Beautiful Losers of Cinema, Part 1: Marty (1955)

As we go through the process of revising HAPPY FUNERAL, I find myself looking at films that possess similar thematic threads.

One archetype I've been studying is that of the "beautiful loser," a perhaps awful shorthand for that character who is beautiful in his brokenness. We can't help but love these compelling misfits, brimming with unrealized potential. You know the type- he can't quite figure out how to navigate his way through life, or is always allowing others to run it. It's the guy who says lines like "I coulda been a contender." It's the character James Dean and Marlon Brando made careers out of playing, and in our time, Juaquin Phoenix and Johnny Depp have had their own go at it... And back in 1955, Ernest Borgnine won a Best Actor Oscar for his own doughy take of it in Marty.

Ernest Borgnine in Marty

We first see Marty (from whom the film takes its name) working in a local butcher shop. He is a 34 year old bachelor, hectored by his own customers about his single life even as they force him to detail the various nuptials of his own siblings. He's a sad, but noble figure, clearly principled with a desire to better his life and surroundings, yet without a sense of agency in his own life, especially when it comes to the question of finding his life partner. It doesn't get better when he gets off of work and meets up with his group of friends at a nearby diner. Their trivial pursuits only further remind him of his own aimlessness.

Perhaps the moment most emblematic is this exchange with Angie, Marty's best friend:

ANGIE

Well, what do you feel like doing tonight?

MARTY

I don't know. What do you feel like doing?

ANGIE

Well, we're back to that, huh? I say to you, "What do you feel like doing tonight?" And you say to me, "I don't know, what do you feel like doing?" And then we wind up sitting around your house with a coupla cansa beer, watching Hit Parade on television...

This conversation reminded me of a lot of the ones I would have with friends in high school- but maybe that's the point, the "beautiful loser" is stuck in an extended adolescence.

This sense of being stuck only worsens when Marty returns home to his mother. But instead of the anxiety he and his friends were trying to distract themselves from, his loving Italian Catholic mother confronts him with it directly:

MRS. PILLETTI

Marty, I don't want you hang arounna

house tonight. I want you to go take

a shave and go out and dance.

MARTY

Ma, when are you gonna give up? You

gotta bachelor on your hands. I ain't

never gonna get married.

MRS. PILLETTI

You gonna get married.

MARTY

Sooner or later, there comes a point

in a man's life when he gotta face

some facts, and one fact I gotta

face is that whatever it is that

women like, I ain't got it. I chased

enough girls in my life. I went to

enough dances. I got hurt enough. I

don't wanna get hurt no more. I just

called a girl just now, and I got a

real brush-off, boy. I figured I was

past the point of being hurt, but

that hurt. Some stupid woman who I

didn't even wanna call up. She gave

me the brush. I don't wanna go to

the Stardust Ballroom because all

that ever happened to me there was

girls made me feel like I was a bug.

I got feelings, you know. I had enough

pain. No, thank you.

MRS. PILLETTI

Marty...

MARTY

Ma, I'm gonna stay home and watch

Jackie Gleason.

MRS. PILLETTI

You gonna die without a son.

MARTY

So I'll die without a son.

Yet in spite of himself, Marty does as his mother advices and as he has done innumerable times before, and goes off to the Stardust Ballroom. There again he is rejected in typical fashion, then forced to watch his best friend Angie dancing. But fate takes a turn when a guy tries to bribe Marty and pawn off his own homely date. Upright as always, the very suggestion offends Marty. Instead he watches as the guy moves on and finds another chump to hand his unwanted girl too. But the attempted hand off goes badly, and in a long take we watch Marty as he watches the transaction go sour. The young woman is devastated and the two jerks wander off bickering about the money. The young woman walks out to the balcony and Marty follows her. It's then the two connect.

Look at this lovely stream-of-consciousness discourse that stumbles out of the mouth of Marty, as he tries to console the dejected Clara:

MARTY
Now I figure, two people get married, and they gonna live together forty, fifty years. So it's just gotta be more than whether they're good looking or not. You tell me you think you're not very good-looking. My father was a really ugly man, but my mother adored him. She told me that she used to get so miserable sometimes, like everybody, you know? And she says my father always tried to understand. I used to see them sometimes when I was a kid, sitting in the living room, talking and talking, and I used to adore my old man, because he was so kind. That's one of the most beautiful things I have in my life, the way my father and mother were. And my father was a real ugly man. So it doesn't matter if you look like a gorilla. So you see, dogs like us, we ain't such dogs as we think we are.

