Erich Stauffer

Category: Pop Culture

  • What Really Happened in Jake Gyllenhaal’s Enemy Movie?

    ***Major Spoiler Alert***Do not read this if you don’t want the movie spoiled for you. It contains major spoilers.

    enemy-movie

    We have met the enemy and he is us.” –Pogo by Walt Kelly, 1971

    What Really Happened in Jake Gyllenhaal’s Enemy Movie?

    In Enemy, both men (Adam and Anthony) are same man, a married history professor who acts on the side, and fantasizes about having an affair. In the end of the movie, in his fantasy, his girlfriend is killed, but he quickly turns back to his old ways (represented by the most scary movie ending of all time, the giant spider).

    Who is his girlfriend?

    The girlfriend is not real. When the door buzzes, he doesn’t get up, he goes into his head. She brings over food to his crappy apartment, hangs out, then leaves without a word. It’s all a fantasy.

    How do I know they are the same man?

    When the two men meet, the first meet the room they meet in is number “221”, which means “two to one”. His mother says he has “a nice apartment, a good job” and that he should quit his dream of acting. When he is with his wife, she asks, “How was school?” She asks him about having an affair.

    Reasons why they might not be the same man?

    Blueberries – He tells his wife he wants blueberries, but he tells his mother he doesn’t like blueberries.

    Unknown Name/Location to Wife? – Anthony makes up the name “Adam Bell” and writes it on a note for his wife to find. She Googles it, goes to the school, and he meets her there (as Adam), but acts (he likes to act) like he doesn’t know her. She can’t believe how far he’s going to perpetuate this fantasy.

    Where does he actually live? Which apartment?

    In the beginning of the movie we hear Adam’s mother’s voicemail where she sounds Russian like the other guy’s mother where she asks of his “new” apartment “how can you live like that?” and then we see a picture of the pregnant wife sitting on the bed in Adam’s apartment. She only refers to him as “Darling,” but he’s clearly sitting in Adam’s Volvo.

    There are two apartments, one “good” and one “bad”. Because he’s a school teacher and acts on the side, because of the way his mother described it (“how can you live like that?”), and because of the shot of his pregnant wife in the background, it’s more likely that he and his wife actually live in the bad one.

    Although in the movie, the times we see his wife she in the “good” apartment. This could mean the nice apartment is a fantasy too. But in the movie, his mind places his girlfriend/affair in the bad/real apartment and his actual wife in his good/fake apartment. This could mean he wishes he could provide more to his wife.

    How do we know when we’re in a fantasy and when we’re in real life?

    There is a definite yellow hue when we see Adam, the school teacher who is with the “girlfriend” in the “bad” apartment and a more ‘normal’, white light when we see Anthony, the actor and his “good” apartment, but this isn’t like the green tint in The Matrix movies. It doesn’t necessarily mean that one is fantasy and the other is real because both have elements of each.

    One ‘totem’ (to use Inception vocabulary) is his wedding ring (which just happened to be Cobb’s totem). Adam, the school teacher, doesn’t wear it, but Anthony, the actor does (except for when he’s playing Adam towards the end of the movie – it’s also partially responsible for the ‘crash’ that kills his girlfriend and ‘ends’ the affair).

    If this topic interests you, read about more movies that question reality.

    What are some motifs in the film?

    Hallways – the beginning of the film starts with Adam walking down the hallway with a key while a guard walks behind him. When he sneaks into his own apartment, he doesn’t have the key and has the same security guard behind him who does have the key. These scenes are shot very specifically for the audience to draw the connection between the unknown guy at the beginning of the film at the club and his security guard, but you’d have to watch it again to fully get the connection.

    Is there any other scenes that we’re exactly as they appeared in the movie?

    In the teacher’s lounge, Adam is asked: “Are you a movie guy? In your free time I mean?” Adam responds, “I don’t know,”, but what I postulate is that the guy asking isn’t real. Here’s why: Adam tells him about a movie he’s recently seen recently that he really liked that he just happened to be in: “Where There’s a Will There’s a Way”.

    On his way home he stops by a movie store to see if they have that movie, but they don’t have it. He ends up watching it anyway because he already owns a copy. Even the actor uses a fake name: Daniel Saint Claire. His real name is Anthony Claire.

    What are some symbols used in Enemy?

    Street Art – On his way home from work, he passes by a mural with the same man drawn multiple times. Behind that mural is the movie store.

