Meanwhile With Trevor
Culture • Lifestyle • Fitness & Health • Movies • Books • Food
Here we'll gather to discuss Story, life, and the creative process. I'll invite you into my thoughts on what I'm reading, watching, and writing, and what I'm learning along the way. Life is a story. We want to live stories that last, and that means understanding their elements.
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Fast & Furious 6 (2013) - The Things that Matter Most

Loyalty. Everyone jokes about Vin Diesel’s overuse of the word “family” in the Fast series, but there can be no family with commitment. The sixth movie opens with Brian (Paul Walker) and Dom (Vin Diesel) racing their cars down a twisting Spanish island highway to be at Mia’s (Jordana Brewster) side as she gives birth. And then Dom sends Brian in alone. Why were they racing? Because it’s a racing movie, duh! The point is, family comes together in good times and bad.

Since the series already dipped its toes into soap opera, we know Dom will never completely get over Letty (Michelle Rodriguez), who was killed in the fourth movie. However, Dom has found new love in the arms of Elena (Elsa Pataky). When her old boss, Hobbs (Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson), shows up suggesting that Letty is still alive, Elena encourages him to go after her. If it really is her, Letty is clearly deep in a bad situation, and as Dom says later in the movie, after Letty shoots him, “You don’t turn your back on family, even when they do.” When he sends out the call to the team, they each drop whatever pleasant thing they’re doing to put themselves in danger for Dom’s sake. Some of these characters, if you’re keeping track, never even met Letty.

We’ve come a long way from the street kid stealing DVD players in east LA, yet Dom’s character remains consistent. He’s the leader who forges strong bonds between people.

This is the movie in the series that uses the mirror team trope. Our team is up against an evil team, and there’s a direct parallel for each member. It’s explicitly pointed out, because these movies are only selectively subtle, and when they’re obvious about something they’re going to be extremely obvious. Besides the good/bad designation, what makes the teams distinct is that while all the parts are basically the same, the man driving them is different.

In their parking lot showdown, Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), the anti-Toretto, says, “A team is nothing but pieces you switch out until you get the job done.” He talks about having a code, Precision, which is cold and analytical.

This is the second time in the series that a code to live by is mentioned. Here it’s tied to loyalty and family. In his mustache-twirling monolog, Shaw sneers, “You're loyal to a fault. Your code is about family. And that's great in the holidays, but it makes you predictable. And in our line of work, predictable means vulnerable. And that means I can reach out and break you whenever I want.”

“At least when I go,” Dom rumbles back, “I’ll know what it’s for.” Like every great leader, he’s willing to make a sacrifice to live up to his code. “Ride or die,” indeed.

Family is what’s talked about the most. Family is the group of people we see on the screen. Family is visual. But it’s the tryptic code of Family, Loyalty, and Sacrifice (and a fourth element that we’ll get into with the eighth installment) that gives the series its heart and why audiences keep coming back, just like Dom’s crew. In our social media society, where loneliness is at all time highs, we find a window into an ideal world where those things still exist.

Speaking of things that still exist in this fantasy land of flying men (when I dragged three of my buddies to see this in the theater on my birthday, my friend Joel literally cast his hands in the air when Dom caught Letty like a burly Superman), chivalry is not dead.

In 2013 women on screen were still allowed to be alluring, and their men were still allowed to rescue them. The women remain every bit as capable with vehicles and fists as ever, but they use their charms on men and fight the other women. And not in a sexy, exploitive way. You don’t match Gina Carano against Michelle Rodriguez for titallation, no matter how attractive they are. The subway fight is still talked about, and for good reason. The women can also make sacrifices every bit as great as their male counterparts without making it about themselves.

[Aside: Sorry Black Widow, but Wonder Woman has got you beat]

Often sequels struggle keep the characters active. Movies, especially action movies, tend to be about the heroes reaching their peak, and the sequel has to manufacture a reason to pull them down, or raise the stakes beyond reason. Or, worst of all, the screenwriters make the characters reactive. Chris Morgan, back again for more, doesn’t fall into that trap. Dom’s crew may have their rear differentials handed to them through most of the movie, but they never stop pushing. They never stop making the bad guys’ job more difficult. It’s our protagonists that are the villains’ antagonists, which makes every twist and reversal pay off.

All in all, Fast & Furious 6 remains my favorite so far. While most people focus on the aburdety of the climax, which would require a runway seven times longer than any airport runway in the world; or Letty’s asking, “How did you know that car would be there to break our fall?” with complete sincerity; or a tank that moves faster than a muscle car; I want to look past all that.

It’s probably high heresy to say this, but I will anyway. Like The Lord of the Rings, the Fast movies use fantasy and imagination to better show us the true virtues. Vehicular warfare, indestructible people, and NOS elixer, are no more out there than Olyphants, Elves, and Lembas bread. One series may express itself more intelligently, artistically, or with greater maturity. But strip away all the unreality, and we find that these stories resonate for the same reasons.

Family, Loyalty, and Sacrifice are real. They matter. And in this cruel old world they’re in short supply.

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Tuesday Update

New article is on the way, but I'm feeling too overwhelmed to crank it out.

00:01:17
Update!

I cover it in the the video, but I've got some new professional writing opportunities coming up and I'm trying to finish my next novel, all while navigating a change in schedule. So look for more pictures and videos, and new articles here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

00:02:47
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion

Leo and Britt come face to face with a prehistoric god a new cult on Saturn. Can they save the children doomed to sacrifice and escape?

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2

Leo and Brittany have arrived on Saturn, but not in the way they'd hoped. Captured by a pagan cult, they don't have time to stop the unthinkable from happening. But they'll try anyway.

Content warning: language and sexual situations.

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1

Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

Instead of griping about what Disney has done, why don't you listen to my space adventure story? He Who Rides on the Clouds is supernatural noir that spans space and time. When children on Mars go missing, Alexis Leonard and his ex-wife Brittany go looking. Their search leads them to a pagan temple and an ancient religion.

If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1
No Posts This Week

Hey everyone, with BasedCon coming up this weekend I'm busy catching up on things and getting ready to go. But I'll be back next week with lots of new thoughts!

Big Changes Ahead

Hey Friends, I've got some big life changes on the horizon and should be able to create more content. What would you like to see? More fiction? More fitness? Maybe you'd like more video or audio content. Let me know in the comments.

Also, if you aren't a paid subscriber, what would get you to pay $5 a month?

Is Ladyballers Doomed from the Start?

The most honest analysis I've seen.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Going Back to 1995

Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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