5 — Friday, March 20, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

‘Last Man on Earth’ 
has unique premise

By ALEX INTNER

Daily Arts Writer

When “The Last Man on 

Earth” was announced last year, 
they hadn’t even filmed a pilot. 
FOX picked up 
the idea straight-
to-series 
with 

only a loose idea 
and Will Forte 
(“Saturday Night 
Life”) 
attached 

to 
star 
and 

write the series. 
Upon presenting 
the 
show 
to 

advertisers 
in 

May, they had 
only a video of 
Forte performing solitary 
activities — singing the National 
Anthem to an empty Dodgers 
Stadium and getting food from an 
empty grocery store, among other 
things. That added up to a series 
with an amount of promise, but 
even more uncertainty. However, 
upon watching the first three 
episodes, it’s clear the network’s 
risk has been rewarded. Over 
the course of these episodes, the 
comedy displayed some growing 
pains, but it also showed great 
potential.

“The Last Man on Earth,” 

which counts “21 Jump Street” 
directors Phil Lord and Chris 
Miller 
among 
its 
executive 

producers, follows Phil Miller 
(Forte), the titular last man on 
Earth after a virus wipes out the 
rest of the planet’s population. It 
portrays the hijinks that ensue 
and how he lives his life as the 
only person in the world. At the 
end of the pilot, the show expands 
its world by introducing Kristen 
Schaal (“Bob’s Burgers”) as Carol, 

the last woman on Earth, and the 
second and third episodes of the 
show feature her interactions 
with Phil. 

The best aspect of “The Last 

Man on Earth” is how it generates 
the show’s inherently one-man 
comedy style. His activities are 
absurd, yet always enjoyable 
to watch. The first episode is 
almost entirely made up of things 
like playing racquetball on the 
presidential seal, creating a Jenga 
tower that would put anyone else’s 
to shame and going bowling with 
a truck and a queue of fishtanks. 
Forte plays each of these scenes so 
casually, adding to each moment’s 
level of humor. While this idea on 
its own is not enough to sustain a 
TV series (which is likely why they 
introduced Schaal’s character), 
it’s the best part of the show.

What’s more problematic is 

Schaal’s character. They bring 
her into the world to add a foil 
for Forte to play off of, however, 
they go slightly too far with this. 
Her first episode (the show’s 
second) is the worst of the three 

because Carol isn’t given any 
sort of nuance. She is OCD to the 
extreme and follows the rules of 
the “regular world” with constant 
rigidity (like stopping at stop 
signs), and perfectly juxtaposes 
Phil’s messiness and complete 
neglect of the rules. Schaal is 
directed to turn up the volume of 
her performance to full blast, and 
it just comes off as obnoxious. Her 
second episode does a lot better 
by the character. It gives her more 
notes to play with her wedding to 
Phil. 

“Last Man on Earth” is the type 

of show that network executives 
should make more often. It has 
an incredibly weird premise, 
but in the hands of an actor 
like Forte and writers like Lord 
and Miller, it turned out to be 
highly entertaining. Sometimes 
in television programming, it’s 
worth investing in a risky premise 
because of a belief that it could 
be strong. Even if the show had 
some rough growing pains, as 
many sitcoms do, it’s a show that’s 
engaging and worth watching.

FOX

“I don’t know if this is gonna fit me.”

B+

The Last 
Man on 
Earth

Series 
Premiere

FOX
Sundays at 
9:30 p.m.

GENDER AND MEDIA COLUMN

Why isn’t Will 
Smith a cougar?

A

s I write this column 
(in my Economics class, 
as my professor stares 

at me expectantly, assuming 
I will know 
the answer 
to something 
I don’t), I’ve 
officially 
been on 
Earth 20 
years, three 
months, 
30 days, 11 
hours and 42 
minutes. And 
it took the 
same brainpower to calculate 
that that it would have to do my 
Econ homework. 

Age is just a number, right? 

A number broken down into 
smaller numbers and more 
finite definitions until it has no 
meaning. It’s why I get along 
better with my mom’s friends 
than my own. Age is just a 
number — until it’s not.

