Friday Night Lights

Call Friday Night Lights a football film if you want.  I see more.  I can't help it right now.

Getting back into this project, or any project for that matter, has been next to impossible since Mom died last month.  Everything I watch seems to have a detail, moment, or theme that takes me right to her.  Everything I do leads me right back.

Maybe I'm just predisposed to wandering thoughts that always end up in the same place.  I find myself looking ahead to a stretch of films about loss and death, and I'm not good at this.

We hadn't spoken in five years.  The "why" seems stupid now.  We didn't get along, so we didn't talk.  She wanted me to call and I didn't.  I wanted her to treat me differently and she didn't.  There's not much more to say right now.  We hadn't talked in years, hadn't gotten along in even longer, and I'm the one who has to live with that, not anybody else.

I told my wife and myself several times this year, probably more times this year than ever, that I should call Mom.  I should drop this shit and just call her.  No, it'll be bad, I thought.  I'll do it later.  Yeah, maybe at the holidays, I'll try it again somehow.  And then...well, I can't tell you everything.

Mom lived in Texas for a while before she got together with Dad.  Watching this film tonight, I'm not actually looking at a film about football — I'm not even thinking about the film at all.  I'm thinking of Mom, 40 years ago, out in that big, wide open nothing of Texas, where the landscapes stretch out forever.  I like to think she was happy there, at least for a while.  I have pictures of her from that era of her life, and she's young and pretty and happy.  She had blonde hair then and I never knew why.

Listen to this soundtrack.  Explosions in the Sky delivers these big, echoing, ebbing and flowing post-rock anthems that put the great big open nothingness of Texas to music.  Throw in some rap and metal from the late 1980s and even Bad Company's "Seagull" over the credits and you have one of the finest soundtracks out there — the kind you can play on repeat and ride the arc of the film if you want.  These instrumentals take me right to her again.

Friday Night Lights is a film about hope.  I see a film that examines how we deal with dashed hopes and missed opportunities.  Friday Night Lights says much about how intrepid we can be when we suffer a loss.  We get back up because we have no choice.  The world might look a lot different in that instant and beyond, and we might hurt like we've never hurt, and we might cry like we've never cried, but we get back up anyway.

And in this case, I find myself looking for solace through some kind of restitution — making her (and others I've lost) proud in whatever way I can because there's no other peace in this.  I don't know what I'm doing, but this seems right.

If I live in a way that would make her proud, then maybe this won't be so hard to carry, and maybe when I see her again, everything will be different.

Free Enterprise

I'm not going to bullshit you.  This movie is not that good.

The idea is fine — two immature, twentysomething geek friends meet the real William Shatner in a bookstore, and he crushes their world by not being Captain Kirk.  Kicking and screaming toward maturity ensues.  Even Shatner has a character arc here.  The film explores the nature of friendship in the face of adulthood, love in the face of childhood, and the imperfections in us all — even our role models.

The execution, however, is for shit.  The writing is bland, the dialogue is longwinded and annoying, and the actors — I feel like I'm watching a group of geeked-out theatre majors at a lame house party where we're all watching a Dream Theater DVD (and I like Dream Theater!).

Pretty much the best actor in this film is William Shatner.

But this film is a funhouse mirror for the geek in me, and gets at so many feelings I have about everything from love to friendship to action figures.  At one point in the late '90s, I thought I'd found treasure here.

I credit this film with giving me the idea to watch Logan's Run on my 30th birthday, which I did, alone, and I'm not sure how I feel about that now.  Now, I guess I just feel like one of a million other geeks, nearly all of whom annoy the shit out of me.

That last bit gets at a strange dichotomy; I like the things that I like, but I often do not like the people who also like the things I like.  Takes a while to get through the door with me.

I'm not saying my fellow geeks are bad people.  I'm glad other people dig this stuff.  I'm glad we have things in common.  I just don't mesh well with them.  My idea of a good time is not hanging out in a smoky restaurant with obnoxious people who smoke pipes, wear furry hats, and grow pointy beards.

Don't get me wrong.  I have a few friends who share my interests, and I love talking with them and spending time with them, but I don't go to comic conventions, I don't do role-playing of any kind, I watch Joss Whedon projects in moderation, and I don't sound like Dr. Bunsen Honeydew or Sheldon from "The Big Bang Theory" when I talk.  Most importantly, unlike a large swath of the geek populace, I shower daily.

Having said all that, maybe I'm a judgmental prick — an elitist among elitists.  But no, there's logic here: just because you like the same stuff as someone else doesn't necessarily mean your personalities will mesh.  I rarely meet someone who not only shares my interests, but also clicks with me.  That's the Great White Buffalo of my social life.

That sort of brings me to the point.  I'm not even sure I want to meet that Great White Buffalo anymore.  In fact, I've stopped looking for it, because I like the people I've found over the years.  If I found the Great White Buffalo now, would that person even fit?  Where?

So yeah, I'm glad that most (though not all) geeks annoy me.  That makes the ones who don't annoy me seem that much more special.  Not only do my friends like what I like, but we also like each other.  Also, they shower frequently.

We don't have to like all the same things.  Some crossover is good, but I'd be freaked if someone had an identical DVD collection to mine, or had read all the same books, or whatever.  That's not interesting; that's creepy.

I need my friends.  I need my wife.  For better or worse, regardless of our differences, I love that we all have our "things" that we share and our "things" that we don't.  The "things" that make us different also make us interesting.  I can learn from the people I know; they can turn me on to a movie I haven't seen or a book I haven't read, or a way of looking at the world that makes more sense than what I was thinking all along.  They also can be the kindest, most wonderful people I could ever want to know.

My mom died a couple weeks ago, and I haven't been able to write or watch anything until tonight.  I don't want to get into that yet.  But things like blogs and stupid DVD collections sort of lose something in the wake of stuff like this.  I haven't compartmentalized all the grieving.

Through the last two weeks, though, I have retreated to my wife and my circle of friends.  On the night of Mom's calling hours, my wife and two good friends took me to the Heorot, which is my favorite bar in the world.  My wife went to the jukebox and put on "Tom Sawyer."  My friends Brian and Chris bought me dinner and a couple of drinks.  We talked like we were all in college again.  We laughed.  I needed that hour or so with them so I could feel something other than what I was feeling.  I felt normal.

I don't have the world in common with these guys, or my wife.  I don't need the world in common with them.  I just need them.  My life is full of large collections, but they are my little collection.  They are my only little collection, but the most important one of all.

Four Rooms

The idea of Four Rooms is simple.  Take four short films and set them in the same hotel, and connect them with one twitchy bellhop character (Tim Roth) who runs through all of them, pulling the four shorts together as one full-length film about his first night on the job.

Then you let four different filmmakers make a short film each, and edit the four together, so you truly get the feel of four stories coming together as one full-length film.

Well, I don't think that's confusing.

This film reminds me of confidence and confidence lost.  This isn't the brightest spot in either Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino's oeuvre, but this is an interesting entry — one that points to a specific type of film made only in the '90s: the ballsy independent that spawned a thousand ripoffs and inspired a legion of posers.

(As far as the other two directors, Allison Anders and Alexandre Rockwell, this film might be their career peaks.  I can't say for sure because I haven't seen any of their other work.)

Until recently, I did not own this on DVD.  For one, the only DVD release boasts such glorious "special features" as "Widescreen" and "Dolby Digital Surround Sound."  In the heyday of my DVD collecting, I refused (and mostly still refuse) to buy DVDs with piss-poor features.  I want more value for my money than "Chapter Selections" and "Interactive Menus" and "Talent Biographies."

However, Four Rooms seemed like a great film to own and revisit once I got to the letter F, so I tracked down a copy.  I've spent a lot of time writing about writing and how I got here.  Four Rooms is an example of the kind of experimental narrative that influenced how I look at storytelling.  I felt like owning this one, even if the DVD features are crap.

