Going viral with TIGER KING in the age of going viral

Also maybe the end of the world isn't a game for me right now

Sorry about Monday and Tuesday, gang. The idea of daily content is easier than the execution.

One of the ways we’re going to manage things during this crisis is by being honest with each other and I’ll start today with some honesty: my anxiety is out of control right now and the only way I can deal with it is to simply let go of it completely.

At this point, anything that adds anxiety to my already-substantial load is simply not in the cards. As a result, I take back what I said on Friday.

I’m tapping out on Death Stranding.

Completely. I’m done. It’s crazy how fast it became clear to me that I am not the target audience for the game. That’s the way it is with me and games, though, and it’s hard for me to get over it if I simply don’t enjoy playing something.

Let me give you an example, and if you’re a gamer, I apologize now because you’re about to yell at me. I tried to play The Last of Us four separate times. Each time, I would talk to someone, they’d tell me about what an amazing experience it was, and I would get all hyped up to play it. Inevitably, it would be someone who I think has great taste in entertainment and I would hope that I would see the same thing in it that they did. Each time, I would sit down with the game in the best possible environment for me to enjoy it.

For me, that involves rearranging the TV room, sitting close to the set, and letting the game fill my field of vision. Gaming is the opposite of watching a film or a TV show or reading a book. Those are about input, about the absorbing of a total experience that someone else has prepared and shaped a certain way. With gaming, the participatory element is what defines it for me. If I don’t enjoy the way I interact with the game, then I don’t care how pretty or interesting the rest of it is. I will explore every corner of a gaming world that I like as long as the mechanics can find that sweet spot between challenging and fun. One of the reasons I will return to a franchise in gaming is because there are things I enjoy playing, like the Assassin’s Creed franchise I mentioned on Friday. From game to game, the general gameplay is the same, and I generally enjoy it. Sometimes they’ll mess with a control scheme between games and it ruins a series for me, or they’ll modify the bones of a game so much that it stops being fun, like with the most recent Just Cause entry. I suddenly didn’t recognize the thing that I enjoyed in the first place, and I couldn’t imagine playing more of it. I’d rather just go play the earlier game in the series again and enjoy that.

The Last of Us seems like a very smart post-apocalyptic character-driven story. I like Naughty Dog a lot. I think they’re a terrific gaming company (at least in terms of content; sounds like a nightmare to work there) with an impressive track record on the Uncharted series, among others. I am impressed by everything I’ve watched from The Last of Us. I am sure they’ll make a successful jump to television, because it seems like they’ve got a wealth of dramatic material that already really works. I think every single time I’ve played it, I’ve made it to the same place where I have to sneak through a building filled with the infected for the first time and I’ve tried to make it through one part of one building roughly 4000 times unsuccessfully, and I’ve turned the game off and deleted it from the machine. The same place every time. It’s a wall I hit, and it’s just clear that the game mechanics themselves are designed in a way that I cannot master or understand for whatever reason. Maybe that makes me stupid. I can play plenty of other games just fine. “Just turn down the difficulty level,” you say? I did. As far as it goes. Nope. Nothing. Any lower than this, and I might as well just watch the eventual TV show, because I’m not playing a game. I’m just having a frustrating interaction with a sad movie.

That’s Death Stranding, but amplified to a thousand. I love the aesthetic of the game, and I honestly think if they didn’t have the weird monsters in it, I might be able to hang. Let me try to lay out how I processed it, because I’m really curious about the experience other people are having with this thing. It’s a game that has the idea of “other people’s experience” baked into the DNA since you can actually leave physical marks on the game world that can help other players, leaving them ladders or bridges or ropes they can use. You can help people you’re not technically playing “with,” and in doing so, you can make the world of Death Stranding better for yourself and for them at the same time. That’s a cool idea, and I get that. I get what’s appealing about that.

The physical gameplay for the section I played was punishing with no relief from that. Every task they lay out for you seems almost impossible based on your abilities and the tools you have. As you do your tasks, there are constant threats that make it exponentially harder to accomplish your task, whether it’s the MULEs who will steal from you or the weird time rain that fucks up your equipment or the actual creepy ghost/monsters who you can’t fight or stop in any way. The rewards you get are in the form of social media likes. There are no significant upgrades that make things easier. It took me almost eight hours of gameplay to finally power up a motorcycle I could use to transport things. I was already deeply frustrated by that point, but I figured there would be a turning point where you got weapons/tools that would level the playing field somewhat.

