The FilmNerds Blog

As someone who was born in the state of Alabama, it’s impossible for me to watch Roll Tide/War Eagle, the latest production from ESPN Films, without feeling some pretty intense emotions. As you’ll see in the film, which airs Tuesday night at 8 pm Eastern on ESPN, being a part of this rivalry means that true objectivity and impartiality is not something you can ever realistically have when looking at the other side, no matter what any journalist covering either of the two teams may tell you. It’s hard to describe to an outsider how all-encompassing, how mind-blowingly intense, and at times how truly miserable it is to be a part of this rivalry – but this movie comes as close as it gets. If I ever need to choose one document to explain what it’s like to live in the state of Alabama, this movie would be it.

That sounds like extremely high praise but it’s really more of an indication of how completely misunderstood this rivalry has been for the length of its existence until very recently. The nation was shocked by the bizarre incident of an Alabama fan poisoning a group of landmark trees on Auburn’s campus last year and while it was certainly an abnormal occurrence, people who live in this state have heard of stranger and more violent happenings resulting from the Iron Bowl rivalry. To the rest of the nation, sports rivalries are something worth getting excited about for a few days a year, the days that the games are occurring. In Alabama, without exception, it’s something that is a part of every single day of your life. That includes Christmas (Auburn or Alabama ornaments on every tree), Thanksgiving (families mentioning Iron Bowl victories among things they are thankful for), and even your own wedding day (so help you God if you planned your wedding on a fall Saturday).

It’s a strange and unique phenomenon that has badly needed exploring by a talented filmmaker and director Martin Khodabakhshian handles it with delicacy by giving both sides equal time to explain their greatest moments and their perspective of the other side. He also chooses both some the most beloved figures from each side (Greg McElroy and Mark Ingram from Alabama, Pat Dye and Bo Jackson from Auburn) as well as some of the most controversial figures from each side (Harvey Updyke, the aforementioned tree-poisoner from Alabama, scandal-plagued Heisman-winner Cam Newton from Auburn) for interviews and manages to get some real insight from every person involved, which is no easy feat considering they are talking about one of the most sensitive subjects they’ve ever been a part of.

ESPN Films in its short life has already produced some of the most fascinating and deeply moving sports documentaries of all time, particularly during its 30 for 30 series that ran on ESPN last year. It has explored much darker and more serious subjects than the Iron Bowl in films like June 17th, 1994 and The Two Escobars (their two finest works so far, in my opinion) but when it comes to getting to the heart of a unique American sports phenomenon, I don’t know that ESPN or anyone else has done a better job than what we see in Roll Tide/War Eagle.

The segment of the film focusing on the strange and sad story of Harvey Updyke was probably the most effective part of the film for me, even though it is the least representative of the normal state of affairs here in Alabama. Updyke is a man who feels both ashamed and astonished at what he did but also deep down has some satisfaction and justification and even pride about what he did. He serves as a parable of what can happen when one lets this rivalry burrow too deeply into the mind and heart. At the end of the day, letting the rivalry get your emotions flowing is part of what makes it fun but you have to learn to turn it off or you could end up like poor Harvey.

Perhaps the most impressive feat of the film is the filmmakers’ resistance to draw some sort of narrative conclusion involving the April tornados that ravaged Tuscaloosa. Many of the less nuanced in-state journalists lept at the opportunity to decide that Alabama and Auburn fans had somehow had their perspectives changed by the tragedy, that it had brought them together and made them forget their silly, petty quarrels. The problem with that viewpoint is that it assumes there is something inherently wrong or petty about the Iron Bowl rivalry. There are freaks out there who take things too far but for the majority of us fans, it’s the source of some of our greatest joys in life. The truth is, people in Alabama love this rivalry and wouldn’t know what to do without it. That’s why the rivalry didn’t diminish one bit after the tornadoes and why it never will as long as both teams continue to care deeply about football.

