AudioShocker

I didn't go to see it, and probably won't ever, but there's a movie out right now that perhaps you've heard of: The Fourth Kind. Apparently, it's about a spate of alien abductions that happened once upon a time in Alaska, during, like, a sleep study or something. It seems to have had some amount of success marketing itself, since I had two friends separately bring it up to me as something that might be worth seeing. Apparently it uses, like, real clips of an actual sleep study. When my one friend mentioned that fact, my reaction was something to the extent of "What, they used actual footage of people waking up?" This strikes me as another step down the strange line of "realism" that Hollywood's been walking for a while now. A cousin of the Batman people having Gotham obviously be Chicago to make it seem, like, more real (recently, I've been thinking that maybe, as Gotham gets more and more real, maybe Chicago will steadily become imaginary; that'd be cool).

As if images of the "real" world somehow add veracity to the movie's fictional enterprise. The trailers for 4th Kind have this "you decide what's real." Though I don't really want to defend the actual world against fictional adaptations, I'm just feeling rather tired of the whole thing. Apparently, I guess, Paranormal Activity, was in a similar vein, insofar as it was similar to The Blair Witch Project. What a fad. Aristotle (without sounding too much like a graduate school A-hole (or sounding just like one, but intentionally so)), I reckon, would remind us that theater is intended as a mimesis of real life, but also that that representation of the real requires careful control and plot-making acumen. Little splashes of notions of things being "based on facts" or, like, looking, like, totally real are just surface level attempts at such things.

My other friend that mentioned T4K to me brought up the fact that apparently the alien abductions that are the subject of the movie were actually the actions of a serial killer. He was rather incensed at the notion of turning an actual spate of serial killings into an alien thing. I'm not sure if I agree or not, but a cursory internet search told me that the investigators of the supposed serial killings decided that it was probably just alcohol abuse and suicide doing most of the disappearing. And alcohol abuse is certainly fair game for reinterpretation as alien abductions.

This all somehow also matches my disdain for the contemporary memoir. So it is similarly vulnerable to the complaint that I hate this stuff without actually reading or watching it. But that's just it; I'm giving my reasons for not bothering with this stuff. I guess I just don't like stories that keep it real. They're real alright. Real boring.

This Week in That Guy #2: Stephen Tobolowsky

We had some discussion last week as to what, precisely makes a guy That Guy. Stephen Tobolowsky matches the criteria perfectly: he's in all kinds of movies and TV shows, but never in a particularly big role. Mr. Tobolowsky oftentimes plays the creepy politician or the villainous step father, amongst other roles. My most recent "that guy" moment was when I was watching the HBO series Deadwood, in which Tobolowsky shows up as a crooked commissioner.

The obvious point which complicates Tobolowsky's status as That Guy, is his seminal role as Ned Ryerson in 1993's Groundhog Day. "Ned? Ned Ryerson? Ned the Head? Needle-nose Ned?" In the comments last week, I was arguing that, for instance, the guy that played Puddy in Seinfeld doesn't count as a That Guy because he's just known as Puddy, too iconic a label to give him That Guy status. And this may be the case with Tobolowsky, as many people out there will always remember him as Ned "Bing Again!" Ryerson. However, I think in the 15 years since that role, Tobolowsky has made so many movies and taken so many (minor) roles, that he's overcome his Ned-ness to become a bonafide That Guy.

Here's something I found on youtube that has Tobolowsky in it:

Wow! What a That Guy!

As further evidence, Tobolowsky was also That Guy in The Insider, Memento, and Spaceballs, not to mention, like, every TV show ever.