I have spent an incredible amount of time studying the Russian language in recent months, and a vital part of learning a new language is hearing (and understanding) it spoken. To this end, I have been watching a lot of Russian movies and Russian-dubbed movies, as well as a lot of American movies with Russian speaking in them. Sadly, those American films are mostly turning out to be more of a joke than a learning tool.

Recent films I’ve watched have included Hitman, Lord of War, and The Saint, while Cold War-era films have included such favorites as Rocky IV, Red Dawn, and Spies Like Us. While those newer films aren’t as iconic, the older ones are largely ingrained in the social fabric of the US, and that’s why I have been somewhat disheartened by what I’m seeing as I go back and watch them in this new way.

Starting with Rocky IV, which was the easy “go-to” movie for a guy looking to test his new language skills, it’s quickly apparent how pathetic that film really was. Judging by their accents, and their poor understanding of the Russian language, I doubt that there were any actual Russians involved in the making of that movie! And worse, it’s filled with Cold War propaganda, such as the portrayal of the Russians as evil, heartless rule-breakers, while the Americans are honest and virtuous. Gag me.

But it gets worse. Red Dawn was very memorable, having been the only mainstream film to depict a successful Soviet invasion of the US… yet once again I doubt that any actual Russians were involved in the making of the film. The biggest speaking roles (in Russian) were given to people who knew nothing about grammar. In fact, it became quite clear that the Russian dialog was written in English and then simply translated word-for-word into Russian, because grammatically it didn’t make any sense in Russian. And in terms of propaganda, let’s just say that the film opens with a depiction of Soviet troops invading a school and shooting children. Wow.

In comparison, it’s Spies Like Us, a comedy film, that was most fair. In this film, Soviets are depicted as people similar to Americans, with seemingly equal ability and technology. And while there were a few strange accents, there were also a few genuinely Russian accents. It’s typical of Hollywood, that only a comedy could be honest. Or maybe it’s typical of life, that reality is funnier than fiction.

The earliest post-Soviet Russian film I’ve watched so far was The Saint, and I think it’s been the best — probably because they used real Russians… in Russia! (With the exception, of course, of a Croatian playing the most prominent Russian role.) Not much Russian dialog, however, so while it was a reasonable (if exaggerated) depiction of the country at that time, it wasn’t much use as a practice tool.

For the most part, I found Lord of War simply offensive. How do you cast Nicholas Cage and Jared Leto as a pair of Jewish Ukrainian brothers? I don’t believe either one of them has a drop of Jewish or eastern-European blood in them, and fortunately neither of them tried to speak more than one or two words of Russian on screen. The portrayal of post-Soviet Ukraine was probably mostly fair, if limited by the plot. However, once again, it fails miserably as a practice tool.

And then there’s Hitman. Most of the time, I couldn’t tell if it was really taking place in Russia, or if it was just some Hollywood sound stage. I tend to lean toward the latter, though, since some of the buildings had blatant spelling errors in the Cyrillic characters. Most of the Russians were played by good ol’ American country boys, and the vocabulary was pretty limited.

With the large number of authentic Russians to choose from, why is Hollywood still selecting country boys to portray Russians on screen? What would happen if they tried to do that with Latino roles?

And with the Cold War long since ended, why are there still so few movies being filmed on location in former Soviet countries?