Watching the trailer for 

“Focus,” the sleek and sexy 
con movie starring Will Smith 
and Margot Robbie, I couldn’t 
even get past the first few 
moments without rolling my 
eyes. I didn’t see the movie 
— by all accounts it could be 
funny or charming or smart. 
But I just couldn’t watch 
46-year-old Will Smith take 
24-year-old Robbie under his 
wing, showing her the ways 
of the con world and maybe 
falling a little in love. I couldn’t 
stop thinking, “Why is that 
allowed?” 

Why are we, as an intelligent 

audience, asked to suspend 
our disbelief when it comes 
to the age difference between 
onscreen love interests? It was 
the case in “Sabrina” 60 years 
ago – a daddy-issue-laden 
Audrey Hepburn was 25 while 
her counterpart Humphrey 
Bogart was 55 — and it still 
happens all the time today. 
Whether it’s part of the plot, as 
“Focus” attempts with Smith 
and Robbie’s veteran/novice 
relationship, or not, it seems we 
find it OK when men in movies 
are AARP cardholders and 
their girls barely out of braces. 

Cursory research into this 

disparity holds true, even 
with award-winning movies. 
Bradley Cooper was 15 years 
older than Jennifer Lawrence 
when they fell in bizarre love in 
“Silver Linings Playbook.” (And 
now Bradley is dating a model 
17 years his junior, which begs 

the question: is Bradley Cooper 
kind of a skeeze?) Woody 
Allen’s entire repertoire, 
including last year’s “Magic in 
the Moonlight,” features the 
perfunctory objectification 
of younger muses. It’s clear a 
director has a problem when 
the onscreen relationship 
between Emma Stone (25) and 
Colin Firth (54) barely bats an 
eye among audiences. 

Search “age difference in 

film” on Wikipedia and the list 
of films featuring older men 
with younger women is more 
than three times the length of 
its reverse, older women with 
younger men. A vast age gap 
between a wrinkled man and 
rosy-cheeked girl is often not 
even addressed in the plot of 
a film — it’s just something 
we’ve come to expect in a 
patriarchal society. In contrast, 
when a woman is older than 
a man in a movie, you betcha 
the word cougar comes up. 
The Wikipedia list alone is 
laughable, featuring titles like 
“Cougar Club,” “My Teacher’s 
Wife,” and “Caught” — these 
movies are defined by this 
illicit age difference. What 
does the other side have? Oscar 
winners and box office hits. 

When women are older 

they are often represented as 
unstable cougars, desperately 
clinging to their youth or 
fading self image — the 
infamous Mrs. Robinson in 
“The Graduate” comes to mind. 
Or they are lonely women just 
making a mistake, reclaiming 
their sexuality — J.Lo as the 
teacher gone rogue in “The Boy 
Next Door.” This is a decided 
type in film, a persona at the 
forefront of a script. Older men 
are rarely defined by their age 
in reference to their younger 
love interest, unless they 
literally are predators. We all 
know “Lolita” and shudder, 
but Keira Knightley was only 
19 when she and Jack Sparrow 
had their almost-tryst in 
“Pirates of the Caribbean,” and 
no one ever talks about that in 
hushed tones.

I know it may seem as 

though I’m grasping for straws, 
but there is a real discrepancy. 
And it matters. Men are 
valued for their strength, their 
experience, their confidence; 
all traits that grow with age. 
Women are valued first and 
foremost for their beauty, and 
then their spontaneity, that 
fresh, fleeting ingénue quality. 

We are afraid for women 

to get old. That’s it. Men can 
age with dignity and humor, 
developing distinguished gray 
hair and endearing laugh lines. 
As men in Hollywood age they 
become wiser, mellower, less 
inhibited. Women don’t have 
that luxury — in real life that’s 
why those who have the means 
so often turn to plastic surgery, 
and in Hollywood that’s why 
26-year-olds are hired to fill a 
role better suited thematically 
for a 40-year-old. Meryl Streep 
was once quoted saying, “When 
I turned 40, I got 3 different 
witch scripts in one year.” 
That’s fucked up. (And to note, 
that was 10 years after Streep 
played a divorced woman 
replaced by an 18-year-old in 
Woody Allen’s “Manhattan.”)

