Author Archives: Bob Evans

Schoedinger’s 5th Amendment

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There’s been a bit of a celebratory mood on the right side of the political spectrum with the report that President Biden’s doctor pleaded the 5th Amendment against self-incrimination during recent congressional testimony. This is taken as evidence that supports the conservative accusations of Biden’s mental decline.

However, when Trump pled the 5th Amendment more than 400 times during his testimony, that is only evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and not any evidence of actual guilt or wrongdoing.

Here’s the truth: When a person pleads the 5th Amendment, it is a null result revealing and supporting nothing. There are plenty of reasons why someone’s lawyer would advise them to take the safer course even when they are not concealing any crimes of their doing. For many people, being investigated by the government is a financially ruinous event, and it’s best to avoid opening any avenues for someone, particularly political enemies, to start such an investigation.

When someone draws an instant conclusion from a person taking the 5th Amendment, that reveals much more about the preconceptions they hold than it does about the person testifying.

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Star Trek’s Canon

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The other day I was engaged in a discussion, not an argument mind you, on Twitter concerning Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and its violation of Star Trek’s established canon.

I myself am not bothered by violation of ‘canon’ if the result are more interesting character, deep stories, and compelling plotlines.

Paramount Studios/CBS Home Video

It is interesting to remember that Star Trek was not designed to have a rigid history with a lore and a canon well-defined. The original series is a product of 1960’s television and, in that day and age, television worked quite differently than it does today at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century. A program was deemed successful if it ran for at least 5 seasons of 20 plus episodes. That produced enough episodes that the series could be ‘stripped,’ run on weekday afternoons in random order. Season five episodes might precede season one episodes so there were no continuing storylines, one episode rarely affected the events in another.

Star Trek, and here I am referring to the original run, the original cast feature films, presented a contradictory and inconsistent ‘canon’ for its future history. Here are some examples.

In The Conscience of the King when McCoy asks Spock to share a drink with him, Spock comments his father’s race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol to which McCoy replied, “Now I know why you were conquered.”  Who conquered Vulcan? No one, this bit of history was discarded.

Pon Farr the mysterious and secretive collection of rituals and biological drives surrounding Vulcan reproduction. Which is it: the thing that ‘no outworlder may know, save for those few who have been involved’ or something Saavik can just casually explain to David Marcus? Additionally with this aspect of Vulcan biology is it something that Spock hoped he would be spared as he said in Amok Time or is it a predictable cycle of every seven years as mentioned in The Cloud Minders and again in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock?

In Space Seed it is established that in the late 20th century a cadre of scientists employing eugenics bred a number of humans with superior abilities creating dictators that sparked the Eugenics War. Eugenics is directed and controlled breeding in human to produce desired traits. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan Chekov explains to his captain that Khan was the product of later 20th century ‘genetic engineering.’ Eugenics, which is breeding for traits, and genetic engineering, which is gene alteration for traits is not the same thing, however advances in science and the public’s understanding of science made the genetic engineering a much more likely scenario, so ‘canon’ changed to fit public perception.

Here’s a biggie. Is it Federation policy to leave planets and cultures to adhere to their own destinies without coercion or as in A Taste of Armageddon or do they have standing general orders for the genocide that any ship’s captain can employ?

My point with these examples is not to ridicule or mock the original series, which I adore, but to demonstrate that a rigid lore or canon has never been an essential element of Star Trek. Strange New Worlds does break accepted ‘canon’, but it does that to give us wonderfully complex and interesting characters and stories so in my book it’s a plus not a minus.

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Movie Review: Magic (1978)

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For many people, the astounding acting skills of Anthony Hopkins exploded into their perceptions, despite decades of on-screen performances, with his Oscar-winning turn in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. That is not the case with me. I was wowed by his portrayal of William Bligh in 1984’s The Bounty, but I first experienced Hopkins in 1978’s Magic.

20th Century Fox

Adapted by legendary screenwriter William Goldman from his novel of the same title and directed by legendary actor and director Richard Attenborough, Magic is a psychological horror film centered on Corky Williams (Hopkins), a stage magician who utilizes a ventriloquist’s dummy, ‘Fats’ (also voiced by Hopkins), as part of his performance. When his agent Ben Greene (Burgess Meredith) informs Corky that a medical exam is required for his upcoming television network special, Corky flees the city for the isolated Catskills town of his childhood, reconnecting with his high school crush Peggy Ann Snow (Ann-Margret). But ‘Fats’ may have other ideas about what is best for Corky.

The trailers and commercials for Magic hinted at possible supernatural causes for the film’s horror, and Attenborough used a deft and light directorial touch to keep things off balance concerning ‘Fats.’ But this story and movie is essentially a horror of the human mind and how it betrays itself when faced with crushing psychological trauma and an inability to escape it.