Marty went on to sweep the Oscars that year and was a huge sleeper hit. A huge reason for Marty's success, I'm sure, was the formidable writing of Paddy Chayefsky, whose incisive dialogue is perpetually timeless and always in the now. These days, when cineastes think of Chayefsky, they think of Network (1976), but even back in the 50's, Chayefsky rendered powerful, nuanced dialogue and was king of the monologue.

To this day, Chayefsky's influence looms large. A notable example: Love the stylized and rambling dialogue of Paul Thomas Anderson? The poeticized monologues especially on display in Magnolia? Well look no further than Chayefsky to discover Anderson's own aesthetic roots.

Chayefsky is perhaps most noted for the words that come out of his characters mouths. He stays consistent to their voice and ever faithful to the language and expressions of his time. But look at how he takes these forms and elevates them to the level of music. Look at the rhythmic patterns underneath the monologue. Marty speaks from his heart and wears it on his sleeve. This is dialogue at its most "on-the-nose." But the earnestness works because it is truthful. And a lot of "rules" fall away when we are simply truthful- as long as that verisimilitude takes on the appropriate aesthetic form of its medium.

And in the case of this particular "beautiful loser," his earnestness gives earthiness and texture to our own pain and longing. The truth that shines through in Marty is that people can be beautiful in their brokenness. And that "beauty" is what we call resilience...

This just in...

Sheri Davani, the fantastic producer and AD who will be producing HAPPY FUNERAL, was just featured in a blog post on matchflick.com.

You can read the article about this wonderful midwife of indy films here.

And then you will think to yourself,

Perhaps I am not as broken as I thought I was.

Perhaps I am not broken at all.

Injured yes--

But healing.

Tired yes--

But awakening.

Director's Statement (March 2010)

(NOTE: This director's statement was prepared for a Screenwriting Lab, and part of what I was asked to do was to describe our project status- something I won't go into when the revised version of this statement is posted on the HAPPY FUNERAL website)

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT

I have always been fascinated by how people meet their deaths. I had observed in my personal encounters, and later confirmed in my reading, that often people who are approaching death experience a new sense of inner peace. About two years ago, I began to reflect on what it would be like to have these experiences at a relatively young age. The exploration of these themes evolved into HAPPY FUNERAL.

HAPPY FUNERAL is a window into the last days of a troubled young man racing to mend the broken ties in his life before a brutal neighborhood loan shark-- or his terminal cancer-- get a chance to kill him. At it's heart it is a trans-cultural, trans-generational story of forgiveness and redemption. I drew on my own Persian and Iraqi family and heritage as I developed the character of Sulayman “Sully” Hakim, who became the vehicle through which the themes of mortality and atonement are lived out. While the story is undeniably culturally specific, it is not a Middle Eastern-American story. It is a human story with a Middle Eastern-American protagonist. My goal is to create an honest portrayal of people with a full spectrum of human emotions.

In this regard, the Turkish-German director Fatih Akin is a major influence, who manages in films like Head On to illustrate Turkish characters whose lives are train wrecks, but are also fully human and never mere caricatures. Others filmmakers, such as Ramine Bahrani (Chop Shop) and Jacque Audiard (A Prophet) have served as superb tonal and aesthetic references as I craft the outer world that Sully is journeying through in HAPPY FUNERAL. My aim is to take this restrained, understated neo-realist approach and combine it with the kind of hopefulness and light that permeates films like Europa Europa or Shawshank Redemption.

The audience will also experience the world as Sully experiences it-- both emotionally and also at a subjective sensory level, much the way we see the world through the protagonist eyes in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Sully’s condition causes his brain to misfire, and as a result, harrowing visions, sometimes beautiful, and sometimes horrifying, visit him. These episodes will hearken to the poetic interludes found in the stunning films of Andrei Tarkovsky.

In choosing to tell Sully's end-of-life journey, I realized I was in grave danger of wandering into a vast wasteland of cinema clichés. So I began to do as much research as I could. One of my resources was in my friend Daniel Spurgeon who is a brilliant poet, playwright and hospice physician. His insights were so helpful to me, I was compelled to ask him to become a co-writer of HAPPY FUNERAL. He has proved to be an able collaborator and we are both committed to doing are very best to make HAPPY FUNERAL a film of the highest quality. Towards that end we submitted our film to the January 2010 Sundance Screenwriting Lab for which were finalists in consideration. Additionally we had a table reading with a near full cast of actors to further assist us in our revisions of the script.

