Author Archives: Todd

Happy birthday, Mr. Rogers

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I don’t have a lot of heroes, but Mr. Rogers is one of them. I watched him when I was a kid, and I watched him again decades later with my children. He’s been criticized over the years by people who didn’t understand him, who thought that his talk about feelings and being special gave several generations of children an inflated sense of self-worth. In truth, he was trying to teach children how to understand themselves, to take responsibility for their actions and treat others with respect. In honor what would have been Fred Rogers’ 85th birthday, here’s something I posted on Oct. 11, 2010:

Channeling my inner Mr. Rogers

Sunday was Mama’s night off. She went to a movie (“Easy A”), and I took Thing 1 and Thing 2 to Moe’s.

While I was paying, Thing 2 (the 4-year-old) ran to get a drink and find a table. I sent Thing 1 (the 10-year-old) to keep an eye on Thing 2.

Soon as I caught up with them, Thing 1 tattled on her brother. “Thing 2 found a Lego man,” she said, trying to sound helpful.

I turned to Thing 2. “You found a Lego man?”

He had a bad feeling about this. “Uh-huh.” He wasn’t making eye contact. He knew where this was heading.

“Where’d you find him?”

“Over there,” he said, pointing to the pop machine.

“Well,” I said, “I think we need to find out if he belongs to somebody.”

Thing 2 nearly burst into tears (he’s learned that being cute and pathetic and really loud helps him get his way, especially in public).

“I want to keep him,” he whined.

“But he’s not yours,” I said, trying my best to channel my inner Mr. Rogers. 

Because of his sweaters and puppets and slow way of speaking, a lot of people made fun of Mr. Rogers, but Mr. Rogers had it figured out.

He understood that kids are just trying to make sense of their feelings and what’s happening in the world around them. He treated them with kindness and love and respect.

Plenty of times over the past 10 years, when Thing 1 and Thing 2 have tried my patience and I haven’t been sure what to do, I’ve asked myself, “What would Mr. Rogers do?” 

“Imagine if you lost a Hot Wheel,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic yet authoritative. ”Wouldn’t you want someone to give him back?”

“No,” he lied.

“Really?”

“No. I’d want him to keep it.”

“Really.”

“Yes,” he said. “I’d want him to keep it. It would be like he found a present!”

“Really.”

“Uh-huh.”

I have no idea how Mr. Rogers would have responded to that.

I responded by taking Thing 2 around the restaurant to the three tables with children. The first two said it wasn’t theirs. Thing 2 perked up. Doing the right thing might not be so bad after all!

A boy at the last table, though, said it the Lego man was his.

Thing 2 was crushed. He shuffled back to our table, his head hung low, your basic Charlie Brown walk of depression.

When we sat down, I said, “I’m proud of you. That boy was really glad to get his Lego man back. Aren’t you glad we helped him find it?”

He put his head down on the table and stared out the window. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he sighed.

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Wreck-It Ralph follows Hollywood’s 17-minute storytelling rule

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Thing 2 watched Wreck-It Ralph three or four times this weekend, meaning I watched it three or four times, too. Thing 2 doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but when he did, he picked Wreck-It Ralph.

Sunday, when it was time for lunch, I made him pause it once the movie reached a good stopping place.  I picked the scene where Ralph, sneaks away from his game, where he’s the villain, to become a hero in a first-person shooter called Hero’s Duty. I hit “pause” right as Ralph crossed the threshold from Game Central Station into the other game, and I noticed the time:

Ralph enters Hero’s Duty right around the 17-minute mark.

I learned about the 17-minute rule a few years ago when I was reading a book about screenwriting. The idea is that the first act of pretty much any Hollywood movie ends around page 17 of the screenplay, which usually translates to 17 minutes into the movie (give or take a minute).

In terms of storytelling, Act I is the setup. It’s where we meet the characters, find out when and where we are and what motivates the hero, and then something happens that changes the status quo and starts story gets rolling:

  • H.I. climbs the ladder a second time to finally kidnap one of the Arizona quints (“They got more’n they can handle”) at around the 17-minute mark of Raising Arizona.
  • Luke’s takes possession of the droids 17 minutes into Star Wars. The droids are what leads Luke to Obi-Wan Kenobi and Princess Leia and, ultimiately, the Death Star.
  • Buddy leaves the North Pole to find is real dad 17 minutes into Elf.
  • The shark eats the little boy on the raft 17 minutes into Jaws. It’s the movie’s second attack, but it’s what forces the town to close the beach and go after the shark.
  • Kevin Costner is thinking about plowing under the baseball field he built in his cornfield until Shoeless Joe appears 17 minutes after the credits in Field of Dreams.

Of course, the 17-minute rule isn’t set in stone.

In the book I was reading, Lew Hunter’s Screenwriting 424, the chairman emeritus of UCLA’s film school calls it the “floating page 17″ rule, meaning the scene setting up the rest of the movie should come around page 17. There are plenty of examples of where that scene comes sooner or later — but only a little sooner or later.

How come?

Hunter says, basically, that 17 pages (about 17 minutes of screen time) is about how long it takes to set up the story and pull people in. Sooner, and we don’t know enough about the characters to care about what happens. Later, we just get bored.

Ever since I read Hunter’s book, I can’t help but notice when Act I ends and Act II begins. It’s usually around the 17-minute mark.

26 things about Raising Arizona

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Hard to believe its been almost 26 years since I cut class to see Raising Arizona in the theater. That’s over a quarter century ago!

All I knew going in was that it was by the guys who’d made Blood Simple, and that it was a comedy. I’m not ashamed to say that I literally laughed ’til I cried.

