Producers in Focus: Lindsay Ellis

            The big shift, in my mind at least, was the Rent video. 

            On New Year's Eve 2016, in that time following the 2016 election when the Trump years hadn't officially started yet and we had nothing solid to try and mitigate our fears with, Lindsay Ellis released a 45-minute examination of Rent (both the show and the musical) that genuinely felt like a shot across the bow of American culture, a statement of the kind of critical thought and active engagement we would need to survive what was coming. 

            She'd been doing longer-form video essays for a while before this; after debuting her original internet persona of the Nostalgia Chick on That Guy With The Glasses in September 2008, she continued to build her audience and develop her voice as a critic and analyst after leaving the site in 2015 (under patently awful circumstances) with her Loose Canon series, where she examined the cultural evolution of how various characters and topics are treated in media (a pre-election examination of comedian interpretations of Hillary Clinton ended up being particularly, painfully prescient). 

            But something about the Rent video felt, and still feels, fundamentally different.  It was angrier, more pointed, and cut much deeper not just into the direct matter of the movie itself, but in what the movie's treatment of the AIDS crisis failed to do when compared to the real-life struggles of the LGBTQ community in the 80's to gain the recognition and help they deserved. 

            And she's been on a non-stop tear since then, regularly releasing massive video essays of similar length on a wide, wide range of shows, movies, and topics, and never failing to actively critique and consider how our production and consumption of media reveals truths in our society we'd often rather ignore, as well as what we can do about them. 

            When examining the collective body of work Ellis has produced in the past few years, I see a deep, thoughtful, and keenly perceptive mind producing some of the best and most meaningful film criticism to be found just about anywhere today.  Her dry, often ironic and/or detached style of humor is unlike anyone else online at the moment, making her unique voice all the more essential.  All of her work is worth checking out, but here are the works of hers that have made the biggest impact on me personally.   

Nostalgia Chick- The Lord of the Rings

            This was one of the last sets of videos Ellis officially did as Nostalgia Chick before leaving TGWTG, but given how much of her history with the franchise jives with mine, her in-depth examination of not only the movies themselves, but the stories around their development and the legacy they left behind makes this essential viewing for any fantasy fan. 

Loose Canon 9/11

 

            All of the Loose Canon videos are fascinating mini-history episodes worth watching, but my hands-down favorite of them all is this two-parter where Ellis explores the history, not of 9/11 itself, but of how we’ve processed it (or rather, haven’t) through film and television, noting different waves or phases in how we’ve thus far tried to interpret and tackle this terrible tragedy.  Like her Hillary Clinton episode, this was one that ended up being uncomfortably prescient in 2016. 

Rent

            With the abyss of a national government committed to eliminating health care and other systematic protections for the poor and vulnerable staring us in the face, Ellis’ closing segment of this video, featuring clips of a real speech exhorting action in the face of tragedy and ending with the echoing protest cry “Health care is a right!” was Goddamn revolutionary, and it was exactly the jolt in the arm I and many others needed.  Even well over a year later, it still gives me chills. 

The Whole Plate- Michael Bay’s Transformers

            This series is still ongoing and far from completion, but although I loathe this bloated corpse of a franchise as much as anyone, Ellis is right on point when she questions our willingness to not examine the cultural significance of one of the highest-grossing film series of all time.  Plus, watching her dig into more detail about these films than Bay has ever deserved it just plain funny, as well as hella educational for anyone who didn’t go to film school. 

The Producers

            Mel Brooks remains one of the greatest comedic filmmakers of all time, but his legacy has become all too often abused by people trying to find a shield to cover their own lack of talent and/or actual racism by using Blazing Saddles and The Producers as “proof” that society is too up-tight and politically correct these days.  This is wrong-headed for a number of reasons, and Ellis goes through each one in great detail, and for good measure she throws in a fairly comprehensive look at how American interpretations of WWII and, by extension, the Holocaust shifted in the decades between the war itself and the premiere of The Producers. 

Pocahontas

            This might be my top favorite of Ellis’ videos, if for no other reason than that the continued global cultural myopia among whites and Westerners about the true extent, legacy, and price of Western colonialism is one of my biggest, most race-inducing bugbears.  It is a massive topic that can only be grasped through serious, complicated thought, but here Ellis did about as good as a job as can be done distilling it into a single sentence, which is quite a feat.