I've seen Four Rooms exactly one other time — the time I rented this one on glorious VHS.  Of course, like every other film geek, I rented for Tarantino and Rodriguez, and I wasn't disappointed because those two guys could do no wrong (and still can't — just one man's opinion there).

I idealize '90s independent cinema, but there's a reason — the films were great.  Even the minor films had the support of A-list Hollywood stars who were looking to do something different.  Bruce Willis shows up in Four Rooms.  So does Antonio Banderas.  So does Madonna.

For me, in my early twenties, seeing big timers putting their weight behind quirky little independent projects gave me a confidence boost.  People took chances then.

But Tarantino wasn't the only one getting to play.  Rodriguez, Linklater, Smith, Liman, Baumbach, and many others got a shot, and they made the most of their chances.  Most of them are still working.

I was just stupid enough to think that maybe weird-ass me had a shot, too.  I didn't want to direct or act.  I just wanted to write something, anything, hell I don't know what.  Didn't matter.  I just wanted to know that I could write what I wanted and not feel as if I had to write the next Die Hard or whatever.  If I wanted, I could ignore my teachers, who told me that maybe writing about my personal experiences wasn't enough.

A film like Four Rooms made me think some strange stuff. 

I never wrote anything like this film.  Mostly, I just needed the confidence boost, and still do (in a different way).

What I mean by a confidence boost isn't that I need to feel free to write what I want.  I got over that part.  Now I write what I want and if people don't want to read any of it, I'm okay with that.  Sometimes writing sits in a drawer or on a hard drive and nobody gives a shit.  You have to be okay with that.  You just have to keep writing.

No, my confidence is a little shaken because films like Four Rooms might not happen again.  There might not be another boom in independent cinema quite like the '90s.  There might not be another open window.

So yeah, there's a weird duality to consider.  On one hand, I'm confident, and I write what I want.  I can believe that someday, maybe the best of what I can do will get through somewhere.

On the other hand, what if the window is closed and someday never comes?  Late at night, the walls can start talking to you, and they can tell you some things you don't want to hear.  When you can hear every clock in your house ticking, you get a heightened sense of the passage of time.

I try to drown all of that out by clacking on a keyboard, but I can't quite type loudly enough.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Ordinarily, the films I discuss here prompt some sort of personal storytelling, but in this case, no, I am not going to tell you about how I lost my virginity.  That story is too short.

Instead, I'm going to admit another kind of folly: my own lack of command over the alphabet.  If 300 and 10 Items or Less are ahead of the letter "A," then why isn't this film?

I think back to the time when I started this project, all that time ago, and the person I was then.  Things were different in those days.  I didn't have as much experience with alphabetizing.

The night I started this project, I was so excited.  Finally, after all those years of waiting, I'd decided that particular night in January was going to be "the night."  I had everything planned out.  I even announced my plans to my friends.  They were supportive, even cheering me on.

The night was going to be perfect.

I went home from work and I had a nice dinner.  I believe I had a glass of wine to relax.  But the anticipation was killing me.  I couldn't really wait.

Unfortunately, that was the problem.  I was so excited, I jumped the gun.

Looking back, yeah, I didn't know what I was doing.  I fumbled around and started this project and ended up getting stuff all out of order, and there was some awkwardness, some instant regret.  When I clicked "Publish," I knew I couldn't go back.

You can't have two "first entries."

I wish I could go back to that night and do things in the right order, to prove to myself and to others that I got better at alphabetizing.  But you can't go back and get a do-over.  What's done is done.  Oh, I could back-date this entry, but you can't turn back time.  And I would still know the truth about my own dubious skills.

Sometimes, a guy just has to keep on moving forward and hope that nobody ever brings up your mistake, your awkwardness, and maybe no one will ever find any writing you may have done about that awkward event on the World Wide Web.

Foreign Correspondent

Far from Alfred Hitchcock's best film, Foreign Correspondent is just okay. They can't all be zingers. However, you do get Joel McCrea here. If McCrea isn't one of the best "everyman" leading men of all time, then I'll eat my hat.

You might know McCrea from perhaps his best film, Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels. That's a film I watched for the first time in grad school. At the time, I wasn't sure what to expect, but Sturges' film combined just the right amount of humor and pathos without being too maudlin.

McCrea worked with Hitchcock on Foreign Correspondent a year earlier. The plot is pretty convoluted; for an older film, I had trouble keeping up with what was going on, and really only remember a few pivotal scenes. The film seemed a bit unnecessarily long, and I found myself not invested at all here.

Of course, that's not really much of an indicator. I've had trouble focusing on films lately, often sitting in front of the TV with my laptop out, surfing away. I find myself answering my own questions with quick Google searches. When did Joel McCrea die? Which film came first, this one or Sullivan's Travels? Did Hitchcock do other films with McCrea in the lead role? What in the world is this film about, anyway?

I sit and type and don't really watch as intently as I should — and I'm not just doing this with older films, or DVDs that I own, but with movies I rent. Last night, the wife and I rented the Liam Neeson flick Unknown, which couldn't hold my interest and left me unimpressed.

Then I re-watched Errol Morris' Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, which was considerably better and got me thinking like a film scholar again, what with all that Eisenstein-y montage-y stuff going on. Still, I had my laptop out. I even took notes!

When Apple introduced the iPad, Steve Jobs talked about how our computer use has changed in recent years. Now that wireless routers are ubiquitous, we use laptops (often with extended battery lives) in front of the television. We seem to watch with one eye on the TV, one eye on the computer screen, one eye on our smart phone, and one eye on the rest. Wait, how many eyes do we have?

My wife isn't a movie person. Her viewing habits are quite similar; she watches television with her laptop out, frequently checking Facebook or her e-mail, or surfing any number of Web sites that catch her interest. If a question occurs to me and I don't have my laptop handy, I ask her to look something up. Within seconds, I have my answer.

That's when we watch television. When I watch movies, especially ones for this project, I tend to have my laptop out, clacking away. This maximizes my time, you see. If I watch my movies and then type an entry like this, I'm looking at as much as twice the running time of the film. If I write while I watch, I get done quicker. I can move on to other things.

As my viewing habits have changed considerably, so too have my DVD buying habits.  I continue to shift toward Blu-Ray instead of downloaded media (a whole other argument).  I haven't bought a plain old DVD since the Great Hitchcock Binge of 2011, which resulted in my adding 50+ films to my collection, many of which I've never seen.

Because I find no real personal attachment to some of the films I'm watching, making time for them has gotten less and less interesting. I suppose this raises the question, why collect all these Hitchcock films if you don't want to watch them?

Put simply, I got started. I had to see that through. I had to see what else he had done, even if his minor works pale in comparison to his masterpieces. Hitch's oeuvre was a blind spot and I needed to fix that in a big way.

Also, you can't very well develop a personal attachment to a film unless you watch the film. (Okay, maybe you can with imagery or a soundtrack or something, but still.  Watching is better.)

Foreign Correspondent, although nominated for several Academy Awards, is a minor film by Hitchcockian standards, but in my twisted, completist view, is still a film worth owning, because even minor Hitchcock is still Hitchcock.

I treat three great directors with such reverence: Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, and Stanley Kubrick.  Even watching their worst films, I find the time well spent.

For Your Eyes Only

For Your Eyes Only is maybe the best of the Roger Moore 007 films, and certainly has the best opening sequence of any Moore effort.

Of course, that's not saying a lot, as most of Moore's Bond films are ridiculous, but at least I don't have to sit through Moonraker yet.

I remember watching this one on ABC when I was maybe 12.  I was never able to stay up to see how the Bond films turned out — past my bedtime, of course — but I was always able to watch the openings.