For the first time in this series I’m profiling a show that hasn’t yet completed its run, which of course leaves open the possibility that the show will go out like many potentially great shows have before it by either overstaying its welcome or betraying its own identity and losing track of what made it so great. In this case, I think anyone who has seen the first three seasons of Breaking Bad will tell you that either of those scenarios seem extremely unlikely.

Breaking Bad is a series that doesn’t attract a lot of viewers, a fact I believe is attributable to a rather unpleasant sounding premise and an advertising campaign that’s not exactly easy on the eyes (the cover of the Season 1 DVD box features star Bryan Cranston wearing no pants and a green dress shirt tucked into his underwear). On its most surface of levels, Breaking Bad is not the same kind of visual feast as its prettier, more popular AMC sibling Mad Men. There’s no glamour, no fantasy escapism and hardly any sex.

The beauty of Breaking Bad is all in the narrative, a story that unwinds so perfectly logically and yet so consistently unpredictably that every hour of the show brings both an adrenaline rush and a satisfying intellectual discussion about the human heart and what it’s capable of. There is no other show on television that sparks as much post-show discussion in my household and that’s primarily due to creator Vince Gilligan and his writers’ willingness to break one of the cardinal rules of television writing: never let the character’s change.

In one of the opening scenes of the pilot episode, high school chemistry teacher Walter White (Cranston) explains to his class that chemistry is the study of the way basic elements can change their nature when put in different situations, a perfect foreshadowing of what’s to come for Walt himself. Walt is a quite typical family man, struggling to take care of his family on a teacher’s salary. When Walt is told by a doctor that he has terminal cancer, that normally stable element finds himself in an unusual situation and the changes he begins to undergo are drastic. Unlike the characters we see in movies who find out they have a short time left to live, Walt doesn’t suddenly become introspective and seek out the meaning of life. Instead he becomes more desperate than ever to find a way to take care of his wife, his son and yet-unborn daughter. Through chance and happenstance, Walt discovers a way to make a great deal of money in a short period of time: making crystal meth. Walt’s background in chemistry gives him all the know-how he needs to produce the city’s best product. All he needs is a business partner.

Enter Jessie Pinkman (Aaron Paul), a former student of White’s whose ultimate destiny was to drop out of school and become one of the many small-time meth dealers in Albuquerque. The creation and handling of Jessie by the writers of Breaking Bad is perhaps the most under-appreciated aspect of the show. While Cranston has earned an Emmy in each of the show’s three seasons on the air, Paul only earned recognition for his work for the first time this past season. But the careful balance between comedic idiocy and sincere, almost heartbreaking decency that Paul weaves into everything Jessie does is what dictates the tone of the show. If this were only a show about Walter White, it would be a dark show indeed. Jessie’s struggle to be at times, believe it or not, the moral compass of the two is at once hilarious, endearing and tragic.

The entertainment value inherent in the premise drives the first season entirely, as Walter becomes a classic “fish out of water”, a straight man trying his best to negotiate his way through a world filled with some of the most unpredictable, mentally unstable scum imaginable. When the show’s first major “villain” crops up at near the end of the first season, a Mexican meth lord named Tuco (Raymond Cruz), it’s clear that Walt and Jessie are in over their heads and that the stakes will only continue to rise. And rise they do.

There are points at which the intensity reaches “squirm in your seat” levels, including the now-classic Season 2 episode “Grilled”. The episode features an ingenious tension-building device involving Tuco’s sick, elderly uncle who is able to communicate only by tapping a bell. The episode is on par with the kind of tension-based writing Quentin Tarantino has made his name on.

A major part of the show is Walt’s struggle to keep his drug trade hidden from his pregnant wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a struggle made all the more difficult by the fact that Skyler’s brother-in-law Hank is a DEA agent (Dean Norris). Like Jessie, the Hank character is initially played for laughs, an overconfident blowhard who is more of a jock than a detective. But as the series goes on Hank gathers complexity, showing both what an incredibly competent agent he is and how fragile he can be when facing the fever pitch intensity of the drug world.

