Word: boxful
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Those people looking for a break from the electron-based spittle that dribbles from your tube should forgo Big Time, where even the stage is designed to mimic the glowing box. Subtitled "Scenes from a Service Economy," this recent play by Keith Reddin rarely has anything to offer that isn't of McQuality. Even though a pleasantly short production of 75 minutes--with commercial breaks that's a 90 minute TV special--Big Time rapidly becomes tiresome and repititious...
...picture shifts to a large lecture hall on a Tuesday morning. The professor drones on about the reification of post-Kantian theories of kitsch. A student sinks back in his seat. The Globe sports section has replaced notetaking. His pen traces patterns around the box scores. The numbers recall the sensational double play in the bottom of the fifth of last night's Padres-Mariners game...
...When box lunches and hotel rooms are needed, they answer the call. When arrangements are needed for transportation, they make the call...
...Anything can go wrong," Wenglin says. "The greatest amount of satisfaction is when the players and the coaches get on the bus Thursday--they know it's going to be there. They know that they're going to walk into a hotel and there is going to be a box lunch waiting for them. They know that when they get up in the morning, there's going to be a big breakfast for them. They know that I'm going to take care of tickets. They know that there's going to be ice time for them on Friday, they...
Hard times have fallen on the facetious fantasy. A genre that flourished a few years ago (Gremlins, Ghostbusters) is now box-office poison (Innerspace, Made in Heaven). Moviegoers want their nightmares straight these days, with guns and badges attached. A pity, because there is life left in the comedy of the supernatural. The form can liberate narrative wit and design ingenuity; it encourages filmmakers to plunder all the medium's resources, to create something that can exist only in the movies. Check out, for instance, Beetlejuice's vision of the afterlife -- it's hell as a strangled bureaucracy...