• After the Lucasfilm logo faded, the film opens with an computer-animated groundhog and I knew right away I had wasted my money. The film was rife with cutesie CG animals making stupid faces and noises. It’s Jar-Jar Binks all over again.
• Indiana Jones just happens to find himself in the middle of a nuclear testing site, just minutes before a bomb is tested. How does he survive? By locking himself inside of a refrigerator. While the entire town is melted down in the blast, somehow this single refrigerator is hurled thousands of feet — maybe even a few miles — and crashes down on rocks, breaking open. Indy exits the ‘fridge completely unharmed, just in time to observe the mushroom cloud in the distance. Come on!
• The mummified remains of an extra-terrestrial have a magnetic effect strong enough to pull lighting fixtures, but only when it’s convenient. Opening the crate containing the alien causes guns and swords and loose change to fly out of pockets and stick to the container, but only a few minutes later everyone’s guns work just fine. And why weren’t the lights already bending into the direction of the crate?
• The accents are all over the place. Cate Blanchett flip-flops between a British accent and something from a Boris and Natasha cartoon. The rest of the bad guys waver between bad, fake Russian accents and bad, fake German accents. And the double-crossing good/bad guy can’t decide if he’s English or Australian.
• And speaking of accents, we’re obviously in the McCarthy era, since Indiana Jones is being treated as a possible communist defector, but the actual communists — complete with ridiculous accents — have no problem socializing inconspicuously at the diner, or just wandering around town.
• The green-screen is painfully obvious through most of the film. Scenes occurring in large, open spaces have the entire cast bunched into small spaces. While it’s bad all the way through, the worst is at the end when the Mayan pyramids crumble and swirl in a vortex, with huge debris floating past Indiana Jones, but not so much as a speck of dust manages to hit him.
• The beards are crazy. After they leave civilization, Harrison Ford goes from clean-shaven to five-o’clock-shadow, to two-day growth, back to five-o’clock shadow, then to three-day growth, then down to next-day hangover stubble. Meanwhile, Shia LeBouf grows a dirty upper lip for five minutes and then spends the remainder of the film with a ridiculous stubble shaped like a Fu Manchu.
• The “big damn ants” managed to build a ladder out of themselves in order to reach Cate Blanchett who is hanging from a tree above them.
• After driving an amphibious car off a cliff, the crew lands safely below in a river. That’s might have been fine, but then they pilot the floating car over not one, not two, but three waterfalls of increasing size. The car incurs no damage and all five passengers emerge each time, completely unscathed — some of them still in the car!
• The punching sound effects get really old. It’s one thing to hear that loud meat-packing sound when you’re watching a close-up of a guy taking a hit. But when Indy is out fighting on the hood of a truck and the camera is following the passengers inside of the truck, the blatant punching sound effects are just too much.
• How long have the natives been hiding in the trees and in the ceiling, and basically everywhere that people don’t normally go? When do they eat? Go to the bathroom? Get exercise? What the fuck was that all about?

When I think of the great wastes of potential in history, tons of examples come to mind. I think of all the expensive, high-powered, imported sports cars that will never be pushed over 55 miles per hour because they’re purchased by bald men in their 50s. I think of the Betamax video players that collected dust while VHS was tops for two decades. I think of the last 50 years of Chicago Cubs baseball.

None of those scratches the surface of the atrocity that is 88 Minutes. Never mind the low-hanging fruit of a big name like Al Pacino, this movie was actually ripe with talented supporting actors who have been impressive behind the stories in many other films.

But just like a wealth of talent isn’t enough to make the Detroit Lions a good team, neither is it enough on its own to make 88 Minutes a good movie.

I have never seen such horrible scene-cutting and forced dialog in such a high-budget film. Unlike many Hollywood let-downs, 88 Minutes is dead right from the start, and then is spends the ensuing hour-and-a-half violently twitching and convulsing on the floor, heaving and bleeding out slowly but never surely.

Given the choice between watching this film or Battlefield Earth, I’d have to choose Battlefield Earth. Okay, that’s not true — I’d actually just kill myself. But I’d give serious consideration to Battlefield Earth before I pulled the trigger.

In fact… I was considering going into detail about all the elements that make this film such a bad movie, but I think I’m actually managing to successfully repress those memories. Besides… what fool would willingly relive them?

This weekend I watched Street Kings. After seeing the commercials, I expected it to suck. Let’s face it; you put Keanu Reeves and Forrest Whitaker into any movie, and you’re pretty much asking for a lousy movie. But then fill in the cast with bit parts played by Hugh Laurie and Cedric The Entertainer, and a handful of no-name gangster rappers, and I’m starting to believe you’re just trying to fulfill P.T. Barnum’s prophecy about the birth rate of suckers.

