An Earnest Request

The summer started with Iron Man, giving us (and Tony Stark) the superhero film we (and he) deserved. It was zippy, it was fun, it had pathos and flash, and, more than anything, it was a movie about a man, rather than his machine. Sure, I had a couple problems with it, but as a whole, I'd mark it a success for our favorite metal-suited billionaire genius.

Then we got The Incredible Hulk, which made me wonder if there will ever be a truly stellar Hulk movie.

But it was after The Dark Knight that I started to really want the world to give me the only superhero movie I ask for.

Please, someone, give me a Superman movie I can love.

I'm sure there are some Hulk fans out there saying the same thing for their main man, and I know there are more important things to ask for, but, really, this is all I want.

Christopher Reeve did a lot. He could play both Clark and the Big Blue Boyscout, and manage to make them very different from each other but yet still undeniably two sides of the same coin. Maybe I should chalk up the deficiencies in his movies to the special effects of the times. Or the plotlines. Or both.

But I know who I want to blame.

I want to blame the same person I blame for Superman Returns falling short of the mark. (And, no, it isn't Marlon Brando; in fact, I loved his inclusion in Superman Returns.)

I blame Lex Luthor. (Well, that and the asthmatic lovechild, who was cute but wholly unnecessary.)

Now, his appearances in the movies thus far have been fun. Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey have convinced me that being a follicly-challenged evil genius is the best time you can have, short of a day playing skee-ball on the boardwalk. They convinced me that executing a villianous plot is virtually synonymous with "hilarious hijinks" and they had quite possible the most useless posses since Disney gave Hades Pain and Panic as minions.


Thus far, Lex Luthor has been fun, but it's time for him to stop. His plots have been cartoonish, with a strange fixation on real estate only, and I'm convinced he's operating on the level of an amateur supervillian. Spacey's Luthor begins by getting an elderly women to sign a will that leaves everything to him. Child's play.

I guess I was sold too long ago on President Luthor. I realized that he was the ultimate villain for our hero. I was sold too long ago on the Luthor that masquerades as a businessman and sometime-philanthropist and makes millions in dirty money under the table, never mind how many people die as a result.

It's so hard for Superman, who operates on physical power, to beat someone at a game that's purely mental. I want to see him have to try. I don't know that I'd mind if he lost. I want him to have to catch up with someone who's always one step ahead, when no amount of super-speed is going to make a whit of difference. I want him to force himself to be more than just the Man of Steel to beat a man who already knows how to deal with that. Kryptonite is easy.

Sometimes I feel that Batman would be better suited to beat Luthor, and I have no doubt that he could, but I want Supes to do it.

Challenge yourself, Clark.

Don't let Luthor let you off easy with dual rockets to opposite coasts. Don't let him insult your capabilities with a Kryptonite island.

Let him be the mega-powerful, underhanded, far-too-clever evil that's nigh impossible to stop with strength and speed alone.

Because, come on, Superman, you've got more than that going for you. You've got . . . Well, honestly, the big-screen you has yet to really show us what else you have to offer. It's up to you now to change that. I believe in you. While everyone else spent the summer believing in Harvey Dent, I spent it putting faith in the Last Son of Krypton, hoping that one day, you'll show us what you're really made of.

And I believe you'll do it, too. After all, you always do the right thing.

Dreaming in Noir

"These are facts, historical facts, not schoolbook history,
not Mr. Wells' history, but history nevertheless."

-Sydney Greenstreet as Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon

Everyone wants to be an old movie. That's inarguable at this point, like some sort of fixed fact, tying the whole race together. We eat, we breathe, we sleep, we want to be loved, and we want to walk around looking beautiful in black and white, tossing off perfectly crafted one-liners. We want our fedoras at just the right angle as we watch the flecks of dust catching the slats of sunlight let in through the Venetian blinds, which is an image stolen from Double Indemnity, which starred Barbara Stanwyck in her engraved anklet, committing honeysuckle-scented murder.

Maybe you want to be Barbara, the cool blonde. Maybe you want to be Veronica Lake. Maybe you just want to be her hair.

I don't.

