Mediocrity Template

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I watched a movie recently. An Italian movie. An incomprehensible Italian movie. In the beginning it was a zombie movie, which was good. It seemed to have the zombie film basics in place. Plus we were drinking beer.

Then it became a semi-erotic, soft core porn movie. Set in a cemetery. With lots of weird death-eroticism (there's probably a word for that, like cryptoeroticism or something, but I don't know it). That was less good. Although at least they had the sense to cast attractive women, which isn't always the case.

Then the principal love interest started getting killed, but she kept reappearing. And not as a zombie – it would have been ok if she was a zombie. The problem was, she kept reappearing as other people. All of these people immediately loved the main character – a cemetery groundskeeper whose primary job was to keep the zombies in the earth, where they belonged, by killing them when they popped up. They would hook up, have sex, and then she would be killed in assorted ways – usually by the groundskeeper.

Then death appeared out of a burning phone book and told the groundskeeper to stop killing his people. It was very Moses-like, but with more carrion.

Then the groundskeeper had himself chemically castrated because one of the confusing incarnations of his love interest pronounced that she could only love an impotent man (I know, castration seemed to be going further than the situation required, but he was, evidently, in love). Once this was done, the love interest reappeared and announced that she had been raped and discovered that sex with men was great, and as such, she could no longer be with him.

That was a twist.

Then she reappeared as someone else, and he somehow had sex with her (not sure how this was possible at this point, but everyone appeared to enjoy it). Somewhere during all of this, the groundskeeper's assistant struck up a relationship with the reanimated, severed head of the town mayor's daughter, which attacked the mayor and had to be shot by the groundskeeper, which made his handicapped assistant upset, but they worked through it. After having sex with the latest incarnation of his love interest, the groundskeeper then got mad and set her on fire. Did I mention that he had started going on periodic killing rampages among the living, at death's suggestion? He had. So this wasn't actually out of character for him.

The groundskeeper went on several killing rampages, but no matter what he did, the police would not blame him for them. Keep in mind that at this point no one has seen or mentioned a zombie for about an hour. And, in fact, no more mention of zombies would ever be made again. This was a pity because at one point, zombies were racing around on motorcycles, which to my knowledge has never been done before.

Then the groundskeeper decided that it was time to flee, because his dead love interest had just reappeared again as the secretary of the new mayor (the old mayor having been killed by his daughter's severed head) and it was wigging him out. Which is surprising because nothing else in the movie seemed to bother him. Oh, and death got upset when he decided to leave, but that seemed like a passing point. Hardly worth mentioning.

So the groundskeeper and his assistant drove off into a tunnel, through which they had never gone before, and which connected their little town to the "rest of the world". When they reached the far end of the tunnel, they slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid sailing off a cliff and into a giant abyss. They then promptly came to the realization that the rest of the world did not exist. At this point, the assistant, who was handicapped in some way and did not speak, suddenly asked the groundskeeper to take him home. The groundskeeper replied with an incoherent noise that left one wondering if he had now lost the ability to speak, which his assistant just seemed to have gained. Then the scene cut in such a way as to imply that the two lived inside a snow globe.

That's how it ended.

I liked the movie.

...spectacular failures are eight hundred and seventy six times better than mediocrity. Anything is better than mediocrity.

I liked it not because it was good, because it wasn't. I liked it not because it was insightful, and certainly not because it was challenging. I liked it because it was awful. This, in long winded and time-consuming format, is my point. Things that are very good, are good. Things that are very bad, are also good, but in an entirely different way. Where the trouble lies is in mediocrity. That's right, a so-so movie is five hundred and thirty two times worse than a terrible one. A sort-of-ok book is a greater burden to finish than thirteen blazing pieces of garbage.

So was the director of this movie trying to create a failure so dramatic that it would entertain just as well as a shocking success? No, I suspect that the director was attempting to be absolutely brilliant, and in failing, produced a plane crash that could be heard from miles away. Which is the point. Spectacular failures result from failed assaults on the icy summits of greatness. But spectacular failures are eight hundred and seventy six times better than mediocrity. Anything is better than mediocrity.

Read into it what you will.

Attempts to produce something that is merely good, sometimes produce something that is good; they almost never produce something brilliant, and most often they result in things that are mundane. This is the basis, I think, of Hollywood's entire formula – produce only movies that fit a certain template, so as to avoid having anything turn out too badly. In so doing, of course, they reduce their number of catastrophic failures, but they also reduce down to almost nothing their chances of producing anything great. And they ensure that they will produce boatloads of junk that is just ok, or kinda crappy. Which, of course, is much worse than dramatic failures. But I guess it's tougher to see it that way when you're the one investing the money.

So what conclusion can we hastily draw from this careless odyssey of foreign filmmaking and haphazard personal philosophy? Can we conclude that caution is for losers and reckless abandon is the only true path to greatness?

Well, no, not quite that. But something like it.