Intercut Issue Twelve

ISSUE TWELVE

INTERCUT Issue Twelve

EDITOR-IN CHIEF

Hannah Carroll

MANAGING EDITOR

Sloane Dzhitenov

FINANCIAL MANAGER

Haden Embry

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Olivia Miller EDITORS

Cyrus Berger

Sloane Dzhitenov

Sophie Gilbert

Casey Epstein-Gross

Nicole Lee

Cecilio Munoz

Miller Ontiveros

Kate Sherman

Nora Sherman

WRITERS

Cyrus Berger

Casey Epstein-Gross

Sophie Flynn

Sam Goodykoontz

Sawyer Savage

Kaden Miller

Danielle Nodelman

Jacob Silberman-Baron

Lewis Woloch

DESIGN & ILLUSTRATION

Olivia Miller

PHOTOGRAPHY

Claire Femano

THANK YOU TO Cfilm, SBC, & Qualprint

MOVIES AND WHY WE GATHER.... 8

Sawyer Savage

AN ODE TO THE BOTTLE THRILLER.... 14

Kaden Miller

I WATCHED AS MANY MICHAEL BAY MOVIES AS POSSIBLE FOR SOME REASON.... 24

Jacob Silberman-Baron

THE UNEXPECTED BEAUTY OF JON BOIS’ DOCUMENTARIES.... 34

Cyrus Berger

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS TIMES

THREE: A SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT.... 40

Sophia Flynn

LISA AND HER SAXOPHONE.... 48

Sam Goodykoontz

LOOK BOTH WAYS AND THE OVERTURNING OF ROE V. WADE.... 52

Danielle Nodelman

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON : A WORTHY SEQUEL?.... 58

Lewis Woloch

THANK YOU for taking the time to read Issue Twelve of Intercut Magazine. Over the last several years, the magazine has welcomed many new writers, editors, and artists. Having worked on Intercut since my freshman year, I have been honored to guide our masthead through the many challenges of assembling a well-rounded entertainment journal amid a pandemic and the inevitable virtual-only environment we have found ourselves in for the past couple of issues.

Now that campus has returned to its vibrant pre-pandemic self, it is all the more thrilling to be a part of this era of Intercut . The many new (and old) faces on our staff bring fresh perspectives on the entertainment industry and continue to contribute inspired, insightful work. There is

truly something for everyone to peruse, learn from, and enjoy in Issue Twelve. I would like to thank everyone who is a part of the magazine for their hard work and dedication this semester. In particular, I am grateful to Sloane Dzhitenov, Olivia Miller, and Haden Embry for their tireless efforts; this issue would not have been possible without them.

On behalf of the entire masthead, I sincerely hope you enjoy this semester’s issue of Intercut , whether you find yourself skimming through a few articles before class or reading this issue cover-to-cover one chilly evening in Olin.

Hannah Carroll

Movies & Why We Gather

By Sawyer Savage

HOLLYWOOD is constantly evolving. Not only are the types of stories studios make different for each generation, but also, so is the way inw] which they are told and how they are marketed. For instance, if we look back on the silent film era, which ran from 1894 to the end of the 1920’s, and then continuing on through the studio film era of the 1940s, stars were paramount. With the end of the ‘60s and into the ‘70s came a boom in auteur cinema, movies that were not driven by actors, but by the strong vision of the filmmaker. Then the year 1975 changed it all. Steven Spielberg released Jaws , a film so popular and so iconic that the line to Amity Island went all the way around

the block–making it the first ever blockbuster. The movie made 476.5 million at the box office. Two years later came Star Wars , which surpassed Jaws as the highest-grossing film, bringing in 550 million in its original release at the box office (since its opening it has made an additional 225 million through re-releases). Special effects truly became the star of the show, beginning a new film experience that inspired a host of other filmmakers who strive to transport their audiences to another world, another universe, another galaxy. Today, Marvel movies reign supreme, offering audiences the same opportunity to travel beyond the borders of our world. While this brief overview of Hollywood histo -

Spielberg and crew flming Jaws, 1975

ry certainly skips many important movie moments, it highlights the industry’s evolution towards grander box-office hits that guarantee more butts in seats and, therefore, more money in producers’ pockets. With the transition to more visual effects-driven projects and larger productions, smaller films were more and more left to streaming alone. The reason for this is economical. Much of the money a movie brings in is generated from selling the films overseas. Therefore, creating films that transcend the language barrier—action and science fiction—are more likely to do well in those markets.