I broke the motorcycle about twenty minutes later, and then the monsters grabbed me and all my deliveries got taken away and I spent about five more minutes trying to recover and then I realized, with a sudden clarity, that I hated the entire experience I was having. I was stressed out about the tasks. I was stressed out about the obstacles. I was stressed out about the lack of progression. I was stressed out by the entire thing. And the one “weapon” they did give me was so annoying in the test mission that I realized it was never going to become a game I enjoyed, no matter what they built on top of it, because I hated the bones of it. I hated the gameplay. I hated the mechanic of walking slowly with a lot of packages on my back. Maybe later in the game you fly and you have powers and you get a mech suit that carries the stuff for you and you can fight those monsters, or maybe not. Maybe it’s just a game that wasn’t designed for someone like me at all and that’s fine. Maybe it stays exactly what it is for another 100 hours. Maybe it gets harder. Maybe the monsters get more frustrating and maybe you never figure out how to build any infrastructure and maybe it’s just a metaphor for life. I don’t know. I’ll never know now because the part of the game that is most important to me, the part where I actually interact with it, was no fun at all. I ended up booting up Uncharted 2 and playing everything up to the train level, and it was so much fun that all the anxiety from Death Stranding melted away. I deleted Death Stranding from the Playstation. I’m done. I accept now that it’s another game that many smart people love dearly that simply isn’t for me. I’m guessing you guys have those as well.

That’s fine. If you like games that are more like interactive art pieces or if you like that grind or if you simply had a different reaction to the mechanics, that’s fine. It’s like with movies. I can’t get upset at someone who watches something like Fanny & Alexander or Pather Panchali or Holy Motors and just doesn’t get what’s “enjoyable” about that experience. It’s a very big broad word, and what we “enjoy” about the art we digest is totally different for everyone. I think it’s amazing that we overlap on as much as we do.

For example…

And Tiger Saw Man

Holy shit, Tiger King, right?

Or, conversely, oh, god, here’s another one of those shows.

I personally thought the new Netflix series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness was compulsively watchable. It’s a wild story of ego and a fringe subculture and terrible people who somehow see each other’s flaws without recognizing any of their own. It’s a round-robin of awful and we pretty much plowed through all seven episodes in about four days.

I don’t think the show is funny or hilarious so much as I think it’s a terrifying funhouse mirror to the world we all live in right now, where every single person seems to be defining reality for themselves regardless of the evidence of their own eyes and the eyes of everyone around them. Of course Joe Exotic ran for President. Why not? Joe Exotic might as well have won. Joe Exotic would make sense in This American Moment as the guy we pick to represent us. Hell, this is who we picked. There are so many chilling observations of human nature in every episode of this show that it’s hard to know where to start. This is a show that stares unabashedly into the absolute worst of us.

Why do we watch this stuff? Why do we devour so much true crime right now? Why do we find the insane so entertaining on our television when most of us go out of our way to avoid it in real life? And how is it that it becomes a viral sensation like this? Netflix has gotten incredibly good at turning their documentary series into big buzz hits, and part of that is because of the topics they choose, which are outrageous and larger than life. Part of it is because it’s hard to believe this is the real world. I watch Danny McBride’s filmography and I laugh because it is all created through the filter of understanding just how insane these characters are. When I watch Tiger King, part of what’s really crazy about it is how these are characters in a story that is concluded. All of this is still going on and unfolding right now. The popularity of the show has given Joe Exotic a huge morale boost, evidently, and he’s delighted by it. Carole Baskin seems less excited about it, but that’s because she’s a different kind of awful than Joe Exotic. He’s the kind of awful which is just permanently oblivious to its own awfulness, which should remind us of someone who is currently dealing with a pandemic that is his fault and yet talks about how high his “ratings” are. Fame for fame’s sake is a hell of a drug.

I think the thing that ultimately keeps us watching shows like Tiger King is the realization as you watch one of these shows that you can’t craft fiction that is as unrelentingly weird as reality. Fiction, even “weird” fiction, is created with intent and purpose, and the people behind that fiction have a point they’re trying to make. Reality does not give a fuck about whether or not it makes sense or offers thematic closure or whether its characters are likable enough for a focus group. I get tired of fiction precisely because of the patterns and the rules and the tropes, and sometimes, you just feel like watching something where you find yourself going “Why would anyone do that?!” repeatedly for the sheer thrill of it. People are an endless ocean of strange, and the deeper you dig into these outlandish characters, the stranger it all gets. I don’t think there’s anything strange about Joe being gay. I think the details of Joe’s various marriages are PROFOUNDLY strange, but that’s more because he was married to two different straight dudes at the same time. Every step of each of those relationships is odd, but on the personal level. I can’t imagine wanting to be part of Joe Exotic’s world, but it’s clear there were many people who couldn’t resist the lure of the big cats, and whatever exchange they made with this guy or with Doc Antle or with Carole Baskin is their business.