Raising Arizona is a classic, one of the funniest movies ever and one of the most quotable:

  • “OK, then,” which is what I tend to say whenever someone says something so stupid it’s easier to agree with them and move than argue the point.
  • “Gov’ment do take a bite, don’ she?” which is the only thing you can say on Tax Day.
  • “There’s what’s right, an’ there’s what’s right, and never the twain shall meet,” which is perfect for when there’s no right answer.
  • “That’s natural,” which I think I said every single time my wife said one of the kids had hisself or herself a little ol’ rest stop.
  • “Son, you got a panty on your head,” which I said to Thing 2 once when he was a toddler, because he did. (He was playing super hero.)

I missed the movie’s silver anniversary, but when I read somewhere the other day that its 26th anniversary was coming up, I thought I’d post a list of 26 things about Raising Arizona:

1. It came out on March 6, 1987, the same day as Lethal Weapon.

2. You might have recognized Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” on the soundtrack, but the tune that plays under the opening credits is a cover of “Way Out There,” originally recorded by Sons of the Pioneers back in the 1930s.

3. The opening credits don’t start until 11 minutes into the movie.

4. The American Film Institute ranks Raising Arizona 31st on its list of America’s 100 Funniest Movies. Arsenic and Old Lace was No. 30. The Thin Man was No. 32. (If you haven’t seen either of those, shame on you.)

5. Raising Arizona opened to mixed reviews; it has a 57% (rotten) rating among top critics on RottenTomatoes.com.

6. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker liked it well enough. She said it’s “no big deal, but it has a rambunctious charm.”

7. Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert disagreed. His 1.5-star review began: “I have a problem with movies where everybody talks as if they were reading out of an old novel about a bunch of would-be colorful characters.” OK, then.

8. David Kehr of the Chicago Tribune didn’t like it, either. He said it was like “an episode of ‘Hee Haw’ directed by an amphetamine-crazed Orson Welles,” which I think sounds awesome.

9. Audiences were pretty much ”meh.” Raising Arizona earned only about $22.8 million in 1987 (that’s $45.5 million in today’s dollars).

10. Based on ticket sales, here’s a list of some of the movies that audiences in 1987 liked better than Raising Arizona: Ernest Goes to Camp ($23.5 million), Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol ($28 million) and Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise ($30.1 million).

11. Raising Arizona was shot by Barry Sonnenfeld, who went on to direct the Men in Black and Addams Family movies.

12. The outside of the “Maricopa County Maximum Security Correctional Facility For Men” is really the 24th Street Water Treatment Plant in Phoenix.

13. The prison counselor (“Why do you say you feel ‘trapped’ in a man’s body?”) was played Peter Benedek, co-founder of the United Talent Agency in Beverly Hills.

14. H.I.’s cell mate (“…and when there was no meat, we ate fowl and when there was no fowl, we ate crawdad, and when there was no crawdad to be found, we ate sand”) was played by Sidney Dawson, a retired music teacher from Tucson.

15. In the scene were H.I.’s co-worker is telling him about the wreck (“… there was this spherical object restin’ in the highway, and it wasn’t a piece of the car,”) their coveralls say “Hudsucker Industries.” Joel and Ethan Coen wrote The Hudsucker Proxy first but didn’t shoot until a few years after Raising Arizona. (In The Hudsucker Proxy, Hudsucker Industries is the company that introduces the hula hoop. You know, for kids!)

16. The outside of Nathan and Florence Arizona’s home is the historic Jokake Inn, which is now part of The Phoenician, a five-diamond resort at 6000 East Camelback Road in Phoenix.

17. Florence is a town in Arizona. There’s a prison there.

18. Florence Arizona was played by Lynne Dumin Kitei, who’s really a doctor.

19. In the movie, a reporter asks Nathan Sr. if it’s true Nathan Jr. was abducted by UFOs. (“Don’t print that, son. His mama reads that, she’s just gonna lose all hope.”) In real life, Lynne Dumin Kitei wrote a book and made a documentary about the Phoenix Lights, a 1997 UFO sighting over the city.

20. Nathan Sr. tells the FBI Nathan Jr. was wearing his jammies (“Nobody sleeps naked in this house, boy!”), but, in fact, the quints were wearing only diapers.

21. Unpainted Arizona was really the Home Depot at 12434 North Cave Creek Road in Cave Creek.

hitattoo22. H.I. and the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse have matching tattoos of a cartoon bird. It’s the logo for Thrush, a brand of mufflers (slogan: “Making hot rods hotter since 1966″).

23. The lullaby that Edwina sings to Nathan Jr. (“…for I did murder that dear little girl/Whose name was Rose Connelly”) is a 19th century ballad, “Down in the Willow Garden.” that’s been recorded by everyone from the Everly Brothers to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

3219_full24. The graffiti on the men’s room door at the gas station where Gale and Evelle clean up after releasing themselves on their own recognizance says “P.O.E/O.P.E” That’s a reference Dr. Strangelove. It stands for “peace on Earth” or “purity of essence” and is the code needed to avert the apocalypse.

25. In “Raising Arizona,” the door is knocked down by the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse, who’s on the trail of Nathan Jr. (Symbolism!)

26. The hayseed bank that’s robbed by Gale and Evelle (“You want I should freeze or get down on the ground?”) was Cavalliere’s Reata Pass, a Western-themed steakhouse at 27500 N. Alma School Parkway, Scottsdale. (When I checked on February 23, 2013, its website said it was closed, but it might have reopened.)

PHOTO: Jokake Inn Bell Towers by Michael D. Martin via Flickr (Creative Commons)