Stephanie Meyer

            I was all-in on Twilight hate during my college years, and so was Ellis.  So were a lot of people.  There has always been a certain disingenuousness to that, but it never really struck me until Ellis became one of the first major voices to point it out and examine the latent sexism in much of our “dialogue” about this odd franchise.  Not an easy take, to be sure, but a needed one. 

The Hobbit

            Her latest major work (as of this writing), a long-awaiting follow-up to her examination of the LOTR franchise, is a massive journalistic undertaking.  I was and have remained a defender of The Hobbit movies over the years, but following Ellis’ explanations of the many, many ways in which both the production of the films itself went south and how its legacy adversely impacted the New Zealand film scene have led me to seriously reconsider my stance.  Which is, in the end, the whole point of good film criticism.  The whole scope of the downfall of the franchise as Ellis paints is damn near the level of a Greek tragedy, one that I hope does not, in the long run, adversely affect the legacy of LOTR.  Sadly, as Ellis points out, a bit of that is unavoidable. 

            Are there any former TGWTG/CA producers you’ve been missing and what to get caught up on?  Then check out and follow the Unawesomes page on Twitter.  Let’s make the internet economy of tomorrow a better, more equitable place, starting now. 

-Noah Franc

Review: Komunia (Communion)

Komunia: Written and directed by Anna Zamecka.  Starring: Ola Kaczanowski and Nikodem Kaczanowski.  Running Time: 72 minutes. 

Rating: 4/4

            Komunia is a sparse and bitingly intimate portrait of the hard life of a poor Polish family.  The parents are separated for reasons we never learn, and the father’s alcoholism makes him effectively incapable of doing anything other than watching TV, leaving the teenage daughter, Ola, more or less alone in trying to take care of herself and her mentally disabled brother, Nikodem, who for most of the film is struggling to prepare for his first communion. 

            It is Ola who has to do all the cleaning and cooking.  It is Ola who has to coordinate every call and meet-up with their mother, who lets in the social worker to speak with her Dad and admonish him for not giving up drinking.  It is Ola who forces her brother to study for the religious exam he has to pass in order to be able to take communion, a task that she devotes herself to with a single-minded fervor, as though getting her brother through this particular rite of adulthood will make everything else worth it.  And still, between all this, she still needs time to just be a teenage girl, to dance and party with her friends in the one good dress she owns.  And sometimes, she can’t do anything anymore, except break down in tears of frustration and worry.   

            The movie is short, hard, and doesn’t try to comment on anything we see.  It’s as grounded and efficient as documentary filmmaking gets, which is what makes it great.  There is no effort to artificially create an “end point” for the family.  We see them live, the brother struggles through communion, the parents try getting back together and break right back up again, and by the end Ola and Nikodem are still sitting on the floor of their tiny apartment, sifting through their books. 

            And it must be emphasized how small the space they have to live in is.  The close-up nature of the camerawork- nearly every shot focuses almost exclusively on either Ola or Nikodem to the exclusion of everyone else- makes every place they are in feel tight, narrow, constricted, mirroring the circumstances of life they find themselves in.  And yet, they (meaning the children, not the adults) still find love and joy and grace even in the midst of their struggles. 

            Being a movie about a family preparing for a communion service, and a Polish one at that, Catholicism looms large over the film.  The many technical questions about the minutiae of the Catechism are treated as matters of spiritual life or death, and some of the film’s funniest or most poignant moments come when Ola or a teacher or a priest are trying, very seriously of course, to instill this or that tidbit of trivia into Nikodem’s brain, but his rapid-fire thinking and pure honesty won’t let him be tied down by whether or not the priest approves of what he says. 

            Komunia is a bracing experience, and at times hard to watch, but for such simple subject matter, this is as potent as a documentary can get.  Maybe I only related to it as much as I did because I myself am a part-Polish Catholic social worker with a mentally disabled brother, but then again, maybe that’s all that counts. 

-Noah Franc

Films for the Trump Years: Bowling for Columbine

            There was about a 36-hour period, starting quite suddenly about two days after the Parkland shooting, where I found myself filled with such a raging fury I could barely breath.  I thought Sandy Hook and the utter refusal of Republicans to allow a proper response to the slaughter of children had killed off my ability to get emotional about this particular topic.  Somehow, miraculously, I was wrong; I am not yet so jaded.  But that doesn’t make the suffering of these victims any more bearable. 