Maybe you want to be Spencer Tracy or Robert Mitchum. Maybe you want to be Peter Lorre. You'd have it almost right if you did.

But you probably want to be Humphrey Bogart. You want that trench coat, chiaroscuro, the fifty cigarettes and the biting cynical wit that can cut almost any man down before the man can whip out a pistol from that secret gun pocket all the film noir men seem to have in their overcoats. You want to be a five-foot-eight bulletproof wonder, born out of gin joints and fog and streetlamps.

I don't.

I want to be the man Bogart can't cut down. I want to be the ultimate untouchable master emperor of the silver screen.

I want to be Sydney Greenstreet.

He is, undoubtedly, unarguably, the far-and-away best of the perfectly-tailored fat men—Orson Welles was too callous; he didn't have the laugh down. He just wanted to be Sydney. You can feel him wanting it, as he slipped away into a world of color television and sketch comedy hours, less indelible than he ever believed he'd be. And Alfred Hitchcock. There was always something sad and yearning in Alfred Hitchcock, stuck behind the camera, wanting to be in front of it, slipping on for moments in the background before hiding again. There was something tragic and grasping about him, wanting the blonde, never getting her, having to make love through the camera lens, and even then, it was the wrong scream, the wrong shower, the wrong dark rooms.

Sydney Greenstreet didn't want the blonde. He didn't notice her, probably, whoever she was. She was Humphrey Bogart's job, a lipsticked siren for the mortal man.

Sirens have no power over gods.

And at this point, after all the evidence, can we doubt that that's what Greenstreet was? Because who could ever touch him? When did he ever lose? Who else can put so much in a chuckle?

When he laughs, you're scared for your life, but you don't know why. He's not going to kill you. Not personally, anyway. He has lackeys for that. Who can forget Wilmer Cook, the hired gun in The Maltese Falcon, and the way Greenstreet's Kasper Gutman said he was like a son? "But, well," Gutman says, a careless shrug somewhere in his voice, "if you lose a son, it's possible to get another." And you don't doubt he means it, for after all, there is only one Maltese Falcon.

Nobody matters to Syndey Greenstreet. Nothing affects him. I can't imagine him helpless or crying or lost.

I want to be Sydney Greenstreet.

He's an impeccably dressed moonbounce mountain, a clean-shaved Father Christmas who has no intention of buying you a present, who doesn't care what you want, and who will never, ever let you sit on his lap.

But he sure does have the laugh down—the warm, rolling, completely non-maniacal chuckle, filled with steel-edged danger. And affection.

You're sure, somehow, that he's fond of all of us, with our little silly problems and our little silly concerns, and he'd like to invite us in for a drink if he could, and he could, but only if it benefits him, and it doesn't. We would just track mud on the white carpets, leave fingerprints on the glass tabletop, and never do a thing for him in return.

At least, that's how I see it. I want to be the idea of Sydney Greenstreet, who never forgets anything, who never slips up or makes mistakes, who never writes angst-filled poetry about eating lunch alone, who wants to eat lunch alone, who doesn't even like you, anyway. I want to respond to Bogart's cutting sarcasm with an indulgent smile and a few choice, multi-syllabic words to put him back in his place.

I don't want to think of Sydney as the one-of-eight-children boy from a place called Sandwich, where his father did something with leather. My Sydney can't have an origin like that, because he was born, fully inflated in a black suit, no clamshell Venus, no Athena bursting from Zeus's forehead. I'm sure he just appeared one day in a hotel suite, cigar in pocket, gin-on-the-rocks in one hand, fez on the mantelpiece, network of underworld underlings already under him.

And that's what I want to be.

I want to be the biggest, baddest, most refined person in the room. I want to love everybody and not care if they love me back. I want to live without hugs and kisses, to live with someone else shining my shoes, and to have Peter Lorre always somewhere beside me, pretending to agree with everything I say, as he fumbles for his last cigarette. I want to know that he's lying and not care. I want a rose in my lapel and lethal tolerance in my smile.

I want to walk down the street like a god, immortal forever in 35mm, safe in celluloid shadow.