With limited settings and cast, Magic is a film that could have been produced for television, but Goldman as writer, Attenborough as director, and cinematographer Victor Kemper use the limitation to create an atmosphere of dread and claustrophobia even in the open woods of the Catskills.

I was seventeen when I walked to the local twin theater to see Magic, and the film has stuck with me over the decades. Unnerving and powerful in its use of what would become known as ‘the uncanny valley,’ Magic is a prime example that horror is not always found in ghouls, ghosts, and vampires but sometimes within the tortured soul of the outcast.

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More Thoughts on Severancev

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Apple TV +

In May I posted that I had begun watching the Apple+ series Severance. It’s about a group of workers for the vast and powerful Lumon corporation who toil under a condition called ‘severance’ where their work-selves, called ‘innies’, exist with no knowledge or memory of their lives outside of work, called ‘outies’, and their ‘outies’ have no memory or knowledge of anything that their ‘innies’ experience.

At the time I wrote that post, I had watched two episodes, and now I have watched the entirety of seasons one and two. I had commented that the series, while stimulating my intellectual curiosity, hadn’t really grabbed me emotionally. While my emotional investment has grown, it has never reached the levels that it has with other genre programs. I remember dreading the ending of Andor because some of my favorite characters are never mentioned in the film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and therefore would likely end up dead by the end of Andor. Severance is fascinating and the characters have grown on me, but I think this division of their nature, central and essential to the show, is also creating a barrier to full engagement.

That said, I do not regret watching and have thoroughly enjoyed the ride that is Severance. The show’s creative team is also doing a bang-up job handling what is in essence a mystery show. The first season ended with a massive revelation for the viewers and the characters that created a cliffhanger, which I despise. I watched season two dreading what sort of cliffhanger they would craft for this ending.

And they did not.

Oh, they certainly did not wrap up all the various storylines and threads. There are a ton of things to propel the show into a third season, but there was also resolution to the reveal from the first season, some clear explanation of some of the strange and mysterious work that the corporation commissioned from the severed, along with expansion of the world and the characters. Instead of another stupid cliffhanger, they properly teased the next phase of the story without making it feel as if they were never going to resolve the issues already raised.

Well done.

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Halfway There

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Friday, I passed 45 thousand words on my gay, cinephile, ’80s, horror novel set in the lovely city I call home, San Diego.

This has been and continues to be quite a different adventure in writing from what I have experienced with any of my previous novels. As I have mentioned in other posts, this one is being written without an outline, without a predetermined list of characters, with a terribly vague sense of how the five-act structure will work, and with only the concept of the darkest magic operating through old and dangerous nitrate motion picture film stock.

I am reaching sections of the novel where I must make definitive choices about some of the elements that have only been hinted at in the text as the characters’ investigation will begin uncovering some of the mysteries at work around them.

Because at heart this is actually a ghost story, with the ghost given ‘life’ by the old film stock, it is also essentially a mystery. Nearly all ghost stories are mysteries, often with some old and buried evil to be uncovered in order to clear the spirits’ torment and allow them to progress to whatever lies beyond life and death.

Ghost stories have always been my favorite genre of horror, and I cannot honestly say why. It is not because I was touched by death at an early age. Well before my father’s passing, I had books of ghost stories for children. One branded to Alfred Hitchcock and another of ‘Tar heel’ ghosts, Tar heel being the state nickname for North Carolina, the state of my childhood home. So, the fascination with ghosts has seemingly always been there, but I have written very few ghost stories. This untitled novel is the longest and most complex attempt at the sub-genre.

When it is completed, I will need a couple of sensitivity readers to make sure I have approached the lives of gay men in San Diego with respect and not stereotyping, but I feel I have made a good effort on that front.

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Twin Peaks: The Entire Shebang

A year ago, Mike Muncer, podcaster behind the excellent Evolution of Horror series launched a new show The Detective & The Log Lady, a Twin Peaks rewatch podcast. I decided to rewatch the series along with episodes of the podcast and my sweetie-wife came along for the ride as well.

This past Sunday we completed the voyage watching part 18 of the Twin Peaks‘ third season, also known as Twin Peaks: The Return which aired on the Showtime premium cable channel in 2017.

ABC Television

It has been quite a ride. I have not rewatched the original series in decades, watched the prequel film Fire Walk With Me only once in the theaters and retained very little of it, and did not even know of the existence of Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces, a feature film length collection of deleted scenes from the prequel film. Watching it all week in, week out for a year, keeping the characters and story elements fresh in my mind as I experience the 27-year journey was an entertainment journey unlike anything I had experienced.

