Off to Skull Island... (Part the Fifth and Final)

Much has been made, even by those expressing affection for Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong, of the “miscasting” of Jack Black as Carl Denham.

This is being perceived/received as ‘found wisdom,’ a given, and has been for some time. It’s my belief that part of this ‘problem’ is the misperception of Denham as a character, whose stature has been conflated into something quite apart from the Denham of yore. It is also to my mind indicative of a false cultural and individual expectation of any remake of a cinematic original (as opposed to an adaptation of a novel or work from other media; there, I can see the argument and allure). If it’s replicas we are seeking, there’s no reason to experience anything but the original, is there?

[This is true in all media, not just film. I recall the process that led to John Totleben and I embracing Taboo as a worthwhile venture after Dave Sim extended the invitation to subsidize any project we wished to pursue in comics. It was apparent to both John and I how shallow and empty horror comics had become, in large part due to the slavish regurgitation of the EC Comics template of the early 1950s. Even when creators we felt were innovative had their shot at really reinvigorating the genre (horror comics), the damned EC mold was embraced with such slavish fidelity that it inevitably strait-jacketed the most ballyhooed resurrection: thus, when writer Bruce Jones, who had scripted some of the most imaginative and transgressive horror comics stories published in the 1970s Warren black-and-white zines Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella, had his shot at editing and writing his own horror comic for Pacific Comics in the early ‘80s, he helmed Twisted Tales -- which, with only a couple of precious exceptions, demonstrated anew the EC formula was dead, dead, dead. What was transgressive and provocative in 1951-54 was toothless three decades later, however ballsy the gore or language; conceptually, it was the same ol’ O. Henry twist-ending claptrap. To be true to the real spirit and wellspring of the EC tradition, it seemed obvious to John Totleben and I, one had to be as bold, imaginative, reckless, innovative and daring as the EC creators, editors, and publishers had been in their time. It was fidelity to the spirit, not acolyte devotion to the narrative templates, that was needed to reinvigorate and reinvent horror comics -- thus, Taboo, moles and all. In comics, music, movies, sculpture, art, etc., it’s all the same -- imitation is a dim echo by definition. Emulating a beloved artist, creation, movement or philosophy can only honor, sometimes transcend, its wellspring by remembering that wellspring has power because it broke molds in its day and redefined all that came before and after. Thus, the truest reinventions emulate the spirit, not the specifics; embrace transformative change, rather than merely replicating the original.]

As with every other character in the new Kong -- including, dare I remind everyone, Kong -- the new Denham is not a carbon copy of the old. Part of the nimble effectiveness of Jackson and his collaborators’s revamp of Kong is their attention to rethinking each of the key players: this is, after all, a 2005 production, not a pale simulcrum of the 1933 original. As I noted in my first installment, Jackson’s King Kong is not what Gus Van Sant’s Psycho ended up being, apparently on purpose: a recreation, not a reinvention, of its respective wellspring. What’s the point? Here, at least, I can understand the decision of those who simply are avoiding the new Kong: if you can only conceive of Kong as being the 1933 original, by all means, cling to it like a precious bit of driftwood in a storm.

Fortunately, Jackson and his compatriots could concieve of Kong as something else -- true in spirit to the original and its time, but as full-bloodedly of-its-time (2005) as was the Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack/Willis O’Brien classic. That is the only way to be true to the original, in my mind. Slavish imitation is too often mistaken for ‘being true.’ When something is as unique as the 1933 Kong was, slavish imitation is neither the way or means of remaining true to the spirit of the film or its creators. In the broad sense of the 2005 Kong and its genres (romantic action/adventure/fantasy/horror films), the seven+ decades spread like a Skull Island chasm between Cooper/Schoedsack/O’Brien and Jackson and his creative partners is wide and deep: in every way, those genres have been stripped down, revved up, and juiced beyond recognition. To think that anything truly resembling the 1933 Kong could be made anew in the contemporary corporate studio dominian, in the wake of everything from Lucas, Spielberg, Cameron and Verhoeven to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Die Hard and Titanic, and the current movie-as-video-game mentality, is unthinkable. Still, Jackson was canny enough to identify both the seams and the junctures between the ‘33 original and the contemporary mode of action/thriller and dance the dance between with skill and agility and nary a hint of cynicism.

Curiously, the inflation of all action/thriller requirements circa 2005 has adopted an accepted level of casual brutality and primal emotion that’s oddly attuned to the pre-Code ferocity & lusty drive of the ‘33 Kong. As countless film historians have detailed, once the regulatory Code grew teeth (a mere year or two after Kong debuted in March 1933), it would have been impossible to make such a film again until the emergence of the MPAA Ratings in 1968. In the meantime, Kong was indeed given a haircut, losing its blunt matter-of-fact unblinking depiction of violence -- reflecting an adventurer’s acceptance of the casualties of sailors, natives, and citizens alike -- along with its more overt sexuality, including Kong’s “whif of quim in the morning” scratch/peel-and-sniff tableau with Ann. By the time the original Kong salvaged RKO’s fortunes anew with its 1952 rerelease and its debut on television three years later, the restrictive environment of theatrical filmmaking and television broadcast had ‘cleaned up’ the old boy and his antics extensively: still, there was no neutering Kong himself.

[An aside on the original film’s power: I still recall, in my first theatrical viewing of the original Kong at a University of Vermont “Lane Series” college revival in 1969 or ‘70, feeling and seeing rippling waves of energy washing over the rapt audience from the screen as Kong battled the T. rex. It was a phenomenon I observed again and again in theatrical showings of the ‘33 Kong; as primal a spectacle as any I’d ever imagined possible, casting a strobic spell as vivid as that of the ‘pure cinema’ underground film The Flicker (1966) by Tony Conrad, composed only of patterned alternating black and white frames of film, which I saw a year later on the same campus. In the case of Kong, of course, those ‘waves’ moving over & through the audience were invigorated by the dramatic context of the film, but also radiating from the personal power O’Brien and his crew had infused into the film, frame by frame. I confess to feeling a similar rush in Jackson’s Kong at the moment, after the giddy battle between Kong and the trio of T. rex in the vines, when the film at last arrived at the iconic confrontation between Kong and the last rex standing: arriving, at last, where the first Kong’s confrontation began. Like a Sergio Leone western, that showdown had now been reinvigorated and effectively recontextualized, not merely restaged. The moment galvanizing the cumulative weight of the film’s narrative thrust -- almost two hours! -- and its dream & nightmare imagery & movement to that point, emulating and honoring as it does not only O’Brien before, but O’Brien’s inspiration Gustave Dore and Boecklin and Charles Knight, and all who came after O’Brien and between then and now: Ray Harryhausen, Al Williamson, Zdenak Burian, Rudolph Zallinger, Frank Frazetta, William Stout, Phil Tippett, Mark Schultz, Budd Root -- need I go on? In the staging of the one-on-one showdown, and the charge not only between giant beasts but between Ann and Kong, and the film and the audience, I also felt a rush evocative of my first exposure to Frazetta, specifically his wonderful One Million Years B.C. cover painting for Monster Mania, his best Kong paperback cover painting (for the 1977 Lorenzo Semple, Jr. screenplay), and that -- ah, I’ll stop now.]

The rethinking of Kong as a character in the Jackson remake is marvelous, and in its way utterly true to the original -- the spirit, not the specifics, of the original. As noted in my previous posts on the film, much has changed in our cultural perceptions of primates: in short, the sketchy caricature and behavior patterns of the 1933 Kong simply wouldn’t wash today, given all we’ve learned since field biologist George Schaller began his observations of true mountain gorilla behavior in 1959 (first published in 1963). Given all that followed from then to now, including Snowball and his kitten and Diane Fossey and her life’s work, our cultural perceptions of what constitutes ‘genuine’ primate behavior has been irrevocably altered. On an unconscious level, the average 2005 viewer would reject as simplistic a Kong as was palatable and believable in 1933. Hell, if all one ‘knew’ had been superficially absorbed via the scantest osmosis -- cursory glimpses of National Geographic photos or TV specials, or Rick Baker’s dramatic evolution of the cinematic primate over the past three decades -- a slavish recreation of the 1933 Kong still would seem archaic, anachronistic, false, laughable.

The same is true of Ann, Jack and -- yep -- Carl Denham. Why wouldn’t it be?

As a viewer, the first time Black registered for me was as a teenage actor, a supporting player in an effectively understated episode of The X-Files and in the underrated rollerblade coming-of-age flick Airborne, which I saw with my kids at a matinee in Bellows Falls, VT. Black was playing essentially the same role in both: the belligerent, slightly overweight outsider teen (is there any other kind?) who is a bit of a fringe-dweller, a bottom-feeder, and an adrift opportunist, as most of us were at that age. That Black lent a charge and charm to these characters became emblematic of his charisma and energy as an actor, and though his range expanded and feral intelligence came to the fore, the validity of those initial perceptions still rang true. That these characteristics were increasingly offset/enhanced by his anarchic spirit and further experience was what elevated Black to his current level of celebrity and relative stardom, in part because he reflected something recognizably contemporary, alive, and utterly American.

For me, from Black’s first second onscreen in King Kong -- a moment I specifically referred to in my first installment of this analysis -- his Carl Denham was a character I instantly understood and recognized.

Was it ‘the’ Carl Denham that Robert Armstrong played? No. Is Jack Black in any way a Robert Armstrong of the 21st Century? No. There are affinities, but the gulf of age, demeanor, and range is self-evident (and I must add, Black has the greater range, though both Armstrong and Black are character actors defined largely by their respective ‘type’). Still, this new Denham works for this viewer, for a number of reasons.

First, let’s not conflate the original Denham. He was as much of a scoundrel as the new: a braggart, a carny, an opportunist, a user of people, and yes, an adventurer and filmmaker. One of the reasons the sequel, Son of Kong, failed then and still malingers in the shadow of its ‘father’ is because it’s harder to ignore Denham’s nature from the first scene to the last: he’s still a bottom-feeder, working an angle on another waif ‘frail’ and another big dumb ape. But the resonance of Kong’s forever-quoted last line -- “’Twas Beauty killed the Beast” -- always was Denham’s deftest sidestepping of responsibility for all the horrors he’d wrought, despite the romantization of that line over the decades (particularly by Forrest J. Ackerman and Famous Monsters of Filmland, which inflated its resonance for two generations). Having seen the film for the first time after reading about it in Famous Monsters, I remember being a bit disturbed and pissed off at that immortal line spoken by Denham: it was another con, pure and simple, and I didn’t buy it at age 10, and I don’t buy it now.