As a result, movies have become more expensive to produce. And it is show business, so studios looked for ways to cut up-front costs. In order to hold the production budget down, they proposed that “above the line talent” take less money up front and instead get a cut of the profits if the movie is a hit. That worked until the demands for up-front money crept back up, but the profit sharing stayed in place. Movies got more and more expensive for the studios. Even with movies that turned a profit, much of the money was no longer going to the studios. With costs skyrocketing, studios no longer want movies that are modest hits. Rather

Movies are a collective cultural experience

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than make smaller movies with the potential to bring in modest profits, they instead make only bigger movies that have higher chances of becoming–like Spielberg’s shark–massive blockbusters. In the vernacular of Hollywood, they don’t want to hit doubles, they want to hit homeruns.

The difficulty in making a blockbuster, however, is that there has also been less inclination by the public to go to the theaters, largely due to streaming services. Now that there is a relatively inexpensive and instantaneous delivery mechanism for an unlimited number of movies directly into your living room, without even having to put shoes on, a new model has taken over the old

block. Now, going to see a movie in the theaters is often reserved for films that people feel can only be truly experienced on the big screen. Of course, this transition to staying home was only exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The option to even go to the theaters if you wanted to was taken away, which further changed our outlooks on movie-watching. Even as we have slowly returned to normalcy, the effects of staying home and enjoying a movie, any movie, from the comfort of our own homes, lingers. It has been the largescale movies— Spider-Man: No Way Home , Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , Top Gun: Maverick –that have motivated the most people back to

Rob Reiner, When Harry Met Sally..., 1989, Film still

the box office, and those continue to be the types of movies being prioritized by the studios.

But when smaller stories are not told, we lose sight of their true value. Smaller movies, with plots that are more narrowly focused, have the ability to illuminate emotional truths that can be lost in a bigger canvas. Part of the value of going to the movies is found in the discussion movie-goers have on the ride home or over a meal. Smaller movies elicit emotions that connect viewers to each other on a deeper, less visceral, level. The discussion after seeing Spider-Man , for instance, is going to be quite different than, say, Scent Of A Woman , a movie starring Al Pacino

which dealt with loss and the need for human connection. With this shift towards only having big movie spectacles in theaters, with smaller films only being released on streaming services, what are we losing? Movies are a collective cultural experience. They entertain, yes, but they also should challenge and enlighten us. Smaller movies tend to be more personal, reaching for emotions other than the visceral thrill. When we go to the movies, we have a shared experience. With smaller movies being seen at home, that collective experience of seeing these personal stories is lost. While there is value in sharing the experience of Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire sharing the screen with Tom

Martin Brest, Scent of a Woman, 1992, Film still

Holland as Spider Men, so too is there value in watching Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan be charming as Harry and Sally.

It also causes a divide of what kinds of films are seen as “important,” and what movies we should share with each other. When only spectacle films are seen as worthy of experiencing as a collective, we are depriving ourselves from having the same experience with a character-driven film. There is some -

Behind the scenes, Star Wars, 1977

thing to be said for the feeling of witnessing a story with a group of strangers in a dark room, regardless of what the film is about. Having the opportunity to experience an array of stories in that setting, leaving the theater after having a shared moment, is worth it. This is not to say that we should never enjoy a movie from our homes. And this is not to say that large spectacles are not fun and important communal experiences. This is simply to

say that having character-driven stories in theaters is just as important as seeing spectacles in that environment. All movies, regardless of size or budget or genre, offer the opportunity for community and shared experience. Smaller, character films offer their own unique experience, and losing the experience of sharing them with each other is a missed opportunity.

Tere is something to be said for the feeling of witnessing a story with a group of strangers in a dark room

An Ode to The Bottle Thriller

BY KADEN MILLER

YOU’RE GOING to be locked in a tight space. It’s one that stirs a general feeling of discomfort in the pit of your stomach. You’re going to be the only one there, and you’ll be severely weakened, giving you less than a fighting chance at escape. And, of course, you’re going to be up against a hellish antagonist. If you found yourself in such a scenario, you’d be smack-dab in the middle of a bottle thriller — a seemingly overlooked subgenre under the thriller umbrella that thrives on what it doesn’t have. Bottle thrillers lack an ensemble cast filled with studio stars or a set replete with sprawling vistas — the type that typically accompany similarly thrilling films of the North by Northwest variety — instead cutting every ounce of fat until only the bare bones are left. That’s actually the magic of the bottle thriller: being just as, if not more entrancing and entertaining by doing more than most films do with less than most films have.

