Three Movies I Liked

The first movie I liked was King of Kong. It was a documentary about professional Donkey Kong players. It focused on a middle-aged man named Steve Weibe who was really good at baseball but messed up at a crucial moment and didn’t play again. He married his girlfriend, had children, became really good at drums but seemed to regret never becoming really great at something. In one scene he played a tiny drumset very fast with an intense facial expression. I think it was his pre-adolescent son’s drumset. One day he looked at Donkey Kong high scores on the internet and then bought an arcade machine. He practiced every day in his garage for something like four hours a day. He mailed a video of himself defeating the Donkey Kong high score to the official high score people. But the person with the current high score—whose “day job” was to promote his barbeque sauce to grocery stores—was friends, or something, with the official high score people and did something, it seemed, that caused Steve Weibe’s video to be disqualified. This barbeque person seemed to be Steve Weibe’s “enemy.” In one scene he moved his barbeque sauce in front of other barbeque sauces in a grocery store aisle while saying things about wanting—or needing—to be “the best.” Steve Weibe quietly cried in an unashamed, calmly baby-like, almost idle manner while sitting on a picnic bench in cloudly weather when interviewed about his high score being disqualified. Then he traveled to a famous arcade and got the high score on a public arcade machine. Then the barbeque person regained the high score in a very dubious manner that seemed funny and maybe “begrudgingly acceptable,” due to how offhandedly and calmly deceptive it was, rather than devious or unfair, to some degree, I felt. After the movie I said “why was that person so evil, that isn’t true, people aren’t evil like that” to Kelly who went to her apartment. I went to NYU’s library. We text messaged each other variations of “best person ever” about Steve Weibe and learned that we were both looking at Steve Weibe information on the internet. Steve Weibe seemed like a humble, considerate, emotional person who sometimes felt severely depressed about life but directed his sadness into drums and Donkey Kong instead of into “forgetting everything” via alcohol/sleep/TV/”acting like an asshole all the time”—though maybe concentrating on one skill is also “forgetting everything” (in a manner however that requires study/concentration, can be financially rewarding, and is “shareable”).

The second movie I liked was also a documentary about people focused on one skill funding it by any means necessary (one girl even got instant payday loans). It was Planet-B-Boy. It showed five teams preparing for the 2005 breakdancing finals in Germany. Some people wore helmets while spinning on their heads. They wore helmets even in competitions. After ~50 minutes Kelly said the American team was not very good. After that we “shit-talked” America in an idle, continuous manner until the end of the movie. Kelly used the word “douchebags” to describe the American team. I used the word “assholes.” The Korean and Japanese teams seemed like they would rather hurt or kill themselves than someone else whereas the American team seemed like they would definitely rather hurt or kill someone else than themselves. I liked the Korean and Japanese teams. They seemed humble and calm. One Japanese b-boy worked in his parent’s green-tea shop. The movie said MC’ing/DJ’ing/graffiti-writing/breakdancing were the four main aspects to hip-hop culture and that a b-boy was a person who did one of those things. The movie said a person was not a true b-boy if for them it was only a hobby. Near the end of the movie a Korean b-boy said he was no longer dancing to make money. He was making money to dance. After the movie I said “we should try to spin on our heads” to Kelly. We talked about starting our own team. We would never practice. We would stand on stage at the finals representing America by moving our arms and legs sometimes. There would be a fish on our team in a 10-gallon fishtank. Kelly said we should have a dolphin or dog on our team to do backflips. I said we should have a rabbit or hamster on our team. We talked about having a tree on our team. Our show would begin with everyone climbing down the tree. Kelly’s b-boy name would be “tired, depressed girl.” I asked if she would rather be really good at breakdancing or Donkey Kong and she said breakdancing. I also said breakdancing. I said the American b-boy team would probably “shit-talk” the Donkey Kong people and felt emotional. I almost always feel emotional in a sympathetic, calming, maybe consoling manner when I think about lonely or depressed people doing things repetitively with neutral or concentrating facial expressions in order to escape/change their situations in life, either temporarily or re “their future,” within a context of “limited time.” I think most people would probably choose mastery of human relationships instead of Donkey Kong or breakdancing, if it were a choice. But I’m not sure. There’s a quote on the internet from a Korean B-Boy that says “As long as we can dance, we don’t care if we don’t have a girlfriend or if we can’t get into a good college. We most definitely don’t care about how society views us. What we are truly afraid of is not being able to dance.”

The third movie I liked was not a documentary. It was about four people who go to a cabin in a forest with the sole intention of going there to scriptlessly film a fictional movie starring themselves. I haven’t seen it. I’ve seen the trailer. Early in the trailer a person wearing a paper bag over their head appears and scares a girl. Then there are some scenes without anyone wearing bags over their heads. It becomes apparent that maybe the person whose idea it was to go to the cabin wore the bag over his head to provide plot, or something, to their movie. Then the trailer shows a person with a bag over their head running toward the cabin, scaring everyone, but in a manner that it’s obvious the person is “just kidding.” Then the trailer shows a person walking into the girl’s room with a bag over their head. The next scene shows people saying things like “did you wear a bag over your head?” and other people saying “no, I did not.” The girl says something like “well, somebody wearing Kevin’s clothes came into my room last night wearing a bag over their head, and they saw me naked.” Then the trailer said the movie was called Baghead. I was laughing almost uncontrollably. The next few minutes I said or thought “baghead” ~30 times at different volumes while laughing or grinning uncontrollably.