Something FRANK Should Like (But Probably Won't)

Frank is my friend. He is a filmmaker and a musician ("musician" if you're Danny) and an all-around creative force. Frank is famously open-minded and generous, but also resistant and hard-headed when it comes to new things. He is also the inspiration for the first in my ongoing series of things I'm obsessed with that my friends should be obsessed with too. Because masturbation is fun.

Reasons Frank Should Like The Hold Steady:


1. Because Dan Hamill Speaks The Truth when he calls them "terrific storytellers with a keen sense of humor whose favorite topics include the misfits and the marginalized of their respective environments."

2. Because even if you think their recorded work is overrated, live this band brings a sheer energy and joy to what they do that is impossibly catchy--kinda like vintage Afghan Whigs. Yeah, I namedrop. If you don't know about the Afghan Whigs, try this for the recent shit. And get the fuck off my blog.

3. Because they are middle-aged guys thoroughly enjoying being rock stars--in other words, two stops down the Frank Jeffrey highway. Viva la Hype Factor!

4. Free beer cozies!


5. Because I get a special prize for being the 1,000,0000th blogger to write about The Hold Steady.

Reasons Frank Probably Won't Like The Hold Steady


1. Because we fear change.

2. Because after the Pitchfork review of the latest album (Boys and Girls in America), the moment of cultural backlash is nigh.

3. Because, conventionally speaking, the lead singer Craig Finn has a voice that is to singing what Action Jackson is to great American filmmaking1.

4. Because point #2 of Reasons Frank Should Like The Hold Steady is dangerously close to Brandon Flowers' justification for Sam's Town. And I apologize for that.

Reasons You Should Care What I Think, Even If Frank Doesn't
Because even if you don't agree with those sentiments, the world needs more no-bullshit, straight ahead, meat and potatoes rock and roll. Indie rock is starting to sound a lot like Bruce Springsteen (see also: Ben Kweller's latest album), and I, for one, am okay with that2. Because you can't let the risk of being labelled a hipster douchebag keep you from being happy. And because your life will be 10% better after you hear "Southland Girls" for the first time3.

Footnotes:
1. Obligatory shoehorned film reference.

2. Sorry about the Bruce Springsteen comparison. Jesus guys, it's really inevitable.

3. Mileage may vary.

Did I Really Namedrop Spielberg and the Coen Brothers in this Thing? Yeah. Yeah, I Kinda Did

Gwoemul (The Host) ( 2006; d. Joon Ho-Bong, s. Kang Ho-Song, Hie-Bong Byeon, Hae-il Park, Du-na Bae, Ah-sung Ko). I owe it all to The Kidd. I read the good reviews of Memories of Murder, the first American release from Joon Ho-Bong, but I don’t know that it would have sprung up to the must-see list without a little prodding from him. And keep in mind that The Kidd and I very rarely agree on movies. We nearly got into a fistfight after V for Vendetta, for god’s sake. Nobody should fight after V for Vendetta.

If you haven’t seen Memories of Murder, stop right here, go rent it, and then come back. I’ll wait. Seriously.

Welcome back.

Now that you’ve seen it, you know that Memories of Murder plays like the Coen Brothers with a social conscience. The artful and unique camerawork, the juxtaposition of humor with truly harrowing scenes, and the emotional distance recall Blood Simple or Fargo. But Joon Ho-Bong adds to it by clearly using the vehicle of the serial killer to talk about the relationship both between North and South Korea, and between South Korea and the West. And he does this through imagery—there is no pause for metaphorical clarification. I know about as much as W. about the Koreas, but it’s clear that the time and place of this serial killer’s arrival are well chosen, and that the director sees something particularly Western about the serial killer phenomenon.

And now The Host ups the ante. Considerably. The camerawork remains bold and assured. The comedy remains deadpan and very, very funny. The director remains at a distance when it comes to making moral judgment. The darkness remains...well, dark. This time, however, the storytelling is audacious and the characters are not merely vehicles for symbolism and amusement. You can stand up and cheer in this movie (and trust me, we did), while at the same time acknowledging that it's more than sheer plot device when the firebrand brother who participated in democratic protests while in college is coming to a final conflict with an American-borne monster loaded up with Molotov cocktails.

