Sunday, September 25, 2005

Lost in Direction


I still have mixed emotions about last night. On the one hand, I got to go out on a date with Annie. Still on that very same hand is the fact that the movie theater we went to only charged $4 for tickets....and still yet, we ended the night by seeing My Book Your Sandwich...so what I'm saying is, this is a very good hand that we're talking about.
On the other hand, we ate at that place on campus that microwaves burgers and their motto is, "Our food isn't very good, but at least we're slow" - and then we saw Broken Flowers.
I have a theory that someone told Bill Murray a few years ago that he no longer needed to act. He could just walk through a movie in a semi catatonic daze. People will think he's being deep. They'll call it a Nuanced performance. If we film him in a dark room just kind of staring....people will think that this is a "thinkers" movie. This way people can walk out and say, "You didn't get it!?!?! It probably just went over your head." Then the person thinks, "Hey, maybe that movie wasn't a waste of my money...maybe I should go back and see it again...to see what I missed." and the other person just feels superior. "It was a muted piece...it's art and it doesn't always have to be so in your face." "Yeah, but this was the kind of art that my 4 year old makes....it's just bad art. Can you make bad art even if you film it darkly, and have 35 scenes where the main character just kind of stares off into the distance while they play cool music in the background?"
-
I get that it worked for Lost in Translation. He was really good in that....and I think for the first time in his life he probably was getting good reviews. So he had to think to himself, "I'm busting my butt playing the smarmy, wacky, party guy in all these movies...but the critics don't like it....but if I just play kind of dead and show no emotion....they love me!"
I'm going to go write Jim Jarmusch (the guy who made Broken Flowers ...and also Coffee and Cigarettes - "hey, this must be deep, it's in black and white...and they smoke cigarettes, have jilted dialogue and drink coffee") I need to let him know he owes me $8 plus a free movie rental...

No comments:

Post a Comment