My Memaw and My Mom

My Memaw passed away and I love her very very much.

Growing up with friends primarily in the Midwest, I didn’t hear a lot of people call their grandmother “Memaw,” which is by all accounts a silly word. Memaw’s real name was JoJean which is also a silly name. In her world Target was Tar-Je, Jezebel was Jezzie, my friend Pedro was Paco/Pancho/Padre and Buca di Beppo was never called the same name twice. She kept trying to get Benedict Cumberbatch’s name right, even to the point where she called me to say she tried to study his name in People.

Top 72 Films of 2014

There were a ton of great films last year. SO MANY GREAT FILMS. I saw 134 films that came out in 2014 and I liked, in one degree or another, 94 of them. There are still a ton of them I would like to see that I’ve missed including The Blue Room, Calvary, Coherence, The French Minister, Get On Up, Happy Valley, The Inbetweeners 2, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, Life of Crime, Love is Strange, A Master Builder, Miss Meadows, The Missing Picture, A Most Violent Year, The Mule, Norte the End of History, Omar, Particle Fever, Showrunners, The Skeleton Twins, Space Station 76, The Strange Little Cat, The Unknown Known, Vic and Flo Saw a Bear, Wetlands, Why Don’t You Play in Hell? and Willow Creek.

There’s this joy that there are so many interesting films coming out. I’m now living in a city where more of them can be seen in some excellent theatres, but the world has changed where within a matter of months all of these films can be seen by anyone, not just those who live near an awesome art house. If you type in any of these films to Netflix, the odds are strong that they will be there or will be there soon. 

So even though all of these lists are a little bit silly, I still like to make mine for the fact that it can be a recommendation list for you. Is #34 that much better than #40? It was for me, but you may end up adoring #28 more than anything. This is what I loved last year and I hope that you too can find something exciting and stimulating and original and bonkers and sophisticated and a film that makes you too wave it to someone where they have to see it pronto.

Since I’m writing about so many films, I’m going to try to keep it brief until I get later in the list. I say that now…

#72

Leviathan

Destruction seems like something that will be inherently cinematic, but not every film is able to pull off the emotional weight of it. By the end of this film, you’re really able to feel the impact of all the consequences that these characters had control of and the ones they sadly didn’t.

#71

X-Men: Days of Future Past

The more superhero films we get, the more Hollywood can’t rely on the same old stories. This is a complicated and curious story full of worthy twists and a confidence to play around in this universe. My only complaint is that I wish it was longer to allow for even more emotional scenes between its characters.

Top TV Episodes of 2014

This is the fourth year writing these silly TV articles and they are some of my favorite things to work on every year. In the previous one, it’s just me ranting about a ton of great shows. This one is easily more fascinating each and every time. Why? It’s because my friends are fascinating.

Critic polls always are a great way to look at a year of art but they are limited by the fact they all are critics. That is what their perspective is. TV is a medium that everybody watches and has an opinion on. Since there are so many installments of a show and so much time is devoted towards the story and characters, everyone is a little bit of a critic as they decide whether they should keep going or not.

Every year I’ve increased the number of people I have writing in this because I’m greedy. I want to read more and more thoughts about what is exciting my friends. So this year I do have some excellent film critics, but I also have lawyers and news producers and video editors and actors and directors and students and marketing experts. I have people who work at a film festival. I have people who work in Spain. I have people who work in sports, in politics, in advertising, in publishing and for colleges and nursing homes and community resource centers for LGBTQ people. I have authors who write about cowboys and skeletons and fools. What connects them all—besides their regret about having me as a friend—is their love for art.

So without further ado, here are everyone’s Top TV Episodes of 2014!

The Americans – “Echo”

(Season Two, Episode 13)

By Nick Rogers

Editor’s note: There are spoilers for the dramatic reveal featured at the end of the second season in the second paragraph. If you don’t wish to be spoiled skip ahead.

The second-season finale of The Americans — cable’s best current series never nominated for a meaningful Emmy — climaxes with a long reveal. Perhaps it’s a tad too long for the usual badge-of-honor believability of the show, which follows Philip and Elizabeth, married undercover KGB agents undermining 1980s America from inside and played by the astonishingly versatile Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell.

Jared, a mortally wounded teen whom we thought cruelly orphaned by a rogue element, reveals that he killed his KGB-operative parents. He retaliated for their rejection of his decision to become a second-generation spy, made after a lithe, comely female KGB agent lured him. Later, we learn this insidious KGB initiative has its sights set on Philip and Elizabeth’s teenage daughter, Paige.

This atypical rush of exposition hardly matters when it so beautifully crystallizes the (sometimes overly) slow burn of themes that dominated the season’s other two best episodes: “Behind the Red Door,” in which Elizabeth demands Philip make love to her like his married alter ego “Clark” to destructive ends; and “New Car,” in which America’s unfettered confidence wilts Philip’s own greener-grass curiosity about iconic American culture.