Female actresses, both young 

and old, deserve better. The 
Margot Robbies of Hollywood 
deserve to be offered roles in 
which their sex symbol sta-
tuses aren’t salient character 
traits. They shouldn’t always 
be the targets of skewed power 
dynamics, a plaything for 
an older man. Older women 
deserve roles that recognize 
their age (and not in a negative 
way) while still valuing them 
as living, breathing, loving 
human beings. That’s not to say 
that age difference shouldn’t 
be used as a storytelling device 
— it’s important that movies 
do recognize when age plays a 
role in character decisions or 
behaviors. But this needs to be 
conscious, and should reflect 
dynamics actually present in 
the world.

My mom is four years older 

than my dad, and growing up it 
was always a thing. There were 
usually jokes at parties about 
Mary, the cougar. Not that it 
really bothered my mom – she 
was too busy living her god-
damn life to let something like 
that irritate her. But it always 
intrigued me. Would there have 
been the jokes if my dad were 
older? Movies are often an 
inflated reflection on real life, 
in this issue especially. I want 
to live in a world where no one 
comments on my parent’s age 
difference, unless those same 
people also call into question 
an even more exaggerated age 
difference like that in “Focus.”

Gadbois is writing angry 

letters to Woody Allen. To 

offer your support, email 

natgadb@umich.edu.

NATALIE 
GADBOIS

Movie experiences 
change with company

By CONRAD FOREMAN

Daily Arts Writer

The experience you have 

watching 
a 
movie 
changes 

depending on whom you watch 
it with.

That may seem extremely 

reductive, but I believe it’s true, 
and I believe it’s a beautiful 
truth. Think about it: Whether 
your watch a movie alone, 
or with family or friends, 
the film doesn’t change, but 
your perception of the film 
can 
change 
significantly. 

The reason why is fairly self-
explanatory: Different groups 
create 
different 
dynamics, 

which affect your perception 
of everything around you, and 
thus your perception of the 
movie.

Let’s look at an example. I 

like “Dazed and Confused” as 
a movie. It’s fine. But it’s 100 
times better when I watch it 
with my two friends that can 
quote the entire film. Their 
enjoyment inspires me to find 
pleasure from the same source. 
“The Goods: Live Hard, Sell 
Hard” offered me a similar 
experience. 
Enjoyment 
is 

contagious — as is disapproval.

An example on the opposite 

end of the spectrum, for me, is 
“22 Jump Street.” Walking out 
of the theater after that movie, 

I felt very negatively about it, to 
the point that I believe perhaps 
my reaction (and review) was 
too harsh. However, the two 
friends I saw it with also hated 
it, and my negative perception 
was reaffirmed walking out of 
the theater, so until I experience 
“22 Jump Street” in another 
way, it will also have a sour 
taste for me. The same goes for 
“The Curious Case of Benjamin 
Button,” which I saw with a 
friend who was determined to 
enjoy the film. He was so sure 
that I would like the movie that 
he promised I could kick him 
in the balls if I didn’t. After 
that, there was no chance I was 
going to enjoy “Ben Button.” To 
this day I think of “Benjamin 
Button” as a three-hour bore-
fest. I’ll never know exactly 
how much that opinion has 
to do with the circumstances 
under which I first saw the film, 
but my money’s on a lot.

As a member of the FilmSquad 

at The Michigan Daily, I fancy 
myself something of a movie 
buff, as do my peers. Each of 
us often holds strong opinions 
about certain films. For each of 
us, the films we love and hate 
are different. Sometimes we 
disagree strongly about a film, 
which speaks to the beautiful 
truth to which I referred at the 
beginning of the article: There 

is no objective standard for art.

