Diving In

I own all of the Head First series. I'll say the style is starting to grate on me, but I still get the books because it's still one of the more original ways to explain stuff I've seen.

After veering into more sophisticated topics, JSP and Design Patterns, the latest book has aimed a bit simpler, with the goal of explaining HTML, CSS, and XHTML. I've always wanted to learn CSS, even if I find HTML kind of a pain in general. It's shown its resilience by not disappearing.

I would have thought, ten years after it came out, that some other de facto standard would have replaced it. The key has always been to get those folks who make browsers to implement your stuff. The closest rival, and it's a long shot by far, appear to be Flash, which uses ActionScript as the language to drive a certain kind of display.

I would have thought people would have created a language that allows you to control layout much better, even if that's antithetical to the original purpose of HTML, which was to describe the content, not its layout. But when you do that, you generally create universally crappy layout regardless of broswer.

Hopefully, it'll be a good read.

My Life as a Dog

I remember about a year or so ago, listening to NPR. It was probably This American Life. The story was so compelling that rather than leave my car to head to my destination, I just sat, listening to the story.

It was a story of Mark Whitacre, an executive at ADM (Archer, Daniels, Midland), who became an informant for the FBI. He had told them that ADM was in collusion with the Koreans and Japanese to artificially inflate the cost of lysine, so all colluders could get rich. This was done even though there were farmers that were struggling to pay for the escalating cost of lysine. He was wired up and met with representatives from competitors as he gathered evidence for the FBI for two years, all the while, his coworkers had no idea what was going on, and knowing he might be caught at any time.

Evenually, Whitacre deals a huge blow to the case, when he confesses that he has been embezzling money from ADM, to the tune of ten million dollars. He says all executives do it, and he was expected to do it too, and so he did. This story was written by reporter, Kurt Eichenwald, who has specialized in scandals on Wall Street. This book is scheduled to become a film by director, Steven Sodebergh, who also filmed a somewhat similar political thriller, Traffic.

So it comes as a surprise that I see his name on something so completely different for him, and on a story as harrowing as it comes. Reported in the New York Times, it tells the story of teen, Justin Berry, who, at the age of 13, got a webcam. He posted himself on the web, hoping to meet some girls, and instead, met some guys. Initially offered $50 to take his shirt off, he thought, why not, if someone is crazy enough to give me that much money just to take my shirt off?

Little did he realize that this would lead to a slippery slope. If he'd take his shirt off, what about his pants, and his boxers, and then, maybe do a little show, and then maybe have sex on camera with someone else, and so forth. He realized he could make lots of money on this. So his camera wasn't so good. No problem. Have an Amazon wish list that had the top of the line camera. So, he had only one camera. No problem, have his fans buy him more. But a faster connection.

Didn't his parents know? They just thought Justin liked being on the computer, and that being on the computer wasn't such a bad thing. Besides, Justin didn't exactly get along with his folks, and he had an adoring crowd who wanted to see his every move. As he got older, people paid for trips to visit them, for an apartment that he could go to, so he would be outside his parents watchful eye, and eventually fell into drug use. His own dad left the family, and when word was that he was in Mexico, he joined him there, only to tell his dad how he had so much money, and have his dad help him find prostitutes he could have sex with on his cam to make money.

He continued to do this for years, until he turned 19, until he agreed to talk to Kurt Eichenwald, and tell his story.

You had to feel Eichenwald, as much muck as he had seen in his life, was floored by Justin, floored by the fact that his story was not the only one of a teen convinced by a surrogate family to become a entertainer, about the kind of deceit it took to hide it from his family, and the emotional comfort he took from these strangers who claimed they loved him. Eichenwald must have told Justin that his life was totally messed up, that he was dealing with sleazebags, and it made him truly fearful. If it happened to Justin, it might happen to one of my kids.

I am a father. I can no longer be the objective reporter. I must help this kid out or be condemned to hell for my complete lack of feeling. And so Eichenwald must have proceeded to tell Justin that confession is good for soul, that what he was doing was far from normal, that he was damaged goods, and the only way he could save himself was to rat out those who had manipulated him all his teenage life, to turn over all his records, all his evidence, and to make amends.

There's a story behind this story that I'm sure is eventually going to make it into a book. Maybe not now. Maybe in a year or so. But I think, if it's to be truly honest, Kurt himself must be a character in this book. He must talk about why he chose to do what he did. It reminds me vaguely of the film Priest which is the film of a priest who hears the confession of a teenage girl that is being sexually abused by her father, with her mother oblivious to this fact.

The priest, felt bound by the sanctity of the priest-parishioner confidence, feels he must keep it secret, and yet, it's so horrible, he feels he must tell someone too. The film has a twist too. The priest is gay. He has his own secrets to hide as well.

Except this real-life story is so much more detailed, so much more jaw-dropping, that one can barely fathom it happened. The story concludes with Justin seeking out the church to deal with his problems, but I suspect he's damaged goods. This was a major addiction in his life. I don't think the church will provide him with what he's going to be missing. He got the kind of emotional support that he didn't have from his own family, by people driven more by their libido than by true goodwill. To be fair, they probably believed they loved and cared for him, but they could never have done so without the titillations that Justin offered. More importantly, he was a star. There were people who wanted to follow his every move, and yet, wanted to control his every move. Even so, he had control, or at least, he thought he did. To leave this all behind means to leave the pedestal, and while his name is splashed in a newspaper, the question is whether he can deal with this withdrawal.

The world that Justin inhabited is this brave new world, and it remains to be seen whether this is some anomaly, a result of troubled children, and troubled adults, pushed forward by technology, or whether this technology signals a change in the way people interact. Lest you think that Internet communication is somehow evil, many teens, now entering their twenties use chat all the time. They leave messages about their whereabouts for all their friends to read.

The outreach of an Internet community can have positive effects. I recall a story of someone with an illness who was part of some community, that recommended doctors, and helped pay for bills. People may not know the folks that live next door, but they may learn to meet folks who live all over the world, and relate to them through text and IM, and create virtual communities. Right now, this is a very tiny portion of the population, but will this grow over time. Think of how the telephone transformed the way we communicate. Will the Internet do the same?

But to get to the story at hand. I don't think I've ever seen an attempt to seem so journalistically neutral, and the complete abandoment of this notion when alarms go off in the head of the reporter who clearly didn't expect to be shocked, despite having seen the underbelly of disdainful practices in business.

Joel vs. Java

Ah Joel Spolsky, you ranter you! The latest Joel article is all about his views on teaching Java in computer science departments. Now clearly, his view about the goals of a computer science department contrast greatly with what these departments are trying to do.

On the one hand, Joel wants these departments to produce the best programmers possible, and to him, Java ain't the way there. That's because Joel has boiled down great programming to knowing two concepts: recursion and pointers. This is strange to me for several reasons. First, Java does indeed have pointers: it simply calls them references.

To be fair, I don't exactly know what Joel thinks one should know about pointers. For example, you can use pointers to attach linkeds lists and trees, but that can be done in Java just as well as C. Languages like C create a strong correspondence between arrays and pointers, and offer something languages like Pascal don't have: pointer arithmetic. Also, C pretty much allows you to cast an int to any arbitrary pointer type.

This means you can point to memory that you don't own. Most modern OSes do not allow rampant access of memory, and use techniques like virtual memory to prevent a process from arbitrarily accessing memory that belongs to other processes. Doing so causes a segmentation fault. Java makes it pretty much impossible to get segmentation faults because you can't perform arbitrary casting. Furthermore, it does bounds-checking on arrays, which is its way of making sure you don't access memory you don't own.

OK, I admit, since Java is a safe language, the worst you can do is a null pointer exception. In general, it protects you from arbitrary memory access, and even more, it guarantees that you are either pointing to an object of a valid type, or that it's null. C and languages like it don't hide this fact from you.

But there's more. Those languages also don't have garbage collection. There's a certain skill to tracking down memory errors, but by golly, they're evil. Real-world programmers need memory leak tools to help trace these problems, and I tell you that it is an incredible waste of time. These bugs are insidious because they are so hard to find. Without tools like Purify, people would go nuts.

Joel also talks about the ability to pack things into bits. Even programmers in C don't actually have to do this. A curriculum can get along perfectly well without teaching bit operations, even if sticks to C or C++. And it's not as if Java doesn't have these operations, because it does. The only headache in Java is that it lacks unsigned types, which creates problems as you cast to larger types (sign-extension and the like).

It's not that you can't learn these concepts in Java, because you can, especially if the person teaching it is aware that they need to teach it. It's just that when you don't know it well in languages like C or C++, it bites you much harder, and the best students are more aware of why these bad things happen. It's like being a tightrope walker with and without a net. When you don't have a net, you know it really hurts when you fall, and you're that much more attuned to the mistake and how best to deal with it.

As far a recursion goes, I mean, come on, which CS dept. worth its grain in salt doesn't cover this? To be fair, I somehow managed to avoid understanding this concept until really late, until pretty much I had graduated. However, if you take a data structures course, you've got to do some recursion, especially with any tree manipulation. Algorithms courses tend to rely on some recursion too.

But understanding recursion and pointers isn't enough to do world class programming. It just isn't. A person who understands both may be far more likely to deal with the complexities of programming, because there's a strong correlation between the ability of a mind to grasp these concepts and to do good programming, but that's all it is: a correlation. In pro football, there's this thing called the combine, where college players eligible for the draft that aren't sure things (like Reggie Bush is a sure thing) go. They run 40 yard dashes, and do all sorts of stuff to impress the scouts.

What they don't do is play the game in the combine. The scouts hope the numbers correlate well to playing football well. This is the same with recursion and pointers.