Fortunately it didn’t full-out suck, so I suppose you could say I was pleasantly surprised. You know, in that same way that you’re pleasantly surprised to find out that the burning sensation when you pee is an STD, but it’s treatable with a shot.

Right. So Keanu Reeves plays the role of maverick-risk-taker-with-no-personality. No surprise. If you’ve seen Point Break, Speed, Johnny Mnemonic, Chain Reaction, The Matrix, or Constantine, then you know what I’m talking about. This time, however, the writer and director weren’t sure that we would get the point, so they made a repeated effort of actually spelling it out to the viewer. “Tom, you’re the only guy crazy enough to do it. You’re like a guided missile.”

There were a few interesting plot turns, a handful of quotable one-liners, and some uniquely intense action scenes that really made the audience feel the bones breaking, and those are the details that kept this movie from being a total suck-fest.

The majority of the film is completely forgettable, but there is one moment I’ll always remember. It’s at the end of the movie, where Keanu is playing talentless-actor-trying-to-look-betrayed, and Forest Whitaker is playing the part of overweight-guy-who-exaggerates-every-body-movement, and I’m about ready to go watch the paint dry in the lobby when I look up and make a startling realization…

Forest Whitaker is Mr Potatohead.

Everyone loves the rebel — guys want to be like him, girls want to be with him, authority figures want to change him. The rebel gets all the attention, and controls all the power. Let’s face it: rebels are cool. And it’s hard to find a cooler rebel than Cool Hand Luke, who is the latest subject of my ongoing blog series about how Hollywood helped to shape my life.

A natural born world-shaker
From beginning to end, there can be no doubt that Luke is a rebel. He bends to no authority but his own, and in doing so, he shakes things up. That’s what happens. When you go against the grain, when you walk against the crowd, when you don’t do what everyone else is doing, things get shaken up.

In this modern, overpopulated world, everyone works hard to “fit in”. People are sheep: they get their opinions from the same talking heads; they follow the trends, shop in the same stores, and wear the same clothes; they drink the same trendy beers and eat the same trendy foods.

When someone doesn’t fit in they stand out, and that’s what Luke did. That’s what Michael Jackson did, and Marilyn Manson, and Howard Stern. Copernicus, and Columbus, and Darwin went against the grain. The quickest and easiest (and often best) way to get noticed is to be different — to be a rebel.

Go to the mall some time in blue jeans and a sweat shirt, and walk in the same door as everyone else and ride up the escalator with everyone else, and see how many heads you turn. Then go back in some nice clothes, and walk in where people are walking out, and try going up on the down escalator, and see the difference. You don’t even have to do it, because you already know what will happen — everyone will be looking at you.

That’s how it was for Cool Hand Luke. Everyone in the chain gang lived vicariously through him. They all watched anxiously to see what he’d do next. They got their satisfaction from his willingness to do what they all wanted to but lacked the nerve. They fed off of him.

Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand
Luke earns his nickname “Cool Hand” after he wins a poker game by keeping his cool while bluffing on a losing hand. Even when he knew he was beaten, he never accepted defeat. And more, his confidence was never shaken.

In another scene, Luke got into a fight with Dragline, the prison yard bully. He is clearly outmatched by Dragline, who is much bigger and stronger than him, and who is repeatedly knocks him to the ground, but he keeps getting up. Even after being warned to “stay down, you’re beat,” Luke replies, “you’re gonna hafta kill me.”

Even when he’s got nothing, Luke never gives up. (It reminds me of Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru.) He never accepts defeat, and he never loses his cool. It’s that persistence that earns him the respect of everyone else in the prison.

A rebel without a cause
For all the admirable qualities we find in our protagonist, the funny thing is that Luke always loses. It seems clear that this is because he never had a goal. During his last big escape attempt, when asked how long he was planning it his response is “I never planned nothin’ a day in my life.”

Had he ever turned all that charm and all that perseverance toward accomplishing a specific goal, Luke might have been unstoppable. Imagine those same qualities applied toward training for the Olympics, or being an entrepreneur, or running for office. But without a goal, all that charm and persistence and rebellion only fueled his impulsive mischief.