Top TV Shows of 2014

Every year I talk about how good TV is on this blog. It’s almost like I don’t know how to originally think of a way to start these articles. But the level of quality is getting ridiculous. Instead of a Top 20 this year, I have a Top 35 and there are still a dozen awesome shows that I’m not able to write about. In 2014, I watched over 100 shows while only dropping a handful of them. (Fun unrelated fact, I was unemployed for a few months this year! I’m better now!) Next year marks the end of plenty of beloved shows but as you can see from the influx of new shows on my list, the quality just keeps coming.

Yet remarkably I did sleep a couple of times this year so I wasn’t able to see everything. I’m either very behind on or haven’t seen Babylon, Derek, Father Brown, Getting On, Happy Valley, High Maintenance, The Honorable Woman, The Knick, Line of Duty, Manhattan, Over the Garden Wall, Parenthood, Peaky Blinders, Penny Dreadful, The Real Husbands of Hollywood, Shameless, Silk and A Young Doctor’s Notebook. I really liked the pilot for Mozart in the Jungle but that season isn’t dropping on Amazon until December 23^rd so…

This is going to be impossibly long so I should quit stalling and get right to…

#35  

Key and Peele 

(Comedy Central)

“Do we throw something other than rice?”
“What would you throw?”
“I don’t know. Cous cous. Skittles.”

Why this is one of the greatest sketch shows is because it’s a show that refuses to be lazy. It doesn’t just look at topics that are popular, but challenges the perspective we have in our society. When a sketch is able to have a successful reversal it’s because they’re creating richer characters than expected. Something can have the illusion of controversial but they’re creating an actualization of a threat that could only exist in a cartoonish form. My favorite of the season is taking the idea of a family being uncomfortable with gay marriage but the family is only uncomfortable with how much they are unrealistically trying to be accommodating. In a season where they abandoned their comfortable format and characters to keep delving deeper, this remains one of the most exciting comedies on TV.

#34

Billy on the Street 

(Fuse)

“Now they’re going to try and find Dori. Here spoiler alert: SHE’S DEAD. HOW LONG DOES A FISH LIVE?”

Thanks to his role on Parks and Recreation and his appearances on late-night shows, the Emmys and a great one-off in New Girl, this was the year of Billy Eichner. Yet none of those can compare to the delightful madness of the game show where everyone wins, even if Billy is yelling at you. This season was even stranger with a chorus of people thanking Adam Levine for this tweets, Joel McHale being trapped in a giant hamster ball while arguing career choices, Billy’s Meryl Streep obsession culminating in the Meryl-Go-Round and one of the best things that has ever happened: Lena Dunham plays a game with Billy’s tiny nemesis Elena which caused Billy to break character for the first time all series. For other people this would be hell, but through the eyes of Billy he is making New York a better place. And I’m too scared to argue with him.

Organizing Crime 2015 Edition

What is my latest excuse for not blogging enough? Well I moved to Chicago, I have a full-time job, I'm working on producing a new play, I'm writing scripts and--oh yeah--I published a (sorta) new book!

ORGANIZING CRIME 2015 EDITION is the third version of our guide to active mystery series. This is a book that Jim Huang and I have been updating for over five years. With this edition, we brought in Nikki Phipps who was instrumental in the companion book ORGANIZING CRIME CLASSICS. 

These books are list books covering active mystery series so you can keep track of what you've read, what's next in the series and find new recommendations. 

So why should you buy this book when we've already done this twice? First of all, come on, man. Secondly, we make every edition worthwhile. We wait about two years between books because we design it so the information can be up-to-date as long as possible. Then every new edition will update every series in the book, but we'll also keep adding more and more authors. We want this to be as definitive as possible. Our 2010 Edition had 300+ authors. The 2012 Edition has 400+ authors. This time we have 800+ authors. Also there are new jokes in the introduction! 

This is the perfect gift for mystery lovers. Our favorite part of going to different conferences where we sell these and find people who have returned with a book they bought a year before filled with checkmarks and additional notes and a lot of love. The spiral bound book makes this easy to take with you to bookstores and libraries to find the next mystery you want.

I don't want to overstate this but this may be the greatest book of all time. 

You can buy a copy directly from The Crum Creek Press website and enjoy the joy of free shipping! 

Or you can buy it at some great independent bookstores like The Poisoned Pen, Murder by the Book or Uncle Hugo's. Also there's something called Amazon, but support local! 

Also I'm very happy to tease that we're developing an app version of this book. It is currently in beta at the moment. If you would like to be invited to test the beta please email me at Austin @ organizingcrime.com (No spaces). The beta is only available for Androids but it will be on iTunes as well when it's finished.

Hank and Asha

Hank and Asha was one of my favorite movies from last year and as of TODAY it's now available on Amazon. Support independent film and support romantic comedies that don't belittle the genre.

With the benefit of modern technology, it feels like we’re able to be in communication with anyone at any time. At this very moment, I can use free technology to talk and see someone on the other side of the planet. It’s a level of global intimacy that has never been available to mankind before, where you can know someone better than you know anybody else…but you have never been in the same city before.

