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Owning Owen

As I have every Wednesday since the start of this semester, I got to school around 4:30. My class starts at 6, so I have a good hour and a half to eat dinner, grab a cup of coffee, and hang out with a couple of girls I had a class with last semester, both of whom have a (different) class at 6. We shoot the shit about whatever, and we realized last Wednesday that they seem to have screenings every Wednesday night. This is sorta frustrating, since we all have class and can never attend the screenings (although I probably wouldn’t even be down there if I didn’t have class, so…).

This week, though, they kinda went all out for whatever the screening was (it turned out to be 11 shorts by 11 different directors, strung together as a feature under the guise of being an “exquisite corpse” experiment — lame!). They set up a bunch of tables set up and set out a huge spread catered by Yang’s, the Chinese place down the street (which, by the way, is a terrific restaurant). I had just eaten, so I wasn’t as excited as I probably would have normally been about free food, but the girls both got some plates of shit before class.

As we talk every week (this week, despite the distraction of possible free food, was no exception), I am always, always, always on the lookout for Owen, my arch-nemesis.

I was happy — I didn’t see him at all before class. He generally gets there early and attempts to harass various professors and students before class, and it’s impossible to miss that voice, but he was nowhere to be found. Still, I didn’t want to take any chances by going into the room early. He may have just gotten there early and sat down, since he’s probably already reachd his peer alienation quota for March. I just sat with my friends and continued to shoot the shit.

When I walked into the room at 5:55, there were only a few people there. It’s basically a large conference table (actually several tables arranged to create one large one) surrounded by chairs. Since I’m near-sighted and a kiss-ass, I usually sit in the front of the room, near the prof. Usually it works out, but this semester is sort of weird, since he hears all the sarcastic comments I make to the guy next to me and assumes I want to contribute these valuable insights in our class discussion.

But the guy next to me wasn’t here. In fact, there was an abyss of empty seats all along my side of the table. I mean, I know I smell, but seriously —

Oh well. At least Owen, who usually sits down at the opposite end of my side, wasn’t there.

Or was he? At almost six on the nose, Owen stormed into the room, loudly declaring to no one that he was “running late.” The prof wasn’t even there yet, and none of us gave a shit, so he was pretty much putting on a show for his personal amusement. He rounded the corner of the table, saw that most of the seats were empty, and —

Oh shit. What was he doing? He walked right past his usual seat at the end of the table and —

Oh Jesus, was he going to sit next to me? Please, for the love of God and all that’s holy, I might start believing in something bigger than myself (it might cheer me up) if you just don’t let him sit next to me.

Owen sat down. Not next to me, but one seat over.

Thank you, God. I hope you don’t hold me to all that stuff I said a second ago, because you and I both know it’s not gonna happen.

I thought maybe, since we were partnered up in our other class last week, he might believe that I don’t despise him and attempt to engage me in conversation. I was, thankfully, wrong. In fact, he didn’t even say “hello” to me or acknowledge my existence in any way. Normally, that would drive me crazy, since I have an obsessive need for validation. I (mostly) openly dislike nearly every I meet, but I still want them to like me, or at least to pretend to.

But with Owen, I will gladly accept his snubbing.

“I’ll be right back,” Owen said to no one. “I can’t believe I’m running so late tonight!”

He got up and left the room. Almost immediately thereafter, the guy who normally sits next to me, Nick, sat down next to me. He looked over at the bag and coat in the seat next to him.

“Is that Owen?” he asked.

“Yup,” I responded.

“Aw, fuck!” he proclaimed.

“Yup,” I agreed.

Nick looked around, but by that time, most of the other seats were filled. “Fuck it,” he said. “I’ll just ignore him.”

I nodded. His plan was solid.

Owen returned a few minutes later, rambled about comics some, and then our prof came in (about ten minutes late) and announced that there’s a free Chinese buffet outside the screening room.

“What?!” Owen almost screamed.

“Yeah,” the prof continued. “Just slip into the line. Nobody will even know you’re not here for the screening.”

Owen literally leaped from his chair, knocking the goddamn thing over (and not righting it, because he was in such a hurry), and thundered out of the room like a buffalo that lost its way from the herd. Now, I’m a large guy myself, so I’m sometimes hesitant to make fun of people who are fat, too, but at least I don’t do things to draw attention to my fatcomings. I don’t wear tight clothes to show off my lumpy physique, for one, and I don’t run my fat ass around, for another. Seeing a fat guy run just looks stupid. Did you ever seen the John Belushi “Donuts” sketch? See what I mean?

Anyway, he disappeared for a little while. A couple of other guys went to get food, but they just came back with sodas and declared the line was too long.

We started class, and there was a loud knock (or kick) at the door about 15 minutes later. Owen was balancing three plates of food and a soda, so he didn’t have enough hands to actually open the door. I don’t want to make fun of him for that, because I’m about as big a tightwad as you’ll ever find, so it’s very rare that I’ll pass up free food, even when I’m not hungry. But this is Owen we’re talking about — he eats like a goddamn pig. Seriously, I wish he had sat in his normal spot so I wouldn’t have to hear him eating. At least when I take advantage of free food, I’m not completely disgusting about it.

Anyway, we got into this discussion about Glengarry Glen Ross, which was the script we had to read for this week, and eventually the conversation drifted to how it would be made today, or if it would be made today. Our prof argued that it wouldn’t be made, or at least not with any major actors, because it wouldn’t make any money. It’s possible he was right, but he wanted to know why this was. What was the current trend?