For clarity, I’m going to use four films to demonstrate the beauty of the bottle thriller: Rear Window , a 1954 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Wait Until Dark , a 1967 film directed by Terence Young; 12 Angry Men , a

1957 film directed by Sidney Lumet; and Panic Room , a 2002 film directed by David Fincher. I think you’ll notice, however, that these elements can be applied to a much wider net of films than you might initially expect. The primary feature of a bottle thriller is the bottle — that is, the tightly enclosed space that governs the plot and its characters for the entirety of the film. There isn’t a lot of conclusive evidence as to the origin of the subgenre (or the term, for that matter), but the most likely link is with the all-important setting and its ancestry to the stage, which was itself a limitation of scene diversity. While some bottle thrillers chose to expand their horizons slightly for the screen, most stay true to the theatrical roots of having one firm, digestible location that’s fleshed out throughout the duration of the movie. At first, it may come as a drag for a film to tread on one locale for its entire runtime, but this is actually one of the bottle thriller’s greatest virtues: such an extended length of time allows us to familiarize ourselves with the surroundings, giving us a firm grasp on the environment that heightens the suspense we feel. Con -

sider the apartments in Rear Window , for example, as we become accustomed to the habits of the tenants and wary of the man Jeffries suspects, or in the titular Panic Room as we learn the motivations of the home invaders and their individual ticks. Beyond that, the best bottle thrillers give the location itself a personality that bleeds into the tension. Wait Until Dark’s apartment is designed specifically for the protagonist, a blind woman, and it’s a true joy to discover the different facets the setting has to offer and the different ways in which they’ll be used to build suspense. To me, this method of environmental storytelling is significantly more engaging than emotionless landscapes of many sprawl -

ing thrillers and adds a je ne sais quoi that isn’t otherwise achieved — by the time we are intimately acquainted with our star, we care about their success. While the bottle thriller’s condensed cast means that this claustrophobia is felt by fewer characters, this narrowed lens provides other benefits. By maintaining a small group of characters present throughout the entire film, the audience is given a better opportunity to learn the ins and outs of who we’re dealing with, making the probable twists more rewarding. 12

Angry Men shows us a full picture of each juror’s individual personalities and associated biases, which makes the plot’s unraveling all the more enjoy -

Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window, 1954, Film still

able to see. Knowing more about who you’re watching greatly increases the depth of enjoyment — providing the audience with a reason to care, beyond being told that they should, maximizes the dramatic value in the plot. Moreover, your emotional attachment to the protagonist will likely increase as well due to the extensive screen time a bottle thriller allows them to have. 12 Angry Men’s Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) has become one of the quintessential protagonists of the 20th century due to our increased exposure to him, and Wait Until Dark’s Susy (Audrey Hepburn) cultivates an instant connection that is amplified by later events.

To maximize tension, said protagonists are usually given strategic disabilities — i.e. Jeffries’ leg injury in Rear Window or Susy’s blindness in Wait Until Dark — to keep them in the palm of the antagonist. These disabilities are often the crux of the story ( Rear Window wouldn’t function if Jeffries could just walk over and to the neighbor’s place) and this is usually done to add a base level of interest in the film and squeeze out as much tension from the script as can be created. Once again, it’s just plainly a lot of fun to see a protagonist overcome both their hindrance and their antagonist

David Fincher, Panic Room, 2002, Film still

Terence Young, Wait Until Dark, 1967, Film still

to succeed and the best bottle thrillers provide us this aplenty. This is what the bottle thriller is all about — captivating us by making extensive use of what it doesn’t have to amplify what it does.

You’ve probably heard of a “turnyour-brain-off-film” — that is, a movie that doesn’t attempt to bring much in the area of thematic importance or plot complications, but instead allows you to see something fun without working too hard? There seems to be a rift between those who are fans of the easy-viewing traits found in many action and superhero genre film s and those who are on their nth rewatch of Primer, but bottle thrillers give you something out of each camp to love. A side effect of a limited setting and a limited cast is not a limited plot, but a less intertwined and perhaps less complicated one. Many are quite simple, and can be summarized as so — Rear Window’s “injured man thinks he witnessed a murder through his window,” or Wait Until Dark’s “blind woman is conned by thieves” — though this actually adds to the depth of the experience, rather than taking away from it.

Having fewer bells and whistles to draw your attention keeps us focused on the story’s tension and heightens the experience to a much greater degree than that found in an overly complex feature, and will satisfy both the viewer looking for something complex and the viewer that’s there for a good time. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “less is more” (surely you have), bottle thrillers are the filmic equivalent. This is, of course, not to diminish the enjoyment associated with thrillers of tremendous size, but for my money the classic bottle thriller is a perfect storm of simplistic yet immensely entertaining elements. Their streamlined plots give ample room for character development and the confined settings lock us in an incredibly thrilling cinematic trance. I implore you to give another look into one of the most purely delightful subgenres I’ve ever seen. So, the next time you’re locked in for the night, maybe you’ll consider putting on a bottle thriller?