For Your Eyes Only opens with Bond placing flowers at his deceased wife's grave, which is a throwback to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  That's not the only thematic similarity.  For Your Eyes Only explores themes of revenge and gets the playboy-esque Bond back to more of the nitty-gritty realism, sort of.

A helicopter arrives to pick Bond up; this turns out to be a classic Blofeld attempt to kill Bond via remote-control.  Of course!  This sequence is both ridiculous and awesome at the same time, and sets up one of the best death scenes for any Bond villain.  In short order, Bond simply commandeers the helicopter, scoops up Blofeld's wheelchair with one of the landing struts, and drops Blofeld down an industrial smokestack.  I don't think Dad had seen the film before; he laughed hard.

Also, this film is the one with the guy who throws the motorcycle, and the other guy who eats the pistachios, and there are Greek people, and Q. disguises himself as a priest for some reason.

All the requisite Bond stuff is here: fast cars, exotic locations, car chases, gadgets, etc.  Julian Glover shows up here —you might know him as General Veers from The Empire Strikes Back, or as Walter Donovan from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  Carole Bouquet plays Melina, the requisite Bond girl.  Her hair is impractically long.

That's pretty much where I start drifting in and out.  There are some chase sequences, some on skis, some with dune buggies, and even the obligatory underwater fight scene that is not really that exciting.  Bond drives a Lotus throughout the film, beds a few women, kills a few men, climbs a mountain, goes off a ski jump, rolls a car and keeps driving.  If I didn't already know the drill, this might be more exciting.

Of course, this one is still good for light entertainment — but only just.  In fact, even Moonraker makes for some goofy entertainment on a Sunday afternoon or evening, provided one does not expect much.

But I'm not in the habit of owning films like that.  Why own this one at all?  The Bond films are a source of great internal strife inside the author.

In short, as an obsessive-completist, I tried to outsmart myself by first establishing a "no double-dipping" rule for myself as related to Blu-Ray upgrades from DVD, and then I purchased the 007 Ultimate Editions on DVD in order to keep from buying Roger Moore films on Blu-Ray.

Thus far, I have prevailed over myself, only having bought all of the Connery and Craig 007 films on Blu-Ray.  So like 1/4 of the series.  Look, I can't explain everything.  This all makes sense in my head, and I'd advise you not to contemplate.  Just keep reading and hush, like you do when you visit TMZ, and this will all go much more smoothly.

For A Few Dollars More

Of Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name" trilogy, I've seen For A Few Dollars More the fewest times.  Many argue that of all of Leone's westerns, this film is his finest.  I'm not so sure.

I've always preferred the rough-hewn style of A Fistful of Dollars, and the slick, refined cinematography in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  That's not to say this film is bad, or doesn't deserve a spot right in the middle.  I just rarely take this one out.

Actually, having taken another look, there's a lot to love here.  Lee Van Cleef is a total badass in this film, a sharpshooting bounty hunter with a saddlebag that unravels to reveal multiple rifles, and he frequently steals scenes from Clint Eastwood.  Van Cleef is not here as some kind of cold blooded killer, like his character "Angel Eyes" in The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, though.  His intentions and true identity are revealed later in the film.

Lee Van Cleef was maybe the first character actor whose name I learned, simply because he seemed to show up in the B-grade action movies, such as Armed Response, which my dad rented when I was growing up.  In 1986, Van Cleef would've been more than 60, and even when I was much younger, I couldn't feel much excitement for an old, balding man running around with a gun — not exactly much of an action star.  But in Leone's films, Van Cleef owns the screen.  I always thought he looked like a vulture.

As for Eastwood, this film is a return to the poncho-wearing, gunslinging character he played in A Fistful of Dollars.  What's interesting here is how much Eastwood's look reminds me of my dad and uncles, many of whom grew beards and swept their hair back in a similar style to Eastwood's character (and many of whom kept their look that way, to this day).  I don't know, maybe this was the style of the times — virtually everybody had a beard.  Whatever the case, I can't see Eastwood in these films and not think of my dad and uncles.

For A Few Dollars More was one of the first westerns — if not, then one of the best— to put a spin on the idea of a bank robbery.  Most westerns depicted bank robbers as thugs showing up on horses, running inside, and taking all the money from the safe.  In this film, the villains steal the entire safe.

I'm still not convinced For A Few Dollars More is superior to the other two films in the trilogy.  In fact, sometimes I prefer Leone's Once Upon A Time in the West over anything with Eastwood.  I will say that one of Leone's funniest and most badass moments is in this film, when Van Cleef's character strikes a match — on Klaus Kinski's hunchback.  Leone sometimes used the old match-striking bit to great humorous effect, but I haven't seen one funnier than this one.

I guess that's another reason why I generally like Leone's westerns — even the ones I don't consider favorites.  He lets some humor happen.  Yeah, the writing is excellent and the violence is far ahead of most American films of the same period, but Leone also brings the funny, and is so comfortable with "badass moments."  In this way, Leone connects quite neatly to Quentin Tarantino's style.

Really, all Tarantino needs to do is make a true western.   Oh, look.

Following

Before Inception, before The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, before The Prestige, before Insomnia, and before Memento, Christopher Nolan made a little, 71-minute feature film called Following.

I bought Following on DVD this summer.  I was in Half Price Books, as is my custom on weekends when I get antsy, and I saw they had shelved this DVD among the out-of-print/hard to find titles.  I didn't know Following had gone out of print, nor did I know the film had gotten scarce.  Sold!

I came home and price-checked the DVD online.  I paid a few dollars too much.  Ah well.

I've mentioned previously that my DVD buying has all but stopped as I migrate to Blu-Ray and get more conservative with my shiny disc collecting.  But that's not the only reason for the near-cessation.

After 10 months of this project, I'm still on "F."

At this rate, I'll get through the alphabet sometime around 2014.  That's troubling in a way, and comforting in another.  At least I have a goal.  I often feel as if I don't.

I still buy the odd DVD here and there, usually when I realize there's a specific film missing from my collection and not available on Blu-Ray (yet).  Following deserved a place on my shelf.  The completist in me rides again.  I have all of Nolan's films on DVD now.

Nolan shot Following guerrilla style, with virtually no budget, no permission, and not much in the way of equipment.  Although the results are not perfect, what Nolan manages to accomplish is admirable.  He gets these quick shots on the streets of London with no permits and gets great takes in public without people blowing his shots.  He used available light as often as possible, recruited friends and family for roles, and ended up making one of the more critically acclaimed independent films of the 1990s.

A lot went right, in other words.

"Everyone has a box," Cobb says to the inexperienced Bill as they rifle through a stranger's home.  He finds that box — you know the one, with the mementos, photos, love notes, trinkets, souvenirs, all detritus of a life, all kept in a shoebox or a hope chest.  This is the flotsam of our past, evidence of what we've done, where we've gone, and maybe where we're going.  Our homes are places where we store our belongings, and they are the evidence of what we have accomplished to date.  If someone broke in and stole our stuff, would we have evidence of our progress?  Would we have anything to show for all those years of working?  Does the acquisition of "stuff" serve as an adequate substitute for the creation of art?

I ask myself that question all the time.  Every weekend, I get antsy.  On payday, the feeling is worse.  I'm compelled to go out, to collect, to acquire, and then never enjoy what I bring home.  Piles and piles of books to go along with shelves and shelves of shiny discs.  I started this blog to force myself to stop and to give myself a project.  I want more.  I should be writing.  I want more.

I've known many people over the years who've had dreams of making a full-length film or writing a novel or screenplay.  Most of those people were just talking — idle chatter no different from the offhand comment about how they'd like to go to Paris someday, or how they'd like to own a Jaguar.

I bring this up as a contrast to what filmmakers such as Nolan, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez, and Richard Linklater were able to accomplish before turning 30.  All of them took that initial leap of making a full-length picture.  They didn't shoot on 35mm film.  Most of them shot on 16mm stock or Super 8.

