War-walking and Midnight Riding

Got a new macbook last weekend. Decided not to fork out big bucks for top-shelf machines anymore. I always end up unloading them a few years later for pennies on the dollar, and the base models have enough kick to do the tasks I give them.

I love the portability of this thing though. I never thought I'd be a laptop guy, and it's true, my fingers are rather more clumsy on this little keyboard than they are in my online bay at work, but at least I can be out, instead of cultivating the "edit-bay suntan."

So, my new obsession is something known as "war-driving," I guess. Part of my motivation for getting the laptop was knowing that they came with Airport wireless network gear. But as it turns out, there are very few places where you can pick up free wi-fi (the public library, a block from my apartment, happens to be one of them, which is great when they are open). Never one to be defeated so easily, I began reading up on ways to gain entry to password-protected wireless networks. I've heard so many stories of people who do not subscribe to hi-speed internet being able to log on with their Airport-enabled Macs, but I guess they live near unprotected networks... all of my neighbors seem to be a bit more savvy - or they hired the Best Buy "Geek Squad" to configure their service.

Well, like most other things that you are not supposed to do with your computer (such as illegal downloading, duplication of copyrighted media, etc), it seems that where there is a will, there is a 16 year-old Norwegian kid with a way. So I got my hands on a freeware program that scans for wireless networks and reports back on whether they are protected or not. For the time being, it works great for finding hotspots where I can jump on, but as yet, it is useless to me for password lock-picking. Am I painting an unethical portrait of myself? Does this make you uncomfortable, reader? When I was information-gathering, I hit up a programmer who is a classmate of mine in Japanese. The topic got him all red in the face and he told me he couldn't help me. "For ethical reasons, or technical ones?" I asked him. "Both," he replied.

I can't really explain the draw for wanting to do something you are not supposed to be doing. I think it's a basic character trait. I guess everyone has that line drawn nearer or further down-field. I don't feel like such a rotten human for wanting to surf the internet for free, I just don't feel like forking out the cash anymore, and I want to know how this stuff works. I think that's the driving motivation for me more than anything else. Anyway, the "sport" of cruising around, scanning for open networks is referred to as "wardriving," but since I am not so dedicated that I want to go burning gas all over the city and mapping hotspots to GPS data as the real nerds do, I call my modest habit "war-walking." It consists of walking out of my building, powering up my laptop and starting a scan, stopping about three doors down once I've found an open network, and sitting on the curb to surf away, while neighbors come and go, giving me funny looks. I'm actually semi-ashamed of being so cheap.

The other nocturnal weirdness I got into recently was participating in Midnight Ridazz, a bike collective not unlike Critical Mass, that meets up a few times a month for night rides throughout the city. Anyone can join, and any "member" can organize a ride. I first became aware of them driving back from a Friday night Japanese tutoring session in Little Tokyo, when I was intercepted by mobs of bikers huffing up Vermont. I tried to shout an inquiry out the window at them, but I think they assumed I was fucking with them, and I was ignored. Someone told me the name of the group later and I found them on the internet and decided to join an upcoming ride.


The ride I joined was called "Noche de los Biciclistas Muertos," and was a Dia de los Muertos-themed ride with riders painting their faces like skulls and mounting skeletons on their handlebars. It was a lot of fun, bringing back a lot of my enthusiasm for street riding. I had not been on my bike since I was a fulltime student at UCLA, when it was my main transportation, but cruising deserted streets at night is a very liberating feeling. The ride was about 22 miles I hear, and the route took us past a couple of graveyards. We stopped on the Whittier Blvd bridge for a moment to listen to tunes that someone was pumping out of a trailer-carted stereo system (Oingo-Boingo Dead Man's Party, anyone?) and someone set off some fireworks. It was an oddly beautiful scene: the downtown skyline at night, lights glinting off the LA River, 800-900 bikers hovering above the river on the bridge, fireworks popping over our heads. I was a bit out of shape ( embarrassingly apparent when I was gettin' smoked by cute girls in ponytails passing me on the uphills ), but the cool night air and the scenery made my post-ride butt pains and leg aches worth it. I love the kind of anarchic spirit of events like that. We met at Griffith Park, right near my apartment, and there were so many riders it took a good 20 minutes (!) just for all of us to make the left hand turn out onto Los Feliz Blvd. It's not so much that I get a kick out of inconveniencing drivers, but there's just a wild spirit to it that's made even better by all the customized bikes and zany outfits. There's so many people, most couldn't possibly know each other, but everyone has the same idea of weird good fun.

