April 23, 2021

One month until my birthday! 

Yesterday, I went to a zoom event put on by Women's Weekend Film Challenge. It was a panel with Jami O'Brien - the showrunner of Industry on HBO - talking about being a showrunner. She gave us a rundown of how she landed in LA. It included, at one stage, losing her job, her boyfriend, and her apartment in NYC. A friend, who wrote for television, encouraged her to come out to LA, and offered her a couch to sleep on. She did it, and eventually she was able to work her was up the TV-writing career track. 

This morning, I'm thinking about how failure might precipitate good new directions in life. I mean, maybe if she stayed in New York and continued to pursue playwriting she might be a famous playwright by now. Who knows? But when you sort of fail out and need to pick a new thing, maybe that can be good because you're going to pick the best of your possible options. If you haven't failed out completely and are still pursuing an old goal, you may be taking routes that aren't very suitable. Does that make sense? After failure there's the chance for a clean slate and a best option. 

I'm wondering if I had to pick a new route -- if I had to -- what would be the best one. Maybe trying to get an admin job at one of the pharmaceutical companies where my friends work. That could be more money potentially. Maybe it would be to try to get into Engineering. To do that, I would probably take another year in LA and take a bunch of science courses at SMC to brush up. Chemistry, Calculus, Physics, maybe even Bio, why not? I'm enough years past my BS that I think retaking undergraduate classes would be good before going for a masters. And SMC classes are good and cheap. 

Or maybe it would be something else. Someone else floating in with an idea or an offer. Anyhow, Mlog time! 

**SPOILERS**

THE HIDDEN 

1987

Directed by: Jack Sholder

Written by: Bob Hunt 

Watched: 4/22/21

A man robs a bank by calmly shooting the man carrying the money bags and the officers around him. He then walks to his car, a Ferrari, pops a tape into his deck, and takes off. It becomes clear that the man – straight faced the whole time – has no escape plan. The cops chase him all over Los Angeles, and he ends the spree by crashing into a barricade of police cars, getting shot up, and then suffering from burns as his car (next to him) blows up. In the hospital, nearly dead, a big black alien looking thing (a lot of squirminess and tubes) crawls out of his mouth and into the mouth of the man in the hospital bed next to him. That man then gets up and goes out to steal cars, commit murder, and rob banks. FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher shows up to take over the case. He seems to know about the alien/parasite thing. He gets the lead detective on homicide, Thomas Beck, to help him. Through their interactions, we come to guess that Gallagher is also an alien in a people suit. Gallagher is hunting the other guy because that guy killed his partner and wife and child and everybody. Gallagher needs to shoot the alien when he’s in between bodies with a funny-looking alien gun. 

He won’t confide in Beck and Beck ends up locking him up – after realizing he’s not an FBI agent at all. Gallagher tells Beck the truth but Beck won’t believe him. That is until the police chief (occupied by the alien) comes in and shoots up the police station. Then Beck lets out Gallagher and the two work together. Beck gets shot. Gallagher finally kills the alien thing. And then in the end, right as Beck has died in the hospital, the alien in Gallagher (a beam of light) takes over Beck’s body and life. 

This movie came out in my birth year! How nice. The opening bank robbery and car chase scene was pretty awesome. It was making me think of Baby Driver (which is also awesome). (Actually, another loose tie to Edgar Wright, I rented this movie because it was one of the ones Joe Cornish recommended on a recent Instagram post.) There are comedic elements as well. Beck gives Gallagher an Alka-Seltzer since the night before, Gallagher had a beer with dinner and had obviously never drank alcohol before. Gallagher puts the tablet in his mouth and Beck explains he was supposed to drop it in the glass of water and drink it. Later, someone gives Gallagher an asprin and glass of water, and G puts the asprin in the water and drinks it. Plus, the bad guy has trouble with one of his older bodies, all herky jerky and losing blood. It’s very reminiscent of the bug alien in Men In Black. Actually the alien gun looks a lot like the guns in MIB. (The Hidden, of course, came out 10 years before MIB. I can’t find anything online that draws a direct connection between the two movies though.) 

I also liked this part where the bad guy asks Gallagher how he’s enjoying being human. It’s during a shoot out and Gallagher and Beck are taking cover behind a wall. Gallagher says that he likes it okay and smiles at Beck. A nice moment. Anyhow, I thought the movie was solid.  

Rating: ★★★