All four made a critically acclaimed film with little money and went on to successful filmmaking careers.  They found ways to cut corners and make their vision into a real film.  They got antsy in all the right ways.  They got off their asses and stopped talking and started doing.

I'm happy doing what I do and living this life, but I'd be lying if I said there was nothing missing.  I have these moments when I stop and consider how much I've done with myself by age 35, and I have bouts of self-loathing and general dissatisfaction.  Acquisition does not provide long-term satisfaction.  Thoreau's bit about leading a life of quiet desperation comes to mind, but I don't want this to devolve into some whiny, navel-gazing mess.  (Too late.)

Films like Following remind me that one can get up at any time and make a start.  Whether I will is another prospect entirely.

Fletch/Fletch Lives

"I don't shower much."

I've previously written about Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase's influence on my behavior, but no Chevy Chase role had a greater influence on me, my sense of humor, or my general level of smartassery than Fletch.

"Fletch" is short for Fletcher.  That's Irwin M. Fletcher, or Fletch F. Fletch, or Jane Doe, or Don Corleone, or Harry S. Truman, or John Cocktoastin (my favorite), or Dr. Rosenrosen, or Victor Hugo, or Hank Himmler, or Nostradamus, or Claude-Henry Smmoot.  Fletch has many names.

He's a reporter for a Los Angeles newspaper, but he always seems to find much more than average news stories. He goes through disguises and aliases with cartoonish frequency, but his dialogue is some of the funniest I've ever heard, and what makes me watch again and again.

"This house is obviously infested with Reticulermes mariocuomos."

Sure, Chase's other films — Spies Like Us, Funny Farm, and Caddyshack to name a few — feature plenty of lines I rattle off in everyday conversation, but the Fletch films provided the heaviest helpings of Chevy's smartass comments, outright bullshit, and physical comedy.

Adult males of a certain age and disposition (typically in the Gen-X/Gen-Y range, and with a penchant for annoying nearby women) all seem to love — and quote — the Fletch films.  Maybe that's the Gen-X/Y tendency toward irony with a dash of condescension, or maybe that's just the XY.

Probably both.

I've often heard of Fletch described as "the one where the guy hires him to kill him" and Fletch Lives as "the one where he goes to the south."  The plots, if you call them plots, are half-baked and convoluted, but who cares when you have this great vehicle for Chevy Chase?

"What can I do to y--for you?"

I taped Fletch Lives one random day in the '80s, and I watched that glorious VHS tape until I had the entire film memorized.  This means I've probably seen the 1989 sequel a few dozen times more than the first film.

In a few cases, I watched Fletch Lives with my parents.  There weren't many films that would stand up to repeated viewings at the King Ranch.  Even the Blu-Ray.com reviewer gets nostalgic about watching this film with his dad.  I'm not the only one who gets a little misty.

In high school, I wrote a radio play that was hopelessly derivative of the Fletch films and whatever other films were influencing me at the time, and by "hopelessly derivative" I mean that I miraculously avoided accusations of plagiarism because my high school teachers were either too busy to care or too uncool to notice.  I'm not proud.

"I would've used your razor, but it looks like you've been doing some gardening with it."

Fletch Lives also seems edited with a greater sense of comic timing.  What I mean is that for the first half hour or so, this film is just riddled with great-line-then-cut editing.  The jokes come quickly, even as the Klan show up to torment Cleavon Little's character.  This is where Chevy Chase really shines.

Of all his great lines and funny moments, for me the quintessential Fletch moment is when Chevy Chase picks up the Klansman's bullhorn and says, "Zulu!  Zulu!  [nonsense]  Gene Hackman kick your ass!  [nonsense]  You want to pay you have to buy!"  I've probably rewound and re-watched that bit dozens of times, trying to get exactly what Fletch says there.  The above comes from the DVD subtitles, with my best guess there at the end.

"When it comes to stewed prunes, are three enough?  Are four too many?"

Fletch Lives is my favorite of the two films, even though most people prefer the first film.  For me, the sequel has better one-liners, a better cast (Hal Holbrook, Randall "Tex" Cobb, R. Lee Ermey, Cleavon Little, Phil Hartman, and Richard Belzer), and the writer, Leon Capetanos, makes the inspired choice of giving Fletch a fish-out-of-water story rather than basing this film on one of Gregory Mcdonald's mystery novels.

Curiously, Capetanos hasn't had a produced script since Fletch Lives, in 1989, but since then he's made a career out of real estate — not unexpected given the film's themes of estates, realtors, plantations, and whatnot.  Information on this writer is hard to find and sketchy at best.  As for Fletch films, there's been some chatter about a reboot, and the idea's been tossed around Hollywood like a hot potato covered in Belle Isle toxic waste.  So far, nothing.

I've often thought that Ryan Reynolds would make a perfect Fletch if a reboot ever happened, but Reynolds once called the role "hallowed ground" and said he would not go there.  "Hallowed ground" my Cocktoastin.  This is the same guy who basically channeled Chevy when playing Van Wilder.  I'm not the only one who noticed.  I don't understand the holdup.

I've spent more than 20 years watching and re-watching the Fletch films, popping off the lines of dialogue in mixed company, and hoping somebody would catch the reference.

Sometimes, somebody does, and it's at those points, I know I have a friend in smartassery.
As far as you know.

Five Easy Pieces

Every selfish, stunted male should watch Five Easy Pieces.

This film is sort of similar in themes to High Fidelity, but without the record shop, or like About A Boy, but without the new friends.  Five Easy Pieces has no happy ending and no great awakening, but the film works anyway, if only as a rumination on the angst of an aimless generation and a reminder to me to not be such a selfish asshole.

Jack Nicholson plays Robert Dupea, a classical pianist who for some reason has taken to a life of working on an oil field and shacking up with a waitress (and other random women).  He is a classic example of an underachiever, a man who has squandered his talent and found himself going nowhere.

Karen Black plays Rayette, Robert's girlfriend, a ditzy but sweet woman who loves him to pieces despite his faults.  She's going nowhere as well, but the difference is, she either doesn't know or doesn't care (maybe both).

Robert doesn't fit well with the blue collar folks he surrounds himself with, including Rayette and his oil rig buddy, Elton.  Robert is verbally abusive toward Rayette, and he can't stand Elton's little boy.  The idea of having children of his own is repugnant to Robert.  He seems to think his life has a greater purpose, but he doesn't know what.

And then he finds out from Elton that Rayette is pregnant.  And then he flips out a little.

He chews out Elton, then walks over to his foreman and quits his job.  Then he turns around to see two guys in suits chasing Elton down, beating him up, and cuffing him.  Turns out, Elton robbed a gas station a year previously and his past is just catching up to him.  Robert puts up a brief struggle, but once he realizes the men in suits are cops, he doesn't resist.  He watches Elton hauled away, and that's pretty much the end of their friendship.  Elton is not heard from for the rest of the film.

Robert runs from every challenge, gets annoyed at anything outside of his control, and reacts like a petulant child when he doesn't get what he wants.  There's a famous scene in a diner when Robert attempts to order breakfast his way, but the waitress won't allow substitutions.  Go here and scroll down to read a transcript.

Five Easy Pieces was one of my first rentals from Netflix in February 2003.  My initial thoughts about the film were colored because I was experiencing films in a slightly new way.  Renting a DVD but not getting the box seemed like a foreign concept.  I was more apt to rent films that my local Blockbuster didn't stock, so I was digging into catalog releases, older films, rarer films, and often, whatever Netflix recommended.  I was in a master's program in English at the time, so I was interested in character studies and quiet little films.  I was renting some strange films, and I was initially very disappointed in Netflix.