In a very short time it seems, the idea of Midnight Ridazz has grown from a few die-hard bike enthusiasts to rides that draw over 1000 people. Maybe it is like anything else in LA - it's something hot with a short lifespan. I often think that people here will get in line wherever there's already people standing (think Pink's Hotdogs). I'm not even sure how often I plan to return to it. But it's interesting how quickly Midnight Ridazz has spawned offshoot and copycat groups. Hell, I don't know, maybe they are an offshoot of something else. It's just something that seems to have caught on. An interesting little item for the metrobloggers, like me. I guess.

Until I get Photoshop running on the Macbook, I can't pst any images to the web. So, for now, go to the Midnight Ridazz site for images of the Noche de los Biciclistas Muertos. They have video too.

Infiltrating the DGA: The Donner Cut and My Dinner with Ilya

On the left stands Director Richard Donner at the screening for his long-awaited version of Superman II. On the right, the impish Producer blamed for keeping this film from public eyes, Ilya Salkind.

For reasons I should probably not reveal, I was a guest at the industry-only screening of "Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut," at the Director's Guild Theater this past Thursday night.

I'm not a religious Superman or comic book fan. I simply got myself involved several years ago with a crazy bunch of people in their passionate attempt to convince Warner Bros. to unvault some missing reels of footage that were rumored to exist. There are detailed accounts around the web of how that footage came to be "lost" and why there are now two existing versions of Superman II, so I won't recount the story. But as an obsessive film geek, hearing the unusual production history of the firing and hiring of directors, the re-writing of the script, and the elimination of Marlon Brando from the final edit refreshed my interest in the film as further documentation of Hollywood's madness.

The invitation, and the film's existence, felt like a vindication of my clandestine group's efforts, although probably very little credit is attributable in our direction. Nevertheless, we were allowed in, wearing suits and ties, to mingle freely with the likes of Richard Donner, Bryan Singer, and other cast and crew members from both feature film franchises.

With the recent proliferation of "Director's Cut" DVDs, there are increasingly more films for which multiple versions exist, although it is rarely the case that the different versions are drastically different . Often, the "director's cut" is merely the re-insertion or extension of a few trimmed scenes which were lost for the sake of a kinder MPAA rating, or for the sake of pacing, etc. It has seldom been the case that a studio or producer has assumed complete creative autonomy and delivered a film that is radically different from what was scripted and shot. One example is the Japanese film Gojira, which was completely reformulated and released in English as Godzilla, King of the Monsters, with new scenes filmed with Raymond Burr and a totally different storyline (aside from the basic premise of a giant lizard crushing Tokyo). A new DVD which pairs both films is a perfect demonstration of Lev Kuleshov's first experiment in film montage - artificial landscape. A commentator on Godzilla, King of the Monsters notes that audiences were unaware that the film was different from what Japanese audiences saw, and the film was admired for it's authenticity in Japanese casting and Japanese set creation. Raymond Burr, it was thought, had been flown to Tokyo for the filming, when in fact, all of his scenes were shot on a cramped stage at a low-rent studio on Vermont Av. ( I hoped to find the studio, since I now live just off of Vermont, but found out that, like many other sites of historical significance in LA, it was torn down years ago).

The next film I can think of which falls into this odd category is Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It too has been released on a great DVD from Criterion which clearly documents the studio's interference with the film and offers two versions to the viewer for comparison.