    Video Cameras – Even the security cameras don’t follow him around. When Adam is checking out Anthony’s apartment, he looks at the security cameras. If he didn’t want to be seen, he should have looked down, not directly at them for so long The director specifically decided to include them in the movie as the shot pans to include them and shows Adam staring at them as he walked by. As an actor, this is a symbol for how he’s not on camera (not working as an actor) as much as he wants to be.

    Phones – Adam has a cell phone. He ignores it when his mother is calling at his apartment, but picks it up when Anthony calls him at school, but when he’s calling his wife’s apartment he uses a pay phone first and then a land line at his apartment. Pay phones are often used during affairs, which was highlighted in the movie by the same name.

    Any other reasons why Adam and Anthony are the same person?

    • He calls his wife to act like a stalker to sow seeds of doubt about someone calling later on. He’s not home when she calls because he is him.
    • When she visits him at school she calls his cell phone, he answers, but he’s out of sight.
    • When Adam calls Anthony he says he spoke to his “wife”, but how did he know she was his wife?

      • What does the director of the movie think the film is about?

      The director states it’s about a man who decides to leave his mistress and go back to his pregnant wife. I don’t think he actually had two apartments or that he actually left his wife. I think he was just absent from her emotionally. Here’s why: After he turns off the radio after hearing about the accident from his fantasy. He wakes up when thinking about his affair and tells his wife, “I’m sorry.”

      What do you think happened in Enemy?

  • Mexican Food Principle

    Mexican Food is great, but it can teach us lessons far beyond gastrointestinal delight. I’m talking about the Mexican Food Principle.

    Mexican food’s great, but it’s essentially all the same ingredients, so there’s a way you’d have to deal with all these stupid questions. ‘What is nachos?‘ ‘Nachos? It’s a tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables.’ ‘Oh, well then what is a burrito?‘ ‘A tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables.’ ‘Well then what is a tostada?‘ A tortilla with cheese, meat, and vegetables.” -Jim Gaffigan

    When CBS News reporter, Amanda Schupak, was describing Google’s new modular phone she said, “It sounds like a taco truck. But instead of picking a filling, sauce and side, your choices are a camera, a speaker and an extra battery.”

    This is a metaphor we can all understand. There are basic building blocks to make something ‘delicious’. In the kitchen, it’s cheese, meat, and vegetables. In a smartphone it’s a touchscreen, WiFi, and bluetooth. Sometimes you want more or less of one or the other, but it’s never going to be bad. That’s the Mexican Food Principle.

    Mexican Food Principle

    Mexican food is great, but it is all the same, it’s almost a conspiracy. It’s almost like they had a meeting 200 years ago in Mexico City and one guy stood up and he was like, ‘Hey, the reason I got everyone here is pretty simple, I figured we could rename this one entree seven times and sell it to the North Americans. The French said it would be a good idea.” -Jim Gaffigan

    This is not a conspiracy, it’s standardization. Peter Drucker said the greatest invention of the twentieth century was container shipping. Containers allowed ships, ports, and equipment to move easier than the random assortment of crates and boxes that preceded it. But the Mexican Food Principle isn’t just for standardization, it can also be used to create new outputs from the same inputs.

    Taco Bell is for Closers
    Taco Bell is for Closers

    SmartBrief on Social Media editor, Jesse Stanchak first coined the term in May of 2013 when referring to the “Mexican Food Principle” of repurposing content. “It’s pretty simple: Mexican food takes the same core ingredients, mixes them up and packages them in different ways. You can do the same thing with your content. If you do a good job remixing and reusing your content, your audience won’t see it as leftovers.”

    Forbes’ contributor, Nadia Arumugam, calls the Mexican Food Principle of product development, “Breeding“, which, “Has been seriously neglected in previous brainstorming sessions for new product development.” James Altucher calls this process of coming up with new ideas, “Idea Sex“.

    Whether you’re trying to create a new breakfast menu item by using a waffle as a tortilla or a doughnut as a bun, you’re using the Mexican Food Principle.

  • Freestyle – A Country Musical

    Freestyle – A Country Musical

    This jukebox musical is on Spotify. I’ve weaved a story out of the following country songs. It’s something I do for fun. Previously I’ve done it with pop/rock songs, but this is my my first attempt at country (by request).

    Listen to Freestyle on Spotify

    [Act I]

    1. Freestyle by Lady Antebellum – Thursday night, Charles, Pete and Kelley are rolling down a river road in a Chevy van listening to their favorite songs from Fleetwood Mac and Macklemore.