            Like everyone, I expected the usual rinse-wash-repeat cycle to happen as it inevitably had for these past twenty, interminable years.  But this time, so far, it hasn’t.  The survivors of Parkland, linking arms with past victims across the country, have been able to push back against the cycle and seem to be on the verge of breaking it (although we’ll have to wait until after the midterms to determine if it really is broken, or just strained).  An unprecedented public focus has been sharpened on gun violence, enhanced by a school walkout last month and the monumental March for our Lives in D.C.

            Today, on the 19^th anniversary of Columbine, a second school walkout, expected to be even more expansion than last month’s, will take place, and I feel there is nothing more appropriate I could do this month with my Trump Years series than couple today’s walkout with a look back at Michael Moore’s seminal work, Bowling for Columbine, which remains his most well-known and potent film. 

            The combination of seeing this film for the first time and reading Moore’s book, Stupid White Men, in the summer of 2004, as that year’s election was heating up, was a pivotal moment in my life.  The boldest passages from the book and the most provocative parts of the film were like lightning bolts to my brain, jolting my intellect into an alertness I have worked tirelessly to maintain ever since. 

            Now, of course, as a 28-year-old adult seeing the film again for the first time in at least a decade, it’s much easier for me to see when and where the clear flaws in Moore’s in-your-face narrative style pop up, as well as his occasional weakness for over-simplifications that often hurt, rather than help, his arguments.  There was always a bit of the juvenile in many of his antics, something that has only slightly mellowed in his later works.  I will never forget the chill that ran down my spine the first time I saw the “Wonderful World” montage, but with over a decade of studying history now behind me, I can clearly see the many cracks in that kind of sensationalist approach.

            However, while it is fair to criticize him for the times he overreaches, if he wasn’t as balls-to-the-wall daring as he is, he would never reach nearly as many moments of painful clarity as he does, which are the hallmarks of great documentary filmmaking.  Yes, the movie’s flaws are more salient than ever 16 years after it took Cannes by storm and netted Moore his Oscar.  But its most powerful moments, and its clearest damnations of the American psychosis surrounding guns, are even more so, and have never been more relevant than now; Moore highlighted a ream of uncomfortable truths and problems within America that have only worsened since the film’s release. 

            The recurring topic of fear, and how it can be and is used to manipulate people, is central to the movie, but while Moore seemed to believe then that those first few years after 9/11 were the apogee of American fear, we now know all too clearly it was merely a paltry prelude to what was to come, the first stirrings of a darkness in the American mind that has now lasted nearly two decades. 

            Moore and his cinematographers have always had a special talent for capturing images, moments, and exchanges that perfectly encapsulate the paradoxes and contradictions of the American character, and Bowling for Columbine is chock-full of them.  A guy buying guns “just to be safe” wearing a “Fuck You” baseball cap.  An employer of Lockhead Martin standing in front of a massive, uncompleted missile from the US nuclear arsenal opining how you can’t just shoot or bomb someone every time you get upset.  Two survivors of Columbine going to the headquarters of K-Mart to try and return the bullets, purchased at a K-Mart store, still inside their bodies.  And my personal favorite; a conspiracy theorist, after showing off the loaded gun he sleeps with and talking about his friendship with the Oklahoma City bombers of 1995, admits that SOME materials, like weapons-grade plutonium, should not be in civilian hands, because, quote, “there’s wackos out there.” 

            Then there’s the racial aspect that the film sometimes, but not always, touches on; both then and now, it’s inevitably white people extolling the virtues of firearms and of uncontrolled private gun ownership.  It’s whites who, according to the Hestons and LaPierres of the world, that have the God-given right to stroll around with loaded assault rifles at the ready, while anyone black, brown, or otherwise only has the right to die, whether or not they had a firearm on them.  These people claim universality for their twisted, perverted worldview, but it’s merely window dressing for old-school, boilerplate racism.  And we keep letting ourselves forget that, time and again. 

