Tell me could you ever tell the secret of the sea?
These high rolling waves along the shore
The footprints of the lovers that come here to love
By the tides washed away forever more
- Woody Guthrie, "Secret of the Sea"
"The Life Aquatic with Thaddeus Venture"
I've seen The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and you haven't.
This is fun for me. I'm pretty juvenile. What strikes me as surprising, however, is that as I made my way out of the theatre and onto the streets of New York, I realized that this is a statement I could have made before I walked into one of the two places in the country that are currently running this flick... I mean, unless you watch The Venture Bros. somewhat regularly.
As an English major -- daredevil or otherwise -- your entire academic focus becomes the analysis and dissection of literature to the point where you can no longer enjoy it. Every sentence of everything you read has to have some greater meaning behind it. And usually it's got to be sexual. And if it's obvious, it isn't worth mentioning, because it doesn't mean you're smart, it just means you're literate and for some reason that's not nearly impressive enough anymore. The only thing that makes being an English major worthwhile at all is Kevin Bacon.
As you are no doubt aware, there are no more than six degrees of separation between any Hollywood actor and Kevin Bacon. What is so neat about this notion for the first fifteen minutes you hear about it is this idea that no matter what obscure or unlikely person you scrape out of the murky, cluttered dumpster of your cinematic acquaintance, you can tie them back to one constant, central truth -- namely Mr. Kevin Bacon.
On some level, this is what English majors -- daredevil or otherwise -- do in those few moments when they're actually enjoying themselves. They're tying things together. They're creating an intellectual discourse that says "The Dead" doesn't exist in an abstract corner of the collective consciousness on its own. It's six degrees of separation from MacBeth. And MacBeth isn't just some tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. It's a freaking tragedy that speaks to the human condition, and by extension, your life as well. English majors try to give us a look at the bigger picture as it's been depicted by the written word through the ages (and apparently we do it for little to no pay) by piecing together seemingly random texts so we can say -- to steal a line from David O. Russell's delightful I Heart Huckabees -- "Everything is connected and everything matters, now isn't that cool?"
Now, I'm not a well-read person. I'd say I'm widely-and-erratically-read, but not well-read. I haven't read most of the classics, and I haven't read the popular bestsellers, which means I can't connect Catch-22 to The DaVinci Code. That's why I spend so much time trying to explain my understanding of the world through the lenses of Spider-Man or the Last Son of Krypton. And when I want to talk about something that might matter to someone other than Prewitt, I try to explain it through TV or movies, because everyone knows, if you don't feel like reading the book, you go to the video store... which brings us back to The Life Aquatic and The Venture Bros.
Back when Fox started showing Arrested Development, I was trying to convince my friends to watch it by explaining it's Royal Tenenbaums for half an hour at a time every Sunday. Not only is Arrested Development about an eclectic and eccentric family of miscreants and malcontents, it's even got the same narrated narrative structure as Tenenbaums, with Ron Howard’s calm and ambling dulcet tones subbing in for Alec Baldwin’s gritty gasoline and whiskey whispers. It's not a perfect correlation, but these things never are and that's what makes them interesting.
Now this Arrested Tenenbaums / Royal Development thing got me to thinking about the rest of Wes Anderson's oeuvre. Where do his other films fall in the network line-ups of the bigger picture show? Simple. Bottle Rocket is NBC's off-beat dramedy Ed and Rushmore's the third and fourth seasons of Dawson's Creek -- a statement I know I'm going to take a lot of shit for, but I'm ready to defend to my dying breath. I just think it'd be a waste of my time and yours to go into elaborate explanations right now. (Did I make these decisions arbitrarily? Maybe. Maybe not.) But I swear to you, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is neatly reflected in an episode of The Venture Bros. entitled "Ghosts of the Sargasso."
I know. It seems unlikely. The Life Aquatic is this quirky epic on (and of course under) the open seas featuring famed oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) and his estranged son Ned Plympton (Owen Wilson) directed by a daringly original auteur of American cinema -- which I'm sure some asshole on some shitty local paper is going to describe as "Jaws on acid" and think themselves a genius. The Venture Bros. is a cartoon about Dr. Thaddeus Venture, a burned-out scientist, his two goofy sons Hank and Dean, and their homicidal bodyguard Brock Sampson that was created by one of the staff writers of The Tick and has in fact been dubbed "Johnny Quest on acid." To imply that they are one and the same seems like more of an insult than saying Rushmore is Dawson's Creek (actually, it probably isn't), but it's true.
