Live (barely) From New York, It's-a Me!

If you've never been to New York (like me, as of a week ago), you can at least imagine what it's like. It's probably the most filmed and recreated city in the whole of human history. In fact, having experienced Sesame Street, Ghostbusters, Spider-Man, Friends, Kimmy Schmidt, the Lego Marvel game, and 60% of rom-coms I felt like I'd accurately pieced together the bulk of what life was like there.

But my wife had been once before, and she really wanted to go back. And take me (Everybody: "Awww", in delight or disgust as you see fit). Now I've been in big cities before; Atlanta, Nashville, Seattle, and the Salvador Dali-esque streets of New Orleans, and I understood that while they mostly look the same from a distance they each tend to develop their own personality and quirks. So you can't really lean into 'if you've been to one city you've been to them all'.

At the same time though, I grew up in Louisiana around people who would not shut up about New York. The people! The shopping! The sites! The musicals! And I'd stand there, staring at them the way I'd later stare at fanboys who'd try to convince me that The Matrix was deep. So going into this three night stay at The Benjamin, I had legitimate doubts that I was going to feel the connection that had been over-over-hyped. But I was determined to answer one question as it pertained to people who were at least a little less cynical than me: What was the big damn deal with New York?

Here's what I learned.

Initial impressions

Our flight from Charlotte to Newark was delayed (side note: I believe it's Mayor Vi Lyles who does the welcome announcement in Charlotte's airport, and she could totally be a professional voice actress) and so we arrived in New Jersey around 10:30 at night. We got a cab from the airport's dispatcher, who really did not seem like she wanted to deal with us, and headed across what could easily have been a bridge to Gotham City.

Two things happened here. One, "New York, New York" from On the Town entered my head and stayed there for two days. Two, I turned into Hilary Duff as Lane Daniels trying to see through the cab window from every possible angle.

We arrived at The Benjamin, and still didn't know where The Benjamin was. There was a sign directly above us which we never saw because we were looking everywhere except directly above us, and even Siri had to draw in an exasperated breath before informing us that we were literally fifty feet away from the check-in desk.

We got our keys, a couple of bottled soft drinks on our daily ten dollar credit, and hopped into the fastest elevator I've ever been in that didn't have a lap bar; cheerfully oblivious to the $39 'hotel facilities' fee we were going to be charged each of the next three days. Now we needed to find dinner from somewhere, since COVID had shut down the hotel's kitchen.

Pizza -New York pizza. I'm happy to say that the famous New York oven baked pizza that I've heard so much about is even nicer in person. Some pizza parlors close at six, some at eleven, some at four in the morning; I can't tell you what the rhyme or reason behind any of it is. I'm just grateful that we were able to find something at almost midnight.

The oddest thing though was how comfortable I felt roaming the streets of New York by myself so late at night. I didn't feel like anybody was going to bother me. And interestingly enough there were a few points where I saw a woman walking by herself as well without the body language of someone on alert. It would take me a few more street strolls to fully understand the concept but simply put, New Yorkers mind their own business. This southern-born introvert has waited his whole life for this environment.

What We Saw on the Trip

1. The Central Park Zoo. Central Park is freaking huge and we only covered the south end of it. And they have a zoo. It's not a big zoo but it somehow still feels complete. Imagine going to a regular zoo and then taking just the highlights and editing out everything else. An aviary, snow leopards, a bear, some monkeys, a seal feeding, and a petting zoo (no elephants, damn it). At fourteen bucks, it was a good ticket; totally worth skipping the 4D Ice Age short.

2. The New York Public Library. Oh man, the architecture of this thing was beautiful. This was the old school library where everyone is quiet, librarians have to retrieve your books for you, and there are lion statues on the front steps (I never thought about it before, why do lions care about books?). I, jocundly, don't work in that kind of library, but I always love spending a few moment inside one whenever the chance arises.

3. The Hard Rock Cafe. It's kind of a tradition, whenever my wife and I are in a city with an HRC we have dinner there. This one felt like it was built from the ground to be a Hard Rock Cafe, as opposed to moving into a pre-existing space. I suppose even though it was a chain, the steak was officially New York steak, so I can check that off as well. Quick question, would any streaming service consider letting you just tap into their channel that plays music videos? They only seem to pick visually good ones.