This film was among the disappointments.  My first impressions of Five Easy Pieces were not good.  I found the film ponderous and thin at the same time, just full of bitchy, unhappy, selfish people, led by Jack Nicholson.  Without likable characters, I was left wondering why I should even care about these people and why I was even watching.

Because of the apparent lack of a traditional plot, I was bored and a little frustrated.  Much of the film didn't make sense.  If Robert Dupea is supposed to be such a great classical pianist, why doesn't he play the piano?  What happened?  Why does he only play the piano when he's either clowning around or trying to seduce women?  What is the freaking point of this film?  There were few easy answers.

Something about the film nagged at me, though.  I had the feeling that I'd missed the point, that I'd need to look at this one again.  I kept the film in the back of my mind and eventually snagged a used copy on DVD, but hadn't re-watched until tonight.

I have thought about the film many times since 2003, though, and as I've thought, I've wondered about that nagging feeling.  What was this film saying, and why couldn't I pick that up the first time?

Part of the explanation lies in that this film is not designed to speak to Generation X, of which I'm a member.  Many of the nuances in this film were lost on me the first time, and I needed more context to really get what the filmmakers were saying.

So I started thinking about context.  What was going on in the world and in cinema at the time of this film's release?  This is a post-Woodstock, post-hippie-dream, early '70s disillusionment think piece and character study.  That really matters to one's understanding of this film.

Oh.

But that's not the only nagging bit.  In my efforts to understand the film, I had to understand Robert, and now that I'm a little older and in a different place in life, I do (I think).

My life is the reverse of Robert Dupea's.  I grew up in a blue collar home.  My family is unrefined by traditional standards.  This is not a slight to them, but just the way I was raised.  I battled against that for years.  I don't talk like them...most of the time.  I don't think like them...most of the time.

In a way, I rebelled and went the opposite direction of Robert.  He embraced a blue collar lifestyle.  I embraced a traditionally white collar profession and the "elite."  I frequently find myself trying to reconcile the differences between the two worlds.

I also used to be a selfish prick.  In my own search for identity, I dated around a lot and often found myself dating someone who was not at all what I wanted.  But I didn't want to be alone, either.  I found myself in situations that were so uncomfortable, I wanted to run (and a few times, I did).  I once stopped calling a girl because I found out she read Harry Potter books.  I'm not saying I was right.  I'm saying I was wrong.

But I never abandoned a pregnant woman at a gas station a la Robert Dupea.

With another viewing, I see and understand much more of the conflict within Robert.  So much of this film is understated that viewers accustomed to something more plot-driven or containing obvious character arcs will struggle here.  I did the first time.

This film takes place in the early 1970s, and Robert typifies the alienation and rebellion of adults around his age at that time, backing away from his upbringing because he feels he doesn't belong, and disenchanted with the world ahead — the world he created for himself.

"I move around a lot because things tend to get bad when I stay," Robert confesses to his catatonic father toward the end of the film, betraying his restlessness and alienation.  His whole life is one big existential crisis driven by his id.  He reacts to difficult situations with all the wisdom and maturity of a teenager, as though his evolution as a human being stopped when he stopped playing the piano early in life.

He plays the piano for his brother's girlfriend and moves her to tears, but feels nothing inside himself.  He confesses that he chose the easiest piece to play for her.  He doesn't get a charge out of much of anything.

I get the feeling he's looking for that charge, but every time he thinks he's found what he wants, he realizes that he's wrong...again...so he abandons it.  He abandons people and responsibility, and in the end, has nothing to show for his life.

"There isn't anybody gonna love you AND look after you as good as I do," Rayette says to Robert in the car as they drive away from his family home together, toward their future together.  He wants no part of that future.

Five Easy Pieces is not an easy film.  I despise Jack Nicholson's character and feel for those around him, who are so often hurt by his selfishness and immaturity.  Five Easy Pieces also is a funhouse mirror for a guy I used to be or could've been if I'd given in to my base desires, and as such, the film is a reminder of what not to do with my life.  Sometimes I need that.

A Fistful of Dynamite (a.k.a. Duck, You Sucker!)

I'll confess; I've never seen this film.  This one was long out of print and never available on DVD prior to 2007.  Even glorious VHS copies were dodgy, hard to find, and expensive.

My wife bought me the Sergio Leone Anthology a few years ago, thereby hooking me up with beautiful DVD transfers of Leone's classic westerns with Clint Eastwood.  I've owned Leone's "Man With No Name" trilogy twice before, on VHS and DVD, but those versions were no frills, dodgy looking, and sounded terrible.  

Here, MGM went back and restored those films, plus this one, adding a metric shitload of special features.  Plus, the completist in me loved the chance to get Leone's last western — this film — on DVD.

Unfortunately, like a couple dozen other films, I acquired a copy of A Fistful of Dynamite on DVD but never made time to watch.  Then again, that's why I'm here.

Originally titled Duck, You Sucker! upon initial U.S. release in 1971, this film has many names, including A Fistful of Dynamite (to take advantage of the notoriety of Leone's earlier film) and Once Upon A Time... The Revolution, which recalls another.  

Why not bundle Once Upon A Time in the West here, too, and make this a definitive Leone western collection?  The answer is pretty simple; that film belongs to another studio.  MGM had four out of five, and that'll work.

With so many titles, the placement of this film in alphabetical order is a little tricky.  I considered just going with the original Italian title, Giù la testa, but that seemed more pretentious than even I could abide.  In the end, I decided to watch this one under the film's alternate English title in an effort to get this one as close to the rest of the Leone set as possible.

This is a fantastic film; though far from Leone's best, this might be his most sensitive and cynical.  James Coburn plays an Irish explosives expert wandering Mexico, and Rod Steiger plays a bandit with a crew made up of his own illegitimate children from his relations with multiple women.  

Coburn's Irish accent isn't bad...for an American in an Italian western.  He had Irish roots, at least.  Steiger's Mexican bandit sounds an awful lot like Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in an angry mood, or maybe John Belushi doing an impression of Marlon Brando.  

Don't believe me?  Then how come when I search for Belushi doing Brando, I get Belushi doing Steiger?

Leone's only bad film is The Colossus of Rhodes — a colossal mess if you ask me — but even though all of his westerns are rock solid, this is probably the one that stumbles and meanders the most.  In an effort to set compelling characters against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, he creates a story that seemingly wanders from sequence to sequence.  Steiger is channeling a little of Eli Wallach's Tuco from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and Coburn's laid back schemer reminds me a little of both Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef's previous efforts, with a dash of Jason Robards or Charles Bronson.  Interestingly, Eastwood was offered Coburn's part but refused, saying the role was too similar to the other films, and Wallach eventually declined the role Steiger took.  

This could have been "Man With No Name" #4.

While serving as Leone's last western, this film also works as a bridge between Once Upon A Time in the West and Once Upon A Time in America.  If viewed as a trilogy, the viewer can see how Leone's view of western history plays out over the three epic films.  Like Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, here we see the influence of the industrial revolution on the American west, not just in how one traveled, but also how one fought.  Machine guns and automobiles appear throughout, mowing down the victims of circumstance, mowing down time.  Most Hollywood westerns keep things quaint, but both Leone and Peckinpah are right to examine other periods of the west — especially the end.

I love owning a copy of an artist's entire oeuvre, if only to give me more opportunities to use the word "oeuvre" correctly in a sentence.  Taken as a whole, an artist's body of work is a work itself, with logical starting and ending points and an evolution along the way.  I can see Leone's views about the American west reflected in his work, as well as his views on how Americans depicted their own history.