One of the recurring motifs in The Life Aquatic is that Pele (Seu Jorge), one of the members of Team Zissou, sings David Bowie songs that he's translated into Portuguese on his guitar. It's lovely, but it's not central to the plot or anything; it's just part of the ambiance that Anderson employs to create Zissou's world. And the creators of The Venture Bros. do the same thing in the opening sequence of "Ghosts of the Sargasso."
No, you idiot. Hank and Dean don't harmonize "China Garota." The episode begins with an exchange cribbed nearly entirely from lines written by none other than the aforementioned Mr. Bowie.
The scene opens on the Bermuda Triangle in 1969, as a flaming rocket ship hurtles from the sky. "I can’t keep it together, Doctor Venture," the unfortunate pilot cries over the radio. "I'm sorry about the TVC15."
Renown super-scientist Dr. Jonas Venture, Thaddeus's father, waiting on a boat with the rest of the support crew saying, "Tom, I'm not worried about that tin can, I'm worried about you."
"I have a message for the Action Man," the flyboy says. "I'm happy," is the message. "Hope you're happy, too. I've loved all I need to love."
"Don't talk like that, Tom, you're gonna make it," Dr. Venture insists as the Action Man starts weeping. "Fight it!"
"I’m feeling very still," the good major says with an eerie serenity, "and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much..."
"She knows!" Venture cries, as the ship plummets ever closer to the rough waters below. "Ground control to Major Tom. Your circuit's dead. There's something wrong. Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom?"
The ship collides with the great blue sea and soon after there's a spectacular explosion.
"Ashes to ashes," the Action Man chokes out. The only eulogy for his dearly departed friend.
Now, I understand that the inclination is to say that this alone doesn't mean much and I'm reading too much into this, and my response is this: of course I am! I'm an English major! That's the whole fucking point! Moreover, however, "Ghosts of the Sargasso" ends up telling this strange story about Thaddeus Venture's search for the sunken TVC15 so he can profit off the vehicle his father never took the chance to, and in doing so, reclaim some measure of his former glory, just like The Life Aquatic's about Zissou's pursuit of a fantastic sea creature that can bring the shine back to his lackluster career.
Do you know what that means? It means that everything is connected and everything does matter and that is cool. But if that seems like a stretch, then you've at least got to grant me that I may just be able to talk about what makes The Life Aquatic great by explaining what makes "Ghosts of the Sargasso" great, and thus review a movie without actually describing it.
Essentially, "Ghosts of the Sargasso" -- and The Life Aquatic -- is about the desperate lengths we'll go to for some sense of accomplishment. Venture's problem is that he's peaked. His greatest adventures are behind him now, and that leaves him wondering what he can do to reinvent himself. Ironically, his solution is to embark on a late night dive to drudge up one of his far more famous father's old failures and literally re-invent that. It’s the least creative solution he could have possibly come up with, but he endeavors to make it seem as dynamic and drastic as possible by recording a ridiculous audio-journal of his pathetically exploitative little exploit. This seems to challenge what's become a central conceit to the consideration of contemporary American culture -- that it's become a culture where celebrity is no longer born of achievement, but considered an achievement in and of itself. Here, we're provided with a depiction of fame and celebrity as something that's got to be maintained. And isn't that as it should be?
While Venture's under the sea seeking for some semblance of meaning, his sons and bodyguard are attacked by pirate ghosts who turn out to be faux ghosts and terrible pirates. Brock utilizes the most dreaded of bodily orifices in an unlikely and disturbing action sequence to get the better of his captors. And then things get downright odd when an actual ghost shows up. It'd be easy to say this is all just weird for the sake of weird, but that's lazy j-school talk, people! If you look closer, you realize that the deeper message here is that man's inhumanity to man often falters in the face of true inhumanity. The odd and hopeful notion that getting a fleeting glimpse of something beyond our understanding won't always leave us confused, but just may bring some tiny measure of peace to our riotous souls and uneasy hearts. It happens when the Venture family sees the ghost of the Sargasso, and it happens when we view "Ghosts of the Sargasso."
I'm not sure I can say the same thing happens in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. But that may have more to do with the fact that if I was sure I could say the same thing, I wouldn't. Because I've seen the movie and you haven't.
That's still fun for me, but that doesn't make it fair.