    2. Down This Road by Cam – Unbeknownst to them, Hillary passes the boys as she is driving to her childhood home. She lives in the city now, but has come home for a long weekend to visit her parents.

    As night falls on the town, one by one the lights go out. Just before Hillary turns her light off we see her pour an engagement ring out of a white paper envelope and look at it through the light.

    3. Drinking Class by Lee Brice – A rooster crows. Charles gets up for work on Friday while looking forward to going out to drink after work with some friends. To him, every night is “Friday”.

    As Charles opens his lunch pail and begins eating his lunch, he secretly opens a small paper notebook full of plans and diagrams for opening up his own business, but quickly puts it away when someone walks by.

    4. Everything to You by Caitlyn Smith – Hillary is eating dinner with her father and she notices how gray his hair has become and she wants to tell him about the ring, but instead sings her father a song.

    She gets a phone call from “Joe”, but she declines the call.

    5. Country Bumpkin by Cal Smith – Her father detects that something might be wrong so he tells her a story about how he met her mother and what she said to him on her death bed. He wanted to know that they had a good life.

    6. Neon Light by Blake Shelton – When Hillary finally listens to the voicemail, she hears Joe singing about how he misses her. He tells her he was looking for a sign and he’s finally found one, in the window of a bar.

    [Act II]

    7. Medicine by Shakira, Blake Shelton – Hillary tells her dad she’s going out for the night and she heads to bar for “medicine”. At the same time, Joe is sitting at a bar back in the city.

    At the bar she runs into Charles and before he can hide his notes, Hillary asks him about them. He quickly hides them before recognizing her and embracing her with a big hug. They begin to talk about old times.

    8. When the Right One Comes Along by Striking Matches – Hillary explains to Charles that she’s only home for the weekend to visit her dad, but the real reason is that she’s running away from her boyfriend, Joe, who asked her to marry her.

    9. Mess is Mine by Vance Joy – Charles tells her that he will take her problems from her for the night and that her “mess” is his. After the song, Charles asks Hillary to sing karaoke with him for fun.

    10. Momma Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys by TR Dallas – Charles chooses “Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys” and eventually the whole bar joins in with them as they sing together.

    11. Dirt by Florida Georgia Line – Charles asks Hillary if she’d like to take a walk and as he’s walking he kicks the dirt and starts telling Hillary about a time when he almost got married, but didn’t.

    12. Remind Me by Brad Paisley, Carrie Underwood – Hillary asks Charlie if he was talking about her. She reminds him that they used to date and it was actually him who took her to the airport when she first left town.

    Charlie asks her to remind him. She said, “We didn’t sleep. I remember I’d wake up in one of your old t-shirts. You’d kiss my neck. I can remember that, but I want you to remind me.”

    13. Drunk Americans by Toby Keith – Instead of kissing her, Charlie says their all just “Drunk Americans” and that, “We just came here to drink.” He walks back into the bar and begins singing with all of the people in the bar.

    Act III

    14. Can’t Get Away from a Good Time by Logan Mize – Saturday afternoon Charles is working on his truck when his friend, Pete, stops by on his way to the gas station. He tells Pete how he “can’t get away from a good time.”

    15. Feelin’ It by Scotty McCreery – Pete drops off Charles and calls up his girlfriend, Kelley to say he’s feelin’ like going out to the beach this afternoon. She’s friends with Hillary and invites her to the beach.

    Pete texts Charles to meet him there that night for beer and a bonfire. Charles responds “I can’t get away from a good time,” and we see him incorporating his new business online before grabbing his keys.

    16. Make You Miss Me by Sam Hunt – Hillary calls Joe and tells him she wants to break up. He says he will make her miss him and that she’ll miss sleeping in his t-shirt. She puts down the phone and cries into her hands.

    When she pulls her hands down she sees her bikini laying on the bed.

    17. Sunshine & Whiskey by Frankie Ballard – Pete sings to his girlfriend on the beach, reminiscing about the good times they had cruising around in his Chevy. Charles arrives and sees Hillary coming out of the water.

    18. Cruise – Remix by Florida Georgia Line, Nelly – Charlie asks Hillary if she’d like to take a ride in his Chevy and they go for a cruise. Charlie tells her he doesn’t want to be a blue collar worker anymore.

    19. Where Your Road Leads by Garth Brooks, Trisha Yearwood – Hillary thanks him for being there for her last night and tells him she’s broken up with her boyfriend. She said she would help him with his dreams if he would love her.