Now that I've been in the "real world" for a while, I'm beginning to see a lot of other skills that are just as important. First and foremost is the ability to work with other people's code. Most CS depts prefer their kids to write code from scratch. There's a huge number of benefits from doing so, not the least of which is that the person writing the programming project doesn't have to supply students with code. Heaven knows that teachers of programming don't want to supply code that has to be tested and debugged. Given their druthers, most teachers want to describe a project in 2-3 paragraphs, so it only takes them an hour to write up. Real world code isn't small and isolated like that.

You also have to have some idea of what it means to architect code. I have no idea how to do this. Well, that's not true. I have some idea, but I don't have the definitive idea on how to do this. And intro books are no better at it than anyone else. Intro books are good at covering the syntax of a language, and perhaps dealing with a few basic things like data structures, algorithms, and some testing. I bet many of these authors have never had to code much beyond a thousand lines long.

Once you get past the fundamentals of the language, of algorithms, and of data structures, the next step is thinking about how to design code, and that ain't easy. People are still coming up with new ways of how to write code, and nothing jumps out as the "right" way.

But, wait, there's more. What software company doesn't use version control, or a bug tracking system, or debuggers? How many CS departments teach the ins and outs of this technology? In the days of C, the build tool of choice was make, and this was so old and kludgy, that I think some high school kid wrote it, warts and all. If you're coding in Java, you use Ant as a build language, or maybe Maven, which builds on top of Ant.

Well, ladies and gents, Ant wasn't around five years ago (and if it was, it wasn't around ten years ago). You can't do serious Java coding without some rudiumentary understanding of Ant (OK, you can, because IDEs do a good job of hiding it, but still). Ant is a piece of technology, just like CVS, just like JUnit, that is part of the Java programming lexicon, and you've got to learn it if you're doing to do business in this field.

Which leads me to the flip side of the argument. Joel is ranting that CS departments are going to stop producing the coding whizzes he so desperately wants, or at the very least, he's going to have to do that much more work to identify the stars. The first scenario is a dilemma, the second, an inconvenience.

But to address this point head-on, why are CS departments doing this? Why are they "dumbing down" the curriculum? Joel has an elitist view of the world, especially the programming world. If there were 100 CS majors, he'd weed out 98 as hopeless, to keep the two superstars. The rest should find something else to do. Of course, if everyone believed that, then no one would ever graduate from college. Not that he cares. He wants the best. The rest is too much work to get to the best, and wasted work at that. Coding whizzes are effectively born, not created.

But CS departments, as many other departments, want students to graduate. That's a nice goal, right?

So why "dumb" it down? This leads me to my next point, which will come as a shocker to most people who aren't in computer science. There are plenty of professors that can't program. Oh, I don't mean, they can't program. They can, but they choose not to.

To illustrate this idea, let me introduce a mathematician of note. David Hilbert. (I could have picked anyone, but Hilbert will do). Hilbert was a brilliant German mathematician at the turn of the twentieth century. If he were still alive now, and in full mental capacity, he could probably still do mathematics today with the best of them. Math notation hasn't changed much in a hundred years (although he was responsible for some of the way math looks today). Sure, there are many advanced techniques in math that just weren't around in his day, but even so, math notation and the idea of proof is basically unchanged.

On the other hand, programming languages are highly ephemeral. I once heard of a professor who lamented that he had to learn Java to teach data structures. Since when did he stop knowing stuff about trees and stacks and graphs and so forth? He knew how to code it in Pascal! Why did he have to know it in Java? What did inheritance and interfaces and exceptions have to do with data structures? He could draw pictures of nodes and arrows, and that was a perfectly fine way of talking about data structures.

Many professors simply don't like the change. They aren't fans of technology. They like the fact that the proof for the irrationality of the square root of two that they used ten years ago is still good today, and will be good ten years from now. They don't like the fact that they have to explain a binary tree in FORTRAN twenty five years ago (the horror!), then in Pascal fifteen years ago, and now in Java. Why do they have to know OO programming? What's wrong with good old procedural programming?

The paper that Joel cites in his rant is typical of this. The committee that was formed (mostly profs. with an interest in teaching programming), want to find some subset of the Java API they can use to teach year after year after year. They want to ignore the fast-paced changes of the language so that teachers don't have to keep up with what's going on in the language. In fact, as they see it, things are getting worse. Languages are revised every year. Did Pascal really change once it got popular? I don't think so.

The reason they switched to Java was because C++ is an extremely difficult language to learn in its full extent. Try to read a book by Alexandrescu on templates, or explain to me what an abstract base class is, and you begin to appreciate just what a mess the language can be. You can easily create problems that can stump even Bjarne Stroustrup. Java promised to hide a lot of that ugliness away, and to a great extent, a lot of people are happy about it. In particular, teachers are happy about it.

I've heard a counter-retort. If ease of language is so important, then why not teach Visual Basic? OK, so people teaching programming realize that learning Visual Basic would take so many kids out of the market for real jobs. The reality is that most kids who learn to program are going to do best in exactly the language they were taught. And the "tougher" that language is, the better their chances of working in the real world. Yet, if it's too tough, then even the teachers struggle. And let's face it, Visual Basic is Microsoft, and people in academia loathe Microsoft.

OK, then why not teach a semi-respectable language like Scheme? Its syntax is far simpler than Visual Basic and Java, yet it has powerful features like closures and continuations. Yet, the world doesn't do much programming in Scheme, so kids who learn it, would have to learn Java and C#, and the change is so great for the average programmer, that it would be a disaster. It's no surprise then, that powerhouse universities like MIT, which attract kids that already program well in Java or what have you, are the ones teaching Scheme.

The point is that academia wants to teach a language that is easy enough for them to understand, without the messiness that students generally don't want to deal with, yet, not be so easy as to not be able to hit important concepts, in particular, object oriented programming.

And there are plenty of profs in the world that think OO programming is just a fad.

This leads me to a phrase that Microsoft espouses. They seek folks with a passion for technology. This means a willingness to embrace the new, to keep up with changes, much like fans of Hollywood want to know the latest dirt on Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck. Programming has become the flavor du jour. The hot topics (outside of MS land) is Ajax and Ruby on Rails. There are people pushing programming with mock objects. People who talk up Spring and Hibernate. People who think Groovy is groovy! Three years ago, these topics weren't on anyone's breath. Three years from now, they won't be on anyone's breath (or they may be!).

Academics want the ability to recycle their notes for the next ten years. I have a colleague who learned to teach programming in the eighties and early nineties. The big ideas then were "top-down programming". Now the buzz words are design patterns and unit testing. Newer buzzwords include mock object programming. Extreme programming. UML. XML. This teacher might well wonder what all this faddish stuff is all about, and why she has to learn it to teach programming. She doesn't realize that programming is like following the hot movie stars. Each year, something new comes out.

And somehow, someway, knowing about recursion and pointers is somehow equated to wanting to learn about all these technologies, and much of that, on your own time. There's a big difference between the ability to learn something, and the desire to learn something. Many academics find it a complete waste of their time to learn a new programming language. Those that have graduated more recently have begun to embrace these changes because they are in the midst of a kind of education revolution that is now taking place beyond the confines of academia.

Do you think kids who program now who know about CSS or RSS or Ajax or PHP or MySQL learned it in class? Come on. Kids these days who dabble in programming now pick this stuff on their own, while professors scoff at this as some kind of fad that's not really computer science.

And to some extent they are right.

If you're a C coder, do you have to know about Jar files and classpaths or Ant? Why did Java programmers have to learn about this, and why is it given such short shrift in many intro books? Because a lot of these Java books were written by C coders who didn't know they had to worry about classpaths.

And to be honest, why does knowledge of classpaths make you any smarter? How does it make you a better programmer? The flat answer is that it doesn't. But the followup answer is that you better know this stuff if you intend to code in Java. And so you have book writers and academics who throw their arms up in the air lamenting "Why am I forced to care about these things when I didn't have to care about them before?" and designers who say "Look at what wonderful things you can do now that you couldn't do before!", and academics who retort "but I don't care to learn that stuff, it's not a new proof, it's not profound, it's just technology!".

So I say that academics have it wrong and Joel has it wrong. Academics don't understand that the computer industry, by its very nature, is faddish, and that to be successful in this industry means having to follow fads all the time, every year. And teachers who are uncomfortable with the idea that what they know now and what they teach now will become, at least, partly obsolete (the basics of algortithms and data structures will remain the same, but how you design and structure code, plus the tools that allow you to build, test, and deploy code, plus tracking bugs, will change and change and change).

Ask an academic in computer science if they are going to teach version control and unit testing and regression testing and how to create and merge branches and use the debugger and so forth, and they'll say "What does that have to do with programming?". What they don't realize is that these tools are now part and parcel of the way code is developed today, and this may change again in five years time.

Knowing recursion and pointers isn't going to guarantee the people Joel finds will want to learn the newest technology and to embrace it. They may say, let's just code in Scheme, and be done with it, once and for all, and that simply isn't enough (though people like Paul Graham would disagree and say that we should code in Scheme or Lisp, and, yes, be done with all this other crap languages).

It's no wonder some people give up on programming, tired of chasing the latest technology, tired of realizing Unicode is not just a single coding standard but a family of coding standard, tired of dealing with RSS, tired of learning yet another tool that is supposed to make them more productive. They want to step off this road to nowhere, and learn a trade, get good at it, and stick to that same skill set the rest of their lives.

Gesundheit!

The most pedestrian of spices is salt and pepper. For the most part, salt from a salt shaker does its job. The information age has, of course, made snobs of us all, or at least, the portion of society that seems to care, which I suppose, includes me. Instead of table salt, you can also get kosher salt or sea salt. I haven't bought sea salt personally, but I have bought kosher salt, which you can get in boxes.

To the non-Jew, which includes me, the idea of kosher salt seemed peculiar. To me, kosher meant things like no pork, no shellfish, and animals killed for eating in a particular manner. What did salt have to do with that? I think it has to do with the process of killing requiring the use of salt.

In any case, whatever the reason, kosher salt is a bit flakier than its table salt cousin, and somewhat less salt. By weight, you have to use more kosher salt or less table salt, depending on what you're cooking. But table salt suffices.

