The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, October 30, 2015 — 5

This column contains spoilers for 

this season of “The Leftovers.”

Show, don’t tell. Anyone who has 

ever taken a high school writing 
class could tell you what this axiom 
means. Truly 
excellent 
writing 
— 

whether 
it 

be in a short 
story, 
an 

epic 
poem, 

a 
screenplay 

or 
a 
TV 

column 
in 

The Michigan 
Daily — makes 
sure 
that 

every word speaks on its own. 
Words should be more than a 
straight path to a single conclusion, 
more than simple exposition telling 
readers what happened. Great 
writers let the reader experience 
the action through the character’s 
feelings, description and a well-
turned 
phrase. 
Great 
writers 

drop hints at what everything 
means, but they leave room for 
the reader’s independent thought. 
They acknowledge the gray areas 
in interpretation, and they let the 
mystery be.

The first season of HBO’s 

“The Leftovers” was one of the 
most stunning collections of epi-
sodes I saw in 2014. The show, 
which followed the residents of 
Mapleton, N.Y. after a devastat-
ing (and inexplicable) rapture-
like event claimed two percent 
of the world’s population, was an 
emotional powerhouse. In show-
ing the lives of those “left over” 
following the departure, “The 
Leftovers” mined the trauma for 
the vulnerable shell of human-
ity underneath. Entire episodes 
tracked the psychological arcs 
of side characters, yet the writ-
ers didn’t drop a single hint about 
the cause of the departure. “The 
Leftovers” was a show framed 
around a mysterious rapture, but 
it gave zero fucks about explain-
ing that mysterious rapture.

Brian 
Lowry 
of 
Variety 

said, in a review of the show’s 
first season, that he found 
“The 
Leftovers” 
’s 
premise 

far more engaging than its 
banal, 
unlikeable-character-

driven 
drama. 
Matt 
Zoller-

Seitz, the TV critic for New 
York Magazine (and one of my 
favorite entertainment writers), 
gave the “The Leftovers” ’s 
first episode a negative review, 
expressing that “the first few 
episodes don’t showcase enough 
artistry to justify all the slogging 
and weeping, the bloodied faces 
and broken hearts.”

You know, I get it. “The 

Leftovers” is a frustrating show 
to watch. The dialogue tells you 
almost nothing — I have a theory 
that a script for an hourlong 
episode of “The Leftovers” isn’t 
more than 15 pages, and mostly 
contains directions for where 
Justin Theroux is supposed 
to stand and take off his shirt. 
People in this show don’t say 
anything, and for an audience 
that is used to “Breaking Bad” 
monologues 
and 
Quentin 

Tarantino 
ramblings, 
this 

minimalist style can wear your 
patience a little too thin. The 
Guilty Remnant, the show’s 
resident weirdo cult, features 
completely mute characters that 
stand around in white clothes 
and smoke all day. Character 
Actress Amy Brenneman and 
Movie Star Liv Tyler spend most 
of the first season scrawling 
their thoughts on legal pads, 
keeping 
maddeningly 
silent 

while I begged them to just say 
something, dammit.

But 
ultimately, 
“The 

Leftovers” 
was 
saying 

something 
— 
is 
saying 

something, if you listen closely 
enough. It’s showing, not telling, 
the keys to understanding and 
appreciating the emotion and 
quietude of the show.

The first episode of the sec-

ond season begins with a cave, 
miles and years away from the 
departure and Mapleton. A 
pregnant cavewoman bears wit-
ness to a tragic earthquake that 
kills her entire tribe and family. 
She leaves the cave, goes to the 
beach, gives birth to her child 
and gets bitten by a snake. She 
dies with her baby in her arms, 
leaving her child to face civiliza-
tion and fend off future snakes 
alone. She dies on the sand, the 
water lapping at her toes.

Describing 
this 
scene 
in 

words does it no justice. First, 
it’s 
completely 
devoid 
of 

dialogue and isn’t shot according 
to typical continuity rules. The 
editing makes it unclear how 
much time is actually passing. 
For 
the 
scene’s 
ten-minute 

runtime, I wasn’t sure whether 
I was watching a sped-up and 
blurry few months or a single, 
stretched minute. The constant 
close-ups take the viewer out 
of the contextual reality of 
the scene. We know she’s a 
cavewoman, but she might as 
well be a familiar Mapletonian 
or a particularly dirty and naked 
woman who lives by the river 
near my house. It’s bizarre, yet 
poetically resonant.

