Me and You and Everyone We Know

Me and You and Everyone We Know (Miranda July, 2005)
Oddball movie about oddballs and the love-fantasy they all pursue, from childhood to old age.  Lots of good moments, but the cartiledge holding the thing together is a little thread-bare, although the good parts are good enough to make you forget what you're seeing isn't very good...like good performance art should.  Ultimately, it's a movie that depends on the charity of the audience to give it the glow in memory that the actuality lacks.

Richard (John Hawkes) is a shoe salesman, recently separated, sharing custody of his two kids, who are growing up a little too fast.  Christine (Miranda July) is a multi-hyphenate: performance artist/writer-film-maker/fantasist/assisted living chauffeur.  She's trying to get a local art showcase to show her work while also juggling mooning over Richard and driving her "Eldercab."  Everything revolves around these two characters in a goldfish bowl environment so tightly wound it would make Iñárritu slap his forehead in disbelief—everyone knows everyone else, even if they don't know it.  And so much of the movie depends on code and secret messages that one suspects July is trying to create her own club-house with secret decoder rings.*

I'll avoid talking about the creepy aspects of the film, which involve underage kids and one pervy guy who talks (or writes and tapes to his window...without consequences, mind you) about what he'd like to do to two young women who hang out at the bus-stop in front of his house (which parallels an earlier incident in a chat-room), and when confronted with it, collapses beautifully in a puff of his own imagined machismo.  One becomes used to the 90° turn that July uses to cap her various stories and soon they no longer surprise.  You also can't imagine the stories going anywhere further than what she presents...everything just ends, another aspect of the limited life-in-a-nutshell world that she creates.  It kept reminding me that these are "characters" and not people.  Conceits, not lives.
Roger Ebert inexplicably called this the fifth best film of the decade.**  As they say in Adaptation.: "You are what you love, not what loves you."  Me and You and Everyone We Know didn't give me much love.  And Ebert must have had a good week that week.

* "Macaroni" and ))<>((: would that the messages actually be profound.

** Well, technically, not inexplicably, but what he found charming, I found a bit...annoying.  Different strokes.

Sucker Punch

"Girls Acting Badly (Acting Badly)"
or
"Showgirls—The Sequel"

Look.  I'm a healthy, red-blooded American male and I can certainly appreciate gorgeous, pouty young women in provocatively scanty attire.  But Zack Snyder's semi-new Sucker Punch just made me angry.  And not just because the thing is so derivative as to be wholly unoriginal—that's usually not a deal-breaker with me, as my enthusiasm for Star Wars or Rango will attest.

But don't tell me you're making a movie about 
empowering women while objectifying them to the Nth degree in the manner of a "women-in-prison" film.  A women-in-prison film with a red-curtain veneer of strip-club in it.  Don't make an action film where giant things toss the femininjas through walls and across rooms without their make-up getting messed up (violence without consequences), and don't make the message of your film "Fight" and contrarily show 4/5 of those fighters being taken down (through their own actions) and the only one surviving being the one who isn't sure of the struggle. 

The messages are so mixed as to be incoherent.

But one shouldn't expect nutrition from eye-candy.

It's all about the illusion in this one, the presentation, and the surface.  It's "Alice in Green-Screen-Bump-and-Grinder-land: the Video-Game." All paste-up and no depth, just a good job of dry-wall, in the de-saturated style of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  Looks great.  But rotten to the core.

And it is too bad.  We need more women-heroes.  We need more women-hero movies.  We just need someone with more enlightenment to create them so that they don't simultaneously make them strong and tear down the message by tarting them up (like William Moulton Marston, the shrink who created "Wonder Woman" and liked to put her in bondage situations).  I'm not saying all women-characters should be pedestal-toppers.  Let's just not kick the dignity out from underneath them.

And any writer worth his word processor shouldn't be undercutting his message, anyway.

If you're going to lower the bar so far you have to dig a trench six feet deep to do so, you might as well complete the job, dig the grave and toss the whole enterprise into it.

Young "Baby Doll" (Emily Browning) is having a bad time of it.  Her mother dies, and she and her sister are left in the care of her evil step-father (Gerard Plunkett) with nothing but abuse on his mind.  "Baby Doll" (that's her only name) tries to shoot him when he attempts to rape her sister, but ends up killing her with the bullet, instead.  As if this scenario weren't dire enough, Snyder films it all over-cranked to give it a lethargic, dreamy "bad portent" feel.  It's the type of overkill you can expect throughout the entire movie.  No lock goes bolted or unbolted except in clanking close-up.  Nothing is relevant unless it's in your face (AND it's in IMAX).

