Barton Fink

After graduation, most of my friends moved to L.A., but I went to Chicago. Writing interested me, but so did improv. I landed at The Second City for about a year.

I decided not to live in Chicago — too expensive. Oh, I had everything figured out. I lived in Hammond, Indiana, in a furnished, studio apartment in a converted hotel called the Southmoor.

Hammond is located in northwest Indiana, in a region known as "The Region." If "The Region" is the armpit of Indiana, then Hammond is the hairy, brown mole in that armpit. (Indiana has many armpits, not just one, or even the standard two.)

The Southmoor had all I needed. I had a living room, a small kitchenette, and a bathroom. I slept on a Murphy Bed until I couldn't take any more, and then I switched to the furnished couch, which smelled vaguely of stale smoke and whiskey.

Smoke came up through the drains. Most of the residents were elderly and/or drunks. Ambulances came and went.

I had a neighbor who came over and knocked one afternoon. He was pretty sauced. He said I should come over sometime and play cards. I told him I might do that. I never saw him again.

My commute to Second City was at least an hour, either by train or car. If I drove, parking cost me $12.00 per day. By train, I paid $14 per day round trip. I stopped messing with trains after I figured that out, although I did miss reading.

I figured out a lot of things. At Second City alone, there were roughly 1,500 people — no exaggeration — who had the same idea. We were all going to make it big someday. Jack McBrayer was there at the time. He did pretty well for himself.

Watching Barton Fink again, I couldn't help but draw parallels to my experiences in Chicago. He had a shitty studio apartment. He wanted to write. He had noisy neighbors. He got nothing done.

Of course, I never woke up next to a dead woman, or lived next to a serial killer, or watched as my wallpaper wrinkled and peeled off the walls. Much has been written about Barton's confusion of "fantasy" and "reality" in Barton Fink. I had my own reality.

I only stayed at the Southmoor about three months before I moved into Chicago. Less than a year later, I was back home.

I don't regret the choice of Chicago over L.A.; I'm still trying to pay off the credit card debt, but that year in Chicago was one of the best years of my life, even if I, too, was confusing fantasy for reality.

Barcelona

[Another recent addition to the collection, backdated for alphabetical goodness.]

Sometimes, you need to see someone do what you love doing.

Barcelona (1994) is a Whit Stillman film that I've only seen one other time, a few years back, but the film left a strong impression on me.

When I started writing screenplays, I tended toward writing navel-gazing dialogue full of introspective observations, examinations, and declarations, along with a ton of inside jokes ripped straight from my interpersonal relationships.

All of that stuff rang true to me. That was how people in my world talked. Granted, my world consisted of a few close friends with which I spent nearly all of my free time in college, but effective dialogue sounds real. To me, all that navel-gazing stuff seemed real.

That's why more than any other style of film, I'm a sucker for a chatty, indie comedy from the 1990s: Kevin Smith, Noah Baumbach, Wes Anderson, and others. They made what I was trying to do seem okay, despite all the screenwriting textbooks and teachers who tried to tell me differently.

In retrospect, I tend to agree with the books and profs now. I usually fell in love with the sound of my own characters and often forgot what the screenplay was even about, which killed me. I still struggle with this. I can't start a script unless I know the story. I didn't do that before. I just...started writing.

Despite all that inspiration and rationalization derived from '90s independent film, I hadn't heard of Whit Stillman until I was watching the special features on Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming. In one featurette, Baumbach sits down with Chris Eigeman, a character actor who appears in both Baumbach's and Stillman's films (including this one). That crossover is easy for them to discuss.

I rented Stillman's Barcelona and Metropolitan at the time, mostly on the basis of their conversation. I found Stillman's films similar to Baumbach's in pacing and rhythm, but Stillman has a bit more to say about social classes, manners, and mores. His films aren't as funny, but they're just as poignant.

For me, Stillman's work reinforces the notion that yes, I can write a chatty little script, and yeah, people will want to hear those characters talk, even if there's not much of a story holding it all together. That's okay. I can experiment with story structure, focusing on character development and arcs. There's still an audience for that. I'm okay.

Barcelona depicts navel-gazers abroad, contemplating the minutiae of their lives against the backdrop of political unrest in early '80s Spain. They experience the city, find a bit of romance, and ponder ideas such as whether they have been shaving in the wrong direction their whole lives, why they appear to look better in a mirror than in a photograph, or how people at parties always seem to talk about marketing.

I said the film was navel-gazey.

In all, Stillman has made three films: Metropolitan, Barcelona, and The Last Days of Disco, all of them chatty '90s pictures. He hasn't released a film since 1998.

Sony Classics recently issued a press release announcing Stillman's fourth film, Damsels in Distress. After more than a decade, Stillman is back.

I'm stoked, because now, maybe more than ever, I need a film to come along and remind me that what I like to write still has validity. Noah Baumbach's last couple of films have left me empty, and Wes Anderson's last couple of films have been too childish and didn't resonate as much as his earlier work. Kevin Smith and Ed Burns simply have gone off the reservation, and both Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino make blockbusters now.