“The Leftovers” is obsessed 

with 
the 
notion 
of 
the 

unexplained, 
the 
idea 
that 

God or nature or a snake’s 
venomous tongue can strike 
and wipe everything out. The 
unfathomable 
tragedy 
that 

made the world disappear on 
Oct. 14 is timeless and spaceless; 
death and disaster have been 
around since the Stone Age, and 
the feelings are still the same. 
“The Leftovers” says all of this 
without a single word, forcing its 
viewers to confront the tragedy 
with their own eyes and ears 
and make of the scene what they 
will. It’s a bold move, but one 
that “The Leftovers” isn’t afraid 
to make.

In last week’s episode, “Off 

Ramp,” former Guilty Remnant 
member Laurie Garvey finally 
decides to share her story. 
After spending the first season 
entrenched in twisted cult logic, 
Laurie has finally broken out, 
and is shopping her memoir 
around to publishers. She gets 
a call from one, who adored her 

words and thinks she has the 
potential to be the new authority 
on grief, loss and dealing with 
the departure. But there’s one 
caveat: the publisher thinks 
she needs to have some feeling 
injected into her book.

“There’s some heartbreaking 

stuff in here,” the editor says, but 
it lacks the necessary explication. 
He calls to mind the scene with 
the lighter (from season one 
of the show), where Laurie’s 
daughter gives her something 
to 
light 
her 
GR-mandated 

cigarettes 
with, 
emblazoned 

with the note, “Don’t forget me.” 
As we hear the irritating squawk 
of the editor’s voice, we see the 
same scene flash over the screen: 
Jill Garvey with her big eyes 
and baggy sweater, the sweetly 
childish Christmas wrapping 
and the gift that is supposed to 
let Laurie know how much her 
daughter misses her and wants 
her to come home.

“If you want people to connect 

with it, you have to tell them how 
it felt,” the editor reminds Laurie. 
Tell, don’t show. He wants her 
to see the realization that “the 
people that you left the family 
for are fuckin’ whackjobs!” He 
wants to see it all dressed up in 
pretty words, in a dialogue to 
the reader. “In that moment, I 
looked at the lighter and saw the 
mistake I’d made in leaving my 
children to fend for themselves 
while I join a cult and never 
speak to them again.” He wants 
some explanations, because the 
events and the images aren’t 
enough to speak for themselves.

That scene is emblematic of 

every nugget of unfair criticism 
“The Leftovers” suffers. That 
book editor wants more words — 
he wants clear characterization, 
cut-and-dry feeling, symbolism 
and 
falseness. 
He 
wants 
a 

good story, editorialized and 
picked over so it will fit on the 
shelf next to all those other 
departure 
memoirs. 
Many 

viewers want the same for “The 
Leftovers.” They want answers, 
explanation, tonal consistency 
and 
for 
the 
characters 
to 

fucking say something, to cut the 
melancholic piano music and 
throw some good monologues 
into the mix.

But “The Leftovers” collects 

its thoughts in a different way. It’s 
contemplative and image-driven 
in a way that nothing else on TV 
is; the dialogue comes secondary 
to the direction, acting and 
music. It’s slow and dreamlike, 
and the tone can change from 
melancholic (Laurie listening to 
the book editor tell her how to 
work through her grief) to fiery 
(Laurie physically attacking the 
book editor in his office) in a 
split second. It lets the moments 
speak for themselves. The image 
of the lighter is enough to make 
viewers realize the gravity of 
Laurie’s regret for abandoning 
her family — through showing, 
not telling.

Gilke is joining a future 

snake cult. To ask for an invite, 

email chloeliz@umich.edu.