    20. Love You Like That by Canaan Smith – Charles tells Hillary that he can love her the way she wants him to and they ride off into the country sunset in his Chevy. As the taillights grow dim, the music fades into the night.

    1 Hour, 12 Min

    If you liked this, you might also like this rock musicals:

    Freestyle

  • The Digital Arrow of Time

    In the library scene from H.G. Well’s The Time Machine where the time traveling man from the past finds books that have fallen apart amid a new ‘CD’-looking object that plays after he spins it on a big open plate thing. He asks about their books, only to learn they have been left to decay and turn to dust. He’s then taken to an ancient museum, where “talking rings” tell of their history.

    HG Wells Time Machine Talking Rings

    In H.G. Well’s future, books have been converted to talking rings, which are like CDs or DVDs that are more like metal rings that play when spun on a special table-top surface. But it’s not just books that need converted to new platforms, The White Album Problem also applies to digital cities.

    In this Atlantic piece on “What happens when digital cities are abandoned?“, Laura Hall writes, “Ownership…must be continually renewed, the way a garden must be continually tended, lest nature overtake its carefully-arranged borders.”

    The way she talks about revisiting her Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) reminded me of what it’s like to go back into the empty Minecraft server. There it sits, a world past occupied, ready to run for as long as it’s maintained. But what happens when it’s turned off the way collegeclub.com was turned off?

    Laura mentions Geocities, where I too had an address in Athens at “8802”. I still remember it because it was the first time a virtual place was categorized like a physical place and so it seemed like it wasn’t just online, but was a real destination. A destination that got shut down by Yahoo! in 2009.

    “The great paradox about these digital communities is that they’re easily kept around forever, and they are even more easily deleted utterly,” said Jason Scott, an Internet advocate and archivist who launched a digital preservation team in 2009. “These communities had lasting historical and societal value.”

    Laura pines, “It’s up to our future selves, or those who live beyond us, to make sense of what’s being saved today: to curate the data and form the stories around it that will give it meaning.” In H.G. Wells story that was with talking rings.

    Scott said, “This is not a new self-awareness. You’re just keeping it on a hard drive instead of the old family bible. Your diary is now on a server, instead of underneath your room, where your parents throw it out.” I couldn’t agree more.

  • Top 10 Meaningless Things People Apply Meaning To

    Universal or not, these 10 things only mean something when you apply meaning to them.

    Thumbs Up

    1. Laughter – a loud bellowing from one’s mouth. For most people this conveys to others that they found something funny, but it could mean that they have a lot of air in their lungs they really want to get out quickly.
    2. Honks – a loud bellowing from a vehicle’s horn. For most people this means the driver is warning another driver or that they are unsatisfied with a recent decision they made and they must be punished with sound.
    3. Clapping – the smacking of one’s hands together. This simple act is often accepted as confirmation of an achievement but it takes hardly any effort from the one clapping other than social involvement from others.
    4. Thumbs up – a single finger is raised in the air. This symbolizes that you did something good or that it is okay to proceed, but it may as well mean that you found which way is up or that you like looking at your fingernail.
    5. Middle finger – the longest finger is raised in the air. You are so proud of your longest finger you decide to showcase it to the world. It also comes in handy when trying to reach the thing farthest from your body.
    6. Two fingers – better than one finger at a time is two. Facing frontwards, you are letting other people know you still have two fingers. Facing backwards, you are letting people know you mean peace, or something.
    7. Winks – one eye is meticulously closed as to call attention to it. This may indicate that one eye is operating in a different dimension or time vortex where it blinks at a much slower rate than the other eye. Not to be trusted.
    8. Smiles – a way of showing as many teeth as possible. To dogs, this is a sign of aggression, but to most people it’s a sign of kindness – unless betrayed by the eyes, in which case the smile is usually a sign of danger.
    9. Speech – air blown through the mouth in specific tones. The melodies of speech used by different cultures means something only to those who choose to understand it, but is meaningless to everyone else.
    10. Writing – a difference in contrast between the surface where it’s written and the objects being written. These characters are, like speech, useful only to those who understand them, but are mere decoration to everyone else.