And then there's Superman II. The backstory to this one seems to have been common lore to any self-respecting film geek; in fact, it is mentioned on the Godzilla commentary as one of the few other examples of an alternate version of a film existing, although, at the time it was not known whether it would ever see the light of day. Most of the fans seemed to be content with the idea of just seeing the raw footage. Apparently, it existed and somewhere buried among it was a performance by the late Marlon Brando. There were photographs which roughly illustrated scenes from the original script, and all of these artifacts had been shared over the magic of the internet for years, giving fans a chance to reconstruct in their heads what Superman II would have been like in a parallel universe.

Finally, due to a confluence of recent events - the revival of the Superman film franchise, the alignment of the planets, and some would say the emergence of a fan-edited reconstruction of the film using bits of "lost" footage culled from international TV broadcasts, Warner Bros and Ilya Salkind and the other powers that be agreed that there were tremendous profits awaiting them should they put aside past differences and allow a new cut of Superman II to be released into the world. And so Donner's sometime editor, Michael Thau, took on the job of patching together a new cut of the film, after 20-some odd years, following the original script and using footage that Donner had shot before he was fired.

Although the DGA theater was mostly filled with industry people (Joe Dante sat directly behind me, Richard Donner and Bryan Singer off to my left, Margot Kidder and Brandon Routh behind them), there were some covert fan infiltrators, like ourselves, peppered throughout the crowd. The sense of anticipation ran through them like electric current, causing nervous twitches and excited bursts of energetic gab. When the MC finished his announcement of the film, a guy in front of me tensed himself inwards, hissing "YES!" in a scream of catharsis that he self-consciously tried to keep from echoing off the theater walls.

The film itself was a bit of a patchwork. There are completed scenes which were lifted unaltered from the theatrically-released Superman II. There were new scenes which were completed with rough visual effects work and/or body double shots. And there was at least one scene which was completed with the only existing footage available - two screen tests of Chris Reeve and Margot Kidder. Even in an industry screening, there were people in the crowd who expected the polish of a finished film, not a historical blueprint; and so, there were snickers at some of the rough FX shots and at Chris Reeve's inconsistent hairstyle across cuts. I was bothered more by gaps in the narrative logic than bad continuity, but I refuse to critique it as a movie because I don't really feel that it is one. For all the money that was spent putting these pieces together (and I don't think it was much), it is really just a chance to see the missing footage that fans were dreaming about all those years.




After the screening there was a panel discussion with Donner and other crew and cast members. Donner seemed content with the film and vindicated at seeing his vision on screen, which is interesting since I think his involvement was mainly to critique Michael Thau's editorial work, rather than play a hands-on role in shaping the cut and re-shooting. Truly, with the deaths of the two actors playing the story's central characters and twenty-plus years of age on everyone else, there was little that could realistically be done in terms of re-shooting. But I think he was perhaps slightly more ambivalent towards a re-edit than say, Terry Gilliam was towards restoring his vision of Brazil. That may have to do with the fact that Terry Gilliam actually shot and cut his version, and saw it with his own eyes before it was shredded to pieces under the supervision of Sid Sheinberg. At any rate, Donner says he now feels relieved that it exists in this "restored" form. Audiences will take away what they will.

After the screening, my friends and I went across the street for a bite only to have Superman's producer, Ilya Salkind, seated with his guests directly across from us. He's a crazy guy. He told us to say that.

"Tell them he's a crazy fucker, because I am!" he giggled in his multi-lingual accent, sipping a beer.

Ilya Salkind proved quite genial and loquacious, hanging over the divider between tables at Greenblatt's to tell his side of things.

We all looked up in disbelief as he walked in and sat at a table near us, but he engaged us directly in conversation, saying first that we looked like the Reservoir Dogs (all of us dressed in suits), and then asking if we were Hollywood consultants. When my friends explained that we were just a group of Superman fans, Ilya's companion decided to quiz us and see if we were "real" fans. "Name three girlfriends Superman had whose intials were all LL." I knew that if I had been alone, the conversation would have ended there, but I also knew that this guy had no idea who he was fucking with. My friends were the real deal. Having passed the test, Ilya cheerfully leaned over the handrail separating our tables and bantered on for at least twenty minutes about the difficulty of working with Donner, his reputation in the media, and his previous attempts to re-edit Superman I & II with Richard Donner into one long movie.