As Americans, we once loved our con-artists, particularly those of a previous generation (after all, we can tell ourselves, we’re not one of their suckers, are we?). As I mentioned from the get-go, though, the con-artist/showman archetype is no longer a living part of our cultural memories: I mentioned P.T. Barnum, but how many kids have ever heard of him? William Castle and Evel Knievel were the most beloved flesh-and-blood incarnations of the archetype in my lifetime, and they were the last of their breed -- again, unknown quantities to contemporary audiences by-and-large, dim memories at best but most likely simply nonexistent to those born after 1970. Sans the patina and mythic umbrella of the real McCoys, Denham’s boisterous chicanery is only further exposed, the incompatibility of his true culpability vs. his aggressive avoidance of any personal consequences -- done with enough swagger and bravado to still be amusing -- laid bare.

What flew as a recognizable, even endearing, ‘type’ in 1933 no longer harbors such innate charisma -- and that, I fear, is what undid Denham for 2005, regardless of what actor inhabited the role. It’s become harder to indulge or forgive, much less ‘love,’ our cultural con-artists, wearing as they do these days the faces of passionless corporate CEOs and pious politicians. In the seven decades since the first Carl Denham so shamelessly spirited Ann away to Skull Island, the archetype has irrevocably shifted into darker terrain -- and that’s the cultural orientation and ‘new reality’ Jackson and his collaborators were facing.

Much as the original Denham was Cooper & Schoedsack’s (particularly Cooper’s) self-aggrandizing peon to their self-images as shameless hucksters and adventurers -- a love letter to themselves writ large, a feat screenwriter and Cooper spouse Ruth Rose managed in spades -- the character also exposed some truths about the archetype. Denham is working on that last line from the time we first meet him (just as Cooper & Schoedsack set it up with the pre-narrative intertitle “Old Arabian Proverb” quote, another canny bit of smoke-and-mirrors flim-flam). From the get-go, Denham is a sexual predator, knowing he has to “sex up” his new film as the boxoffice has dwindled on his jungle pix. He kidnaps Ann because he needs a pretty bod and face, a hook: he isn’t interested in her one whit (that becomes Jack’s narrative imperative, in both Kongs), and in the end, with his final line, he makes her the patsy. There’s never a reason to trust Denham for a second in the ‘33 original -- he’s out to cover his own ass every step of the way; it’s only his male comraderie with those he’s suckered into his hare-brained death-defying scheme that fleetingly lends him some measure of dignity, though he’s playing that for all it’s worth, too (knowing if anyone can bail his sorry ass out of having lost the film, the sailors, the girl & the gorilla, Jack’s his only bet). From stem to stern, Denham plays his compatriots, employees, lackies, stooges, and his blonde patsy by spinning myths, fairy tales, and romances -- and enough of ‘em fall for Denham to function (as a showman and as a catalyst for the film’s action).

The irony here is that Jackson is as fully aware of the mythic grip of fairy tales, romance, and hooey as the original Denham was. But he and his creative partners are also savvy enough to know it doesn’t “sell” as it once did: there’s no actor alive I can think of who could “sell” that iconic line in 2005 with a straight face. We don’t fall for the Denham’s of the world any longer (no, we fall for the Ken Lays, Dick Cheneys, Condi Rices, and George Bushes of the world -- or some of us do, anyway).

Jackson knew exactly what he was up to with the character of Carl Denham, like it or lump it.

My son Dan told me his best friend Sam was 'with' the film -- till "Twas beauty killed the beast." “I dug it until that last line,” Sam said, “that really soured the cream in my coffee.”

I think that’s the point, you see.

No, it’s not Jack Black’s fault or Peter Jackson’s that Denham comes across as the manipulative, self-justifying, opportunistic weasel, huckster and people-user he always was. It’s the times, they have a-changed, and I might add while we Americans are still capable of lying to and about ourselves, the world doesn’t fall for that line of horseshit and hooey any longer. Jackson is a New Zealander, not a Californian, and he’s never been under the spell of America’s vast capacity for self-deception. (I mean, really -- did you think we were the hobbits and heroes of The Lord of the Rings in the eyes of the rest of the world? Look upon Sauron’s realm, allies, armies and entourage, and shudder.)

No mistake, Jackson meaningfully cast Jack Black as Denham, and the very character elements so many who bristle at this King Kong are citing as litany and verse are the components that expose Denham -- and, by proxy, his fellow Americans -- as the scurvy cur he is (we are).

The new King Kong fully inhabits its dream, and that’s its terrible power and beauty.

But it fully embraces the fall from glory, too -- not only the great ape’s fall, but our own -- that, after all, is part of the dream, too.

Sadly, it’s part of our cultural reality as well, a mirror, if you will, of who we no longer are, of how far we’ve wandered astray since 1933; of what we’ve done, how we’ve changed, and what we’ve become and how we look to the rest of the world.

It’s a mirror we reject and resent, whether or not we choose to fall for or from the dream.

We made all our choices. If we didn’t chart the boat, we willingly went along for the ride.

It’s our Kong, damn it.

But it’s Denham’s fall that is ours, as much as -- more than -- Kong’s.

It’s a long. long fall.

And it never, ever was the blonde’s fault.



- New Year’s Eve, 2005, The Mountains of Madness, VT

______

Happy New Year, one and all.

May it be a better year for us all.

Happy New Year! This Blog Has Been Liberated! Anyone can now comment!

First off, one and all -- Happy New Year! Now let's see if this old sot can make it to midnight this year. My balls dropped long ago.

OK, on to the big news:

Having finally had some time in the wee hours this morning to fully explore the setup of this blog and all, I have stumbled upon the means of liberation.

Huzzah! Dunston Checks Out!

The Blog is Dead! Long Live the New Blog!

As of this morning, commenting on this blog is a simple operation!

No more oppression of the unbloggified or the timid!

Lift your heads out of the tarn of repressed free speech and utter what you will! The monopolistic capitalization of the comment board by a chosen few is over!

A new dynasty of freeform blather is loosed! Spread wide your typographic colon and let splay the spew of your gray matter! Yawn vast and unpucker your gaping red-eye, spill your psychic small intestine and spatter my virtual-bowl with your issue!

OK, that's no longer an obstacle. Sorry I'm such a Luddite. Apparently, I could have done this months ago.

At some point, you never know, I might even be able to post images on this thing, or reset the clock to something other than a timezone in the mid-Pacific.

OK -- More later --

Intermission! "Let's All Go to the Lobby, Let's All Go to the Lobby..."

Before I wrap up my lengthy King Kong rant this afternoon, a quick morning jog about the keyboard:

* Walter Ungerer and I are now in Day Three of our two-week University of Vermont online film class, "Ways Of Seeing: Film as Art." I intended to promote the class here, in case some of you were at all interested in taking the class, but I received no prior notice or info from UVM. Still, all is going well, and I hope -- if we're tapped to do this again (this is our second year offering the class) -- I can rectify the situation enough to post ample alert here in hopes some of you do climb aboard.

One of the reasons I'm working with James Sturm and Michelle Ollie at The Center for Cartoon Studies is simple: they followed through. Everything James and I discussed, everything that was bounced about, culminated in the CCS opening its doors, and James made participation possible and easy. One of the reasons my papers and collections are with Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas instead of anywhere else is because Randy Duncan and Lea Ann Alexander followed through when others had not (I had previous approached, and been approached by, other universities and libraries). Now, I'm no king of follow-through, mind you, but it makes a world of difference when working with an institution or college when the minimal contact and support is indeed provided.

In the end, UVM came through, but it was a curious vacuum to be in: knowing (thanks to my conversations with Walter) that we were giving the class again, but hearing nothing from UVM. One day the contract showed up, and next day we're giving the class! Whew -- I was, if anything, over-prepared, so it's all good now. But sorry I didn't give advance notice here.

* Speaking of the Center for Cartoon Studies, I am indeed teaching there this coming semester -- teaching drawing, in fact. This has inevitably led me back to my own drawing board as I prepare. So if more Bissette art surfaces in 2006, you all have James Sturm and the CCS -- students and faculty -- to thank. Just a heads up on that.

* I saw Wolf Creek last night on the big screen, despite my son Dan and daughter Maia's dire warnings. It's a curious deadend of a film, quite beautifully crafted and put together, but as bleak an experience as Open Water was, in its way, with the key caveat that it isn't misfortune, a heartless universe and ill luck alone that dooms its waylaid protagonists: it's base human malice. Like its initially beguiling antagonist ("you'll never know where I might -- POP UP!"), this is a nasty piece of work, not recommended for tender dispositions or the squeamish, but it's not a particularly grueling or worthwhile film, either.

As such, Wolf Creek is:

(a) the latest nihilistic variation on the venerable and justifiably classic Richard Connell short story The Most Dangerous Game. Relevent to the ongoing discussion of King Kong on this blog, it bears repeating that the 1932 Ernest B. Schoedsack/Irving Pichel version starring Fay Wray, Joel McCrea, and Leslie Banks (as the screen's greatest Count Zaroff) -- along with ol' Denham himself, Robert Armstrong, as a sloshed victim -- is still the one to see;

(b) the latest offering from Lion's Gate, which remains the one studio dedicated to releasing a steady flow of always (at least) interesting horror films into theaters, and hence near and dear to my horror-lovin' heart;

(c) pleasurable in its way as a throwback to seminal 1970s Outback horrors like Outback, aka Wake in Fright (still the best of its breed, though rarely screened and hard to see, and practically a primer for this film), The Cars That Ate Paris (again, a clear precursor to Wolf Creek) and Celia aka Celia: Child of Terror. Wolf Creek is closest in look, temper and tone to the Australian genre and borderline-horror films of the 1980s which I quite loved and love: think Razorback, Shame, Long Weekend, Fortress (a real gem starring Rachel Ward with an EC Comics-worthy final shot), etc. Visually, as in all these films, the unique landscape of the Outback defines the film in a way that sets it apart while lending gravity and a terrible reality to its horrors. This is a reference point few viewers will have, though, so I don't expect much resonance for others on this count;

(d) the latest in the contemporary string of torture movies, which has become -- synchronistic with our national shame of Abu Ghraib et al -- a mortifying mirror of our life & times.

