mostly it was all awkward watching it (I swear Eddie Murphy had something stuffed into his underwear at one point. My wife told me to just get over it because I kept bringing it up, but seriously, it looked like a baseball was in his underwear, it looked like his testes were severely swollen and I almost became concerned, but eventually I did let it go, but seriously, if you get a chance check out Eddie Murphy’s junk, it’s weird in how perfectly spherical it is – or maybe mine is the one that’s jacked up and no one has ever told me).

            The beginning of his act was painful to watch. He starts off talking about how “faggots” (his word) better not be looking at his ass! The audience thought it was hilarious. He worked that joke for a solid minute or so, and then went into Mr. T being gay which I kind of remembered.

            For the most part Delirious wasn’t too entertaining until towards the last half and then it got funny. It was mostly just interesting watching Eddie Murphy and seeing how young he was and full of promise with his spot-on impressions and his energy. Is comedy just different now that his routine wasn’t as funny now as the audience thought it was back then?

            I would say maybe half of his routine was funny, and the other half was just a bit too dated.

I Liked It

Richard Pryor starts off about how ever since Reagan was elected nobody was fucking.

            That’s probably about as dated as you can get (making fun of Mr. T has more timelessness than making fun of Ronald Reagan – I think), and though I rated them both the same as liking them, Richard Pryor’s film is just a bit better. The comedy may be about the same, they both set the cussing bar to a new high and at times they both have moments that made me genuinely laugh, but Richard Pryor’s performance, and the production of his performance was just a bit more fine tuned than Eddie Murphy’s.

            I realize that I’m criticizing them not on the comedy or their performances, but on the quality of the movie, but when you have two comics were performances are so similar it doesn’t give you much more to look at other than the movie as a whole.

            And I get it when you say – it’s Eddie Murphy and Richard Pryor, Richard Pryor is a freaking legend while Eddie has become a vague shadow of his former self, how can you say they are the same – but just watch both of these films.

            To be fair and clear, Richard Pryor’s performance came first, by like a year or two I believe, so any comparison between the two – Pryor is the clear winner because he paved the way for Eddie, and Eddie followed the way without bettering it.

            Eddie Murphy’s Delirious is well known for his red outfit. Red leather jacket and pants, it looks uncomfortable and smelly and the jacket is half open the entire time showing off the fact that Eddie is not wearing a shirt underneath. He looks like a wanna-be rock star, or a wanna-be Michael Jackson. Richard Pryor wears a red suit as well, but he wears it well, and that’s something I wouldn’t have noticed had I not seen Eddie first. Pryor wears a black shirt under his red jacket that matches his red pants and what I believe to be gold shoes – doesn’t matter though because Pryor looks cool.

            They both interact with the audience well: Eddie borrows a camera from an audience member and takes some photos, and even tells a joke directly to a kid who was brought to the show. Pryor’s whole show feels like a one-on-one with the audience, his stage is close to the audience, and at one point he comes down the steps and sits down almost square on with the audience, and at one point an audience member calls out a bit of Pryor’s that they like and want him to do, and Pryor acknowledges the request and does it. They both act out skits and conversations between people (Eddie) and conversations between animals (Pryor), showing off both their fantastic abilities to act and give each character they’re doing a personality that makes the whole thing just that much more entertaining.

            Pryor of course has an ace hidden up his sleeve with the stories of his being burned and having to go through recovery. As he points out in his show, people were wondering what really happened, and he addresses it. It is an entertaining and interesting look into the life of someone addicted to drugs that doesn’t change the show or bring it down in anyway. The entire time he’s on stage Pryor gives off the sense of cracking jokes with friends, and when he gets to the heavy stuff, he keeps it funny by commenting on his experience, but also serious with a few stories of how drugs were slowly taking over his life and how others were noticing and trying to help. It makes the show a symbol of Pryor’s return to comedy as well as a return to life. It is awesome to know how far down he sank and then seeing him back on stage, performing, you can see how far back he rose.

            I may have fond memories of watching Delirious with Jason when I was a kid, but I have much more fond memories of watching The Toy with my brothers, watching Stir Crazy with Jason, and Brewster’s Millions, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Silver Streak on my own.

I Watched Are All Men Pedophiles?, Streaming Now on Netflix. Watch anthropology and sociology be distorted beyond recognition to support crap!

I Hated It

So I watched Are All Men Pedophiles? on Netflix.

            I did some research into the documentary before watching it because it sounded kind of suspect. Like when you read an article or watch a show thinking it’s going to take one slant and then it turns out to have a totally different angle than what you thought.

            I watched the preview for this documentary before watching the movie, and my apprehension was reinforced. It sure seemed to me that a lot of the people being interviewed in this poorly produced documentary were of the mind that society has gotten the wrong impression about pedophiles! Which is good to know, right? I instantly began to feel regret for all those times I’d heard about an adult molesting and having sex with a child. Damn you left-wing media for painting all pedophiles in a negative light! Damn you advertising agencies for paying teen girls to be models and so in turn making adult men molest and have sex with kids! I mean, how could one expect an adult to NOT do it with all the advertising surrounding them daily?

            Oh wait. Yeah, that’s right, because it’s not just illegal but also horribly morally and ethically wrong on all levels of existence. Like, however many parallel universes you can imagine there being, the one constant stretching throughout them all is how wrong it is to have sex with a child.

            With the understanding that this documentary will be horribly off the mark and probably pretty offensive, I watched it. As much as my initial reaction to the preview for the movie was one of repulsion, I couldn’t bring myself to really denounce the documentary without seeing it.

