Plan 9 From Outer Space
I remember seeing Plan 9 From Outer Space for the first time in university, which was notorious for being the worst movie every made. One of the things that made it great was its use of footage inserted within footage that was intended to be a part of the plot, but was clearly unrelated to the plot. As we enter this period of new-run inserted into old-runs, I cannot help but think that Lynn Johnston is doing a sort of Plan 9 From Outer Space homage.
Last week we saw an extended sequence of reprints which showed Dr. John Patterson getting ready for work in his striped shirt and coat. When he arrived at work last Saturday, his striped shirt was replaced with a white shirt and a tie. In Sunday’s strip coming back from work, he also is shown wearing a white shirt and a tie. But the last panel of the Saturday strip was a lead-in to reprint of John Patterson talking to Dr. Ted McCaulay, in today’s For Better or For Worse where John is wearing a dental smock. It’s like in Plan 9 From Outer Space where 2 unrelated film clips are set together with a new bit of story, and none of the clothes match from scene-to-scene, so it is obvious they don’t match and the director did not care to take the time to make them match. He was just editing together pieces of film to try to make a story.
I wonder if Lynn Johnston is thinking the same way. If she were to have written last Saturday’s strip to connect the two reprint series we would have had something like this:
Panel 1: John takes off his coat and a striped shirt is revealed underneath it. Jean Baker says, “You had 2 calls this morning.”
Panel 2: John puts on his dental smock. Jean says, “One from Marie our hygienist and one from your wife.”
Panel 3: John is on the phone saying, “But, what can I do to keep you from leaving me? Sob!” Jean Baker says, “Is there something wrong, Dr. Patterson?” John says, “I need a coffee.”
Panel 4: John and Ted in the coffee shop. John is still wearing his dental smock. John says, “Have you ever had someone leave you Ted?” Ted thinks, “I think I’m going to leave and get a stronger coffee. It’s way too early in the morning for this.”
This way, John has moved from costume to costume linking the strips and the surprise punchline of John being all worked up over Marie leaving instead of Elly leaving still works, having been set up but not directly revealed.
Instead we have Saturday’s strip revealing the punchline, and a jarring change of outfit for Dr. Patterson which cannot be explained. It is like Lynn Johnston has this story to tell about Marie the departing hygienist and she has already written and drawn it. Then she picks 2 series of strips somewhat related to the story to add to it. You would think a more sensible method would be to look at the strips, see how people appear in the strips and try to match their dialogue and costume. But sensible and Lynn Johnston are two terms that do not belong together.
Lynn Johnston has now taken comic strips in a range of badness matched in film-making by the famed bad movie director Edward Wood. As I have said many times, just when you think Lynn Johnston can’t make it worse than it is, she does it again, and in a way and style I wouldn’t have thought possible. I can no longer evaluate her for quality of her slice-of-life drama. Instead I must consider her creativity in making her strip worse. The woman is a genius in the same way that director Ed Wood was with Plan 9 from Outer Space. Can she make this strip worse than it is? I have every confidence in Lynn Johnston.
Last week we saw an extended sequence of reprints which showed Dr. John Patterson getting ready for work in his striped shirt and coat. When he arrived at work last Saturday, his striped shirt was replaced with a white shirt and a tie. In Sunday’s strip coming back from work, he also is shown wearing a white shirt and a tie. But the last panel of the Saturday strip was a lead-in to reprint of John Patterson talking to Dr. Ted McCaulay, in today’s For Better or For Worse where John is wearing a dental smock. It’s like in Plan 9 From Outer Space where 2 unrelated film clips are set together with a new bit of story, and none of the clothes match from scene-to-scene, so it is obvious they don’t match and the director did not care to take the time to make them match. He was just editing together pieces of film to try to make a story.
I wonder if Lynn Johnston is thinking the same way. If she were to have written last Saturday’s strip to connect the two reprint series we would have had something like this:
Panel 1: John takes off his coat and a striped shirt is revealed underneath it. Jean Baker says, “You had 2 calls this morning.”
Panel 2: John puts on his dental smock. Jean says, “One from Marie our hygienist and one from your wife.”
Panel 3: John is on the phone saying, “But, what can I do to keep you from leaving me? Sob!” Jean Baker says, “Is there something wrong, Dr. Patterson?” John says, “I need a coffee.”
Panel 4: John and Ted in the coffee shop. John is still wearing his dental smock. John says, “Have you ever had someone leave you Ted?” Ted thinks, “I think I’m going to leave and get a stronger coffee. It’s way too early in the morning for this.”
This way, John has moved from costume to costume linking the strips and the surprise punchline of John being all worked up over Marie leaving instead of Elly leaving still works, having been set up but not directly revealed.
Instead we have Saturday’s strip revealing the punchline, and a jarring change of outfit for Dr. Patterson which cannot be explained. It is like Lynn Johnston has this story to tell about Marie the departing hygienist and she has already written and drawn it. Then she picks 2 series of strips somewhat related to the story to add to it. You would think a more sensible method would be to look at the strips, see how people appear in the strips and try to match their dialogue and costume. But sensible and Lynn Johnston are two terms that do not belong together.