ART BY OLIVIA MILLER

I Watched As Many Michael Bay Movies as Possible For Some Reason

BY JACOB SILBERMAN-BARON

MICHAEL BAY is one of the great oddities of Wesleyan. On one hand, he’s one of our most commercially successful alumni. On the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone walking out of one of his movies extolling the virtues of a liberal arts education. At Wesleyan, Bay didn’t fit in much. In describing it, he said, “Wesleyan was very cliquey. They all wore dark clothing, and they were always uggghhhhh .” It’s unclear to me exactly what “ ugggghhhh ” means, but it’s quite clear that he didn’t fit in with the artsy, pretentious vibe of this fine institution. He wanted to make something commercial. Personally, I’m quite an ugggghhhh person. I like Charlie Kaufman movies and Oscar bait. I

hadn’t seen many Michael Bay movies, and, prompted by a different writing project which this turned out to be completely unnecessary for, I decided to watch as many Michael Bay movies as possible. It wouldn’t be enough, however, to settle for a shallow mockery of Bay: I had to understand him.

The popular vision of Michael Bay can be summed up in one word: explosions. It is with mixed emotions that I report that, although that description might be reductive, it isn’t exactly wrong. Bay also likes gunfire, cars, helicopters, and hot women. Bay started as a music video director, and these early videos show a bold visual style. He even directed the original Got Milk? com -

mercial, where an Aaron Burr expert misses a trivia question about who shot Alexander Hamilton because he runs out of milk. (Chalk the Hamilton thing up to a little Wesleyan coincidence.) After making some waves with his bold visual sensibility, he made his first feature film with Bad Boys . I had always thought of this movie as a Will Smith vehicle, but the opposite is actually true. Before, Will Smith was a sitcom actor. Afterward, he became a real movie star. I didn’t love Bad Boys. The plotting spent too much time on a tired “one of them pretending to be the other” dynamic, and it wasn’t all that funny. I should also note that, with the busy life of a college sophomore, I watched it

over the course of days, and the energy of a Michael Bay movie isn’t conducive to stopping and starting. Still, a Bay craziness shone through occasionally. The Bay visual style feels like being on an intense psychedelic drug that is sometimes composed of metal. Cuts are quick, cameras move fast, and there are strange metallic sounds in the background. Why isn’t there more nuttiness in Bad Boys ? According to Bay, he didn’t have enough money. Thankfully, that was remedied with Armageddon , which centers on a team of oil drillers trying to stop world destruction. These days, the world ending in a movie is an almost banal threat, but Bay makes it quite real with short montages of ran -

Michael Bay

dom destruction. I found myself cackling with delight at the sheer magnitude of it.

Not only is Armageddon a movie of big explosions, it’s also a movie of big emotions. In order to introduce the characters, Bay has Bruce Willis fire a rifle at Ben Affleck while running through a collapsing oil rig. All that he needed to do was tell us that Willis’s character isn’t happy about his daughter dating Affleck’s character, but Bay chooses violent excess. It’s glorious. It’s a mistake to watch a Michael Bay movie and sneer at it for being dumb. Stupidity is the point. Gyllenhaal commented in an interview that he knew Bay liked a take when he would shake his head

and say “That’s so stupid.” When a Michael Bay movie was working, I found myself aghast at the utter scale of its stupidity.

The problem with Bay’s next movie, Pearl Harbor , is that it isn’t dumb enough. The scenes of Pearl Harbor being destroyed are spectacular (if quite disrespectful to the real-life tragedy). The rest of the movie passes at a crawl. Some bright studio suit wanted Bay to make a Titanic -style historical epic and win an Oscar for it. (The film won an Oscar for sound editing, but received terrible reviews.) Someone thought Bay could pull off an epic love story, but as a stunt coordinator for Bay told GQ, “Michael Bay is not gonna tell a love

Michael Bay, Pear Harbor, 2001, Film still

story.” So, the first hour and a half of the movie is stuffed with dull romantic scenes. He gets to fly some planes and have some hot women stab needles into men’s asses (a Bay motif), but the scenes of characters talking to each other about their emotions feel seven times their length. I could almost hear Bay saying “I don’t give a shit about any of this.”

Pearl Harbor is such a terrible movie that it inspired a love song in Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s Team America with lyrics like: “I need you like Ben Affleck needs acting school.” Bay doesn’t seem fazed by the criticism. His response: “I think I dated that guy’s girlfriend.” Sadly, I was unable

to cross-reference a list of Parker and Stone’s girlfriends with Bay’s, so I have no idea who he is referring to or if it is at all true.