TV COLUMN

Rapture cults and 
pregnant cavewomen

CHLOE 

GILKE

I 

met Zach Ornelas, two-time 
Detroit Free Press Marathon 
champion and 2013 School 

of Education graduate, for drinks 
at Ashley’s on the Thursday night 
after his 
second 
win in 
Detroit. 
The race 
ran the 
morning 
of Oct. 
18, the 
Sunday 
of Fall 
Break. 
While 
most of 
Ann Arbor was nursing broken 
hearts and hangovers from the 
Michigan State game, Ornelas was 
pounding the streets of Detroit 
alone, six minutes ahead of second 
place in a field of 4,000 runners. 
His finishing time was two hours 
and 20 minutes, running a per-
fectly even (and perfectly insane) 
pace of five minutes, 21 seconds 
per mile for 26.2 miles.

But the race was the fun part. 

And the beer that followed. 

We sat at a gnarled table across 

from the bar at Ashley’s, under a 
sign that listed over 50 craft beers 
on tap, almost all of which Ornelas 
had tried before. “I drink a lot of 
beer,” he said, pulling an Ashley’s 
gold card labeled “Friend of the 
Owner” from his wallet. “You 
need beer for marathon training. 
It’s great for recovery. Lots of 
carbs, lots of calories and it relaxes 
you, which is really important.” 

I think I hiccupped. On the 

spectrum 
of 
fun 
activities, 

running marathons and drinking 
beer seem to fall on opposite 
sides, with little or no crossover 
besides a congratulatory pint at 
a marathon finish line. But then 
again, marathoning and college 
life itself seem incompatible.

There are several hurdles 

for college kids trying to train 
for marathons. First of all, 
our age is a factor, since it’s 
widely accepted that the “ideal” 
marathoning age begins in our 
late 20s and continues through 
our 30s and 40s. Where most 
athletic 
competitions 
are 

dominated by us, the young 
20-somethings (besides sports 
like gymnastics, where 12-year-
olds kick our butts), marathons 

have historically been won by 
an older crowd. Records prove 
it: Last October, physicist and 
running blogger Graydon Snyder 
graphed the ages of the fastest 
marathoners from 1967 to 2014, 
finding that the average “peak” 
age for marathoning was 28 years 
old for both men and women.

So what comes with age? 

That old standby: experience. 
Marathons differ from other 
competitions because of what they 
require — not (relative) speed or 
fast reflexes, but steady endurance 
and self discipline, gained from 
years of plugging in miles and 
strengthening our bodies to last 
for the long run. So in technical 
terms, our moms have a huge head 
start on us, just because they’ve 
been on their legs for longer. But 
our age isn’t the real limiting 
factor in marathon training — it’s 
our lifestyle.

“In college, we put ourselves 

through way worse than a 
marathon,” 
Ornelas 
said, 

laughing. “Think about it. If you 
set aside time each day to train, 
eat well, sleep and be smart 
about recovery, you’re not going 
to damage anything by running 
a marathon.”

Ornelas trained for his first 

marathon during his final fall 
semester at the University, while 
juggling 40 hours of student 
teaching per week for the School of 
Education. He was no stranger to 
running, having already competed 
four years on the University cross 
country and track teams, earning 
All-Great Lakes Region honors 
his senior cross country season. “I 
was one of those rare runners that 
are waiting for the marathon to 
race,” Ornelas said.

He continued, “Compared to 

shorter, faster races on the track, 
marathons are much easier to 
train for.” Ornelas relied on Alex 
Gibby, former University men’s 
cross country coach, to text him 
weekly 
marathon 
workouts, 

like hour-long runs at marathon 
pace. Though Ornelas’s strong 
foundation of collegiate running 
gave him an advantage over 
the average college kid, it made 
him perhaps more prone to 
overtraining.

“Going too fast, too soon or 

too often, is the biggest mistake 
you can make as a marathoner,” 
Ornelas said. “When I first started 

training, I ran every run at six-
minute mile pace and was going 
130 miles per week, about 20 miles 
a day, always alone. I woke up at 5 
a.m. to run before work, then went 
out again at 5 p.m. I was dedicated, 
but I wasn’t enjoying it.”