  • Sleepless – a Rock Musical

    In December of 2012 I wrote my first rock musical based on a compilation of songs on Spotify at that time. This is my 2nd rock musical, which like the first jukebox takes place over a period of 24 hours (here’s the Spotify link to listen):

    [Act I]

    1. Sleepless by Cazzette – The scene begins on the dancefloor right after the woman the he’s been dating has decided she needs more space. He’s forced to spend the night on her floor remembering when she used to sleep next to him.
    2. All the Way by Time Flies – In the morning he wakes up and decides he’ll be alright and she’ll come back to him someday, but resolves that next time he loves someone, he’ll love them all the way.
    3. The Man by Aloe Blacc – Before he leaves she offers to keep it a secret on Facebook for a while, but he tells her she can tell everybody because he’s “the man”, which he begins singing into the streets.
    4. Summer by Calvin Harris – Once away from her his heart turns to lament as he remembers the first time he met her, last summer. Then he remembers the lies she told and how she acts so innocent now.
    5. Can’t Hold Us by Macklemore – After running into his friend who convinces him to go out with him. His friend tells him, “This is the moment and tonight is the night. Learn from that failure, gain humility and keep marching”.
    6. All of Me by John Legend – That night he meets a girl with a smart mouth and a beautiful mind. He can’t figure her out, but he sticks with her through her range in mood swings and decides to give her all of him, but she doesn’t know this yet.
    7. Fallingforyou by The 1975 – The night is ending and she begins singing to him, “If you don’t want me around…” while secretly singing, “I think I’m falling, I’m falling for you,” and then he says, “I don’t want to be your friend.”

    [Act II]

    1. Midnight City by M83 – Together they are waiting for a car to come pick them up and while they wait, they look out over the city’s skyline. “The city is my church,” she says as she stares at the neon signs and sparkling twilight.
    2. Kids by MGMT – Off in the distance a car’s horn begins to honk. It’s his older brother. He stops, opens the door, the music is blaring. He recollects to her what it was like for them growing up and urges him to, “Control yourself.”
    3. Shake it Off by Taylor Swift – Before they get to her house, she urges him to “shake it off” saying that people always think the worst of her. She shares how her ex-boyfriend came around with his new girlfriend, but quickly stops.
    4. Burn the Pages by Sia – He quickly realizes he may be moving too fast and as they reach her house to drop him off, she stops him and lets him know that, “Don’t worry, I’m here by your side. Yesterday is gone and you will be okay.”
    5. Riptide by Vance Joy – “Lady, I wanna be your left hand man. I love you when you’re singing that song and I got a lump in my throat, ’cause you’re singing the words wrong. I just wanna to know if you’re gonna stay.”
    6. Rather Be by Clean Bandit – “If you gave me a chance I would take it. It’s a shot in the dark but I’ll make it. Know with all of your heart, you can’t shake me. When I am with you, there’s no place I’d rather be.”
    7. Welcome to the Black Parade by My Chemical Romance – He grabs her hand and as they walk together he begins telling her a story about how when he was a young boy his father took him into the city. He said:

    “Son when you grow up, would you be the saviour of the broken, the beaten and the damned? Will you defeat them, your demons, and all the non-believers,  the plans that they have made? Because one day I’ll leave you, a phantom to lead you in the summer, to join The Black Parade.”

    Then he turns to her and says, “I’m just a man, I’m not a hero. Just a boy, who had to sing this song.”

  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

    The Secret Life of Walter Mitty debuted in the United States on December 25, 2013. This review focuses on the how the film is an essay on the transition from analog to digital – made for and by the children of the 70’s (otherwise known as Generation X), the “analog vs. digital” and “disrespect for the past” themes, “the purpose of life”, and symbolism in the film. Most of this is from memory and is my own opinions. I have not read any other reviews on this movie, but have seen the movie and trailers.

    * Spoiler Alert * This article contains information about the movie. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, please consider watching it first. * Photos credit 20th Century Fox *

    Walter Mitty and Cheryl Melhoff

    Generation X

    In #Mitty, the movie, the actors and the director are all Generation X. Stiller was born in 1965 and is currently 48 years old. To give you perspective on the person writing this article, I was born in 1980 which makes me part of Generation X, Y, and the Millennial Generation, however I’m most likely Generation Jones. While I was able to pick up on a lot of the references and music used in the film, there are still things that I didn’t ‘get’ like the name on the t-shirt Mitty’s mom kept for him.

    The movie is full of references to Generation X. Mitty’s sister is auditioning to be Rizzo in Grease, a movie that came out in 1978. She gets him a Stretch Armstrong (debuted in 1976) doll for his birthday. Mitty has a Jansport hiking bag (popular in the 80’s). At the end of the movie Mitty is wearing a hoodie sweatshirt, a leather strap necklace with a copper hex nut, and friendship bracelets. There are also several scenes referencing “Major Tom“, which is a fictional character created by David Bowie in the late 60’s.

