Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An In-Depth Analysis of the Film by a 16-Year-Old Version of Myself

Before I was an aspiring screenwriter/snarky blogger, I was once a legitimate film critic for a daily newspaper. Sure, I was a teenager, and sure, I reviewed movies like holiday classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but that didn't make me any less legit or any less snarky.

Because I thought it might be fun (and because I'm also a bit lazy) I've pulled out a piece that I wrote for the paper when I was 16. It's been eight long, crazy years...



'Rudolph' movie flawed, yet still a classic favorite
Written by Zombie, Age 16
Originally Published in the Tribune Chronicle

Legend has it that somewhere in medieval Europe, two small children were chopped up with a butcher knife and ground into sausage.

(Seriously, this is a Christmas story. Keep reading.)

As the legend goes, St. Nicholas arrived and was able to bring the two little sausage patties back to life, as children.

I've got one question:

How come we don't see claymation holiday specials about THAT?

Just imagine it: The two little claymation kids could easily be put through a sausage grinder. (Or, more likely, one of those little mold things that squeezes your Play-Doh into noodles.) The opportunities for gratuitous cartoon gore are endless.

While our animated Christmas specials weren't ever as violent as any given episode of "Mr. Bill," they were still SERIOUSLY MESSED UP.

"Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" made its debut on NBC on Dec. 6, 1964.

"Rudolph" is the pinnacle of all Holiday TV specials. I may even venture to argue that it is one of the greatest movies of all time.

Just as when anything is considered perfect, there is always room to point fingers and laugh at it, "Rudolph" leaves itself open for much ridicule, mainly because of the large, glaring errors and distinct lack of logic in his plot.

Next time you watch, try to explain these:

- Carefully listen to what everyone calls the misfit elf who wants to be a dentist. They begin calling him "Herbie." About halfway through the movie, his name changes suddenly to "Hermey." Which one is it?

- Why does Yukon constantly lick his pickaxe?

- What's wrong with the misfit girl doll? She seems OK by me.

- What kind of stupid elf would build a train with square wheels? Put jelly in a squirt gun? Name his jack-in-the-box "Charlie?"

- What makes King Moonracer think Santa will help the misfit toys? Didn't Santa just help run Rudolph out of Christmas Town for being a misfit himself?

- Santa doesn't seem very concerned for Rudolph when his parents are missing. He's only concerned with whether or not he'll be able to fly his sleigh to all the good children in the world. Is that selfish, or what?

- The abominable snowmonster is completely harmless once they remove his teeth. Wait a minute . . . isn't he still 10 times their size? I don't understand why he doesn't just step on the elves, and knock down Christmas Town.

- Why does Santa give the misfit toys out to children at the end? They've already pointed out to us that no one wants them. I mean, I'd be pretty disappointed if I unwrapped my toy elephant and saw that some dummy (probably the one who dreamed of being a dentist) had painted polka-dots on it.

- If I were one of the mean elves at the end of the movie, I'd hate to have Hermey/Herbie/Whatever working as my dentist. I can just imagine this following scene:

Dentist: Alright, now open your mouth a little bit wider... Good. I can see in back now. Hey, wait a second, didn't you used to make fun of me? Well, buddy, looks like it's time for a root canal!

Elf: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!

Despite all the glitches that I pointed out in the movie, it teaches us a lesson that I find valuable to this day.

Each character learns to let themselves be individuals. So, whether you're a red-nosed reindeer, an elf who wants to be a dentist, a jack-in-the-box named Charlie, or a humor columnist who wears duct-tape pants, remember that very important message.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!

7 Pounds out of 10

I had seen the preview for Seven Pounds several times before going to the actual movie, and what struck me about the trailer was that it didn’t spoon feed me the amount of character and story information that I’m accustomed to these days. I had mixed feelings about it. I distinctly remember being curious, but confused at the same time. Seven Pounds seemed like a movie that was going to make the viewer work to keep up with the story. That proved to be true, but its story makes viewers work just a little too hard, and the blend of curiosity and confusion lingers throughout. In the end you’ll be keeping your fingers crossed that it all adds up, and you’ll be disappointed that the film finds ways to dance away from its strongest element in the courtship of two wounded characters, for the sake of its elaborate conclusion.

