FILM
The Perks of Being a Fan
How Stephen Chbosky Didn’t Ruin Your Favorite Book by Elinor Jones I AM NOT THE PERSON you want to able rights for the last 13 years, tinkering the way they did in the book.” It would have sit next to during the Harry Potter mov- with the screenplay himself, until he could been an unsatisfactory response, if Chies. Or The Hunger Games. Or any other eventually put out the movie he wanted for bosky hadn’t succeeded in doing just that. In addition to some ace adapting by Chthe fans he valued. He directed adaptation of a wildly popular book. I just sit there, jabbing The Perks of Being the film, too. I recently got to bosky, the kids in this movie play a huge a Wallflower speak with Chbosky, and while hand in making it great. Lerman’s Charlie the ribs of whoever’s unfortudir. Stephen Chbosky part of me wanted to seem cool is as uncomfortable and sweet as I wanted nate enough to sit next to me, Opens Fri Sept 28 and professional, a bigger part him to be. Miller’s Patrick took me a few whispering about what’s difVarious Theaters of me—the fan part, the part minutes to understand—he was more out ferent. So after I read—and completely fell in love with—The Perks of that won out—just wanted to know why he there than book-Patrick—but eventually I Being a Wallflower, I dreaded seeing the cut the stuff he cut. Chbosky patiently ex- came around. But it was Watson’s turn as movie. I didn’t think I could stomach any plained, “I think there are certain people Sam that’s the most interesting. There was changes to such a sweet, sad, and trium- who loved the book who will see the movie potential for it to be way too distracting phant story. But guess what? This movie who really will wish I’d put in this scene or to see somebody from Hogwarts with an that scene, but I can assure anybody who American accent in early ’90s Pittsburgh, totally worked! I still can’t believe it. For the uninitiated (WHY ARE YOU loved the book that if anything’s left out, but thankfully, she gives Sam a sweet vulUNINITIATED, YOU SHOULD READ it’s left out for a reason, and it was my do- nerability that Hermione never had. ChTHIS BOOK), Perks is about a teenage ing. All I wanted was for people at the end bosky told me one of his favorite moments outcast, Charlie (Logan Lerman), in his of the movie to feel that sense of catharsis, from the movie was watching her transfirst year of high school. His only friend has just killed himself, he dearly misses an aunt who died several years before that, and he pours his heart into letters to a person he’s never met. Charlie has the great fortune to befriend stepsiblings Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller) and their band of punk-rock theater nerds who help him have fun and deal with some serious shit. Author Stephen Chbosky had the incredible foresight not to option Perks to the Hollywood machine: He sat on those valu- THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER Hardcore wallflowerin’.
Seeing Double
Looper: Time Traveling for Fun and Profit! by Erik Henriksen
FILM
separated by 30 hard years—and Cranky Old Joe has no intention of letting Young Jackass Joe take him out. It’s a slick setup, and most fi lmmakers would be content to leave it at that—but Johnson, true to form, blows it out in bigger, weirder directions. Looper riffs on other sci-fi fl icks—most notably The Terminator—but ends up feeling surprising, focused, intense, and original. Looper’s world—with technology that feels tangible, where America’s class divide is split even wider, where a vault of blood-splattered silver still can’t solve your mommy and/or daddy issues—is, like the lonely football field of Brick or the madcap Europe of The Brothers Bloom, a hell of a place to visit. And if there’s one thing most of the people who live there can agree on— in between their shootouts, anyway—it’s that predicting the future is a fool’s errand. Which maybe makes me a fool to admit that I’m already excited for Johnson’s next movie. But I don’t think so.
