Sunspot: August 2009

So, I was watching 1408 yesterday for the first time (this post will contain spoilers for a couple of movies, so tread carefully.) And when I reached the end, I started thinking “how weird is it that the protagonist lived at the end of a modern horror film?” So John Cusack (who I’ve thought was awesome since The Journey of Natty Gann by the way) didn’t die at the finish and there wasn’t any “surprise” in a mirror where a ghost shows up behind a character or somebody’s sucked through a window or portal. He lives, his wife lives, Samuel L. Jackson even tells him “good job” (unfortunately without using our favorite term for a person that copulates with female parents.) I thought it was unusual, so I looked up the movie on Wikipedia and saw that the original ending was that the main guy dies at the end in the fire and then his estranged wife is haunted by him, but it proved unpopular with test audiences, so they reshot it for American audiences.

I usually laugh at the people who like “happy endings” and I like my movies (especially horror) “hardcore”. And I often think American audiences are immature and foolish for wanting a happy ending. But I thought about it for a little while as to why I enjoyed the fact that the ending was different than what I expected. I’ve come to expect tragic endings now and that’s just as absurd as a Deus ex machina that saves everyone. Why is dark better or more realistic? Because we expect things in our regular lives to end in tragedy? Because everyone dies? The world doesn’t have to always be tragic and sometimes good things do happen. That’s why I liked the ending, because it was true to the story. There was no dramatically satisfying reason to kill John Cusack off. He didn’t believe in ghosts, so what? Either does 30% of the Czech Republic but we’re not going to do anything nasty to them (yet.)

Anyway, this is one case where I really thought that the original ending was inferior to the one they replaced it with, because it confounded my expectations. It’s a cliche since Night of the Living Dead to kill off the main character and at least Romero was trying to make a point about humans becoming monsters. If you want a dark ending, watch The Mist (that’s an ending that won’t leave you for a week, and a gut punch that actually was effective because it was true to the theme of fear changing people’s behavior in horrifying ways.) But why does every story have to be “dark” to feel realistic? What aspects of life are being documented? And why do these images have to be so brutal? I know that horror movies are usually supposed to be “commentaries” on things happening in the real world, but most of the time I feel like I’m really just covering up the fact that I like blood and guts. There might be some commentary involved, but it’s usually just to make me feel better about indulging in violent fantasies (otherwise how do I laugh and cheer on Dexter?) It may be healthy to for humans to express these ideas, but the conventions are getting old. The gloom that I used to see as being true to the world now just feels artificially constructed to get a rise or shock the adolescent in me who wants to be scared because I’ve never experienced what real fear-for-my-life horror is like. It’s that last dip on the roller coaster when you think you’re out of the woods, but it’s a sucker punch.

Yes, Hollywood endings are usually contrived and that’s the fault of the writer not setting up the pieces to make the climax dramatically satisfying, but I thought my reaction to 1408 was interesting specifically because it’s not the reaction I thought I’d have. I usually seek out the “original endings” because I think they’re more honest, but here I had the exact opposite reaction. So now I noticed something different in myself and how I see things.

That got me to thinking about the band and how when we release a song are we serving the song’s message in each lyric, in the song structure, even in our ridiculous a capella moments at live shows where we get everyone to sing along.

It’s time to start writing new songs again (I know we just released Singularity, but we’re always looking to write the perfect song) and sometimes I find myself struggling with repeating formats and plugging into templates of what’s worked before. It does help to make sure that the idea is clearly delineated before creating the actual work. We definitely did that with a lot of the tracks on Singularity, and most of the songs feel pretty complete (On most of the tracks, I wouldn’t know what else to add and on tracks like “Hypnogogic” there’s probably a lot more words than necessary to convey the idea!)

Thinking about how my own expectations need to be shaken and thrown around to get a different and surprising reaction out of me, I feel like that’s something we need to do creatively to get that reaction out of the listener.

What do you or don’t you expect from Sunspot would be the best question? How can we either exceed what you’re looking for or how can we confuse you enough to make it interesting? I’d love to hear what people think as we start to work on new material and develop the new live show. Feel free to email, DM, Myspace, or Facebook me any ideas or thoughts you might have.