Overtraining wasn’t his only 

bad habit. Ornelas admits that he 
abandoned his social life, passing 
up nights out with friends who 
were visiting town to turn into 
bed early. He also neglected his 
diet — the marathoner remembers 
a particularly low point two weeks 
before winning the 2013 Detroit 
Free Press Marathon, when he 
was so low on money that dinner 
consisted of a can of soup, poured 
over a hotdog bun.

“Then again, my diet has never 

been very good,” said Ornelas, who 
holds the official cross country 
team record for chicken nuggets (50 
nuggets in 14 minutes). “I don’t eat 
fast food anymore. Still, something 
is always better than nothing — 
even if it’s unhealthy, with how 
much we run, marathoners have to 
take in fuel.”

In order to finish a marathon, 

Ornelas recommends that you 
run at least 40 miles per week, 50 
miles if you want to enjoy the race 
— a mileage sum that is probably 
more than many college students 
have ran before. Training is all 
about working up to the race: 
increasing 
your 
run 
length 

slowly, so that an hour-long run 
becomes 
comfortable; 
fueling 

properly and frequently, allowing 
your body to rebuild and endure; 
spending time recovering, giving 
yourself breaks from the stress 
of training, to focus instead on 
friends and family.

“Running is a passion, but it’s 

also just a hobby,” Ornelas said. 
“Go out with your friends. Recover 
more; go on long, easy runs. If your 
marathon is hard within the first 
10 miles, that’s a bad sign — the 
best races happen when you don’t 
think about the miles.”

The runner finished his drink, 

a quick sip, like a stop at a water 
station. “Nobody has to run 
marathons,” he said. “I love it and 
hate it, but I choose to run. And 
that’s rewarding enough.” 

Middlebrook hiccupped, so it 

turns out she is actually mortal, 

too. To ask her how it feels, 

email hailharp@umich.edu.

HEALTH & FITNESS COLUMN

Marathoning for 

mortals

Front Bottoms: 
All the emotions 

CONCERT REVIEW

Alt-rock band brings 
personal experience 

to the Majestic

By SELENA AGUILERA

For The Daily

Before all of the pop-punk kids 

crawled into every open crevice 
inside of the Majestic to see an 
emotional set from the The Front 
Bottoms, two bands played to a 
relatively unexcited crowd.

The opener was South Caroli-

na-based Elvis Depressedly. Matt 
Cothran started this lo-fi trio 
with his girlfriend back in 2011. 
If you ever want to hear a song 
about getting your heart broken, 
smoking weed, having sex and 
fucking up, look no further. Elvis 
Depressedly is the band for you.

Their performance was more 

than captivating — the music 
spilled onto the crowd and com-
manded everyone to sway left 
and right in unison. I was under 
a spell that the music gods had 
casted upon me. I thought drop-
ping out and becoming a groupie 
was the life for me if it meant 
that I could listen to this band 
every night for the next few 
months. Sadly, their set was cut 
short and I was brought back to 
reality. I patiently waited for the 
next band to take the stage while 
silently wishing Elvis Depressed-
ly played just one more song. Or 

two. Or twelve.

Four men then took the stage. 

These guys, with their full beards 
and New Balance shoes (not the 
cool ones, the dad looking ones), 
were called The Smith Street 
Band. This Austrailian band trav-
eled across the world for this tour 
and have the accents to prove it. 
Frontman Wil Wagner’s voice 
was especially cute — too bad I 
could hardly understand what he 
was shouting throughout the set. 
But, I have to give this band some 
props. I mean, when they started 
to play, they never stopped. Every 
song fell into the next with-
out missing a beat. The way the 
band maintained their energy 
the entire time was impressive 
to say the least. In comparison to 
Elvis Depressedly, however, The 
Smith Street Band’s set dragged. 
I wouldn’t ask for an encore, but 
the time was enjoyed as it lasted.

After heavy anticipation, the 

four total babes that make up The 
Front Bottoms walked on stage. 
Amidst the screaming “I love 
yous,” and effort made by every-
one to grab the band’s attention, 
I felt my skin shed and my inner 
fangirl emerge.