Pepper, on the other hand, is almost always pre-ground. This creates a problem because much of pepper's bite comes from oils, which, when exposed to air begins to degrade the flavor, until you have a pale imitation of what used to be pepper. Freshly ground pepper is usually best, but here's the problem: getting a pepper grinder.

You can pick up one almost anywhere, but they are a bit pricey. They cost around twenty dollars or more. How do you find a good pepper mill? I was looking around at some usual locations: Williams and Sonoma, Crate and Barrel, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and so forth.

Then, I recalled reading an article in Cooks Illustrated, one of my favorite cooking magazines, about a pepper mill they raved about. Problem was, I couldn't remember what the brand was. (Sad thing is I think I bought one a few years ago, but never used it). I did finally find its name: Unicorn Magnum Plus. It's rather pricey at around forty five bucks. I was going to buy one anyway, but once I found shipping and handling where going to add another ten bucks, I hesitated.

I found a place online that seems to be the company that distributes the entire line of Unicorn pepper mills: Pepper Gun and opted for one of their cheaper mills: Keytop. It's smaller than the Magnum Plus, and they're basically closed for business during the holidays, but hopefully in a week or so, I'll have the new pepper mill and talk about it then.

Now, you might wonder what I want with a pepper mill. Recently, I found a recipe for hot and sour soup (two, in fact, one in Cook's Illustrated and one in Saveur). The first recipe uses white pepper to create the heat for the soup.

Ah, white pepper. Ever heard of it? You know about black pepper. There's even red pepper. But white pepper? It's basically black pepper, but it's white. Or somewhat tannish. Unlike black pepper, which shows up as visible flecks in whatever you're cooking, white pepper dissolves and you can't see it.

For some reason, it is a challenge to find white pepper. McCormick's makes it, but all their spices are way overpriced. If you want to get cheap spices, find yourself an Indian grocery store. You can get bags of spices for a the cost of a tiny little bottle by McCormick. And that's if you can even find white pepper.

However, I wanted white peppercorns, so I could grind it fresh, which meant I needed a peppper mill, and now I need peppercorns. I think I'll be able to get the peppercorns from Williams Sonoma, which I visited a few days ago. They had a large jar of it for ten dollars. A little pricey, but it'll do.

Even harder to find are Sichuan peppercorns, which are often used in Sichuan cooking, i.e., spicy Chinese cooking. I suppose a well-stocked Chinese grocer might have it. We'll see.

Oh, the recipe. I've always wanted to make hot and sour soup. It's one of those comfort foods I like, though not all the time. I recall my mother making it once from a can, and it didn't really resemble the stuff I got from restaurants. I thought there was some magic secret to it.

Turns out, it's not all that hard to make, although it is modestly time consuming to cook. Basically, chicken stock, tofu, bamboo shoots, pork, sesame oil, egg, cornstarch, soy, and vinegar (and white pepper! or chili oil). The heat comes from white pepper, so says one recipe. However, the white pepper I had was pretty bland, and I added jalapenos to spice it up. The recipe suggested black vinegar, which I didn't have on hand (we did have something that was black, but it called Chianking vinegar, which did make for a unique tasting hot/sour soup).

OK, so finding good white pepper makes me something of a snob, I admit. Ultimately, being more educated about the world means being more snobbish. Instead of getting any pepper mill (or even knowing I should get a pepper mill), I have to find one that has been judged as good.

Alas, this snobbery means I can tell you that pepper is much like coffee. They say the best coffee comes from grinding the coffee fresh (there's also using good water, and getting a decent brand of beans). If the coffee is ground, then exposure to air starts to degrade its flavor until a year or so later, when it becomes near undrinkable. That's why some companies now vacuum seal their coffee, although some of those vacuum seal an "inferior" make of coffee. It's sort of like getting gourmet Spam. It can only be so good, right?

I know there are a bunch of people that don't care, but funny enough, there are a bunch who do care. Would I care if they didn't? I doubt it. There wouldn't be a market for people who care if there weren't enough people to care. Starbucks made people care about getting coffee of a certain grade, and convinced people it was worth shelling out several bucks.

I used to be one of those folks. I would shell out a few bucks for a latte or a cappuccino. Then, I realized I just wanted good caffeine, and so regular coffee suited me just fine. Thus, when I go to Starbucks, I get their coffee of the day.

Oh, but you know snobbery. Starbucks is the Walmart of coffee houses. But really, as much as they've made life tough for coffee houses, they also gave rise to places that had no coffeehouses. Magic Johnson made an effort to introduce Starbucks to the inner city because he thought even the poor would spend a few bucks on coffee.

In fact, that was the same thing that pushed the ordinary Joe to demand a better cup of Joe. Maybe you can't afford a BMW. Maybe you can't eat caviar, or dine in fine French restaurants, but by golly, you can drink a pricey cup of coffee.

Given my druthers, I'd rather have coffee at a good Seattle coffeehouse like Victrola, but quality coffeehouses aren't all that common. Go to a decent Seattle coffeehouse, and it's worth getting a latte, if for no other reason, than to see the floral pattern they make on the froth in the cup. The locations seem to attract a more bohemian lot than the usual denizens of a Starbucks.

This kind of thinking, I suppose, is endemic of the bobo mentality (bobo=bohemian bourgeois), i.e., folks who have money, but care about the quality of what they buy, and environmental friendliness, etc. This is a merit-based elitism, rather than a wealth-based, blue blood elitism.

All this from wanting better pepper for hot and sour soup.

Long Live the King

People love going to the movies, but they love watching their favorite TV shows too. That's because they begin to like the people in the show, and it no longer becomes about what happens, plotwise, in the show, but what happens to these people. Thus, shows like Friends or Seinfeld are popular, because people genuinely like the characters in the show.

Given the nature of serial shows which can have upwards of twenty five episodes a season, lasting years, even decades, the people become a part of your family, albeit a dysfunctional family.

Films, on the other hand, have much less time to introduce characters, and must often make the decision to focus on characters or focus on plot. Characters become archetypes or ideas, more pure, more intense. If plot or action is important, it becomes the overriding force that pushes the narrative forward, at the expense of character development.

Peter Jackson has two things that pull him. He wants to have action in his film, grand set pieces where spectacles never seen are splashed on the screen. However, the savvy filmmaker he is, he knows that all the action doesn't matter if you don't have characters to care about.

Jackson sets the bar of difficulty high when he remakes King Kong. This is at least the third film incarnation of the film, from the stop motion original back in the 30s(?), to the one from the mid 70s, to his version. Remakes often have a lot to live up to, though remaking a monster movie is often much easier to improve. At least, it's not a remake of Casablanca or Gone With The Wind, classics that few would consider remaking.

But Kong is even inherently challenging. This is, fundamentally, the story of a woman and an oversized ape. It is beauty and the beast writ large. But can you make it believable? I kept imagining this story of some family that wanted to have a birthday party for their pet monkey, and that in the company of other monkeys, this monkey went wild and bit the master.

To be fair, Kong isn't a real ape, though Jackson takes pains that he is not a human/ape who has sexual longings for Ann Darrow, but treats her more as a favorite plaything, trying to remove more of the anthro from the anthropomorphizing of animals.

But is Ann a real person? She has as much background and history as Kong. An out of luck vaudeville actress, she just seeks a man in her life. So what if that man happens to be an ape. He's the strong, silent type, who'll protect her, no matter what. Dig too deeply, and you realize that there's something not all there with Ann, and that's the rest of her life.

Not that the other characters fare much better. Jack Driscoll, the writer, is just a writer who happens to fall in love with Ann. But he's not much more than that. He mostly chases Ann around, and that pretty much sums up his character. A man who will stop at nothing to save Ann. He's the human equivalent of Kong, except he can't kill dinosaurs, and he can write stories, even plays that serve as his own advice.

The closest person that resembles a character, and barely at that, is Carl Denham, who ends up being the stand-in, of sorts, to Peter Jackson, and any director who's long suffered to bring his vision to the world. Oddly enough, I wanted Jack Black to make his performance more over-the-top. Although he talks about being rich and famous, money seems to be the least of his worries. It's all about making movies.

If Kong succeeds, it's in its visual spectacle. Cinescope gives you an extreme width for a height, and shows off the jungle, and the view of New York City to great effect. Kong looks fantastic.

And while the three hours pretty much flew by, ultimately, the film is handcuffed by its underlying story, which is the story of a woman and ape, which didn't quite grab me as I thought it should have. Even the ending, where Jack climbs the building (through more modern means) to meet Ann feels like a letdown. Why would she give up Kong for the playwright (albeit, now a dead Kong).

And I had imagined, as Kong was falling, floor after floor, that somehow, the WETA guys would have him looking gleefully mad, mouthing "My Precious".

Smartline

There's a theory that, on the whole, Americans are getting smarter. Of course, this depends on what you mean by smart. The Simpsons did as much as anything with the current preoccupation with references. For a few years, this cartoon would reference movies. It doesn't do this much anymore, but it has spawned a lot of referential work.

Another example was the Scream horror films which deconstructed horror films while itself being a horror film, or Tarantino bizarre musings on what they call a quarter pounder in France, or that Clark Kent is really a disguise or costume for Superman.

Reference spewing forces people to remember lines from movies (most notably Star Wars), books, and other cultural occasions (remember "wardrobe malfunction" or "mother of all wars"?). This ability to recognize cultural references makes it nearly impossible for foreigners who aren't steeped in American culture to follow what's going on. It takes a lot of work to be this savvy about the world.

There are at least two more things happening culturally that have made people "smarter". One is search engines. It used to be, once upon a time, that if you wanted to find information, you had to go look it up, say, in an encyclopedia. Even as comprehensive as some encyclopedias are, they don't cover many topics. Search engines allow you to find web resources, even if some of the sources aren't entirely reliable.