Somebody argued that people want escapism. That’s the new trend. That’s why Lord of the Rings has been so successful; that’s why comic-book adaptations have been so successful. Even if they’re acting as a social commentary, people can ignore that aspect (if they choose to) and enjoy the pure entertainment of it. And everything’s pretty clear-cut — here’s a good guy, here’s a bad guy, and there’s very little gray area. “It’s all black-and-white,” he said.

“I’m…” Owen began, but stopped himself, obviously trying to think of a more polite way to articulate something but having trouble because he was so clearly enraged. “I have to disagree with you about the superhero movies. They are not black-and-white.”

“You can argue with me all you want,” Artie responded, “but when I go and see Spider-Man, no matter what happens, I know Spider-Man’s the good guy and the Green Goblin is the bad guy, and I know I’m gonna root for Spider-Man to kick his ass no matter what happens.”

Which somehow shut Owen up. That surprised me, but maybe he just gave up because Art was pretty much right.

The discussion also touched on the idea that many films are adapted from other sources. Art argued that this was because it was a sure moneymaker. If a book — a book, for crying out loud! — could be a bestseller, the movie would be a box-office bonanza. Execs play it safe, sure, but that’s no reason for 80% of domestic movies to be adaptations, remakes, and sequels. Especially when so many of them are crap.

My argument was that nobody ever reads anymore. Hollywood buys book properties, bestsellers or not, when they see movie potential, but they don’t always market them as BASED ON THE BOOK BY… unless Stephen King, John Grisham, or Thomas Harris are involved. And they do this because they assume (often accurately) that nobody’s read the book, so they’ll think it’s some original thing when it’s really just an easy way to make a buck.

All the while, as I’m making my point, Owen is making his own point to no one in particular. And his voice steadily increased in volume, so after I’m finish all of a sudden I hear this screaming — literally, screaming — “…and that’s why they allowed this FASCIST DICTATOR in office. They just accept what’s SHOVED IN THEIR FACES because they’re too stupid to pick up a BOOK!” And on “book,” he melodramatically slammed some book or another onto the table for emphasis.

Me and Nick looked at each other, then I looked at Art (who was sitting right across the table from me). We were all trying our best not to burst out laughing, but it was quite amusing.

“Moving on…” the prof said, breaking the uncomfortable gosh-should-we-laugh atmosphere that plagued the entire room.

Eventually, we started talking about the papers we have due around midterm (about four weeks away, with our wonky schedule), and we were forced on the spot to pitch an idea for the paper. Since the class is about Chicago screenwriters, the paper topic needed to be at least vaguely on-topic. One guy was struggling, but he decided on something. “I thought I’d compare Manhunter to the book and the remake. Did Michael Mann write Manhunter?” If Mann hadn’t written it, that would’ve potentially blown the whole topic.

But, yeah, he wrote the script.

Before anybody could answer him, though, Owen shrieked out, “Thomas Harris wrote the novel!”

This guy looked at Owen with mixed contempt and disgust and said, “I know. I was talking about the script.”

Owen. Owned. He just sat back and shut up.

Meanwhile, I tried helping this girl sitting next to me (she actually had nowhere to sit, so she had to pull up a chair on the other side of me, literally right next to the professor). We had been flirting all through class, and she kept making references to John Hughes movie, so I kept telling her she should write about how Pretty in Pink was a better movie than Sixteen Candles.

“Are you fucking kidding?” Nick yelled abruptly. “Sixteen Candles is so much better.” And the girl agreed, which launched a 10-minute debate about which one is actually a better movie. During this, Owen got visibly agitated. Remember, in our first class, he decried the work of John Hughes as completely unrealistic.

Since he had nothing to add to the conversation, nothing to make us shut up like we’d been doing to him during the entire session, he just said — again, to no one — “If only Todd Solondz was from Chicago.”

Ugh.

So, to change the subject for no reason, he started talking about how illogical Glengarry Glen Ross is, because they’re all so desperate to do a job for so little commission — but that’s the whole point. Their jobs suck, their lives suck, but they’re utterly desperate for that money. If they don’t get it, they’re fucked. They lose their job, they lose their money, and (in the case of Shelly Levene) they lose their family.

When this was pointed out to Owen, his response was, again, “Oh.”

Lastly, Owen went on about how he’s been step-outlining his mythic novel, which he’s been working on for years and has “82 subplots.” A step outline works like this (and is really only conducive to screenplays or maybe playscripts): you go scene-by-scene, describe what happens in the scene, and then write out the conflict (both textual and subtextual), the purpose of the scene, how it moves along the story, and so on. It’s really helpful in writing a script, but I can’t possibly imagine it helping with a novel. The form is so completely different — I mean, a novel can go on for hundreds of pages with no conflict at all and still be interesting.

But that’s just a minor thing. If it works for him, fine. But I could’ve owned him on that, if I’d wanted to really get into it. I’m too passive for that, though.

That’s the thing, though: granted, it’s only week four, but nobody’s ever really said anything to Owen to call him on his bullshit. Everybody just sat and took it, even though most of them knew him in advance of this class. Maybe they’ve all gotten tired of him, or maybe they were all on edge because, honestly, Wednesday night classes suck balls.

But it was sort of a turning point, I guess, and I noticed that on Thursday, the normally garrulous Owen was actually rather quiet and timid and only spoke when spoken to.

Frankly, it was nice.

Posted by Stan on March 6, 2004 1:41 PM  | Permalink | School Rants | Digg It