Seven Pounds is directed by Gabriele Muccino (The Pursuit of Happyness) and stars Will Smith as Ben Thomas, an IRS agent who takes it upon himself to alter the lives of seven strangers for the better. Why he embarks on this mission is a secret that Muccino and writer Grant Nieporte guard half heartedly. They feed you pieces to that particular puzzle, but you’ll have it solved well before the full revelation. The clandestine treatment of Ben’s past seems unnecessary, and unfortunately, so did most of the strangers in the film.


Rosario Dawson plays Emily Posa, a printmaker who suffers from an ailing heart. She’s the most important of the seven strangers to Ben Thomas and the most important to us. Woody Harrelson plays Ezra, a blind pianist and second of the two most worthwhile strangers. I loved Dawson, and throughout the movie I wanted to yell at Ben Thomas for not falling in love with her as quickly as I did. In these depressing times their steady courtship is what people care about, but the movie keeps jumping away to secondary characters that are small parts of Ben’s mission. On paper they may seem big, but on the screen they come off as distractions. Ben rescues an old lady from an abusive hospital, helps a Hispanic mother flee an abusive relationship, and donates bone marrow to a young child, but these saintly moments don’t hold much weight. For us to care about all of seven strangers and draw any real reward from Ben’s deeds, we need to spend more time with those characters, and to do that the movie needed to be three hours long. I don’t think Will Smith had it in him for three hours of Ben Thomas. At times, two seemed like more than he could handle.

There’s no questioning Will Smith’s ability to deliver as an actor, but this was the first role of his that I’ve seen in which he seemed stiff and perhaps a bit uncomfortable. I think a part of the problem is that there really just isn’t much of an emotional range for Ben Thomas. He spends most of his time somewhere between depressed and very depressed. His moments with Emily present opportunities where his character can really evolve, but Ben takes small steps forward and stops in the realm of the bland. Granted the character has reason to be angry and depressed, but someone like Will Smith is so gifted with his knack for drama and comedy in the sense that the man can go anywhere as an actor, so it becomes frustrating to see him stuck with Ben Thomas in a sort of character bubble.

People will go see Seven Pounds because of Will Smith, but people should go see Seven Pounds because of Will Smith and Rosario Dawson. The film is at its best when they simultaneously occupy the screen in a story about two people that need each other. When you pull away, it’s a story about more than just two people, and it’s about a man’s mission. But there will come a point in the film when most viewers will abandon Ben’s mission in favor of his underlying love story with Emily. You will hope that in the end the pay off will be as good as Muccino probably thinks it is, but when you arrive at that pay off, it will be hard to escape a feeling of underachievement. You won’t be too upset about it, because in the end you’ve watched two characters who needed each other find one another. It doesn’t matter how good or bad times are, if done right, that element will always leave viewers happy.

Holiday cheer from the BFI archives...

I'm a sucker for Victorian-era film/photography. I was really delighted to see BFI reaching into their archive for the holidays... Oh, how far special effects have come since 1898!

Made in 1898, G.A. Smith's 'Santa Claus' is a film of considerable technical ambition and accomplishment for its period. It uses pioneering visual effects in its depiction of a visit from St. Nicholas.

A former magic lanternist and hypnotist, Smith was one of the first British film-makers to make extensive use of special effects to create fantastical scenes. It comes as little surprise that Smith corresponded with the French pioneer Georges Méliès at about this time, as the two men shared a common goal in terms of creating an authentic cinema of illusion. (Michael Brooke)

Courtesy of the British Film Institute.

The Writing Week Part 51 – Got a Manager

At this time last year, my post-Apocalyptic spec was, at best, an emerging idea, a dim light in my head beginning to grow bright. By April, I had a draft of it that the League had seen and was pleased with, especially for a first draft. I took a few months away from it to gain the necessary space between writing a first draft and attacking the hell out of it with rewrites. By Summer, I was back at it, reworking scenes, cutting some while other Leaguers held a gun to my head and verbally abused me about the uselessness of said scenes. I went out of the League for the first time and received feedback from a former board member of the company I work at, a former board member who writes for television. After receiving his notes – the equivalent of a polite nod, pat on the back, and then suggestions on how to fix the damn thing – I was back at the drawing board. By mid October, I had a draft that I was pleased with, pleased enough to begin the query letter process for the first time.