Mixing the emotional beats of Spielberg with the cynicism of stylists like the Coen Brothers usually gets you, well, a mess.This movie, however, is funny, scary, and smart. Each character gets his or her chance to shine, including the monster—not that the monster becomes anything but an eating machine, but it has moments of both clumsiness and unexpected beauty (the CGI is tremendous, minus the end—this monster lives and breathes). Like Spielberg, the movie isn’t afraid to exploit the clichés for the sake of a good story (you don’t show a bow and arrow in the first act without having it go off in the fifth act), but like the Coen brothers, it’s not afraid to exploit those clichés for the sake of twisting your assumptions and giving you a truly thrilling and unexpected experience—not because there’s some awkward twist at the end, only because you’re truly unsure where this ride is going. Also, like the Coen brothers, Joon Ho-Bong knows how to make proper use of really weird dudes.
And, yeah, it’s another big monster ravaging a city movie, and yeah, that monster is the product of American influence in the area, but you know what—Godzilla’s got nothing on The Host.

This is a movie about crisis and hope. A movie about human mistakes, and the consequences of those mistakes leading to higher and higher escalations. About people trying to do the right thing, and blocked by a series of missed identifications, faulty assumptions, and resultant disasters. It’s probably one of the best post-9/11 movies of the year (sorry United 93 and World Trade Center), if only because it points out the arrogant American assumptions of late are only the latest in a string, and that arrogance is not only an American trait (although we seem to be particularly good at it—this is also the best use of bad white guy actors I’ve seen outside a Paul Verhoeven movie).

In a week when I got to see Scorcese return to form in a huge way, it was a privilege to watch another great appear on the scene. My world just got a little bit bigger. And when’s the last time you said that coming out of a horror movie.

And before you accuse me of wretched excess, think how'd you'd feel if I left in the references to Kubrick and The Third Man.

Next Time: Shark Attack 3: Megalodon

P. S. I know I haven’t been doing this for a while. Blame it on Lucky Number Slevin. I’ll be back with the roundup of a terrible summer soon.

Comfort Food

Inside Man (2006; d. Spike Lee; s. Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster). I was watching Top Chef this weekend on Bravo, and thinking about how this reality show separates from other shows. Don't get me wrong--I watch a lot of shit. The Slither review is coming any day now, for example. But the reason those other shows are shit is because they ultimately have so little at stake. It's funny to see beautiful women get worked up and humiliated for something that will be worth very little, because while attractive, they're not models. I think the reason the drama gets so thick on those shows is because they all recognize that they won't be stars. Instead, the suffering has to bring value.

But on Top Chef, you watch talented people do their thing, with minimal fuss. Any interpersonal problems become just another obstacle to doing your job--if you lose your shit, you lose the game, simple as that. And very little tops the simple pleasure of watching a talented person enjoying him or herself at work.

Hence, Inside Man. Inside Man is about smart talented people going about their business, both inside and outside of the movie. Within the fiction of the movie, the characters are all smart and insightful and good at what they do. The script ambles along, drifting here and there, and wiping out questions of right and wrong with regards to Owen and Washington. Instead, the conflict is approach-approach. The characters are so well drawn that I rooted for both of them, and the tension I felt derived from being unable to see how the movie could resolve itself in a satisfying way (e.g., neither man loses).

In this sense, the movie itself is the heist. The director and performers give their all to showing you exactly what they are doing the entire film (Denzel is cool, Spike is stylish and New York through and through, Clive is dangerous, Jodie is smart and cynical) and daring you to figure out how they're going to pull it off in the end. When it does happen, it's a pleasure to be fooled.

The best part is, the personal drama that invades the other movies (Spike's occasional forays into wretched excess, for example) is kept to a bare minimum. The characters are focused on the goal the entire time. Which makes this movie a surprise joy--not because it does anything new or different or innovative, but because talented people know what you want to see, and they give it to you just the way you want it.



It's funny--along with Night Watch, 2006 seems to be a celebration of going back to the basics. At least for me. If I start blogging about missing Matlock, somebody shoot me. (Columbo's okay though.)


