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Write What’s In Your Head - A Review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

I’ve been a Jurassic Park fan for almost my entire life. This year, I attended the JP 25th Anniversary Fan event at Universal Studios by myself. My wedding ring has dinosaurs on it and the quote “we always find a way” inscribed inside it. In fact, every time someone had the opportunity to speak publicly at my wedding, they mentioned Jurassic Park. I didn’t know I was THIS much of a nerd, but I guess I am.

I have fond memories of seeing each of them in theaters. During the “must go faster” scene, the T-Rex bursts through a fallen tree and it was so scary Latoya Dent, my cute next door neighbor, and I jumped towards each other! I’m still mad at myself for needing to go to the bathroom during The Lost World raptor attack. WHO HAS TO GO TO THE BATHROOM DURING A RAPTOR ATTACK?! (Besides the people getting attacked by the raptor. ZING!) I won a contest to see an advance screening of Jurassic Park III and won a RAFFLE at that same screening. I was so excited when I won, I jumped up. Then sat back down immediately, because I was so embarrassed. And Jurassic World got me so hype, there was a point towards the end of the movie that I punched my wife I was so excited. No other way to say that abusive sounding statement. It was on the shoulder... Like a LOVE tap! I saw this three times in the theater... my wife didn’t join me for the other two times.

Throughout all of this time, being a fan that is also interested in pursuing entertainment myself, I’ve had several ideas about what would be the PERFECT Jurassic Park sequel. And since this is all 25 years in the making, I have had a lot of different ideas. Some good. Some bad. ALL FUN.

I had a fun time watching Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom at an advanced screening last week. The audience was all fans that cheered at stuff in the same way Marvel fans cheer when someone says something seemingly innocuous and you’re like... “I guess it’s important that he doesn’t like raisins?” I saw it with MY PEOPLE and we really did have a blast.

This film deserves a couple superlatives on both ends of the spectrum of the Jurassic Park franchise.

It is hands down the scariest Jurassic Park film. I’ll say there are things about the first Jurassic Park that are certainly terrifying. The Kitchen scene is unparalleled. But there isn’t a Jurassic Park movie scarier than Fallen Kingdom. They are obviously going for that and I think they accomplish that tone very well. The scene with the little girl and the claw... actually works. And I thought that looked ridiculous as hell on the poster.

This is also the dumbest Jurassic Park movie in terms of writing. The characters are one-dimensional. Or half-dimensional. Without-dimension. The scenes are simple and derivative. It was like they were loosely mapping The Lost World, a movie that was only loosely based on the then unfinished Lost World novel and then the unused scenes from the first JP novel. It was a bunch of stuff strewn together and it showed in TLW and it REALLY shows in this film.

Justice Smith and his character KILL. And the movie does a really great job of once again building on Blue’s character. The JW films excel at humanizing the dinosaurs. This film also returns to the roots of Jurassic Park’s BIG IDEAS and the implications of genetic research in a way that the other sequels have really been lacking. I got to see Trevorrow and Goldblum discuss the scenes with Ian Malcolm. Trevorrow WISELY returns to Crichton to write this character and it shows in the film. (HE DOESN’T SAY “LIFE FINDS A WAY.” I REPEAT. IAN MALCOLM DOESN’T SAY “LIFE FINDS A WAY.” THIS IS A CHEAP PLOY TO GET YOU INTO THE THEATER. HE. NEVER. SAYS IT.) Also, what was with Chris Pratt’s accent? What was with James Cromwell’s accent? AND WHERE WERE CLAIRE’S JUNGLE HEELS?

But my biggest problem with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is they stole it from me. There are images in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom that have been in my head since I was in the fifth grade... And these bastards not only stole it from me, but they used it in their mediocre horror movie.

Remember I said I had a bunch of JP sequel ideas? Well, these fuckers stole one. One premise I had followed a group of scientists to Nublar. Their mission was to try to capture a more advanced species of dinosaur with the ability to camouflage (major missed opportunity in this movie) and bring them (a pack of animals, another missed opportunity in this movie) back to the mainland, and the thing that would make my movie unique was it was not set in the jungle the whole time, but nearly one-third to half the film would be spent on land with the creatures terrorizing the scientists in a lab (not a lab mansion... I SEVERELY fucked up by not setting my movie in a lab that was also a mansion. I think it works very well in this movie.)