    You can always tell about how old you are based on what music appears in commercials and it’s becoming apparent that the markets have begun marketing less to the Baby Boomers and more to their children, Generation X. No where is that more apparent than in this movie, which is filled with product placements tucked in and tied to the story line from eHarmony to Papa Johns to LIFE.com, but with nods to Conan O’Brien, TBS, Cinnabon, Dell, CareerBuilder.com, KFC, Instagram, the iPhone, and American Airlines.

    Generation X was the last generation to graduate high school and enter the workforce before cell phones and Internet access became ubiquitous. Ben Stiller’s directorial debut, Reality Bites, which came out in 1994, was the same year Netscape started. The World Wide Web had just begun and yet it was already clear that things were changing. It appears that Ben Stiller, despite the success he’s had since then, still longs for a time when things were more simple, more analog – and is betting his audience does too.

    The Secret Life of Walter Mitty Movie Review

    Analog vs. Digital

    When Walter Mitty goes to give Rich the longboard at Cheryl’s home, there are at least three 70s-era cars on the street, which is very unusual for a movie set in 2013. In that same scene, on a wall, drawn in chalk is the words, “Here Comes the Sun,” which is an allusion to a Beatles Song of the same name from the album Abbey Road, which came out in 1969. On the cab ride back to his mom’s house, Walter Mitty wants to turn the cab’s digital video off to which the cab driver says ominously, “It stays on.”

    Walter Mitty has an analog clock in his apartment (not pictured, but you can hear it ticking in the background) and he wears an analog wristwatch with a leather strap. Although the watch is never specifically referenced in the film, it plays a small part in the short story by James Thurber. For a sense of how Thurber thought about watches, in The Gentleman in 916, he writes, “Even the sound of a wrist-watch prevents me from sleeping, because it sounds like two men trying to take a wheel off a locomotive.”

    While Walter Mitty does have a computer, it’s an older model, Dell laptop, which echoes his cell phone, an older flip-style phone. In contrast, Cheryl’s character uses a modern smartphone with Internet access. She still uses terms like “buffering” when searching the Internet (something she probably doesn’t have to do and isn’t a term used much any more). On the flip side, the photographer, Sean O’Connell does not have a phone at all – nor does any place Sean is currently located (ie. a shipping boat).

    While on the shipping boat, a deck hand takes a picture with his smartphone for Instagram, and asks to be Facebook friends. This foreshadows Mitty’s meeting with Sean O’Connel in Afghanistan who doesn’t take a picture at all, instead choosing to remember the moment as “me”/himself without the camera. This lost desire to be ‘in the moment’ shares a sentiment with those who identified with Charlene deGuzman and Miles Crawford’s I Forgot My Phone video which  went viral in August of 2013.

    Ben Stiller's Secret Life of Walter Mitty Movie

    Disrespect for the Past

    Walter Mitty works with analog film, something Kodak stopped making in June of 2013. Mitty’s co-worker, Hernando (which means “bold voyager”) has a man-crush on the photographer, O’Connell for still using film, which acknowledges he is well aware that although he is surrounded by film negatives, digital pictures have largely replaced analog film. Mitty states that he has never lost a negative despite “over a million” negatives passing through his care over the last 16 years he worked at TIME magazine.

    “Negative Asset Manager” is Mitty’s job title, but it’s also a metaphor for the deprecation of ‘everything that’s come before’. In the final scene of the movie, Mitty tells his former boss that the magazine has been built by many people over a long time, which the new boss is now treating as a negative asset on the balance sheet that needs debited or written off. The message is that businesses are created and ran by people, not balance sheets, and should be treated with more respect, even when things change.

    When Mitty’s boss, Ted Hendricks asks Mitty where the picture was, Mitty says it’s in a “silver bath” to which Ted does not even try to understand. He later asks someone else to look it up only to conclude that it “doesn’t exist.” Of course it exists, but simply Googling “silver bath” will only give you shiny pictures of bathroom accessories. You have to know that it was a part of photo processing, which is something older generations, even Generation X, understood – even if only in context.