There have always been torture movies, mind you, going back to the silent era, but it's no coincidence this new strain is so insidious and malicious. I've written at length about the 'lost memory' variation of this contemporary subgenre in a review of The Jacket I'll be publishing in Green Mountain Cinema II in February, which is arguably where the current virulent strain began. It was also anticipated by a sleeper I quite enjoyed, Wrong Turn, though this new vein was launched into boxoffice vitality with the one-two-three punch of Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, Eli Roth's Cabin Fever, and the odd breakthrough success in 2004 of Saw (which shaded a semi-remake of The Abominable Dr. Phibes by way of Se7en into the most schematic of all the current torture films, effectively placing audience empathy in both the tortured and torturer's shoes via its final absurd twist).

I must add, however, that the most intense of all these films -- and by far the most successful -- remains Mel Gibson's The Passion (of the Christ), a statement and context that may infuriate some, but there it is. The Passion not only distilled the essence of torture-as-spectacle into the most abusive two+ hours of film I've ever endured, it did so as a pro-Christian vehicle that had busloads of devout parents dragging their impressionable little ones into the theaters, too: no wonder we're mired in Abu Ghraib as a nation. It is no coincidence: this is how these things work, don't you see? The pop culture reflects our unconsciousness, our cultural and national zeitgeist, in ways we are usually blind to until we've a bit of hindsight. In other ways, Mel also pushed the envelope that has fueled the savagery of this latest strain of Sadean films: with The Passion passing with an 'R' rating, the cat is well out of the bag.

High Tension (in many ways still the best of the current lot), The Devil's Rejects (a better-made film than Rob Zombie's first, but an empty exercise in the end that risibly romanticizes its killer brood), Saw II, and Eli Roth's eagerly-awaited-in-some-camps Hostel (nice phonetic pun, that) have upped the ante, and this vicious streak of Sadean cinema is only getting more agonizing, more of an audience endurance test, and strangely more urgent than ever. It's the nature of the beast, a dual-edged sword that deserves far more scrutiny than I'm able to give this morning in this venue -- and, of course, the backlash is inevitable.

Just remember, at all times, the context of our shared reality that is fueling this new subgenre -- and that it was our willful entry into "pre-emptive war" and all that has followed that provided the stock for the bloody soup.

Oh, and that Mel was the one who really upped the ante in the first place. It's going to be mighty tough for the Christian right to claim any high ground when the shit hits the fan, as it must.

Off to Skull Island: Part the Fourth (and penultimate)...

It's amazing what audiences will and won't suspend when they (we) are actively suspending disbelief -- and what is elevated, deified even, or quickly damned in the process.

Critical faculties are applied or ignored opportunistically, and the individual experience is rarely (if ever) the communal experience. Simply put, what works for one viewer doesn't work for another viewer; what one audience member gleefully embraces is emphatically rejected by another.

All this is going on, consciously and unconsciously, between heartbeats, eyeblinks, as the film unreels.

It's astounding that we can even communicate about "our" experience afterwards. First of all, there is little agreed-upon vocabulary when it comes to conversing about any vicarious experience, be it music, art, cinema, comics, whatever. But most of us accumulate a workable enough arsenal of catch-phrases and terms over the years to not only stumble through the process of articulating "our" experience (usually distilled into a utilitarian opinion, and nothing more), but of asserting "our" experience/opinion as being innately "correct." (It's even loopier when one is struggling to communicate about an experience others have refused to participate in, whatever their reasons; I'll leave that for the comment threads and the exchange with 'HB3', which speaks volumes.)

Everything is realigned again after the experience of viewing a film. We'll talk (or write) with a tone of 'common sense' candor that makes "our" view sound the most "of course" sensible, pragmatic, and thus "correct." Our value judgements are stated as fact more often than not, and the presumption is that the individual experience and communal experience are somehow aligned or permeable: that is, what Peter Jackson's King Kong was or was not for me must of course have been the same for you, or somethign is amiss -- with me, or with you (the unstated assumption being, of course, that "I'm" always right and "you're" always wrong, unless we are in full or acceptedly partial agreement).

That said, I am not saying my views stated herein are "correct" in any way. They're just my views, which I've gone to some lengths to detail in hopes of communicating what I experienced while getting thouroughly intoxicated on Peter Jackson's Kong. For my money, this Kong was sheer pleasure, as engaging, entertaining and marvelous an experience as I've had in a movie theater in quite some time. It was worthy of the beloved original, which itself was and is a creature of inspiration, compromises, and opportunistically-applied suspension of disbelief as any other film.

Ah, but the 1933 King Kong has also been deified, elevated like its titular iconic monster into a form of Godhead, a thing to be revered, savored, worshipped perhaps. Thus, it has become somehow critic-proof, impervious to whatever pitiful slings and arrows were, are, or might be fired against it. It is, in the mind of many, mythic, a totem, "perfect" -- and thus, idealized in a way few films are or ever will be.

The original King Kong is a truly great film, but it harbors its share of anachronistic cultural presumptions and assumptions, errors and missteps, adsurdities and impossibilities. For some, stop-motion animation is inherently a flawed technology, and they've never been able to accept Kong or his fellow primordial inhabitants of Skull Island as anything but shoddily animated, herky-jerky puppets, and when that is the case, King Kong remains forever a puzzlement. (I have my own theories on this, being a die-hard lifelong lover of stop-motion animation: the 'persistance of vision' illusion inherent to cinema that makes stop-motion animation work for much of the populace may not biologically function for another portion of the populace: that is, the frame-to-frame movement doesn't 'read' as it does to most viewers, and is thus rendered clumsy and 'refused' by the eye/mind -- but enough on that.) But those of us who love Kong not only 'ignore' those flaws -- we embrace them.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard Kong devotees rhapsodize over how Kong's rippling fur is "more lifelike," when it is in fact the handling of the animators that caused the original Kong's pelt to shift and move erratically, with neither rhyme nor reason according to any sense of anatomical versimilitude. But it's part-and-parcel of "the one and only true King Kong," hence sacred and sacrosanct.

The original King Kong is a great film, yes, but it's a load of horseshit, too, steaming and bubbling, served with shameless vigor and garnished with piping-hot fresh neck-deep blarney.

As I read various online critics, writers and bloggers tearing into the new King Kong on this point or that point -- the cartoonish excess of the Apatosaurus stampede, the further escalating action of Kong vs. the trio of T. rex, the show-stopping blight of the spider-pit, the decision not to show Kong's passage (identical to the original), Anne's flimsy non-winterwear, the lack of wind on the top of the Empire State Building, etc. -- it becomes laughable that the contemporary yardstick is so different from that applied to the 1933 original. Is any of this nonsense valid? Check your credibility at the concession stand if you're one of those who embrace the 1933 and use such circular illogic to damn the 2005 remake.

I mean, let's get real. Once I've accepted (a) a 25-to-50 foot gorilla where no gorillas or gorilla-like primates of any kind reside on Planet Earth, (b) the very premise of Skull Island, complete with all manner of incompatible prehistoric specimens living and breathing, and (c) the impossibility of any importation of an outsized primate into the heart of Manhattan (if, in the first place, you can swallow the export of a homeless blonde ingenue and lone female on a shipload of male salts), let's face it -- in the words of Cole Porter, anything goes. If you argue otherwise, you're full of as much shit as Kong before he drops his morning load.

Now, being a fantasist and storyteller myself by profession, able over my career to swallow and projectile-vomit among other risible conceits that of a man reborn as a spud-man and living in the swamps in and about Houma, Louisiana circa 1983-86, I absolutely accept the 'internal logic' necessary to make any quantity of horseshit float, for the duration of either a reading or a viewing, perhaps more. But it is, nonetheless, a conceit, a fabrication, an agreed-upon tapestry of lies and trickery we are all indulging for the pleasure of a story being told. Within that tapestry, one sets up certain groundrules, and works with them -- and by necessity (including, in the case of a film, what a 90-minute-to-200-minute running time will or will not permit) we all implicity agree to suspend the rest.

"Suspension of disbelief," some call it, so I shall, too.

Now, by any measure, the original King Kong required a healthy few swallows of horseshit if the film was/is to be enjoyed. In fact, many 1933 critics (including The New York Post reviewer) at first ridiculed King Kong, even as the Depression-burdened audiences were lining up around the block for their 15-cents worth of escapist/confrontist entertainment. Seems like most of the 1933 audiences, and those of every decade thereafter (including those blessed by the daily rebroadcast of Kong on The Million Dollar Movie in the 1950s), were able to swallow what some 1933 critics couldn't and wouldn't.

Let's see, Skull Island -- even if you can swallow the geological absurdity of a 'skull' shaped landmass, that's some name, particularly for a Dutch East Indies isle off the coast of Sumatra which was shunted back and forth between colonial countries for centuries (and extensively explored and charted by the 19th Century). Scientific study of the area can be charted in part by the extensive telegraphed reports pre-and-post Krakatoa's volcanic eruption, if you're seeking some bearings on the matter.

Gorillas in this hemisphere are less than unlikely. In 1933, gorillas, per se, were arguably as recent additions to the pop cultural menagerie as dinosaurs: the first gorillas were lowland gorillas, discovered and announced as such around 1846. Still, it took Paul du Chaillu plunging into Africa to begin shooting them a decade later to really elevate the beasts into the pantheon of fearsome zoological curios. It was du Chaillu who referred to his quarry as "hellish dream creature[s]... half-man and half-beast," inhabitants of "the infernal regions." The first mountain gorillas -- inhabitants of Eastern and Central Africa -- were shot in 1902 by a German named Oscar von Beringe (hence the latin name for the species, Gorilla gorilla beringei), with many more falling under the gun before 1925 -- but all in Africa. Most of what we now know about gorillas, particularly their behavior and true nature, we owe to George Schaller, whose studies began in 1959, so I won't diss the '33 Kong in light of those discoveries -- after all, if it is the mythic primate over-sexuality Kong's creators were seeking to conflate or exploit, the male Orangutan would have been the way to go, and we now know chimpanzees are by far the most aggressive and potentially homicidal of the great apes -- but still, as gorillas made their way into the circuses of the world, their peaceful, slow-moving nature was becoming recognized. Note, for instance and purposes of context, my previous post on Gargantua.