Next Time: The Real Cancun

Requiem for a Dreamer

Nochnoy Dozor (Night Watch) (2004 ; d. Timur Bekmambetov, s. Konstantin Khabensky). Hero with a Thousand Faces could be the death of me. Joseph Campbell's magnum opus and Robert McKee's Story are distinguished in my life as the most influential books that I have never read. What matters is a ton of people read these books, who I in turn watched and read made movies that I saw and thought about and emulated. Joseph Campbell helped George Lucas turn the high art of The Hidden Fortress into high adventure that still managed to be successful art. Campbell and McKee do everything wrong with art--they argue that plot dictates character, versus the other way around. (Keep in mind I am admittedly and purposefully getting this wrong--everything I know about these guys comes from internet postings and Adaptation).

Night Watch openly rips off the Star Wars, Highlander, and about 80 other fantasy films (although, sadly, not Willow), but it's got flaky ideas rooted in Russian re-interpretation of the ideas in American fantasy, which, as Campbell points out, is pretty much ripped off from myth in the first place. Night Watch is the kind of movie you're vaguely embarrassed to enjoy--not because it's a guilty pleasure (it's too well made for that) but because it's simple-minded and hits beats that you aren't supposed to hit and is old-fashioned and predictable, even in where its surprises will come. You can feel the structure of the ideas. It's the cinematic equivalent of Law and Order (Okay, it's 9:46--here comes the twist).

I enjoyed Night Watch. I might have enjoyed it less if it was more proximal to the movies it rips off. But the thing is, Americans don't do this anymore. Much of the 90s and the 00s have seemed to wrestle with character dictating plot, the way art should, but at the end of things, it's felt like awkward hybrids of the dramas of the 70s with the blockbusters of the 80s.

Which means we have fewer extraneous sex scenes happening in the third acts of movies. And more politics and monologuing. American film seems reluctant to be ridiculous. Meanwhile, this movie has vampires running around eating each other, instead of pontificating about it. And has little toys sprout spider legs and take off running. And thrives off ridiculous contrivances to keep the pedal to the metal. And somewhere in the universe, Luc Besson makes movies in which Jet Li is raised as a dog and Jason Statham is a driving badass fighting villains with terrible accents and it is ridiculous, but it's fun.

Night Watch reminds me of the old promise of a Lambert movie, a Seagal movie, an Adrian Lyne movie. It violates everything I believe in, it kills me that Campbell and McKee widescreen a complicated and nuanced process that grows and changes over time into an absolute blur of common structure. But it works.

So hey everybody, let's get retarded.

Next Time: Jacob's Ladder

'Johnny Utah IS Hot.'

Point Break Live (2006; s. Julie Feuer, d. and also s. a bunch of random fucking geniuses). Point Break (1991) is a throwback to a simpler time, when major studio released action movies could be about cryptohomo relationships between male leads, star Lori Petty and Flea, and proteges of James Cameron, like proteges of Prince, could still get work.
That's all I have to say about Point Break. Now we're going to talk about Point Break Live. Point Break Live is a fairly straight telling of the saga of Johnny Utah, ex football great, now FBI agent, out to track down a devious group of bank robbers called the Ex Presidents.Kicked to the side by the F.B.I. brass ('cos that's the way shit goes down in the 80s), Utah is taken under the wing of another misfit, who has a name, but is, let's face it, Academy Award Winner Gary Busey.
Anyway, Busey has this Crazy Idea that the bank robbers might be surfers. So he sends Johnny undercover. You know, because great football players with bum knees make great surfers.

Until Johnny is recruited by Bodhi, a zen master of what it means to lead the life free of fear. A life of 100% pure adrenaline.

Ultimately, Johnny finds his loyalties divided between the straitlaced stuck up assholery of the F.B.I. and the intense, dangerous surfers.

Ultimately, however, the surfers reveal that they ARE the Ex Presidents, and that, as always, when in doubt we should listen to Busey. However, Johnny's cover is also blown. Violence ensues, innocents get hurt

And Johnny has to take Bodhi down. In the most dramatic scene of the movie/play, Bodhi attempts to escape by skydiving, and Johnny chases him down. Without a parachute. Because that's how Keanu rolls, mother fucker.

But Bodhi gets away.
Johnny chases Bodhi around the world, finally catching him in Australia during the 50 year storm, which brings it with the hardcore waves.

They fight, and Johnny gets the better of Bodhi, but then lets him go, sacrificing him to the storm. Again, that's how Keanu rolls.

Despite my multiple Keanu references, you've probably figured out that isn't Keanu in the pictures. Overcoming performance anxiety, Julie decided to bring it with her Keanu impression and win over the crowd.

