West Wing photos

Thanks to Ian, who has all the expensive digital equipment and software for videos, I now have a couple of screen captures from the clip Ryan made for me showing a couple of different shots from my appearance in the series finale of NBC's The West Wing. In the pictures, you'll see Martin Sheen and Jimmy Smits. This scene which is supposed to be at the Capitol was actually shot at the Department of Commerce. Anyway, here they are.

Movie review: The DaVinci Code

With all the press coverage of this week's opening of The DaVinci Code and their gleeful reiteration of the lukewarm and negative reviews from Cannes, I wasn't expecting much from the movie. After all, the novel itself, regardless of how many millions of copies it has sold, is full of weak, bad writing and is certainly not great "literature" and Ron "Opie" Howard hasn't been doing anything exciting in film in years.

So, I was pleasantly surprised this afternoon to find The DaVinci Code actually to be a pretty decent movie.

Now, for those who read and reread and memorize novels, the movie is merely "based" on the novel; it follows the general story line, but it does take a lot of liberties, largely because of time limitations, improvement of action, and flow, and a few things were completely rewritten, including the ending. Now, while the novel is a work of fiction—and not even a novel that claims to be "historical fiction"—there were quite a few interesting discussions in the novel about art analysis of various Leonardo works, cryptographic games, historical discussions about the Knights Templars and the Roman Catholic Church, and some interesting forays into debating some of the more controversial ideas in early Christian theology, but the movie both shortened these things and dumbed them down considerably for the mass market.

It's a shame the theological discussions were minimized, especially since the author took a lot of leaps in his interpretations, so they needed to be debated. For years before the novel was published, though, I was teaching these things in my ancient and medieval humanities classes, all to the consternation of all my pentecostal and evangelical students who had never before had to "think" about their religion. While we don't know exactly what was true and what did or did not happen 2,000 years ago, we do know that there were over 80 written gospels that were considered by church councils over the years, that the divinity of Jesus was determined by popular vote in A.D. 325, and that the medieval Merovingian kings of France considered themselves to be descendants of Jesus (although this claim is shaky, since they didn't become Christians until A.D. 496). It's also known that culturally it would have been incomprehensible for a young Jewish man from a good family in the 20's A.D. to have remained unmarried until he was 30 or 33.

But, so few people know anything about the history of Christianity these days, it's probably just as well that the movie creators cut through all of this to make a more engaging movie.

When viewing a movie based on a novel, I always consider how faithful the screenplay is to the novel, but then I settle back and see if I can enjoy the movie on its own merits. This is where the movie version of The DaVinci Code succeeds. It's actually a pretty good action adventure murder mystery. There were a couple of places where the film dragged a bit, mostly because of incessantly long periods of expository dialogue, and then at the end of the film in the rewritten ending, a lot was anticlimactic since those of us who'd read the novel kept thinking it was over and yet the movie kept going on and on. I wouldn't be nominating this film for the adapted screenplay Oscar.

Sir Ian McKellan was absolutely fabulous in his role as Leigh Teabing. His energy is what keeps the movie interesting amongst all the brooding. Alfred Molina played a wonderfully smarmy bishop and the often-naked Paul Bettany made a chilling Silas (though the role was definitely rewritten for him and was not true to the original character in the novel). Jean Reno as the French police Captain Fache reminded me disturbingly of the district attorney in the Duke Lacrosse case with his tunnel vision pursuit of a suspect against the weight of logic and the evidence. And the new Audrey Tautou made a lovely Sophie with her big brown eyes and pretty face.

Then there was Tom Hanks. We've all already heard about his "bad hair" for the movie. His performances and appearances over the past few years have all been so sanctimonious and pompous I generally tend to avoid his movies, and this show did not change my opinion. What's more, he spent the whole film with a constant look of bewilderment and worry on his face and his acting was so stiff it almost dragged the whole film down the tubes. So much for token aging Oscar winners.

Director Howard, though, created one of his best movies in some time. There were great chase scenes, good character portraits, and many good things about the movie. Two shocking scenes caught me so off guard I actually jumped in my seat. He chose to shoot the flashback sequences in what looked like a pale, slightly colorized, black and white film. On the downside, though, was the superimposing of some of these images into the action, such as depicting the funeral of Isaac Newton while the main characters were walking into Westminster Abbey, and then he would highlight some of the art symbols being discussed in a way that reminded me of old educational films. His only real failure with the film was the ending, which meandered to a whimpering close.

Movie tickets in D.C. are up to $9.75. With that in mind, I'm always careful how I spend my limited movie dollars. The DaVinci Code turned out to be a very entertaining movie, so I was not sad at all that I'd made the ticket investment, and I might even consider going a second time. Film reviewers notwithstanding, you'll enjoy the movie, so go see it.

We are available to sign autographs now

Yay, I actually saw my face on national television tonight! I think we calculated about eight or nine seconds worth of screen time in four shots in one scene. Of course, in three of those shots, you have to know which body is mine. ;-)

I've decided to give up the practice of law. Based on what I was paid to do this show, for the actual time I was on screen I made about $60,000 per hour. I could never charge that much as a lawyer.

It is very interesting seeing how long a scene shoot lasts and how much more action, dialogue, and footage is shot than is actually used by the film editors. They used more of my scene that I expected (about half of what was filmed), but some of my friends were in other scenes that took them hours and hours to shoot, and I only caught a glimpse of one of them. I shall have to view the videotape more closely, but I just didn't see much of them.

It's a shame The West Wing is going off the air and that this was the series finale. In the hour before tonight's show, they rebroadcast the very first West Wing and it reminded me of how incredible the writers were in the early years back when Aaron Sorkin was still involved. Why can't the real White House have writers to create such wonderful presidential speeches? I loved the way in that very first show the President told off the Evangelical leaders, and then his comments about the Cuban boat people in their quest for freedom were so moving and so quotable. Of course, Martin Sheen is an incredible actor; I think I mentioned last March how incredibly charismatic he is in person. I wonder if he's ever thought of running for president?