To me, it seems objectively 

obvious that “Birdman” is a 
unique, brilliant film in every 
way — acting, cinematography, 
soundtrack, narrative, etc. But 
even this year’s Best Picture 
winner 
proves 
divisive 
for 

some. My father summed up 
“Birdman” 
as 
“Hollywood 

making fun of stage people 
making fun of Hollywood, and 
underneath it all is the fact 
that (Michael) Keaton played 
Batman a couple times.” This 
is blasphemy to me, but how 
can I say that anyone is wrong 
in their judgment about a piece 
for which there is no objective 
grading scale?

I know that what I’ve said 

here isn’t groundbreaking, nor 
particularly original. I just 
wanted to take the opportunity 
to use the platform I have 
through the Daily to point out 
some important obvious things 
about movies. Any movie can be 
enjoyed, no matter how shitty; 
all you have to do is watch it 
in the right environment, with 
the right people. Any movie 
can be hated, no matter how 
masterful. 

Maybe 
the 
real 
point 
is 

that words like “shitty” and 
“masterful” aren’t appropriate 
to describe a film — only the 
experience of watching the film.

TV REVIEW

COMMUNITY CULTURE NOTEBOOK
Meaning of the bow

By BAILEY KADIAN

For The Daily

It’s time. The lights dim, the 

audience roars and it’s your 
turn to greet them. You are 
no longer the character they 
watched, but yourself, walking 
toward center stage to face all 
who watched you. You have 
waited for this moment for 
quite some time, and you are 
ready to receive the praise that 
they are eager to give you. 

The 
bow 
calls 
for 
an 

abandonment of your character. 
The rule that demands “you 
must never break character” 
is dismissed for this moment 
and the audience sees you just 
as you are. The fourth wall is 
gone, and now there is nothing 
separating 
you 
from 
your 

character. The character you 
were has been exchanged for 
reality, and your audience now 
recognizes you as you. Your 
first steps toward center stage 
make you realize that this is 
your moment to acknowledge 
them face-to-face.

Initially, you think they’re 

thanking you. Their praise 
indicates to you that your 
audience is grateful for your 
entertainment, 
for 
your 

emotions, for your story. You 
gave them all they needed to 
engage in an alternate world 
with alternate characters and 

now you bow to accept their 
appreciation. As the cheering 
continues and you scan the 
crowd, you realize this bow 
means more to you than others 
would think. Is your bow only 
an exchange of your audience’s 
gratitude toward you? Or does 
this bow initiate a catharsis of 
your own? 

As 
an 
actor, 
you 
work 

every moment of every day 
to produce something that 
an audience will love. You 
work to eventually see that 
your 
audience 
approves 
of 

the story you have told them 
and appreciate what has been 
communicated. However, your 
bow does not work entirely 
one way. There is an equal 
exchange of thanks from the 
audience to the performer, as 
well as from the performer 
to the audience. Your bow is 
a form of submission to your 
audience. You see it as your way 

of telling them that the effort 
you put towards every second 
of rehearsal, and will continue 
to put towards your art, is for 
them. With that commitment, 
you submit everything you are 
to become a character for them 
to grow with and relate to. 

With this bow you say:
Thanks to you, audience, 

because you are why I do what 
I do. Thanks to you, because 
your very applause confirms 
to me that the hours I spent 
rehearsing 
lines, 
learning 

blocking, 
running 
numbers 

and sacrificing time was worth 
it. Thanks to you, audience, 
because your praise eliminates 
my uncertainty towards my art 
and my fear and anxiousness 
towards defeat. You are the 
reason I wake up every day 
inspired by a character that I 
must become. I realize at this 
moment that my art produces 
a feeling of utter contentment, 
and you are here to witness it. 
As I stand here at center stage 
to be thanked by you, I truly 
owe you the thanks. If I didn’t 
see you here in front of me 
clapping and smiling, I wouldn’t 
be doing what I love. My life 
without theater would not be 
fulfilling, so a thanks to you all, 
because with this bow, I accept 
the challenges that will come, 
and I will graciously accept the 
satisfaction of this moment.

I will graciously 

accept the 

satisfaction of 
this moment.

CRITERION

I’ll watch anything, and I’m watchin’ you.

FILM NOTEBOOK