Now, the Keanu impression is an underrated art. It's almost surfer, but dumb instead of Zen/stoned. It's almost dumb, but with an edge of something that you can almost pretend is smarter than what it is. Now, you really have to appreciate the degree of difficulty here. First, it's not like Julie was rehearsing or anything. Her basic directions were 'read the cue cards' and 'if we push you over, go limp.' Maintaining The Keanu Voice the entire time, whether she was taking major bumps while being taught how to surf, being tackled by the big breasted production assistant with a massive sleeping bag (I've had dreams like that), or robbing a bank with cap guns and NO RUBBER MASK.

And how did she do?

A star is born.

Despite catcalling from the audience in appreciation of her fine work, and a proliferation of douchebags in the corner who looked like they were living the whole "we're the pretty boy jock fraternity from every 80s movie (sans Billy Zabka)," it was pretty remarkable what they were able to pull off in the performance space, including two kick ass skydiving scenes.

So What Did I Learn from All This?

1. I have a new pick for which of my friends is best equipped to be an action star. (sorry Danny)
2. You gotta live to get radical.

3. It's really kinda hot to watch a beautiful woman simulate bank robbery and sky diving. And sell meatball sandwiches.

Next Time: Roadhouse: The Musical

The Accidental Anarchist

The Matador (2005; d. Richard Shephard; s. Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis). Film is inherently collaborative. Here’s where I make a solemn pitch: trust the actor. When it comes to something like Hamlet, the actor’s interpretation will be what defines the play, moreso than the director doctoring the formula, having (SPOILER) Hamlet survive or mow everyone down with a machine gun, for example. Similarly, as much as people complain, no one really wants anything substantial to happen that might be life-changing for Batman or Superman. It inevitably fucks with the formula, and the formula is a comforting one.

But just because there is a formula, does not mean there cannot be innovation. Shakespeare wrote a whole lot of sonnets with a set structure. And let’s not get started on haiku. Or, consider the case of Pierce Brosnan. Brosnan has been a generally successful Bond. However, Brosnan’s best work has involved giving the piss to the Bond franchise. Remington Steele was a thinly veiled Bond joke, providing us with the suave, roguish British enigma who is secretly so incompetent at everything but conning people that Stephanie Zimbalist looks like Jack Bauer next to him. The early years of the show are amazing romantic comedy, so much so that the Bond producers (missing the joke?) offered him the Bond gig.

Even within the Bond set, there is an element of subversion to Brosnan’s performance, particularly in the best of his run, Tomorow Neverf Dies, which I believe features his defining moment as Bond. During a routine Bond movie stunt, Brosnan is steering a car by remote control from the back seat, and manages to do the usual Bondian con that results in the bad guys taking themselves out. But then, Brosnan breaks into a boyish laugh at his own cleverness. It’s a defining moment for his version of Bond—distinct from Connery’s cold machismo, Moore’s ironic detachment, Dalton’s angry solemnity, and Lazenby’s…blandness? There’s a very real sense that Brosnan plays Bond as being just as surprised as what he gets away with as we are, but only able to show that delight and surprise in private—behind the suave mask, he’s a little less cold, a little more relatable.

Plus, during his Bond run, Brosnan did a little number called The Tailor of Panama, where he again undid the Bond myth, showing what it means to be a charming and sophisticated amoral killer in the real world, when your actions have real consequences.However, despite evidence that the formula was working (nice bump in Bond receipts, nice ratings for Remington Steele), the Powers That Be fucked with things. In Remington Steele, they started to explore the back story, started to make Brosnan a little more competent. (Maybe this was a Brosnan call—it is rather emasculating to play the romantic equivalent of Inspector Gadget). And the Powers That Be in charge of the Bond franchise decided to innovate the franchise not by playing to what has been successful (letting a solid performer innovate within the formula) but instead by doing what has sunk each performer (“updating” the formula with darkening plots such as the James Bond-gone-rogue bits, or strengthening the female characters and pretending that it has always been a great honor to be a Bond girl. It sure did wonders for Tanya Roberts and Maud Adams, right? Right?).

