Space is Deep

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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/waypointcomic/waypoint-1-4

This past week was an eventful one. I want to talk about two of the events I attended, and how they’re completely different but come from a very similar artistic place. One was Open Melody, a music festival highlighting experimental/outsider bands. The other was a screening of the massive Hollywood blockbuster Project: Hail Mary. Basically the same thing, right?

Open Melody was a small fest thrown over the course of three days at an art gallery/performance venue called 2220 Arts + Archives. Founder/curator Sam Farzin and his team did a fantastic job of putting it together (I also have to thank the estimable Ned Raggett for telling me about it and giving me his plus one). I’ve been to more than my share of festivals, and this first-time event ran smoother than some I’ve seen put on by supposed pros. It featured a variety of bands across a variety of genres, ranging from improvised jazz to post-black metal. They all had one thing in common: they all tackled their chosen genres from totally lateral angles.

Whether it was Deerhoof’s deconstructed indie rock, Lightning Bolt’s explosive reverb-driven punk, Agriculture’s Zen Buddhist take on black metal, or Ben LaMar Gay Quartet’s discordant jazz, they took established styles and subverted expectations. They undercut traditional song structure, jumping between different sections or cutting off grooves short. They played with unexpected combinations of instruments – the krautrock-influenced Tussle had two drummers, a bassist, and a guy messing with keyboards and sequencers. One of the drummers appeared to have a bent bicycle wheel as a cymbal. Water Damage had eight people on stage – none of whom were in clown masks or boiler suits – including a saxophonist and somebody playing 3-D printed woodwinds, all working together to create a slow-building, swirling drone. OOIOO, an offshoot of experimental Japanese act Boredoms, just kinda did whatever the hell they wanted.

Although they fit into specific genres, they refused to play by the rules. It wasn’t Shaggs or Daniel Johnston incompetence-as-outsider-art. All these musicians knew their craft. They just found their own way to create their art – even if the results were sometimes confounding. Across the board, the acts at Open Melody rejected formula and presented unforgettable performances because of it. They gave the audience the appearance of something familiar and then proceeded to guide them into something unfamiliar and exciting.

So what does that have to do with Project: Hail Mary, a $250 million Amazon MGM production headlined by movie star Ryan Gosling and based on a bestselling novel? It’s because it doesn’t play by the expected Hollywood rules. Noted influencer and author Jason Pargin articulated it well in a recent video: it’s a big blockbuster science fiction movie that doesn’t have a villain. Its message is about the importance of cooperation in the face of a universe that’s trying to kill you as hard as it can.

This next section will have minor spoilers; I’ll try to avoid anything big but read at your own risk if you haven’t seen the flick yet.

Project: Hail Mary uses elements of three-act structure but subverts it in significant ways. In film school, I was trained to focus on conflict between characters as the driver of story. Gosling’s Ryland Grace is on his own for the first act of the film, trying to piece together his mission from fractured memories and the empty ship he’s trapped in. Can’t use interpersonal conflict for that. There's a parallel flashback subplot on Earth in which we see how Grace wound up on the mission, and that does have small conflicts (much of it internal), but the main action revolves around dude figuring out how to stay alive and what he’s trying to accomplish.

The really remarkable part starts when he meets the modifier/foil character, Rocky, in act two. Usually, you would have those characters immediately butt heads and disagree on the direction to go. It’s the fuel for every movie from Bringing Up Baby to Lethal Weapon. Project: Hail Mary doesn’t do that. Instead, it finds the story driver in the challenges the two must overcome together – first to even communicate with each other, then in overcoming the obstacles in the way of their shared goal. They have small disagreements and annoyances, but they get along the whole time. The conflict comes from the two of them working out how to get past the problems thrown at them by an uncaring cosmos.

There’s no evil alien race; there’s an alien race behind the crisis, but it’s not sentient. It’s effectively a force of nature just doing its thing. There are no traitorous crew members sabotaging their mission, no space squids trying to eat their ships. It’s mostly just physics and technological limitations standing in their way. And it is fascinating to watch these two beings from completely different backgrounds and atmospheres figure out the solutions together. It helps that Gosling is charming and the Rocky puppet/performance delightful, but that could still be extremely boring on screen. It’s not.

The filmmakers (directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller with screenwriter Drew Goddard) crafted a thrilling space epic that largely centers around nerds doing math. It has all the touchstones we expect from a science fiction blockbuster – big effects sequences, cool spaceships, enormous stakes – but it does totally different things with them than, say, something like Rebel Moon, which felt beholden to the genres it was working in. I think that's why it's connecting with audiences. The film lured people in with the promise of cool space stuff, and it delivered on that, but it also gave them something unfamiliar and fresh by coming at it from a unique perspective.

I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that my upcoming comic, WAYPOINT, is about a lone human in space learning to cooperate with weird-ass aliens – although mine definitely has more in the way of direct villains. It also has a bitchin' soundtrack. I tried to undercut and subvert the genre tropes I was working with; I can’t say if I succeeded like the Open Melody musicians and Project: Hail Mary filmmakers, but you can decide for yourself when the Kickstarter finally goes live (it’s coming soon, I swear!).

NOW SPINNING

Thundercat – Distracted
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Miho Nakayama – Exotique
Sea Lions – Free the People