Brandon's Pop Culture Site

You may be thinking that James Frey’s mistake was writing a nonfiction book with lies in it. But I would have to disagree with you there. There have been many memoirs over the years that have been called into question as being truthful. I would be willing to wager that in almost ninety percent of memoirs there is some embellishment going on. In the end the writer is trying to sell books. In one of the most famous biographies of all times Mason Weems tells of a young George Washington who upon cutting down a cherry tree stood before his parents and declared, “I cannot tell a lie.” Apparently Mr. Weems didn’t have such qualms about telling lies because we now know this for the utter fabrication that it is. In many early twenty century so-called biographies wild west outlaws and heroes lives were recalled, all their harrowing adventures and great quotes, the only problem is the writers of these books didn’t even seem to make an attempt at getting the stories correct and after a while Wyatt Earp became as much of a fictious character as a historical one. Still today we are trying to sift between the truth and legend of many historical figures. Now don’t misunderstand I am not trying to condone James Frey’s lies, my only point here is if you read an autobiography or biography and believe every word and account in it you are dangerously naïve, but if any of you are interested I will gladly sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. A writer’s job is to tell a story people want to hear, fiction or non-fiction. But there is an even more core thing here too; people will lie, especially about themselves. There is not a person reading this who hasn’t been telling a story about themselves and made themselves sound better than what they actually were, or sometimes in case worse than they actually were, I myself have uttered the phrase, “I almost died.” This is harmless enough, but probably not technically true. One could say that there are two engines that drive us to do this, one is the need of self-preservation and the other is the need for attention. Depending on where your moral line is, you will tell a lie that you believe is in your best interest and/or is harmless. So America stop acting shocked at what Mr. Frey did, most of you have done it to, the only difference is you probably didn’t make money on it.

No, lying wasn’t James Frey mistake, character flaw maybe, but not mistake. His mistake was apologizing on Oprah. No from what I saw that wasn’t an apology as much as a tongue lashing and “Boo”fest. James Frey sat there like a whipped puppy and took the scolding and apologized profusely the whole time and made himself look like Oprah’s bitch. At first you may not think this is a mistake, but him trying to make amends.

Last year the only book to self more copies than A Million Little Pieces was Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. That is no small feat for a nonfiction book, but there is a very easily stated reason for this. Oprah added it to her book club and raved about ceaselessly. Oprah is very powerful and influential and her voracious fans ate it up, buying the book in hordes. Mr. Frey had already milked that cow dry. If James Frey had gone on Oprah and the second she started to go off on him jumped up Jerry Springer style and got right back in her face to the point that he had to be hauled off the stage by security, that would have been the clip on the news for the next two months and every one of us that doesn’t like Oprah and got a kick out of watching him go off on her would have run out and bought the book. It would have probably been bought by people that were neutral on Oprah as well, out of sheer curiosity. He probably would have doubled his profits and more importantly it would have helped him on his next book.

Let’s face facts, no matter how good his next book is, it will be a cold day in hell before Oprah puts her stamp of approval on it. He has zero chance of getting back into that country club, but he could have created a new base by standing in defiance of Oprah. And apparently those that were his new fan club wouldn’t be shocked if we found out his next book was bull too. Now I am guessing that he harbors some hope that he can get back into Oprah’s inner circle and he probably didn’t realize how much of a pussy he would look like on her show. I can’t say that I blame him, Oprah is powerful and influential and any book that she signs off on is a bestseller, I am sure the temptation to get back on her good side was powerful. But not trying to create a new fan base was a mistake.

It could still be fixed though Mr. Frey. I submit to you that you should go on Howard Stern and go off on Oprah. Howard Stern will probably help and more importantly you will get Oprah’s attention again and she will denounce you as a heretic on national television. It will make all the news shows for at least a week, and new fans will pick up your book just to spite Oprah. Think about Mr. Frey.

The last two movies I watched were similar in a fundamental way, while being very different. The Skeleton Key and The Constant Gardner are two movies you will never find next to each other at Blockbuster, but these movies due share something in common. Neither was very good, but both had excellent endings.