In other words, the formula conformed to what the audience expected (or more precisely, what the audience was perceived to expect), versus capitalizing on what the actor might bring to the table that was new and different and interesting.And now comes The Matador, Brosnan’s first important role since his official exit/discharge from the Bond franchise. The movie itself is fairly average—the typical hit man meets ordinary guy and both lives are changed independent movie set-up of the last few years. Kinnear (a decent actor) and Davis (a great actress who has done more with less) are stuck in hoplelessly didactic roles, maybe a notch above narrators.

Brosnan lifts it up however, by doing what he does best, trashing the Bond myth. He plays his assassin, Julian Noble, as not a robot or ubersuave killing machine, but as a bullying child, gleefully lying, manipulating, and changing his identity to match whatever the situation requires. Even before the crisis of conscience Kinnear’s character is supposed to induce, Brosnan is already needy and wheedling, begging for some kind of recognition or favor from others. He’s cursing like a sailor, he’s shifting from crass to angry and paranoid to capriciously funny in a matter of seconds—he’s not cut off from his emotions, he’s running strictly on his emotions.

Performance-wise, Brosnan is loose and free-wheeling in a way he hasn’t been since that Bond moment, or perhaps that movie where he plays the divorced Irish da trying to get his daughter back—I was already choking up in the trailers for that one, so I refused to see it to save whatever tattered shreds of dignity I have left.

What’s sad about The Matador is the movie fails to follow the actor to his logical conclusion, instead opting for something warmer and fuzzier. Like many of the post-Tarantino indie films in the mid-90s: the family is clearly rejuvenated by their partial adoption of Julian Noble and the introduction of bloody violence into the family, but nobody follows that to its natural conclusion. Is Brosnan’s manchild a new son for them, someone for them to take care of? What about the flirtation that Brosnan engages in with Davis (which essentially gets mentioned and dropped, despite the intriguing and queasy possibilities)? What about Kinnear’s clear mancrush on Brosnan, and the intriguing and queasy possibilities of that? What about the suggestion that Brosnan keeps his propensity to violence? Instead, the movie becomes: do Noble’s panic attacks get resolved? In other words, they take a damaged, vulnerable, self-satisfied guy and make him more competent, more conventional, more emo. More like us.

Depressing, isn’t it.

Sure, Noble’s a mess, but Brosnan makes him a compelling mess, and frankly watching him start to give a substantial shit (as opposed to the mild cases of giving-a-shit that bring on his drinking and whoring binges and drunken apologies) is boring. The world needs a little anarchy, and watching Brosnan bring that kind of structured anarchy to the table is a rare pleasure. Sometimes, we don’t want to see growth, or change. Sometimes, we just want to see bad people do what they do, and get a little vicarious thrill. And is that so wrong?

Next Time: After the Sunset

Come What May

Perhaps Love (2005; d. Peter Chan; s. Takeshi Kaneshiro, Jackie Cheung, Xun Zhou) Hong Kong films understand myth. They literalize metaphor, making theme into the guiding force of a relationship, often moreso than any recognizable human behavior. I would say this was an ethnocentric position, but there is a direct correlation between John Woo’s willingness to make manifest his particular obsessions and themes in the absolute wonkiest way possible, and the success of the work correlated exactly with how explicitly they treated the metaphors (tracked in a straight line from Hard Target to Broken Arrow to Face/Off, and then back down the line again through MI: 2. And The Mirror Has Two Faces).

I hoped the restraint of the studio system might create an interesting tension with the unhinged brilliance of the Hong Kong stylists; instead, with rare exception, Hollywood just watered them down.

If there’s anything more stylized than an action film (with its doublings and who watches the watchmen identity switching), it’s a musical. Needless to say, you didn’t need to ask me twice to watch my first Hong Kong musical. And it was everything I hoped it would be—all the energy and insane passion of Moulin Rouge!, along with a didactic presentation of the themes in the narration and the music, along with some of the most brutal romantic reversals I have ever seen on screen outside of Crossroads.

Things they do better in Hong Kong:

Antagonists get to be equals. It seems like a fairly simple principle—your hero is defined by your villain. A great villain makes for a great hero (Exhibit A: Alan Rickman in Die Hard, with Exhibit B: Alan Rickman in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves missing by a hair only because his great villainy was still overcome by Kevin Costner’s very mediocre performance. You still forget how truly bad that movie could be). Importantly, the antagonist in Perhaps Love is not a villain. Although I love Richard Roxburgh’s ability to swing from Snidely Whiplash to a character of real menace in Moulin Rouge!, it would have been interesting to see him do what Jackie Cheung does in this movie, play a powerful man driven to distraction when the woman he loves cannot see him as more than a business transaction. He begs, he threatens, he violates, he accepts, and then pulls a grand gesture that generates an entirely unexpected ending.

