October 17th, 2007
"You can come back, baby," Bob Seger once promised. And who would want to live in a world where Bob Seger's promises mean nothing? Not The A.V. Club, that's for sure. What follows is a list of concepts, programs, acts, and people whose time came and went, but is due to come back around, because we need them more now than ever.
Foolishly ambitious websites
Why? Because some of them, like Kozmo.com, were awesome. Called "the shining example of a good idea gone bad" by CNET, Kozmo let customers rent DVDs, order food, and buy CDs, pregnancy tests, and pints of Ben & Jerry's, plus tons more. It'd all arrive via bike messenger in an hour for no service charge. Small orders—like a candy bar—soon did the company in, though: According to Securities & Exchange Commission documents, the company made $3.5 million in 1999—and lost $26.3 million.
Why now? More than six years have passed since Kozmo made its last delivery. Surely someone has figured out a way to make money doing this, right?
How they might come back: Kozmo has, sort of. In 2005, Kozmo vet Chris Siragusa started MaxDelivery.com, a more grocery-focused site, but with the one missing piece of Kozmo's puzzle: booze. Unfortunately, it's only available in New York City.
Ben Affleck
Why? After Affleck and buddy Matt Damon wrote their own ticket with the Oscar-winning Good Will Hunting, their careers split off like the tortoise and the hare." While Damon carefully cultivated a reputation as a serious actor with impeccable taste, Affleck jumped right into the Hollywood fast lane, winning instant fame before crashing hard on the heels of lousy projects like Daredevil, Surviving Christmas, and Gigli, not to mention the tabloid excesses of the "Bennifer" affair. Truth be told, there isn't much in his filmography that earns him a second chance, yet his public appearances reveal an intelligent, affable man who stands a good chance of aging well, now that his wild, crappy oats have been sown.
Why now? Affleck's performance as George Reeves in last year's Hollywoodland was a revelation. No doubt Affleck could identify with Reeves' precipitous downfall, and that mournful spirit carries over to his directorial debut, Gone Baby Gone, a superb Dennis Lehane adaptation with a great feel for his working-class Boston roots.
How he might come back: The fact that Affleck isn't an A-list Hollywood star any more should work in his favor, since the temptation to make Pearl Harbor 2 isn't an issue. Hopefully, Gone Baby Gone will be a new statement of purpose.
Rick Moranis
Why? Before he was resigned to churning out family dreck like Little Giants or Honey, I Shrunk The Increasingly Uninteresting Contrivance, Rick Moranis was a gifted comic actor who honed his versatile chops on SCTV, where he did amazing impressions of everyone from Neil Diamond to George Carlin. Then came Ghostbusters, and suddenly, all anybody wanted from him was some variation on the wimpy, voice-cracking Louis Tully. To his credit, nobody did it better (see also: Little Shop Of Horrors), but after Honey came along, Disney got its hooks into Moranis and never let go. When his wife died, Moranis left the movie business altogether to raise his kids, choosing instead to dabble in music with albums like The Agoraphobic Cowboy.
Why now? With Ghostbusters compadre Bill Murray proving that there's life beyond the easy laugh, now is a perfect time for Moranis to finally try his hand at something that requires him to do more than just talk funny.
How he might come back: By taking a role in something by Wes Anderson or Noah Baumbach that lets him be understatedly quirky, rather than just another nerd caricature.
Listening To The Grateful Dead Without Guilt
Why? No band in rock history comes with more negative baggage than The Dead. To appreciate all that Jerry Garcia hath wrought, you have to claw your way through decades of embarrassing Deadhead jackassery and aggressive nay-saying from rock critics, hipsters, and punk rockers. Those who can survive the journey—many people don't even try—will discover that The Dead doesn't fit the stereotype of a stoned, directionless jam band wanking away for stoned, directionless people. Like its better-regarded peers, Bob Dylan and The Band, The Dead at its best (see American Beauty and Mars Hotel, for starters) dug deep into the roots of American music and brought it into the modern age, simultaneously evoking the past, commenting on the present, and pointing toward the future. And the jams are pretty cool, too.
Why now? The Dead gets blamed for inspiring jam bands, but un-jammy acts like Wilco, Oakley Hall, Ryan Adams, Will Oldham, Midlake, and Paul Duncan owe the group an obvious debt on their recent releases. Other bands, like Broken Social Scene and Animal Collective, have plugged into the Dead's freewheeling spirit of collective collaboration.
How it might come back: Take a deep breath, forget the baggage, and buy American Beauty. Just don't tell your friends.
Hulk
Why? Detractors weren't wrong when they assessed Ang Lee's foray into the realm of big-budget superhero movies as ponderous, slow, atmospheric at the expense of action, and more in love with its cineastic allusions to Alfred Hitchcock (via shots of golden San Francisco and a quasi-Bernard Herrmann score) than with its source material in old comic books. The objectors were wrong, however, when they wrote off such attributes as liabilities. Hulk's moody pacing has helped to sustain and bear out the film's mysteries over time, and even its most indulgent scenes—many marked by the conspicuous absence of a certain green character with big muscles and bad shorts—answer to a special kind of ambition.
Why now? Numerous other superhero films have hewed toward the dark and psychological in recent years, but none has made as grand a game of retooling traditional action-movie arcs and narrative ticks. Have we reached a point yet when what we really want is for Hollywood to be more explosive and less experimental?
How it might come back: Repeat viewings offer rewarding formalist games and psychedelic visuals—none of which are drawbacks late at night.
Gillian Anderson
Why? Being so widely identified for one role—in this case, the quietly sultry Dana Scully on The X-Files—isn't always helpful for actors looking to expand their repertoire, but if David Duchovny can have his own TV show (Californication), surely his more gifted counterpart can find good work, too. Exhibits A through Z in support of Anderson's talent are on display in The House Of Mirth, a sterling Edith Wharton adaptation in which her tragic socialite suffers for asserting herself in a society that tacitly forbids it. And that famous monotone of hers can be used to deadpan comic effect, too, as it was when she played herself (and Widow Wadman) in Tristram Shandy: A Cock & Bull Story.
Why now? It used to be a sad fact in Hollywood that decent roles for women over 40 were tough to come by, but with beautiful older women like Laura Linney, Mary-Louise Parker, Maria Bello, and Virginia Madsen getting plum roles these days, it seems like the time is right for Anderson to stage a comeback.
How she might come back: Another X-Files movie appears to be in the offing—we'll believe it when we see it—but new projects with frequent Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert B. Wiede and Love & Death On Long Island director Richard Kwietniowski sound more promising.
The Hughes Brothers
Why? The Hughes brothers' 1993 debut Menace II Society filtered the violence and brutality of inner-city life through the dark prism of film noir. In the process, it served as a bracing, downbeat counterpoint to the message-movie earnestness of John Singleton's Boyz In The Hood. Though derided at the time as an overreaching sophomore slump 1994's wildly ambitious blaxploitation-styled crime drama Dead Presidents is far better than its reputation suggests, as is the wildly entertaining 1999 street-life documentary American Pimp. After striking out with the 2001 adaptation of From Hell, the Hughes brothers retreated into television work. Hopefully they're already mapping out a return to the big screen.
Why now? In a world where Soul Plane and Hood Of Horror resurrect all the worst aspects of blaxploitation with none of the genre's redemptive low-down virtues, cinema would benefit tremendously from the return of a black filmmaking team that oozes ambition and style.
How they might come back: After the trip into television and period films, a cinematic return to the mean streets that fueled Menace, Presidents, and Pimp could be just what the brothers need for a comeback.
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