#evco

It was July, 2013. I was about to go into the eighth grade. Let’s take a moment and let the ‘Nam flashbacks pass.

Now that we’ve done that, at this particular point in time, I was slowly but surely starting to cultivate my interest in movies. I was going to the theater more frequently with friends and family; even though it was only to see mainstream stuff like the next Mission: Impossible or Despicable Me or Marvel chapter, I was still going.

One movie I was particularly excited for that summer was the remake of The Lone Ranger. Yes, that remake. The one starring Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer (this movie was doomed to fail from the fucking start, wasn’t it?) that you forgot even happened.

I was excited for this movie because I liked Westerns. I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Westerns. In fact, if you track back to my early childhood, that was probably where my love for cinema actually started. Every time I went over to my grandparents’ house, my granddad would have a John Wayne or a Clint Eastwood movie on and he would watch them with such interest that I couldn’t help but do the same. To this day, whenever I find a good Western, I experience such strong feelings of delight and excitement. If you ask me, there’s still no more thrilling a trope for an action movie to do than a quickdraw shootout. That long moment of intense silence where both you and the characters know someone is going to die, and then finally the lightning-fast movements of both characters followed by gunfire…it captures my full attention every time.

We also had the first season of the old 1950s Lone Ranger show on DVD, so unlike a lot of people whom Disney no doubt wished would have seen this movie, I actually knew a little about who the Lone Ranger was as a character.

So, I went to the theater and I saw this movie. And then I saw it a second time. And then a third time. Three times in all. I think that was the first time I’d ever seen a single movie in the theater that many times.

I kid you not: when the credits rolled, there was a standing ovation every. Single. Time. That is completely true. There’s pretty much no way for me to prove it…but it’s true.

And I think that was it: I think that was the moment the seed for this blog was planted. Because I looked up at the screen and behold, I saw a movie reviled by critics both professional and not-professional. But those critics were faceless. Not to say they aren’t people existing in the same dimension as you and me, but nevertheless they weren’t there. But I was there in a theater full of people who enjoyed themselves so much they had to clap to let it all out even though no one who had anything to do with the making of the movie was in the room to hear it. And I didn’t have the words as a thirteen-year-old kid, but if I had, I would have asked myself, “How is this not valid?”

Obviously, this doesn’t just apply to The Lone Ranger. I won’t die on that hill. You don’t have to like that movie. But how many dozens of other movies are out there whose tale of woe is exactly the same? And the chances that you would agree with the critics out there and despise all of them? Pretty much nonexistent. Everyone has missed out on a good movie at some point in their life because they took someone else’s review for granted. Why do we do that? Why do we let other people tell us what to like? Even worse…what to try to like? There’s nothing wrong with sharing and comparing opinions. If I thought there was, I wouldn’t be writing this. But to take those opinions at their word just…because? That doesn’t sit right with me. Maybe because if we’re willing to take total strangers at their word when it comes to our entertainment…what else might we be willing to take their word on?

You can’t ever put knowledge in a bottle and twist the cap closed. Knowledge is infinite. You’ll never know everything there is to know. I’ll never see every movie there is to see. That’s why it doesn’t matter how little or greatly you choose to diversify your watchlist. Whether you only watch American-made movies or you throw a little French new wave in there doesn’t make a difference. You’ll never be an expert, it’s not about that. It’s about why you’re watching what you’ve chosen to watch.

Are you watching it because you’re interested in it or because someone told you that you should be? Are you not watching it because you’re disinterested in it, or because someone told you that you shouldn’t be?

🌱: i think the most exciting thing no one talks about is getting your very first little supplies. that 5 minute period of just sitting there with so much explosive happiness you just wanna giggle until you can’t breathe, its one the major milestones i feel when it comes to being a little! your first sippy,first bottle, first toys, and then your first decos. its always so exciting and fun and sharing that with other people makes me so happy. especially when i see you guys posting it!

How many times have you watched a movie based on a book and said to yourself, “Yeah, the book was a lot better”?

Here’s a little bit of a deeper question: how many times have you asked yourself why the book was better?

See, I think people tend to get caught up on the wrong things when comparing books and their film or television adaptations. Take Jack Reacher for example.

Now Amazon Prime just released the first season of its version of Reacher—which, by the way, is really good—but I’m talking about the Tom Cruise movies.

When the first of Tom Cruise’s two Jack Reacher movies came out, I was twelve years old and I’d never read a Jack Reacher novel. I didn’t know why anyone wouldn’t like that movie, until I figured out that in the books Jack Reacher is like seven feet tall with arms the size of tree trunks. And Tom Cruise…isn’t. So, for people who are fans of that book series, this really pissed them off.

“Tom Cruise can’t be Jack Reacher! That’s like making Spider-Man black!”

It’s not that I don’t understand where they’re coming from. If you picture a character looking a certain way for a long time, it’s probably a little frustrating to see the exact opposite of that in the visual adaptation. But if you can have the self-control to set aside that one little hang-up for just a minute…Jack Reacher is a good movie.