Similarly, Kaneshiro isn’t left to be just an idealized pretty boy hero—he indulges in an act of emotional violence that is almost worse than Jackie Cheung’s own gesture. And which again relates to the movie’s overall themes (sung by the Angel character at the beginning) regarding the present and past being mere traps, and life needing to be lived in the present.

Since I mentioned him: here's a little something for the ladies. And Frank.

There’s room for three. The female character is not blown off in this film. She is not a victim, she is not a passive prize for two powerful men to fight over, she is not an idealized love object. You get to see her ambition, her betrayals of herself and Kaneshiro, and exactly why she lives the way she does. They don’t cheat and make her a traumatized victim to explain her mysterious past; instead, all her reactions are legitimate functions of her choices, which are selfish, but understandable. Even if we kept calling her ‘whore.’ Hey, just because you have three equals in a movie doesn’t mean you can’t have a rooting interest in somebody.

They understand myth. This is a movie that is not afraid to be about big ideas. It hangs Big Ideas out there in the songs, and throughout the movie, even though it’s insulated around these three people (no ancillary people are breaking out into song), it’s scoping for something epic. A lot of people got turned off by this in Moulin Rouge!—the idea that the people were barely recognizably human in sanding a musical down to its bare essence. And as with Moulin Rouge!, the themes in Perhaps Love are nothing new—life is a circus, life is a movie, we’re all performers, memory is treacherous. Still, when you’re so inventive with the characters, and you come up with one hell of a brave ending (including a swaggering, self-satisfied smile all over the Angel’s face, who as far as I can tell mostly fucked everything up in a way that may or may not have been for the better), you’ve earned the right to at least get the discussion started.

This movie looks great, sounds great (even when you can’t understand the words), and while it’s not reinventing the musical like Singin’ in the Rain or The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, it does mine out something unexpected, just when you thought you knew what you were in for. It makes me want to go back and watch the opera of The Killer, and wonder what would happen if they let Chow Yun Fat break into song here and there. Now that’s an experiance that we would find most kaliente.

Next Time: Tsotsi!

DVD Corner #1: One of These Things Is Not Like the Others

Grizzly Man. (2005; d. Werner Herzog and Timothy Treadwell) As you’ve probably already heard, Grizzly Man is Werner Herzog’s documentary about the crazy dude who lives with bears. And, as already noted by millions, if Herzog’s calling you crazy….Herzog does a phenomenal job of giving full voice to Treadwell’s belief that there was some secret wisdom in nature, while still creating a powerful counterpoint in his own position that life is nasty, brutish, and short, and best not spent living with bears. And I was surprised that despite Herzog’s own determinism, his ideological opposition to Treadwell, and the clinical detachment with which he dissects Treadwell in the back half of the film, he is still so visibly moved and empathic to Treadwell’s motivations and position. Still and all, though the movie is like nothing else, it is also a dead end moment—it is didactically exhaustive in its position, moving with such clarity in presenting the two arguments that I think it actually stifles any ambiguity or conflict in the two positions, and winds up being more a really interesting debate than a film I would revisit over and over again.


SPL (2005; d. Wilson Yip, s. Sammo Hung, Ken Chang, Donnie Yen). A movie of men, by men, for men. Not in a Brokeback sense. SPL features the stock Hong Kong crime drama set up of a cop and a ganglord who become so obsessed with each other, that the destruction of the other man becomes more important than each's own survival. SPL screws with the stock set up by involving a third man (played by Donnie Yen), and getting downright apocalyptic with the ending. I haven't seen an ending this over the top affecting since Old Boy. And props to Donnie Yen for some of the most innovative fight scenes I've ever seen. Like sex scenes, fight scenes can often feel distinct from the progress of a movie, which is an interesting problem considering most movies are built around one or the other. In SPL, there aren't many fight scenes, but, like the movie, the scenes feel sweaty and desperate, and enhance the feeling that wherever the conflict between these three men is building to, it's nowhere good.