So, the conceit of an easily-angered big gorilla living on a remote isle in the Dutch East Indies, far from Africa, was pretty silly shit circa 1933. Good thing Merian C. Cooper's original plan to have his big ape battling Komodo Dragons didn't wash.

Instead, Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack supplanted the Komodo Dragons with neodinosaurs -- that is, living dinosaurs, still living and thriving in sequestered seclusion on Skull Island -- inspired by efforts of Willis O'Brien, whose the stop-motion animation footage created for the planned RKO project Creation, which Cooper scrapped, prompted O'Brien to pitch Kong being done with the same technique, including dinosaurs. Neodinosaurs, much as I and every other child who loves or loved dinosaurs wishes otherwise, remain a pretty remote bit of speculative fantasy, whatever lake monsters and sea monsters may or may not actually exist. The discovery of living coelocanths once lent tenuous credibility to the fantasy of prehistoric life being extant on the planet, but a tenacious fish is still many rungs of the ladder from dinosaurs -- so, much as this writer loves the notion and always had, its sheer foolishness to buy into the premise of any patch of ground, however remote, still nurturing a menagerie of neodinosaurian giants.

Then there's the issue of Kong's existence at his given size, the same stretch of credibility all 'giant monster' fantasies require. The entire premise of a 30-to-50 foot ape, or ant, or whatever, is by and large invalidated by the square-cube law (publicized in the context of the genre thanks to an excellent 1953 Saturday Review of Literature review of the giant ant classic Them!, which is where I first read about and understood this scientific principle as a wee lad scouring the dusty magazine stacks of the Waterbury Public Library, reading up on old movies). In short, the square cube law of geometry maintains that the surface area of any given form increases proportionally to the square of its linear dimensions; however, its volume increases as the cube of its dimensions. In the case of a giant monster, its size and relative strength may be proportional to the square of its height or length, but its mass (in terms of sheer weight) is cubed: thus, the larger a given monster, the less likely it will be capable of sustaining its own weight. Its legs won't function, it won't be able to breathe, etc., if it's capable of eating enough to sustain any life at all.

I know, that's no fun at all. Never had been, but thus the rarity of giant apes, radiation-inflated insects and arachnids, and lack of real-life kaiju eiga in our banal day-to-day world.

Furthermore, if you can roll with all that without your skull imploding like Skull Island at the end of Son of Kong (so, was Kong a female? A primate lesbian with the hots for the blonde dish?), there's the conundrum of an ape that we later see climbing all over Manhattan's skyline being 'kept at bay' on Skull Island by comparatively puny walls and a double-door he pushes open when provoked.

Then there's the issue of getting Kong from an Indonesian isle and into Manhattan without, oh, I don't know, passing through Ellis Island or alerting customs, much less setting off an international incident with Indonesian authorities or whatever. Even in 1933, there were laws governing the trafficking of animals and alien species, and by any stretch of the imagination, Kong (however docile and/or drugged) is a pretty tough-to-hide 'bring 'em back alive' acquisition. Besides, such a voyage would take (per the film's own narrative) at least six weeks. How to keep Kong drugged, chained, and fed (not to mentioned, uh, the waste disposal issues)? How, exactly, is that accomplished?

So, with a deft quick-cut (emulated, properly, by Jackson and his creative partners), we leap from Kong konked on the Skull Island beach to debuting in downtown Manhattan. OK. (If you maintain, as some do, that Jackson dropped some sort of narrative ball emulating that canny cut from Skull Island to Manhattan, consider, constant reader, the always maladroit "en route to civilization" scenes of Kong sequels and imitations, including the Toho 'sequels,' the Dino remake, et al -- it's rare when a flick like Eugene Lourie's gem Gorgo has a reason for the sequence, and pulls it off with any measure of believability. Sometimes, narrative shorthand like that jumpcut serves a plethora of purposes, including sidestepping the kind of running-time-devouring necessities of dealing with logistical issues even going there invites.)

Thereafter, we are supposed to buy that Kong indeed finds Ann -- finds and recognizes and recaptures Ann -- by climbing on buildings and peering into windows. Itty, bitty, what's-the-chances-he'll-luck-on-that-apartment's-particular-window windows. With New York City's population already in the millions, the odds are certainly stacked against this, however sharp his eye, nostrils, or just dumb luck.

The Empire State Building was pretty spiffy and new in '33 -- construction having been completed only a couple of years before -- so incorporating it into the narrative was a stroke of genius by any cynic's or naysayer's standard. Still, would its structure have borne up under the weight of a 16-ton or so gorilla? Would its summit's structure have carried that weight? Wouldn't the winds have simply blown Kong -- and if not the ape, the girl -- from that 1,200+ foot height?

And when he fell -- barring issues of wind velocity, air resistance, and the impact the bounces on the way down might have -- it seems fair to guesstimate his less-than-ten-second fall to street level bringing that mass of primate flesh into the pavement at better than approximately 270+ feet-per-second, which means (given the laws of kinetic energy: kinetic energy=1/2 mass x velocity squared) the fall should impact at over 39 million foot-pounds of force, which will either (a) plunge Kong's karcass into a very deep crater of sub-street destruction, including perhaps a crevass through the subway and all such veining of civilization below, or (b) pulped primate soup with a splatter of hair and central stock of splintered marrow and bone, in the unlikely event the street sustains any measure of support when the mega-monkey pancakes.

Not much to eulogize, in either case.

So, let's take it all in: we've got a savage great ape of indeterminate gender and variably size (sometimes shot-to-shot), by all evidence the lone or last member of its species, living on the wrong continent in the wrong hemisphere of the planet, scrapping with neodinosaurs (which themselves wrecklessly mixed species geography, not to mention incompatible spans of geological time, without any regard for any semblence of 'realism), falling in love with a female of a dwarfish, hairless, completely incompatible species. And then, like, being towed into New York City and displayed on stage for a paying audience to see, after clearing said importation and display with relevent authorities. After which, having somehow maintained his footing atop the summit despite high winds while making sure his frail little plaything Ann Darrow didn't blow off either, Kong was shot down by planes and subsequently plunged from the top of the Empire State Building, though he neither plunges through the tarmac into whatever is under the street below, nor turns to primate puree on the pavement. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.

What a vast and brimming, steaming crock of shit.

Heresy!

Bullshit.

Still, Kong is magic, and we accept magic when we wish to fall beneath its spell. Kong -- in all his incarnations -- is a fairy tale, the best two versions (1933 and 2005) dreams. They function solely on that level. That is their power, their charge, their importance, the be-all and end-all. Tear at the fabric of either, and they dissolve. That's not a flaw, that's the nature of dreams.

But let's stay with the cultural elevation of the 1933 version, 70+ years hence:

Furthermore, when a film (or any creative work) becomes thus culturally sanctified, its elements become similarly deified. Thus, the characters, however shallow, anachronistic, or reprehensible when analyzed with the same critical faculties we bring to bear on a contemporary work (such as, for instance, the Jackson Kong), are already "blessed" as being identifiably themselves. We have long since qualified/rectified/amplified them into proper alignment with the sanctified work.

Case in point: Carl Denham, as played by Robert Armstrong.

[To be concluded, as the conjunction of Armstrong and Black's Carl Denham's brings all this to a head, tomorrow...]

The Condi Connection: Picking up on Kong tomorrow at last, but first, this from Kondi's Kissin' Kuzzin! Can't Get Enough of Condi? Meet Constance!

I've about finished my King Kong piece for posting here -- concluding the multi-part 'think piece' I launched last week -- and hope to have it up by Friday AM at the latest. But there's been a number of things that demanded immediate attention in the meantime, what with dear friends and family in need, making sure Blue Underground got in touch with Eddie Campbell and had access to the necessary issues of Taboo for the upcoming DVD release of the rare 1977 giallo The Pyjama Girl Case (never before released in the US!), the launch of filmmaker Walter Ungerer and my online film class for the University of Vermont -- which I meant to alert you all to here in advance, but the necessary info never reached me -- not to mention all the shit relevent to the year coming to a close, and Marj and I just getting back from a trip and all... so, apologies, thanks for being patient.

So sure, it's been a hectic day, but I have to share this scattershot info turned up while researching my buddy Mark Martin's fave Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- and the synchronistic conjunction of a recent item HomeyM sent my way.

First off, it seems Condi has a cousin, Mark -- and she's a mighty interesting cousin at that.

To quote 200 Motels: "Which -- do -- you -- chooooooose?"

According to Ronald Hilton (in "Confederate Flag: Stand Firm, Howard Dean", November 6, 2003), "Constance L. Rice, lawyer, is director of the Advancement Project in Los Angeles... [addressing] the battle for equal education in a city that is racially and ethnically divided." Hilton wrote about Constance:

"Always a studious tomboy, Rice gained admission to Harvard, only to be physically beaten during her freshman year by a fellow student whom she had refused to date. Left with a broken nose and a determination never to be that powerless again, Rice began studying tae kwon do and became a national champion. With a degree in government from Harvard and a degree in law from New York University, she also is a champion fighter for women's rights, minority rights and community rights.... Rice began her legal career as a federal clerk, drafting an opinion that created the "reasonable woman" standard. She moved to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and became co-director of the Los Angeles office. During her tenure, the fund's Los Angeles office won more than $1.6 billion worth of injunctive relief and damages through class action lawsuits on behalf of multi-racial coalitions of clients. In 1998, the Los Angeles Times designated her one of 24 leaders considered the "most experienced, civic-minded and thoughtful people on the subject of Los Angeles."... The Advancement Project, which Rice co-founded, is responsible for a dramatic court victory that required the state to spend the funds it had to build new schools in the districts that needed them. Also, her firm was deeply involved in efforts to expose the recent Ramparts corruption scandal, and it now has a contract to advise the city's police union. "We need to help them have the tools they need to be humane," Rice says. Unlike her second cousin, Condoleezza Rice, Constance Rice avoids party affiliations and political labels. But she says the two women share an appreciation of "facts, analysis and a solution."

Ah, very diplomatically put, Mr. Hilton. And here all this time I thought Condi was lying through her teeth. But enough of that, back to Constance, who makes the heart grow fonder.

Seems Constance has quite impressive career credentials, having received more than 50 major awards "for her work in expanding opportunity and advancing multi-racial democracy" (quoted from the article, below) after having graduated from Harvard College in 1978 and winning the Root Tilden Public Interest Scholarship to New York University School of Law, where she earned her law degree in 1984. Constance thereafter served as law clerk to the Honorable Damon J. Keith, judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit; worked at Morrison & Foerster as a litigation associate; joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (in '91), and so on per Hilton's article, above.