Twin Peaks when it aired in 1990 on ABC became a national and cultural phenomenon but the second season, adrift after the creators stepped back because the networked forced them to reveal the solution to mysteries they preferred not to, lost that grip on the nation’s imagination and the series ended on a cliffhanger that would not be resolved until 2017.

Freed from network constraints and interference the series’ third and final season presented almost nothing that the fan base demanded, instead diving deep into the abstract dream-logic that so defines the work of director and co-writer David Lynch. The entire series defies easy explanation or interpretation. Is it about the evil and corruption that lies just under the surface of American life? Is it about trans-dimension beings waging a war for humanity with entities such as ‘Bob’ and ‘The Fireman’? It is merely a strange dream held by television characters where some of them are actually aware of their nature as fictional constructs?

Arguments can be made for any and all of these premises, often with all of them playing a part in interpreting the program.

What is undeniable is that Twin Peaks had a massive impact on television going forward from the 1990s. Not only did programming become more experimental in their plots and conceptions but Lynch and co-creator Mark Frost showed that it was possible to bring feature film cinema quality to television, paving the way for today’s prestige TV.

I may not understand it all, but I admire it all just the same.

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I Really Like This Photo

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This past Sunday there was no weekly trip to the Zoo because my sweetie-wife and I went to see 28 Years Later and there was no zoo expedition the previous Sunday because that was my weekend of migraine headaches. That’s not a recommended weekend, by the way.

However, we did go to the zoo on June 19th. My sweetie-wife has that federally recognized holiday off and I took the day off to share it with her.

The bird in this photo is a Western Bluebird and it is not an animal on exhibit at the San Diego Zoo but a wild creature that came into the enclosure with California Condors and the Common Raven. I really like the way the photo turned out. The subject is really nicely isolated from the background both by color and by the depth of field. None of the other picture I snapped that day are even close in how much I like them.

Western Bluebird

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A Plutonic Understanding of Some Transphobia

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March of 1930 saw the announcement that astronomer Clyde Tombaugh discovered the ninth planet of our solar system, Pluto. Despite controversy at the time of discovery concerning the object’s apparently quite small size, for the next three generations, school children learned the names of the nine planets. In the 1990s, discovery of larger bodies in the Kuiper Belt added to doubts concerning the proper classification of Pluto, followed by the discovery of Eris, an even larger body in the outer reaches of our planetary system. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) released three criteria for a body to be considered a planet: 1) It orbits the sun, 2) It possesses enough gravitational pull to be roughly spherical in shape, and 3) it must have cleared out its orbit of other large bodies. Following these new parameters, Pluto was moved from the classification of planet to dwarf planet, igniting public outrage that burns to this day.

While there is debate among the astronomers and other scientists over detailed points such as what exactly qualifies as having ‘cleared out’ its orbital volume, the most intense defenders of Pluto as a planet are laypeople without scientific expertise or training. I find this a curious phenomenon. Pluto’s status has zero impact on their lives, their day-to-day activities, or even outside of the fierce controversy, their conversations. With the body’s status so irrelevant to their lives, why do people demand its status so vigorously?

Because it’s what they learned as children. The ‘facts’ we learn when we are young are the most difficult to discard when new data or ideas come along to displace them. It doesn’t matter that classifying Pluto as a planet would mean adding a lot more planets to the roster. They do not want to do that; they want the nine planets that they learned in grade school. That’s it, that’s the entire argument and goal, to have what they were taught decades ago to be the same today as it was then.

For some, certainly not all, the debate surrounding transgender people operates on the exact same mechanism as the insistence that Pluto is a planet. They were taught that the world and people worked a certain way, a very simple model of humanity, and they find it impossible to discard the model impressed upon them in childhood. It doesn’t matter that the truth of the spectrum of human sexuality and identification is self-evident; they want the simple, but false, binary definition they understood when they were six. (For those who wish to deny the spectrum and insist on a binary understanding, that would mean you could not define the character of John Rambo as more masculine than the character of Peewee Herman. That judgment only exists if there is a spectrum of masculinity—in a binary system they would be equally masculine.)

This explains only some people’s transphobia and insistence on strictly binary understandings of gender. There are those who harbor more hateful and bigoted views. Their issue is simply being unable to unlearn what they have learned. Their views are more aligned with evil than ignorance.

I wish there were a simple and direct way to enlighten people to acceptance of others in all their dazzling diversity that life presents. We live only once. For a very brief time, we walk this Earth seeking love and happiness. To inflict pain and suffering upon others because they don’t live as you think they should is a terrible crime, robbing them of precious time that can never be recovered.