Asha first heard of Hank when she saw his film at a festival in Prague. Smitten by his talent, she decides to send him a video of appreciation. When he receives the recording in New York, he returns the favor. Then she responds. And he responds. And she responds.

What they create is something special. The entire film is composed of these recordings they send each other with the titular characters looking right into the camera as they imagine the one they care about on a different continent. While a show like Peep Show uses this device to bring the audience along into their spiral of awkward destruction, Hank and Asha uses it to make you part of the romance. We become even more invested because, more than any other film, we feel that we’re in the room for their most sincere moments—even though nobody technically is.

This experiment could have easily been a series of Skype calls with the leads always moving a bit too close to their laptop camera. Since both characters are enthusiastic documentary filmmakers, this allows director James E. Duff to make every video they send each other to be more visually dynamic. These are two people who want to depict their own individual truths. So they create experiences that they can capture on film to share with each other. This includes setting up the camera before they try the famous beer from the Czech Republic for the first time or when they are at their most emotionally confused, they press record so they can convey exactly what they’re feeling when they receive surprising news.

Enough cannot be said about the two actors who have to carry the film. Andrew Pastides and Mahira Kakkar never miss a beat for even a millisecond. They have no one else to react to but the all seeing-lens and the results are incredible. They control the frame with their expert understanding of the characters as Pastides and Kakkar are able to portray all the emotions the characters mean to put onto film and the ones they can’t hide. This gimmick is incredibly challenging for actors and without them this could be an unfortunate disaster. Instead, thanks to their charmingly perfect performances, a beautiful vision and a wonderful script by Duff and Julia Morrison, this is one of the most likable and rewarding romantic films in years.

House of Cards is Better Because It's Not Great TV

I’ve seen the first five episodes of Season Two of House of Cards. I will absolutely be spoiling the first episode and mention minor things in the next four.

I thought the first season of House of Cards was fine. It had a cool style and fine performances, but it never lived up to the hype that it was creating for itself. Then something changed during the premiere of its new season. It decided that it was going to be crazier.

Sure Frank killed Peter Russo at the end of his convoluted plan to make the Vice President quit. However that was seen as a dark scary moment in Frank’s psyche that allowed him to improvise from his scheme and learned a bit about his psychotic ambition. Yet it still wasn’t that interesting of character inspection because I never cared about Frank. I didn’t care about any character on the show; I felt bad about the lack of control in Peter Russo’s life but now he’s gone.

In Season Two, the show seems to embrace how emotionally distant the show is and will just let us enjoy the chaos. And this show really wants to be chaotic. It’s taking the Breaking Bad big moments without any of the emotional stepping-stones it takes to get to those moments.

At this point in the show, we have a vice president who is essentially a serial killer, a wife who is threatening unborn babies, a McPoyle hacker who will bark like a dog to save his beloved guinea pig and a possible Christian lesbian—definitely Christian, maybe lesbian—who is converting a prostitute who can blackmail the aforementioned VP.

This show is silly.

So very silly.

The Top 61 Films of 2013....Because Why Not

As I write this, we are now 27 days into 2014 which means thanks to the effect of New Year’s consumption, the polar vortex freezing our brain cells and probably something that has to do with Rob Ford, we can’t remember 2013. Every publication wraps-up the year with a billion slideshow articles they turn in before winter break because they’re pretty positive nothing will happen during those last two weeks.

Then we’re done! No more 2013! Now it’s time to focus on “films” like I, Frankenstein and….what the hell is The Nut Job? Today I’m going to go against the grain and write about the best of cinema from last year even though we are almost a month into its predecessor. I can never do it at the end of December because there are too many movies that I want to see before I write my (pseudo) definitive list.

This year I want to go even crazier. I want to talk about my Top 61 films because I see this as one of the best years in cinema I’ve ever experienced. Also I think the film market is changing. Right now you have access to amazing films so you don’t have to go see The Legend of Hercules. There are more options!

Last thing before this gets any longer (Ha!), even though I waited to see more movies, that doesn’t mean I saw everything. I still missed About Time, After Tiller, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, Bastards, Best Kept Secret, Beyond the Hills, Caesar Must Die, Clear History, Deceptive Practice, Ernest & Celestine, Escape From Tomorrow, Go For Sisters, The Hunt, Night Across the Street, Paradise: Love, Pieta, Post Tenebras Lux, Sightseers, Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers, Something in the Air, Starbuck, Tim’s Vermeer, A Touch of Sin and You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet. I’ll get to those…one day.

Last first thing, why 61 films? Because I was going to do 60 and then I realized I forgot to put one on my list halfway through writing this. Why even have this many? Make it to the end of the article, but now let’s get started…

#61 

How to Make Money Selling Drugs

This movie is so obviously influenced by The Wire it’s even bold enough to have scenes from the HBO masterpiece and interviews with David Simon. The gimmick of making this movie a “How To” guide is a lot of fun and serves as a nice counterbalance to the depressing financial statistics about how the decades long War on Drugs has severely damaged America.

Currently Available on DVD.

