Warning: this review gives away the ending.

Me and Will (1999)
Directed and written by Melissa Behr and Sherrie Rose
Starring Melissa Behr and Sherrie Rose
A Melissa Behr and Sherrie Rose joint.

This is not a good movie.

It is a long movie. An unintentionally funny movie. An erratically dramatic movie. A very, very badly edited movie. But it is not a good movie.

Gory Losers? Groinal Lodgings?

Why, if it was so bad, did we watch the whole thing?

I’ll tell you why. Because the cable movie ratings warned us about how it had AC and GL and so forth, and my roommate was convinced that GL stood for Gay and Lesbian.

To be fair, we had plenty of reasons to think that they might, as I think my roommate put it, “realize that they really loved each other all along and then do it.” First of all, it was on Showtime, home of the cornier American version of Queer as Folk and of The L Word.

Secondly, it’s a buddy movie about two hot tough femme women riding motorcycles across the country, which is usually Hollywood code for lesbian. They even code one of them as “butch,” making her “the tough one” and naming her Will, of all things. Why Will? Because she’s butch, I guess. We didn’t really get any other explanation. The other one is named Jane, which at first I thought was just a pseudonym she was giving out. Nope. Her name’s actually Jane.

Thirdly, the only actual city we see on their road trip is San Francisco, in which they spend a ludicrous amount of time considering that they’re going from Los Angeles to Montana. They rave about how they’re going to move there. All right, they’re saying it because hot men are passing them – and there’s a reason they’re passing you, ladies – but then they go into a diner with a ridiculously flirty waitress (played by Traci Lords). We are just getting so many mixed messages here.

The Good, the Bad, the Plot, and the Editing

The plot. The plot? The plot….

Well, there was a plot. I remember it; we drove by it several times. Occasionally we even slowed down enough to see what was supposed to be going on.

See, they’re in rehab. And they hate rehab. And they like motorcycles. And one of them knows where the motorcycle from Easy Rider is, because her dad’s friend owns it.

So of course they break out of rehab, get ahold of some motorcycles of their own, and drive up to Montana to get it. I mean, wouldn’t you?

The rehab angle actually provides much of the movie’s unintentional humor. I watched it with my roommate, who had two years in Alcoholics Anonymous at the time, and a friend of ours who had a year, along with my own year and a half in various other twelve step programs. As my roommate remarked, it seemed like it was written by someone who had a month sober and said, “Oh wow! I should make a movie about this!”

This inspiration, you see, provided the subplot, which is that… well, it’s that Will has a drug problem, basically.

The subplot is supposed to be that Will and Jane make a passionate commitment to each other to stay sober until they find the famous chopper – and then get totally wasted. The movie has a very difficult time sticking to a plot, so this subplot basically turns into “Hey! Addictions sure are tough to shake, huh?” But we do get a lot of accidentally funny moments where one of them, out of nowhere, starts spouting twelve-step slogans, or yelping about “the committee in my head!” or reciting the Serenity Prayer – and then they go right back to their standard “bad girl” personas.

Pacing and Plot Problems

This would be a pretty good plot if it made any sense. I mean, yes, break out of rehab. But how? What are the dangers? Where are the wacky or dramatic chase scenes? How the hell did they get those motorcycles? We don’t know; I mean, we’re only the viewers. We only planted our butts in those seats for two entire commercial-free hours for this movie. Why should we know what’s going on?

I’m not bitter at all.

That’s one example of the terrible editing. We repeatedly go from Dramatic Disclosure to Sudden Resolution without much thought. The editing is problematic on another level as well. For example, when they go to San Francisco – inexplicable as that already is – we are treated to at least two separate montages in which they appear to cross the Golden Gate Bridge repeatedly. It’s not that they like to ride their bikes across the bridge and pay that stiff $5 toll over and over – it’s simple overuse of “Hey! Look! They’re in San Francisco! You know ’cause you can see that bridge!”

