Whoo-hoo, everybody!




Well, didn't your parents teach you anything? When someone says "Whoo-hoo" to you, it's good manners to respond in kind. Here, let me try it again:

Whoo-hoo, everybody!

Audience: Whoo-hoo!

That's more like it. Now we can get down to brass tacks viz. this Cloverfield business. Right: Hands up: who's seen the movie?

Let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4... 89, 90, 91... 204, 205, 206...

Here, let me see: According to my handy pocket calculator here... that is... everybody in the room. I thought so.

Of course, there's always a chance that the bartender back there in the Coconut Lounge hasn't seen it yet, so I'll try not to give too much away tonight, but....

I will merely observe that the dude played by Michael Stahl-David was a real crybaby. Every time you turn around, he's like: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

Don't get me wrong: I'm sure that I, too, would be startled if the severed head of Lady Liberty came bouncing down Fifth Avenue toward me like a bowling bowl -- especially if I myself appeared to be the tenpin that she was hoping to "pick up" on the throw. Still, while everybody else in Manhattan was contenting themselves with uttering generic and largely interchangeable screams during these attacks, Michael's character seemed determined to distinguish himself by the hysterical specificity of his cries -- until one is tempted to ask him the indignant question that Hamlet put to Laertes in the churchyard scene:



Who is he whose grief bears such an emphasis!
whose phrase of sorrow
Conjures the wandering stars,
and makes them stand
Like wonder-wounded hearers?




And then Michael would be like:
It is I, Rob Hawkins!

And I'd be like: Well, tone it down a shade, Rob, will ya? Honestly! You're scaring the kiddies -- who, I need hardly add, have already been traumatized 29 ways to Sunday. (Take my own 5-year-old son, for instance: I had only recently convinced him that there were no such thing as monsters under his bed -- and now this: He'll never trust me again!) I know that you just lost your brother on the Brooklyn Bridge and everything, but this monster attack is not a bowl of cherries for the rest of us, either, I can assure you! I had a bridge game scheduled for tonight (for just one admittedly small example).

Of course, that Lady Liberty scene is just crying out to be spoofed -- in fact, I've already written a brief screenplay for that very purpose:

Scene: Fifth Avenue, New York during Monster Attack

Lady Liberty's head falls in the street

Rob: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

The saucer-shaped top of the Seattle Space Needle grinds to a halt beside the iconic cabeza

Rob: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

The clock face of London's Big Ben slams into the back of the Space Needle

Rob: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

The snow-covered peak of Mount Everest lands on top of the three aforementioned wrecks

Rob: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

Three Hours Later during a lull in the monster's destruction of popular icons: Rob and friends are searching for food on a side street.

Lily: I am famished!

Hud: Wait a minute, that's -- that's a McDonald's!

Rob: Yes!

Hud: And they're actually open! Whoo-hoo!

Rob: Oh, mama, I am going to get the biggest hamburger of my life -- and even eat a second one -- in honor of poor Jason, you understand!

Hud: You guys stay there, I'll place our order.

Lily: Get me a fish sandwich, no tartar sauce, and a large fry!

Hud: Right. And two hamburgers for Rob, right, Rob?

Rob: Two HUGE Hamburgers -- with fries, of course!

Hud leaves to order, returns in less than a minute, somewhat crestfallen

Hud: Bad news, gang: The dude says that they're out of everything except salads!

Rob: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"

Of course the real star of the movie was the video camera that the gang employed during the mayhem. It certainly took a licking and came out ticking. I don't know what's more remarkable: the camera's battery life (especially considering the device's many energy-consuming bells and whistles, including night vision and floodlights) or its ability to withstand punishment (considering how frequently it was jostled and collided with during the film). I only wish the photographers had held the flippin' camera still. I was dizzy by the end of the film on account of the constant shifts in perspective created by the studiously bad cinematography. I personally would have preferred to merely imagine that the catastrophic events were being filmed by a video camera, without having the fact painfully proven for me throughout the movie, with every annoying sideways jerk of the lens. But then if I had my way, no one could even own a video camera until they had taken a basic course in movie-making, thereby taking the worst of their inevitable aesthetic sins out of the public domain. Still, I think the camera gimmick probably worked well for folks with stronger stomachs than my own (that is to say, young people who are used to navigating the claustrophobic and monotonously rendered hallways of a video game like Doom or Tomb Raider) but even in their case, the ploy surely only has its novelty value to recommend it -- so let's hope that copycat filmmakers, impressed by the success of "Cloverfield," don't start forcing us to see all of our films like this, "as through a glass darkly" -- i.e. as through a video camera shakily.


Whoo-hoo, everybody?

Audience: Whoo-hoo!

Very good: You're learning!

You've been a great audience. (No, seriously, don't sell yourself short.)

One quick reminder before I go: The Coconut Lounge closes in 5 minutes, okay?

(I can hear Rob now: "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!")