4. The Rockefeller Center/Radio City Music Hall. Being August, and...you know...the middle of an ongoing pandemic I don't think we got the full effect. But we got the gist. FAO Schwarz was big, even if I didn't find anything I wanted to make room for in my backpack. I was a little disappointed in NBC's gift shop. During the past decade Saturday Night Live has changed. In addition to being the funniest it's been in years, the most recent cast has been surprisingly vulnerable. I would have bought just about anything with Cecily Strong's face on it, but all their merchandise was "More Cowbell", Stefon (a character I just never got), and generic things with 'Saturday Night Live' on them. It's always something.

5. Trash & Vaudeville. My wife loves fashion, so by proxy I've picked up on a handful of talking points. Ultimately it's not my thing, but if I had the money I'll be damned if this store wouldn't get me into it. There's an energy here where you can just feel the connection to Debbie Harry and My Shopping Addiction. I'm probably due for a midlife crisis; maybe I'll start dressing like an aging rock star.

6. Times Square. This was the heart of it all. I can't imagine what New Year's Eve is like here, but August 17th had the kind of party atmosphere I always expected, and never got, from Mardi Gras. Street dancers, music busses, a couple of mostly naked women, Batman and Deadpool posing together, and a short walk to flip off the Scientology center. I even got attacked by a homeless man who took offense to my COVID mask (a tidbit I'm peculiarly proud of), and adamantly defended by strangers. New Yorkers don't want you to interact with them, but they're really proactive when someone needs help.

What We Didn't See

1. The Statue of Liberty. It would have been nice but not worth the Lyft money, because she just wasn't on our way to anything we were looking to do.

2. A Broadway show. And I'll be honest, I'm not broken up about it. I love doing theater, but I've never been all that passionate about watching it.

3. Many kids or elderly people. Let's face it, New York is for people who don't mind walking. You've got to have stamina to survive there.

4. The subway. We just never had a reason to go underground; leaving me with the unanswered question, how does a city install a subway system? Do you assume you're going to need one before you add in the skyscrapers, or do you start digging and hope they're not as heavy as they look?

5. Individualism. All of my T-shirts have Nintendo logos or Disney characters on them, which probably identified me as a tourist since 99% of the New Yorkers I saw did not wear anything other than plain shirts or business outfits (with the occasional yoga wear). One single woman had her hair dyed an anime color. But aside from that, everyone seems to naturally want to blend in with everyone else.

6. Giant apes climbing buildings. Dude, what the hell?

What We Took Away

I'm a writer (amateur, yes, but shut up), so naturally I'm drawn to character. From my three days spent in what's esoterically known as the Big Apple, this is what I believe I understand. New York is a clock. It's the Big Ben of the United States. When New York decides it's time to fawn over Hamilton, the nation fawns over Hamilton. And everything in the city is in motion, and every wheel cog demands every other wheel cog respect that motion. It's the first city I've been to that had signs saying "No Standing Any Time".

It's a place for people who like to be on the go, grabbing hot dogs along the way and treating 'Don't Walk' as a caution light. You're a part of the city almost immediately; and you have to be or you're going to get run over. New York doesn't welcome you like Orlando, it just gets you moving.

But as quickly as New York makes you one of its own, I can't help but wonder how rare it is to succeed at whatever motive led you there in the first place. Did you want to be a fashion designer? A Broadway star? A CEO? I don't get the impression that the city cares if you make it, or how you feel about failing. I imagine you could be the best chef ever between two intersections and instantly become nobody when your card stops working at the bagel stand.

So I guess to close out without resorting to the cliché about visiting but not living there, I have to say that the city itself is a living, breathing titan that legitimately inspires awe. And for a brief time, it was a joy to be a single blood cell injected into its circulatory system going on the ride; killing my feet, getting my neck scratched, and becoming simultaneously wiser and poorer. But I don't think I would ever want to get to the point where that novelty becomes mundane.

Everybody's got the rhythm that works for them. For me, I can honestly say I love New York. But in small doses.

Looney Tunes: Back in Traction (Reflections, Reviews, and Revisions)

I am a huge Looney Tunes fan. I'm from the generation that didn't just grow up on them, we absorbed them. They were everywhere; comic books, TV specials, movies, and of course the never ending reruns of the classic shorts that just never seemed to get old.

In the early days of animation, the studios were all competing with Disney, as Walt's animation team had  risen to dominance. It was the creators of the Looney Tunes who first abandoned this approach in favor of finding their own voice, planting the seed of rebelliousness that Bugs and company have always embodied. To paraphrase people smarter than me, if Disney was classic music, the Looney Tunes were jazz.