            It’s amazing how much the film now works as a time capsule of those last few, precious years where school shootings were still rare enough to spark genuine outrage and sadness, not apathy and resignation.  When the 90’s were dying, yes, but still had a few breaths left in them.  When “Columbine” was a singular event with a singular meaning in the English language.  There was no talk of “like Columbine” or “since Columbine.”  Just “Columbine.” 

            From the speeches Moore shows in Littletown in 1999 to the March for our Lives just last month, the parallels are chilling and at times overwhelming, as is any serious effort to understand just exactly how much two decades of inaction have cost us.  A recent Washington Post study, an absolute must-read, estimates that nearly 200,000 current and former US students have been exposed to gun violence and struggle with the various after-effects and traumas associated with being a survivor.  What that has cost us as a nation and as people is beyond money, beyond numbers, beyond quantification, and above all else, beyond excuse. 

            We are, each and every one of us, complicit in this senseless slaughter.  We can all choose to be part of the solution.  But it requires our active choice, today, tomorrow, and forever. 

-Noah Franc

Previously on Films for the Trump Years:

Part 1- Selma

Part 2- Good Night, and Good Luck

Part 3- 13^th

Part 4- Get Out

Part 5- Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral

Part 6- The Big Short

Part 7- Human Flow

Part 8- Winter’s Bone/Moonlight

Part 9- Black Panther

Part 10- Arrested Development

In Memoriam: Isao Takahata

            A giant has left us.  Several days ago, on April 5^th, 2018, Isao Takahata, co-founder of Studio Ghibli, died.  He was 82. 

            This is a heavy blow to anyone who considers themselves an anime fan.  Takahata was, in many ways, often overshadowed in the public eye by his longtime collaborator and Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki, who is certainly better-known to most casual filmgoers, but everyone who has followed Studio Ghibli knows just how deeply the two depended on and supported each other throughout their careers.  Each would likely never have had the sustained success they’ve had without the other. 

            Often referred to as the “animator who can’t draw,” Takahata long carried the nickname “Paku-San” around the Ghibli office; he would often come in each morning loudly chomping on bread, the Japanese onamonapia for which is “paku-paku.”  He was often teased by his co-workers for being comparatively lazy and laid-back, especially when compared to Miyazaki’s legendary work obsession.  In his afterward to a book cataloguing the studio’s early years, he credited their professional partnership as being one of the driving forces behind his achievements, writing, “It is through Hayao Miyazaki’s very existence that I have always felt scolded for my slothlike tendencies, been made to feel guilty, been cornered into doing work, and had something greater than whatever limited talents I might possess squeezed out of me.”

            However they were brought out of him, willingly or no, Takahata’s works will indelibly stand alongside Miyazaki’s as not just great animated films, but as some of the greatest films of all time.  He was never as prolific, per say, as others, being credited as the director for just five of Ghibli’s feature films to Miyazaki’s nine, but each film project he did choose has had a striking impact, and revealed a mind capable of working through a cast array of artistic styles and story types. 

            His most well-known and arguably most influential film, 1988’s Grave of the Fireflies, is a realistic-looking, devastating portrayal of Japan during WWII, one that Roger Ebert argued had to be on any serious list of the greatest war movies ever made.  He followed this with a meditative work on childhood, country life, memory with Only Yesterday (1991), a film whose tone could not have been more different, and after that, he made the even more bizarre and fantastical Pom Poko (1994).  My Neighbors the Yamadas, released five years later, was yet another wild departure, a series of slice-of-life vignettes from a typical, middle-class Japanese family, drawn in an almost comically child-like style. 

            For whatever reason, he didn’t head another major project with the company until nearly a decade-and-a-half later.  But when he finally did return to the directing chair, the result was an artistic thunderbolt.  2013’s The Tale of Princess Kaguya not only ranks as one of the best works in the Ghibli canon, I have fervently argued on more than one occasion that it deserves to be considered one of the greatest films of all time.  It now turns out that it will stand as his final feature film, but my God, what a note to go out on. 

            Takahata may be gone, but his works resonate with such power and force that his memory will long outlive us all.  Every film of his is worth seeing, and if you haven’t seen any of them yet, now is as good a time to start as any. 

            Arigatou gozaimasu, Paku-San.  You are already sorely missed, but you will never be forgotten. 

-Noah Franc

A Critic, a Camera, and a Wall

            It began, as so much does in our information age, with a tweet, and snowballed from there. 