Luke was an agitator. He landed in prison for cutting the heads off of parking meters. When asked why, his response was, “small town, not much to do in the evenin’.” Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, as they say. A man needs to have a purpose.

Life isn’t fair
When Luke’s mother died, the warden had him put in the box just to prevent him from trying to get to her funeral. After a torturous week of hard work, while everyone else got a day off to rest, he was forced to spend the entire time digging a hole and filling it in, just to dig it again, all without sleep or rest. And in the final scene, he dies unjustly.

Everything bad that happened to Luke was unfair. And that’s life: it isn’t fair. But Luke’s whims were his undoing. You have to pick your battles. There are times when there is nothing to be gained from being the rebel.

Coincidence — the noteworthy alignment of two or more events or circumstances without obvious causal connection, according to Wikipedia — is the theme of the day when considering one of my favorite films: 1999′s Magnolia. However, it is no coincidence that this film is the topic of today’s post, because I will be discussing how Magnolia was one of the vehicles through which Hollywood has made me a better person.

While the introduction — a nearly 30 minute story that seems almost fascinating as a movie by itself — sets us up for a story of coincidence, I have to be honest in saying that I really didn’t detect any coincidence whatsoever in the actual movie. The story was filled with noteworthy alignments of characters in the plot, but their connections were made obvious and far more than casual. In fact, I don’t think it’s about coincidence at all, so much as it is about the hidden truth underneath of coincidence: that sometimes things just happen, and there isn’t always a reason.

This happens. This is something that happens.
We pick up in the film with nine individual stories, each already a crisis in progress, and spend the course of the three-hour movie learning how each present-day crisis is the product of some unresolved issue from the past. This core theme is summed up in the quote, “we might be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.”

These nine interwoven stories start out tense, and the tension only builds and builds until we reach a breaking point, where the entire cast sings Wise Up by Aimee Mann. It’s at this point that the point of the story shifts, stopping the focus on who did who wrong, and starting the focus on the fact that they’re just details people hang on to.

In a deathbed rant, we have Jason Robards saying, “Don’t ever let anyone ever say to you, ‘You shouldn’t regret anything.’ Don’t do that, don’t! You regret what you fucking want! And use that, use that, use that regret for anything, any way you want. You can use it, okay?”

It’s dangerous to confuse children with angels
A major part of this theme is how children are so often the victims of the mistakes adults make. Though present with all the characters, this is echoed loudly in the correlation between the young quiz kid and the adult quiz kid. But nowhere is the theme spelled out better than in the womanizing workshop being put on by Frank T.J. Mackie (played by Tom Cruise).

Mackie, we learn, is the unlikely son of tv mogul Earl Partridge (Robards), and has grown up to be every bit of the misogynistic on-air persona as the father he hated for doing the exact same thing. It’s this overflowing source of wisdom who continues the theme with his quote, “the most useless thing in the world is that which is behind me.”

That, of course, pales in comparison to the far more realistic and useful — though certainly less hopeful — advice he gives in the line, “in this life, it’s not what you hope for, it’s not what you deserve — it’s what you take!” We’re getting from Mackie a glimpse of the cause of all that regret being spoken of by Partridge.

Can you learn from a womanizer?
It all reminds me of last week’s movie, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, where we learn about hanging on to pain and regret. Only this time we have a different, yet equally monumental, quote to live by for our response: “I will not apologize for who I am. I will not apologize for what I need. I will not apologize for what I *want*!”

Look. Throughout the film, it’s quite clear that Frank T. J. Mackie is a pig, not someone to be idolized. But I think it’s also clear that he’s a hypocrite, saying all the right things without actually believing them himself. When Mackie refuses to apologize for who he is, it’s rhetoric to get into women’s pants, but this line carries with it a beautiful irony in that it contains the answer to his problems, if he’d only take the time to believe in what he’s saying.