And that’s not even the bridge they would take if they were coming from L.A.

Then there’s the amount of time they spend in San Francisco. See? Why would they do this if they weren’t setting us up for that all-important lesbian subplot? Damnit. This movie – like the bad hustler movie we saw afterward, and the really terrible softcore porn after that – has a little difficulty with pacing. There are long pauses, slowly delivered dialogue, and a lot of scenes that just show people walking, or sitting, or putting their clothes on.

Possibly the most egregious examples of the movie’s rocky pacing are in their relationships with their parents. Quite a way into the movie, with no warning and no previous voiceovers, we are suddenly assaulted by the sound of Jane’s voice reading what appear to be cheesy song lyrics. But no: it turns out that she is telling us that Will was sexually abused by her father, and that Will suddenly realizes at this point that she needs to confront him. No sooner do we learn this than Will goes to a pay phone. She calls him, freaks out, hangs up, goes into a bar, does shots, vomits up blood, and they never, ever speak of it again.

The same time and effort are put into the five or ten minute scene with Jane’s mother. Her mom is clearly supposed to have obsessive-compulsive disorder; they play it subtle by not telling us this outright, but they are thwarted by the incredibly over-the-top OCD stereotypes. She twitches, she mutters numbers and counts fish sticks under her breath, she washes her hands every five seconds… they’re not taking any chances that we might not get it. She’s also quite abusive: she screams at her daughter at the drop of a hat, hits Jane’s hand when she puts a drink down without a coaster, and manipulates her shamelessly. Jane apologizes meekly and wipes off the coaster (not the counter) with the hem of her shirt. Yet after five or ten minutes of this cavalcade of scenery-chewing, Jane takes her mother’s hand and has a Meaningful Moment where All is Made Right Between Them.

Man… those two days of rehab must have been good.

Credit Where Credit’s Due

This movie did keep us guessing. It never took the easy solution to a crisis: although the famous chopper was ridiculously easy to get, none of the other plot points were resolved. Will does not confront or reconcile with her father, who we never see. She does not resolve her drug and alcohol abuse problems; in fact, she overdoses at the end and dies. When her boyfriend turns out to have been following her throughout the road trip and she gets back in his car, she doesn’t go back with him; he just comes along for the ride. When they stop to fix one of the bikes and a cop hits his wife with a flashlight, throws her out of the truck, and then Will and Jane try to rescue her and he comes back and assaults Will, they just let her get back in his truck. Nobody gets easy answers, least of all the audience.

The movie also gets some credit because it was written by the two leads, Melissa Behr and Sherrie Rose. One review raved about them; apparently they’ve been unjustly relegated to roles in “exploitation (movies) and cheap TV shows,” and wrote and produced this movie on their own. That’s pretty impressive, and this movie has great potential. Someday, perhaps, someone will remake it — or just edit the version that’s already out there.

I’ve heard a couple of people condemn this series as badly-written, “trashy” in the bad way. I don’t really get that; I’m INCREDIBLY picky about writing, how can anyone be pickier than me? They must have a different meaning for “trashy.” And for bad writing.

I really enjoy Charlaine Harris’ writing style. Her other mysteries tend to be a little on the depressing (or in some cases just depressed) side for me, but what we now call the “True Blood” series is saved from that by heroine Sookie Stackhouse’s determined optimism.

It took me a while to figure out what Harris was doing that I liked so much, stylistically. I finally realized that she is in touch with the sensory world here in a way I haven’t seen in her other novels or in many books in general. The pacing alternates between action and regular, everyday experiences like sunbathing or taking a bubble bath. Sookie, as the narrator of the series, shares her feelings about everything, often subtly – both physical feelings and emotional ones. Harris doesn’t hit us over the head with “THIS IS HOW SOOKIE FEELS ABOUT THIS GUY,” either; she weaves all these psychological and sensory impressions into the narrative so deftly that it’s easy not to notice they’re there, even as they flavor the entire experience of reading her books.