I love Leone's films because he seems to capture more about the American west than any American western director ever did, and he does so with dry humor and a keen eye.  In fact, I'd argue that most of the Italian western directors did a better job of celebrating the west than anyone out of Hollywood not named John Ford or Sam Peckinpah (and those guys had their missteps — Leone didn't).  I suppose one could argue for Clint Eastwood's own efforts as a filmmaker, but I can't watch his westerns and not see the influence of his work with Leone.  That leaves me with only David Milch, whose "Deadwood" redefined how modern audiences view the west (mostly with colorful language many say was heretofore unheard).  

Ah, but A Fistful of Dynamite has plenty of F-bombs — brave for a western released in 1971.

Before tonight, I'd never seen A Fistful of Dynamite.  At 157 minutes, this isn't something I'll return to often, but having seen the film now, the rest of Leone's work sits in a new context, and I can't stop thinking about this one.  I can barely stop writing.

A Fistful of Dollars

Shopping for my dad is always difficult.  What do you get a guy who never expresses an opinion one way or another about anything in your price range?

I mean, sure, I know he'd love a '57 Chevy, but you can't exactly get those at Target.

We only have so much money to work with, and we had even less when we were growing up.  One Christmas, Mom put in our heads that Dad liked Clint Eastwood westerns.

You know how when you have someone to shop for, and they're really difficult, you latch on to that one thing and that's all they ever get?  Well, you know how sometimes you're wrong, and you end up buying something over and over — something the person doesn't really want?

I got him a copy of High Plains Drifter, another classic Eastwood western, on glorious VHS.  To my knowledge, that VHS tape remains unopened.  We're talking at least a decade, still in the wrapper.

I never bought him another Clint Eastwood film.  This is not to say he didn't appreciate the gift; he just wasn't interested after all, and that's fair.  Maybe I need to try harder.

I've been trying ever since.

When I was growing up, westerns were always on television.  Usually, my granddad would keep John Wayne films on television when he wasn't watching football or "Hee Haw."  So when we'd visit, often we'd watch a movie on TV.

Dad enjoyed those John Wayne films as well, I think.  The Sons of Katie Elder, Rio Bravo, Big Jake, and True Grit were on from time to time.  This was a different time, when the Saturday or Sunday matinee film on television was a total crapshoot, so when a John Wayne film was on, you'd lucked out.

Of course, Dad never spent much time in the house on his days off.  He was always outside working in the yard or the garden, or on some project, or in the garage.  Or he'd be out trying to find a bargain at some auction or garage sale.

Sometimes, though, a random hot or rainy day would line up with a John Wayne film on television, and he'd stay in with us.  Those days were rare.

A Fistful of Dollars is the first of Sergio Leone's "Man With No Name Trilogy," in which Clint Eastwood plays the mysterious main character, usually a drifter, fast with a gun, highly intelligent, and darkly humored.

Whereas John Wayne is the archetypal protagonist in so many of his films, Clint Eastwood's work with Leone was as an antihero: terribly dark and much more violent.

Sure, John Wayne's films often explore dark themes, but I always feel like I'm watching a sanitized Hollywood western, and at any point a character will say, "Gee willikers!"

But that's me.

A few years ago, I lived with Dad for a summer.  I watched The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly that summer, mostly because I was unemployed and living with my dad, so I had nothing but time to watch old movies and write.  (I should've started this blog years ago.  I might be on letter G by now.)

One night, Dad and I got to talking about the "spaghetti westerns," because I'd picked up a great book on the topic.  With this conversation, I almost figured him out a little.  He said, "Those films are just too violent for my taste."

This is a man who, in 1986, took his 6-year-old daughter and two sons, ages 11 and 8, to see Rambo: First Blood Part II and Cobra at a drive-in double feature.

But I didn't press.  Maybe his tastes have changed in 25 years.

One thing is certain.  Dad's not a fan of foreign films, even if some of the characters speak English.  He always calls them "dubbers," because the dialogue doesn't match, and that's distracting.  Add to that, the voice actors are usually terrible, and that's even worse.

Subtitles?  Not an option.

I look past the bad looping of a Sergio Leone film, and I'm willing to watch a subtitled film.  Dad is different that way.  But he still watches movies.  I just have to keep trying.

Last Christmas, my sister and I pooled our money and bought Dad a Blu-Ray player.  He's had this astonishing 52" flat-panel television for two years, but he only watches over-the-air programming out in the country.  He had his DVD player connected via RCA cables.  He was satisfied.  I wasn't.

His first disc was not a Clint Eastwood film.  I got him The Searchers, and we watched some — not all — of that film on his 52" television, and what we watched was glorious.

I'm not sure if he's watched the film since, except to demo the picture quality to friends and relatives.

But at least he's demo-ing the picture quality.

This is a step in the right direction, but this hardly means I'm safe just getting him John Wayne films instead.  The solution isn't so simple.

All this leads me to a little realization.  Dad doesn't consume films in the same way I do.  For him, films are disposable entertainment that he doesn't have time to obsess over.  I blog and pick apart and navel-gaze and watch and re-watch stuff.  We're different.  As I get older, I'm more okay with that.

Dad's birthday is this week.  I have no idea what to get him.  Maybe I'll just get him Paint Your Wagon and see what happens.

The Fisher King

I used to do improv with this guy Dan, who used to sing "How About You?"  He sang a lot of showtunes, actually, because he was a musical theatre major.  Took me a while to make the connection to The Fisher King, though.  Dan's a fan of this film, methinks. I know I am.

The Fisher King might be Terry Gilliam's best film, in that, by far, this is his most coherent effort with the most compelling story.

Your usual Gilliam touches are here — he loves twisty plots and off-kilter camera techniques and medieval symbols and filthy locations and downtrodden, misfit people.  He also goes for the gut punch with characters who are so deeply flawed you wonder how they live with themselves, and then he makes them worse.

Gilliam's films are usually style-over-substance affairs, but not The Fisher King.  In this one, the narrative is as strong, if not stronger, than Gilliam's typical vision.

Jeff Bridges plays Jack Lucas, a shock jock on a New York radio station.  We see him hanging up on people, telling people off, and at one point, he tells a caller that all of the yuppies "need to be stopped."  The caller turns somber, ominously, and that's the end of the call.

Lucas' career is on the upswing.  He's going to read for a part in a terrible television show — one of those sitcoms with a catchphrase — and he has to rehearse the line, "Forgive me," until he is convinced that he has the line delivery down cold.  Then he turns on the news to find that the somber caller went crazy, took Lucas seriously, and shot up a restaurant, killing seven people.

Flash forward to three years later.  Lucas now works in a video store with his girlfriend, played by Mercedes Ruehl, who pretty much disappeared from any screen I've seen in 15 years.  The sitcom with the stupid catchphrase is now a milquetoast hit with American audiences, and Harry Shearer, not Lucas, got the part.  People on the street say "Forgive me!" to Lucas as he walks by.

At his lowest point, Jack is ready to kill himself when two thugs show up to try to set him on fire in one of those senseless set-a-bum-on-fire type killings.  But then Perry, played by Robin Williams, shows up out of nowhere to save him.

Perry gives Jack a place to recuperate, which is in Perry's makeshift home in a boiler room.  Before Jack can leave, Perry tells Jack that he knows where the Holy Grail is located.  Some rich man has the grail, Perry says, and he needs help stealing it.

Confused and alarmed, Jack gets out of there, but not before the owner of the building stops him on the way out and tells Jack all about Perry's story.

Perry was in the restaurant, with his wife, who was killed.

Perry spent a year in a mental institution after the shooting.  He was a professor.  Now he's a homeless man with a fixation on medieval lore, and he hallucinates.  He's a pathetic figure.  He's by turns enchanted by an awkward female office worker, and tormented by a demonic, red knight.

Helping him isn't as simple as throwing money at him, Jack finds, and that kind of sensitivity to the plight of the less fortunate is never preachy here — just obvious if you're not an idiot.  Williams and Bridges are in top form here (both would have to wait a while for Academy recognition).

