May 30, 2003

Somehow, today’s column seems to be of a whole.  Life works out that way sometimes.

I have been chewing over a very personal story about a very private person who is involved in a very public business and a very successful movie franchise.  To paraphrase a person who is better than I, these are the moments that define us.  Unfortunately, these are the moments that define the business of entertainment journalism overall.

The reality is that this story is likely to give wing to the ugliest aspects of the entertainment media.  A man’s most personal of choices will become our collective source of comedy for a few weeks.  After that, it will be his life again.  And we will have contributed a good deal of pain, cruelty and selfish indulgence to the karma of the universe.

Unlike the sexual ambiguity of some major stars, this is a story that cannot really be put on the back burner.  It would be a real tragedy if the public response to this story were to send this man out of the business when his massive talents are just beginning to mature.  If he remains in the public eye, even behind the camera, there is no way of hiding what is true.

And that’s an irony, since many of my sources have said that this “secret” is not something that he is particularly keeping secret.  If you know anything about making a healthy transition of any kind in your life, you must know that being open and honest with your truth is a key part of your evolution.  And that seems to be the case. 

Now, I am dancing around the facts.

But before I explain… I must examine myself and my motivations in this process.  I take what I do very seriously.  Probably more seriously than my subject usually deserves.  So be it.  But I have to be aware of my own ego in writing this story.  Am I really writing this because I want to make my small effort to shape how you look at this issue?  Am I doing this man a favor by framing this before the tabloids do or am I starting a bigger snowball down the hill a little faster than it need be rolled?  Do I just want to be first? 

I could just rationalize the idea that he wants to be open and honest and that I’m a ray of the disinfecting sunshine.  I could claim it is news and news is news and that is my job.  But whenever someone tells you that, pay the check and leave quickly, you are about to be bent over in an unpleasant way. 

I could just walk away from the story… pretend that it is beneath me and my column… hold my nose high in the air while Jay Leno stoops to gags that Johnny probably would have passed over.  But how can I? 

Every indication I have says that Larry Wachowski is now in the process of changing his sex.  Dressing in public like a woman, taking female hormones and yes, having a sex change operation. 

Now, tell me whether you would be laughing and picking up the phone to share this gossip if he was a member of your family.  Convince me how funny it is when someone finally comes out of the closet to his or her family.  Explain how hysterical going to a 12-step meeting and admitting your addiction for the first time is. 

Can you imagine anyone who is more emotionally vulnerable than Larry Wachowski is right now, no matter how sure he is and how proud he is to be making this change?  Money and fame is obviously a lot easier than poverty and obscurity.  Money can ease the burdens of the physical world.  But it can’t protect the human heart. 

Before you send me any e-mail that is less than human… stop yourself.   And think.  I will be happy to exchange thoughts with any of you who show some thought on this, who are not just reacting like a giggling teen. 

The fact that many rich and famous people act like childish asses does not make them all into machines who deserve random acts of malice as a way of bringing them down to earth.  The choice to change your sex, whether I understand it or not, is not one lightly taken by either the person making the change or the doctors who perform the operation.  I’m sure that I will get mail from religious-based groups detailing horror stories of people who had sex changes and wanted to go back.  All rules have exceptions.

My point is that none of this is blithe.  None of this is funny.  None of this is ours to judge.

And back to that wise person whose words started this story… how we react to this news is more a reflection of ourselves than of Larry Wachowski.  So take a second and look in the mirror.  I hope you are happy with what you see.  I hope that I am too.

HULK SPLAT:  The cover of Entertainment Weekly has become bit of a mixed bag in recent years.  No matter how big the film, the magazine has managed to find something “different” for the news rack imagery.  But in Hollywood, different is not always better.  There is a reason why we see the same images over and over and over again.  I (or you) may not always like it and sometimes it is a poor strategy, but for the most part, branding is the way to sell movies these days.