I enjoy the fact, too, that these are survivor novels. It’s made perfectly clear from the beginning that Sookie was abused by her “funny uncle”. It’s a more active plot line in this first book, but Harris doesn’t just drop it after that; the fact comes up from time to time in later books as appropriate, just as it would in real life. Sookie occasionally gives some thought to how it’s affected her, and we can see more ways that she may not even realize: her self-image, for example, starts out fairly low and slowly blossoms over the course of the books, and she is a 26-year-old (if I remember right) virgin when the books start, which supposedly is because she is also telepathic but can’t be totally unconnected to the abuse.

Fun, adventurous reads, although I will say it gets pretty violent from time to time. There’s always the sense that the good guys will win, as opposed to in real life, plus the excitement of seeing HOW they will win – since werewolves, magic, fairies, and all kinds of other really well-thought-out supernatural nuttiness keeps getting thrown into the equation.

Really, my ultimate recommendation for these books comes from a gut level: no matter how many times I read them, I still just want to read them over and over and over again. There aren’t a whole lot of books that work that way for me, so the Sookie Stackhouse books hold a special place in my heart.

Sidebar: I enjoy the HBO series a great deal too; although they often take extreme liberties with the plot and characters, so far (halfway through the first season – yes, I’m behind) the plotlines still seem very true to the original characters. Cut for spoilers: Read the rest of this entry »

I really enjoyed this book. It’s the story of a couple who took a year to try to eat locally, as in food grown within 100 miles of them. They take turns writing chapters. I enjoyed:
* the quality of the writing
* the fascinating stuff I learned about food and about the culture and cuisine of the far north of Washington State and the far south of Canada
* the inspiration to explore different local farms and other food producers where I live because it involves so much adventure and connection with the earth

My favorite thing I learned:
* Local food is not the same thing as native food! you can grow a lot of stuff practically anywhere and it “counts” as local. I always bought into the ideas (debunked through their experiences) that there is only a limited array of things that we can grow even here and that the best way to get diversity in what we eat is by having supermarkets ship stuff like starfruit and year-round grapes from all over the world. SO not true.

My main problem with it:
* I can put up with a certain amount of people’s crazy without any evidence that they are dealing with it. But there was a growing amount of crazy coming from one of the authors, to the point where it became its own plot arc. It was about depression, maybe even suicidality, intense shame, you know, the usual. While reading it, I wrote, “I don’t totally trust them to resolve it rather than doing the super-common ([unhealed] addict/abuse survivor) thing of ‘And then it just went away and we never talked about it again.’ We’ll see!”

Well, I was right. And it boggles my mind. I’ve heard, recently, that editors at publishing houses are not for copy-editing so much as for checking spelling errors; my fantasy that they go through the text saying “Well, now, this plot line never got wrapped up, and are you sure this is the approach you want to take with this section of the book?” is, in reality, apparently rare to nonexistent, depending on the publisher.

What this book needed was more of a critical eye on the story as a whole. All the food stuff was great, but the personal stuff was extremely wobbly. And, I have to say, it’s difficult on the reader to go through the emotional rollercoasters of a couple struggling with serious mental health issues, without any open acknowledgment that that’s where we are going or any closure. (It also kind of kills me because early in the book, they openly introduce a “protagonist” who then dies, and they talk about why they brought this person into the book even though their time in it would be so short, and I’m like… so you can notice and acknowledge that? Where was that skill later on?! Throw me a bone here!)

Basically, while the rest of their stories boil down to things like “People are great and quirky all over,” or “There is adventure to be had no matter where you are,” or “We can all eat fantastically well and save the environment to boot,” there is just this one that sticks out, throbbing, sore-thumbly: “Sometimes people struggle together because at least one of them is insanely depressed and really obviously drags that internalized shame around at all times, but it doesn’t really matter because… hey look! Spring greens!! LOOK AT THE SPRING GREENS EVERYBODY”

This problem isn’t limited to Plenty: plenty of other food books, I’ve noticed, feature the Real-Life Protagonist Struggling With Unacknowledged Unresolved Heart-Wringing Shame. Julie & Julia, and The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry, really stick out in my mind as belonging to this category. It’s striking because the food parts are always so well-written here, but the emotional landscape remains so unexamined.