After a forgotten flop, Bay reclaimed commercial success with the Transformers series, then made Pain and Gain in 2013. If Pearl Harbor is a pale James Cameron impression, Pain and Gain is a somewhat more successful Martin Scorsese impression. Released the same year as Wolf of Wall Street , the film follows the rise-and-fall template of Goodfellas or Raging Bull , complete with narration. Claiming to be based on a true story, we follow a team of bodybuilders who kidnap a rich man to steal his money. In addition to hav -

Michael Bay, Ambulance, 2022, Film still

ing a unique visual style, Bay has also developed a trademark style of acting. It involves yelling as loudly as possible at another actor or, often, directly into the camera. There’s no room for subtle buildup or cool anger: it’s best to stay as loud as possible as often as possible. Sometimes, this is played for humor, and it never really started being funny. This style of acting is part of the reason Pain and Gain doesn’t entirely work. Bay’s visual panache is appreciated here, and the editing keeps things moving obnoxiously quick. The script, by two guys who went on to write Avengers: Endgame , is competent enough, even if it relies too much on voiceover narration. Bay beats you over the head sometimes, but I didn’t expect subtlety. Plus, Ed Harris shows up halfway through the movie to play a private investigator, and he gives a deliciously un-Bay performance with a noir detective feel. I might have been getting exhausted by Bay. There are only so many times in a week you can be amazed by an explosion. His hyperactive editing style was starting to tire out my eyes. When I saw 6 Underground , a movie that qualifies as pure chaos by any reasonable definition, I was nodding off. Thank -

fully, there’s still a masterpiece left in the Bay chronology: Ambulance . Made for a comparatively pithy $40 million, the film is a 140-minute car chase set in an ambulance. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the most insane man you have ever seen on film–we’re told he robbed 37 banks in the past ten years–whose heist goes wrong. His performance is so positively unhinged that it seems like he’s trying to one-up Bay himself. In general, Bay likes to let his actors improvise, but Gyllenhaal apparently directed entire scenes. Like the best Bay fare, Ambulance is spectacularly dumb. The greatest hits include Gyllenhaal firing at helicopters with a machine gun from the moving ambulance and a surgery that involves both an exploding spleen and patching an artery with a hair clip. Ambulance also relies less on explosions (don’t worry: there are still a bunch of them) and more on subtler forms of violence like gunfire, breaking glass, fire extinguishers, and Jake Gyllenhaal’s face. Oddly, Ambulance seems to break the pattern of Bay’s career. Most of his movies get terrible reviews and go on to gross hundreds of millions of dollars. Ambulance is one of two entries in the Bay canon to get a positive Rotten Tomatoes score (68% positive

reviews), but it flopped at the box office, making $51 million worldwide against a $40 million budget, losing money for the studio. In the grand scheme of his career, however, I’m sure Michael Bay will be fine.

I’m not sure exactly what to take away from this experiment. Watching a substantial proportion of most directors’ filmography generally gives me a sense of their interests, themes, and a deeper understanding of craft. Bay, however, has a remarkably rigid set of interests: violence, destruction, hot guys, hot girls, America, and, of course, explosions. He’s good at a few things (action setpieces and frenetic editing)

but terrible at more important ones (story and character).

I’m one of the ugghhhhh Wesleyan students that he so hated, but I’m not immune to the charms of Bay. When a Michael Bay movie was really working, it was a case for a different approach to film. Forget about the idea that movies should have some social or political importance, forget about plot holes, forget about three-dimensional characters, forget about the Rotten Tomatoes score and what your friends say on Letterboxd, and sit back, be amazed, and shout: “This is awesome!”

Michael Bay, Pain and Gain, 2013, Film still

The Unexpected Beauty of Jon Bois’ Documentaries

BY CYRUS BERGER

over the Grand Canyon. What do these athletes have in common? Only that each athlete Bois focuses on is named Bob. Bois tells viewers that the number of athletes named Bob has dropped off sharply from its previous highs, so he has created a documentary as a tribute to the many Bobs in sports throughout history. The surprising approach and subject matter of this documentary is representative of what makes Bois such a special filmmaker, and why he is able to find so many fascinating, moving stories in the world of sports.

IN HIS TWO-PART documentary The Bob Emergency , the sportswriter and documentary filmmaker Jon Bois tells a variety of fascinating, but seemingly disconnected sports stories, ranging from a man’s quest to break the long-jump record to the career of one of the NHL’s most notorious fighters to an X-games skater dangerously attempting a trick

Bois, a sportswriter for SB Nation, has gained popularity by making sports documentaries on Youtube with a unique style, full of fascinating graphs, Google Maps visuals, and smooth jazz.