    The most visual disrespect for the past occurs as Mitty is entering LIFE magazine for the last time and movers are literally dropping art onto the floor as they violently remove it from the walls. All of the desks are empty and covered in drop cloths like dead bodies, a symbol for the lost jobs and the lost magazine.  After working at the magazine for over 16 years, during his 17th year, the job ended – a ‘death” which could be a metaphor for the death of his father, which happened when Mitty was 17.

    Walter Mitty Purpose of Life

    The Purpose of Life

    In The Secret Life of Walter Mitty movie, LIFE Magazine’s motto is, “To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed.” This motto is written on the wall of the lobby and is repeated in the wallet O’Connell gives Mitty and in the background of the movie as Mitty leaves for Greenland. However, on the wallet, O’Connell added one more sentence, “That is the purpose of life.”

    Off the coast of Greenland when Mitty jumps into the ocean, the captain of boat yells, “Don’t fear the porpoise,” which sounds like, “Don’t fear the purpose.” In this movie, Walter Mitty is 42 years old. In real life, Ben Still was 47 at the time of shooting the film. While younger than Brad Pitt, he still may have fears about the purpose of his life, just like Walter Mitty. Just like us. Just like me. He doesn’t want to be the old man bringing the news on a telegram.

    Film Symbolism

    The most blatant symbolism used in the movie was with allusions to 35 mm film reels and negatives. From the lights in Mitty’s apartment hallway to the windows on the outside of his apartment building, to the dots on the glass in LIFE magazine lobby, to the fuselage of the Greenland airplane at night, the film perforations, also known as perfs or sprocket holes and rectangular acetone film frames themselves were apparent throughout the beginning of the film.

    The word “Life” was used throughout the movie, not just as the name of the magazine, but also in conversations Mitty had with Cheryl and his mother. It’s also referenced on the bottom of the longboard Mitty traded for in Iceland. In large print it says, “LIFIO”, which is Icelandic for “can survive”. Similarly, Cheryl comments to Mitty “last in, first out”, which is commonly shortened as “LIFO” in business process management. Find any more? Leave a note in the comments.

  • Ben Stiller’s Walter Mitty Longboards

    UPDATE: Bustin Boards has confirmed that it’s a Bustin Boards Boombox longboard and after seeing the movie, it should be noted that there is only one longboarding scene in Iceland. The other New York scene mentioned in this article is ‘covered’ by CGI which makes it look like Walter Mitty is longboarding on asphalt. All pictures copyright of their individual owners.

    Ben Stiller as Walter Mitty Longboarding in Greenland

    Ben Stiller stars in and directs The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, where he is seen carrying and riding a longboard skateboard in several parts of the movie. At one point he’s longboarding down a hill in Greenland, while in another scene he’s longboarding down a street in New York City. The 2013 movie, which is based loosely on the original James Thurber short story and the 1947 Danny Kaye film, was filmed in Bronx, New York City, Greenland, and Iceland.

    While the movie doesn’t come out in America until December 25, 2013, after watching the trailer I wondered what longboard Ben Stiller was using in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty movie. A reddit thread on longboarding in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty offered up the following clues. According to justchilln, “a Freebord was actually used in a dream sequence in which Mitty is snowboarding down the street of NY. Source- My buddy was the freeboarder.” You can see Ben Stiller filming part of this sequence in New York in this video below.

    On June 14, 2012 Silverfish Longboarding posted the above video on Facebook where Jame Ka-stello pointed out, “It’s a Gravity Ed Economy, and Ben can actually skate, modestly as it may be – lets not get too fired up, the wires are there because they use that rig for a lot of stunts. Plus it would suck for ben stiller to catch a stop rock and faceplant I suppose.” And Aj Powell said, “At least he’s riding Paris Trucks“. However, Willy Staley noticed that, “the trucks are on backwards.”

    According to user, thewatches, on Reddit, “I saw this movie in a pre-screening in nyc, and it’s fantastic, but they use 3 different longboards in the movie (it’s supposed to be just one board). They change it situationally, some downhill board like a landyachtz or something and two different Bustin boards.” While I couldn’t find a picture of a Land Yachtz longboard skateboard used by Ben Stiller in the Walter Mitty film, the pictures below are most likely a Gravity Ed longboard and a Bustin Maestro Pro longboard.

    Ben Stiller Gravity Ed Longboard Ben Stiller Bustin Maestro Pro Longboard
    In this image, Ben Stiller is likely riding a Gravity Ed longboard with Freeboard attachments to keep his feet in place. Some have criticized the film for Walter Mitty not wearing a helmet, but in this image he is being hung by wires to keep him up. Originally featured on The Daily Mail on May 7, 2012, Ben Stiller is shown carrying an. “extremely large skateboard over his shoulder”, which is likely a Bustin Boards Maestro Pro Longboard.

