Whither Whedon?

One of the problems of our celebrity-obsessed culture is that we, the common people, feel some sort of connection to famous people.  We follow them on twitter, visit their Facebook page, and generally think of them as just another buddy, albeit one that never actually sends a personal e-mail.

I try to avoid this delusion, mostly because I am, you know, sane.  But there is one celebrity I feel a connection to, and that’s Joss Whedon.  And I don’t think I’m alone; Whedon’s ability to connect with his fan base was unique among writer-directors.  Of course, the stronger the connection, the stronger the backlash when something severs that connection.

There was a huge fallout when it came to light that Whedon had been unfaithful to his wife with women (unnamed, as far as I know, but then I’ not exactly in the loop) that he had worked with.  As a result the fan site Whedonesque shut down, and his reputation took a hit.  There was a lot of confusion over whether he should be included in the #metoo movement, or questioning his feminist credentials, but there never was any implication that he “Harvey Weinsteined” any women.  To quote the Steve Martin comedy L.A. Story, he had just been “a big dumb male.”

All that aside, I am concerned about his creative output. Of course he had his biggest success with the 2012 release of The Avengers, with a gross of $623.4 million.  In 2013 he released his low budget version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, which may have only grossed $4.3 million but cost next to nothing to make and had an impressive Metacritic score of 78.  A big-budget blockbuster and a critically acclaimed, small budget Shakespearean adaptation; not a bad year.

Since then Whedon’s output hasn’t quite matched those highs.  His follow-up to The Avengers, The Age of Ultron, grossed a mere $459 million and had a middling Metacritic score of 66.  I’ve gone back over Whedon’s oeuvre and frankly I think it is clearly the worst thing he’s ever written/directed.  The script feels rushed, like Marvel wanted to get the sequel out as soon as possible because the franchise might die if the next installment wasn’t in theaters within three years (okay, maybe they had a point). 

Since Ultron, he did some script doctoring on DC’s Justice League (it helped some, but not enough).  He had tried to get a big screen version of Wonder Woman made for years to no avail, which would have helped his feminist street cred, only to see the film get made by a woman director.  He had been linked to the next best thing to a Wonder Woman film, a big-screen version of Batgirl, but reports are that that's off as well.

His imprimatur is still around, as a creator of the TV show Agents of SHIELD (which I stopped watching a couple of years ago) and other Marvel-centric entertainments.  But the director of two of the 13 biggest grossing films of all time (okay, Black Panther will bump Age of Ultron Ultron down to 14 next week) hasn’t directed anything since Ultron, three years ago.

Where does Whedon go?  Back to television?  Frankly that seems to be a medium more suited to his skills at witty dialog, plot twists and character development.  Or would that be seen as slumming after directing two films that together grossed over a billion dollars? Given we now live in the era of beloved TV show reboots, would a “reimagining” of Firefly be considered blasphemy?

Sometimes creative types can find freedom to be intimidating.  It’s easier to take risks when you know you have to succeed or be jobless.  Once you have the freedom to do whatever you want, you might suddenly find you don’t know what you want (after The Avengers huge opening weekend Whedon sent out a message that finally he’d be able to do that reboot of Air Bud the world had been waiting for).

Between 1939 and 1944 Preston Sturges produced six of the most brilliant comedies ever filmed (The Great McGinty won an Oscar for best screenplay; four of the five others made the AFI list of top 100 comedies).  When he was finally given the freedom by the studio to make his lifelong dream, he made a biopic about the invention of anesthesia called The Great Moment.  His career never recovered. 

I hope Joss Whedon can find his next project and have better success recovering from his career setbacks of the past few years.

It is impossible for the NCAA NOT to be corrupt

In the realm of “news that is not news” we have this shocking revelation—some college basketball players may be receiving money!  This is a shocking discovery to the coaches (who make millions of dollars) and the athletic directors (ditto) of the major college powerhouses.  How dare the pristine world of college basketball be sullied by filthy lucre!  “What about the resplendent joys of pure amateurism?” ask the coaches from their summer homes in Gstaad or Corsica. 