If you’re unfamiliar with Bois’s work, I would recommend checking out “2220,” “Pretty Good: Lonnie Smith,” “The History of the Seattle Mariners,” or “Captain Ahab: The Story of Dave Stieb.” All are available for free on Youtube and, because of their entertaining style and their focus on the human side

Jon Bois, “The Bob Emergency,” 2019

of sports, are compelling even if you don’t care about sports–as I didn’t when I first watched them. I thought I wasn’t interested in sports, besides a passing affection for my long-suffering local baseball team, the Seattle Mariners. But watching Bois’s videos changed that. Bois unveils the beauty behind sports. He looks past the surface-level wins and losses to find stories of improbable achievements and deeply human struggles.

Bois rarely focuses on obvious champions. His subjects in his shorter works include his “favorite worst baseball player,” the constant struggles of the Cleveland Browns, and one video which is simply titled “NO!!!!!!” about an incredible football play with a painful ending worthy of that title. His longer, multipart documentaries similarly focus on less-celebrated teams and players, like the Atlanta Falcons and their infamous Super Bowl loss to the Patriots (coached by Bill Belichik ‘75). In order to tell these often-overlooked stories of struggle, defeat, and unrecognition, Bois uses an unconventional visual style and takes full advantage of the structure of free internet release. Bois’s first standout quality as a filmmaker is his choice of stories, and the details he discovers about them. For ex -

ample, relatively few people would recognize the name Dave Stieb. He was a very strong pitcher in the 1980s, but his team, the Toronto Blue Jays, struggled for most of his career. However, Bois and his co-creator Alex Rubenstein saw enough potential in Stieb’s story to devote a four-part documentary to it. Bois finds a series of incredible, statistically improbable stories about Stieb: how he became an MLB-caliber pitcher despite never pitching before college, how he struggled to gain any Cy Young award votes despite being clearly among the best pitchers in the MLB, and, most notably, how he repeatedly came within a few outs of pitching a no-hit game–a rare feat achieved only around 300 times across the hundreds of thousands of games in MLB history–before seeing each of those no-hitters interrupted in heartbreaking fashion. Bois combines these details, which show incredible achievement that could easily go overlooked, to create a portrait of a man who struggled to beat obstacles he couldn’t overcome and grew as a person through these struggles.

Bois identifies this deeply human story by focusing on someone others might overlook, an approach reflected throughout his work. Bois looks at fascinating players like Lonnie Smith,

whose career was marked by cocaine, mascot brawls, historic seasons, and near murder–I would summarize Bois’s video on him here, but there are too many twists to even try. He also carefully identifies statistical anomalies in relatively obscure games revolving around relatively obscure players, like Steve Jeltz’s remarkable performance in a 1989 Phillies-Pirates game. Perhaps no work better shows the subjects that interest Bois than his and Rubenstein’s six-part documentary on the Seattle Mariners. The Mariners have arguably the least success of any current MLB team, having never even played in the World Series. When Bois released his documentary in 2020, the Mariners were in the middle of the longest playoff drought in American sports at the time. However, Bois identifies the Mariners as fascinating “protagonists” who achieve beautiful moments of success–a record-tying 116-win season in 2001, a historically great late-90s lineup, the incredible careers of beloved players like Ichiro Suzuki and Ken Griffey, Jr., and a thrilling 1995 playoff run–even amid all this mediocrity.

Bois is consistently able to find a fascinating story in an overlooked competitor. This is because he sees beauty not just in success, but in the human

Jon Bois’ documentaries tell sports stories in a way nobody else can

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stories of people trying to achieve something. To bring these stories to life, Bois uses a distinct audiovisual style that’s simultaneously unconventional for sports documentaries and perfect for the stories he tells. In “Pretty Good,” a series of short documentaries, he tells his stories primarily by moving through Google Earth satellite views of key locations, overlaid with images of newspaper headlines. Sometimes he pulls in a live-action visual aid, like a nightmarish fake board game to represent the hellish 1904 Olympic Marathon or a set of toy soldiers acting out the absurdity of the most lopsided loss in college football history. In his later videos, Bois tends to structure all the

visuals around different charts. These charts convey information both effectively and creatively–for instance, he graphed the Falcons wins under .500 to look like a bird–but the graphics tend to be simple and flat rather than the fancy, elaborate graphics of a sports talk show. Bois’s visuals are also soundtracked by distinctive jazz music. This unique approach is perfect for Bois. The simple visuals are designed to direct attention to the story, with flat graphs keeping the viewer’s focus on the statistically remarkable data and what it shows about the subjects. The Google Earth images, meanwhile, place the viewer in a very specific place and time. Furthermore, the lo-fi idiosyncrasies of Bois’s visual

Jon Bois, “The Bob Emergency,” Screenshot

style compliment the underrecognized stories he focuses on.

