Previously on TheAngryPen:

09-12-2000 2 Parties

08-18-2000 Al’s Acceptance

08-10-2000 Gore’s Choice

08-03-2000 The American Dream

07-20-2000 History and Hollywood

07-13-2000 40 Acres and a Mule

07-06-2000 The God We Trust

06-29-2000 Lyrical Assault

06-15-2000 Bank Fees

06-07-2000 A Mixture Often of Incongruous Elements

05-24-2000 Social Security

05-17-2000 Governmental Good Intentions

05-10-2000 Johnny Reb and Disgusting Fatbodies

05-03-2000 Low Fidelity

04-26-2000 Jackboots and Black Helicopters

04-19-2000 Movie Trailers

04-12-2000 All Things Cuban

04-05-2000 Censorship

03-29-2000 Juries and Tobacco

03-22-2000 Several Things

03-15-2000 Gore the Reformer

03-08-2000 Mission to Mars

03-08-2000 Super Tuesday

03-03-2000 Little Johnny Murderer

03-01-2000 Bob Jones

02-23-2000 The Christian Coalition

02-16-2000 Valentine's Day

02-09-2000 Short-Sighted Political Parties

02-02-2000 Mosh Pits

01-12-2000 Al Gore's Personality

11-17-1999 Playboy

09-02-1999 The Demise of Heavy Metal

	TheAngryPen vs. Movie Trailers

Last night, the Pen was reminded of all the reasons he goes to movies in the first place. He goes hoping for nights like last night.

Last night The Angry Pen was, in defiance of all known laws of common sense, allowed into the premiere of Frequency (“Opens everywhere next Friday” ... “The Future is Listening” ... “Only in theatres” ... you know the drill). Anyway, if they’d known that THE Angry Pen was in that theatre, I’m sure the folks over at New Line would have been quaking in their boots. I mean, would you let an Angry Pen this easily provoked into a screening of a sixty million dollar movie whose biggest star was Dennis Quaid? I know I wouldn’t.

But they needn’t have worried. All was well.

The Pen loved it!

But hey, The Pen likes lots of movies... why should this one get a coveted spot on the Angry Pen site? Well, as you might expect, The Pen is going to tell you. There is nothing particularly brilliant about this movie. It’s above-average-clever, the actors are likeable and give good performances, and the action sequences are just different enough to keep you interested. But none of that explains why the nit-pickiest of movie fans, The Angry Pen, was able to look past plot devices, editing lapses, and obvious clues that, under any other circumstance, would have caused him to stand up in the darkened theatre and scream “In the name of all that’s Holy, what the hell are you people doing to me!?!?!?”, the way he did at similar screenings of U-Turn and The Thin Red Line.

I loved this movie because it caught me by surprise. It’s rare, but it does happen to The Pen now and again. I somehow managed to avoid the studio marketing blitzkrieg on this one and walked in knowing exactly one thing about the movie, that Dennis Quaid and Jim Caviezel play father and son. And that’s all. Oh... wait, I also knew there was a ham radio involved somehow, but that’s really it.

Which brings The Pen to the topic he wants to discuss with all of you today: Movie trailers...

I have a love/hate relationship with movie trailers. Do you remember the way you watched horror movies as a kid? With your hands over your eyes for safety, the terror on-screen perfectly letter-boxed by the spaces between your fingers as you tried desperately to keep up with the action from behind a bunker of flesh and bone? Well that’s the way I watch movie trailers.

I love to see little tidbits from the movies I’ve been hearing about, often for years. I love to get a sneak peek at the explosions and bad-ass one-liners that will fill my long summer days, or the drama that will occupy my fall and winter nights. What I do not like, is the way the modern trailer leaves no room for surprise. No room for the magic that is, ultimately, the reason I go to the movies in the first place. I don’t want to know what’s going to happen before I even buy my ticket!

Which explains the hands over my face. I’m constantly on the alert for any small piece of unwanted information that might flash, unexpectedly, across the screen. When it happens, my fingers slam together like bank vault doors, but as often as not, I’m too late to avoid seeing what I don’t want to see.

But visual cues are not the only spoilers I’m on the alert for. A single slip of an important line, or too much information in “Mr. Big Voice’s” trailer narration, can sometimes be enough for me to shove a finger in each ear and start chanting “la, la, la, la, la, la” over and over again like a kid throwing a temper tantrum. Unfortunately, my gambit fails more often than it succeeds. It’s so frustrating to know going in that, for example, Truman’s life is a TV show. How much more powerful would that film’s message, that we accept the reality we’re given, have been if we’d discovered the facts about Truman’s life along with him. Or what about the Terminator 2 trailer, where the mystery as to which Terminator was the bad guy was pretty much blown by the inclusion of Schwarzenegger’s now classic line “come with me if you want to live.”

Shameful.

I mean, I can understand the fear. They’ve only got two minutes to convince us that it’s worth our while and money to eschew the rest of the crowded movie marketplace and choose their film over all the others. They feel like they’ve got to leave no room for confusion, no margin for error. And so they throw in the kitchen sink, desperate for us to get the message. But here’s the rub. Does anyone in this modern age believe, especially with the proliferation of web-based fan and review sites and “entertainment news” shows, that anyone who really wants to know what a movie is about, can’t get that information without having to rely solely on the trailer!?

Perhaps it’s not good to get everything you want all the time. Like heroin addicts, if offered the chance to see the coolest bits of a movie months in advance, most of us will take it, even though a large part of us may be screaming “NO!” Maybe the marketing execs have a responsibility to protect us from ourselves in that regard. Especially considering the fact that, once we sit down in a darkened theatre, we can no longer choose to avoid watching a given trailer.

Several months ago, I was settling in for a matinee showing of The Haunting, when I happened to catch a trailer for Brokedown Palace. After the trailer was over, a woman about five rows behind me said, in a voice clear enough to be heard by the entire theatre, “Well, I don’t need to go see that movie now!” Well, if that doesn’t send a bolt of abject terror through the studio marketing departments, then I doubt if anything could.

Repeat after me Hollywood... “just enough to get them excited... just enough to get them excited...” Very good, now go home and repeat that to yourself ten times every night before you go to bed. Consider it your act of contrition for ruining The Truman Show for me.