Hell, on paper, Looper’s premise sounds “THIS TIME-TRAVEL SHIT just fries your brain like an egg,” says Looper’s badass: Time travel doesn’t exist yet, but schlubby crime boss, Abe (Jeff Daniels), it does in the future. And in the future, one surefi re way for criminals to disand he’s right: Time-travel Looper pose of problematic individuals movies usually don’t make a dir. Rian Johnson is to send them into the past— hell of a lot of sense. So here, Opens Fri Sept 28 where an assassin known as a right off the bat, is one of the Various Theaters “looper” is ready and waiting. many great things about Looper: It dispenses with the head-scratching Problematic individual gets zapped into early on, fully aware that paradoxes will the past, the looper shoots ’em and pockbewilder and that space-time is a pretty ets the silver that’s taped to their body, iffy playground, but that even so, there’s a and—space-time having been thoroughly lot of fun to be had. Looper’s crazy smart, exploited—the looper proceeds to blow his but—unlike, say Inception—you won’t silver on cars, drugs, girls. Joe (Joseph spend its runtime trying to glue together Gordon-Levitt) is a looper, and while he’s its logic. You’ll just be enjoying the mov- arrogant, strung-out, and selfish, he’s also ie. Because all you need to know to enjoy pretty content with his crappy life—until Looper is that actions have consequenc- his next victim, Joe (Bruce Willis), zaps into place. The two Joes are the same Joe, es—and Looper is an action movie. But Looper is “just” an action movie the same way Brick was “just” a noir, or The Brothers Bloom was “just” a heist fl ick: All three were written and directed by Rian Johnson, and with each, Johnson appropriates the skeleton of a genre, then fleshes it out in astonishingly clever ways. On paper, there’s no way Brick, a grim murder mystery set in a SoCal high school, should’ve been so gorgeous and heartbreaking; on paper, The Brothers Bloom’s heist shouldn’t have so easily blossomed into a hilarious, sweet romance. And on paper, Looper’s premise— LOOPER BUT WHICH ONE IS BRUCE WILLIS?!?!
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formation in a scene that takes place in a tunnel. “It was like she entered the tunnel as Emma Watson and she left the tunnel as Sam.... [Watson] never got to be a kid kid,” Chbosky said. “And what I saw on her face in that moment was someone who was absolutely free. Who got to be a kid.” Yeah. It’s pretty great. Fangirling aside, if you haven’t read the book, you’ve been to high school, so you’re gonna relate to this film. The cathartic Perks captures the sometimes-awesome/ always-awkward pains and victories of American teenagerdom in a way that few movies do. Get ready for some flashbacks. For our complete interview with Stephen Chbosky, go to portlandmercury.com/film.
GEEK OUT CATHODE RAYS OF NOSTALGIA
Portland Retro Gaming Expo Sat Sept 29-Sun Sept 30 Oregon Convention Center More info at retrogamingexpo.com FOR THE PAST six years, the Portland Retro Gaming Expo has been a bright spot on the calendar of Portland gamers—a place to pick up old and hard-to-find cartridges and discs, bathe in the cathode rays of nostalgia, weep for long-dead consoles, and check out panels and tournaments that don’t happen any other time of the year. For its seventh year, the Expo’s taking it up a notch or two, graduating to the Oregon Convention Center and throwing out some pretty serious attractions: The “Mega-Cade” Arcade—Set up with the help of Portland’s videogame Mecca, Ground Kontrol, this is 20,000 square feet of arcade cabinets and pinball machines—they’re culled from all over the Northwest, and none of them require quarters. The Tetris World Championships (qualifying round begins Sat Sept 29, 10 am4:30 pm)—I talk a lot of shit about how FUCKING AWESOME I am at Tetris, but even I would be out of my depth here: Anyone with 10 bucks can enter, but only the top 32 will have a chance at the $1,000 first-place prize, not to mention the chance to play against the champs featured in the documentary Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters. Geek Trivia: Videogame Edition (Sat Sept 29, 3:30 pm)—Local podcasters Cort Webber and Bobby “Fatboy” Roberts bring the gaming questions to their ridiculously popular trivia event. Fair warning: Roberts works at the Mercury (DISCLAIMER), and he’s smarter than everyone else here. Except for me. Also, compared to me, he sucks at Tetris. Atari 2600 Programmer Series (Sat Sept 29, 11 am)—David Crane and Garry Kitchen are on a panel! Okay, they aren’t household names, but their works are: Crane co-founded Activision and designed Pitfall!, for chrissakes, while Kitchen’s the one who adapted Donkey Kong for the 2600. Interesting? Yes. A chance to thank these dudes for improving your childhood by a factor of one million? Yes. ERIK HENRIKSEN
September 27, 2012 Portland Mercury 43