However, perhaps the most important strategy that allows Bois to do justice to these stories, and to make documentaries in an unconventional way, is his releasing his work for free on Youtube. This strategy is tied to Bois’ status working for sports blogging network SB Nation. In terms of funding and employment, Bois comes from the world of internet sports writing, rather than documentary filmmaking, which allows him to create unique films that can find their own audience online. His videos are completely in his own style, and the stories are the stories he finds interesting rather than the stories that people would already be interested in. Furthermore, his release strategy and simple visuals combine to give his videos a very personal feel. Unfortunately, this does also mean his films and style aren’t always recognized in discussions of documentary filmmaking. While the New York Times recognized his Mariners series as some of the best TV of

2020, and the Seattle Film Critics Society named that same series as the best documentary feature of the year, Bois has still only gained limited recognition as a great, innovative filmmaker. But his style is incredibly effective, and he’s taken advantage of free internet release in a way few filmmakers have been able to. Jon Bois’ documentaries tell sports stories in a way nobody else can, using his own filmmaking strategy to find compelling human stories that he shares with an audience who he trusts to find whatever he’s focusing on interesting.

At the end of The Bob Emergency , Bois reflects on how all the fascinating players he has focused on are connected by only their name. He says, “People are full of wonder. No matter how you study our history, you will always, always find it.” This is a thesis statement for his entire body of work. He finds that wonder with sports and Google Earth, but his work proves that it can be found anywhere if you look closely enough.

Jon Bois, “The Bob Emergency,” Screenshot

The Royal Tenenbaums Times Three: A Scientific Experiment

BY SOPHIA FLYNN

AS WE ALL KNOW , Intercut is Wesleyan’s only film and TV magazine. And since this publication is so firmly aligned with the arts and humanities, I thought I would bring some STEM flair to this issue to spice things up–a scientific experiment! So, I have organized my experiment using the scientific method, in order to bring the most authentic STEM experience to the magazine. According to khanacademy.org, the scientific method has five basic steps, plus one feedback step.

Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, Film still

Step 1: Make an observation.

I love to watch movies with other people, and I am also a big movie crier. Usually, other people don’t cry exactly when I do, or don’t cry at all, but still feel moved by the film. Observation: different people are emotionally moved by different things in the same film.

Step 2: Ask a question.

I know from observation that we all react and connect differently to movies, but the piece of art doesn’t change between watches. This leads me to wonder – what makes people react differently to the same piece of art?

Step 3: Form a hypothesis.

If the film is the controlled variable (look at that, more science!), then the audience must be the independent variable. It must be something to do with people that varies our experiences of movies. So, here is my hypothesis: because people bring their own unique life experiences and mental states to each viewing of a film, this must affect how they emotionally connect with it.

Step 4: make a prediction based on the hypothesis.

I believe that when individual people watch a movie, their unique lives and preferences will lead to individualized experiences of the film. So, my prediction is that if a bunch of different people all watch the same movie, they won’t have the same favorite characters, moments, or feelings at all.

Step 5: test the prediction.

This is the good part! I organized an extremely scientific experiment, in which I enlisted three willing participants to watch Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums with me and submit to a post-watch interview. Don’t worry – the participants were compensated for their time with my sparkling personality and the use of a Pop It!™ for the duration of the film viewing. The Royal Tenenbaums follows a dysfunctional, rich family as they live under the same roof for the first time in years and are prompted to navigate past childhood trauma and present conflict. I chose to screen The Royal Tenenbaums

because of the ensemble cast and interlocking plotlines, and because it would be very obvious which different characters and aspects of the film people connected to–hopefully making analyzing the final results more straightforward. Because the acting is so stilted and detached, the audience has to do a little extra legwork to get any emotional payoff from this film. Therefore, it was obvious when people connected with a character or scene, as scenes generally aren’t directed to elicit an emotional reaction. Also, I simply think The Royal Tenenbaums is a good movie!

Note: The different people I watched the film with will be referred to as Participants 1, 2, and 3.

Sub-step 5A: results and analysis.

After the film, I asked my participants a series of questions, including: Who was your favorite character? Were you able to emotionally connect to the story or the characters? What would you have changed about the film? The question of favorite character proved to be very interesting.