The second is video games. Once upon a time, people used to say video games helped you with hand eye coordination, and while that was true, in a sense, it primarily helped you with, well, playing video games. But then video games became more puzzling. There's many a game where you must figure out what's going on with limited clues. I can imagine such games being incomprehensible to people of a certain generation used to games like Monopoly or even Clue.

The increased intelligence of viewers has meant television that has become more intelligent as well. Comic books have labryinthian plots that are more soap opera than soap operas (ask a comic book fan, especially in one of the major universes, explain what's going on, and you'll see it's a disaster), and such ideas carry on into films. Joss Whedon was especially effective building up genre expectations only to twist in the end, giving you a result you didn't expect.

But in the end, is this really intelligence? It seems like the kind of intelligence IQ tests test for. But will we solve any new problems this way? Will new theories of physics come from this kind of raised intelligence?

Much of this ability is assessing what's important to a society at a point in time. And yet, it's information that stales quickly. I remember watching a British Rock and Roll Hall of Fame show. In it, they interview Jamie Cullum (who I'm currently listening to). He's into jazzy songs and covers, and seems like a huge hit in UK, though he's not all that well known in the US. I suspect the reason he was interviewed was because he was the flavor du jour. Maybe his talent will persist longer than, say, Vanilla Ice (he does seem more talented, in any case).

Are we acquiring information that is mildly useless, that goes out of style in a year's time? In fact, this almost defines technology. Technology is changing at a rapid rate, and in this superficial sort of way, as people fumble to the next best thing, meanwhile struggling with the monstrosity they have created.

Even my introspective rant probably wouldn't have been possible a decade ago. I might not have cared about these issues (though 7 years ago, I began to care, when I was mired in IRC and chat in general, and seeing how behavior changed under these circumstances).

I don't disapprove of this kind of knowledge, and in some indirect way, it probably is making us smarter, though not in any tangible sort of way. Would it be better if we sat with math books working out theorems devoid of what's going on in the outside world? Or is it better to "learn" what the culture thinks is important, so we can say something clever or witty about it.

Based on a Short Story

I picked up Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, a short story that was part of a collection of short stories, but because of the film, it's now in its own tiny book. It's rare that you can read the entire story faster than watching the film, but that's the nature of the short story: it's short.

I was surprised how much of the dialogue was used straight out of the story, but I shouldn't be. Adaptations often try to remain very faithful to the text. The opening scene with Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) explaining the job to Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) is right out of the story. Basically, he wants them to herd sheep, but due to restrictions from the park service, they aren't allowed to camp near the sheep. Due to sheep loss, he wants them to camp near the sheep anyway, but no campfires to draw the attention of park rangers. They can hold camp in the legal spots which are some distance removed from the sheep.

Since the film is two hours, there are scenes, barely hinted at in the story, that are more fleshed out in the film. For example, when Jack talks about being in Mexico, there are scenes in the film showing him in Mexico. There are added scenes, too. When Jack is unable to meet Ennis as much as he wants, he tries to find other men. In particular, he meets up with a guy whose wife is a non-stop chatterbox. It's suggested that the husband is willing to have a fling with Jack, if, at the very least, to get away from his wife. This isn't in the short story.

Even a key scene at the end of the film was filmed at the beginning, and is only briefly mentioned in the short story. In effect, what the screenwriters did was to film scenes that were said in one or two throwaway sentences to fill up the two hour time.

The movie also changes some of the characters' personalities. I'm sure Annie Proulx did not envision Hollywood hunks, Ledger and Gyllenhaal, to play the leads. Ennis, in particular, is made out to be bucktoothed (or Jack...can't remember).
He's not made out to be the silent type, at least, as much as the film makes him out.

There was one issue I was interested in. When Spielberg filmed The Color Purple, he considerably toned down the lesbian aspects between Celie and Shug, which were, apparently, central to Alice Walker's book. Presumably, they weren't ready to make a film that explicit and potentially scare off an audience that has often been perceived as more homophobic than most. Many gay fans wanted more explicit sex scenes with nudity in it. It was said Ang Lee wanted to be more circumspect.

To this end, he has been. If anything, there's quite a bit more female nudity. Heath is shown blurred (due to depth of field filming) from behind. Jake is shown from his side, where nothing is visible. There's even a famous scene where the two are supposed to jump over a cliff into water that was photographed by paparazzi (it turned out to be Ledger and a standin), but as it shows up in the film, you can't tell it's either of them, since it's filmed from the side off at a distance, rather than the explicit nature of the paparazzi photos.

Were those scenes unfaithful to the book (as if that really matters)? Not really. The short story is quite short, and its scene suggest some roughness, but it's not erotica either. It's much more challenging to write those scenes explicitly than show them.

The film doesn't try to explain why the characters like each other, but then, neither does the short story. If anything, the point is that they were there, they were lonely, and they did it. A bond, presumably forged in solitude and despair.

I suspect Brokeback Mountain will merely extend the kinds of films that are made about gay experience, In particular, it may be more revolutionary in its treatment of cowboys than its treatment of gays. My housemate asked whether there was any shooting in the film, and, yes, technically there was. But it was Hollywood that somehow created this cowboy mythos of masculine men working in the untamed west, that the actual act of herding cattle is barely mentioned. That the task wasn't purely about fighting off Indians, but to move cattle.

Since this film is set in the 20th century, it presents a cowboy (or in this case, a shepherd) whose job is, indeed, moving sheep. The closest a recent popular film has come to this is City Slickers, which also made a task of moving animals.

Brokeback Mountain happens to explore an area of gay experience that hasn't been popularly portrayed in film. And by doing so, it talks about a kind of society that is far removed from what most people know. It may have as much to say about the treatment of women as it does about gays, and their role in society. As much as this is a throwback to an older time, it has elements that face modern America today, including the need for a two-income family, the poor man who marries into wealth, and the woman seeking divorce.

In an odd way, I wonder if this film is perhaps more misogynist that one would expect. Jack's wife is an indepedent rodeo cowgirl, who's much better at what she does than Jack. She's also a more shrewd businesswoman. Jack is the one who goes out to promote the product, and seems much more like the politician or coach's wife who's out there to support the husband. Ennis has to pay child support, and has never really wanted to make more out of himself than be a ranch-hand. He doesn't want a city job. It's Ennis's wife that wants more out of their ilves, to move into the city. She ends up working as a grocer.

Jack and Ennis's relationship is a way to get out of their trapped lives. They feel trapped by the women in their lives. They feel trapped by their poverty. They feel trapped by society that won't let them be together. If anything, it's almost like telling the story of two women, a hundred years ago, who are unable to escape the yoke of their husbands, and only find solace in each other.

As simple and unadorned as Brokeback Mountain is, labelled as "the gay cowboy" movie, it is as much a commentary on the changing gender roles of men and women in this period of time, at this location of the country. In its own way, this film is as much about women's liberation and male emasculation as any topical film or documentary about the movement in the 70s.

I suspect these kinds of issues, gender roles and their evolution, appeal to Ang Lee, particularly in The Ice Storm, but even, to some extent, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, except that film focuses on women as the central characters. Even as minor characters, the women characters evolving power cause the men to lose a sense of their masculinity, and they ultimately try to reclaim it with one another.

It's an intellectually interesting conceit that doesn't come across from merely watching the film, but from thinking about the world that the film inhabits, and is therefore far more savvy than one would normally give it credit for.

Rocky Mountain High

There's nothing wrong with an independent filmmaker wanting to make a broadly pleasing film, but there's something that seems almost inherent in independent filmmaking to make a film that doesn't try so hard for cheap thrills.

For example, the romantic comedy formula---and it is a formula, is boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy has fight with girl, boy makes up with girl at the end. They are many variations of these, subsituting boys for girls or girls for boys, or what have you.

The formula works because the goal of the film is to draw you in as a person who wants to see this relationshiop work, then to produce an artificial dilemma, so that you, the viewer, now feel bad that this relationship is going to fail, but miraculously, in the end, everything works out for the best.

But it must be the kind of formula that drives some filmmakers crazy, especially if that final scene is unearned. Consider Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. Jarmusch is about as independent as they come (though not as experimental as say, Brakhage).

The story is about Bill Murray, who has made his fortune in computers, and used to be quite the ladies' man. The film opens up with Murray being dumped by a woman half his age (Julie Delpy, who was in Before Sunrise and Before Sunset). His life, at this point, seems awfully hollow. It's hard to believe that he is a ladies' man at all.

He discovers that he may be a father, that one of his flings from twenty years earlier may have given birth to a son, and that son may be resentful. Through the prodding of his next door neighbor, a self-styled detective, he tries to locate four women and find out whether they fathered his son. He is reluctant to do so, but does it anyway, and it becomes a journey into the aftermath of their relationships with him, but slowly it also becomes a journey into a life he could have lived (a theme that Star Trek 2 also covers). What would a son have meant to his life? Would it be more meaningful?

A conventional film would give you what you want. He'd find his son, and they'd somehow make up, and all would be well. And yet, you know, watching such a film, this can't happen, even as Jarmusch dangles a would-be son in front of Murray. He wants you, the viewer, to want this resolution, and then, he takes it away, because such an ending would, frankly, feel dishonest and unearned.

A conventional film such as Latter Days. This film works only because it does a few things well. First, it introduces a world that's hardly ever shown in film, namely, life as a Mormon. It's not particularly insightful, even though the director (and writer) himself is an ex-Mormon. (I suspect a better film for this would be the "prequel" to Napoleon Dynamite, whose director, I believe, is also Mormon. The star of Napoleon also acts in this first effort that deals with Baptists vs. Mormons in Idaho).

Second, it holds very tightly to the notion that love can be meaningful. Treacly as this may be, it's one of the things that works. Christian is a shallow fellow who sleeps with any guy he can. He moves from one to the next. One day, Mormon missionaries move next door, and he makes a bet with his waiter friends that he can bed one of the Mormons. It turns out Aaron is closeted, and when Christian is about to make the moves, he tells Aaron that it doesn't mean a thing, that it's nothing to worry about.