I would recommend this book heartily for the insights into local food, local gardening, into exploration and connection with others, into the joy of meeting strangers and bonding over an apple, into the amazing foods I had never heard of and the journey of eating locally for a year all of a sudden, with no preparation. Just be prepared for a few emotional pitfalls along the way.

I’ve been waiting for Joss Whedon’s new series, Dollhouse, with a sort of queasy anticipation for months. On one hand, it’s obviously about government ritual abuse, and it’s a little shocking and exciting to have that portrayed on TV – even if it turns out to be in a subtle, “this doesn’t really happen we swear,” X-Files kind of way.

(I’m torn about whether the X-Files made people more suspicious of government cover-ups, or whether it crossed the line into making it seem more like all such ideas are fiction. I think it went back and forth during its time, but I don’t know what the ultimate impact on people was.)

On the other had, it’s obviously about government ritual abuse, and will I really enjoy watching that? Even if Dollhouse is obviously on the side of the people being manipulated and abused, and the process of finding yourself again?

Well, maybe a little FAQ will help people process this series. Or: maybe writing a little FAQ for you will help me process this series.

What is Government Ritual Abuse?

Simple answer: ritual abuse is any abuse that is connected to an ideology – religious, political, whatever. Genocide, holocausts, clergy abuse…. Government ritual abuse is abuse by governments. Most commonly, in the United States, this includes things like Project Monarch – mind control experiments, experimenting on people general without their consent – but also situations like prostituting children to government figures. It’s scary shit.

How is Dollhouse About Government Ritual Abuse?

So my understanding of Dollhouse is that it is about a secret (non-government) agency, a corporation that programs people to be whatever the client wants. Erases their memories, controls what they think about themselves, how they behave, et cetera. This is eerily similar to what the CIA (according to their own documents – see the link for Project Monarch for more info) tried for so long to do. The goal was to create a sort of super-spy, who could be extremely convincing while also being no threat to the government because everything they knew and believed could be controlled.

This worked to varying degrees; you can never control everything people think, but ritual abuse in general is often all about controlling what a situation seems like so that people are too traumatized and too confused to trust their own experiences and build the consistent, coherent memories that normally let us function on a day-to-day basis. Often, to the extent that this ever worked, it involved creating or training people within multiple systems (what used to be called MPD or DID) to serve various functions for the government without being aware of what was happening most of the time. (And, in fact, a lot of their early experimentation involved explicitly trying to “create MPD.”)

But It’s Not About the Government!

Yeah, that’s true. Which is very interesting to me, that the reality is that the government has done (and could still be doing) this kind of work, and the fiction (which will probably be much more widely disseminated) is that a corporation does it. Anti-capitalist? Pro-government? Hey, I’m just glad this is coming out at a time when Obama, not Bush, is president. Because this is the kind of thing that the Bush dynasty was very involved in, (my fiancee suggests “bunch of douches” as a substitute for “dynasty”) and if we’re going to even imply a sort of support for the government by changing it to the act of a corporation, I’d rather have someone who seems trustworthy in office.

But yes: it’s the acts that are redolent of government ritual abuse, not the organization. Technically, Dollhouse is not about government ritual abuse; but in showing a fictionalized way that those very acts and plans could play out, it is.

At least in theory. Now let’s see what happens on the small screen!

Related offsite articles (not from Facing Abuse):

• Joss Whedon interview: “Dollhouse” (gointothestory.com)
• Taxpayer-Sponsored Torture from your Friends at the CIA (lockergnome.com)