It's that same rebellious spirit that's granted the Loonies (the word I've chosen to use) their post-Termite Terrace longevity but also made them a difficult fit for the long form storytelling of cinema, as their movies prior to Roger Rabbit had essentially been clip show excuses to recycle the shorts of the golden age. I mention Roger Rabbit because (curiously) every attempt to put Bugs and Daffy in a feature film since then have somehow obligatorily been a hybrid of animation and live action.

Perhaps the reason for this is because the Loonies by nature aren't meant to have character development, they're meant to be funny; and in their case funny is about seven minutes of pain and suffering and nobody learning anything until we do a palette cleanse and go again. Thus it makes sense to have a POV character to handle the film's plot from beginning to end so the animals can go back to trying to kill each other.

It's with this lens that I want to look at the unofficial film trilogy Space Jam, Not Space Jam, And Back to Space Jam, to figure out what went wrong, what went right, and what in theory Warner Brothers can do about it.

Space Jam

For me the 90's was a college degree that will never matter, a series of customer service jobs, and an overall sense of hopelessness. Visually, it's a tumbleweed rolling between Clerks and Reality Bites with the occasional espresso shot of joy from Kevin Conroy's Batman (I don't know if that's irony or just really sad). The then-younglings seemed to be having a much better time of it, with Spielberg's TV shows and an insatiable urge to zigazig ah.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, athletes became superheroes. I've always been on the geek side of jocks vs. geeks and we were never going to win with a dial-up connection, but we had a begrudging respect for the top tier personalities of basketball's "dream team" even if we couldn't tell you who they'd played for prior to the 1992 Olympics. It was only natural that a player of Michael Jordan's charm would go on to play himself in front of a green screen to the most 90's soundtrack ever Jock Jammed together.

So what can I say about 1996's Space Jam besides director Joe Pytka is a whiny bitch? Well, to summarize, the Looney Tunes live underneath the surface of the earth (in Hell maybe?) and Danny DeVito voicing a Danny DeVito knockoff decides we're overdue for a remake of The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. To WB's credit, they don't waste any time trying to infuse the premise with credibility; this film is just a theme park ride.

Stuff happens, some of it is smile-worthy, none of it feels particularly inspired; it's just dumb fun with a soundtrack. The problem is the Looney Tunes are not dumb fun, they're comedic art. Jordan is fine at playing himself but he's no Bob Hoskins, and the only way for him to get in and out of Bugs's anarchy is by removing the rabbit's teeth. These are Diet Looney Tunes, which raises a fundamental question for all three of these films: Does the person/committee calling the shots understand them?

In Space Jam the answer is a resounding no. First off, as mentioned previously this ain't Disney. These characters do not get along or cooperate for a common goal. One wonders if there was a draft of the script where DeVito's Swackhammer actually enticed the greedier Loonies over to his side in the first act. The second thing, Bugs Bunny is pure ego. He doesn't kowtow to anybody, even if his life depends on it. And finally there's Lola, who I assume started as sexualized fan art of Babs Bunny. The thing about Jessica Rabbit, and her precursor Red Hot Riding Hood, is the characters were sexy but they also had layers. Their respective creators took the time to at least answer the question for themselves "What does she want?". Lola apparently just wants to strut, which is fine if she's a running gag, but Space Jam is trying to pass her off as a new addition to the Looney Tunes cast. "Don't call me doll" isn't a character any more than if Bugs's whole shtick was his love of carrots.

So was there anything about the movie that caught my attention? Yeah, one scene. When Bugs and Daffy have to break into Michael Jordan's house to collect his gear there's a tiny bit of the lifetime of animosity between them. It's not much, Daffy just makes a couple of insincere grand bows to Bugs's orders. But the sense that Daffy's resentment is still tucked away in there is the one sign of life in the old bird. And in the movie. And where there's a spark...

Looney Tunes: Back in Action

Full disclosure, I saw this once in the theater and walked away thinking "Eh, that was okay," and didn't think much more about it. Until the next morning when my brain started replaying some beats from the movie; the frustrated Batman during the Roger Corman cameo, the scene in the Louvre, the moment Daffy Freaking Duck saves humanity from being turned into monkeys. I went back a second time and walked away thinking "This was actually pretty well done." Then a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth, dragging my various coworkers with me. I've since decided that this movie is a gem.

With flaws, but all gems are. None of which derail the movie, they just stand out in a film that shoots for the moon and damn near hits it. The first is the self-consciousness of the jokes. As someone who's actively tried writing comedy I can tell you that when you worry you're not being funny enough you overcompensate by cramming as many jokes into your work space as you can. The one liners come desperately fast, and it's no wonder; when you're trying to match Chuck Jones, Michael Maltese, and Mel Blanc, you're setting a Marx Brothers level bar (the good movies, not The Big Store). It's also worth acknowledging that the studio kept interfering with Joe Dante's direction, demanding changes that can't really be made that late into animation.