Aaron is repulsed by the idea. He wants love to be meaningful, and accuses Christian of being a shallow individual. This causes Christian to reevaluate his life, and he begins to think about why he is this way. Worse still, Aaron is found out, and he is sent back for "retraining" for his homosexual tendencies. Christian is distraught without Aaron, and goes to look for him, and at one point, he thinks Aaron has committed suicide (he hasn't). This leads to the big moment at the end, when Aaron, left without anyplace to go, heads to Los Angeles, to a restaurant owned by a woman Aaron had given kind words to. The restaurant, incidentally, that Christian works at.

Does it feel earned? Who knows? Romantic comedies make you want the happy ending. Independent films sort of make you want it, but makes you realize that you don't really want it.

Which brings me back to Brokeback Mountain.

Ang Lee, I think, at heart, can go either way with a film, but he has more of an independent filmmaker thinking. Admittedly, he's tied to the source material, a short story by Anne Proulx. I had been hoping to read the short story (I picked up the book shortly after watching the film) to compare before I blogged, but this is as good a way to do it. I'd rather get my opinions down, then read, then see if my opinions change afterwards.

I don't know what reaction people will have to Brokeback Mountain. Contrast it with King Kong, Peter Jackson's latest spectacle. Although I haven't seen it, word is that it is a bombastic, loud picture, with a soul at its center. Jackson's genius is his ability to combine action with a story that you care about. But his style is broadly entertaining. You couldn't imagine Jackson directing Brokeback, at least, not without more overtures to being more entertaining. Even his highly acclaimed Heavenly Creatures brings to life two girls imaginary world, in a dizzying manner.

Brokeback is deliberately paced, and seems almost an odd throwback to an era where emotions weren't out in full display. It's the kind of film that appeals to Ang on many levels. It deals with emotional repression and secrecy, which he has dealt with in Crouching Tiger. It is a period piece, much like The Ice Storm or Ride With the Devil.

In fact, you know Ang is heading this way with an opening dialogue that is well-nigh incomprehensible. Ennis (Heath Ledger) and Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) need work for the summer. They are trying to herd sheep. Randy Quaid, the foreman of sorts, describes what they will do, and you scratch your head. Did he just speak English? Yet, it's Ang's way to inject some realism into the kind of job they will do.

Early on, when this film was being cast, some criticized the selection of Ledger. He was some pretty boy, say like Ben Affleck, whose acting skills were seen as deficient. Yet, it's Ledger that's a revelation. Watch this film back-to-back with Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, and you see Ledger's fantastic range, which contrasts even with his role in A Knight's Tale, a role that seems more prototypically Ledger. In Brothers Grimm, Ledger plays bookish Jacob Grimm. In Brokeback, he plays repressed Ennis Del Mar.

It was Jake Gyllenhaal that people had fewer objections to. He had had some roles that people respected more, from the quirky Donnie Darko to the more comedic The Bubble Boy. He was cast as lead for Sam Mendes' Jarhead. He played the bland boyfriend-like character in Proof.

Yet, I'm now thinking that Jake is the one who's range is more limited. In the relationship, he's more the boy, trying to be the man. Ledger plays Ennis as grizzled, reluctant, trying to get on with life.

The pace of this film is slow. The film runs two hours, but it feels like three hours. It spans about twenty years. As much as it seems like a film that's set on a very small scale, focused on its two leads, and the wives they marry, it questions bigger issues.

We imagine, for example, that once upon a time, when men were "in charge" and the women were left at home to raise the kids, that women didn't have much power to determine their lives. Many films, even modern ones, have difficulty portraying a world that's not male-oriented. How many actresses play the suffering or supporting wife? At least, Brokeback is set in a period that we associate with this kind of behavior (it is remarkably dissociated from the time period it goes through---occasionally, there are hints that they are living through the 70s, but there's no talk of a gay revolution that should be occurring through the middle of this period).

In a key scene, Jack hints that he's seeing other men behind Ennis's back. He does so because the two meet up on Brokeback too infrequently for his tastes. This is after Jack has admitted that he has been cheating on his wife with another woman, an admission that doesn't faze Ennis. It is admission that Jack sees other men that puts Ennis into a rage.

It is a worldview that reminds me a bit of traditional Asian male society. I shouldn't say traditional because it's the culture that has come from post World War 2 Japan and other Asian cultures. The stereotypical Japanese works really hard at work, while the wives stay at home to raise the kids. When the work day is over, what do the guys do? Do they rush home to be with their wives? No. They head over to a bar to drink with the guys.

It's been said that John Woo films are homo-erotic, with men only able to express their emotions with other men. I suspect, however, it's typical of a culture that has treated women like second-class citizens. Women raise kids. They do the cooking. They please the man. But they don't understand men. Only men understand men.

It's almost this kind of world that Brokeback Mountain inhabits. Both men marry because that's what they are supposed to do. They do seem like responsible enough fathers and husbands, but the women in their lives don't seem to satisfy them. At least one of the wives knows this is happening, and yet, she lets it continues for years. She doesn't even confront her husband's indiscretions until much after they are divorced.

Despite the vague current of misogyny, it really is a commentary on the culture that causes them to have to marry, instead of being with each other. Strangely, too, it is a commentary on responsibility versus indiscretion, and seems to both support indiscretion as well as put it down. Ennis has a role to play in society, and he tries to play it, even though he knows he wants more than society offers. He can't make himself give up the responsibilities he feels he owes to others, even as it means that he can't be truly happy.

Jack, on the other hand, gets to lead a life that's more his own, and yet, he's also trapped. He can't convince the one man he cares about to abandon his responsibilities and join him.

Jack imagines a world that allows cowboys like him and Ennis to be together. The irony is that this world exists just outside the boundaries of where they live. Yet, they are in a different world, the world of conservative outback Americans. There is no Studio 54. There is no San Francisco. There is no Harvey Milk. There is no disco. They live in a world that hasn't changed, and they try to do what they can in this world. If anything, it feels the film is set at least ten years earlier, if not more, and it very well could be.

In the end, you also question whether the relationship would have worked. You want it to work, for some reason, because you know it's what's most meaningful to the both of them, and yet. Yet.

It would, I think, be ironic if this were the film that causes an acceptance of gay films, if for no other reason that it is almost completely devoid of gay politics. There is a segment of the gay population, the closeted portion, that I'm sure can't stand gay politics, partly because they don't agree with it. It removes this element because it is trying to be a simple story of love, forbidden love, at that. That ultimately, despite the rainbow flags, despite Southern Decadence, despite angry queer cinema, that it's fundamentally about being with who you love.

This film is a bit of a slow burn. It doesn't rise to a huge crescendo at the end, its impact lingering minutes and hours after the film ends.

Cowpoke

It's now here.

Brokeback Moutain opens nationally today. I've heard about the film for nearly two years now. At one point, Gus van Sant, who is openly gay, was set to direct it. Except for a few films that don't bear the idiosyncracies of Van Sant (most notably, Finding Forrester, but to a lesser extent, Good Will Hunting), Van Sant's films have been challenging to follow, especially such minimalist offerings like Gerry, Elephant, and presumably, Last Days.

Ang Lee was then set to direct. Ang's films range the gamut. He followed up the hugely successful Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with the less than successful The Incredible Hulk, parts of which I caught recently. It was hard to say how this film would Brokeback would turn out, but early word is that it's picking up awards at various end of the year critics awards. The last gay-themed film with this much buzz, was the quite different Philadelphia, with Tom Hanks playing a successful lawyer whose career is derailed when he gets AIDS, and his law firm decides to fire him.

Some people saw that film as Demme trying to appease gay fans. Demme had directed Silence of the Lambs, which was critcized as anti-gay; the serial killer that was the bad guy (are any of them good? but Hannibal was meant to be somewhat sympathetic, it's the other guy, Buffalo Bill, that's the real bad guy) was seen as possibly gay, or perhaps desirous of being transgendered (there's a famous scene, where he crosses his legs hiding his masculinity, trying to be like a woman, which was mimicked by Brad Pitt, caught on photographs by papparazi, back when he and Gweneth were still a couple).

Brokeback Mountain is a very different film. Where Philadelphiia deals with several hot-button issues: AIDS in the workplace, acceptance of gays, comparison of gay discrimination and ethnic discrimination, Brokeback Mountain, ostensibly, plays itself more simply, as a tale of forbidden love. In this respect, it echoes Crouching Tiger where the leads played by Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh are unable to show the love they have for each other due to respect to a former friend, and learn to regret the noble decision they thought they were making.

Where so many recent films about being gay now focus on how it's no big deal, this film goes back an era, when it was a big deal, when people who engaged in gay acts may have not felt excited about what they were doing, but instead, ashamed.

Usually films that are released at the end of the year are jockeying for awards. Many Academy Award winners have been released in December. Million Dollar Baby (and its nearest competitor, The Aviator), Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, Shakespeare in Love, Titanic were all released at the end of the year. In fact, the most noticeable Academy Award winner that was not released in the summer or late in the year, was Silence of the Lambs, which was released roughly in March of 1991. That's extremely early in the year for a film to win Best Picture.

In fact, it was Shakespeare in Love, a December release, and beneficiary of a huge Miramax ad campaign that managed to upset Spielberg's epic Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture. Spielberg's film was released in the summer. Since then, many films with Oscar buzz are released in December.

To give you a sense of when films are made, Jake Gyllenhaal, (think I finally learned to spell his name), did Jarhead, which was released about a month ago, after Brokeback Mountain.

There's always the sense that this film has been overhyped, and watching it may be a letdown. Still, Ang Lee, for the most part, does make films that are satisfying to watch, so I'm at least expecting that.