As a litigator, Rice filed a landmark case on behalf of low-income bus riders that resulted in a mandate that more than 2 billion dollars be spent to improve the bus system; launched a coalition lawsuit that won $750 million for new school construction in L.A. (reportedly rerouting funds previously slated for far more affluent suburban school districts); etc. Beyond that, Rice served as counsel to the Watts gang truce; spearheaded a statewide campaign to save equal opportunity programs; was appointed to the governing board of Los Angeles's Department of Water and Power (where she served as president); etc. etc. etc. It's a head-spinning whirlwind career, to say the least.

All that and more about Condoleezza Rice's cousin can be found online in various venues (google her!). Among her many online documents is Constance's "Confederate Flap: Stand Firm, Howard Dean: Candidate's allusion to poor Southern whites opens an important issue," which is

here.

Worth a read, if only to balance the spin.

Anyhoot, by coincidence, here's what HomeyM sent me this past week:

Last Friday on NOW, David Brancaccio talked with Constance Rice, Condi's talented, compassionate and humane second cousin, about what Guantanamo says about our society.... As a civil rights lawyer, Connie Rice has had extensive experience with the justice system and she knows that a lot that is being exposed in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is reflected in the US prisons. David talked with her about those prisons....

Members of Congress from both parties are now calling for an independent investigation into possible abuses at Guantanamo. But even with the painful lessons learned from Abu Ghraib, the White House says "no." Civil rights crusader and regular NOW contributor Constance Rice says that there are parallels between the treatment of prisoners in American prisons, those in Abu Ghraib, and the prison camp at Guantanamo that are instructive.

"Am I saying that our prisons are as bad as Abu Ghraib? No," she says. "But do we have conditions that are illegal, unconstitutional and cruel and unusual? Yes."

The talk between David Brancaccio and Constance Rice is

here.

And here's the link for

The Advancement Project,

should you be so moved.

OK, enough Condi and Constance and such -- back to Kong!

Bissette Blathers On: Interview online!

Among the items I hoped to post while away is this, which went online yesterday (12/26/05) -- so, one day late, but still, it's there.

The good & gracious Land of Frost inhabitant Alex Ness interviewed yours truly at length, and it all awaits you at

Pop Thought Pops Bissette!

Here's hoping all is going well for you, Alex. Send some good vibes his way, people, he can use it!

Enjoy, and more later...

Hello, Blogosphere! Back from the road, 12/27...

Hope you all had a most Merry Christmas, and are enjoying a fine stretch of holi-daze and days.

I've been away for a few days and unable to access computers (a rather blissful state, actually) for a time, so I've got considerable 'catch-up' to do today, including posting my in-progress 'think piece' on King Kong. When I was able to get (briefly) online, it was impossible to link to my blog (due to the archaic old computers in reach), so it went, so it goes.

More later, with multiple daily posts in the coming day or two to get everything caught up and back in gear. See you here, soon!

Off to Skull Island... (Part the Third)

It’s ironic, given the decades of rumors and obits of/for men who claimed to have “played Kong” in the 1933 original, that 21st Century movie-making magic has come back to -- an actor “playing Kong.” As my friend Michel H. Price, co-author (with the late, great George Turner) of the definitive book(s) on the making of the 1933, had occasion to remind me when I sent him a photocopy of an obit of yet another pretender to the throne, “no one played Kong, ever, in any shot.” The original Kong was a fusion of stop-motion animation (by Willis O’Brien and his crew) and ‘life-sized’ live-action Kong animatronic mechanics: that huge grinning face, the iconic simian hand Fay Wray spent so much time in.

Andy Serkis is the 2005 Kong, converted by calculated CGI magic into the most vivid and heart-breaking primate character in cinema history. Building upon the venerable tradition of the Hollywood ape actor, from Charles Gemora to Bob Burns to Rick Baker (who, BTW, is piloting one of the planes that bring down Kong at the end of Jackson’s remake: Dino’s Kong shoots down Jackson’s Kong, not quite up there with Divine raping him/herself in John Waters’s Female Trouble, but still a nifty conceit), Serkis honors those-who-came-before with a performance of remarkable intensity, majesty, and uncanny fidelity to primate behavior. By design and necessity, Serkis’s Kong is a conflation of all things simian, wedded to a depth of heart and expression superceding any and all previous celluloid or CGI outsized monsters: he is indeed King.

The most convincingly ‘real’ cinematic gorillas to date remain Rick Baker’s creations for Gorillas in the Mist (1988), with Baker’s slightly stylized simians for Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984) and Ron Underwood’s engaging remake of another O’Brien stop-motion simian Mighty Joe Young (1998). In fact, both versions of Mighty Joe Young (the 1949 original is strongly recommended, and just out on DVD) are as heartfelt a balm as I can recommend to parents seeking to soothe the savaged hearts of their little ones moved to tears by the old or new Kong -- though in both cases, King Kong is by far the superior film. Baker, of course, also “played Kong” in the inflated, ill-fated 1977 remake, and he remains the sole asset of that opus worth revisiting. Despite the limitations imposed upon him by the misguided entirity of Dino DeLaurentiis’s enterprise (which, it must be remembered, included Dino’s bid to purchase all extant prints and negatives of the 1933 original and have them destroyed, a ploy that thankfully proved impossible), Baker gave the film his all, and Baker’s Kong is an honorable ode to the iconic Kong we all know and love, even if the film he is trapped within is not. That Baker would dramatically refine and perfect his art -- in terms of both performance and makeup-effects versimilitude -- to create the far more convincing and personable primates of Greystoke, Gorillas in the Mist, and the Mighty Joe Young remake is no surprise. After all, the young Rick Baker who “played Kong” wasn’t that far in years from his breaking-into-the-biz ape suit John Landis wore for Landis’s spoof Schlock!, or those Baker constructed and donned for Kentucky Fried Movie (another early Landis gem, the one that landed him the directing gig for Animal House) and The Thing with Two Heads (a double-decker gorilla, natch), or even Baker’s mutant baby for It’s Alive and the risible Octoman. Baker’s own affection and devotion to Kong punctuates his stellar career, and his involvement with Jackson’s project, however peripheral, only enhances the integrity of the current venture.

Serkis builds upon Baker’s primates in particular, lending the new Kong the utterly convincing, beguiling presence of a true outsized silverback. Serkis first struts his stuff in the brief sequence in which Anne (Watts) extracts herself short-term from the fate of all previous ‘brides of Kong’ by removing her ceremonial spiked ‘bride’s collar’ and plunging one of its thorns into Kong’s paw (a neat bit of environment-as-storytelling here, as Kong’s first stop with Anne is the site of the evident death-by-battering of all who preceded Anne); thus, Anne survives Kong-as-wife-beater, elevating their relationship a notch above domestic abuse writ hideously large.

The film’s pivotal sequence follows this, as Anne truly saves herself from potential death-as-frail-plaything when she startles Kong with further unprecedented “bride of Kong” behavior by doing the unexpected: applying her vaudeville skills, Anne entertains Kong (she has, after all, made ‘gorillas’ laugh in the off-Broadway theater performance glimpsed in the film’s opening). What could have fallen flatter than Jessice Lange’s ‘70s feminist-caricature prattle elevates the enterprise to a new level as Serkis’s Kong reacts with appropriate simian reactions. He is startled, angered and fearful, and his immediate instinct is to aggressively grimace, bare his fangs, roar, and basically carry on like Bill O’Reilly, while his eyes reveal more than he intends: a child-like merger of fear (what is this?), outrage, and wonder. Anne coaxes simian hoots of amusement from Kong, who then escalates Anne’s ‘act’ into dangerous turf by first knocking a stick out from under her (as satisfyingly primal a bit of slapstick as can be imagined) and then poking, prodding, and bullying her, trying to get this blonde ‘doll’ to extent the performance that has so unexpectedly delighted him. Kong-as-domestic-abuser rushes to the fore anew when Anne insists “no” means ”no”, and his subsequent destructive whirlwind of rage is both apt for a silverback and for the frustrated human male. By this juncture -- and without missing a beat thereafter -- Anne has won both Kong’s heart and our own, and in doing so giving us fresh insight and access to Kong as a character.

Now, this moment is as much the fruits of the script and Jackson’s canny conception and direction as it is Serkis and Watts’s performances: it is brilliantly conceived and executed, the point at which this King Kong shifts into a new realm of inspiration and excellence. While remaining faithful to the 1933 wellspring, all involved understood the task at hand, and rose to the occasion. The further evolution of their relationship is communicated by Serkis and his CGI collaborative creators of the character, and Watts as Anne, with similar economy of intent, effect and consequence. The second pivotal turn in the relationship between Anne and Kong comes amid the heart-stopping, floor-stomping, pulse-racing Kong-vs.-Tyrannosaurus rex (in triplicate!) tour-de-force, which further demonstrates Jackson’s skill as a storyteller and a filmmaker. Where most 21st Century action directors would be satisfied with a fraction of the kinetics generated by this dynamo sequence, Jackson the storyteller knows if it does not serve the tale, it is all useless noise. After the sequence’s initial giddy escalation of the classic 1933 sequence, culminating in a breathtaking participants-on-the-ropes extension of the battle into a dangling entanglement of vines, the moment Jackson brings us back to the iconic confrontation between Kong and the last T. rex standing -- at last, we are back where the 1933 Kong stood -- it is Anne’s realization that Kong is her protector, and her acting upon that realization, and Kong’s reaction to her action, that sends our hearts soaring to match our already racing pulse. All this occurs without bringing the confrontation between Kong and the snaggle-toothed T. rex to a halt: it in fact intensifies the showdown, and we are more fully invested in the action that follows than we perhaps believed possible.