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Movie Review: 28 Years Later

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28 Years Later, the second sequel to pandemic/zombie movie 28 Days Later picks up where the title implies, 28 years after due to well-meaning but idiotic animal rights activists caused the release of the ‘rage virus’ the islands of the United Kingdom are under a strictly enforced quarantine populated by the infected and survivors attempting to scratch out life and community on the British island.

Sony Picture

28 Years Later is centered on a small nuclear family, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams), his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and his clearly ill mother Isla (Jodie Comer). Jamie takes Spike across a causeway that keeps the island community safe from the infected for an initiation into what life on the mainland, infested with the infected, is like. The trip into the mainland alerts Spike to that his father is not entirely honest and that a man considered dangerously insane living there is in fact a physician. Desperate to save Isla Spike takes his mother to the mainland on a perilous quest to find the doctor.

Written by Alex Garland and directed by Danny Boyle, the team that created the original film, 28 Years Later is a very competently crafted piece of cinema. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle handled the assignment of using handheld unsteady quite well producing the emotionally disjointed sensations without overusing the technique to the point of motion sickness. (At least for this viewer.)

That said, I never emotionally engaged with this movie. The first act, Spike and Jaime’s expedition to the mainland felt more like the introductory level of a video game that established the world and its rules and less like the opening act of compelling story. The father/son interactions are not enough to pull me fully into caring about either of them. Isla’s illness, while tragic, feels more like external motivation. The fact that she has good moments and bad moments mentally, but we don’t really, for the most part, see who she was before the illness took over her life, presents Isla as more of a hypothetical character than a fully realized one.

Without being drawn into a story that compels my attention emotionally I was left with time for my mind to wander which only exposed elements of the world building I found unresolvable.

The ‘Infected’ present the same narrative issues as the ‘reavers’ did in 2005’s Firefly sequel film Serentiy. I simply cannot picture how they function when they are not on the screen chasing down and killing the non-infected. In the original film it was presented that the virus, acting far too quickly for any actual infection, activated the emotion of violent rage in its victims. Rational thought vanished and whenever an infected person noticed an uninfected one, they chased them down with murderous intent. That’s all fine and dandy but after a few weeks there will not be any more active infected. If you are not maintaining yourself, food and water, you will die.

Okay, so maybe, just maybe, the infected possess enough of their faculties take care of such matters. 30 years later there should be no infected. In the course of this film, we witness an infected woman giving birth. That means that there has to be sexual relations between the infected, not a product of the emotion of rage. For there to be generations of infected that means the infected must be raising children and the raising of human children is a labor and cognitively intensive task. I simply found it impossible to suspend my disbelief for the basic core concept of the movie.

Others feel differently. 28 Years Later is being hailed among the horror community as a great film and you may find it so, I, however, while not repelled by it found it less than interesting.

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Movie Review: Fountain of Youth

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In 1981 Steven Spielberg and George Lucas released the box-office-busting adventure film Raiders of the Lost Ark earning $354 million dollars and setting off a wave of copycat movies hoping to reproduce that lightning in a bottle financial effect.

Most of the copycat productions were of limited budgets, lacking major stars, and frankly poor-quality scripts. As with Alien before it, Raiders of the Lost Ark is singular and stands out well ahead of any imitators.

Now, 44 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark, comes another imitator trying to capture that sense of adventure and fun that so marked the original film, Guy Ritchie’s Fountain of Youth.

Siblings Luke and Charlotte Purdue (John Krasinski and Natalie Portman) the children of an

Apple TV+

adventure-loving archeologist are estranged because Luke continues their father’s adventuring ways while Charlotte has settled into a routine mundane existence as a museum curator. Luke pulls Charlotte out of her dull life and onto a globe-spanning hunt for clues hidden in historical artifacts for the location of the fabled Fountain of Youth. They are being bankrolled by billionaire Owen Carter seeking to avoid an untimely death due to liver cancer. Along the way they are pursued by both Interpol for the crimes they are committing and a shadowy secret society.

With Guy Ritchie directing and Apple producing Fountain of Youth is no cheap, hastily thrown-together production of a movie. It boasts an impressive list of talent, shooting locations around the world, well-crafted action and chase scenes, but still fails to be engaging.

The characters are reflections of archetypes seen over and over again. Attempts to give them rich inner lives that might elevate them from flat to people with depth utterly fail and no chemistry exists either on the screen or the page for the enemy to lovers subplot between Luke and the woman representing the secret society determined to stop him.

At no point was I ever really caring about the characters or events on the screen, which is not how I always feel about Guy Ritchie’s work. He has directed some very entertaining and engrossing films, but this is not one of them. It does strike me that anytime Ritchie strays from modern criminal London his odds of producing a movie I really like drops considerably.

Fountain of Youth is streaming on Apple TV+.

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