#60 

Hey Bartender

Another year, another documentary about an awesome niche world I’ve never seen before. This movie shows the cultural rise of the cocktail and how the right bartender could be just as exciting as the brilliant new chef. Always cool and slick, this brings such a nice allure to this world and the work it takes to make a successful environment.

Currently Available on iTunes

The Beauty of Her

One more thing about today’s nominations. I like the Oscars because there’s a sense of legacy to the flawed institution and it gets to reward those who aren’t typically rewarded. I really can’t care about Oscar snubs for Robert Redford and Tom Hanks because I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re probably going to be okay. Instead let’s focus on the unheralded who did some amazing work.

What I was really happy to see was K.K. Barrett and Gene Serdena’s nomination for the film Her. There have been so many tweets and Facebook posts lately about what all “needs” to happen within the next year to make Back to the Future II accurate. Those are amusing (well mostly repetitive) but that was never meant to be a fully realized science-fiction world. It’s a fun satirical look at different aspects of culture that are all jumbled together to make for an entertaining romp.

Why I love Her so much is that it’s not a glimpse of our future, but a future we wish we had. I started to notice halfway through the movie that I hadn’t seen a single corporate logo. The OS system that Theodore uses doesn’t have an apple on it or even a name. Everywhere he walks, there aren’t billboards screaming about things to buy. He does get the occasional junk email but he is able to get a system in place to ignore those for him. The elevators are clean, the offices are colorful and the homes are filled with items not products.

Her has a world where society has evolved to become user-friendly, not corporation friendly. It’s shockingly nice. There were two times during the plot I was worried that a lawsuit was going to break out, but that never happened. There is civility amongst everyone because in this magical world, people are just trying to connect with one another. When Theodore sits for a moment near the end of the film and watches everyone on their mobile devices, they’re not looking like drones. They are engaging and talking and happy. This isn’t a world of distractions, but a world to focus on the things that matter the most to us.

These types of worlds are rarely depicted because the boring conclusion to technology is that it’s bad and evil and we need to only use quills because that’s what our Founding Fathers had. Other than ignorant/boring luddite approach, futuristic stories often use technology as a foil because that’s where the conflict arises. Spike Jonze has taken the (in retrospect) obvious approach in that concept and realized that people inherently create their own drama in their journey to be happy.

Barrett and Serdena created a world where people try to fulfill their happiness through their lifestyle without commenting on consumerism. Money is rarely brought up in the world, often only when it’s being rejected. Chris Pratt’s character of Paul is complimented about his shirt from Theodore and then is seen wearing it a couple of more times throughout the film. That shirt wasn’t about how much it cost or what brand it is; it’s about how that shirt made him connect to Theodore.

When Theodore talks to his date about the video game, it isn’t about the top-of-the-line graphics but about the connection he had with one of the characters. He doesn’t even own a TV to play it, but lets it surround him in a room as if it was tangible as anything else in his life. This focus on a richer importance seemed to make a superior product because nothing is seen malfunctioning in the world. Theodore can always get the letters sent, voice-command to listen and the videos to play exactly when you want them to.

Now I’ve given credit to a lot of people in this including Jonze as a screenwriter and (not-nominated) costume designers. Yet it was Barrett and Serdena that made me realize how this world functioned and they did so in an intelligent and non-flashy way. I can’t wait to see the movie again for a number of reasons, but I want to look even closer at the way this world reflects the kindness and peace the characters want for themselves and others.

Top TV Episodes of 2013

No matter what we watch, my friends always want to discuss TV shows more in depth than movies. That doesn’t mean that they like these shows more than the movies we watch, but there’s something subject to debate when you break up a story into installments. There’s the theorizing about what happened next and arguing what episode was better. To view a show in segments tricks you to analyze parts of the whole and to watch the show over a course of weeks makes you more invested.

So I love talking with my friends about their thoughts on these excellent shows. Every year I like to ask them to write for my blog and show everyone their perspective. Here are 23 of my friends and myself writing about some of their favorite episodes of the year equipped with their Top 10 list. Due to when I’m posting this, there are few episodes in 2013 that sadly won’t be up for consideration like the Treme series finale, Matt Smith’s final episode of Doctor Who and the Downton Abbey Christmas Special.

At the very end you can read about what episodes were the collected Top 10 with other bits of trivia. But first let’s head over to the CW…

Arrow – “Three Ghosts” 

(Season Two, Episode 9)

By Aaron Wittwer

It’s hard to turn the TV on anymore without becoming mired in the tendrils of some cinema-quality masterwork of a show like Breaking Bad or Homeland or Game of Thrones or Justified or Sons of Anarchy etc… Tightly plotted, intelligent dramas perfectly crafted to challenge our idea of what television can be. Arrow isn’t one of these. Arrow is a show about a second tier, comic book superhero who shoots things with arrows. It’s got a cast of really, really good-looking people. It’s on the CW. All the ingredients are there for it to be yet another piece of under-wrought YA garbage. But it’s not. Instead, it’s one of the most gleefully fun and entertaining shows on television, treating us with a refreshing degree of unapologetic melodrama, consistently well-choreographed action, and a compelling cast of core characters.