I'm hopeful that Stillman's new film will have something to say, and that I'll get that same feeling again, that maybe what I like to write isn't so crazy. Sure, I can get validation from friends, relatives, and mentors, but there's nothing quite like seeing someone do what you like doing.

The Bad Sleep Well

Minor Kurosawa is the cold pizza of film. The Bad Sleep Well is one I've had trouble with in the past. I essentially blind bought this DVD after renting the film from Netflix and giving up after 30 minutes of watching.

The problem wasn't that the film was bad. The problem was with me. I wasn't in the right frame of mind to watch a 50 year old Japanese film about corporate corruption. I'm not sure how one gets to this frame of mind.

I still think the film is overlong and terribly slow. But Kurosawa films grow on me.

I've written previously about how one has to watch a film at the right time in order to fully appreciate what the director/writer/what-have-you are getting at, and sometimes that involves the viewer getting to a certain point in life. We have that transaction with film — we don't watch passively. We process information. If we can't fully perform the transaction, then we don't understand all or part of the film.

This is not the Kurosawa film to start with, of course. However I appreciate the film for its balance of darkness and slight humor, along with Toshiro Mifune's performance. There's a lot of good here.

Mostly I appreciate that this film will still be in my collection for the day that I'm truly ready.

Bad Santa

One of the drawbacks of this project is I can't control the timing if I want to keep moving forward in order. So tonight I'm watching Bad Santa, perhaps the most offensive Christmas movie ever made.

Wait, no.

I was 9 years old when I remember seeing trailers for a film called Silent Night, Deadly Night a slasher film in which the killer dressed as Santa. Oh, the uproar. That film eventually got pulled from theaters. We were a bunch of uptight assholes in the 1980s.

Still, that's probably the most offensive, puerile Christmas film ever made. At least Bad Santa is funny and gives the main character a real shot at redemption.

Plus, the kid's name is Thurman Merman. How is that not funny?

What's more, you get John Ritter's last live action performance. I grew up watching reruns of "Three's Company" in the afternoons after school. Mom would take naps on the couch, so I'd have to watch TV quietly. Ever try to laugh quietly? Not happening. I woke her up a lot.

Bernie Mac is here too. He deserves kudos for the negotiation scene alone. "Half."

I don't connect to this film in the same way I connect with Christmas Vacation, which for us is a family tradition on Christmas Eve. However, Bad Santa makes us laugh consistently (even if we feel like we shouldn't be laughing). Plus we get to see John Ritter again each time — always a good thing. This is a great film for right around December 7 — something to watch as the tree goes up.

People wait for the right time of year for a lot of things. Watching a holiday film in the "offseason" isn't a bad thing. Now I actually have some money in the bank and I'm not stressed out and pissed off. I don't want to punch other customers in the store. I can find stuff I want. There's parking everywhere.

Life's pretty great when it's not Christmas. People forget that.

Back To The Future (Trilogy)

Lots of films don't age well. We remember films being a whole lot better when we saw them the first time. We were once mesmerized. Now we can't get over how much they suck, and how in the hell we didn't notice the first time.

The Back To The Future trilogy is, appropriately, timeless.

Back To The Future premiered when I was 10 years old; Parts II and III came out when I was 14 and 15, respectively.

Dad usually rented good movies. Now he buys Blu-Ray discs. Guess who got him the Blu-Ray player? Call it payback for nurturing my love of movies. I was pretty much allowed to watch anything at a young age (okay, no porn). I saw The Terminator when I was 11 or 12. I turned out mostly fine.

I don't remember how I saw Back To The Future Parts II and III, so let's assume I saw those on video as well in the early 1990s. I may have seen both of them in the theater, or at the drive-in a mile from my childhood home. I have no idea.

I distinctly remember seeing the TV special that promoted Parts II and III, when Zemekis, Spielberg, and screenwriter Bob Gale went back to the well. Talk about excited. Even then I knew there was more story to tell, and I wanted to see where everything went. I digress.

These films mesmerized me when I was a kid, and seeing them now, I appreciate them for how they take me back, and for how they have barely aged.

Perhaps most importantly, Michael J. Fox is forever young here, before Parkinson's derailed his career. I love seeing him in supporting roles in shows like "Rescue Me" now, but this trilogy is the best work of his career.

Sure, there are plot holes you can drive (or fly) a DeLorean through. How did the walkie-talkies in Part II work all over town except in the Hill Valley tunnel? I distinctly remember endless childhood frustration with lots of different walkie-talkies that barely received from across the yard.

How come the DeLorean only runs when the plot needs the DeLorean to run?

Never mind. This is brilliant stuff.

I went several years without owning these films. The studio screwed up the initial DVD release with technical problems. I felt like a sucker. But when I saw the reissues pictured above, I snapped them up.

Having a film (or trilogy of films) I loved as a child connects me to my youth. I have a lot of films like this. In a way, they're like traveling through time.

When I watch this trilogy, everyone is young again. These films put me right back in the 1980s, stretched out on the living room floor in front of the family's wooden, console television. The front door is propped open, and I can hear the insects outside on a summer night. I can hear the semi trucks on the highway in the distance. Unfortunately I can smell Mom's cigarette smoke, but I can also smell the popcorn she made.

Back here in the future, I find myself looking backward a lot.