ES-F has "Baby Doll" committed to the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, where he bribes an orderly (Oscar Isaac, no scenery goes unchewed) to lobotomize "Baby Doll" to shut her up so he can inherit his wife's fortune uncontested and in the five days before the doctor (Jon Hamm, who's actually subtle in this movie) arrives for the procedure, the girl fantasizes a scenario in which she's not in an asylum, but a strip-club/bordello and she recruits four other girls—"Blondie" (Vanessa Hudgens), "Amber" (Jamie Chung) and the sisters, "Rocket" (Jena Malone) and "Sweet Pea" (Abbie Cornish)* to plan an escape, an escape concocted in a "delusion within a delusion" (Hello, Inception!) when she rehearses her dance number for the john (whose the lobotomist in the slow-mo reality) to whom her virginity will be sold in five days.  This dance number is apparently so erotic that it paralyzes all, male and female, who watch it, so that the other girls can acquire those articles needed to escape.

We don't see the dance.  We see the resulting fantasies "Baby Doll" imagines in order TO dance, and these make up the action scenarios in the film: the first, a snowy martial arts fight with three giant statues; the second, a WWI fight in the trenches with steam-punk Nazis; the third, a Peter Jackson-ish Middle-Earth with dragons and Orcs; the fourth, a SCI-FI battle on a bullet-train that's part super-hero and part Matrix—it becomes readily apparent that most of the thought and work of this film went into these second-level fantasy sequences, all played out over Moulin Rouge!-styled song mash-ups.

It is also apparent that the entire movie is a pre-lobotomized fantasy (only I think they got the timing wrong!).

So many good ideas are borrowed from other movies.  But, just because the ingredients are good doesn't mean the dish they create doesn't taste like dog-food.  I used to be a fan of Zack Snyder.  I thought 300 was dumb, but had flashes of clever presentation.  I genuinely admired his adaptation of Alan Moore's Watchmen, and still do.  But now with the 1-2 sucker-punch of Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga'hoole and ...Sucker Punch, I'm going to have to do a gut-check before dropping all pretense that I can be objective before going to see another of his films. 

Which will be the new "Superman" film.  I don't even think The Blue Boy Scout can pull a rescue of that one.  We shall see... 

Sucker Punch is a Waste of Time.

The Cast of Sucker Punch...fooling themselves.

* Throughout, I kept imagining the nasty Twitter message Jane Campion would be sending her Bright Star lead after seeing this movie. 

Don't Make a Scene: The Last Tycoon

Next month, we're doing a bunch of comedy scenes for April, but we still have a week to go before then.  Here's an oldie but a very illustrative one, a scene that I wish a lot of today's directors would take a look at...and learn from.

The Set-Up:  Here is F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Screen-Writing 101" interpreted by Harold Pinter, director Elia Kazan, and a young Robert De Niro (acting unusually spry and light-hearted at this stage in his career). The rest of The Last Tycoon, the film of Fitzgerald's unfinished last novel is a bit mordant, but this scene crackles, not only because of DeNiro's performance, but also due to Donald Pleasance as the stuffy British writer who "just doesn't get it." He also becomes the audience-surrogate, drawn in by Studio Head Monroe Stahr's visual story-telling. The other two writers in the room have one line between them, and do a good job of communicating the "been there, done that" of hearing this speech again--the fellow on Pleasance's right doesn't say a word; he just sits with a writerly sneer on his face.

But follow the eyes (it's the reason there are so many screen-shots for a relatively quick scene). The looks that pass from Stahr to the writers and between them, do more communication than Monroe's three-corner dialog. And when he sits down, smugly satisfied with his performance, he lowers his head, waiting for the response he knows will come.

It's a bit specious, but it's a fine story illustrating how to use an audience's attention to lead them through a scene set-up. And Kazan's camera follows Stahr as he bounds around the room, playing all the parts, making sure that we see the audience reaction (Pleasance's) to each complication Stahr adds to the story.

And, of course, Stahr gets to keep the illusive nickel.