These high rolling waves along the shore
The footprints of the lovers that come here to love
By the tides washed away forever more
- Woody Guthrie, "Secret of the Sea"
"The Life Aquatic with Thaddeus Venture"
I've seen The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and you haven't.
This is fun for me. I'm pretty juvenile. What strikes me as surprising, however, is that as I made my way out of the theatre and onto the streets of New York, I realized that this is a statement I could have made before I walked into one of the two places in the country that are currently running this flick... I mean, unless you watch The Venture Bros. somewhat regularly.
As an English major -- daredevil or otherwise -- your entire academic focus becomes the analysis and dissection of literature to the point where you can no longer enjoy it. Every sentence of everything you read has to have some greater meaning behind it. And usually it's got to be sexual. And if it's obvious, it isn't worth mentioning, because it doesn't mean you're smart, it just means you're literate and for some reason that's not nearly impressive enough anymore. The only thing that makes being an English major worthwhile at all is Kevin Bacon.
As you are no doubt aware, there are no more than six degrees of separation between any Hollywood actor and Kevin Bacon. What is so neat about this notion for the first fifteen minutes you hear about it is this idea that no matter what obscure or unlikely person you scrape out of the murky, cluttered dumpster of your cinematic acquaintance, you can tie them back to one constant, central truth -- namely Mr. Kevin Bacon.
On some level, this is what English majors -- daredevil or otherwise -- do in those few moments when they're actually enjoying themselves. They're tying things together. They're creating an intellectual discourse that says "The Dead" doesn't exist in an abstract corner of the collective consciousness on its own. It's six degrees of separation from MacBeth. And MacBeth isn't just some tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. It's a freaking tragedy that speaks to the human condition, and by extension, your life as well. English majors try to give us a look at the bigger picture as it's been depicted by the written word through the ages (and apparently we do it for little to no pay) by piecing together seemingly random texts so we can say -- to steal a line from David O. Russell's delightful I Heart Huckabees -- "Everything is connected and everything matters, now isn't that cool?"
Now, I'm not a well-read person. I'd say I'm widely-and-erratically-read, but not well-read. I haven't read most of the classics, and I haven't read the popular bestsellers, which means I can't connect Catch-22 to The DaVinci Code. That's why I spend so much time trying to explain my understanding of the world through the lenses of Spider-Man or the Last Son of Krypton. And when I want to talk about something that might matter to someone other than Prewitt, I try to explain it through TV or movies, because everyone knows, if you don't feel like reading the book, you go to the video store... which brings us back to The Life Aquatic and The Venture Bros.
Back when Fox started showing Arrested Development, I was trying to convince my friends to watch it by explaining it's Royal Tenenbaums for half an hour at a time every Sunday. Not only is Arrested Development about an eclectic and eccentric family of miscreants and malcontents, it's even got the same narrated narrative structure as Tenenbaums, with Ron Howard’s calm and ambling dulcet tones subbing in for Alec Baldwin’s gritty gasoline and whiskey whispers. It's not a perfect correlation, but these things never are and that's what makes them interesting.
Now this Arrested Tenenbaums / Royal Development thing got me to thinking about the rest of Wes Anderson's oeuvre. Where do his other films fall in the network line-ups of the bigger picture show? Simple. Bottle Rocket is NBC's off-beat dramedy Ed and Rushmore's the third and fourth seasons of Dawson's Creek -- a statement I know I'm going to take a lot of shit for, but I'm ready to defend to my dying breath. I just think it'd be a waste of my time and yours to go into elaborate explanations right now. (Did I make these decisions arbitrarily? Maybe. Maybe not.) But I swear to you, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is neatly reflected in an episode of The Venture Bros. entitled "Ghosts of the Sargasso."
I know. It seems unlikely. The Life Aquatic is this quirky epic on (and of course under) the open seas featuring famed oceanographer Steve Zissou (Bill Murray) and his estranged son Ned Plympton (Owen Wilson) directed by a daringly original auteur of American cinema -- which I'm sure some asshole on some shitty local paper is going to describe as "Jaws on acid" and think themselves a genius. The Venture Bros. is a cartoon about Dr. Thaddeus Venture, a burned-out scientist, his two goofy sons Hank and Dean, and their homicidal bodyguard Brock Sampson that was created by one of the staff writers of The Tick and has in fact been dubbed "Johnny Quest on acid." To imply that they are one and the same seems like more of an insult than saying Rushmore is Dawson's Creek (actually, it probably isn't), but it's true.