Jackson, Serkis, Watts and their creative partners only build further upon this for the duration of the film. The immediate wake of the battle -- Kong refusing eye contact with Anne, turning his back her (further believable simian behavior, unexpected but ringing absolutely true); her slow ‘presenting’ herself to him as he labors to keep his eyes from her, culminating in his casual ‘acceptance’ via plucking Anne from the ground and tossing her onto his shoulder -- sets up the exquisitely-played moments between Kong and Anne outside his lair. Since seeing the film last week and now, I’ve read a few reviews and online critiques; some argue the sexual dimension of the Kong of yore has been taken away, but I can’t see that. The courtship is as ferocious as before, its culmination (Kong offering Anne his open palm, their ‘first’ -- alas, only -- night ‘sleeping together’ with Anne cradled in Kong’s hand) as affecting and sexualized as ever. True, gone is the inferred primal rape fantasy of the 1930s (coming as it did on the heels of genuine scientific research into cross-breeding humans and apes: see “Kissing Cousins” by Clive D. Wynne, The New York Times, Monday, December 12, 2005; thanks to Rick Veitch for sending this tear-sheet to me!): this is indeed a courtship, and all the more moving for being one. Jackson and his creative partners have wisely brought Kong, Anne and ourselves beyond the parameters of the original’s potent but shallow uncanny biological urges -- Kong sniffing the clothing of the unconscious Anne (which evokes the rude comment of Brian Cox’s character in Rob Roy: “Ah, nothing like a sniff of quim in the morning!”). This is indeed an interspecies romance of fresh depth and dimension, and the new Kong is the better for it.

The payoff in the final Manhattan-set act is profound, from Kong’s initial look of revulsion when confronted with Denham’s stage faux-Anne to Kong and Anne’s reunion to the revelation of Anne's empathic bond during her showgirl act on another stage (effectively drowned out by the lyrics of "Bye, Bye Blackbird"); from their playful interlude on Central Park ice (a lovely, unexpected delight) to the inevitable, iconic tragic finale atop the Empire State Building.

That the King who asserted his dignity and dominance by refusing to make eye contact with Anne on Skull Island now cannot take his eyes off Anne lends heartbreaking urgency to the whole of Jackson’s recreation and slight reinvention of the remarkable finale.

This is brilliant filmmaking on every level -- and it is the chemistry between Serkis and Watts, the fusion between Serkis and the CGI team, that brings Kong to such affecting life.

[An aside: One of the primary moments in my own education as a comics artist and storyteller came from my mentor Joe Kubert, who once effectively dissected a pragmatic but critical misstep in the final panel of a story I was drawing for Heavy Metal while still a student of Joe's school. "Eye contact is very important," Joe patiently explained from over my shoulder, while pencilling onto tracing paper an alternative approach to the last panel of "Curious Thing". "Eye contact between characters, eye contact with the reader -- this is one of the greatest tools you have as a storyteller." I never forgot Joe's lesson, and it always played a vital role in each and every panel or piece of art I ever drew thereafter. Jackson knows the primal power of that tool, too, and few fantasy films have used it as dramatically, appropriately, or effectively as Jackson did in his work, including the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and King Kong.]

This brown-eyed, scar-visaged, broken-jawed, tooth-jutting Kong is also patterned after the 20th Century’s most renowned and beloved gorilla, Gargantua. Gargantua was once as famous as Elvis, but just as P.T. Barnum is no longer a known quantity to 21st Century audiences, Gargantua has faded (with his partriarch circus-proprietor) into vague cultural memory; it is entirely appropo that Jackson and his creative team resurrect Gargantua via/into Kong.

The associative link is strangely apt: the real-life Gargantua’s career trajectory roughly paralleled reel-life Kong’s. The maimed little gorilla orphan West Key Bar Captain Arthur Phillips delivered to caring foster ‘mother’ Gertrude Davies Lintz aka Mrs. William Lintz (I’m not being a chauvanist, just adhering to the standard of that era) about this time of year in 1931 had reportedly been scarred by a vengeful sailor, who ‘avenged’ himself on his captain after being discharged for misbehavior by the cowardly act of spraying a nitric-acid-filled fire extinguisher into the infant gorilla’s face. Working with an adventurous dermatologist (who repaired the extensive facial damage as best as 1930s medical procedures allowed), Mrs. Lintz personally nursed the wounded gorilla back to health, though Gargantua was never able to close his eyes. “I had to put drops in [his eyes] three times a day,” Mrs. Lintz said, “It is a tribute to the gorilla’s intelligence that after the first panic, he cooperated in his own cure.” A devoted animal lover, Mrs. Lintz indeed nursed Gargantua -- then named Buddy, short for Buddha -- back to health with such tenderness that the primate not only recovered from the trauma, but remained (despite the fixed scowl of his striking features) one of the most affectionate primates to tour the circus circuit. Richard Kroener and Anthony J. Desimone also worked with Mrs. Lintz and Buddy aka Gargantua in his formative years, nursing him back to health again in 1936 from a second mean-spirited scarring (a North Miami Zoo employee fed Buddy chocolate syrup laced with a potent cleaning disinfectant, internally burning the gorilla’s stomach lining and intestines).

After sheltering and caring for Buddy for six years, the near-adult size, strength, and potential for her 400-pound adopted ‘son’ to inadvertantly injuring someone prompted Mrs. Lintz to find a new home for her beloved primate. Already renowned among circus and animal trainers, Buddy/Gargantua was a desirable acquisition for any circus, and his sale to John and Henry Ringling North in December of 1937 placed the primate in the menagerie of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Baily Circus. Wintering in Sarasota, Florida and touring the US thereafter as Gargantua the Great: "The Largest Gorilla Ever Exhibited -- The World’s Most Terrifying Living Creature!", the benevolent Buddha was world-famous for over a decade. When Gargantua died in November of 1949 -- coincidentally passing while Mighty Joe Young ‘toured’ movie theaters across America -- his death was front-page news. (If you want to learn more, check out the two books I referenced for this writeup -- Animals Are My Hobby by Mrs. Lintz, 1937, Robert M. McBride & Company; and Gargantua: Circus Star of the Century by Gene Plowden, 1972, Bonanza Books -- or google Gargantua and check out the photos.)

Thus, Kong and Gargantua were already simian brethren throughout the late 1930s (Gargantua’s world tour began in 1938; King Kong was re-released throughout the 1930s and ‘40s, still bailing out RKO’s dwindling studio fortunes with a boxoffice-busting 1952 rerelease that earned a writeup in Time magazine). The decision of Jackson and his creative collaborators to revamp Kong with a Gargantua-stylized ‘facelift’ -- evoking the scars of a life lived amid the deadly saurians and primordial inhabitants so abundant on Skull Island -- is as true to the great ape’s era as every other component of this 2005 masterwork.

Except, some argue, for Jack Black’s incarnation of Carl Denham.

[To be continued...]
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Interlude: My First Printed Art?

As a break from my Kong essay, here's something I can't wait on:

Well, technically, no. It wasn't my first printed art, but damn near.

But still -- My pal Mark Martin reacted so passionately to my son Dan wearing an old Bissette's Market t-shirt that Marj and I did a new printrun of 'em, just for Mark.

Check out Mark's hilarious post on this over at

Jabberous!

It's the Monday, December 19th posting, though the rest of Mark's blog is always of interest, too!

Off to Skull Island... (Part the Second)

Ray Harryhausen always said it took a very special kind of actor to perform in his type of film -- interacting/shadowboxing with stop-motion creations that simply weren't there on set -- citing Kerwin Mathews (Sinbad in Harryhausen's classic The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, 1958) as an exceptional actor in that regard. Arguably, what was an extraordinary task in the era of stop-motion animation pioneer/mentor Willis O'Brien and his acolyte/breakaway sucessor Harryhausen's films is now expected of almost all screen actors, given the new CGI-dominated landscape. Instead of Harryhausen instructing William Hopper to play off, say, the eyeline-defining 25-foot-black-head-on-a-stick-standin for the Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth, directors Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller have the entire cast of Sin City performing against green-screen sketches-of-sets in Texas to play off their absent co-stars, who will later perform on the same green-screen in abstentia imagined environments and already-in-the-can (or to-be-filmed-later) performances.

Thus, what was the unusual province of low-budget marginal actors and non-stars in the 1930s-70s is now the norm, punctuated with aging action stars like Arnold Schwarzeneggar providing the physical templates for their CGI simulcrums -- virtual performances, of a kind -- which 'perform' in their place as necessary. The stop-motion-animated skeletal Arnold that figured so prominently in the final act of James Cameron's sleeper hit The Terminator (1984) was a transitional keystone: now, Arnold is enhanced and/or supplanted by a CGI-simulcrum in almost all his films, at some point or another. A CGI-simulcrum Arnold dominates a surprising share of screentime in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), evidence of how far we already are in the blurring of special effects & screen acting. It is not hard to project an upcoming Schwarzeneggar opus in which the CGI template already on hand from the actor/governor's younger self dominates the film, enhanced with CGI-touched-up closeups of the still-living performer for the sake of versimilitude; a concept Peter Laird and I mused & chuckled over back in the early 1990s, then far-fetched, now business-as-usual in Hollywood.

In this regard, then, let me acknowledge and touch upon the extraordinary performance Naomi Watts gives in King Kong, for the life of the film and of Kong is so strongly felt in part because Watts so beautifully inhabits Anne Darrow and the film as a whole. In hindsight, Watts demonstrated her chops for this once-unusual kind of performance in one of the most surprising sequences in David Lynch’s full-of-surprises Mulholland Drive (2001): when the frail ingenue Betty (Watts) gets her shot at an audition in a producer’s office, we aren’t prepared for the conviction and power of her performance. Playing off hunky Chad Everett (the handsome but undistinguished actor I still can only associate with the 1960s TV show Medical Center), Watts sweeps us off our feet in the emotional force of the moment, invigorating the hoariest and most risible of soap-opera schtick with breathtaking intensity. It’s a delicious (and distinctively Lynchian) scene, and incredibly relevent to King Kong. Just as Watts vicariously lent momentary conviction and dimension to even (chuckle) Chad Everett, her Anne lends support to her CGI co-star. Anne and her character arc, defined in large part by her mercurial dynamic with Kong, is such an affecting experience that we do not only believe in her bond, her love, for Kong, we come to share it.

All of which would have been for naught were Kong -- specifically, the Kong created for Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong -- unworthy of such a performance, such devotion, such love.

Thankfully, he is. Ohhhh, is he ever.