The Constant Gardner was a very confusing and hard to keep up with movie. If you are not familiar with it, Ralph Fiennes plays an English diplomat in Africa whose wife is murdered and he spends the movie unraveling the secrets of her life and the secrets of her death. I wouldn't go so far as to say this movie is bad, it was in fact a very well put together story and Ralph Fiennes is always amazing. The problem really comes from the fact that the filmakers are trying to put together a rollercoaster ride where every minutes brings a new surprise, this might have succeeded except that the movie was so hard to follow that you spent every minute thinking about what happened in the previous minute. So you constantly feel like you are playing catch-up with the storyline. But if there is a redeeming quality to all this it is the ending, which was excellent and since there was no new information to process I was able to give all my attention to and enjoy.

The Skeleton Key starred Kate Hudson and I was never sure what this movie was trying to be. The previews made it look like it might be a horror movie, it wasn't. The tone of the movie early on made it feel like a thriller in the grand tradition of M. Night Shyalaman, it wasnt. I had begun to believe it was just a drama, it wasn't. In all fairness the movie had aspects of all of these and I feel that the filmmaker was trying to blend this together seamlessly, which didn't work. The problems with this movie are too many to name, but I will name a few of the most prominent and most distracting. The acting is atrocious, Kate Hudson is not only the star of this movie, she is the only person here who acts like they have been in a movie before, but don't take that as too much of a compliment to her, she wasn't that good either. The single biggest problem with the movie is simply how the story is held together. Greeks used to call upon the Deus ex Machina whenever their heroes got into spots they couldn't get out of or when they could think of no other way to advance the story. Here the Deus ex Machina is the main characters nosiness, which is insurmountable in size. There must be a dozen places where the story could have hung up and died, but Kate Hudson's character would then do something that would make you scratch your head and say, "Now why the hell is she doing that? That doesn't make any sense." In Stephen King's Misery, Annie Wilkes gets angry at Paul for bringing Misery Chastain back to life by unfair circumstances, Annie Wilkes would have kicked out her television had she been watching this movie. But just like a really long flight to a really beautiful place, once you get there you are happy, and I have to say that when you get to the ending and understand what is going on(and that does take a second) it is somewhat satisfying. Now I can't under good conscience tell you dear reader the ending and I also in good conscience can't recommend this movie, but if you want to know the ending you will just have to sit through 99 minutes of crap for the last good 5 minutes. It is painfully apparent when you have watched this movie that the person who wrote it obviously had the ending first and worked his way back, I think under better writing this might have been a really good movie.

So constant reader I will leave you with the question that is the title of this post. Does the end justify the means? These aren't the first bad movies to have good endings, my mind harks back to the 1980's and an early Kevin Costner movie called No Way Out. A movie with a stellar cast, but a confusing and slightly boring story, a movie similar in these regards to The Constant Gardner. Both had great acting, both were confusing, both were a little boring, but both had great endings. Also, Edward Nortons first movie a Richard Gere thriller called Primal Fear, it had an excellent ending the only problem was, when I got there I no longer cared. I will say this in favor of these movies, they atleast have a hook. The concept of Cat in the Hat was to dress Mike Myers in a cat outfit and watch him run around, there was no story to go with it. Another concept, let's milk eighties nostaligia for a fast buck by bringing back the Orange Charger and putting two dreamy guys in it for teenage girls and a dimwitted beautiful starlet in short, short, short, shorts in it for the teenage boys. How about this concept lets take a CGI kangaroo, but one with some street appeal, in fact let's make him a rapper, and we will put a sweater of money on him and let two nitwits try to catch him, but he is a sly, streetwise Roo. I am sure you can see where this is going by now, atleast if a movie has a good ending it doesn't feel completely like you've wasted your time, not all of it anyway. I just wish they could all be like an M. Night Shyalaman movie or The Usual Suspects, I like being surprised and shocked, but boredom is not the emoition I want to precede these reactions. If you got to take a flight to a resort far away, you might as well fly first class.