Creative Journalism (The Good Kind)
If I had read more articles as fun as this little beauty, I might not have spent so many years thinking that journalism was utterly boring. This article had me in stitches. It’s written as a letter from Wolverine to Superman about Bryan Singer possibly directing the long-delayed Superman movie. I need to look up more about the writer, Joal Ryan. Some of my favorite quotes:
“But you–you conniving Kryptonian–you pretend you’re all about truth, justice and the American way, when all you’re really about is getting back on the big screen anyway, anyhow.”
“Superman, you are like the messed-up hot chick who can’t keep a guy… Got quite a collection of ex-suitors there, don’t you? (Say, do you keep their pictures on a wall in the Fortress of Solitude–maybe next to your Lois Lane shrine?–you nutball stalker.)”
“P.S.: Superman III sucked.
P.P.S.: Superman IV sucked worse.”
As for the subject of the article, I would be disappointed if Bryan Singer didn’t helm X-Men 3 due to a Superman movie. Aside from never having been much of a Superman fan (he’s just too Super… I like heroes with more humanity and angst), X2 might just be my favorite comic book movie to date. I felt that it had the closest-to-perfect blend of action and emotional conflict I’ve seen on the big screen (much better than a certain arachnid everyone seems to be obsessed with.) And with the ending of X2 being what it was, the third movie has a lot to live up to.
From what I’ve heard of about Bryan Singer, he seems to be a great director to work with. In commentaries and such for the two X-Men movies, those who worked with him couldn’t seem to give him enough praise. I really like the following comment he made in one of the featurettes on the X2 extras DVD:
“A film is not like a book or a painting. A film is made by thousands of people. And I’m kind of a funnel through which all their talents pass. So in that sense, it could be called my vision, but it’s really my vision of their visions.”
I very much like his way of putting it. With so much focus on movies “belonging” to the director (hooray for auteur theory), it’s nice to hear a director genuinely acknowledge the other creative input into a film while not diminishing his own role at the helm.