Note to self. Never say never.

Sure I swore off reviewing media (films, books, games) citing career burnout, but in reading through Sean’s recent reviews of The Breakup, MI:3 and games like Kameo and Call of Duty 2, I decided that perhaps I had a bit more fuel in the tank to take pen to paper (or poker to pixel as it were) and jot down my thoughts on all things pop-culture. As a bit of a compromise to myself, I shall eschew the traditional review structure for something a bit more conversational. While I’ll try to tread carefully; beware, here there may be spoilers.

Before delivering my first new review, I figured I’d use this post to provide a glimpse at my own origin story.

The closest I’ve come to exercising my inner Ebert was my stint as Staff Writer for the Arts & Entertainment section of the Daily Collegian - the daily college newspaper of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This was during my run from sophomore to senior (1991 - 1994).

A little bit about the paper. The Collegian, at the time, was the largest daily college newspaper in the United States. That may have changed over the years (Barbizon was a real up and comer in those days - “Why be a model when you could just look like one.” I mean, really, who needs that seven figure payday when you can just sit around stopping traffic all day while posing outside Meineke).

Like all great origin stories, my path was paved with broken glass. Gaining access to the upper echelon of the publication was no easy task. Sure, I could have just waltzed down to the paper, mentioned I was interested in writing, and been sent off with my first assignment to cover ‘hell week’ at I Eta Pi - but I had greater aspirations. Cool Runnings was releasing that Friday and I’d been dead in my dorm room if I was gonna’ pony up any more of my hard earned scratch to catch the Candy man in action (Uncle Buck led to that stringent policy).

Anyway, I wanted only one job on the paper and that was to review movies. The problem is, the paper already had an effete film critic on the payroll and there was nary room for one more. However, said film critic made one big mistake. First, a little perspective.

Before Al Gore birthed the Internet by connecting two VIC-20’s with a yard of fishing line, film companies used to rely on grass roots campaigns to get the buzz out on their less than blockbuster fare. They would assemble press junkets where they would fly members of the press into New York City or Los Angeles, ply them with booze and rohypnol, show them their POS flick, and then send them off to jot down a thousand glowing words in their publications, where each critic could then compete to get their blurb on the top of that flick’s ad campaign when it finally launched. As most major film critics (think Pauline Kael, David Denby, Joe Bob Briggs) felt this practice was akin to pimpin’ the quote whores, the invites typically found their way into the hands of the collegiate press.

So on the weekend that our resident film critic found himself holding court with Samuel L. Jackson and Nicholas Cage as Amos & Andrew, I descended to the bowels of the Campus Center, approached the chippie working the desk at the Collegian Arts section and demanded she let me seize the day and review National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I. In hindsight, had she told me to “Take a hike kid, we’ve already got our Shalit!”, I’d have two extra hours in my life that I could have used to put Homer and Bart through their paces in that great Konami Simpsons video game that stole so much of my laundry and Mad Dog 20-20 money.

But she relented and a few hours later, I was justifying the existence of that poor man’s Charlie Sheen, Emilio Estevez. One of these days I’ll dig out that first painful review and publish it here.

To speed things up, our Ebert finally returned from his two week’s sojourn to the Big Apple to find he’d grown a Siskel. The first thing he did was change the locks to the public office. Then he called my dorm room and left the following message with my roommate Rich: “Tell your buddy Ed, there’s only so many movies that release a week, and I’ll be a Smith College co-ed before I let that chump lay into Highlander II: The Quickening.” Fortunately for me, Rich was knee-deep in a mid-semester bender and the message came out “The Collegian called. They like your stuff. By the way, can I borrow a dollar?”

All right, so maybe that last part is a bit of wish fulfillment. Tis true, Jeffrey Lyons up and dumped my ass. As fate would have it, there was a girl working for the paper who I had gone to high school with. I called her and clued her in to the despotic nature of the Arts and Living page. Together we conspired to get all Che Guevera on the Collegian and shred this daily paper.

The revolution was put on hold when I received a call a few moments later from our good man Roeper - offering me the position of Collegian Film Critic (and then in small print - “of the films playing on the local cable access campus movie station”.) Capsule reviews of Cabin Boy? I could dig it.

So I toiled away - writing short 30 word blurbs on everything from North (which I hate, hate, hated every hateful moment of) to Body of Evidence (a Basic Instinct clone featuring Willem Dafoe and Madonna - so wait, who’s playing the femme fatale?). By semester’s end, my Medved had decided that I, indeed, had chops and promoted me to co-film critic. Basically, I think his cerebral taste buds had finally recovered from the numbing Amos & Andrew delivered earlier and he needed some chump to deal with Demolition Man. Regardless, I was finally riding shotgun and that’s the way it would be through the end of my college career. And in time, I finally got my share of the A-list pics. Thanks to the Collegian, I didn’t have to pay to see Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

So we come to the final act. Before closing curtain, I wanted to drop a few anecdotes (think of it like those credit “cookies” featuring the cast of Smokey and the Bandit 5 - Smokey is the Bandit cracking up over filmed flubs and follies).

- Tasked to cover Boxing Helena, a flick directed by David Lynch’s daughter which is also notable for a much publicized exit by Kim Basinger that led to a marathon breach of contract suit, I arrived at the theater to find a throng (read: 4 bored Amherst soccer moms) assembled en masse outside the theater, protesting the film’s supposed mysoginistic attitude towards women. Helena told the tale of a disturbed surgeon who rescues a bitchy actress from a fiery crash and proceeds to keep her hostage in his home as he slowly amputates her, keeping her alive and in a box as his show piece. O.K. So maybe the subject matter is a bit dicey - but what reads as shocking on the page, plays as ridiculous on screen. The biggest insult of all - the film employs the “it was all a dream” ending. I saw this film on opening night, with just my brave compadre Justin by my side. We were the only ones in the theater. There were more protesters than filmgoers. Perhaps the protesters feel that they did their job. Either that or a widely panned shlock thriller starring Sherilyn Fenn and Julian Sands playing in the “Dirt Mall” doesn’t have the drawing power it once did.

- I gave Mrs. Doubtfire a C minus, calling it “sitcomesque.” I received an angry call from some fired up chica who couldn’t believe that I didn’t like Mrs. Doubtfire (this review coming a full eight years before I would issue a fatah on the infidel Patch Adams). So naturally, I figured this was a joke and proceeded to go along with it - asking the girl the normal questions one asks when they get a random booty call in the middle of the night - “So, ahhhh, you like movies about guys that dress up like chicks? You know what I like? Movies about girls that undress like chicks!” Yup, I was a smooth operator. Anyway, she was going berserk so I decided to look up her alias in the student directory and expose this masquerade once and for all. Oh what do you know. There is a Stephanie Calipari in JQA dormitory. Oh, and lookey here. Her papa just happens to have a legion of NCAA Final Four-bound warriors at his command. So of course, I did an about face, printed a retraction the following day, branded the film an A and downgraded Schindler’s List to a D plus to restore balance to the force.

- The End -