Tarnation (2004; d. Matthew Caouette). Whereas Grizzly Man felt too complete, Tarnation almost felt too oblique. It leaves ellipses everywhere—almost always absolutely infuriating me. Sometimes, it’s obvious that the gaps were just material that was too hot to touch, like the first important relationship intersecting with Caouette’s almost off-handed mention much later in the film of his multiple suicide attempts and phases of acting out at the same time. Other times, it is obvious that Caouette is just as confused as we are, and choosing to portray the questions instead of the answers. Each choice feels organic and honest, a feeling only reinforced by the homemade quality of the movie. It’s easy to see why this movie feels like a revolution.

Meta This

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005; d. Michael Winterbottom; s. Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon, Kelly MacDonald, and Jeremy Northam). The trouble with meta-stuff is, it’s all frontal lobe.

(Admittedly, this is an ironic sort of comment for this blog.)

Meta-anything bridges similarities between concepts or cognitions or physicals; therefore, it’s all application of knowledge as opposed to feeling. Among my dearly adored Charlie Kaufman movies, I feel like I only truly love Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, because only that film feels truly emotion-driven, as opposed to high concept driven.

Edit: I take that back. Charlie Kaufman films are emotional—it’s just a novel emotional experience. He actually evokes (or maybe invents) a new emotion in me, something blending admiration and fondness and jealousy and anxiety. Is meta-emotional a word?

Anyway, if you’re sitting back and gathering your thoughts, it’s hard to actually have a direct emotional response. You're thinking instead of having an experience—it’s the age-old distinction between criticizing and doing.

And part of the reason movie critics hate as many movies as they do—because it’s hard to shake yourself out of a distanced response to something, unless it’s new or interesting or resonant or ego-feeding. Particularly when you think how much easier it is to pun out 500 versions of ‘it sucked’ than denote your unique experience of Pulse.

I’ve actually read Tristram Shandy the book, back in a Beginnings of the British Novel class in college. It was a great class—it finished with the Jane Austen books (where most of us begin and end when it comes to early British literature), and you can see the great drunken staggering of the beginning of an art form. For instance, there’s The Monk, which presages the Great Trash Novel, but does it so much better, because there’s no context to know when you’ve gone too far over the top—there is no Top yet.

And then there’s Tristram Shandy, the purely commerce-driven art form, where the hero takes an age to be born, simply because the author was determined to make this book his steady source of income. Imagine that—he set out to write one book, for the rest of his life. And to make sure that happens, he barely ever gets born. And thus, postmodernism, and all its winding plots that become snakes eating their own tails and their deconstruction of social forms, is born of the most linear and primitive of social structures, the token economy.

And dick jokes. Lots of dick jokes.

The movie is, in its own way, a good adaptation. It introduces the characters faithfully, before breaking set and showing the architecture of the medium (the novel within the novel in Tristram Shandy, the movie within…well, you get the idea). Like the author, the movie keeps going not through action or plot, but giving people the room to talk and behave in a somewhat formless fashion, and then having other people come along and talk about what’s going on—the production assistant who lectures on the authenticity of the endeavor, the star who suggests plot changes based on what best serves his ego (mistakenly, because of his ignorance of what happens), the professor discussing the Major Themes of the Work, and the director, screenwriter, and crew arguing about what will happen next strictly because of what it will cost. None of whom actually explain anything. Instead, all their attempts to explain it all generate further distance between their desires to create something, and the actual behaviors. Kind of like the way friends, lovers, bosses, and our own theories about how life works and our secret desires about how we wished it worked, make living the chaotic negotiation of an ever-growing gap between what everybody wants and what it all means, ultimately resulting in a product that mystifies everybody and satisfies few.

Which, as Stephen Fry says, is exactly the point.

Problem is, the movie does its job too well, and like life, is at its most scintillating when people are just talking instead of thinking. I’ve never enjoyed a metanovel half as much as a novel, just because it always seems like a joke too clever by half. Watching Coogan and Rob Brydon riff on the color of Brydon's teeth or do dueling Pacinos? That’s direct experience, and that’s funny. And it casts the rest of the film in a pallid light.

So, yeah, I got the point. But the movie itself is kind of like granola—a little bit of flavor every now and then, and probably good for me, but it sure as hell doesn’t beat the sweet kick of a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Next Time: Leprechaun in the Hood