The other flaw is the human cast, which as I say isn't really a problem. Just...you know...not Bob Hoskins. Steve Martin's Acme Chairman could probably have used a test audience. He's good enough for an Austin Powers character, but we know what Martin is capable of; it's kind of late Steve Martin 'doing' early Steve Martin. Jenna Elfman is decent, but perhaps some coaching from Carol Burnett would have solidified the character she was going for. Timothy Dalton is quite funny, if underused. And Joan Cusack might be an actual cartoon character in disguise.

The wild card is Brendan Fraser, who has the thankless job of pretending the movie is about him. The short version: he's much better in the role than you think he is. Fraser is a subtle actor, which is easy to overlook if you're only familiar with his popular movies. Here the burden of convincing us of Back in Action's rules on the Looney Tunes (actors who play themselves) rests predominantly on his shoulders. Jordan played Jordan. Fraser plays DJ, an out of work stuntman who just lost his job before learning his actor-father is actually a secret agent while dealing with the always temperamental and recently fired Daffy Duck; and that's act one. And Fraser finds a way to make it all feel sincere while getting out of the spotlight of the real star. It's arguably the most generous performance I've ever seen an actor give.

The real star is Daffy. From the opening moments, this movie lets you know that it knows what it's about. Looney Tunes don't do 'heart' like the Muppets, it's just not their thing. But Back in Action allows the duck and the rabbit to dip their toes in a pool we've all wondered about: does Daffy hurt? Playing second fiddle is an enviable position to everyone except the one in that position, because right next to you is that damn first chair spot that no matter what you do you just can't crawl your way into.

The great Joe Alaskey voices both Bugs and Daffy and he infuses both characters with the whole of their long history together. Outwardly, Bugs is as much of a dick as he's always been, but behind the mallard's back Bugs is very defensive of him. Daffy wants respect, and he's never going to get it. It's not fair; it's comedy. In the end, nothing changes. Daffy doesn't get respect or resolution; hell, he's too self absorbed to even recognize that he saved all of humanity. As the audience, we know that Daffy is lovable, and he's working so hard to prove something that he doesn't have to. It's tragic in a way, but it's also comforting to see without question that Bugs knows what we know. No one can top Bugs, but Daffy is his equal.

Space Jam: A New Legacy

I want to start by talking about Don Cheadle. I've always thought he was a great actor, but I've never seen him go over the top. He is having so much fun as villain Al-G Rhythm, it's a contagious performance. Now with that said, for a movie with the freaking Looney Tunes in it, there's a real problem when the first thing I want to do is talk about Don Cheadle. In fact, I don't even want to talk about them next. Let's talk LeBron James.

I don't agree with any of the criticism James is getting about not being able to act. It's not to say that I think he can act; just that I've only seen him in this, and it's not a fair example. Green screen acting is hard. You need at least one of two things to not look completely like a dumbass, a director who can walk the actor through each performance beat or an actor who's skilled enough to ask the right questions. It's unreasonable to expect James to be the latter at this point in his Hollywood career, and I can't really gauge Malcolm D. Lee's directorial talent from his filmography (much less how much control he even had over the project). Suffice to say, James is serviceable. I wanted him to be better, and I still do, I'd like to see more from him. But I don't think he was bad, and I really believe he was trying, and in some ways succeeding.

The problem with this movie is the WB studio. I don't know what conglomerate calls the shots, but they understand their franchises as well as Michael Eisner understood Disney's. Essentially what we have here is about six executives worth of ideas and only one who gets it right part of the time. You know, pretty much a true to form follow up of the original. I will say I enjoyed watching it. Once. But like the original, I doubt I'll ever go back and revisit it. Why, you ask? Well let's pretend you do. Because it makes the same stupid mistake the original did and Back in Action didn't, it doesn't understand the Looney Tunes.

So instead of reviewing it, let me try story doctoring it. First off, open with Al-G in the serververse where he has the idea to allow WB franchises to intermingle. He sends it to the executives who turn it down because it seems like a stupid idea. That rejection hurts, so he tries to implement it anyway, by going to the Looney Tunes to test it out; and show that scene. They're all intrigued and head off to different worlds. But, being Looney Tunes, it's in their nature to f**k things up. So now Al-G has just taken an idea that nobody liked and made it harmful, thus making him both a sympathetic character as well as a potential villain.