If you search for query letters or query letter help on Google, you’re likely to get a lot of conflicting and often demoralizing information – I know I did. One of the most upsetting things, if you want to call it that, was frequent mention of the current ineffectiveness of query letters. According to most help guides for writing query letters, most blogs written by agents and agents’ assistants, and most tutorials and informative sites managed by producers, query letters do not work. The statistics I read led me to believe that if I sent out 100 letters, I would be lucky to hear back from 10 companies, 3 of which would request to read my material.

I sent out an even dozen letters, and I did them all via email. If querying is so useless these days – the main argument for that being that people don’t take the time to read them anymore (though what they do read was never mentioned – then I didn’t want to spend any money on them. OK, I did pay the $25 for a subscription toe DoneDealPro.com, but that’s a hell of a lot cheaper than a Hollywood Representation Directory and it comes with updated script sales. Can’t beat that. So, I went about choosing my companies from DoneDeal based on those that met two “very strict” criteria: they had websites and, either on that website or on their info page on DD, had an e-query address. Twelve emails sent. I heard back from four of them, all requesting my script. That was back in October.

Two weeks ago this Thursday, I was at a brunch meeting for work. I got a call from an unknown number. Long story short, I had a 20 minute conversation with manager [redacted] of [redacted] Entertainment. [Manager] had emailed me the night before when he was only half way through my script asking if he could represent me. Since I hadn’t checked my email and answered by 11:30 the next morning, he gave me a ring. He loved the script and had some very big ideas for it. We agreed that he would send me a representation agreement and that I’d allow him to send out a feeler to someone very big in the industry (I’ll leave that person unnamed now, but he’s a big-wig). Last Wednesday, I met with [Manager] and signed on the spot with him. He outlined the timeline for pushing my script and we collectively decided on my next project, something I’d been thinking about a lot but had not yet committed to writing now.

Literally overnight I went from being unrepresented to being signed and having a big name reading my material. This script and what I’ve don with it has come a long way in under a year. The moral of the story – remember, this blog is to share our experiences for the benefit of other aspiring writers – is that two things work: persistence (which most – and hopefully all – writers know they need) and query letters (which people might tell you are useless now). As Jeffrey Nachmanoff once told me, great scripts do not just sit around in peoples’ drawers. They get discovered. Sometimes, we have to help our scripts come into the spotlight, but the bottom line is that they can. Get your material out there. Work on those query letters; have people review them for you – hey Leaguers, how long did we spend agonizing over every single word? It can work. Believe me.

The Wire and Authenticity

It’s not everyday that cnn.com puts something up that I feel should be shared on the site, but this has been a day of small surprises, the most exciting being my coworker bringing her puppy to the office. Thrilling, but you know what’s more exciting than puppies? Another two discs of The Wire arriving via Netflix today. I’ve recently started watching the HBO show with my girlfriend, and from what I had heard it’s supposed to be one of the best shows ever, yadda yadda yadda. I mostly agree, because it’s a pretty damn good show, but something still sickens me about how this country has such an intense interest in criminals of all colors, shapes, and sizes. But that’s a deeper conversation that demands more energy than I’m willing to put into this post. (Shhhh, I’m at work.) So instead I’ll just provide a link to an article in which CNN writer and West Baltimore native, John Blake, provides a brief critique of the show and examines its authenticity. All you Wire junkies should check it out.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/TV/12/22/the.wire/index.html

Trailer Trash XXV: Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)

"He knows when you've been naughty!"

Ah, the holiday-themed slasher - a cornerstone of the horror genre. Back in the glory days of the video nasty era, you rent a VHS and see people stabbed on any holiday Hallmark sells cards for. A few of the more popular holidays for rampaging psychos are Halloween (of course), Valentine's Day, and the Fourth of July. Even April Fool's Day has its own knife-wielding maniac flick. No question about it, though - the most creative and interesting holiday horror films are all centered around Christmas.