The Story: What a day it's been for Monroe Stahr (Robert De Niro), Production Head for the All-American Film Corporation: an earthquake, a pretty obvious attempted pass by his boss' daughter, insecure stars, scape-goated directors, oh...and then there's that girl who's a spittin' image for his late wife that's attracted his eye. The least of his worries is a novelist (Donald Pleasance) making an uneasy transition to screenwriter, who has been summoned to Stahr's office for a little attitude adjustment. This is you, watching.

Action!

(Boxley walks into Monroe Stahr's office a bit diffidently, eyeing the other two writers in the room seated in front of Stahr. Stahr welcomes him and offers him a seat between the other writers)

MONROE STAHR: Sit down, Mr. Boxley.

BOXLEY: I can't go on. It's a waste of time.
STAHR: Why?

BOXLEY: You've stuck me with two hacks. They can't write.

BOXLEY: And they... bugger up everything I write.

STAHR: Well, why don't you just write it yourself?

BOXLEY: I have. I sent you some.

STAHR: That was just talk. We'd lose the audience.

BOXLEY: Talk?!
STAHR: Mm-hmm.
BOXLEY: I don't think you people read things.

BOXLEY: The men... The men are dueling...

BOXLEY: ...when this conversation takes place.

BOXLEY: At the end, one of them falls into a well...

BOXLEY: ...and has to be hauled up...in a bucket.

STAHR: Would you write that in a book of your own?

BOXLEY: Of course I wouldn't. I inherited this absurd situation.

STAHR: Let me ask you, do you ever go to the movies?
BOXLEY: Rarely.
STAHR: Because people are always dueling and falling down wells?

BOXLEY: And talking a load of rubbish!

(Stahr gets out of his chair and comes around to the front of his desk)

STAHR: Listen... has your office got a stove in it that lights with a match?

BOXLEY: I think so.

(Stahr crosses to the work-table at back of his office. Boxley's eyes follow him)

STAHR: Suppose you're in your office. You've been fighting duels all day. STAHR: You're exhausted.

STAHR: This is you.

STAHR: A girl comes in. She doesn't see you.

(Stahr crosses the room to the door, goes through it, then comes back in, looking furtively in both directions.)

(Stahr crosses to his desk and mimes the actions)

STAHR: She takes off her gloves. She opens her purse. She dumps it out on the table.


STAHR: You watch her.

(Stahr crosses back to the work-table)

STAHR: This is you.

(Stahr crosses back to his desk and mimes the actions, except for the nickel which he takes out of his pocket and bounces on his desk)

STAHR: Now... She has two dimes, a matchbox and a nickel. She leaves the nickel on the table. She puts the two dimes back into her purse.

STAHR: She takes the gloves...they're black.

(Stahr crosses back to the work-table)

STAHR: Puts them into the stove. Lights a match.

STAHR: Suddenly, the telephone rings.

STAHR: She picks it up. She listens.

STAHR: She says, "I've never owned a pair of black gloves in my life." Hangs up.

STAHR: Kneels by the stove. Lights another match.

(Boxley listens attentively, then catches himself. He's actually enjoying this.)

STAHR: Suddenly, you notice...


STAHR: ...there's another man in the room...

(Boxley can't help but look)

(Stahr crosses the room to the front door)

STAHR: ...watching every move the girl makes.



(Stahr crosses to his desk. Looks at Boxley. The other writers look at Stahr, then turn their attention to Boxley, who looks at them expectantly.)

(Stahr looks at Boxley, letting the moment hang. Then he slides into his chair looking like the cat that ate the canary. He looks again at Boxley and waits. Then he looks over at the other writer and smiles)


BOXLEY: What happens?

STAHR: I don't know. I was just making pictures.

BOXLEY: What was the nickel for?

STAHR: Jane, what was the nickel for?

JANE: The nickel was for the movies.

BOXLEY: What do you pay me for? I don't understand the damn stuff.

STAHR: Yes, you do...

STAHR: ...or you wouldn't have asked about the nickel.

 (Stahr feigns throwing Boxley the nickel, who grabs at it, then sees he's bought the illusion)

(And Stahr holds up the nickel)

The Last Tycoon

Words by: F. Scott Fitzgerald and Harold Pinter

Pictures by: Victor J. Kemper and Elia Kazan

The Last Tycoon is available on DVD through Paramount Home Video.