Add The Fisher King to the miles-long list of films I wish I'd written — the kind of piece that combines all these fantastic set pieces with character arcs and real heart.  No shocker here — Richard LaGravenese's screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.

I saw this film for the first time when I was 20, living in my first college apartment and checking out movies from the library as often as I could.  This is one of the earliest examples of me watching a film and being aware of the quality of writing on display — not just clever jokes or quotable lines of dialogue, but a fantastic story.  You might say this is one of the first films that made me want to write screenplays.

That's what keeps me coming back to this one.

Fight Club

I blame Fight Club for so much.

For one, Fight Club made writing screenplays about split personalities okay, when the oh-shit-Norton-is-Pitt twist really wasn't that interesting a twist in the first place.

That's the least interesting bit of the film, really. Having taught screenwriting for several years, by far the most overdone, clichéd, beaten to hell plot device among beginning writers is the split personality.

That device got so common in the years following Fight Club that I eventually made a list of banned story ideas for my classes. "Split personalities" was near the top.

(Of course, I offered to grant exceptions for those students who were also licensed, practicing psychiatrists. Nobody ever took me up on that.)

Fight Club explores the emasculation of men in modern capitalist society, but doesn't do much to provide reasonable solutions or alternatives, just postulating that the pendulum on which inept men sit must one day swing back, violently, against whomever or whatever performed the emasculation.

This is the logical conclusion, circa 1999, to the arc on which we found ourselves. Prior to 9/11, our greatest enemies were ourselves. Timothy McVeigh parked a van full of explosives and blew up a building. Sound familiar? The largest terrorist attack on American soil prior to 9/11 was perpetrated by an American. This is the world into which Fight Club was born.

Who is our enemy since 9/11? You make the call. Are the terrorists our enemy? Muslims? Republicans? Someone else?

Who says we have to have just one enemy? We were fantasizing about blowing up our own financial sectors in escapist film in 1999. When you have no real threat, you make one up. Hollywood has done this for years. Don't get too comfortable.

"We're a generation of men raised by women," Tyler Durden suggests, as if mothering causes the beta male mentality, some kind of dime store psychoanalysis. I don't buy that, exactly.

(Interesting choice of words: "I don't buy that.")

No, Mom didn't make us this way. Not by herself, anyway. (A male-dominated society attributing predominantly male foibles to females. That's rich.)

Fight Club also factored into my ill-advised aspirations as a film theorist. I had these grand ideas of doing my Ph.D. in film, and I'd seen a few articles on the demasculinization theme. I read them, enjoyed them, found them fascinating, and they validated some of my favorite films. I like when scholars write papers and books about films I enjoy.

Of course, these papers and books also tend to make every male film theorist look like an asshole. Hey, look, now the white guys are wringing their hands and trying to tell everyone how tough it is, being a white male. Y'all don't know what it's like, being male, middle-class, and white.

Our fathers wouldn't do this...would they? Where's the pendulum now?

Finally, for all of Fight Club bluster against material goods, I never stopped acquiring them — still haven't. In one year of owning a Blu-Ray player, I've amassed some 60 Blu-Ray discs. I don't know what all of this means, except that I probably don't take Fight Club to heart very much. Maybe I can't blame Fight Club exactly. Maybe here I just blame myself for not getting the message.

When I think about how my collections have gotten out of control over the years — the hundreds of DVDs and CDs, the thousands of baseball cards and comics, the shelves and shelves of books, and the mountain of debt I've built for myself over the years, all in an effort to satisfy...something, I can't help but think of what Tyler Durden would say:

"The things you own end up owning you."

More than any line, that one sticks with me. So much truth there. Give up your worldly possessions and move out of town. Fight Club is Walden with bloody fists.

Everybody says marriage and family tie you down, but I was tied down long before marriage. Paralyzing fear of the unknown and the lack of control I sometimes feel all seem to feed into this obsession to collect.

I've explored that here before, tried to generate something positive by writing and examining what I've made of this, and nothing could be more beta male than this navel-gazing writing project that goes from arrogance to self-loathing to self-aggrandizing to simply justifying materialism and obsessive-compulsiveness run roughshod. I'm not going to blame a movie and I'm not going to blame Mom. There's no point in assigning blame.

If I had nothing left but my wife and my rabbit, I'd still be happy because everything else can be replaced or recreated. They are the true currency, the true possession, the real meaning.

Watching Fight Club beats all that out of me.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas caught my eye upon initial release, but I lost interest in seeing the film when I read Roger Ebert's review in which he described the film as "a horrible mess of a movie."

"If you encountered characters like this on an elevator, you'd push a button and get off at the next floor. Here the elevator is trapped between floors for 128 minutes," Ebert wrote then.

I turn to Ebert often. When I leave a movie and can't put my finger on what I liked or didn't like, I go read Ebert's review. Most of the time, he carefully and completely articulates exactly what I am thinking but can't say just yet. I'm not the only person who does this, so don't get all uppity about my lack of originality. I need time to process things, to reflect, and then assert. Ebert gets there first. So what?

He rips this film, though. He questioned Terry Gilliam's true influence on this project, given that Gilliam was not the original director (Alex Cox was fired from the project). He chalks this one up as a Johnny Depp vanity project, but I don't know how Ebert could miss Gilliam's touch here — these lens choices, soundtrack selections, and camera angles are nothing but Gilliam.

But regardless, because of Roger Ebert, I ignored the film for several years. I figured this was yet another Terry Gilliam mess, style over substance, story optional. Yawn and barf.

For all my moments of self-loathing when I reflect on my early 20s, I had Terry Gilliam pegged. I couldn't stand his work outside Monty Python, really. I still have trouble with Gilliam films — just not as much. I need less time to process what he's doing, and instead of getting frustrated, I welcome the challenge. After watching Lost in La Mancha, I see Gilliam as more down-to-earth, not some madman with a budget and a camera.

If I'm not mistaken, I finally watched Fear and Loathing on glorious VHS with my old film school roommate, Justin, when I lived in Ohio. He insisted I watch this one. Justin had quite the influence on me. He was the film student, while I was a screenwriting student from the telecommunications program who got to sit in film department courses. I was an interloper.

In short, I sat among future giants of the film industry who cited without fear of pretentiousness such influences as Bergman, Kurosawa, and Godard. They'd seen most of the films we screened, and had interesting things to say about technique and aesthetics. I was interested solely in storytelling.

These were true film students who shot on film, not video, like a real film school, not some podunk college that promises to "teach you valuable film industry skills that get you a job" while not actually having the equipment to do so. No, these folks were for real. They helped each other. They made actual films. They edited on Steenbecks and eschewed nonlinear editing software. Several of these folks ended up on IMDB, with actual credits. I'm not linking to them no matter what.

Anyway. Justin. I'd mention a title or he'd mention a title and we'd get around to me admitting I hadn't seen the film. First he'd sort of make me feel like an idiot, which was his custom, and then boom, he put the tape on. He did this four or five times that summer. He'd go out and get movies and come home with a pile of them. Living with Justin was sort of like living with a much younger, more pretentious version of my dad, and I mean that in the most complimentary way possible.

That summer kicked me in the ass, in a way. I learned director's names. I learned more about shooting. He kept film stock in the refrigerator, because that's what you're supposed to do. Once, his mom called and caught me off guard. "How do you like living with Justin?" "It's fine." "Oh, trust me, I know my son. But he's harmless. He's an open book." Uh...okay. I never figured him out because I never tried.

We bickered a little. Then we had a falling out. Stupid roommate stuff. I moved to Chicago and started the next chapter, but I became more voracious with how I consumed movies. Justin and I got back in touch several years later, but hardly spoke after that. He's out there somewhere, in Colorado or Oregon or some damned place, making movies, watching movies, an open book.