The stage was set under magen-

ta lights as bubbles started to fill 
the air. Balloons dropped from the 
ceiling and it felt as if I was trapped 
in some candy land I would have 
imagined when I was 10. I half 
expected to see Willy Wonka 
somewhere among the sweaty 

bodies that surrounded me.

Frontman Brian Sella’s voice 

sounded amateur, but that’s what 
made his performance so entic-
ing. It showed that he’s imperfect, 
just like everyone else. He made 
interactions with the crowd cre-
ating a personal experience and 
when he sang he closed his eyes. 
The other members did their 
part in contributing to the show, 
but had little emotion and inter-
action with the crowd. All eyes 
were on Sella, especially during 
their hit “Swimming Pool,” when 
his movements made it seem like 
he was making sweet love to his 
guitar. I’m positive that when 
he sang the lyrics, “And I will 
be alone probably the rest of my 
life,” tears started falling from 
the crowd collectively. They 
yanked emotions out of every-
one that night playing songs like 
“Maps,” and “Twelve Feet Deep.”

The majority of their set was 

from their new album, Back on 
Top. I’m not familiar with it, but 
I do know that they performed 
it extremely well. It didn’t mat-
ter that I didn’t know the words, 
the songs still wrecked my heart. 
They signed off with “Twin Sized 
Mattress,” and the 17-song set 
was over leaving everyone want-
ing more.

I guess now all I can do is 

spend my time drowning in cof-
fee as I count the days until The 
Front Bottoms make their way 
back to the mitten.

He explained that the visual 

aesthetic of “The Good Dinosaur” 
is rooted in landscape, noting that 
the film’s Director of Photography 
comes from a background of 
landscape painting. Pytko also 
mentioned that the team used 
U.S. Geological Survey data to 
inspire and sculpt the film’s 
backgrounds.

 “Those initial shots take a 

really long time because we’re 
trying to figure out the shot, 
but we’re also trying to figure 
out the overall pipeline for the 
show,” he said. “It’s not just 
about that shot, we’re trying to 
figure out the bigger challenges. 
It’s usually months and months 
of work.”

 Later in the presentation, 

Pytko screened around seven-to-
eight minutes of the film divided 
into a few different clips. Each of 
the clips centered on protagonists 
Arlo, a cute green Apatosaurus, 
and Spot, a mute cave-boy. One 

emotional scene involved fire-
flies and howling at the night sky. 
Another, surprisingly, involved 
a 
classic 
Western 
aesthetic, 

drawing visual inspiration from 
VistaVision-era 
Westerns 
like 

“The Searchers” and “Gunfight 
at the O.K. Corral.” Yet another 
(possibly 
the 
most 
beautiful 

sequence of computer animation 
I have ever witnessed) involved 
Arlo and Spot running through a 
giant flock of seagulls. 

 Each scene was lit absolutely 

beautifully, and Pytko gave us 
some insight into the process of 
lighting scenes in a digital space. 
He used terms heard frequently 
in real-life lighting like “key” 
and “fill,” but explained that 
there are distinct differences in 
virtual lighting.

 “We try to start from some 

realistic places. We start with 
physically based lights, so they 
sort of try to react like actual 
lights. But then because it’s in a 
virtual space, we have all these 
ways to break that relation-
ship and do what’s important 
for the visual story,” he said. He 

noted that digital lighting artists 
have the ability to decide which 
objects are affected by which 
lights no matter where they’re 
located, among other techniques 
that would be impossible in the 
real world.

 At the risk of sounding hyper-

bolic, these clips of “The Good 
Dinosaur” were the best-look-
ing animated films I have ever 
seen. The film’s natural features, 
rushing water, tall grass and 
night sky all felt photorealistic, 
yet blended perfectly with the 
more cartoony character mod-
els. The film is on another level 
of detail and gorgeous visual 
composition, even in compari-
son to recent beautiful Pixar 
projects like “Brave.” 

 Pytko told me that the pro-

duction process on the film from 
beginning to end took six years. 
That’s an astronomical amount of 
time (and money) to spend on one 
movie. 

 It shows. 
 “The Good Dinosaur” will be 

released in theaters nationwide 
on Nov. 25.

PIXAR
From Page 1A

HAILEY 

MIDDLEBROOK