I will avoid talking about too many other characters that appear after the pilot since each character that comes into the lives of Walter and Jessie has an impact on where they ultimately end up and even on the men that they become as the series progresses, just as each element can be changed by the other elements it comes into contact with. Walter’s journey from the man he is in the pilot episode to the man he is at the thrilling cliffhanger ending of Season 3 is a stunning story about the power of a single choice in life. From one slightly abnormal decision made by a good man in a moment of desperation comes an almost unthinkable, yet totally believable, series of events ever deepening in intensity. Where Walter is headed, we still don’t know but what is clear from the first three seasons of this stunning show is that both he and Jessie are on a path that they can no longer turn back from. They live in a world completely shaped by the consequences of their actions and it’s a narrative so well-written, so well thought out by the writing staff that it makes you wonder whether the writers are writing the story or simply allowing the story to write itself.

Where to Watch It: The first two seasons are available on Netflix and while you can’t see Season 3 on DVD until June 7th, AMC is currently replaying the complete series two episodes at a time every Wednesday night.

In the wake of Aaron Sorkin‘s Oscar win for his brilliant screenplay for The Social Network, I thought I’d take the opportunity to look back at what I believe to be the most underrated work of Sorkin’s illustrious career. After bursting onto the scene as a Hollywood screenwriter and playwright, Sorkin first entered the world of television drama in 1998 with his critically acclaimed but sadly under-watched series Sports Night, a series that so defied the conventions of television writing that producers included a laugh track in the show’s first season before shifting to marketing the show as a straight drama in season two. By the time audiences finally caught on, Sorkin’s mind-blowingly awesome pilot for The West Wing had received a full series order in 1999 and Sorkin was officially on his way to becoming one of the biggest names in the history of television drama.

After a break from television that included work on a few Hollywood screenplays and a dalliance with drugs, Sorkin returned to television when his pilot script called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip was picked up by NBC in 2006. The show combines elements of both Sports Night, a show built around the production of a live television show and the camaraderie that goes along with it, and The West Wing, a show about the private lives of public figures and also a show that used personal relationships and character-driven dialogue to frame debates about relevant social issues.

Studio 60 focuses on the cast and crew of a highly popular late night sketch comedy show with a long legacy of smart social and political satire (ring any bells?) and the network executives at the fictional network that airs the show, NBS. On its surface level, it’s a show about the inner workings of a major network television show, the dozens of factors that play into what can and can’t go on the air, what defines success and failure, and all the many things unrelated to quality that determine what goes out over the airwaves.

For the length of the show’s first and only season, our main characters are the show’s two producers, both of whom are based loosely on Sorkin himself. Danny Tripp (played by West Wing alum Bradley Whitford) is the level-headed brains of the operation while Matt Albie (played by Matthew Perry) is the comedic voice of the show, though he struggles with both drug addiction and the lingering angst created by his relationship with his star cast member and former girlfriend Harriet Hayes (Sarah Paulson).

As Studio 60 is a largely autobiographical piece for Sorkin, many of the characters are based on people that figured prominently in Sorkin’s career and Harriet, as many have noted, is likely based on actress/singer Kristin Chenoweth, with whom Sorkin had a brief relationship prior to her stint on The West Wing. Like Chenoweth, Harriet is a devout Christian which leads to problems with her career as a mainstream entertainer, particularly when she angers her gay fanbase by appearing on an episode of The 700 Club. While Paulson doesn’t quite equal the acting chops of her formidable co-stars, the Harriet character from a screenplay standpoint is a brilliant Sorkin creation and her passionate back-and-forth with Perry’s Matt Albie is the emotional and philosophical core of the show.