    M Longboard Industry in France

    While I’m not sure how this fits into the story, I did find that on Nov 10, 2013, M Longboard Industry wrote on their Facebook page (translated from French), “What a pleasure when a huge company producing Hollywood knocks on the door of a small workshop shape French … On the occasion of the release of the film “The Life of Walter Mitty” January 1, 2014, 20th Century Fox has decided to win 3, Z-Shape M-longboard-industry autographed by Ben Stiller in person!” and “Ben Stiller on the set of “The Dream Life of Walter Mitty”, on the occasion of the French release January 1, 2014, M-3 longboard longboards industry, the effigy of the film autographed by the actor to be won at the national level through UGC! Soon find all photos of the production of these boards Z-Shape.” The associated picture was that of Ben Stiller holding the sign post, which is a different longboard skateboard than the other two longboards shown.

    Ben Stiller Other Longboard

    What are the 3 Longboard Skateboards used by Ben Stiller in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?

    I have emailed customer service at Gravity Skateboards, Bustin Boards, Land Yachtz, and M Longboard Industry, but have yet to get a response about if any of their longboard skateboards were used in the Walter Mitty movie. However, both the movie and Bustin Boards are located in New York City so there’s a high probability that the movie used a local company. Gravity Skateboards are out of California, Land Yaachtz are out of Vancouver, BC, and M Longboard Industry is out of France.

    1. Gravity Ed Longboard – used in street scenes in New York city – buy on Amazon.
    2. Bustin Maestro Pro Longboard – used in the downhill scenes in Greenland – buy on Amazon
    3. Either the Land Yachtz Longboard Time Machine or the M Longboard Industry X Board as used in other parts of the film – buy on Amazon.

    If you have information about what longboard skateboard was used by Ben Stiller in the 2013 Secret Life of Walter Mitty Film, please let me know in the comments below or on Twitter.

    Matt at M Longboard Industry Matt points to this Rad Train article as evidence that Ben Stiller used Dregs Skateboards. I can’t find any hard evidence of that, nor can I find the original Concrete Wave Magazine article that supports it, but I will admit that the Dregs Blade Crest longboard does look a lot like the one used in the film. Josh Dickey, managing editor at The Wrap, said on Twitter that the downhill scene in Greenland features a LandYachts Wolf Shark longboard.

    If you’ve seen the movie and know what skateboard Rich is using in the park or think you have a different explanation for the longboard used, please let us know in the comments. Thanks!

  • Symbolism in Wes Anderson Movies

    Colin Marshall recently commented on about a series of RogerEbert.com video essays on Wes Anderson films. These are my comments on his comments, but mostly it’s about the symbolism I see in Wes Anderson films.

    Wes Anderson Suitcases

    • Suitcases – first few movies they are always silver, last few canvas; they are always matching and of different sizes – like different aged members of a family; they could obviously literally represent emotional baggage, but more likely represent the ties (family) that bind us and that we always carry with us (throughout all films). In the trailer for The Grand Budapest Hotel I noticed the hotel is full of suitcases – as if Wes Anderson is trying to tell us something – like this movie is all of his other movies combined into one hotel full of suitcases.
    • Guns – Bottle Rocket and Life Aquatic both had hand guns, but Mr Fox, Royal Tenenbaums, and Moonrise Kingdom all featured rifles. I think the obvious nod here is to violence, but I almost view it as a contrasting feature to the artistic, loveable characters – it lends to the ironic, comedic tone of the movie underscored by the understating the guns are given in each scene. They serve both as contrast and as comedy.
    • Binoculars – the commentator mentioned this as referencing Star Wars, but I think it’s much more than that. When you look through binoculars, there are many things happening
      • Your power is magnified – you can see farther, which gives you more power
      • You are symbolically looking into the future – children are often seen using binoculars – they want to see what’s coming. Adults do not want to know what’s coming because they are not looking forward to it.
      • You are seeing a mini-movie – what you see through binoculars is like a mini, personal movie inside a movie, which is a metaphor for Wes Anderson films, which are movies about making movies.
    • Trains – trains are featured prominently in Darjeeling Limited and The Grand Budapest Hotel. They are both used to literally move the plot forward and as a way to showcase Wes Anderson’s iconic “dollhouse” sets.