The mosasaur swimming through a wave approaching surfers has legitimately been in my head since 2001. And the general look/tone of my film can be seen in the baryonx scene with Claire and Franklin. Very dark, lots of fire, and weird corridors/vents for the trapped humans to climb through and the dinosaurs to stalk them in.

Of course, to make matters worse, they didn’t actually steal this from me, because they couldn’t. I didn’t actually write this stuff down. And that’s the real horror. That’s the real tragedy of it all.

This movie isn’t good, but that doesn’t matter. It was made. Who knows what ultimately stopped me from completing a draft. Or if I ever could have done anything with one of them had I finished. But let me just tell you, the feeling of watching something you wrote on screen that you didn’t actually write... doesn’t feel good at all. So, if you have an idea. Any idea. Write it. Write it. WRITE. IT.

Find a way.

#jurassic world #jurassic park #the lost world #jurassic park iii #colin trevorrow #ja bayona #stephen spielberg #michael crichton #writing #screenplay #regret #review #film #filmmaking

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The Black Friend in a White Show

Here's my whole thing...

Everything I’m about to say is really difficult for me, but I want to share this.

I have always struggled in my own skin.

I have eczema all over and it's really uncomfortable. Beyond that, I'm a black man and I have struggled with my identity as a black man.

I was never really cool. I always had a precise manner of speaking. I said things like, “precise manner of speaking”. Which meant I was ridiculed as a kid for talking "white" or liking "white" stuff by the kids in my family or the black kids in the neighborhood. Or my white friend’s dad that said I was a “white black person” once.

At every point in my life from kindergarten to freshman year of college, I wasn’t hanging out with the black kids, but I was the "black best friend" to a white kid. This probably had something to do with Winston from "Ghostbusters", Gerald from "Hey Arnold", Hadji from "Jonny Quest", or Skeeter from "Doug". He was blue, but black as shit. #BlueLivesMatter

I liked this way of life, being the "black best friend" to my white friend who was the star of the show. It was what I was used to seeing, even though there were plenty of black tv shows and films that I consumed constantly, but that was the problem. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up in a white household, but in a black household, there are TV shows and there are black TV shows. They were different. They were other. And to me, they were not the way I was because I was the black sidekick in a white show.

When I was in the eighth grade, I loved Mariah Carey. This is actually a check on my white card. I was also really good at Napster. Computers-White card. I would download every new Mariah Carey song before that shit came out. I downloaded a remix of Heartbreaker that DJ Clue did. And if you guys know DJ Clue, homie never let you hear the song. “YEAH DJ CLUE DESERT STORM REPRESENT” he would scream (and probably still does scream?) over every track he produced. The main artist, in this case, the golden-throated Mariah Carey, would be mid verse and you'd hear his signature “WOOOOOOOOOOO HAHA” out of no where. It pained me to no end.

On this episode of the TV show I was the sidekick on, I had one of those rare scenes with my friend David, he's also black, so this episode passed the BLACKdel test. He's gay as well, but not out at the moment, but going to be a VERY MAJOR character in later seasons when the show gets an ethnic make-over. #Diversity.

In this episode, I tell David about how I'm trying to listen to Mariah Carey’s Heartbreaker remix that DJ Clue produced and I can't hear the damn song. All I can hear is DJ Clue screaming and I grunt out, “GOD I HATE BLACK PEOPLE!” Out loud. To him. Now, I didn’t know this was how I felt at all, but I didn't say it in the fun, “‘there's black people and there's NIGGAS! NIGGAS HAVE GOT TO GO’ let's laugh at Chris Rock at a comedy club” way. I said it in a surprising, I guess this is how I feel way. And it felt weird to say and it floated in the air for maybe 2 seconds before David schooled me to no end, in a monologue that at the core was “you hate DJ Clue, maybe yourself, but not all black people,” then he exited the sound stage saying in a sassy gay black razor sharp witty snap to death “okkkkaaaaaay” - remember this is still a white TV show, they don’t understand how to write this scene for real. So, I ruminated over this. And I’m ashamed and felt that shame for many many years. I still feel it. Maybe I hated myself. Why?