Co-starring with Harriet in the cast of the show-within-the-show are D.L. Hughley, who puts in a surprisingly sincere and strong performance as the show’s veteran performer, and Nate Corddry (brother of The Daily Show’s Rob Corddry) as the impressionist of the cast (a role he plays quite well) who becomes a major focus of the second half of the season when his brother, a soldier in Afghanistan, is captured and held hostage. Corddry’s performance is heart-wrenching and gives Sorkin the perfect venue to talk about the personal consequences of what he believes to be a media-driven war.

Perhaps the most interesting piece of this complex and multifaceted puzzle of a show is what could be called the “business side” of show business, the network executives played by Amanda Peet, Steven Weber and TV veteran Ed Asner. Peet plays the head of programming at the fictional NBS, a TV producer’s dream who believes it’s her job to ensure that the goal of her network should be to create the best quality programming possible and that money will follow quality. Her boss, NBS chairman Jack Rudolph (Weber) disagrees and clashes with Peet throughout the series, arguing with surprisingly strong rationality for the idea that a network is a public company with shareholders and that its job should be to create profit. While Rudolph is clearly meant to be the “bad guy” in this relationship, Sorkin often shows him to be the wiser of the two on some matters and he makes it evident that men like Rudolph don’t attain their power and prominence without being very smart and very aware of the realities of their business. Asner’s Wilson White is the head of the parent corporation and is merely a recurring character but further adds to the complexity of the dynamic of putting on a simple little television show by reminding us that sometimes massive business deals, even international trade agreements can hinge on the public perception of a television network and the shows it airs.

Sorkin’s willingness to be daring and challenging in his approach to discussing the sometimes dirty business of network television was summarized perfectly in the very first scene of the pilot episode of Studio 60. In this clip, the show’s Lorne Michaels-esque producer Wes Mendell (Judd Hirsch) suffers a nervous breakdown in a scene that establishes right out of the gate just how high the stakes are for all the characters we’ll be following on this show.

Studio 60 ultimately wasn’t able to retain its enough of its massive early audience to get a second season from NBC, something that thankfully was understood early enough in the writing process that Sorkin was able to write the final few episodes accordingly and build towards a satisfying conclusion, a gift many canceled shows are never afforded. Some have blamed the wild success of another new series in 2006 that aired on the very same network, Tina Fey’s now massively successful sitcom 30 Rock, which was foolishly perceived to be very similar to Studio 60 both in concept and in name.

In truth what probably spelled the end for Studio 60 were two fundamental issues that were woven into the very premise of the show. One of them was an error on Sorkin’s part; the show-within-the-show never quite lived up to the hype Sorkin places around it with his dialogue and backstory. It’s supposed to be the Saturday Night Live of its world but what little we see of it is dull, unoriginal and dreadfully unfunny and that’s a difficult barrier for an audience to overcome when it comes to suspending disbelief. Secondly, and I believe most importantly, Sorkin’s main theme throughout this series is the reconciliation between conservatives and liberals, a message that in 2006 fell on very deaf ears. It was a show about the Iraq War, the media’s role in allowing it to happen, the neutering of creativity and artistic freedom by the buying power of Evangelical Christians. While this is fascinating stuff that Sorkin deals with in an intelligent and compassionate way, they are not topics that network television audiences want to spend an hour of their precious leisure time thinking about.

If you’re a fan of Sorkin’s brilliant work in either The Social Network or Charlie Wilson’s War, it’s important to remember that, as I’ll often point out in this blog feature, there are hours and hours of his writing available in the form of television drama, a form that doesn’t get the same level of respect as an Academy Award-winning screenplay but is no less stunning and engaging when it comes to dialogue, character development, storytelling and in the case of Sorkin, thoughtful political and social commentary.

Where to Watch It: The complete series is available for Instant streaming on Netflix.

First things first: welcome to our new regular feature here on FilmNerds that we’re calling TV for FilmNerds. This feature came out of my many conversations and experiences with fellow film lovers in which I discovered a prevailing bias by some of the more discriminating film fans against that infernal household appliance known as the television. Over the years, I’ve come to devote an equal amount of my leisure time to both TV and film and in this humble film nerd’s opinion, there is just as much brilliant, smart and even emotionally powerful content coming over the airwaves (or cable as it may be) as there is on the silver screen. You just have to know where to look. In each installment, we’ll be highlighting a some work made for the small screen that we feel even the snobbiest of TV-hating film fans would admire and enjoy if they gave it a chance.