Oddly enough, there's been little mention of many other rival films coming out to compete against Brokeback. The most notable is Peter Jackson's King Kong. Still, Brokeback Mountain appears to have the early buzz. Other than those two, I don't know of anything else. Sure Narnia is out, but no one expects it to win awards, except possibly in special effects. Last year, it was Million Dollar Baby vs. The Aviator. This year? Well, we'll see.

Now the question is whether I should watch it Friday night, or wait until later. It'll probably be a bit crowded to watch it on Friday night, I'd imagine, although it's rather chilly. Still, I don't have much planned that night. It'll depend on how I feel.

I Wanna Be a Cowboy

Again, I decided to watch the director's commentary. As I've said before, this can be an ordeal. You've spent somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours watching a movie. To watch the director's commentary is to double the amount of time--time that you may not want to spend. Most people would find the commentary incessantly dull, but I find it compelling.

It's not entirely clear, to me, who the commentary is directed to. I suspect it's for people who find the filmmaking process compelling, which I do. The director's commentary often reveals the director's passion for the film. Even awful films often have directors that care a great deal about how the film is made. It can make you appreciate something that can be otherwise dreck.

Taken at face value, Cowboys and Angels might be seen as an odd story that tries to tell three different stories at once. One is about Shane's character, a shy civil servant who knows there must be something better in life than what he's doing. This is an issue that isn't addressed much in American films because Americans are far less class conscious than Brits.

A good referencee point is the 7-Up documentaries "directed" by Michael Apted, which follows the lives of about a dozen British youths of varying background, from age 7 to current day. The documentary team visits the group every 7 years. Until recently, you couldn't really watch the documentary. With places like Amazon, which now carries tens of thousands of DVDs, this series has a chance to be watched by many more people .

Some of the youths come from working class families. Others come from markedly wealtheir families. Perhaps the sad thing is the lack of social mobility. The one youth that may have leapt the furthest is the physics professor, who grew up on a farm, and eventually made his way to being a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Many of the others are doing fine, but seem trapped by their income level.

The director of Cowboys and Angels, David Gleeson, made a fairly autobiographical film, at least, in parts. In particular, Shane's job as a civil servant, even to the exact building Gleeson worked in, is completely autobiographical.

People often say you should write films based on experience. It makes it that much more realistic. For example, in Atom Egoyan's, Speaking Parts, the main characters work in a hotel where they clean rooms and fold sheets, etc. It turns out, as a teen, Egoyan did exactly that. Gleeson, too, wrote about his own life, and found it very odd to watch the places he worked put on film, even though he was the one who put it there.

Gleeson has several objectives in this film. One was to represent Ireland in a more realistic way. He didn't want a film about the IRA. He didn't want a film about the really popular guys that go to clubs. The film is set mostly in Limerick, which is one of two or three major cities in Ireland (the other two I can think of are Dublin, and Cork).

To this extent, there are many overhead shots of Limerick, as well as the phone booths (what few exist in the US always seem much older than their European counterparts), the trains, the busses, the pubs, the nightclubs.

I've always known that films are filmed out of order, often because it's convenient to group many scenes together, and it all depends on what's available. If you watch the behind-the-scenes documentary on the LOTR DVD, you discover a key conversation in Return of the King was filmed separately nearly a year apart. That has to be pretty wild. (The scene, in case, you're wondering, is when Frodo and Sam are climbing up a largish mountain, and Frodo tells Sam to go home, that he no longer needs Sam.)

Other things you learn from the director of an indie pic is how tough scenes are to film. In particular, getting a scene lit correctly (which means making everyone look great) can require a great deal of work. There's a scene where Shane and Vincent talk to each other. The guy playing Vincent says it's like his head is glued to the back, and the reason he doesn't move his head much is the lighting in the scene. If he moved more naturally, it would create bad lighting on his face. It's a testament to the acting that one doesn't notice it.

Directors also seem to notice continuity errors. For example, there's a room that has no graffiti at one angle, and then at a different angle, there's graffiti. Sometimes there are anachronisms. For example, currently, there's no more smoking allowed in Irish pubs. Thus, the smoke filled pubs shown in the film is no longer realistic.

Directors often sneak in a variety of people who aren't actors in the film. Thus, friends, relatives, etc. make guest appearances.

OK, back to comments about the film.

What worked well for me. Overall, I thought the actors were pretty good. In particular, Michael Legge, who plays Shane, has to convey a fair bit of information (as do actors in general) with his face. A lot of acting is really in the facial reactions, which you can see in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role in Mysterious Skin.

I also thought, given the general ludicrousness of the idea, that the actors involved with the drug running worked out better than it really deserved to. Unlike, say, Blue Velvet, where Dennis Hopper's character basically harasses Kyle MacLachlan's character, Keith ends up befriending Shane, which is somewhat unexpected.

Vincent's character works out well too. While he's made to be a stereotyped queen who's into fashion design, Allen Leech (who plays Vincent) doesn't camp it up in his dialogue (is that just an American gay affectation), and initially, doesn't even seem to care that much for Shane. And his character actually seems to care about fashion. This is not just one of those character traits that's added to make his character more gay.

One of Gleeson's goal was to make a film that was about a straight and gay guy sharing a flat. To that extent, Gleeson doesn't make the film I thought he might have made. The trailers make it seem like it's about how Vincent takes a shy kid and makes him more self-confident while he remains rather emasculated (sort of like Queer Eye). That's not exactly what he does. If anything, it's Keith, the drug runner, that makes Shane turn out the way he is, or at least his civil servant mentor. Also, his relation with Shane veers in an unexpected direction.

Lately, many films have treated being gay rather matter of factly. Cowboys and Angels is no exception. No one seems to react to it at all. The director was asked in Q&A's whether Ireland was this open, and he felt that Ireland had become more accepting of gays in society. Obviously, the upcoming film, Brokeback Mountain is going to deal with these issues where things have to be kept secret because of social backlash.

Having a film set in Ireland was interesting. I wouldn't say that I know that
much more about Ireland after than before, but still, I like seeing different
settings.

What doesn't work. Hmm, well, I still think it's a bit ludicrous how Shane gets involved with Keith, but at least, the film addresses this point. Also, Gemma, who plays something of a fag hag doesn't have her character developed very much. There are some deleted scenes where they explore her background some. Still, those scenes dragged (it's about Shane asking her about bisexuality), even though they make her an edgier character, but also somewhat unlikeable.

I read one reader's comment who complained about a key scene. During the drug pickup, two guys are driving Shane, and they hit a car. A woman is injured, and her boyfriend/husband want to call the police. They proceed to beat him up and then run away. The idea, I know, is to show the dark side of what this kind of life is like, and it's a key step in Shane deciding not to take this route with his life. I'm not sure there's an easy way to resolve this.

There's also the rather pat resolution, where all the drug runners are captured (it's hinted at to be sure, with police staking out the place), but where Shane and Vincent manage to get off. The resolution is thought out, however, unlike many films where they just tack something on. It feels tacked on, but the director hints what's to come throughout. Still, it knocks out Keith's character when it's convenient that he should no longer be in the film.

Gemma's character is relatively bland, so she doesn't get much development. Again, the film doesn't necessarily suggest that Shane and Gemma will get together after all is said and done.

Whether Shane would be both a person that would get into trouble and also get himself dressed up by Vincent is another point that I quibble with. Still, Legge's acting does enough to hide this strange dichotomy in Shane's life.

As I said in the previous post, I ended up liking this, mostly because it had the potential to be awful, even in its first hour, and turned out not to be that bad. I guess this damning with faint praise, but it is really a bit better than that. I'd put it about 5 out of 10, meaning decent, but flawed.

Real Guinness

I've seen films from a bunch of different countries. Spain, Thailand, China, Japan, Korea, Australia, Brazil, France, Belgium. But I think I may have seen my first Irish film. I suppose one could lump Ireland as part of the UK, but each part of the UK has, I suspect, it's own sensibility: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales (am I missing anything?)

Cowboys and Angels starts off in one of these embarassing ways that made it difficult for me to watch the whole way through. I'd watch ten minutes then stop, and ten more and stop. I had first started watching this maybe two weeks ago, and only just finished it today.

The film starts off with Shane Butler, a shy Irish kid who works as a lowly civil servant, needing to find a place to stay, since he can't afford a place by himself. He meets up with Vincent Cusack, a gay fashion design student.

Initially, the film doesn't seem to know which way it wants to head. Both sides of Shane's life are so vastly different from what you'd expect a person like Shane to lead. On the one hand, he finds some drugs stashed in some vent that belongs to Keith. Keith apparently is a low-level thug that delivers and sells drugs. He eventually convinces Shane, who needs the money, to pick up some drugs for him.

On the flip side, Shane wants more out of his life than his civil servant job, and this is underscored by an elderly civil servant who is close to retirement, and has decided that his life has been a waste, since he was too scared to do the things he really wanted to do. His life is what will become of Shane if he doesn't jump at some opportunity.

Initially, it's almost too hard to believe that Keith would want a shy kid who's trying to be good to do drug running. To this extent, the film defies usually pigeonholing. Keith, despite his occupation, actually seems to care for Shane, and after a while, you discover the real reason that he has asked Shane to do this.

This could also be a film where Vincent is stereotyped as some flamboyant gay fashion guy, and yet, the film, generally speaking, takes his fashion career rather seriously, Whether Vincent would really spend all his time in bed hanging out with hot blonds is, perhaps, yet another thing that is hard to believe.

Despite many elements that just seem intellectually wrong, i.e., a guy like Shane would simply never get caught up with one side or the other (I could see him doing art through), there's something that begins to work, and I believe that what works is it's rather simply underlying message: do what you really want to do. Take chances in life. That message, combined with a storyline that tries to buck easy stereotyping makes for something that's rather involving, even as it doesn't always make sense.

I suspect it works because, despite the grandiose way Shane develops confidence in himself, it is about confidence, and to some extent, friendship.

The film ends much better than it starts, which is a minor feat in itself.