Jump cut to today. My racial identity is still a little skewed, but I’m figuring it out. I grew up to thankfully NOT hate black people hahahahahahhaha lololol. I do a podcast with my friends, two black guys, about being black in the media. And we three couldn’t be more different. What unites us is our brown skin and there are times when our shared experience unites us and our different experiences push us closer together in a deeper understanding of what it means to be black, but sometimes we yell at each other because what being black means to each of us individually is so important and the other one JUST DOESN’T FUCKING GET HOW MY BACKGROUND MATTERS! IT COUNTS! UGH! WHY DON’T YOU GET IT?!?!!?!?!

I love that we learn from each other this way but why are we so divided sometimes? What causes this? How can a discussion about a movie lead to three guys yelling so passionately at each other about what it means to be a black human? We’re forced in a battle of identity, how to dress, how to speak, how to act, how to be, because we were pulled here against our will hundreds of years ago. And now we’re still grasping at straws trying to fit in, trying to stand out, trying to just fucking be. How does black fit in a white world, but the world IS EVERYBODY’S. And maybe I was so concerned about fitting in a white world that I hated that I was black.

Then I see #PhilandoCastile #AltonSterling #EricGarner #OscarGrant #TamirRice #JohnCrawford and the list goes on and on. Why does this keep happening?! Why are innocent, why are unarmed, why are people with their hands up, why are black people committing no crimes being shot, strangled, killed?!! I realize that GOD I HATE BLACK PEOPLE! is not only something I shamefully uttered to my best friend one afternoon, but it’s something that a lot of people think. And they don’t even know it, like I didn’t know it. There are people that deep down think that ALL black people are ruining their Mariah Carey song, not DJ Clue’s loud mouth, but all black people. These black people that all behave the same way, whatever stereotype you can paint on them, characters in a white show. But the show, the world is EVERYBODY’S. We’re all on this show. And we all got our own shit.

We’re black, we’re white, we’re all the colors of the rainbow. We’re all different.

We’re all human beings. We’re all the same.

No one deserves to be gunned down.

No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one. No one.

We should love each other. We should love each other. We should love each other. We should love each other. We should love each other. We should love each other. We should love each other. We should YEAH!

DJ CLUE!

DESERT STORM!

OH GOD, I’M STUCK AS DJ CLUE!

REPRESENT!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Stop hating one another.

Love each other.

Stop. Killing. People.

#altonsterling #blacklivesmatter #trayvonmartin #ferguson #mikebrown #philandocastile #saytheirnames #ericgarner #oscargrant #johncrawford #tamirrice

jaysonscottmusson

Because I make art using fragments of garments that people mistakenly think Bill Cosby wore, I’m often asked my opinion regarding the numerous allegations of rape against him. Hmmm, let’s see; 55 women have come forward accusing Bill Cosby of rape over the span of 50 years? The word of 55 woman against the supposed claims of innocence of one fucking man? Hmmm, let me see… A man who has used his vast reservoir of money, fame, and goodwill he has manipulated the public into giving him in order to silence the voice of 55 women (and counting), so he can what? Talk down to black people on their moral short comings all the while assaulting women for decades? Continue to live in some Huxtable Bubble where he stands on top as Patriarch to us all? Nah son. Fuck that. Send that motherfucker to jail, and Holztclaw his ass, make him serve consecutive sentences back to back, none of that concurrent sentencing shit. Bye Cliff, bye!

Oh, and do I care about some ‘tarnished legacy’ of The Cosby Show? Not at fucking all. Anyone who weighs the lives real women against the fantasy life of a television family needs sit down and really assess whether or not they’re in possession of a soul.

That’s it from me!