In the interest of a smooth transition into fundraising, development and eventual pre-production, we realized we needed to begin assembling our team. It was while I was at Sundance this year that I watched the film Night Catches Us and noted that the name of the Associate Producer and 1st Assistant Director for it, Shahrzad “Sheri” Davani was Persian. I later learned that she has worked as a producer and AD on a number of Sundance favorites, and has also worked with many Indy film powerhouses. Thinking she might connect with the material and that she would also bring the necessary know-how as a producer, I tracked her down and persuaded her to read the script. Happily, she enthusiastically came on board as a co-producer for our film.

As many have rightly pointed out, in the aftermath of the distribution meltdown, it is necessary for filmmakers to integrate a marketing and distribution strategy into their approach from the inception of their project. For this reason, we decided that planning for marketing and distribution needed to go hand in hand with our revision process. For that purpose, I asked my friend Kristy Thomley, a successful young publicist who works under the radar for many filmmakers and production companies, to come on board as the Producer of Marketing and Distribution. Our aim then is to smoothly transition into social network marketing when we have a final draft of the script in Summer 2010, and it will be Kristy who will execute the strategy we develop together.

As we slowly assemble our team, our primary goal is refine the screenplay of HAPPY FUNERAL until its craft and art are as solid as possible. When we arrive at a final draft, we will bear full steam ahead in filling all of the primary roles necessary to make the film a reality. Along with this we will do everything in our power to target niche audiences, carry out our social media marketing and pursue crowdsourcing. First the aim is to raise enough money to create a trailer and shoot selected scenes, and then based on the strength of these samples, continue to build the crowdsourcing community, and also to pursue more traditional avenues of fundraising.

After finishing the script with Daniel, I will continue on as a producer for HAPPY FUNERAL and will eventually direct and edit it as well. I plan to shoot HAPPY FUNERAL on location in Los Angeles. The bulk of the film will most likely be shot on the RED, but Sully's vision sequences will be shot on the Canon D7, both because of it's nimbleness and its beautiful look. However, I must confess that committed as I am to making this film, I'll shoot it on my own HVX-200 if necessary. I project the budget to come in under $300,000, a budget which also reflects costs for marketing and self- distribution after post-production is complete. Fortunately I edit for a living and believe that this skill- set will prove invaluable in making this film as inexpensively and efficiently as possible, whatever the budget or the format that we will eventually shoot with.

Re-reading what I have written about our plans, I must be honest and state frankly that I am daunted by the work ahead. However, I do not know what to live for, if not to strive to make films that bring joy and meaning to our world. At its core, HAPPY FUNERAL is about the human heart’s struggle to find peace with itself and an often cruel and violent world. As Sully makes his rapid march towards death, he rediscovers what it is to live. My hope, above all else, is to create a film where the audience experiences something similar.

-- Samah Tokmachi, Writer/Director, HAPPY FUNERAL

Twitterific

For many people, Twitter is about getting as many followers as possible.

I think there's some obvious benefit in that, but I think that singular goal overlooks other, sometimes even more important uses for Twitter.

So, for example, there is the opportunity to be made aware of all kinds of new happenings and sources of information out there. Already I have been made hip to several movie reviews, movies, blog posts on technical matters, music and artists I would have never otherwise known about.

But there's more to it than that.

Here are some case studies of connections I've made with people on Twitter, presented in order of occurrence:

1) My new friend Clara:

Clara Aranovich is a very smart, very lovely film grad student at USC. She found me on Twitter because we were both finalists in consideration for the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. We've become good friends and a lot of good things have come out of it.

2) Jesse Dylan and the good people of FreeForm

Jesse Dylan, the acclaimed commercial director, who directed the Obama "Yes We Can" video and also founded the production companies Form and FreeForm started following me on Twitter. It took me a second to realize who he was, but as soon as I did, I followed him back and reached out. I arranged to meet with him, though our meeting was twice cancelled. I persevered, and we finally met. He was very gracious and gave me lots of advice and encouragement. I told him that I wanted to learn from his model of both commercial and non-profit work and that what he was doing was exactly the kind of work I wanted to do. I offered my services for his non-profit work pro-bono, but he told me that anybody that works for him gets paid. That was meaningful I thought.