Top 20 TV Seasons of 2013

TV may be getting too good. I tried to write a Top 10 and found it to be almost impossible. Luckily I’m in control of my own blog so now I have a Top 20. (Spoiler: I still cheat.) It’s not just that my favorite shows keep getting better, it’s that more channels are making quality entertainment. The Sundance Channel proved to have some of the year’s best programs, Netflix made huge waves with launching entire seasons at once and more and more foreign imports are making its way stateside.

People are trying to say that the Golden Age of Television is fading, but it only seems to be growing stronger. Almost half of my shows on this list are first seasons of new shows. Every week of the year seems to have at least a half dozen great shows on the air. So even with watching so many shows, there are some that I have missed usually because I don’t have the time to catch up with them.

Thus, I apologize (not really) for not being caught up on Call the Midwife, Enlightened, The Good Wife, The Legend of Korra, Parenthood, Scandal, Shameless (both versions), Skins and A Young Doctor’s Notebook. Also I haven’t even started Arrow, Bad Education, Borgen, Dancing on the Edge, Last Tango in Halifax, The Venture Brothers or The White Queen. So many shows and now here are the seasons that were the best of 2013…

20. Treme Season Four (HBO)

“So what is it exactly that you want to do, hmm?”

“I want to get Caldonia’s reopen. Take over Raul’s lease, revitalize Rampart Street, fight the good fight for live music and New Orleans.”

“That’s it?”

“To start.”

In so many ways, Treme became a metaphor for the thing it loved the most. People are loving HBO more and more and yet nobody is watching this charming and emotional show about life in post-Katrina New Orleans. It wasn’t able to have a full season for its finale, but haven seen three of the five episodes, it still seems too soon to go. Unlike other final seasons, this isn’t leading towards a climatic ending. For at the end of these five hours, their lives won’t end. You want them to succeed in their dreams and thus you want New Orleans to prosper and thus you want America to prosper. When certain characters succeed financially, they always want to return to this city because that is where the soul is. And boy did this show have soul. You’ll be missed, Treme.

19. Orphan Black Season One (BBC America)

“Bloody hell. How many of us are there?”

The trailer for this show didn’t impress me. It kept using plenty of vague buzzwords to try and intrigue you about its conspiracy and clones. Then I watched the pilot where Sarah Manning sees a girl who looks identical to her, kill herself in public. Sarah’s reaction? Steal the girl’s ID so she can empty her bank account. The show continued to expand in wonderfully crazy ways that kept playing to its strengths, which included the insanely good performance of Tatiana Maslany who not only could play several characters perfectly but can also play those characters playing other characters. The goofiness and innovation made this show a whole lot of fun.

The Barest Essentials a Poet Could Need -- Austin's Top 20 Sondheim Songs

I'm very excited for tonight's HBO documentary about the great Stephen Sondheim. He's responsible for some of my favorite shows thanks to his wondrous speed and witty lyrics. I haven't seen all of his shows--Gypsy and Follies are two big omissions--but the ones I have seen are filled with such incredible ambition. So as I continue to have all of these tunes stuck in my head, here are my Top 20 favorite songs written by Mr. Stephen Sondheim.



20. "Everybody's Got the Right" -- Assassins



Creepy, unsettling and it prepares you for the uncomfortable darkness to come.


19. "Invocation and Instructions to the Audience" -- The Frogs



Hilarious commentary on how audiences ought to behave during a live show. Comedy podcast fans should recognize the opening notes...

TV is Fantastic But Television is Frustrating

With the state of television changing, networks are scrambling to figure out how to stay relevant in the age of Netflix, piracy, DVRs, OnDemand and TV on DVD.

Honestly I want to see bolder tactics by networks. Now AMC probably doesn't think it needs the advice considering the Breaking Bad finale had over 10 million viewers (which for all of you playing at home, is nuts.) This final season was incredible and I know it's going to play a whole lot better on DVD.

Imagine if AMC didn't try to force the season into its framework, but vice versa. Looking at the episodes, it would have been an amazing night of television if they made "To'hajiilee" and "Ozymandias" a two-parter. Label them as two separate hours so you can chart two different ratings. Don't worry about drop-off because who the hell would not see what would happen after that cliffhanger.

Then make "Granite State" and "Felina" a two-parter because that tonally fits a lot more than giving them a week apart. In fact, go BBC style and have limited commercials for the final episode and then about 15+ minutes of ads between the two. That gives the audience a nice breather and a chance to go to the bathroom before it all ends. Then the final episode can be as clean as possible. (Yes, I know sponsors want that time in the middle of the episode but at the rate the world's moving, nobody is going to watch shows live within a few years.)

Ultimately this doesn't matter because the show will hold up on its own and people discovering this in a few years won't even know how stupid it was that there was a ridiculous hashtag on-screen the entire time or the ad breaks felt very awkward especially for the first half. People will just see the season as a set on Blu-Ray or Netflix and feel the compulsion to watch it all as soon as possible.