            On March 13^th, 2018, a Twitter thread was started by Allison Pregler, aka “Obscurus Lupa,” between herself and several other current and former TGWTG/CA producers, where they exchanged horror stories related to working with the Walkers and the CA management, especially CEO Mike Michaud.  This thread started to go viral, and while many of the stories were, apparently, nothing new, in the wake of #MeToo many, many more fans, including, I am ashamed to admit, yours truly, were seeing and hearing them for the first time. 

            The success this initial thread had at getting people’s attention, prompting more and more content creators to come forward with their own stories of ineptitude, mismanagement, and in some cases serious abuse, culminating in a massive, 70-page (and counting!) online Google Doc, gathered under the hashtag #ChangetheChannel.  

            I won’t try to summarize it all here, but I do think the Doc is worth reading in its entirety.  If you only have time for bullet points, Suede has already put together an excellent companion summary.  Needless to say, this is heavy stuff, the kind that simply can’t be ignored.  To my immense disappointment, however, CA and the Walkers in particular have done exactly that.  At first they simply blocked any and everyone who directly wrote them on Twitter about this.  Since the Doc hit, the only official response has been a brief, half-assed, victim-blaming farce of an “apology”, one that even the site’s most ardent supporters have found wanting.  As a result, over the past month numerous producers, including Todd in the Shadows, Film Brain, Rap Critic, Suede, and even Linkara (whose seniority and status on the site rivals that of Brad Jones, Angry Joe, and even Doug himself) have announced their departure from Channel Awesome, and since the “apology” came out on Monday the company’s Youtube page has lost well over 20,000 subscriptions, and that number is still rising. 

            It would be one thing if the stories of mismanagement, bad communication, double standards, lack of company policies and standards, and production chaos could simply be chalked up to the initial inexperience of ambitious, amateur filmmakers in over their heads.  It would be disappointing, but not necessarily deal-breaking, if it turned out that the Walkers were just kinda dickish and frustrating people to work with and/or for.  We’d be having a different conversation if there was any indication that the Walkers had learned from the mistakes of the early years and reformed their business practices.  We’d be having a different conversation if any sort of genuine remorse from the heads in Chicago were forthcoming. 

            But we’re not having any of those conversations.  We’re having this one.  And we’re having it because, when taken collectively, these stories point to a pair of internet celebrities that, despite their remarkable talents, are simply unsuited to being in a position with decision-making power over the lives and careers of others.  People who found themselves in such a situation, partially through sheer luck and circumstance, but who never bothered to try and learn how to use that power responsibly. 

            Yes, the worst abuses clearly come from Mike Michaud and Mark Ellis.  But the Walkers cannot be separated from this (and there are more than enough examples of Rob being directly involved in some problems), because they are the face of the company.  They are Channel Awesome.  It only exists because of the Nostalgia Critic.  The IP ownership of the name aside, if Doug had ever truly dug in his heels and said that things needed to change, it could have happened.  But he didn’t, and so far there are no indications that he will ever do so. 

            And even he, as much as I admire him, has his own direct responsibility in much of this.  My good friend and podcast partner, Justin (aka The CineMaverick), the person responsible for introducing me to Doug Walker in the first place (and whose comments to me on #ChangetheChannel were the inspiration for the title of this piece), told me that the story that's stuck with him the most is how Doug initially wanted a To Boldly Flee scene between Linkara and Lindsay Ellis (then still known as Nostalgia Chick) to essentially be an extended rape joke.  When confronted about the very, VERY obvious problems with this, he did eventually relent *somewhat*, but never seemed to grasp why making light of rape was the height of bad taste, and STILL forced Lindsay to record assault noises for the dub.  

            This particular story, I find, is emblematic of the worst part of all this.  Sadly, there is a clear and persistent pattern to all this; the women.  Almost without exception, the worst stories, and the most damaging treatment and abuse, has been towards the women, producer or otherwise (though this of course in no way discounts the experiences of men who mistreated).  There is a clear and present undercurrent of sexism and misogyny, both explicit and passive, running through much of the working environment these stories flesh out.  And that’s the part I find most depressing.  With all the needed upheaval of #MeToo happening, I’d always thought that the Walkers, at least, knew better.  Clearly, I was wrong.  Yes, this sort of thing is and has been standard in a lot of lines of work.  But it doesn’t excuse it, and it needs to change.  We can’t turn a blind eye to this shit anymore.  