He can't control them or get them to come back into their own world. So what might work? Space Jam sequel. He just needs a player. "LeBron, how would you like to test out our new technology and star in a new Space Jam movie? You'll actually play opposite the Looney Tunes in real time, not drawn by frames but performed virtually! kind of like a video game. Great! Let's do some screen tests. I'm gonna send you into various situations and you just kind of wing it, convince the characters to join your team."

From there it's about the serververse rewriting itself around Al-G's premise, probably making him more powerful but also locking him into the outcome of this basketball game. And it would give us more time to spend with the individual Loonies. Put Bugs in a world like Scooby-Doo where the rules don't favor him. Have him start playing along by dressing up as the monster but then have him start to forget who he is by adopting the new role (thus showing why this was a bad idea). Put Porky and Sylvester in a Final Destination movie (a la "Scaredy Cat"). Have Daffy battle Jim Carrey's Mask character (it's owned by WB, I looked it up). I mean, really go for it.

I don't know how it ends and I don't care, but doesn't that sound a lot more anarchic than what they did? Like the original, I enjoyed things about the movie. One of the few inspired choices was to have Bugs treat James as if he's an antagonist during their first meeting, because that's what Bugs is used to. Ultimately A New Legacy is bigger and noisier than its predecessor, but about the same in quality.

So What Should WB Do Next?

Besides turn the DCEU over to Bruce Timm and Paul Dini? Okay, the problem with handling the Looney Tunes isn't with the characters; they're timeless. Like all avatars for the soul of comedy they're the funhouse mirror that reflects on the world as it is, albeit distorted; there will never be a time when someone can correctly say that they're outdated.

But figuring out how to find our way back to that soul is a trickier approach. WB keeps trying, and once in a while they strike gold (see The Looney Tunes Show). But I think we can find a better strategy than throwing things at the wall to see what sticks; again, DCEU take note.

I want to tell a story that I love telling, and probably already have in another blog post. Later in his life Chuck Jones started making public appearances, and at one event a mom and her little girl went up to meet him. "This is Chuck Jones," said the mom to her daughter, "He draws Bugs Bunny." The girl quite firmly corrected her mother, "No, he draws pictures of Bugs Bunny."

This exchange stuck with Jones, and he took a little time to reflect on what the girl had meant. He realized she was right in the way that a child's wisdom always is. Nobody ever "created" Bugs Bunny. He existed, on some other unseen plane where he continues to exist. Periodically he reveals something of his personality and antics to those of a creative mindset, and it's the privilege of those artists to translate his existence into a form for the whole world to share. And it's with this understanding that WB's ideal direction becomes clear.

Double down on Lola.

A couple of reasons. One, the Looney Tunes as a whole has historically been a boys club and that element IS outdated. Two, we've already seen three different versions of Lola, in much the way that Jones's Daffy differed significantly from Robert McKimson's Daffy but they were still the same duck. And three, when my wife and I went to see A New Legacy there was a young woman in the theater dressed in Lola's outfit from the first movie; not the rabbit head mind you, but the unmistakable basketball uniform. As much of a non-character as she was in Space Jam, something about her connected with an audience. Almost like there's a new voice from that plane Bugs resides in, asking to be turned loose in our world.

So what I propose, all you decision makers who are never going to read this, is a half-hour cartoon series called Lola. Each episode is made up of three individual shorts, just like the old cartoons, that all feature Lola. Animation style can vary and there doesn't need to be any continuity, just give her a canvas to play on, to find her identity.

Imagine the possibilities just from having her interact with the other characters in already familiar situations. How would she deal with opera-diva Giovanni Jones from "Long-Haired Hare" differently than Bugs did? Would she focus more on humiliating him by redecorating his stage to look like a saloon and make him perform with an orchestra of banjoes? How would Elmer Fudd react to her? "Oh, I didn't weawize you wewe a wady," Would she take that as an insult and spend the whole cartoon demanding he shoot at her? What about Wile E. Coyote? Would she take an interest in his elaborate traps, even trying to help make them work without fully understanding their purpose? And what if she has a goal that comes into conflict with a 'winner' character like Speedy Gonzales?

There are always ways for the Loonies to evolve as times change and new issues come to the forefront. They're strong enough for a fresh take and some current risks. The main thing to remember, you don't go into comedy because it's safe, you go into it because it isn't. Give them their teeth and their dynamite and just roll with the carnage.