Flashback

I've read, somewhere, that people rarely listen to DVD commentaries. I don't know why I like listening to them, except that, occasionally they offer insight you don't get from just watching the film. Admittedly, some films have pretty stupid commentary tracks. I'll always point to the awful actor's commentary on T3 (although the director's commentary is usually good).

I just listened to the commentary for Mysterious Skin, after rewatching the film. On the whole, it holds up reasonably well. Some characters don't come out nearly as well the second time around. Eric's character (he's Neil's flamboyant friend) still seems out of place for midwestern Kansas. The accents still sound more Southern than flat midwestern. Brian's mom is too much like a mom in a cereal commercial. Even Brady Corbet's scenes at the gripping end scene don't quite ring right.

Although it's not as good as I remember, it does resonate as the story of two lost boys, one who's blotted out the memory of the past, and the other trying to relive the memories, and that their meetings is a kind of unsatisfying catharsis for the two of them. It's the first time Neil realizes what was a magical period in his life was something that Brian built a fictional castle in the sand in his mind to explain.

The commentary, as might be expected, involves a lot of praising. In particular, Brady Corbet (who, I now know, pronounces his last name like sorbet, not like Olga Korbut), gushes effusively over the impact of them film. I will say that actors often have to dig deep emotionally to do a role, and therefore, are more out in the open about their emotions than most people. The difficult scenes that Brady and Joe (as he's referred to in the commentary, as opposed to his written name as Joseph Gordon-Levitt) created an emotional bond that two guys generally never get to because they aren't about exploring their emotions in that way.

I hadn't realize that the song that ends the film was by Sigur Ros. It just goes to show you how much indie music that actors listen to. I've known about Sigur Ros for a while, when my friend, Phil introduced me to them a few years ago. I was even at one of their concerts way back when, shortly after 9/11 (about a month later), when travel to the US was probably a pain for this Icelandic band.

I remember watching a special on Lord of the Rings, and the characters that play Merry and Pippin (Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan) were at a record store, and one was recommending Sigur Ros to the other.

This is a far different film that Gregg Araki normally directs. His early films were angry pieces about living with HIV (e.g., The Living End) or the nihilistic, The Doom Generation. Araki adapted Scott Heim's novel for the big screen.

As usual, you listen to how the film was shot out of order, which is very common for a film. Surprisingly, you also discover that Joe had very few lines, which, once you think about it, he does have extremely few lines. Or that the coach only appears in about ten minutes of the film, or Elisabeth Shue (mentioned as Lisa) also has few scenes. Or that much of the time, the film is done in POV (point of view) framing, i.e., with the actor looking directly into the camera, rather than looking to another actor.

Gregg is rather talky throughout the commentary. Brady is gushing, and Joe is a bit laid back.

There are scenes in the film that are generally difficult for the young actors, since the topic is, after all, about sexual child abuse, and the young actors are really young. I feel the guy who played young Brady was more realistic than young Neil who seemed way too much the child actor. So much so that it was mildly grating. There's no doubting the kid has some talent, but one learns a bit of restraint as one gets older. The funny thing is that Joe also acted since he was really young, so he can, to some degree, relate to the young kids acting in the film.

I had put the film as one of the best of this year, up their with 3-iron. I'll probably have to knock that down a peg, but for those watching it for the first time, Araki can pack a punch. In the past, those punches have seem gratuitous, but here, it feels more appropriate. It can distract one from noticing the quality of the film as a whole.

As a commentary track, it's one of the better ones I've heard. It's not quite at the level of Ocean's 11, where you get to hear directorial decisions, which is what I often like about the commentary. Usually, if they don't tell you about creative decisions (rare), at least, they can tell you about the conditions that the film was made (often, horrible).

Gee, now it's 6:15. This is the problem when you sleep at 10, then wake up at 1 AM.

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

I just came back from having breakfast at midnight at the local diner across the street. It seems like, once you get beyond about ten customers, a diner fails to function properly. I came in, and sat down, and waited. A waiter then comes by and says "I'll be with you in a minute", then takes the order of someone else. You think he'd remember to come back to me right afterwards since he said "I'll be with you right in a minute", but no. Instead, he heads back and starts having one person pay their bill. Then, another. Then, another.

This is taking a few minutes, at which point I think he'll never come by to help again. After all, he has, as I'm sure, completely forgotten what he said three minutes earlier. Now waiters aren't paid a lot, so there's not a high skill level for many of them. The key to good waitering is memorization. In fact, memorization tends to be great for a lot of professions, and is vastly underrated.

A great example of this comes in the film Tampopo about a woman who runs a noodle shop, albeit, rather poorly. A trucker tries to teach her the ways of being a good noodle shop owner. One key is to listen to half a dozen customers rattle off their orders, all with special requests, and her ability to parrot back the orders without ever having written it down. The closest real-world example I know is some lady working at a sushi shop who remembers half a dozen orders, and often remembers orders you made the previous time you were there. It's a bit of a shame that all that memory is in service of waitering, but it's impressive when it happens.

Needless to say, she's like the Einstein of waitering. Everyone else is remedial, at best. For example, I went to Dunkin Donuts, and this lady somehow didn't hear that I ordered a bagel with salmon spread. She was convinced I said sour cream. Furthermore, I was ordering two bagels, one sour cream and onion (this is how she forgot the cream cheese spread) and one with sesame seeds. The final result was backwards. I wanted a sesame seed bagel with salmon spread, and a sour cream and onion steak bagel. Somehow, she could barely remember two orders. This is clearly not the job for her. Needless to say, she didn't write anything down, thus exacerbating her lack of memorization skills.

A second woman did finally come out (where was she hiding?) and I told her I wanted to order right away. She almost seemed surprised by this, and wasn't even ready to take down the order. It was a special, scrambled eggs, and water. I could have said the order the minute I walked in, since I almost always order the special. Still, this crowded evening meant i was dealing with people who couldn't keep track of who came in and when.

My solution to this is to have timers. The instant you sit, the timer starts. Then, you can see how long it takes before they really get to you. I swear, this one addition to waitering would improve it by a lot. You could point to the waiter and say, do you realize it's taken you five minutes to get to me? Now I understand that many restaurants don't like to have too many waiters. Each one you add means less money for everyone. So, one waiter can be extremely overworked, and unable to process which order to take next. Even so, the stopwatch should prove useful. I know. It won't happen, because it would give customers one more thing to complain about.

I wouldn't have even been at the diner had the local coffee place actually kept their kitchens open. For some reason, coffee houses often have subpar food, and really, this place is no exception. Some of the food is horribly overpriced, but I assume that's because it takes SO much time of them to cook food, as opposed to dispensing coffee. Surely, some marketing genius is taking great credit for coming up with the idea of a coffee house, where overpriced coffee and lack of real cooking results in profits galore. Any cooking that does take place in a coffee house is guaranteed to be extra slow, and not up to real high standards.

This leads me to my third watching of Aardvark'd. I've been watching the DVD commentary. I know, statistically, that watching the commentary is almost unheard of. It's possibly even worse when you are watching commentary by the interns, who aren't particularly trained to do commentary. I don't particularly blame them since this is not in their skill set (there, I used "skill set" in a sentence).

I listened to Benjamin Pollack and Michael Lehenbauer in one commentary track. Clearly, of the two, Ben was far more polished, and had lots more to say. Michael would giggle and add some commentary. It's funny what they point out as interesting. The commentary did leave some unanswered questions. For example, it seems Liz was about the only woman there, and by some standards, she's pretty attractive. Yet, the interns were pretty PC in not saying that she was hot, or anything.

The interns tended to comment about themselves, rather than to talk about the others. For example, in that particular commentary track, Yaron comes on. When he's on, neither say much about Yaron. Was he a great guy? Was he insufferable? In fact, until the third time through, I didn't realize he was a marketing guy (I know he mentions it, but it's very briefly done). I don't even know what his responsibilities were. While it sounded like he didn't code much, it also seemed like he was capable of doing it.

The commentary helped because I could finally tell who was who. Since the first commentary was Benjamin and Michael (technically, it's the the third commentary track), I could focus on those two guys. I'm part way through listening to Tyler and Yaron. Their commentary is a little more balanced, but you could tell that Benjamin liked to order Michael around, even though it's not clear in Benjamin and Michael's commentary track. Yaron was super self-concious, and his hope was that he wouldn't seem like a total idiot.

By the third time watching it, you begin to pick up all sorts of odd stuff, like the changing facial hair of Yaron, who is mostly clean shaven in one take, or sporting a grungy beard growth in another. You also see the interns in the backgrounds typing away.

What I found particularly surprising was the number of people at Fog Creek. Not including interns, it's like 4-5 people. That's tiny. I mean, really tiny. I was always under the impression the company had at least 20 people. I had no idea that it barely had anyone. Thus, all the software is probably the result of 3-4 people (at least, up until Project Aardvark). I guess this is why they want to have a bunch of bright programmers. You need far fewer to achieve the same (or better) results.

There was also another segment I didn't quite get until seeing it a second time. There's some guy who grows tomatoes. I had thought it was one of the interns. After all, it's not always clear who is or is not an intern, when all the faces are new. At the end of the documentary, the guy is tearing up the tomato plants (probably because it's cold, and the plant has already borne fruit). I had originally thought there were two different guys, that an intern had planted the tomatoes, and that one of the full timers had ripped it apart. It comes across far more malicious when you think that, then if the same person who grew the tomatoes also tore it down.

I also made a mistake on the music. While the director did compose the music, I think another guy did the lyrics. Yaron points out in his commentary track that it's really cheap to get someone to do music, because so many people want to do it. Even so, I found the music amusing.

In the end, I also realized that Copilot may not be the best of products. While it's a good idea, how often do people really help out their parents, etc. I suppose it seems like a lot, but is it even a dozen times a year? At 2 or 3 times a year, it becomes highly infrequent. I don't have a particular great idea for them to work on for next summer, but I'll ponder it some more, and maybe post it to the forums.