I'm still holding out as liking the time in-between episodes because of the chance to discuss it all week and then it becomes an event that you can gather with friends to watch the new episode (or episodes). Not looking at the quality of the shows, it's always a more fulfilling experience to gather to watch Game of Thrones than Breaking Bad simply because of how the product is presented.

If everybody in the world is going to continue to compare the quality of TV shows as cinematic, when will networks start to act like theatres?

My Interview with the Director/Co-Writer of EMPTY BOTTLES

I met Eric Martindale when we were working on a local independent film. There we became fast friends by avoiding work and talked about LOST. During our years at Ball State, Eric was a major player in the theatre section where he acted in shows like GOD’S EAR and directed one of my favorite productions at Ball State, ART.

Since graduating from Ball State, Eric has moved to Chicago and started up the On Deck Theatre Company. Their first production is a show called EMPTY BOTTLES (co-written by yours truly). It is about a young man named Andy who is starting a new life with a beautiful stranger named Charlotte and Jacob, the brother he never really connected with.

The show opens on July 18^th at the Straw Dog Theatre in Chicago for a limited three-night engagement. Last night I chatted with Eric online to ask him about the origins of the show and what his methods are like.

Austin Lugar: We're going to start off with an easy one. What were you up to tonight?

Eric Martindale: Just got out of rehearsal. Listening to "Cannon in D"... not sure why.

Austin: You're a classy guy. As we're getting down to the final days, how have the rehearsals been?

Eric: Educational, frantic, stressful, wonderful... it's amazing I'm always one second way from swelling with pride or having a heart attack. There is a whole other element I've never contended with and that's being both the writer and the director. Directing comes easy to me, but when it's my words (and yours) I sometimes forget what it is I'm actually suppose to be doing. I feel more on the line than ever.

My Dream Ballot for the 2013 Emmys

There is no perfect awards show. Every year it seems the Emmy drive me nuts more than anyone else thanks to their insane voting techniques, networks bias, miniseries mislabeling and their belief that CBS comedies are funny. Anywho, the Emmy nominations are about to come out and just like every year I assume their picks will annoy me to no end.

So for no reason whatsoever, here is my dream Emmy Ballot for this year. Keep in mind that I am still very behind on Rectify, The Good Wife and Parenthood. I would include some acting picks for Broadchurch but that doesn't premiere in the US for another two months. I would include a miniseries category but I haven't seen that many so it would just be filled to the brim with Top of the Lake and Behind the Candelabra nominations.

Leading Male in a Drama

Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad

Hugh Dancy in Hannibal

Jon Hamm in Mad Men

Timothy Olyphant in Justified

Matthew Rhys in The Americans

Ben Whishaw in The Hour

Leading Actress in a Drama

Claire Danes in Homeland

Romola Garai in The Hour

Tatiana Masiany in Orphan Black

Elisabeth Moss in Mad Men

Keri Russell in The Americans

Robin Wright in House of Cards

Supporting Actor in a Drama

Jonathan Banks in Breaking Bad

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Game of Thrones

Peter Dinklage in Game of Thrones

Noah Emmerich in The Americans

Mads Mikkelsen in Hannibal

John Noble in Fringe

Supporting Actress in a Drama

Anna Gunn in Breaking Bad

Christina Hendricks in Mad Men

Lucia Micarelli in Treme

Margo Martindale in The Americans

Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey

Maisie Williams in Game of Thrones

Leading Actor in a Comedy

Alec Baldwin in 30 Rock

Jason Bateman in Arrested Development

Louis C.K. in Louie

Nathan Fielder in Nathan For You

Chris O’Dowd in Family Tree

Matt Smith in Doctor Who

Leading Actress in a Comedy

Lena Dunham in Girls

Tina Fey in 30 Rock

Sutton Foster in Bunheads

Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep

Amy Poehler in Parks and Recreation

June Diane Raphael in Burning Love

Supporting Actor in a Comedy

Will Arnett in Arrested Development

Charlie Day in It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Adam Driver in Girls

Jason Gann in Wilfred

Nick Offerman in Parks and Recreation

Timothy Simons in Veep

Supporting Actress in a Comedy

Jenna Coleman in Doctor Who

Elisha Cuthbert in Happy Endings

Jessica Hynes in Twenty Twelve

Karen Gillan in Doctor Who

Alia Shawkat in Arrested Development

Julia Goldani Telles in Bunheads

Best Drama

Breaking Bad

Game of Thrones

Hannibal

The Hour

Mad Men

Spartacus: War of the Damned

Best Comedy

30 Rock

Arrested Development

Bob’s Burgers

Louie

Parks and Recreation

Veep

Are there major shows that I'm missing? Anything I still need to check out?

I Co-Wrote a Play!

Here is an announcement I am so proud to finally be able to talk about publicly. For the past eight months, I have been working on a play with Eric Martindale, something he has been working on for years. Now it is finally coming into fruition.

This July at the Straw Dog Theatre in Chicago you can see the world premiere of EMPTY BOTTLES, an original work written by Eric and myself and directed by Eric. It is being produced by Adam Lord and Cody Nicoletti, as the first work by the On Deck Theatre Company.