I decided to open this new feature with a series that served as the cinematic training ground for one of the most buzzed-about young directors working today, Edgar Wright. Wright burst onto the scene with the brilliant zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead in 2004 and followed it up with the Michael Bay-esque action homage Hot Fuzz in 2007. Most recently, Wright set the nerd world on fire with this summer’s underappreciated Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

But to call Wright the sole creative force behind Spaced (1999-2001) wouldn’t be fair or accurate. Wright directed the series but the writing duties fell solely to the two stars of the show, Simon Pegg (who later starred in Wrights first two theatrical features) and Jessica Stevenson, who aside from a memorable cameo in Shaun of the Dead would most likely be recognized by Americans as the strict mother from the cult indie hit Son of Rambow. The trio met working on a British sketch comedy show and decided to embark on their own venture about a platonic pair of 20-something burn outs by the name of Tim and Daisy who move into an apartment together and get up to all sorts of highly referential hi-jinx.

The rest of the show’s cast of characters is relatively small: there’s Tim’s gun-toting best friend Mike (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz co-star Nick Frost) who is obsessed with all things war; Daisy’s best friend Twist (Katy Carmichael), a shallow fashionista who doesn’t get any of the many references bandied about by the rest of the cast; tortured artist Brian (Mark Heap) who screams while painting in the apartment down the hall; and landlady Marsha (Julia Deakin) who rather creepily leers at all the young hipsters while quietly wishing she was one of them.

The show’s first series (that’s a season for us Americans) relies pretty heavily on the gag of referencing other films, going particularly heavy on geek masterpieces like Evil Dead 2, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and, of course, the original Star Wars films. A fan favorite among the seven episodes of the first series is the fourth episode “Battles” which features a paintball battle with the brilliant Peter Serafinowicz (Look Around You) that shows a lot of the talent for action cinematography that Wright displayed later in Hot Fuzz.

By the time the second series rolls around though the show, like most television comedies, has become far more at ease with its own characters as well as its sense of style and tone. Rather than rely so heavily on referencing, the show generally focuses on the quirks of its characters and the relationships between each of them and rather than simply become a meta-film playground, the show begins to create some quite excellent film moments of its own.

The standout sequence from the show comes in the fifth episode of the second series “Gone”, which eventually features fake gun battles and one of the best Jurassic Park references ever. Earlier in the episode, however, Wright and company give us an incredibly original and unique sequence that grows out of a very simple question between two friends: where should we go drink tonight? (Click the picture to watch the scene in its entirety)

It’s a scene that can both be appreciated by those who don’t know Tim or Daisy but a scene that so perfectly captures and synthesizes the very specific and evocative tone of the series. It gives us a glimpse inside two very typical, very self-aware young middle class Londoners looking to both have a good time but also make sure that they convey the right message about their own identities while doing it.

At just 14 total episodes, Spaced is an easy watch and never really turns in a dull or unnecessary episode (in part a product of the far superior British form of making all television in a sort of miniseries format). Fans of the Simon Pegg-Nick Frost comedy dynamic will find plenty of it here and the peripheral characters, particularly the wonderfully odd landlady Marsha, get their share of laughs too but the star of the show is the perfectly handled and understated romantic tension between Pegg and Stevenson. Like Tim and Dawn of the BBC’s The Office before them, Tim and Daisy’s never becomes the obvious romantic plotline we constantly expect it to turn into, though there is plenty of suggestion and hinting along the way.

Where to Watch It: The DVD box set features an absurdly good lineup of commentary tracks for each episode, including commentaries by Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Diablo Cody, but if you don’t have Netflix you can watch the entire series for free online at Hulu.