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5/8/2004 » Film, Econ | 
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'Mean Girls' and movie markets
Hong Kong destroys Manhattan
I saw Mean Girls on the recommendation of my cousins, both of whom are younger, by four and 10 years. It was, shockingly, excellent. It’s Heathers with lots of ethnic characters (Indians, Vietnamese, Lebanese, gay, disabled, African). It’s sharply written and often witty, it’s so rare you see a well-written movie. There’s lots of diversity, showing a high school as it really is, not as 90210, though the central characters are still blonde and lameglossy.
 Random desi characters are popping up all over film. Rajiv Surendra plays a hilarious character, Kevin Gnapoor, silent ‘G.’ He’s a risky character, and he’s not overly stereotyped. He’s the math team captain, to be sure, but he’s also an annoying rap poseur who tries too hard with women. That’s more like real desis I know, some of whom I could name :) One critic noticed:Rajiv Surendra nearly steals the show as a “mathlete” with a business card that reads “Kevin Gnapoor: Math Enthusiast/Bad Ass MC.”
 The film soundtrack on iTunes has a lush lounge track, ‘Misty Canyon,’ by vampy Brit songstress Anjali. It also has the Gnapoor character’s hilarious ‘Mathlete Rap’:
Yo, yo, yo,
All you sucka MC’s ain’t got nuthin’ on me
Not my grades, not my life
You can’t touch Kevin G
I’m a mathlete, so nerds of the earth
But forget what you heard
I’m like James Bond the Third
Sh-sh-shaken not stirred
I’m Kevin Gnapoor
The G’s silent when I sneak in the door
To make love to the woman on the bathroom floor
I don’t play it like Shaggy
You’ll know it was me
’Cause the next time you see her
She’ll be like, ‘Unnngh! Kevin G!’
We’re all tired of high school movies, what’s with the obsession? And the love interest looks like an East Village hipster, not a high school kid. But I dug it. You’ll notice that Tina Fey, the SNL writer and author of the Mean Girls script, has an asymmetrical mouth. One side barely moves, which is probably a hereditary condition. I had no such problem with the movie: I had a smile on my face early on, and it never left.
Movie finance probably constrains the intelligence of the script. That’s why you don’t get great effects and good writing together, they want to make sure they scrape the bottom of the barrel with the demographics. Sharp writing goes with low-budget human stories alone. Imagine how awesome an ID4, Star Wars or Van Helsing could be with a great script. But no, like fools, intelligent people go to see these flicks anyway, exerting no market power whatsoever.
There’s an interesting story in the Atlantic Monthly about how the rise of big, dumb special effects movies is partly due to the rise of foreign markets. International now dominates revenues, so rapid, witty banter in English out (too American) in favor of lowest-common-denominator, highly simplified scripts. The author claims most movies are not made for Americans any more.
I’ve seen dumbing down software for international markets as well. And in a related example, Java applets look like neither Mac nor Windows and lack the polish of either. They’re so general-purpose that they’re too compromised. Sometimes you just gotta say, ‘This is crisp, this is lucid, this is Good. Just leave it alone.’
Of course, it’s nice to even have that problem. You know, the too-much-money, too-many-markets one :)
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