Ah, the forums. Apparently, this is the equivalent of Real World folks being able to hear from fans (which never happens because the filming is done months before it's shown). I should now go back and read the blogs, which I barely paid attention to when it was live. It's archived, so I can reread it all. I'm hoping the blogs offer some insight that I wouldn't already have.

In hindsight, I think the DVD was a great idea by Fog Creek. I'm still not crazy about what made it in there, but at least the people seemed likeable enough (if a bit geeky all around). I'd still love to see if they have good ideas about how to write software, or whether you simply throw bright kids at the problem, and things get magically solved with minimal amounts of planning.

Aardvark, Part 2

The documentary about the creation of CoPilot was not written in two parts. In fact, I think the whole thing lasts all of about an hour. Even so, I watched it in two parts, because I watched half of it at 2 AM, and the blogged for an hour or so, and then went (mostly) to sleep.

This morning, I woke up, and went to watch the second half.

The second half is, actually, a bit better than the first half. Again, much like the first half, there isn't much said about the actual creation of software. What makes these kids so good at software? How did Fog Creek organize this project with some assurance that the solution would actually be feasible in twelve weeks? What was the software development process like? How was the architecture designed? How long did it take to get up to speed on the work environment?

Clearly, such things would not have made for good watching, and yet, it's exactly the kind of thing I care about.

About ten minutes into the second half, the film makes a wild veer, and starts talking about Paul Graham. For a while, I only knew about Paul Graham through a book he wrote on Lisp. Lisp is acknowledged as the second oldest programming language, behind Fortran. I should say "surviving language", as I'm sure there were many "languages" that only a handful of people ever used and therefore don't qualify as languages.

I was then told about his book, Hackers and Painters, where he discusses what it means to be a hacker. Like the documentary, I'll make a divergence as well.

In the 80s, when PCs became ubiquitous, the term hacker grew to mean a person who broke into computer systems illegally and, on the benign side, left some indication they were there, but otherwise did no harm, and on the malicious side, tried to bring the system down, or stole secret information, or altered information.

It wasn't until later that hacker came to mean a person who was really good at coding, and a hack came to mean a clever way to code something up.

It is in this sense that Paul refers to "hacker". He notes that only a small percentage of people in computer science can be considered hackers. Most computer science majors know that, while the professors they work for are bright, and possibly even brilliant, many are average coders, and some, oddly enough, don't even code. They are theoreticians, or they pass the buck onto grad students to deal with the painful aspects of programming. Those few who love to code claim there's nothing better, and yet, to code well means you're constantly learning how to make the best of the programming tools out there, and to learn new and better tools.

Many bright computer science types simply find that keeping up with coding trends is futile. It's a waste of their brain power to learn the newest fad. Why learn Ruby? Why learn Java? Why learn C++? There are many a CS prof. whose last programming language was Pascal, and they're happy they haven't bothered to learn any new programming language in twenty years. It's like learning a new foreign language every year. What's the point?

But hackers love programming languages, and not just for the sake of learning something new. In fact, Paul Graham's favorite language is Lisp, which is an old, old language (though it looks far different now, than it did when it was invented). He says it allows him to write "hacks" more efficiently than any other language.

Paul Graham isn't just an academic who talks about code, either. He and Robert Morris, he of the famous Internet worm of the late 80s, went to write software that eventually got sold to Yahoo and formed the basis of Yahoo Stores.

Graham, like Spolsky, also believes in hiring the best. The rest simply aren't worth it. They believe in that elite hackers should rule the world, or at least, the software industry, and by extension, that hackers are born, not made. Or, perhaps more accurately, you can make a very good hacker great, but you can't do anything useful with an average coder. It would take weeks of constant hand holding to make the average coder decent, and even then, they'd always need more hand holding. A top notch coder gets things quickly, and then figures out new ways to do things that you never thought of.

Graham's been criticized for this belief. In particular, Graham has esposed that hackers should only be given cool stuff to work on, that the tedious boring stuff should be left to the petty programmers of the world. It is for this reason, that some argue that hackers are ill-suited to a startup company, because someone has to write there boring pieces of code, and if the hackers lift their noses to the air at such tasks, a startup would fail.

Graham has his own company called Y Combinator, which is about as geeky a name that you could ever come up with. I suspect the first question he asks potential employees is "Explain what a Y combinator is". Those interested in lambda calculus would know that the Y combinator is a way to implement recursion in lambda calculus.

Aardvark'd discusses this company for about ten minutes, and it becomes like a recent episode of Lost. OK, let's talk about Lost. Lost is ABC's big hit about a plane that crash lands on an island after leaving Sydney, Australia, ostensibly to head to California. This island appears to have invisible monsters, and secret capsules, and so forth. Essentially, it's about how the passengers try to figure out how to get off this island, and the people they encounter, including "the others".

Anyway, in the pilot, you learn that the plane broke into two parts, with the main part falling on one part of the island. It was assumed the other part went into the sea, and everyone died. Only, they didn't. One episode was devoted to telling what happened to the people in the tail section. This covered over a month's worth of events in 50 minutes.

Ten minutes of the documentary are devoted to Y Combinator. You get to see Paul Graham, and some of the kids that go work for his company. Instead of being called employees, they appear to be called "grant winners". However, there's so little time devoted to this that you never get to see a compare/contrast between the way these two companies work. Just as it appears you're going to see a new cast of characters, like Real World 2 meets Real World 1, it goes back to Fog Creek.

One thing you realize about documentaries is how they manage to avoid people getting self-concious about the camera. The kids are always suppressing a laugh, and seem to feel awkward making the documentary. One scene involves the recounting and reenactment of a large cockroach in the Fog Creek lavatory. This involves a cockroach eye view of the two interns who proceed to kill the cockroach.

Ever listen to NPR segments. Unlike television segments, there's no video in an NPR segment. It's radio. It's audio. They rely on sound to tell their stories. In particular, music can be a big part of the story, sometimes serving as counterpoint to the story. For example, I remember one angry story of how Bush's administration completely flaunt the rights of Iraqi prisoners, due to their wanton ignorance of the law. As angry as the subject matter and words are, the voices of the commentator and the music especially, are muted, if not, upbeat.

There are several songs in the film, and they're so obviously keyed into the documentary itself, that after a while, you realize it had to be written for the documentary. And so it was. (I should really call these things infomercials, because that's more or less what it is). Lerone Wilson not only made the documentary, he also wrote music for it. (Wilson has an uncanny resemblance to Tiger Woods).

The second half of the film touches a little on the software process, in particular, it talks about a discussion of a bug, and whose fault the bug is. It also talks about the criticism the whole project has had, although frankly, I think Project Aardvark is a brilliant idea for what it's trying to do, which is lure top-notch talent to Fog Creek. You get a sense of the success of this when one guy talks about the sense of abandonment he's feeling when he leaves this project, and that he's going to work on meaningless school projects.

There's also a "passage of time" segment as one guy shows his tomato plants up on the rooftops of the building they work in. You get to see the tomatoes about a month into the project, all the way to the end, when the guy hands out tomatoes to the employees at Fog Creek, and in particular, to a bemused Joel Spolsky. (If you watch the credits, you can see its fate too).

As another note, one thing you realize is there are hardly any women. In fact, only one woman figures at all into the film, and she's not a software developer. There's also barely a person of color. At best, it appears one guy might be middle eastern or Latino, and one guy of possible Russian descent. There aren't African Americans. There's one Asian American. Not even Indians, who tend to figure promiently in the software industry.

This is a problem you see when you deal with companies looking for top-notch talent, especially small companies. There just aren't many talented women or minorities in computers. It's not that these companies don't want to hire them. They'd love to find some woman or some African American or Latino who is a brilliant coder. It's just that they are extremely few and far between.

To give you an example, how many top Asian Americans are in football? Three, four? Asian Americans make up, say, 1-25 of American population, but probably make up less than half a percent of NFL players. African Americans, who are maybe 14% of the population, make up at least half the numbers. This may be cultural. This may be genetics. Who knows? But the point is that when you look for the "best", you can't get good demographics, and that's trying to be perfectly fair to everyone.

At the end, there's a bet to see how long it takes, when they go live, before they get their first sale. I suppose that makes it the climax of the documentary.

The documentary closes up, much like you'd expect, which is to show empty cubicles, computers with screen savers, i.e., a kind of closure to the process. When I get the chance, I'll probably watch it with the commentary, but you have to realize these kids aren't professional actors or directors. Even professionals often do a horribly job with commentary, because commentaries are often done impromptu, often live as the people are watching, rather than scripted. Needless to say, it produces a wildly uneven results with some commentary being brilliant, and others nigh-well unbearable to listen to (for example, the cast commentary to Terminator 3). I'm not expecting a whole lot.

In the end, I think this might have worked better as a series of half hour segments, done week by week, where we actually learn about the code, about the problems people have working together, about how the whole thing was planned, and how much was interns deciding stuff, and how much was full timers deciding stuff.

What I liked about Aardvark'd: the sense of New York, that Fog Creek looks like a cool place to work, Joel Spolsky, the music.

What I disliked: hard to tell who was who (the documentary struggles with this too, often showing one guy juggling, so you know who he is), little about the software development process, very little about the guys at Y combinator, what makes these kids so bright, and what you miss out when you don't get bright people.

The production was at times good (especially the end credits), and at other times, rather amateurish. You can see a struggle between the kind of film Wilson wanted to create (it's about the people) to the kind that Fog Creek may have wanted (it's about the people, but as coders). The question is who is this film pitched at. If you want to use it as promotional tool to attract brilliant folks, does it really work? I suppose it could, if you say brilliant coders like their limelight too, and see that the work environment isn't some stodgy office filled with incompetent nincompoops with busy work.

Anyway, I think it was worth the money I spent on it, although I was expecting a different documentary altogether.