It will play on July 18th, 19th, and 20th and I will definitely be letting you know when tickets will be on sale.

It is starring three brilliant actors I couldn't be more happy with: Curtis Becht, Maeghan Looney and Keith Lipke. I was up in Chicago this past weekend to sit in during auditions and I was overwhelmed. My point of reference for auditions have been comedy movies where there's a montage of "wacky" auditions and then the main character loudly sighs and then the perfect audition happens at the very end. That was not the case here where every single person who auditioned wowed me in some way or another, highlighting unseen nuances of the characters I thought I completely knew. I'm now "that guy" where I wish there were more parts for the actors we saw this weekend.

The story of EMPTY BOTTLES is about a young man who finally left the house of a psychologically abusive father and is now ready to start a new life with a beautiful stranger and his distant brother. Yet reality never seems to match the future you envision. It's a dramatic work with comedy, romance, uncomfortable tension and even has a very silly brief song parody about Temple Run.

Once again, I am so proud of all of this. It was my first time being asked to work on something dramatic and something this large. This has been Eric's personal project for so many years and I am honored that he allowed me to tinker with it and be a true collaborator.

It has been so amazing to see my friends work this hard and to make something that's so damn impressive. I can't wait for this play to come out and for everyone to see it.

Get very excited.

Why Doctor Who is Still Good and People Need to Calm Down

A year ago this month, I gave three different Doctor Who speeches in three different locales, including at the Pop Culture Association in Boston. To prepare for my presentations, my research expanded my love of the new series to the entire 50 years of cosmic madness. I watched all of the Classic Series running from 1963-1989 (with an awkward one-off in 1996), I started listening to Big Finish audio dramas, I read about the production history, critical analysis and I listened to the full run of popular podcasts like Radio Free Skaro. I know, my life is tough.

That all sounds ridiculous because it is but I am still nowhere near an expert. I’m just a big fish in a small (American) pond. There are those that have every production code memorized, they know the history of every planet and character and have seen every episode dozens of times. I don't know that much about the show. 

So in many ways I feel that I have one foot in Doctor Who fandom and one foot in TV fandom. Right now I adore television. I like writing about it, I like reading about it, I enjoy spouting about how it’s more rewarding than movies and surprise surprise I watch too many shows. A lot of my friends are more in this TV fandom camp where throughout the week we enthusiastically chat and analyze the latest episode of Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Community, Bunheads, Justified, The Americans, Downton Abbey, Breaking Bad, etc.

I discovered the new series of Doctor Who between its second and third season back when I was in high school. During the Russell T. Davies run I happily enjoyed as a fun treat that only my brother and I seemed to know about. With each growing year, I became more enthusiastic and as David Tennant was leaving I started to get more and more friends into the show. (Thank you Netflix!) They weren’t going into the show as fans of science-fiction or British programmes, but simply they enjoyed great TV.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed a number of TV critics like Mo Ryan and Ryan McGee on Twitter, TOR and other bloggers express extreme dissatisfaction with the current season of Doctor Who while I notice the fanbase is eating it all up. 

The best example is the recent episode “Cold War.” It’s an Alien-esque adventure on a submarine where a lone Ice Warrior stalks the crew. The Doctor Who fanbase adored it because it was the return of a Classic Series villain who first appeared in the late 60s and had smaller cameos in the 70s. “Cold War” retained their creepiness but added a new element that fans of the villain adored. Yet some TV critics found it very routine with some jumps in logic. Again, I’m in the middle where I found it to be very fun and spooky but I wished it would have been more vicious and the supporting characters to be better developed.

This is the polar opposite of last year where the Doctor Who fanbase was disappointed with Season Six and the TV fanbase ate it up. I think I understand why this is happening. Let’s look at Steven Moffat’s run as Doctor Who showrunner.

Season Five

The Eleventh Doctor begins with a new companion (Amy Pond), a new TARDIS, a fondness for bowties and a mystery involving cracks in the universe. 

The Emotional Arc: This season it’s on the companions, specifically Amy Pond. The Doctor visited her and abandoned her as a child and this led her to a neurotic upbringing. Her relationship with the kind but plain Rory Williams is tested. The villain’s plot involving the cracks is even centered all around her. By the end, she is the one that saves the universe through her memory.

The Structure: This is modeled off of Russell T. Davies’ way of arcing a season where he teased at a codeword that paid off in the finale. (“Bad Wolf” in Season One, “Torchwood” in Season Two, etc.). The difference is that Moffat did it a whole lot better where instead of just sneaking in the cracks in every episode, he introduced more of their mythology in the middle of the season. Also the finale made sense, which was another step up.

Season Six

When hanging out on the beach of Utah, an astronaut rises from the water and kills The Doctor. No regeneration, just dead. Amy, Rory and River discover that was an older version of The Doctor and spend the season trying to figure out how to prevent his death. Also almost all the gaps are filled about who is River Song.