The second one sucks, I’ll give you that. But the first one is entertaining. I’ve always especially liked how it functions as a kind of antithesis to the Mission: Impossible movies. Tom Cruise plays a similar character in both series, but while the Mission: Impossibles are all about going to exotic locations and performing increasingly insane stunts, Jack Reacher is a little more grounded, a little more subdued. It’s a nice change of pace in terms of the style of the action sequences.

But I digress. The point I want to come back to is that aside from the physical description of Jack Reacher himself, nothing about the movie seems to compromise the integrity of the original story. That doesn’t mean nothing else was changed, it just means if there were any changes, they didn’t ruin the movie.

Think about The Lord of the Rings movies. You think those contain every scene from the books exactly how they were written, or did they maybe take a few creative liberties?

“But they didn’t make the hobbits six feet tall, did they?”

As it stands, The Lord of the Rings is a fantasy series, so the height of hobbits or dwarves is not a preference but a necessity to the world-building. Jack Reacher is just a guy, in what is meant to be a realistic world, and his height does not affect key aspects of the story unless specific scenes are written around it.

When it comes to adapting a book into a movie, getting variables like a character’s height correct is much less important than keeping the same themes and tone of the source material. This is why adaptations like The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Stand by Me work so well. They may not look exactly the same on the outside, but they have the same heart and soul. They preserve this key sense of familiarity that keeps fans of the books from being alienated despite a few small changes here and there.

If both Tom Cruise’s first Jack Reacher movie and the new Reacher show are entertaining—and they both are—then what is the logical conclusion? The character’s height is trivial.

Don’t get me wrong, as much as I love movies, I love books too, and sometimes I wish I could see just one adaptation of a favorite book that plays out scene for scene, word for word, exactly how the author originally wrote it. But at that point, it’s less the fault of any one specific movie and more indicative of the limits of the medium. As a visual art, movies can’t do everything that books can do, and vice versa.

Today, I want to talk about the 2005 action-adventure movie Sahara. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s based on a novel by Clive Cussler, and it’s from a series following this suave explorer guy named Dirk Pitt, which totally sounds like a real person’s name.

I’ve never read the book, but I once heard it described as an “airport novel,” meaning it’s a book you might pick up at the airport for seven bucks, read on your flight, be casually entertained, and then forget about. And I remembered that and thought to myself, “Wait a minute, that’s exactly the kind of movie I want to champion on this blog.”

Honestly, at this point, there’s not many movies I think I’ve seen more times than Sahara. Not even because I set out to rewatch it so many times, it’s just the go-to lazy Saturday afternoon movie for me when I can’t find anything else I feel like watching.

What makes this movie the kind of movie Just Admit It was made for? Well, what doesn’t? Its budget was 130 million dollars, but it only made 119 million dollars worldwide. Very few professional critics had anything good to say about it. But in spite of all that…it’s good.

The main stars are Matthew McConaughey, Steve Zahn, and Penelope Cruz. Some good character actors also have supporting roles—Rainn Wilson, Delroy Lindo, William H. Macy. But it’s McConaughey and Zahn that bring this home. Their chemistry is great. I listen to them banter and I think, “I totally buy that these guys have been friends for most of their lives.”

And I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, McConaughey’s obviously a great actor, and I don’t watch as many movies as EvCo Productions does, but I’m sure this Steve Zahn fella has good comedic timing. So, what’s the big deal?”

Well, that kinda leads me into the major point I want to make with this movie. I have this theory that the only people who care about things like cinematography are the filmmakers themselves and cinephiles. And I’m sure you’re thinking “Well, yeah, duh,” but really think about that for a second.

There’s so many hundreds of people who want to dissect movies and go “Oh, this shot was so masterful because yada-yada-yada,” but you know what? The average audience member doesn’t think like that. All they want is to be entertained. Now obviously, you have to have at least acceptable writing and cinematography to be entertained, but at the end of the day, what does your average audience member connect with?

Two things: one, actors. People love actors. They love seeing familiar faces, they love faces that emote well. Human beings are largely sympathetic creatures. If an actor is good at their job, we will watch a movie that we otherwise wouldn’t watch.

Two, soundtracks. Nothing connects with the human soul like music. This is a technique every movie uses; the music in any given scene is meant to help bring out a certain reaction in the audience. However, a lot of movies turn this technique into a trick. If you put into your movie an instantly familiar or at least a very likable song, that song has the potential to win the audience over for the rest of the movie. There’s a reason the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack is ten times more popular than the actual movie. This trick works. And even though it is a trick, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad trick. Some movies totally overuse it (*cough* Suicide Squad *cough*) but in the right dosage, I think it’s a reasonable method.