The one real failing in the series, which is more about the people who make up this underworld, is that there’s very little focus on just how horribly all of these cats are being treated. Honestly, I wish all of these people were in jail and there was no private trade of big cats in the United States. It is insane to see these conditions and the neglect, and the casual reveals about some of the cruelty and death was hard to stomach. I’m not a fan of zoos in general, and there was a lot about this show that I found almost off-handedly horrifying. It’s clear, though, that the filmmakers decided early on that the characters were the show they were making, and it’s not really about the cats. That’s just the backdrop.

Tiger King is more than enough reality for now, so it’s back to fiction. I owe you a few Quarantine Picks O’the Day now, so let’s start with the one my family watched last night…

If You Watch It, They Will Cry

We’re a baseball family. I’m sure I’ve mentioned it. Toshi’s a baseball player, and now that he’s in high school, he’s really starting to lean into it. He’s a freshman, but he’s been embraced by the older guys on the team, and he’s enjoying that connection and that sense of belonging to something. I don’t think he’s got any illusions about playing it professionally, but he has enjoyed the training this year. He’s almost eye-to-eye with me at this point, and he’s putting on muscle. Part of the reason baseball is his pick is because he understands the game and his role in it, and part of the reason is because he likes the larger story around baseball, the symbolism of it all.

I love Field Of Dreams, but I am careful to watch it once in a very long while. It’s a very gentle little movie, hung on a ridiculous premise, and it probably shouldn’t work at all. You hear a magic voice tell you to build a baseball diamond, go kidnap J.D. Salinger, and recruit the ghost of a dead doctor to play a game? And that’s the movie? Really?

Yep. And, man, it works. I think there are three Kevin Costner films that are truly great, and this is one of them. He’s at his best when he’s got the Amiable Goofball cranked up, and he’s great here as Ray Kinsella, a former hippie turned farmer and family man who suddenly finds himself caught up by the hand of fate, forced to do these insane tasks for a reason he does not comprehend. It sets up a series of emotional payoffs that are just terrific, and that final game of catch kills me every single time. I love James Earl Jones in the film more than I remembered, and his smile might be the movie’s secret weapon. Amy Madigan is so good as Ray’s wife, and I love Burt Lancaster’s guest appearance. What the film gets more right than anything is the way we look to symbols for their power, for the things they give us. Baseball is a powerful American icon, and the way this movie uses it as an expression of nostalgia for something good and pure is very moving. It’s about the way baseball connects us. It’s about the game, about the memories you have of the places you watched those games, and about the people you saw them with. It is a simple film, but almost brutally efficient, and the final shot of the line of cars stretching on to the distance gave me chills when I saw it this time. I was still a teenager when the film came out and seeing it now as a man about to turn 50, it definitely feels like I am far more Moonlight Graham or Terence Mann than I am Ray Kinsella at this point.

And Finally…

One of my favorite scenes in any movie is from That Thing You Do! directed by Tom Hanks, and considering I just read the news that Adam Schlesinger has passed away from complications connected to COVID-19, I want to wrap things up by writing about exactly why that scene always lands on me so hard.

If you haven’t seen the film, you really should, and I’m going to make that the other QPOD for today. It’s a great little film overall, but there’s one moment in it that works on a whole other level for me. It comes early in the film, after the group has recorded their version of “That Thing You Do!”, as they hear it playing on the radio for the first time. They’re not together when it comes on, but they all immediately start to converge on the same location. As they do, they get more and more excited, right up to the moment they all see each other and they lose their minds, celebrating and thrilled and amazed that this thing they made is suddenly playing on the real radio. It’s a moment of accomplishment and validation and pure unbridled joy, and it’s one of those moments that you only get a few times in your career, even if you’re very fortunate. People start to take it for granted after they’ve been doing it for a while, which is understandable. There’s nothing but gratitude that first time, though, and that scene is the single best expression I’ve ever seen of the way it feels.