The Emotional Arc: Season Six is very much focused on The Doctor. The whole run of the new series has hinted about the darkness of the character and the violence he has caused while saying he’s always about doing good. At first, the season seems like it’s all about prevention of the death but as the season goes on, it’s clear it’s all about if The Doctor knows the assassination will happen why would he ever choose to die?

The Structure: Due to the complicated serial nature of this season, this resembles more of other TV shows on the air where the plot moves forward every episode. Aside from “The Curse of the Black Spot” and “Night Terrors”, each one is sneakily about the mystery filled with clues, revelations and red herrings to this very timey-wimey season.

Season Seven

The final days of Amy and Rory cover the first half of Season Seven while the mysterious nature of Clara, the impossible girl who keeps appearing in different points in time, is taking over the second half.

The Emotional Arc: Oddly, enough, this time it’s on the adventures themselves. Moffat said he wanted to go away the arc-heavy season so this time it’s all about the “blockbusters”. In fact, every episode has come with its own movie poster. Every week is a different genre. So far we’ve had (in order): horror, adventure, western, family drama, film noir, Christmas, modern thriller, very sci-fi, submarine, and lately a ghost story. Every season has variety, but this one is striving for something new each week.

In fact, I've said in the past that while still about the adventures, Part One of Season Seven is about the show addressing finality of certain characters.

The Structure: This time the obvious influence is the Classic Series. Doctors 1-7 rarely had any sort of arcing story. Usually it was just jump to a new place and embrace the adventure. While we do have the Clara mystery running through this season, it is much lighter in focus than The Doctor’s death. There are more clues about what she isn’t than what she is. In fact, at this moment, Clara doesn't even know there is a mystery going on.

In addition, since this is the 50^th anniversary, this season is very heavy with references to Doctor Who as a show. Thankfully nothing has been too overbearing for new fans, but the slight nods have been very fun in every episode. For example in the last episode “Hide”, the use of the Eye of Harmony and the Metebelis III crystal were references to Classic fans and the orange jumpsuit was for fans of the Tennant years.

Ultimately what it comes down to is that Steven Moffat seems to consciously be crafting the show for every fan imaginable. Since the show has been running for 50 years with every era and Doctor having their own distinct voice, there is never just one way to run the show. Personally, Season Six’s format is my favorite but what I like even more than that is how flexible and surprising the show can be. I don’t know what Moffat is planning for Season Eight, but it’ll be awesome if he hires even more new writers because having Neil Cross this season has been very refreshing.

So as I speak from both parties, I strongly want Steven Moffat to stay because although he has his own tropes he falls back on, he’s someone who is determined to make the show stay relevant. What it comes down to is, everybody needs to calm down. When the show is doing everything right, every episode and season should be something new and exciting. Even when an episode feels a bit familiar like "The Bells of St. John", it is structurally filled with elements that have never been on the show before, Classic or New.

Goodbye Pa

I never knew my Pa like so many others knew him. He served our country, he lived overseas in places like Germany and the Philippines and he was a dentist specializing in the gums.  All of that happened before I was born. As long as I’ve known Pa, he has been retired and never in the best health. I don’t think I ever saw him prepare his own meal and watch much else on the TV besides sports, Dr. Oz and the assortment of judge shows.

Over the past year, Pa’s health has spiraled considerably. His memory has become unfortunate and he became weaker every day to the point where standing up could take an hour. In November my mom and I traveled down to Austin, Texas to care for Pa and my Memaw who is also in unfortunate health. Aside from a two-week break in early December, I have been down here caring for them every day through emotional and physical trials.

In this condition, I learned about my Pa in a different way; the truest forms of himself arose to the surface. He was a man who cared deeply for his family. Several times a day he would ask what everybody in the house was up to and wanted to know what the rest of his grandsons and granddaughters were up to wherever they were in the world. Coming to sit at lunch and dinner was a valued part of his day. Even though he couldn’t understand the conversations, he wanted to be around those closest to him.

He had a simple sense of humor that on paper was not very funny, but was always entertaining to see the sparkle in his eye of being proud that he’s telling a joke. He laughed at almost everything and he had the most wonderful grin. When I told him that he would blush and then smile again because he knew I liked it. His modesty was a way to protect everyone. Even on his final days he would always say, “I’m fine.”

Spending a lot of time with him the last two months, we went through the worst together. There were a lot of difficult and frustrating times that were very sad and embarrassing. However I never regretted being down here. We sat and laughed every day as I told him stories and we talked about the silly acts of Live With Kelly and Michael.

Pa never fully understood what was happening to him but he was able to focus on the greater things. No matter what happened he always knew that he was loved. He left behind two daughters, a son, four grandsons, a granddaughter and a diva Shih Tzu who cared for him deeply and were always there for him. It broke my heart how much pain he was in so I am overjoyed he is now in peace. His presence contributed to the joy of this Austin home. Goodbye Pa. I shall miss you.

The last photo of Pa. Even though I don't even think he was hungry, he asked for some bananas so he could have a meal with everyone. He was able to eat them on his own, but Memaw still wanted to feed him.