            Of course it wasn’t as bad as I had thought. It wasn’t like a pro-commercial for pedophiles, and as dangerous as it is for me to say that the documentary did have some interesting points after my rant, I will say that . . . well, it had some interesting points.

            First, a story: I was with my son’s pre-K class at the zoo this summer. I was the only father in the group of moms, and the teacher told me that there was a little girl in the class who is – for lack of a better word – a bit of a “daddy’s girl” and I was warned that since I was the only guy in the group she would probably be hanging out around me instead of the kids. No problem, I said, but when the girl came up to me and took my hand and pretty much wouldn’t let go the entire time, I felt extremely self conscious. Now of course I knew there was no danger, but I also knew that no one else knew that. None of the mothers knew me, and it may have been my imagination, but it seemed as the day went on and the girl continued to hold my hand that a few of the mothers would look away from my direction when I looked at them. I tried to get the girl to play with the other kids, but she wanted to stay with me. Short of yelling at her and pulling free and running from her while yelling how I wasn’t a pedo, I didn’t know what to do but to keep holding the girls hand. The teacher was very nice and would often walk with me and crack jokes about how she bet I was having fun at the zoo and I’d laugh and then say to the little girl “Don’t you wanna hold your teachers hand?” The little girl would simply say no and the teacher would laugh and go check on the other kids.

            Though it was uncomfortable, holding the girl’s hand and having the moms keeping an eye on me, I need to be honest that were it my daughter and another man, I’d WANT those moms to keep an eye on the guy who was holding her hand. It’s the world we live in, as much as it sucks, it’s the way it is. I may not like it, being a man and being scrutinized more for that fact, but I totally and completely understand it. It’s because of the bad guys that all guys are watched, so it is up to the good guys to change the world’s perceptions – unfortunately it just seems like there are more bad guys (or the bad guys are getting more notice) than good.

            The documentary touches on stuff like that, how even with the rise of female teachers having sex with young boys; it is still kind of creepier when it’s an older guy with a young girl. The documentary talks about how some airlines will not sit a child next to a strange man (I am okay with that and understand it), while a strange woman is okay (not so sure about that. Haven’t women been known to do bad things, even with kids, and even with kids that aren’t their own?); and some daycares that allow fathers to drop the children off but not inside the building (that’s a bit weird – if it’s true).

            The documentary did dip into the art of blaming others for those who have sex with teens, because of advertising, and genetics is why an older man has sex with a teenage girl. I didn’t buy that at all. I know the legal age is like 16 or something, but even if it’s legal, I don’t see why one would want to try and start a relationship with someone who has such a large age difference (and the documentary states that a teen is attracted to an older man genetically for a relationship, not just sex). Age may just be a number (as the creepy narrator says at the end, which was just almost too gross) but it is also about experience – experiences that prepare you for relationships with other people, experiences that prepare you for love and loss, and eventually experiences that make you bold enough to try and start a family and pass all that you have learned from said experiences down to your children. You cannot do that within a relationship between a 40 year old man and a 16 year old girl. What you can do is have sex and have fun and pretend like age is just a number until it eventually becomes something more than that.

            It seems the documentary’s main point was a distinction between pedophiles (attraction to kids before puberty), hebephiles (attraction to kids during the age of puberty), and ephebophiles (attraction to kids after the age of puberty). I’m not entirely sure why the distinction needed to be made. A kid is a kid, no matter their age and no matter the name you give the man (or woman, as the documentary pointed out) who is attracted to them and anyone who thinks it okay is very wrong.

            The documentary lost me around the time it felt the need to point out that there are two different types of pedophiles; those who act on their urges and those who don’t. A person who is attracted to little kids is a pedophile but that doesn’t mean they’ll act on it, so based on that thinking there are acting pedophiles and just pedophiles – or something like that – and eventually pedophilia will be accepted just as homosexuality has steadily become accepted. It actually makes that comparison, I’m not shitting you! The documentary is flawed to say the least, and even at times offensive in its ignorance as to the way the world works. It may never come right out and say its agenda is the defense of pedophiles, but then again I don’t need to be told something is complete shit to know that it is.

           

            At the end of the documentary the narrator asks if all men are pedophiles, and he says that according to the general interpretation of the word, when a guy looks at a teen model and thinks she’s attractive, then yes, all men a pedophiles. So obviously – wait, what? If I see a picture of a teen girl who is on the cover of Vogue and think, she’s cute, I’m a pedo? If I buy a dress for my daughter and shoes and a thing for her hair and she dresses up and I think, man she is so beautiful, I’m a pedo? To be clear! When I look at Bradley Cooper and I can ABSOLUTELY see why women find him cute, I’m – what? Gay? Or if I see George Clooney (seriously, the guy just has the personality of an awesome guy that goes so well with his looks) and again I can say without a doubt that the man is attractive, that defines me entirely? I don’t even think society – for the most part mind you, because sure there are some people who – would assume that meant that I was gay? Nor would me thinking a cover girl is cute make me a pedophile, not even by society’s take on it all.

            I hated the documentary because it wasn’t good. The topic was obviously one that inspired a mental discussion with myself, but the documentary is poorly done and has the feel of ickyness – and that’s not from the topic, it’s from the quality. The sound was at times distorted a bit, the video looked as though it was recorded with a camcorder instead of a real camera, and I’m sorry but none of the people interviewed seemed real. I honestly thought about looking in to see if any of the doctors and scientists were real people because they just did not sound like they knew what they were talking about, and that may be due to the quality of the documentary. It just all had a staged feel to it that made it just not good.