It’s an iron law of economics—money abhors a vacuum.  College basketball generates billions of dollars of revenue for major programs, not to mention the money wagered on March Madness brackets.  The idea that coaches, or boosters, or agents would not divert a slim trickle of that amount to the players responsible for a program’s success is Pollyannaish in the extreme.  Add in the fact that many of the top recruits are from less-than-wealthy homes, have little interest in academe, and have visions of million dollar contracts and shoe endorsement deals dancing in their heads, and the idea that such players will happy exile themselves to playing for free for a year becomes as fanciful as the Easter Bunny.

Those who support the “one and done” policy that the NCAA and the NBA have developed argue that there is an inherent benefit of exposing young men to higher education.  They argue that these young men are not unpaid, but instead paid in exposure to the ideas and concepts they learn about in the classes they take while attending college.

As Dorothy Parker once said, “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make hi8m drink/You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”  I’d find this line of reasoning more credible if I could also remember a large number of news conferences where star athletes announced that they were forgoing the NBA draft to complete their BA degree.  If anyone remembers a single news conference like that, let me know because I can’t think of one.  If a young athlete wants to use his basketball skills to leverage admission to a prestige college, great; but these student-athletes aren’t going to be those who will be “one and done” in the first place.

Another argument for the one and done policy is that 18 year old boys coming out of high school aren’t mature enough, aren’t physically developed enough, to compete in the NBA against 25 year old men.  That would be a reasonable line of argument if it were true that no high school graduates had ever succeeded entering the NBA directly from high school.  And none have.

Except for Lebron James.  And Kobe Bryant.  And Kevin Garnett.  And Moses Malone.  And . . . oh heck, here is Wikipedia's list of high school draftees.  It is really hard to argue that high school players can’t succeed in the NBA when you have Lebron James as the literal poster boy for direct from high school eligibility.

Another problem with the one-and-done system is the fact that the NCAA prohibits student-athletes from having agents.  On the one hand, agents might invariably tell students to skip playing for free at school and start earning money, for both themselves and the agent, in the NBA.  But agents who want to maximize their income might advise players who are truly unprepared for the NBA to stay in school in order to develop their game, in effect getting free career development advice from someone like Coach K at Duke or Tom Izzo at Michigan State.  This might be an objective source of advice, unlike family members whose opinion is uninformed and who have a higher incentive to get the kid into the NBA (and making money) as soon as possible.

I previously suggested two reforms for college football.  One, if you aren’t going to pay students for playing, at least pay them for practicing.  Most student-athletes are unable to earn money at part-time jobs on campus because of the time commitment for practice, so treat their practice time as the equivalent of a part-time job that would give them some money for buying pizzas or making trips home during breaks.  Second, student athletes have complete control over their names and images, and any use of a player’s name or image for profit needs to reimburse that player.  Perhaps the money could be put in a trust until the player leaves college, but the NCAA can’t sell the rights to a player’s image without the permission of that player, and agreeing to play for the team is not consent.

I don’t know how these would apply to basketball players.  Football players are trapped in college for three years, while one and dones only have to pretend to be a student for one semester or two quarters (the players who know they are headed for the draft can blow off their Spring classes and just lie around dreaming of their NBA contracts).  I don’t think the money from a part-time job or selling the rights to a player’s name would give them enough money to dis-incentivize accepting $100,000 under the table (allegedly). 

The biggest irony in all this is the call by people such as Lebron James for the NBA to stop using the NCAA as a minor league and to pay players more for playing in the “G League.”  The irony is that it is called the “G League” because Gatorade bought the naming rights to what used to be the Developmental League (D League).  Once again, someone else (the NBA) is making money off the backs of unpaid or underpaid players.

College is a great place for people who want to be there.  For a young athlete who is forced to spend one year playing for free instead of making millions of dollars, it is not a great place to be; saying he is getting paid with an education is meaningless when he’ll be leaving after one year.  Money being funneled to players under the table cannot be stopped so long as there is so much money on the table and the people responsible for that money are forced to play for free.  The NCAA cannot stop being a corrupt system so long as there are billions of dollars floating around and players who want some of that money.