I prefer the Criterion version of Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because, as with most Criterion releases, you get a metric assload of special features. I don't get why people buy the cheaper, stripped-down versions of things when there's a Criterion edition. Oh, sure, the Criterion versions are always more expensive, but look at what you get!

Documentaries, artwork, liner notes, and of course, with this one, you get a commentary track with Raoul Duke himself, Hunter S. Thompson. He chimes in occasionally with something borderline lucid, but spends just as much time rambling and, from time to time, he just howls like some kind of donkey-wolf braying at the moon. This is the genius?

I wonder if Ebert evaluated this film unfairly, based on the latter-day Hunter Thompson, who burned out and became even more rambling and incoherent. Yes, there are moments of utter chaos and confusion in this film, but there are just as many quirky, humorous moments amid the chaos to keep me watching. Add to that the lucid moments, the times when we just see Depp's Thompson typing, musing, set to the music of the era, when I see that even the paragon of drug addled nonsense can articulate what I'm thinking, even about an era I never knew.

Fargo

When I first saw Fargo on glorious VHS in 1997 or so, I'd heard most of the Oscar buzz, but I don't recall the film playing in the theaters in my hometown.  Of course, at 22, this isn't exactly the kind of film I went out to see.

No, back then, I was looking at independent comedies, and I fancied myself a fan of dark comedies (based mostly on my relationship with Clerks and Harold & Maude), but not necessarily films this dark.  For the longest time, I didn't consider this film a dark comedy, despite all the black humor here.  I'm not sure what I was thinking.  I was 22.  That's all I can say.

Years on, I can see why Fargo won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  Fargo is an incredibly brave piece of writing.  By the 6-minute mark, we've met William H. Macy's Jerry Lundegaard, a crooked car dealer taken to his logical conclusion, and the two dangerous types he hires to help him.  See, Lundegaard just wants to run a little scheme, make a little money, and get himself out of financial trouble.

Peter Stormare's chain-smoking hitman is downright frightening in this film.  He's cold-blooded, psychotic — the last kind of man Jerry Lundegaard actually wants to hire, and the last guy Steve Buscemi's character wants to offend.  Of course, Buscemi's character is no Snow White (think that name over and feel free to wonder if I'm making a pun).

But that's not why the script is so brave.   The protagonist, Marge Gunderson, played by Frances McDormand, doesn't even appear until the 33-minute mark of a 98-minute film, defying all the conventions in all the screenwriting textbooks.  She turns out to be the most interesting character, and the Coens left her in the quiver for almost 1/3 of the picture.  She's a spitfire, a real detective, able to piece together crimes in seconds, just by looking around the scene.  In this way, she's a lot like Willem Dafoe in The Boondock Saints, except Fargo doesn't blow ass.

Marge owns every scene, and pwns every male in this film.  She doesn't need help.  She's a supportive wife to a dutiful artist, a competent chief of police, a great detective, an excellent shot, and a mother-to-be.  I'm not sure there's ever been a stronger protagonist ever put to film.  Her husband is just as supportive, offering to make her eggs when she's called to work in the night, and insisting that she eat a good breakfast.  He's also the kind of guy who will fall asleep in bed with his hand in a bag of potato chips.  He's harmless, a beta male.  They make a great couple.

This time through, I saw shades of my wife and me.  She's going to end up making more money when she's done with school, and I'm not too fussed about that.  I'll play the supporting role in this house.  She's no cop and I'm no painter, but the comparisons aren't too hard to make.  She's in nursing school and I'm a teacher.  When she's done, I won't be the breadwinner.  I'll be the breadrunner-upper or something.  Whatever.  If the Gundersons are any indication, that stuff works too.

I made a point to collect all the Coen Brothers' films on DVD, because as far as modern filmmaking goes, nobody is doing better work.  I don't reach for Fargo often, but when I do, I always see new bits to appreciate, and I don't just mean bits of Steve Buscemi flying out of a wood chipper.  You betcha.

Family Plot/Frenzy

I'm backing up to get two Hitchcock films, both of which are contained in the Masterpiece Collection. I've never seen either film, so I'm just reacting as I go.

Family Plot is Hitchcock's final film, a sort of thriller/black comedy. Though far from Hitchcock's best work, he was in his mid seventies at the time of the film's release, and still puts together a film that trumps most stuff made in the last 35 years.

Unfortunately, such faint praise is the only praise I can give Family Plot. What's more, despite a 95% fresh rating, many of the critics resort to faint praise, too, using phrases such as "not exactly top-tier Hitchcock," "minor but worthwhile," "pretty good," and my favorite, "enough good stuff to make it at least worth one viewing." Uh...okay. Perhaps more telling is the 57% fresh rating among audiences, or the 2.5 star rating on Netflix. The film has many fans, but most of them are hardcore Hitch fans who like everything, and/or critics who are afraid to call this film dopey.

For a start, the medium/psychic scenes with Barbara Harris are kind of painful to watch, Bruce Dern plays pretty much the same character in every film, and the melodrama is hard to swallow. Still, I'm sticking with this one.

A tall, mysterious woman who goes by "The Trader" and who looks like a young Tom Petty walks around this film, dressed head to toe in black. What's her deal? Oh, wait, that's Karen Black. I liked her better in Five Easy Pieces.

And...oh, wait, there's William Devane, formerly of "Knots Landing," and a dude I once saw roam into the Borders bookstore where I worked in Chicago. Hard to believe that guy worked with Hitchcock. What's he done since? Uh...a lot of television, mostly typecast as the creepy or unscrupulous type. Still working, though. Hey! I was once within 10 feet of an actor who worked with Hitchcock. That's kinda cool, I guess. Devane is super slimy in this film, all mustache and teeth and licking his lips a lot.

The plot is twisty, features egregious and unnecessary blue screen use, and doesn't make a lick of sense. I can do without this one.

Frenzy, on the other hand, is a fantastic film. I wish this had been Hitch's last film, because Family Plot is such a slog. Set in London, Hitchcock's penultimate film is a straight-ahead suspense film about a "Necktie Killer" on the loose. When a stack of circumstantial evidence puts the law on the trail of Richard Ian Blaney, a hard luck case, he has to find a way to clear his name. Jon Finch plays Blaney, a chain-smoking, hard-drinking, temper-prone Englishman who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up the target of a police investigation into a series of grisly strangulations.

Frenzy is deftly written and paced, and seems the kind of film that is much more polished and lucid than Family Plot. Hitch has this incredible cast of great English character actors: Finch, Alec McCowen, Barry Foster, Billie Whitelaw, and on and on and on.

Hitch returns to England with a keen eye for the distinctly English. At one point, we're treated to a protracted conversation between a police inspector and one of his underlings, while the inspector eats the bigger part of a traditional English breakfast of eggs, sausages, rasher bacon, mushrooms, toast, and other fatty protein-y things that are awesome. When I visited England, I had a real breakfast at least twice. I was full for hours. The average LDL number in England must be in the thousands.

Food plays a significant role in this film, for some reason. Hitch features characters eating something in just about every scene. Brit food is often slagged off for being bland, boring, or just plain gross (blood pudding, anyone?), but I must say, after seeing what the police inspector's aspiring "gourmet" wife made him for dinner, I'd take this any day:

For Hitch, Frenzy seems like a love note to all things English — the plot is a nod to Jack the Ripper, the food is distinctly English, the black taxis are prominent, and familiar pieces of London are given plenty of screen time — Tower Bridge, Covent Garden, etc. Normally I'd say that this is why I liked the film so much, but really, the film is just damned good.

I'm not one to recommend many movies, but if you get anything out of this Hitchcock jag that I'm on, maybe you'll get a look at a lesser-known Hitch film like this one. In many ways this is a textbook thriller — the kind of film Hitchcock could make in his sleep, but in other ways this is Hitch coming full circle to make one last great film.