Suddenly I'm doing film reviews
It started with Wild Son, and boy is it wild?
This is the true, behind-the-scenes story of how I got into doing film reviews. It is a journey I never foresaw, and I’m learning a lot from the pros, like Bill Arceneaux (of Movie Going with Bill) who is, amazingly enough, one of my subscribers. I feel like I have a natural affinity for the analytical aspect of this work. I love analyzing characters and stories. I love noticing the details in films, like how a character’s apartment is decorated. I have a ways to go when it comes to criticism and technicalities. Keep scrolling….
I leapt into this by writing a review for a play called Wild Son: The Testimony of Christian Brando. A one-man show written by Champ Clark and starring John Mese in the eponymous role, it got me thinking about biographical theatre and all the fascinating aspects of psychological trauma. Moreover, John Mese is someone whose name I’ve been hearing for most of my life, and obviously I knew a tiny bit (pre-show) about the tragic fate of Marlon Brando’s son.
When my mom was in the MFA program for theatre at LSU, in the reign of Professor John Dennis, John Mese was one of the really hot ones in the program. The head of the program, Dennis thought the world of Mese’s talent and potential, and for good reason, as I now appreciate. Mese was dedicated and he never gave up. He worked his ass off in Los Angeles throughout the 90s and 2000s, accumulating the credits you see now on IMDb, and even co-authoring a kid-lit book series with his wife—that, by the way, got a write up in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance by that magazine’s senior editor, Jane Bennett Clark. (You can follow the adventures of “Flippy and Friends” at the Twitter @FlippyFriends.) I could be wrong but it seems to me that King of Herrings (2013) was a major turning point for his film career. Not only did he succeed in getting the old gang from LSU back together (Joe Chrest, David Jensen, Eddie Jemison, and Wayne Pére) he accrued a major producing credit on a film that was widely circulated in the film festivals, including the Film Festival of New Orleans, where the film was mainly shot on a shoestring budget.1 Mese also, in a sense, dived back into his theatrical roots with that film, because even though it is a film, it was originally conceived by Eddie Jemison and David Jensen for the stage. (They wanted John Dennis to direct it, but Dennis was too ill by then, and passed away, at any rate, in 2012.) Mese went even deeper into those roots in 2019, when he debuted as Christian Brando at the Santa Monica Playhouse, and he went on to do several critically acclaimed performances of Wild Son around Los Angeles and San Francisco. When my mom tried to go see it at the Whitefire Theatre in Sherman Oaks, just before the pandemic, she couldn’t even find a parking space! When the show came to Baton Rouge (Mese’s hometown, though today he’s a longtime Angeleno) for Father’s Day 2022, Mom and I got tickets, but we were very relaxed about it because we thought it was set to be staged in the Bistro Byronz restaurant in easy distance of where we live. But Bistro Byronz actually has three locations in Baton Rouge, and the one where Mese was doing his show is the Mid-City location. So Mom and I had to high-tail it to her Ford Escape, zoom along halfway across the city, down Bluebonnet and then Jefferson, by which time Mom was freaking out because she was like, “What is the deal? Do I have some kind of kismet block about this show?” I was like, “I get it, but let’s try to save the freak out for when there is really something to freak out about.” I’m exaggerating a little bit. She wasn’t hyperventilating or anything, but she did pray out loud, the whole way there, hoping for some non-tragic event to delay the start of the show. We got to Square 46 on Government, and slid into a parking space without anymore drama. We calmly walked in (I might or might not have made a joke under my breath about the Queen, always the last to arrive and first to leave) and, as luck would have it, the show had been delayed by ten minutes. That gave Mom enough time to get wine for each of us and me enough time to find seats. There wasn’t much to choose from in terms of seating. It was very nearly packed to capacity by the time we got there, but we managed it, and I’m just grateful it all worked out because, wow! Not only is this a fantastic show, it’s been life changing for me on a personal level.
The story of Christian Brando coming through the channel of John Mese is riveting. I don’t regret giving the Bistro Byronz performance a five-star rating. Where is the flaw? The story is fascinating. Champ Clark’s writing is brilliant. John Mese gives the story the tones that make it such an emotional journey from start to finish. His simple costume, his can of beer, his shoeless feet—all contribute to convey the thinly veiled brokenness of one of Hollywood’s lost boys. I think the part I connected with most deeply was after prison, when Christian traveled around, a rolling stone, and tried to rebuild his life in the remotest and extremest ends of the country—New Hampshire at one point, then Washington State, or I might have it backwards. He found some peace in the wilderness—a recurring theme in the play, since we also learned that he loved his father’s private island, Tetiaroa, (pictured below) until the time his father exiled him there for over a year and he went stir crazy.
In New Hampshire, post-parole, Christian’s heart still longed for his parents’ love, and he tried to share his newfound sense of peace with them. I found that absolutely heartbreaking, as someone who has a deep desire to share my heartfelt experiences with people I care about. Who doesn’t know that feeling, too, when you try to share the experience and the other person just does not get it? Moreover, who hasn’t struggled to reconcile his/her unique personality with certain accidental circumstances of birth—who our parents are, for example? I can’t say it enough but I think it is a profoundly human story. After the show, I went home thinking about it obsessively, but unable to articulate it in spoken words. When I sat down at my computer at home, I started to type out what I was unable to voice. I had never done a theatre review before, but I figured that anyone who has a pulse cannot fail to be moved by this play. In four weeks, Wild Son will be live, Greenside at Riddle’s Court, Edinburgh, Scotland! The international debut!
I subsequently reviewed two other films from the filmography of John Mese: I love the jazzy, fatalistic feel of King of Herrings and the Steinbeck echoes in Bugtussle, a short film which is currently on the film festival circuit. I’m now drafting a review of Netflix’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Persuasion. This, like the filmography of John Mese, has a personal context. Ever since I read the book 20 years ago, I’ve reread it many times afterward, and I consider myself as a connoisseur of every adaptation of the novel ever made; it is my favorite Austen novel. In a way, I feel like Coy and Crow in Bugtussle, trying to be bank robbers and doing it badly, but then again, I could also draw a comparison to Mary in King of Herrings; I’m just finding my voice. These films are personal to me. On that note, I will leave you with a dialogue between Hermione Granger (Emma Watson) and eponymous (Daniel Radcliffe) in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001).
Hermione : You'll be okay, Harry. You're a great wizard. You really are.
Harry : Not as good as you.
Hermione : Me? Books and cleverness. There are more important things: friendship and bravery. And Harry, just be careful.
I do love that dialogue, even though it is a bit different in the book. Through her magical characters, JK Rowling showed us that it truly does take a village. Harry would never have defeated Voldemort without the help of his friends. Play to your strengths, ask for help, and get it done!
John Mese himself denies credit for getting the “KOH” boys back together. He fully credits Eddie Jemison for that accomplishment. “Eddie [Jemison] is really the one who got everyone ‘together’ for KOH... I was brought on as the First [Assistant Director] by Eddie because he knew i had produced/directed a few mini-features (one that he starred in called Perfect Day) and I had been reading and giving him notes on scenes from KOH since the very beginning of his idea in a workshop/class we did together in Hollywood. And eventually, I ended up doing during shooting and in Post Production he (and Sean Richardson) bumped me up to producer as well.” [Email from John Mese, 22 July 2022.]
Many thanks for the shoutout! Pro might be a stretch, but I'll take it :)