"We were gonna trim all the fat, and that fucking movie would have been like a rocket! Dick was so excited about it, we were jumping up and down, kissing each other."

I don't know whether Richard Donner and Ilya Salkind ever shared so much joint passion over anything that they actually jumped up and down kissing each other. Donner made it rather clear on the panel that he had banished the Salkinds (Ilya produced with his father, Alexander) from the set and that their relationship had ended very badly. Margot Kidder also engaged in a little Salkind-bashing on the panel, and mentioned that her previous on-record outrage at the producers back in the early 1980's had resulted in her part being vengefully slashed away in Superman III. Clearly, history has been kinder to Donner than Salkind. This was Donner's party, after years worth of fan support, clamoring for Warner Bros to release the footage from the vaults. All the celebrating was leaving Ilya feeling a little cold though, and as the night wore on, he embarked on an above-the-belt revenge-rant against Donner and Donner-philia, pausing only for self-congratulatory asides.

"Do you know how many fucking takes he did of that red sun?" Ilya claimed it was in the 40s I believe, though I have forgotten the precise number.

"That's hilarious," one of us responded.

"It's not hilarious when you're producing a movie! What did you think about the boy in Superman Returns having super powers? The love scene in this Donner Cut was edited with that in mind, but it makes no sense! How could he fuck her? He's an alien ! It makes sense in our film."

When Tom Mankiewicz spoke at the panel discussion, he related his initial reluctance to do a comic book adaptation. He went to meet with Richard Donner and found him dressed in the Superman costume. "Just try the costume on, Tom. Once you do, I swear you'll want to do the story," Donner told him. Mankiewicz attributed the film's narrative success to Donner's willingness to "get inside" the story, to accept the fantastical elements as factual and proceed to the emotional heart of it. Whether this view of the story was shared by Salkind I don't know, but he seemed as passionate about the story as any fan I'd ever met, and just as ready to engage with it on his own terms of "realism."

"What did you notice in the original Superman II about the molecule chamber?" he asked, as we were leaving. He had that impish grin again, waiting to trip us up on our knowledge of Superman. "Not this edit, but the original one. What did you see? No fan has ever caught this."

My friend, who has seen the Superman films more times than is safe for one's health, made several attempts to guess at where Salkind was leading.

"No! Wrong! What did you see?!"

Giving up, he finally told us. "His skull! It's his skull!"

We looked at each other blankly.

"He has an alien skull!"

I meekly attempted to follow up the uncomfortable silence with a query for more information. "What was the distinguishing characteristic of the skull?"

"It's ALIEN!" Salkind roared. "Go and watch it! I made them put an alien skull in there!"

As we said goodnight and shuffled off, I pondered Salkind's situation. He was the Judas of Superman. He was blasted by Donner, the cast and crew, the media, and the fans. Although he had initiated the project and put as much sweat into it as anyone, his legacy was as the "ruiner." There was something a little bit sad about the whole thing. Donner being celebrated for a work that is supposed to be "his," Salkind's frustrations with the project growing out of his hands and turning its back on him like an angry teenager, and not least, the fans who would undoubtedly watch the new film and return to the internet to bemoan its shortcomings. For many people, it will always be what it was supposed to be - simple inspirational myth. But filmmaking is such a wierd political, strategic beast to conquer, sometimes the events surrounding the mythmaking take on their own mythic qualities. Those who care enough to do the archeological digging end up sharing the neuroses of the filmmakers, and the whole spectacle can shift focus to new players.

As much as I have sometimes hated being a part of the pollutive cultural fallout of the entertainment industry, the trade-off is being able to swim in these little eddies of minor historic cultural significance. The dramas that unfold here may be of little import on the grand scale of life, but some of these episodes are almost Shakespearean in their parade and bedeviling of pride and passion.