Frank Mackie, for all of his good advice, is faking it. He’s seeking validation through sexual experience in the same way that Earl Partridge seeks it through money, Linda Partridge (Julianne Moore) seeks it through martyrdom, Claudia (Melora Walters) seeks it through drugs, and Donnie Smith (William H. Macy) seeks it through answering trivia. But all of them could move forward from their past if they would just accept who they are. We should not apologize for who we are.

We met upon the level, and we’re parting on the square.
Words are nothing without meaning, and only one character in the film seems to have the authenticity of believing the things he says. It’s that authenticity that makes Officer Jim Kurring (John C. Riley) the character we attach to as the hope-bringer in the story. And it’s fitting, then, that the movie comes to an end on his words, “The law is the law, and heck if I’m gonna break it. But if you can forgive someone… Well, that’s the tough part. What can we forgive?”

It really comes down to that. So in summary… You may be done with the past, but the past ain’t done with you. You shouldn’t regret anything. I will not apologize for who I am. What can we forgive?

You’ll probably call me a nerd (and you’ll probably be right) but I grew up on Star Trek. I’m not a Trekkie, nor am I a Trekker, but I’m nerd enough to know that there’s a difference. Personally, I just like the shows — old shows and new show, but not all shows. (And no conventions for me, thanks!)

But this isn’t about the show, it’s about the movies. Specifically, we’re talking about this week’s example of how Hollywood made me a better person. We’ve already covered Yoda (yes, it gets higher billing than Star Trek), and Tyler Durdan. Today’s wisdom comes from our old pal Captain Kirk.

I don’t control minds, I free them
In a nutshell, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier introduces us to Spock’s half-brother Sybok, a Vulcan who has embraced emotion. Sybok uses his mind-meld ability to help someone relive their painful experiences in a sort of Church of Scientology meets Freudian therapy kind of way.

Once a person shares their pain with Sybok they feel free of it, and in return they follow him with a blind loyalty that brings to mind comparisons of Jim Jones or Marshall Applewhite. Sybok takes control of most of the crew of the Enterprise, and puts the ship on a course toward The Great Barrier, with Captain Kirk locked in the brig.

Then comes Kirk’s turn. After watching Spock and McCoy share their pain with Sybok, Kirk is invited to do the same. But Captain Kirk refuses! Seemingly he’s the only person ever to say no, but nevertheless, with all the conviction (and melodrama) that Shatner can conjure as an actor, he declares:

Damn it, Bones, you’re a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can’t be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They’re the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don’t want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

And suddenly we’ve transcended from bad, overacted science fiction into philosophical realms. We all have pain. Some of us carry grudges our whole lives, crass and jaded. Others easily forgive and forget. But no matter where you fall in between the two, we all live and learn, and it is our pain that teaches us. Yes, I learned that from James T Kirk.

In that moment, I learned to stop holding a grudge about my parents divorce. I stopped being upset about the conditions in which I grew up. I let go of the self-pity over missed Christmases, and being homeless as a teenager, and found a way to accept my brother’s suicide. Yes, before this moment I had always thought pain was bad, but now for the first time I could see the positive. These are the things that make me who I am. Like Kirk said, I need my pain.

Little did I know this was just the tip of the philosophical iceberg that the Enterprise was going to hit…

Where no man has gone before
With the ship under his control, Sybok leads us through The Great Barrier to Sha Ka Ree, where he intends to see God, first hand. And he does. The crew has disturbed the great and powerful Oz, and we get a little fireworks show to prove it. Then, God starts asking about the ship and once again our Captain takes the side of reason and logic:

Kirk: What does God need with a starship?
McCoy: Jim, what are you doing?
Kirk: I’m asking a question.
“God”: Who is this creature?
Kirk: Who am I? Don’t you know? Aren’t you God?
Sybok: He has his doubts.
“God”: You doubt me?
Kirk: I seek proof.
McCoy: Jim! You don’t ask the Almighty for his ID!

Hell yeah! It’s like the astrologer’s magazine that closed due to unforeseen circumstances. (Not to mention, Genesis 3:8-9, where God – the omniscient and omnipotent creator of everything – is incapable of finding Adam in the garden.)