When I had my very first piece of professional work produced, it was a play that was part of a one-act festival in Hollywood. It was part of an evening of four plays, and it was a rocky rehearsal process. We had a director we loved and a cast we loved, but the cast ran into some personal walls as we started getting close to opening, and we had to replace them both at what felt like the last minute. It was terrifying. I felt like nothing was going to work and our big debut was going to be a disaster. The opening night was like an out-of-body experience for me, and the crowd in the room was warm and receptive and complimentary. Even so, that wasn’t the moment where it felt like everything was real. That came the next day, very early in the morning. I couldn’t sleep after the high of the performance, and neither could my co-writer. We ended up driving around, from newsstand to newsstand, anxious for the morning papers to arrive. We pulled up at one on the corner of Ventura and Van Nuys, and just as we walked up, the truck arrived with the LA Times, Variety and Hollywood Reporter all aboard. We waited for the guy to cut open the bundles of each of them, and I grabbed Variety while my co-writer grabbed the Times.

I tore through it until I found what I was looking for, and I began to read out loud, getting louder and more excited with each sentence. Here’s what they wrote that morning:

Best of “Act One: Evening A’s” four plays comes, appropriately, at the end. “Sticks and Stones,” by Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, offers a red-hot exploration of racism and communication neatly packaged in a Los Angeles lawyer’s office.

An Italian cop named Sal (Louis Mustillo) has been reviled in the press for killing a 14-year-old black in the line of duty. He turns to a slick, smarmy lawyer named Alan Klein (Jonathan Silverman), who has no patience for locker-room racism.

As they bicker over semantics, a predictable theme of society’s failure to communicate develops. But writers McWeeny and Swan push that further, probing for the inevitable link between “harmless” words and violence.

The piece could use some trimming as it descends occasionally into a diatribe on the plight of urban blacks, but it sizzles when it sticks to specifics.

Mustillo and Silverman compose intriguing portraits of questionable characters, especially the former as the tortured cop who is convinced that it’s the world that’s screwy and not him.

The 40-minute short has potential as a small-budget feature and certainly displays some writing talent.

And before I could even catch my breath, my co-writer read back the LA Times review to me:

The final offering, “Sticks and Stones,” is the evening's set piece. Written by previously unproduced playwrights Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan, the play revolves around a high-powered attorney (Jonathan Silverman) and a racist cop (Louis Mustillo) who is on trial for the hate-slaying of a black youth. (He insists it was in the line of duty.)

Director Jerry Levine and his fine cast plumb the emotional depths in the piece, which poses provocative questions about the nature of racism, the abuses of the press and the lethal power of the spoken word.

We each grabbed a fistful of papers to buy and ran to the car, whooping and hollering and excited and sure that we were never going to struggle again because, after all, Variety said that we “display some writing talent.” It seems so silly now, but at the time, it was everything. It felt like we’d arrived. We were real. We weren’t some hypothetical anymore. We had done something. We had made something. We weren’t pretending anymore.

The thing that makes That Thing You Do! so wonderful is the way it’s clear that Hanks loves these young people, and he loves the moment when you’re starting to figure out your voice and who you want to be and what you want to say and how you want to say it. It’s a keenly-observed film, well-acted, and none of it would work if that song didn’t absolutely kill. “That Thing You Do!” gets stuck deep in your brain the first time you hear it, and then they play it another 20 times in the film. The danger is that you’ll end up hating it by the end of the movie, or that you won’t believe it could have been a big hit, or that it just doesn’t work, and while all of the music in the film is spot-on perfect, there should have been an Oscar given for the song itself. It really is a character in the movie, and Hanks cast it perfectly with Schlesinger as a songwriter. It wasn’t just a one-off for him, either. His work for Josie and the Pussycats is hilarious and wicked, and he did terrific movie work for the Farrelly Brothers and in Music & Lyrics. I’ve never gotten around to Crazy Ex-Girlfriend or his Cry-Baby adaptation, but enough people I respect are absolutely crazy about them for me to suspect that he was always a great collaborator to help bring something with a strong voice to life. 54 is too goddamn young for him to be gone.

These are rough days, with rougher ahead, and we’ll only get through it with kindness and care for one another. In the meantime, if any of you happen to be millionaires who feel like adopting a pop culture columnist during this crisis, I would be more than happy to accept your assistance, because I am flat out terrified right now.

But I’m still here, and there’s plenty of content ahead for you guys. I’m going to have the Formerly Dangerous Movie Club stuff going up over the next few days as we discuss some particular April fools, and I’m making a little progress on some unusual stuff that I’m going to share as well. Whatever happens, I’m going to have to keep my head down and keep writing because that’s the only way I know how to make it through any of this.

Stay healthy. Stay safe.

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Image courtesy of Kojima Studios
Image courtesy of Netflix
Image courtesy of Universal Studios
Image courtesy of 20th Century Fox/Playtone