But there is more -- much more -- to this. Dig:

We're in an age where the term "animated feature" is no longer distinctive: most Hollywood films we see are in fact "animated features," punctuated with live-action components. While this would seem self-evident in certain genres, bear in mind that almost all live-action films from the major studios are so CGI-enhanced (placing landscapes in windows, supplanting live skies with CGI skies, etc.) that the chances of your seeing a non-CGI-enhanced "major" feature in now almost nil. With the emergence in 2004 of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and especially Robert Rodriguez's initial batch of made-in-Texas CGI-constructed live-action fantasies (culminating in the already-cited Sin City), the mutants have indeed taken over. We've come a long way from the anachronisms of silent-era live-action/animation curios like Max & Dave Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell and Walt Disney's Alice and their 1990s descendents Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, which are as relevent to the new age of cinema as are Willis O'Brien and Ray Harryhausen's populist monster-movie fusions of live-action actors and stop-motion creatures.

The true nature of the crossroads we're at in 21st Century cinema has already spawned noisy-but-empty exercises in tedium like Van Helsing: seamless technological versimilitude guarantees only the relative illusion of high production values will be slathered over the most voidoid of turds, if the studios deem said turd worthy of such window-dressing.

Still, there's no computer-generating talent, nor is there any magic bullet for the emotional vacuum most CGI creations embody. What's been forgotten by all but a few in the post-O'Brien/Harryhausen era is that shopping-out effects sequences in the crazy-quilt production mode Hollywood has indoctrinated as the norm is inherently antithetical to the convincing creation of life on the screen.

For instance, though Ang Lee reportedly dedicated intensive attention and time to 'directing' the CGI 'performance' of The Hulk for his ambitious 2003 adaptation of the Stan Lee/Jack Kirby Marvel comic character, the failure to infuse the Hulk with any recognizable personality traits was almost a given. You cannot 'shop out' or 'outsource' a performance: the many hands behind the CGI Hulk -- the character, that sense of being alone -- doomed the project from the beginning in a way most audiences and critics were unable to articulate, but all felt. It wasn't just the fact that Eric Bana -- playing the Hulk's human alter-ego Bruce Banner -- seemed in no way connected to that green CGI brute in purple shorts; it was the fact that no single presence or personality was evident or could be felt in the Hulk. He remained an impersonal, soulless CGI confection.

On a conscious level, we all reacted to that. On an unconscious level, we knew there was literally nothing there.

The multi-effects-house school of film production is by definition destructive to a film like Ang Lee's The Hulk. The end result is, by definition, unavoidable. Primary lessons have been lost: there is a reason, for instance, that Walt Disney and Dave Fleischer assigned particular animators to particular characters in their animated shorts and features. Betty Boop animated by anyone but her creator Grim Natwick simply wasn't Betty: she'd pass for a shot or sequence when the necessities of tight production deadlines and scheduling required other animators animate Betty for a shot or two, but unless Grim's hand was behind the key sequences, it just wasn't Betty (until her look, movements, and manner was suitably codified later in the series). Disney and his directors made sure Bill Tytla animated Stromboli in Pinocchio because they understood Tytla was as much a performer as an animator: Bill inhabited his creations, from the winged-and-horned demon in The Night on Bald Mountain sequence of Fantasia to Stromboli and beyond, in ways that indeed communicated directly to audiences. Assigning animators was inherently a form of casting, and "casting" Tytla as Stromboli was a masterstroke, a perfect fusion of animator and character.

Those men were also alchemists: they projected essential aspects of themselves into their animated creations. The same was absolutely true of O'Brien and Harryhausen's work, via their interaction with those stop-motion-animated puppets. It was their distinctive personalities and performances we responded to (and still respond to). Thus, Willis O'Brien was Kong in a measurable way: Kong embodied and projected vital elements of O'Brien.

Stop-motion animation was not a mere technical exercise in the hands of a true artist.

Ray Harryhausen has often recalled in interviews and his books that when he worked under his mentor O'Brien on the animation of Mighty Joe Young (1949), there was one particular Joe puppet Harryhausen felt a great affinity for, and that affinity comes through in the particular sequences Harryhausen animated in the film using that puppet: those sequences, in fact, define Joe's personality in ways that carry the film. Harryhausen's most memorable solo stop-motion creations, from the Rhedosaurus of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms to the Medusa of Clash of the Titans, were recognizably extensions of Harryhausen the actor: they acted, reacted, moved and inhabited their cinematic worlds in ways our unconscious minds recognized as distinctively, uniquely Harryhausen's way of acting, reacting, moving and inhabiting the world. It wasn't just a matter of similar movements or stances -- though those manifest threads are self-evident upon scrutiny, from Harryhausen's 1940s fairy tale shorts to his final feature Clash of the Titans -- but of the literal projection of the artist through his art, the alchemy I referred to above. Artists like O'Brien and Harryhausen expressed themselves so eloquently through their stop-motion creations that we recognized them and reacted to them as projections, loved them as such.

I know from an early age, long before I stumbled upon the first articles on O'Brien or Harryhausen in the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland, the child I was recognized upon seeing 20 Million Miles to Earth for the first time that it was somehow, mysteriously linked to "that monster" in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Little did I know at the time that Harryhausen had pursued the path he did due to his own overwhelming, definitively formative exposure to O'Brien's magic in the original King Kong: art as communicative disease.

As children, we unconsciously respond to these things. We grasp them on an organic, beyond-words level. This is something the best puppeteers have always understood and worked with. There's a reason Jim Henson, Frank Oz and their fellow Muppeteers always played the same roles on Sesame Street: the puppeteers were their puppets. The kids would know when Big Bird was right, and would respond on a gut-level if Big Bird was "wrong." It isn't just a matter of vocal performances (though that has an organic reality, too: since Mel Blanc's death, we've all missed on a very real level the Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Yosemite Sam et al of our youths), it's physical, interactive, and children know when Bert & Ernie aren't really Bert & Ernie. It's a sort of alchemy, it's magic; as children, we respond to this. As adults, we may consciously forget, but when confronted by as soulless and fragmented a non-personality as the CGI Hulk of Ang Lee's film, our unconsciousness makes the same assessment. The kid in us all knew there was nothing really there.

All of which brings me (at last!) to Peter Jackson and his Kong. Jackson never, ever forgot his childhood perceptions of film, and of the original Kong; never forgetting, Jackson has attended to his films with the necessary childlike intensity of play and zeal for creating convincing realities on a primal, organic level. Hence, the alchemy and magic of his King Kong is genuine.

From his first film, the delightfully daft gorefest Bad Taste (1988), Jackson demonstrated a fundamental grasp of cinema and its potential that was intoxicating. Even with no money to work with, the ever-inventive Jackson and his cronies pulled off ambitious effects (including almost seamless forced in-camera, live perspective shots using detailed miniatures) that lent their cheapjack opus a sense of expansive scale and scope that belied its impoverished means. En route to the reportedly $200+ million budget of Kong, Jackson has never lost sight of the core issues of cinema, its fundamental nature.

Unlike Ang Lee (or, more to the point, the insufferably detached George Lucas, whose films since the 1977 Star Wars and his magnificent production of The Empire Strikes Back have been steadfastly soulless confections), Jackson understood that it is not the director that infuses life into special effects and CGI characters. As The Hulk painfully demonstrated, the work of many hands adds up to a dramatic cipher, however involving the narrative and dramatic context, if we do not feel, sense, and believe in the organic totality of a character. Fragmented among multiple effects house and technicians (and, yes, artists), however attentively Ang Lee directed the performance of his Hulk, the CGI Hulk would be less than a hulk: a thing of disconnected illusory movement and images, shards of a notion of a character, splinters and bytes of what might-have-been. Lee's Hulk will sadly forever remain a fragmented cipher: less, in fact, than the sum of his parts.

As in theatrical puppetry, the creation of cinematic characters via effects requires a single, organically-identifiable personality be projected into a 'virtual' character, and it must obey the rules of such alchemy: it is unavoidably either the animator or the puppeteer who instills life in the character.

If Kong were to live, he had to have a single, solitary, and strongly felt soul injecting life into that otherwise soulless simulcrum. However much Naomi Watts poured into her heartfelt performance, she would have been stranded high and dry (much like Jennifer Connolly, who gave an excellent performance in The Hulk) were the CGI-spawn-of-Skull-Island Kong unworthy of her (or our) devotion.

Thus, Jackson knew his Kong depended entirely on Kong being a perceivable extension of a single personality: a soul had to be enfused into the CGI beast. With the reality of 21st Century theatrical feature film production belying the remote chance of a single animator being the soul of his Kong, Jackson embraced the model he had already forged in his remarkable Lord of the Rings trilogy: he cast his Kong.

Thus, the heart and soul and voice of Gollum, the incredibly versatile and personable Andy Serkis, was Jackson's perfect Kong.

Andy Serkis played -- he was -- Gollum, the greatest CGI character in the history of cinema.

Andy Serkis is now Kong, and we are in the thrall of a new spectacle: the perfect synthesis of technology and art, of CGI and performance, of computers and magic.

[Continued tomorrow...]

Off to Skull Island... (Part the First)

Forgive my crowing a bit, but before I get into Kong (thought I'd never get to it, HB3?), a heads up for the top ranking a DVD I had a little hand in (guest interview subject in one of its delicious extras) just earned. Check it out --

Diabolik Laughs Last!

"moo-oo-ha ha hah HAH HAH!"

[PS: If the Diabolik link doesn't work for some reason, cut-and-paste the following:
http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s1833pick.html
I've corrected the link three times, but for some reason it doesn't seem to be functional. Sorry!]

It's an honor to have been part of this sterling resurrection of one of my favorite Mario Bava films, one of my all-time fave comics-to-cinema adaptations, and bigs thanks to Kim Aubry of Zeotrope-Aubrey Productions and to my long-time Bava-lovin' amigo Tim Lucas for suggesting to Kim I be involved at all. Great to see Kim and Tim's faith, devotion, and hard work pay off thus, too.
______

I've held off writing this until I could get the time in place and thoughts in order. Here we go:

Spoiler Alert/Warning: I'm not holding back! If you don't want to know details about Kong, stop reading ang go see it now!

The coincidental excavation of my "where did I put those?" collection of Budd Root's 1990s run of Cavewoman comics series (amid the setting up of my new workspace/studio) the very day my son Dan and I took in the early morning matinee of Peter Jackson's marvelous King Kong was a pleasant omen. No one in the remaining self-publishers circle I've stayed in touch with has been more eager about the coming of the new Kong then Budd has been; so, Budd (along with Willis O'Brien devotee Myron Mercury's occasional emails) kept my enthusiasm bouyed even as I diligently avoided reading anything on the upcoming remake. The sole exception to this tactic was my purchase of the DVD restoration of the original Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack/Willis O'Brien classic King Kong, which unavoidably placed Jackson and his creative team on my screen, lovingly "recreating" (some would argue "creating for the first time") the long-lost, long-cut and almost mythic 1933 spider pit sequence. More on that later...