Basically, if you’re God, you don’t need my ship. And you don’t need to ask who I am. I’m outtie. So how does “God” respond? Why, by zapping Kirk with more fireworks, of course! Then he threatens, “Do you doubt me?” To which Bones objects, “I doubt any God who inflicts pain for his own pleasure.” (Yeah, I gotta admit, that reminded me of the bible, too.)

Phasers set to stun
The moral of the story seemed to be that nobody can take you to see God and cure all your pain. At the end of that yellow brick road, you find out that the Wizard of Oz is a fake, and the tin man had a heart all along.

Our lives are the sum of our experiences, good or bad as they may have been. What makes us special is not what we avoid or rid ourselves of, but rather what we learn from the bad hands we’re dealt, and how we play them out. That’s the overarching lesson in Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. And it’s a resounding theme with everyone who reaches great heights, like Thomas Edison, Steve Jobs, and Michael Jordan.

Which leaves us with the closing thoughts, as Bones is pondering whether or not God really is out there, and Kirk responds, “Maybe he’s not out there, Bones. Maybe he’s right here,” pointing to his chest, “In the human heart.”

That would have been a good name for this movie, echoing perhaps the most quotable line of dialog from the film. But to be honest, it wouldn’t have mattered what the title was — you could call it “Milk and Cereal” and it would have still been an awesome move.

Based on the trailers, I expected a more mature attempt at Blair Witch filmmaking, with something of a sci-fi suspense twist. In a way, I was right, but also in a way I was completely wrong.

This movie is like nothing you have ever seen before. It defies all genres. I walked out of the theater amid a sea of voices muttering things like “wow. what did we just watch?” This is film history. In a time when everything coming from Hollywood is just a rehash of something else Hollywood gave us years ago, Cloverfield is the birth of something truly unique.

The true genius of the film is in its synergy of iconic elements from the history of handheld video cameras, as well as a few what-ifs, imagining how something might have looked if it had been seen by a camera. It’s Blair Witch meets America’s Funniest Home Videos, meets Godzilla, meets 9/11 documentary, meets the Zapruder film, meets Titanic, meets King Kong.

Basically, it’s like everything you’ve ever seen before, yet this film is like nothing you have ever seen before.

I hear, all too often, about how movies are too violent. But frankly, I just don’t agree. Why? Because this week’s example of how Hollywood has made me a better person comes from the movie Fight Club.

I guess it’s hard for some people to imagine how anyone can get any philosophical value or learn any life lessons from a movie about grown men beating each other senseless in basements and parking garages. As it turns out, though, the fighting was just a detail in the story. The real story was about mediocre men discovering themselves while cutting through the crap of modern society.

Hitting rock bottom
The movie gets going when we see the main character lose everything he owns to a mysterious explosion in his apartment. With only the clothes on his back, he finds himself staying with his friend in a condemned house. Left without the mind-numbing qualities of television, playstation, and the Internet, these two decide to get out and feel life. That’s when they start their fight club.

But it doesn’t stop at the creation of the fight club. They build an entire empire, manned by people who, like them, have nothing. They gain power over businesses, politicians, and even the police, all because they stopped numbing their minds and instead set out about doing something. As the line from the film goes, “it’s only after you’ve lost everything that you’re free to do anything.”

The things you own end up owning you
In a consumer-driven society, we are taught that it is our civic duty to spend. And no matter what ails you, there is something you can buy that will temporarily relieve you from your self-loathing.

We become garbage collectors, and our homes become our prisons. Soon enough, we’re keeping a $20,000 car in the driveway, in the rain and snow and wind, because there’s no room for it in the garage where we keep a few hundred dollars worth of junk nobody uses any more. Over the last 10 years, I’ve watched one of the fastest growing businesses in America — mini storage — popping up everywhere. We have more stuff than we have room for, so we’re paying other people to keep it for us!

We’re buying newer, bigger shelves to hold more and more CDs and DVDs; new dusting gadgets and disposable toilet brushes, and more injection-molded racks to hang them on; one blanket for the bedroom and another for the living room… for each person in the house… and then we complain that it’s too much work to keep it all clean! We want to travel, but we’re afraid of leaving our houses unoccupied for too long.