            None of this needed to happen.  All these stories of mishap, especially surrounding the production of Suburban Knights and To Boldly Flee, have prompted quite a few people to compare the Walkers to Tommy Wiseau and The Room, and in some ways the comparison is not without merit.  But the clear divide between the two is that, while Wiseau is an utter black hole of anti-talent, the Walkers are the exact opposite; they are sharp, funny, and extremely talented comedians.  They never would have had the lasting success and impact on online criticism they’ve had if they weren’t.  But talent is, never was, and can never be an excuse for the mistreatment or exploitation of others.

            I’d be lying if I tried to pretend that this all hasn’t cut me very, very deeply.  I have lauded and been inspired by the Walkers for nearly a decade now.  I have spent countless hours watching my favorite videos of theirs repeatedly, and dragged Lord knows how many friends and family members to my computer to show them this or that review.  The Nostalgia Critic has helped me though so many times when little else would cheer me up or put a smile on my face. 

            So, yes, this hurts me as a fan, as it hurts my friend Justin and many other people I know who feel similarly about Channel Awesome.  But in the end, what we as fans must accept is that any discomfort on our parts is ultimately just not that important.  I have lost an emotional refuge in a turbulent world, and that blows.  But these people who have been directly used and harmed by Michaud and the Walkers have lost jobs.  They’ve lost friendships.  Their physical and/or emotional health has suffered.  In some cases they’ve been subjected to online abuse that followed or continues to follow them long after they left the company.  Focusing on that- shining a light on it, and fighting it- is far, far more important than whatever personal conflict I’m experiencing over this. 

            I can’t tell anyone how to process all this or what to do.  We each need to consider the evidence and decide for ourselves.  But after reading everything and giving it careful thought, my course of action is clear to me, as painful as it is. 

            I have officially unsubscribed from both the Twitter and Youtube sites for Channel Awesome.  I will cease watching any and all new videos on the site, including everything by the Walkers.  Regarding the older NCs, Bum Reviews, Vlogs, and Sibling Rivalries, the reams of comedic craftsmanship that have brought me truly uncountable moments of joy, happiness, and peace, I can’t yet say if I can ever watch them again.  It’s still too soon for me to decide that.  But, at the very least, I am on an indefinite hiatus from watching or recommending any past material of theirs. 

            I am open to revisiting this stance on both old and new materials and to one day supporting them (meaning the Walkers, not Michaud) again.  However, that can only happen under the conditions that A) either Michaud leaves CA, or the Walkers do, and B) they give this a proper response and apology, or if I have some solid reason to believe that they have actively changed their ways.  What form such amends could take isn’t something I can say, but I think a fair standard would be something that at least a majority of the producers currently sharing their stories accept as genuine, so that is what I will look for.  If the Walkers simply up and leave Channel Awesome, which would be quite a remarkable move, then I would certainly keep tabs on what they do next, at least at first.  But I highly doubt they will do this. 

            However, until that day- and as painful as it is for me to admit this, such a day may very well never happen- I can’t, in good conscience, continue to follow and promote than as I have before.  I am also going to commit myself to a project that, in retrospect, I should have made time for long ago.  On no less than four occasions in the past, I have written here to lavish praise on the Walkers.  I will not delete or alter those past posts- I feel it would be dishonest and disingenuous of me to pretend my feelings then were other than what they were- but I feel a responsibility to balance this out as best I can.  Erego, over the course of the next few months, I will write a series of articles covering the many former TGWTG/CA producers who have impacted me every bit as much as the Walkers have, and whose work I've continued to follow after they left the site.   

            Look, there's no other way to say it; this sucks.  Everything about this sucks.  But this clearly needed to happen.  Allison, Kaylyn, Lindsay, and the other producers who have been mistreated deserve better as artists and as people.  We deserve better as fans and consumers. 

            We have lost, perhaps, a refuge.  But I feel this is necessary to rectify the past and allow us, together, to make another one.  One safer and brighter, one based on genuine mutual trust, not lies and exploitation.  It’s time to start over.  It’s time to take the next step in creating a better tomorrow, for all of us.  It’s time to change the channel. 

-Noah Franc