I then received a tour of the facilities and had an extended meeting with the Director of Development at FreeForm. We've been in touch and discussed some future projects. No work as of yet, but regardless, I value the friendship and finding a community of like-minded individuals who are making work with the highest ethics and aesthetics in their content. I'll probably blog more about this unique relationship in the future.

3) Duraid Munajim, Director of Photography for Son of Babylon

I tweeted about this film as soon as I arrived back Park City. It was by far my favorite of the films I saw at Sundance. I tweeted exactly that, and it was retweeted by SundanceBuzz. In turn, the DP's girlfriend retweeted, and then the DP himself retweeted it and started following me on Twitter. This was Duraid Munajim. Duraid offered to meet with me and have some coffee in Park City, but I was already gone. I said let's talk after the Sundance dust has settled.

Then in February, I sent him another follow up e-mail. i didn't hear from him that month, but then a few days ago, he told me he was here in LA. Today we met and it was a fantastic connection. He gave me his reel, told me war stories from the set of Son of Babylon (almost literally, since they were shooting in Iraq) and we generally talked shop and life. And since my father is of Persian descent and Iraqi-born, and Duraid is half-Iraqi and half-Persian, we had a lot in common.

So what's my point? My point is that Twitter helps you connect with like-minded people who you can build personal and professional relationships with, and if you focus on giving, you will naturally receive.

The end.

Connecting the dots, building the system, assembling the team...

This year at Sundance proved to be an important one for me.  Every film I saw spoke directly to my life and my heart.  A few films especially, some in more ways then one.

Night Catches Us was beautifully crafted and connected to a sense of American history.

Taqwacores dealt with the confrontation of religion and modernity.

Son of Babylon was a masterpiece of the highest order.  I wept many times as I watched it.  This beautiful and important work should be moving to a stone, but as a son of a son of Babylon it was especially moving.  I could die happy  if I ever made a film with as much depth, craft and humanity as it.  I am especially happy that it was made by an Iraqi.

But in spite of these cinematic gifts, perhaps the best thing that comes out of an event like Sundance, is the chance to connect with potential collaborators and like-minded supporters.

For example, at Taqwacores I met several young actors with heritages from around the world- all people I would be happy to cast and who were interested in my work and the things I wanted to say- you can't ask for more.

And when I saw Night Catches Us, I noticed a Persian name for 1st AD and Associate Producer, that of Shahrzad Davani.  Seeing as tbe main character (and several other characters) are Iranian-American in HAPPY FUNERAL, I thought she might perhaps connect with and appreciate the material.  I looked for her after the screening, but she wasn't there, although I did make some great heart connections with some others associated with the film...

When I saw Shahrzad Davani's name again in a Twitter feed, it made me think perhaps that I should reach out to her.  I asked Rainn Wilson if he wouldn't mind connecting us, and sure enough he did.  Sheri (that's what she goes by) turned out to be very supportive and totally like-minded.  She immediately agreed to read the script that Daniel Spurgeon and I have written,  She said she'd get back to me over the weekend. I didn't hear back from her right away and started getting a little nervous.  Then she sent me a one sentence e-mail asking if I was free to meet.  I immediately said yes and we set up a day and time...  But I felt a little unsure, given the terseness of her response.  I thought, perhaps, she didn't like it.

But than I saw her tweet: "Looking forward to mtg with @samahcinema and talking about his great script."

The best part was when Rainn retweeted it and took credit for the meeting.  That's cool, I'm glad Rainn can take time between Emmy nominations and Office episodes to take credit for connecting Sheri and I.  I figure he confused his two million followers that day, though ten of them did start to follow me...

Anway, the meeting went swimmingly and later my co-writer Daniel and I met with Sheri to map out a strategy for the next few months.

Little by little, we're organizing our we're creating a solid and dynamic team...

Avatars of a new (as of yet unrealized) age...

So I just saw Avatar and as you'll no doubt agree, I found it visually supreme.

Many, many people have already commented on this remarkable and revolutionary spectacle... So I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade with what I have to say. In fact I agree with most of David Denby's breathless homage:

"James Cameron’s “Avatar” is the most beautiful film I’ve seen in years. Amid the hoopla over the new power of 3-D as a narrative form, and the excitement about the complicated mix of digital animation and live action that made the movie possible, no one should ignore how lovely “Avatar” looks, how luscious yet freewheeling, bounteous yet strange. As Cameron surges through the picture plane, brushing past tree branches, coursing alongside foaming-mouthed creatures, we may be overcome by an uncanny sense of emerging, becoming, transcending—a sustained mood of elation produced by vaulting into space..."