One of the recurring motifs in The Life Aquatic is that Pele (Seu Jorge), one of the members of Team Zissou, sings David Bowie songs that he's translated into Portuguese on his guitar. It's lovely, but it's not central to the plot or anything; it's just part of the ambiance that Anderson employs to create Zissou's world. And the creators of The Venture Bros. do the same thing in the opening sequence of "Ghosts of the Sargasso."
No, you idiot. Hank and Dean don't harmonize "China Garota." The episode begins with an exchange cribbed nearly entirely from lines written by none other than the aforementioned Mr. Bowie.
The scene opens on the Bermuda Triangle in 1969, as a flaming rocket ship hurtles from the sky. "I can’t keep it together, Doctor Venture," the unfortunate pilot cries over the radio. "I'm sorry about the TVC15."
Renown super-scientist Dr. Jonas Venture, Thaddeus's father, waiting on a boat with the rest of the support crew saying, "Tom, I'm not worried about that tin can, I'm worried about you."
"I have a message for the Action Man," the flyboy says. "I'm happy," is the message. "Hope you're happy, too. I've loved all I need to love."
"Don't talk like that, Tom, you're gonna make it," Dr. Venture insists as the Action Man starts weeping. "Fight it!"
"I’m feeling very still," the good major says with an eerie serenity, "and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. Tell my wife I love her very much..."
"She knows!" Venture cries, as the ship plummets ever closer to the rough waters below. "Ground control to Major Tom. Your circuit's dead. There's something wrong. Can you hear me, Major Tom? Can you hear me, Major Tom?"
The ship collides with the great blue sea and soon after there's a spectacular explosion.
"Ashes to ashes," the Action Man chokes out. The only eulogy for his dearly departed friend.
Now, I understand that the inclination is to say that this alone doesn't mean much and I'm reading too much into this, and my response is this: of course I am! I'm an English major! That's the whole fucking point! Moreover, however, "Ghosts of the Sargasso" ends up telling this strange story about Thaddeus Venture's search for the sunken TVC15 so he can profit off the vehicle his father never took the chance to, and in doing so, reclaim some measure of his former glory, just like The Life Aquatic's about Zissou's pursuit of a fantastic sea creature that can bring the shine back to his lackluster career.
Do you know what that means? It means that everything is connected and everything does matter and that is cool. But if that seems like a stretch, then you've at least got to grant me that I may just be able to talk about what makes The Life Aquatic great by explaining what makes "Ghosts of the Sargasso" great, and thus review a movie without actually describing it.
Essentially, "Ghosts of the Sargasso" -- and The Life Aquatic -- is about the desperate lengths we'll go to for some sense of accomplishment. Venture's problem is that he's peaked. His greatest adventures are behind him now, and that leaves him wondering what he can do to reinvent himself. Ironically, his solution is to embark on a late night dive to drudge up one of his far more famous father's old failures and literally re-invent that. It’s the least creative solution he could have possibly come up with, but he endeavors to make it seem as dynamic and drastic as possible by recording a ridiculous audio-journal of his pathetically exploitative little exploit. This seems to challenge what's become a central conceit to the consideration of contemporary American culture -- that it's become a culture where celebrity is no longer born of achievement, but considered an achievement in and of itself. Here, we're provided with a depiction of fame and celebrity as something that's got to be maintained. And isn't that as it should be?
While Venture's under the sea seeking for some semblance of meaning, his sons and bodyguard are attacked by pirate ghosts who turn out to be faux ghosts and terrible pirates. Brock utilizes the most dreaded of bodily orifices in an unlikely and disturbing action sequence to get the better of his captors. And then things get downright odd when an actual ghost shows up. It'd be easy to say this is all just weird for the sake of weird, but that's lazy j-school talk, people! If you look closer, you realize that the deeper message here is that man's inhumanity to man often falters in the face of true inhumanity. The odd and hopeful notion that getting a fleeting glimpse of something beyond our understanding won't always leave us confused, but just may bring some tiny measure of peace to our riotous souls and uneasy hearts. It happens when the Venture family sees the ghost of the Sargasso, and it happens when we view "Ghosts of the Sargasso."
I'm not sure I can say the same thing happens in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. But that may have more to do with the fact that if I was sure I could say the same thing, I wouldn't. Because I've seen the movie and you haven't.
That's still fun for me, but that doesn't make it fair.
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