Lynn Johnston has now taken comic strips in a range of badness matched in film-making by the famed bad movie director Edward Wood. As I have said many times, just when you think Lynn Johnston can’t make it worse than it is, she does it again, and in a way and style I wouldn’t have thought possible. I can no longer evaluate her for quality of her slice-of-life drama. Instead I must consider her creativity in making her strip worse. The woman is a genius in the same way that director Ed Wood was with Plan 9 from Outer Space. Can she make this strip worse than it is? I have every confidence in Lynn Johnston.
posted by howard at 8:17 PM
10 Comments:
howard,
Lynn Johnston has now taken comic strips in a range of badness matched in film-making by the famed bad movie director Edward Wood. As I have said many times, just when you think Lynn Johnston can’t make it worse than it is, she does it again, and in a way and style I wouldn’t have thought possible. I can no longer evaluate her for quality of her slice-of-life drama. Instead I must consider her creativity in making her strip worse.
It still amazes me that there arc complaints about how boring this is, Jusst because theycan no longer have fun mocking the endless hosannas being directed at the worthless Anthony doesn't mean that things are dull. Watching someone self-destruct is always fascinating.
dreadedcandiru2,
Watching someone self-destruct is always fascinating.
Especially when they self-destruct in unusual or creative ways. Of course, I prefer to think of Lynn Johnston not so much as self-destructive, but as someone finding new ways to do what she did worse than she did it before.
Yes! We now have *three* games to play:
1. Spot-the-retcon
2. Connect-the-strips (to an unrelated original where the joke was done better)
3. Fix-the-continuity (at the rerun/ interpol-quel interface)
You did a great job on #3 today, Howard
CanuckDownSouth,
You did a great job on #3 today, Howard
Thanks. Great list of games. I would add a sub to your list.
1. Spot-the-retcon
a. New-run
b. Missing old-run (for when Lynn drops a strip out of the original reprint sequence and thus changes the effect of the storyline)
i. Makes John / Rod look worse
ii. Makes Mike / Aaron look worse
iii. Makes Elly / Lynn look better
The only thing I could think about this strip is, Marie has been providing more to John than just the skills of a hygienist. I think this was Lynn's way of hinting at her suspicions that Rod cheated with his hygienists all along. There is no other reason to take it so personally. I think what he is saying here is, "Who knows where I will find another hygienist willing to blow me in the X-ray room?"
I think Lynn knew Rod was a cheater all along. She just never thought he'd actually leave her.
Probably not surprising that Wood had such a mishmash in Plan 9 because he was determined to use footage of Bela Lugosi. Once Lugosi died, he started using that weird body double on top of everything else.
Yep; Lynn has killed off the original Pattersons, and now she's using bad doubles just to put something together.
qnjones,
The only thing I could think about this strip is, Marie has been providing more to John than just the skills of a hygienist.
That’s the way it came off as it ran originally. The interesting addition is that we are now informed that Marie was married and had a child. I know the woman with whom Rod was rumoured to have had his affair was married and a former hygienist of Rod’s, but I don’t know if she had any children. I can’t help but think these additional details are supposed to be a clue as to the nature of the woman for whom Rod left Lynn.
I think Lynn knew Rod was a cheater all along. She just never thought he'd actually leave her.
Certainly there are enough examples of this in the strip, even in the first year. But if that was not conclusive enough, in her interview with Macleans, she practically said it happened with Rod in Lynn Lake, with her comments about how commonplace adultery was. It is pretty easy to draw the conclusion that Lynn thought Rod was cheating all along. However, when Rod actually started cheating or how often, we don’t know. It’s difficult to tell with Lynn’s overactive imagination, how much is true or not in her interviews.
debjyn,
Probably not surprising that Wood had such a mishmash in Plan 9 because he was determined to use footage of Bela Lugosi. Once Lugosi died, he started using that weird body double on top of everything else.
Yep; Lynn has killed off the original Pattersons, and now she's using bad doubles just to put something together.
I like it. Yet another way that the new-runs are like Plan 9.
howard,
It is pretty easy to draw the conclusion that Lynn thought Rod was cheating all along. However, when Rod actually started cheating or how often, we don’t know. It’s difficult to tell with Lynn’s overactive imagination, how much is true or not in her interviews.
That's right. It's almost impossible to get an accurate portrait of their marriage based on her testimony alone. You first have to allow for her tendency to exaggerate how bad other people were and how blameless she was. In her mind, the naked truth has to be clothed in a garment of falsehoods so as to make it respectable.
dreadedcandiru2,
It's almost impossible to get an accurate portrait of their marriage based on her testimony alone. You first have to allow for her tendency to exaggerate how bad other people were and how blameless she was.
One of the nice things about the earlier strips is that Lynn Johnston often had Elly blame herself for some things, usually moments of Elly and poor parenting compared to her own standard or to Anne Nichols. Although the hygienist looks like Cheryl Ladd, which we know is true from the CBC documentary of the time, the idea that Rod Johnston would have 5 dental hygienists in Lynn Lake from which he could knock it down to 2 candidates seems highly unlikely. Lynn Lake is far too remote to have such a large number of available, unemployed hygienists. Considering Elly’s later concession that the woman John hired was not as brainless as she imagined from her appearance, we get Elly accepting a little blame. This gives us a clue as to what really happened.
My guess is that Rod hired a very pretty hygienist, and given he was working in Lynn Lake, looks probably ranked much lower on his list of requirements below “willing to work in Lynn Lake.” Lynn got upset at how pretty she was. Lynn admitted the woman was competent even though she was pretty. Lynn had John admit in her strip he hired the woman for her looks, something that Rod (or any sane husband) would never admit to his insecure wife.
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