All of that gushing, deserved praise aside, one might notice that for all the Emperor's fine haberdashery, there were a few spots of nakedness...

After it was done, I turned to a friend and said “Even if you hated you would have to be impressed.” And he said, “That’s kind of where I am.”

And I can understand why. It has all the trademark hokey things you would expect from a James Cameron film: the dialogue is not exceptional (it’s very on the nose in many places).

The disparity between the dialogue and visual imagery is indeed striking. And I can understand why the mind that might be great at creating such stunning visuals might not be the best for crafting evocative, subtle dialogue. In some ways, they have almost opposite requirements.

In dialogue it’s rarely a good thing for a line to be on the nose- the only time I think it works is when a character really would say something on the nose- but even that should be done sparingly. On the other hand, visually it’s not unusual for a very striking, beautiful, powerful image to also be very transparent in it’s meaning- but of course it still has to be organic to the story and not contrived. (Contrivance, rather than literalness of meaning, would seem to be the greater danger from a visual point of view).

An example of where the literalness worked visually but was a bit annoying in the dialogue was the constant reference made to the “web of life”. It felt didactic and forced. On the other hand, when the central character found himself accepted by the Na’vi people, the moment was conveyed with the perfect visual metaphor. A small group approached him and put their hands on him. Then others followed suit and laid their hands on those touching him, and yet evermore followed. Flowing out from this one center were several hundred Na’vis connected hand to shoulder to hand, forming their very own “web of life”. This worked beautifully I thought.

The point I wouldn't want to lose here is that some of these 3D images were astonishing in ways that I've never seen before in film. One of the opening images begins with the Jake Sully roused from a cryogenic state, released from his frozen catacomb into a sub zero gravity ward. His attendant floats towards us, and the distance we see several other attendants drifting in space. It is both magical and mundane. I loved it, and other moments like it.

Unfortunately, the screen in the Arclight Dome was not as bright as I felt it should’ve been. It all looked a little too dark with the glasses on. And the 3D glass did strain my eyes. I long for the day when 3D means not wearing glasses , but rather the stereoscopic images are projected on multiple screens for a diorama like effect. That would be pretty cool I think- much more pleasurable and less strain on the eyes.

IS THIS THE FUTURE OF CGI?

One thing that felt like a shortcoming of Avatar was the "animated" look of the Na'vi people and much of their envionment. I think this disparity between the impressive 3D elements versus the sometimes cartoonish ones has to do with an absence of physical references for the CGI artists. If you ever work with a CGI studio they’ll always tell you it’s better to work with an actual physical reference. Once I directed a PSA with a girl flying a kite. Since we weren't able to get the kite into the air, it was necessary to make a fake CGI one.

Still from the PSA I made for Full Circle Learning, CGI by Eight VFX

The CGI studio that made the kite that she was flying asked me for the actual kite so they could scan it in and create a 3D model from it. And this from what I understand is always the preferred route. I remember hearing Bryan Singer talking about this when he made Superman Returns. They actually shot Brandon Routh in the air with wires, and then removed them in post. They did this rather than shooting him against a green screen. And if you watch Superman, the flying is really convincing.

Same with Where the Wild things Are.

Spike Jonze was very insistent about not only shooting on location, but also having the Wild Things be actual puppet outfits (which the Jim Henson team did a wonderful job creating). This way when the CGI artists manipulated the puppet costume’s face, they actually had something to work with- almost a tactile clay- rather than having to construct it from digital scratch. And in doing so, there’s a certain photorealism that they have that Avatar does not. As one of my favorite artists, David McKean tweeted, there's almost an anti-CGI quality to the Wild Things- a real weight that the Na'vi do not possess.

While the Na’vi digital avatars are true to the actors' performances, their actual physical being still looks cartoonish and obviously animated. It’s a long way from Roger Rabbit, but it still closer to the Phantom Menace than I think is ideal.

They kind of look like a lot of angry Gumbys don't they?

However, it might be a while before we can get that total photorealism without the aid of a photographed physical reference. Perhaps when a vast catalogue of 3D models made from real physical objects comes into being- perhaps that’s when we’ll finally cross that digital threshold…