The most heartening evidence, though, came the morning of the new Kong's debut, when my son Dan called me early in the AM to ask if I was ready to go see Kong with him. He'd caught a midnight show the night before (he'd plugged into the local theater staff showing), and was eager to immediately share the experience with his ol' Pop! Dan is a pretty discerning viewer, and this was a great sign. Later that same day, my amigo Chas Balun rang up out of the blue to alert me to the glory that is the Jackson Kong, and again, this carries a lot of weight for me: Chas, you'll recall, was the man who alerted most of us in North America to the joys of Jackson's very first feature, Bad Taste, having in fact provided me with my first viewing of that gem waaaaaaaay back in the day. Chas wrote up Bad Taste for the newsstand in the pages of Fangoria and moreso in the pages of his own zine Deep Red, thus launching the Peter Jackson US cult before anyone else recognized the mad wet glint in Jackson's bloodshot eye as the lunacy of genius. Thus, when Chas called to say all the hype wasn't a lie and Jackson had come through with flying colors, on the immediate heels of Dan's "Hey, Dad, we're going and that's all there is to it!" call -- well, I at last permitted myself to harbor some expectations.

So, Dan, Chas, and Budd, here's to you.

A thing of primal beauty and surprising majesty it is, Jackson's Kong (a shorthand reference I use but hope not to abuse for the sake of convenience, as this Kong was forged by a remarkable collaborative effort lead by Jackson, prominent among that number Jackson's sterling New Zealand-based effects crew Weta Workshop and Weta Digital and his credited screenplay partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens). First off, Jackson and his confederates in cinematic crime were true to the time, tenor, intent and content of the original sans devotion to anything but the narrative meat and core spirit of the 1933 Kong. Passionate fidelity not unquestioning fealty, inspiration above mere imitation reigns: Jackson was devoted to making a Kong for the 21st Century rather than simply retrofitting and rebooting the 1933 model with 21st Century technology. Thus, we're spared the tarn of, for instance, Gus Van Sant's Psycho (which replicated its source beat-for-beat with the unfortunate grace note 'enhancements' of greviously miscasting its two leads, overt masturbation added to Bates's scopophilia, color and a gaping wound to its shower murder, and the utter trivialization of its crimes amid the context of the post-Manson/Lucas/Dahmer et al reality of the 1990s). In every detail, this rethinking of Kong is rigorous and faithful and, in most cases, correct.

One can quibble with "I would have preferred this" alternative notions, but there's no denying the clarity and crystalline follow-through of every decision Jackson and his creative partners made. There are few missteps and no missed opportunities, and even with the 'spider-pit' sequence, the urge to recreate (or, in the case of the 'spider-pit,' create for the first time for audiences) is addressed and embraced only when it fits and/or amplifies the narrative drive of Kong itself. Therefore, where a lesser filmmaker with all the CGI toys at his or her disposal might have simply amped up classic 1933 sequences customized with unfilmed passages from the Delos W. Lovelace 1932 novelization (such as Kong's confrontation at the tar pit with a group of Triceratops, a spectacular bit including Kong tossing boulder-sized shards of solidified tar at the ceratopsians), Jackson and his team instead reinvigorate the narrative by passionately reinvesting themselves in the characters -- and by doing so, reinvesting ourselves in this resonant pop-culture myth, from stem to stern.

They did so with renewed attention to Kong's era -- absolutely wed as it is to the myth and its tenacity -- thus immediately eschewing the dangers of making Kong more 'contemporary' by setting it in the present. The early 20th Century era of high adventure that Kong emerged from is instrinsic to its mythic power; that Kong was the creation of restless, aggressive adventurers, fighters, cowboys and dreamers is fully acknowledged and honored, as are the desperate times Kong both personified and promised, however romantically, escape from.

Thus, we meet Anne (a radiant Naomi Watts) playing a faux-Chaplin-Tramp in a failing vaudeville production, clinging to a beloved father-figure as the entire troupe is on its last legs. This rethinking of Anne stills brings us to the meeting place of the 1933 original -- Anne's desperate theft of an apple -- but her deftly scripted, played and directed backstory isn't superfluous, attuned as it is to both the realities and fantasies (how many Busby Berkeley scenarios began this way?) of the early Depression years. This setup also slyly introduces the chops, skills and tools necessary to Anne's initial survival of, and eventual winning of, Kong himself -- very sharp writing, this.

We meet Carl Denham (played by a perhaps-too-youtful but eager and utterly shameless Jack Black) at his most furtive, his eyes narrowing and darting like a cornered scavenger. He is, in fact, 'cornered' by the failed screening of footage from his latest opus, met at the moment of his imminent demise as an up-and-coming filmmaker, as the bored producers assess their cut-and-run alternatives to further indulging Denham's latest hare-brained exotica. This passage is cannily true to its era in ways most audiences are blissfully unaware of (the crass query of the most bored of the producers as to whether Denham will include "titties" is dead-on, as lurid & sensationalist early sound era exotics like the gorilla-mating-with-women confection Ingagi and breasts-in-Bali Goona Goona had eclipsed the respectable pioneering adventure documentaries of Martin & Osa Johnson and Cooper & Schoedsack). Denham's flop-sweat followed by his off-the-top-of-his-head pitch for something more and his foot-in-mouth confrontation and blow-up at the "titties" query synchronistictly plops Denham into Anne's shoes: shit out of luck, out of work, and desperate for any alternative still in accord with his/her path. Again, very tasty scripting.

However, some devotees of the original may already find themselves at odds with the film. I put it to you that the original Anne (Fay Wray, beautifully evoked here -- along with Cooper -- in Denham's cab-ride dialogue with his flunky perfectly played throughout by Colin Hanks) was as much a shorthand product of her era as the original Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong, natch). To 1933 audiences caught in the grip of the Depression, they needed only to lay eyes on willowy Anne as she reached for that apple to identify fully with her plight; 2005 viewers would make no such leap, not this side of the Atlantic, anyways (we're still too fat and complacent as a people to so immediately empathize and identify with poverty, hunger, and need). To 1933 audiences still close enough to the reality of P.T. Barnum as part of their own lives, Denham (an overt projection of both real-life adventurers/creators Cooper and Schoedsack, but particularly the outspoken huckster Cooper) was an immediately recognizable and alluring archetype; again, not so for 2005, when few remember who Barnum was and fewer still have ever brushed, much less experienced, the kind of old-school carny bluster Denham embodied in '33. There was still an electricity and validity (a cultural investment, if you will) in the 'White Queen' narrative in 1933, too; it had informed silent jungle films and serials, best-selling adventure stories and countless pulps, and was essential to MGM's monumental 1931 hit adaptation of Trader Horn. That colonial-era archetype was old-hat and already disposed-of when it was last trotted out in failed anachronistic jungle films of the 1980s, from the mainstream bomb Sheena, Queen of the Jungle to various cheapjack Jess Franco and Italian cannibal and zombie retreads. So, any allure or stock 2005 audiences might have lent to the mere sketch of 'a blonde white queen' by nature taming the big, black ape was nothing to be counted upon. Nor do the partriarchal precepts, prejudices and presumptions of '33 carry the day -- anachronisms all, risible at best, offensive at worst -- hence the wisdom of this meticulous character reinvention.

Jackson, Walsh and Boyens properly (and literally) slow the juggernaut rhythms of their Kong time and time again to place us in privileged empathic moments of meditation with both Anne and Denham, and this lends surprising cumulative weight to the proceedings. They -- and, once he assumes center stage almost 75 minutes into the film's running time, Kong -- are the only characters afforded these communal moments, and this is the film's keystone. Thus, we share/experience Anne's decisive moment in which she steps onto the platform of the steamer (and Denham's anxiety that she may not); Anne's experience of being borne away by Kong in all its pulse-racing immediacy, and her eventual realization that she must act in order to save her life; Anne's gradual awakening to Kong as more than just a beast, and the tentative stages of their nascent bond forming, its (believably) blossoming into something extraordinary; the arc of Anne's reaction to her rescue, and the conflicting emotions (relief, confusion, reassessment -- not just of the rescue, but tellingly of Denham and of her rescuer Jack -- outrage and ire); the almost telepathic moment of empathy with Kong, many streets and a stage away, in NYC; etc. We also share/experience Denham's emotional life with similar reveries, arriving at Denham making eye contact with his right-hand man (Hanks) amid the hoopla of Kong's impending show opening in Manhattan. This is a great and telling moment in the film: Denham is a user, and for a fragile moment the burden and shame of that -- of all the lives he has derailed, destroyed and altered in reckless pursuit of goals he cannot articulate, only seize -- is felt, by Denham and by the audience. A lesser filmmaker wouldn't have known, much less cared, the moment was there to be conveyed.

In the original King Kong, Anne was a waif and a cipher, invigorated primarily by the cinematic appeal of Fay Wray in the part and then by Kong's devotion to her, which we (the audience) come to share; Denham was an arrogant, reckless showman and braggart, a man's man in that he was fearless in the face of any danger (hence worthy of our emotional investment rather than rejected a villain). Neither would wash in 2005, any more than they would have in 1977, but Jackson and company thankfully avoided the revamps Dino DeLaurentiis, Lorenzo Semple Jr., and John Guillermin brought to bear: Anne (Jessica Lange) as feminist showgirl, Denham (Charles Grodin) as greedy capitalist/oilman. In fact, if there is any contemporary spin to these characters, it's Jackson and company's slight nod to none other than our current president in Denham's character (in fact, one fleeting dialogue exchange involving Denham, the ship's first mate, and the cabin boy played by Jamie Bell resonates in this context, citing the foolishness of equating "I'm not gonna cut & run" bravado with bravery, particularly when the alternative leads to the death of almost everyone in the search party).

But that's subtext, not text: Denham and Anne are fully-fleshed characters in all their appeal and foibles, and throughout Kong this investment pays off in spades.

As is, and as does, I am thankful to say, the characterization of Kong.

And it is this that elevates not just the film, but makes abundantly clear why Peter Jackson is among the greatest filmmakers of this or any era.

[Part the Second on Monday. See you here...]