And everyone I meet is anxious to tell me how they’re not as materialistic as everyone else. Everyone is frugal. Everyone is economic. Everyone hates clutter. Nobody is part of the problem. So why is it a problem? As they say in the movie, “sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken.”

Day after day, becoming a little more like Tyler Durden
After watching Fight Club, I was immediately inspired to break out of the materialist pattern. I bought a black leather CD case, capable of holding 200 discs, loaded it with my DVD collection, and took two enormous bags of DVD cases out to the trash. I had a big garage sale and sold off all knick-knacks, the tools I didn’t need since changing careers, the guitars I didn’t play any more, and all the clothes I didn’t wear any more.

But I didn’t stop there. When a friend needed a tv, I gave her mine, and since that day, I have not owned a television. (Seriously, almost five years!) Without the tv to keep me complacent, I get out more, I read more, I travel more, I do more. And I snack less, too.

The same year, I gave another friend my microwave, and haven’t had one since. That’s one of the best things I’ve done. Now that I have to cook, I’ve learned to do it pretty well. I eat healthier food, and it tastes better… and usually it costs less! And the cooking time isn’t an issue… after all, it’s not like I’m missing my favorite show…

At this point in my life, everything I own fits neatly into one small room. I have some clothes, some books, a few cameras, and a computer. But more importantly, I have a life. Perhaps I haven’t lost everything, but for the most part, I really am free to do anything.

The most profound sages and gurus in my life have not been religious leaders, intellectuals, teachers, leaders, bosses, or even parents. In my lifetime, the real sages have been fictional people — moving images dancing on a projection screen inside the cinema. With that in mind, I’m starting a new series of posts, discussing how Hollywood made be a better person.

Yoda. You seek Yoda.
The first fictional character to influence me came into my life when I was only five years old. It was a lovable green muppet who spoke in cryptic zen koans with poor grammar. Yoda was famous for saying “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

It was a fictitious, mystical religion invented to sell movies, but to a five-year-old kid, The Force was the most awesome idea ever conceived. And in spite of being rather ugly and scary-looking for a muppet, all kids knew that he was the master, and if we understood what Yoda said, maybe we could be Jedi knights, too. Ah, the power of a kid’s imagination. What fun.

But one little phrase from Yoda has stuck with me my entire life: “Do, or do not. There is no try.”

They may be words from a fake religion invented for a fantasy movie, but they’re so true! When you say you’ll try, you are already accepting the possibility of failure. But more than that, Yoda isn’t just telling his student not to leave room for failure… he’s telling him to take control of his life. What he’s really saying is: either choose to do it, or choose to not do it; saying you’ll try is only copping out.

The words we say reveal a great deal about the way we think. They also affect the way we think. One of the hidden powers of the mind is our ability to convince ourselves of things by using words. The subconscious doesn’t know the difference between reality and imagination.

Napoleon Hill
In his book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill describes the qualities of successful people, and he should know… he spent a lot of time around some of the most influential people of the early 20th century, including Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison, and Henry Ford. He spent two decades learning from rich and powerful people what made them successful.

Hill dedicates an entire chapter to the importance of decision making. He describes two kinds of people — leaders and followers — and suggests that 98 percent of people go through life as followers, taking what life gives them, while the rare two percent of people who make decisions and empower themselves go on to be successful at everything they do.

When Andrew Carnegie approached him and asked him to write the book, he thought about it for 30 seconds before saying yes. Carnegie told him that had he spent 30 more seconds, the offer would have been rescinded because a man who can’t make decisions and take action will never be successful.

Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway
In her book Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway, Susan Jeffers writes about the pain-to-power vocabulary, which encourages the reader to take responsibility for their life rather than leaving it to fate.

She says to replace the words I can’t with I won’t. Instead of saying I hope, say I know. The idea was important enough to her that she made a half-page chart to illustrate the importance of changing ten common cop-outs into empowering statements. But all she’s really saying is Do, or do not. There is no try.