Digital Joe #10

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I freely admit it. I´m a whore.

A spoiler whore. (What did you think I meant, you dirty, dirty people?)

It´s not like I wake up every morning and say to myself "Gee, what movie can I totally spoil for myself today?". Rather, I happen upon that one little pivotal plot point through happenstance. For instance, I absolutely love the new version of "Battlestar Galactica" that wrapped up its second season back in March. I watched the show religiously when it was airing new episodes on a weekly basis. (The first person to make a crack about staying in to watch TV on a Friday night will get blown out an airlock.)

I could stay away from the spoiler threads on all my usual message boards and any kind of early review online. Heck, I even stay out of discussion threads just in case someone let The Big One out of the bag. But once Friday morning rolls around and my anticipation of the show is nearly at its peak, there´s a force, almost like a super-magnet inside a bunker on an island, that draws me toward every spoiler there is.

So by the time 10 pm rolls around ("BSG"s show time), I know what´s going to happen, how its going to happen and even how the show ends. And thus, I´m spoiled for the entire episode. I can remember a time not too long ago when the only spoilers fans could get for their favorite movies and TV shows came through print publications that hit the newsstands three weeks after that particular episode debuted anyway.

(My god, having the internet back in 1990 when Captain Picard-as Locutus-was staring down his crew in "The Best of Both Worlds" would have been an absolute godsend. I can´t tell you how many times I paused the tape and advanced frame by frame to catch even a glimpse of what was to come in Part II.)

I couldn´t have been the only person who read every little bit of information at the bookstore in all the sci-fi magazines and TV Guide´s. Any little tidbit of minutiae was like a whole new world for me. I even vividly remember reading a magazine in a Canadian bookstore and telling my sister "seaQuest" was relocating from California to Florida. Granted, it´s a very small piece of information that didn´t mean a whole lot in that soggy, crappy and basically worthless second season. But it was still a revelation to me.

I´ve noticed a couple different kinds of people when it comes to spoilers. There are the "Love ´Em´s" (those who will do anything to get the smallest bit of information); the "Avoiders" (those who go to great lengths not to be spoiled); and then there are the "Killers" (those who literally pop blood vessel´s if they learn an episode title or if people begin to dissect a trailer without spoiler cuts).

I should mention right now, the rest of Digital Joe this week is going to deal with spoilers for TV shows and movies. If you find something out you don´t want to know, don´t be blaming me. Fair enough?

Spoilers are problematic for a lot of casual fans (heck, even the hardcore ones have issues with them). They become nearly impossible for us writers to deal with. I´m always fascinated by how the journalistic-types tactfully dodge the Big Reveal or Heartbreaking Emotional Moment in any form of entertainment. How did the reviewers of "The Empire Strikes Back" get around the fact that Vader was Luke´s father? (My buddy Eddie Feng contends that Vader being Daddy isn´t really a spoiler since the name "Vader" means "Father" is a couple European languages.) How do you not tell an audience that King Kong falls to his death in a classic "Beauty and the Beast" story? And, for the love of everything cinematically holy, does everyone NOW know that Rosebud is a stupid sled?

You would think that knowing someone is going to die on "Lost" is going to cause some real-life hardship for a viewer by the way some people react. If you don´t put a spoiler warning up with a big, bold and flashing headline before you say something along the lines of "next week´s trailer shows Mr. Eko falling off a cliff," you will be strung up before you can say "Boo-YAH!".

Eddie (my inspiration this week-thanks buddy) actually seeks out spoilers so he can focus on other aspects of the movie. I certainly respect his right to not be surprised just as much as I respect someone else´s right to be completely spoiler-free. But I have to ask: is being spoiler-free really realistic?

Point blankly, it´s not. Whether it be in a magazine, on the radio or on the internet, there are too many people who don´t respect other people. TV Guide online proudly proclaimed a couple week´s ago that Cynthia Watros (Libby on "Lost") had signed on for a part in a new series, leading a whole host of people to assume she would leave her current gig. There was no spoiler warning as far as I remember attached to the news story.

One of the worst-and most constant-offenders of promoting spoiler´s has been Twentieth Century Fox. Go take a look at your "Planet of the Apes" set sitting on the shelf.

Go ahead, I´ll wait.

Okay, on nearly every release of this classic movie, isn´t there the MASSIVE spoiler of the Statue of Liberty somewhere on the art? Really, that is the shock and awe (to borrow a military phrase) moment in the flick. So why in the world use it on any portion of the DVD art? It doesn´t make any sense to me. There is undoubtedly at least one person out there who didn´t know about this revelation. Is it fair to ruin the movie for them (if indeed a spoiler will ruin it)?

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