Ho Ho Horror! Merry Death-mas! Santa Clause is coming... to kill you! See how easy it is? For most screenwriters, the tagline practically writes your holiday horror script for you.

Most of these films involve overly-stabby Santas, but a few branch out to elves, gremlins, and deadly dwarves. A few classics are Black Christmas (aka You'd Better Watch Out), Christmas Evil (completely unrelated to the movie New Year's Evil), Silent Night Bloody Night, Don't Open Til Christmas and To All A Good Night. More recent entries in the genre are Jack Frost, Santa's Slay and Santa Claws.

What makes this holiday such a viable one for the genre? That's a college thesis I'll let someone else write. BUT - considering one of the most beloved Christmas tales, Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol, involves ghosts and all sorts of creepy stuff, it's certainly not a new trend.

That brings us to today's Trailer Trash spotlight: 1984's Silent Night, Deadly Night. By far the most prominent of holiday slashers, this one has spawned not only four sequels but an upcoming remake.

The plot of the first film is convoluted and nonsensical, but I'll boil it down for y'all: A little boy witnesses a robber dressed as Santa Claus kill his parents. Fifteen later that trauma leads him to dress as Santa Claus and go on a killing spree. It's more or less the same as Batman's origin story, but the results are oh so very different.

Y'know, you're probably getting sick of my chattering. Here's the trailer:



At 0:07 - I'm already scared by all of the very ominous-looking toys.
At 0:35 - No, Santa!
At 0:44 - Santa's strong!
At 0:52 - Don't kill Frosty!
At 0:56 - Splat!

For as silly as it is, the movie sorta works as a cheesy slasher flick. It's better than its sequels, for what that's worth, and has plenty of creepy moments. (Those shots of the creepy toys in the trailer? There has to be at least ten minutes of creepy toy footage in the film.) And that's Linnea Quiggley getting impaled on the deer's antlers, because it's barely an 80s horror film unless she's in it. I'll say this: if you're in the mood for a killer Santa movie, you could certainly do a lot worse than Silent Night, Deadly Night!


Happy holidays, y'all!

"He's Dreaming of a Red Christmas."

Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.

Keeping Fresh (some scattered thoughts)

Yesterday while watching a trailer for Frost/Nixon, I suddenly wondered whether this movie would have been made if we still lived in the Clinton era. Or if Bush had rocked our socks, and we didn't all secretly wish someone would interview him for 28 hours and get an answer.

A while back, Onyx gave me a list of criteria he thinks should be involved in judging a screenplay. Pretty much everything's on the list: story, (a lot falls under story, originality, conflict) structure, execution, dialogue, etc. However, I wanted to throw "current interest" in the list. Onyx, for good reasons, said that's up for debate. Obviously there will always be romantic comedies and action movies, but even those follow the trend of our time. An article in the New Yorker pointed out how the typical romantic comedies nowadays star the slacker dude who needs to learn responsibility and the hot go-getter girl who needs to loosen up, when a few decades ago the typical was the serious goal-oriented man's life is turned upside down when the bright sassy girl shows up. As for action movies, cars continue to blow up, but the depiction of the villains are now more PC and racially diverse.

On the other hand, being about a too-current event can hurt too. A while back a friend of mine was screening NYU's dramatic writing grad program's portfolio, when she came across a script that was about the victims of Katrina. She immediately rolled her eyes since it came off as a script fishing for sympathy with its subject. As it turns out, it was one of the best script in the pile, but my friend was obligated to read every script to the bitter end. If she was an agent that gave every script 15 page chance, this one might have not made it.

Cake Man recently posted about the possible slow demise of historical movies, and in the comments Onyx says that Westerns might need to reinvent itself to stay alive. There was some debates on that. Perhaps they need to do what romantic comedy does: keep updating. The story will always be the same: get the girl/guy, people can expect that comforting thought going in, but it certainly keeps itself up to date with the times.