The point is, Sahara has both of these things. It’s got great actors and great music. These are the things that elevate it, that make it enjoyable and for me, memorable. The actors and music choices are so good, in fact, that I can enjoy this movie even though there are a couple of really bad editing choices. Like there’s this one part where Steve Zahn’s character is getting shot at by this guy, and he hits the deck, and then it just cuts to the shooter going, “Where’d he go?” and Steve Zahn just apparates behind him and takes him out. How did he do that?!

But then for every dumb part like that there’s a part that has the makings of an iconic action-adventure sequence like the “We need to pull a Panama!” scene.

In a lot of ways, Sahara really stands for what I believe movies were meant to be all about. It’s this big treasure hunt adventure with a bad guy who has an evil lair made out of solar panels and they blow up a helicopter with a 200-year-old cannonball. Does it make sense when you take the time to think about it, no, but so what? Whoever said movies have to be realistic was wrong. Realism isn’t fun, this movie is fun.

If you haven’t seen Everything Everywhere All at Once, you’ve probably at least heard of it, because it’s one of this year’s most talked about movies so far. There’s a lot of reasons why, but perhaps the biggest reason of all is that this movie is the independent film studio A24’s first movie to ever reach 100 million dollars at the global box office.

That sounds pretty great, I hear you say. How on earth could this be concerning?

Well, believe it or not, every film studio was once a small studio…or, at least, smaller than they are now. And it’s pretty common knowledge that the smaller a studio is, the more bold and creative the artists working for that studio will be allowed to be. There was once a time when your average Disney-produced movie was just as much about originality and unique artistic voices as it was about making money.

Well, for the last decade or so, A24 has been one of those small studios who champions new voices with unique, often risky ideas for movies. If you’re unfamiliar with A24’s entire lineup of movies, I encourage you to go look it up—you will be hard-pressed to find a more diverse list—The Bling Ring, The Spectacular Now, Locke, Laggies, A Most Violent Year, Son of a Gun, Barely Lethal, End of the Tour, Mississippi Grind, Room, Ex Machina, Free Fire, Green Room, Good Time, Lady Bird, Disaster Artist, Last Movie Star, Hot Summer Nights, The Florida Project, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Eighth Grade, Slice, Mid90s, Never Goin’ Back, Under the Silver Lake, Lighthouse, Uncut Gems, The Green Knight, Val, X, Everything Everywhere…I could go on forever, the point is, these are all really unique and vastly different movies.

The ones I just listed are all the ones I’ve currently seen. Do I love all of them? No. I don’t even like some of them, but almost all of them have at least one scene or other aspect that stood out to me and has stuck with me since I watched it. In my opinion, Never Goin’ Back is not a good movie, but it is a weird freaking movie and a couple of those especially weird scenes still pop into my head once in a while even though it’s been years since I watched it. Meanwhile, how many movies have I seen between then and now that I’ve completely forgotten? A good handful, that’s for sure.

I’m going to such great lengths to establish how A24 fits into the contemporary film world and how its movies have affected me personally because for the first time ever I suddenly have reason to worry it won’t always be this way. With Everything Everywhere, A24 has its first 100-million-dollar movie. I don’t think it is unrealistic or unnecessary to start asking ourselves: are they going to want to repeat this phenomenon? What lengths are they going to be willing to go to repeat this phenomenon? Are they going to start saying “no” to movies that, five years ago, they would have said “yes” to do, on the basis that they don’t believe those movies will make them 100 million more dollars?

While A24 movies are mostly offbeat and arthouse-y it’s not entirely impossible to predict which of their movies might make more money or at least generate more conversation. Uncut Gems was a rare example of Adam Sandler straying from comedy, and as has happened before, that got people talking about his underappreciated dramatic talent. Everything Everywhere may be a trippy, unusual experience, but at its core, it’s just a multiverse movie, and thanks to Spider-Man: No Way Home and other recent Marvel releases, the multiverse is a hot concept right now.

It’s just not difficult for me to imagine the leaders of A24 picking and choosing what projects to fund with the mindset of “what will make us more successful?” as opposed to “what deserves a chance based on creativity and originality?” I just want this studio to always be a small studio, and I’m not sure that’s going to be possible. The next several years will slowly but surely reveal their true intentions, I think.

🌱: its that time where i’ve became sick and need the late night rumble of my breathing treatment machine to slowly lull me to sleep. these are always no fun, one of the lesser perks of being your families sick kid🥲. im just hoping my sore throat and congestion go away, i desperately want to eat something!!!

🌱: hm. i really wanna make this account flourish but im still trying to figure out how! with that being said, if i posted a submit box would you guys fill it with questions? i wanna try to post more original content, but i don’t exactly have the supplies to do so right now. i wanna make this my true safe space, as well as interact with you guys!! for now, if you’d like to submit a question i’ll post an ask box, maybe some q&a questions?but im gonna continue to repost and follow all of your pretty accounts!! im truly happy i was able to find a community finally.

🤎beaucoup d'amour,

Evan🤍