Why Jennifer Connelly turns up in full glam on the inside pages I do not know.  It could well be her and her personal publicist’s specific positioning.  Even the brainy Connelly might want to look like the fabulous babe she is – somewhere, somehow - during this run of suffering girlfriend roles.

But that cover!!!

There is no one who is a greater believer that audiences will make the connection with the CG Hulk once they are sitting in a dark movie theater.  The Hulk has a bigger hurdle to jump – who better? –  than a Roger Rabbit or even Smeagal/Gollum in Lord of the Rings because there is a different kind of suspension of disbelief involved.  Roger Rabbit was supposed to be a cartoon.  Smeagal/Gollum is beyond reality, but he lives in the context of a film filled with fabulous freaks. 

We know The Hulk.  We were comfortable with him being a really big guy in green make-up who could throw some stuff around, 6 Million Dollar Man-like.  This Hulk is the really the first all-CG central figure in a live action film.  He is, unlike any other character that was not a cave troll, a visual anomaly by his very nature.  He spends an unusual amount of time in the sun for a CG character. 

If there is anything that we know about CG characters is that context is absolutely critical.  When you realize that even real humans are two dimensional on screen, there is no reason why a CG character can’t do everything a human can do.  But the subconscious disconnection from reality with CG characters comes from minor, minor, minor human details.  The biggest thing in movies like Spider-Man and even The Matrix Reloaded is body weight.  What does a human being look like doing super-human feats?  If you were flipping across two city blocks in the air, what would your body look like?  The challenge has been enormous.  When The Hulk throws that metal elevator platform (or whatever it is) out of his way from below and emerges into the laboratory (if it’s a laboratory), as seen in the commercials and trailers, how much power and torque should that platform be moving at.  Because if we don’t believe that The Hulk was naturally the source of the movement, we will not believe in him.  It’s like some of the car effects in earlier Michael Bay films.  When an explosion would blow two cars, each on opposite sides of the street, onto their sides, it always looked like an effect to me.  It was cool looking, but did it ever look like the effect of an explosion on a city street.

Still, I believe that Ang Lee & Co. will find the humanity in the CG that will allow us all (well, most of us) to suspend that disbelief.  But the new EW cover ain’t helping.

The biggest burden this film has had to carry was the much-mocked Super Bowl spot.  I would still argue that the response has been overly negative.  But I can understand.  Even yesterday, I was talking to a competing studio person who is not particularly interested in tearing anything down and she mentioned the “CG problem,” never having seen any materials on the film since the Super Bowl spot.  I still feel that the Super Bowl spot left a deep footprint, even if the word of mouth was not all that Universal could have hoped. 

I am sure that in some incarnation, the EW cover looked good.  But sitting on the shelf at my nearby newsstand, he looks like a video game character.  It is the only key image of The Hulk that I have seen that made me get that RCA dog look.  (Head cocked to a side, brow furrowed.) 

Of course, when you end up debating the details of why something might turn people off, you have already lost.  It is the irony of this film generation.  Movie critics and reporters have very little effect on the box office.  But there seems to be little question that we have a major effect on how people read films. 

You can hate The Matrix Reloaded all you like and the Zion sequence in particular, but to say that Reloaded is a thoughtless, idea-free pale Xerox of the original film leads to only one conclusion… you are either stupid or you are not really interested in getting it.  Sure, maybe that’s the fault of a screenplay that is overly expositional in direct (and inappropriate) comparison to the original.  But that’s my point.  There is a lot going on there, even if it bores you, irritates you or disappoints you.  It is, in my opinion, the job of a professional critic to reach beyond personal taste.  But alas, few do.

Anyway, the point of all of that is that it kills me to think that anyone will use that EW to define his or her expectations of The Hulk.  It would be inappropriate for almost any movie that is hyped on the EW cover.  And maybe I will end up hating The Hulk.  After all, until I see the movie, I can’t fairly judge.  I doubt it.  But this tangled web of gremlins in which we live…

E ME:   What do you feel?