Participant 1 liked Henry Sherman (Danny Glover) the most, even though he has less involvement in the main story than other characters. Participant 1 said that he was drawn to Henry because he was “sincere,” “genuine,” and “the only truly innocent character.” Therefore, we can extrapolate that Participant 1 was not moved by other characters because they seemed to not have good morals, and this Participant’s value of morality skewed his viewing to favor Henry. Participant 2’s favorite character was Eli Cash, played by Owen Wilson. He liked Eli because “he takes over the frame because he’s so odd.” Participant 2 was not at all interested in realistic characters, but instead liked the characters that were the craziest and the most interesting to follow. This is notably different from Participant 1. Participant 3 followed a similar logic to Participant 1–in that her favorite character was Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Houston) because she “had real motivations” and “didn’t feel like a caricature.” But even though Participants 1 and 3 both liked realistic char -

acters, I know that Participant 3 has a tendency to favor female characters in movies, because they are easier for her to relate to as a woman.

When I watched this film, I found that Chas is my favorite. I feel drawn to him and his story because, in my opinion, he has the most emotional depth in this film where actors are encouraged to deliver lines very flatly, and many characters seem emotionally disconnected from the world around them. Ben Stiller’s performance as Chas moved me to tears, because I felt like there was real emotionality behind it. Therefore, I brought my personal value of vulnerability and emotional depth to the view -

ing of the film, and it skewed the way I thought of all the characters. Another question that was important to my research was whether viewers felt like they could emotionally connect with this film, even though the actual plot events are deeply unrelatable… How often does the average Wesleyan student’s father fake a terminal illness to break up their mother’s new marriage? Participant 1 reported that even though he didn’t relate to any specific character or situation, the overall articulation of family disjunction resonated with him. He described understanding the idea of “feeling tied to a person, but also wondering what we even have in

From left to right: Henry Sherman, Richie Tenenbaum, Chas Tenenbaum, Margot Tenenbaum, Ethelinie Tenenbaum and Royal Tenenbaum

common.” Participant 2 was unable to emotionally connect to the story, because he said that he didn’t see himself in any of the characters. But it’s not that he didn’t enjoy the film. He said it was “compelling,” which he defined as, “the characters are more like themselves than me.” This inability to empathize with the characters led to a more interesting viewing for Participant 2, as he personally enjoys stories about characters who are unlike him. Participant 3 was generally unable to emotionally connect with the film because of the stilted and distant nature of the cinematography but was moved by the scene after Richie Tenenbaum (Luke

Wilson) attempted suicide. She said that the scene was “vulnerable” and was one of the only times she saw emotion from the characters, which let her connect with them.

Finally, it was interesting to hear what people would have changed about the film–implicitly, what would have made them connect with it more. Participant 1 said that he found Royal Tenenbaum’s character (Gene Hackman) fundamentally unlikable because he didn’t seem very complex, and that if he could sympathize with Royal more, he might have had conflicting emotions, which would be more interesting.

Personally, I actually find Royal a com -

Owen Wilson as Eli Cash Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, Film still

plex character. But it’s cool that Participant 1 didn’t see that – his experience of the film was affected by his personal inability to connect to or understand this particular character.

Participant 2 also expressed a desire for more character depth, but he found Margot Tenenbaum (Gwenyth Paltrow) and Richie to be the least developed characters. The romance between these characters is a major plotline in the film, and Participant 2 was unable to feel moved by it because he fundamentally didn’t understand why they were drawn to each other in the first place. With the expansion of their characters, he would have understood them and been able to connect with them more. Participant 3 took the most issue with Wes Anderson’s editing style – she wished the movie had a, “... Longer scene without cuts. Every scene is buffered by lots of cuts, and you don’t actually really feel like you’re there with the characters.”

I never got tired of watching the same movie over and over again

“ ”

Step 6: conclusions and feedback. Well, I proved my hypothesis! Each person I watched the film with had a totally unique experience based on their personalities and preferences. Favorite characters, emotionally resonant moments, and dissatisfactions varied per person. I watched the movie three times, and each time with each person I myself had a totally different experience, too! The perspectives that each of these three lovely participants brought to the film gave me different lenses to view it through, and I never got tired of watching the same movie over and over

again. So, I guess the takeaway here is that, since everyone views every movie differently, we should watch movies with lots of different people! This experiment ended up proving what I already knew – that discussing and analyzing pieces of art with people who I find super cool and interesting is the most fun thing ever. But, that’s just my unique perspective. I would totally recommend this experiment to anyone interested in intense scientific research (read: learning more about their friends and watching a good movie a couple of times).

Wes Anderson, The Royal Tenenbaums, 2001, Film still