Groundhog Day

I wanted to get to Groundhog Day on Groundhog Day, but that didn't work out. Then I figured I'd just settle for getting to this film during the month of February. Here you go.

I heard of Groundhog Day shortly after the film's release in 1993, when I saw my neighbor, Chris, wearing a "Groundhog Day -- the movie, not the holiday" t-shirt (or was that a hat?). I don't remember when I ended up seeing the movie for the first time, but for some reason, I remember that shirt/hat. Okay, it was some kind of article of clothing. Or maybe a coffee mug. Okay, it had the name Groundhog Day on it somewhere.

Anyway, the point isn't when I saw the movie, but that I saw the movie.

After maybe 15 or 20 viewings now, I can't hear Sonny & Cher's "I Got You Babe" without laughing. I can't hear the name Ned without following with "Ned the Head." I can't hear the name Punxsutawney Phil without affecting a Brian Doyle Murray voice.

Like all great American comedies, Groundhog Day stands up well to repeat viewings mostly because of great dialogue and brilliant comic moments. Every Groundhog Day brings out this DVD in homes across the country, including ours.

My wife and I watch Groundhog Day every year on Feb. 2 -- like many people, we like our little traditions, even if this one has an annoying moment or two. (Every year, at the 29:00 mark, I see David Pasquesi and tell my wife that I once took a class with him at The Second City in Chicago. The first few times, I didn't remember saying as much the year before. Now I just do it to annoy her.)

At least one part doesn't work at all — when Larry and Rita identify Phil's body in the morgue. Phil kills himself multiple times, only to wake up instantly at 6 a.m. to repeat the day. To spend time with his dead body indicates that the rest of the day goes on without him, and that's a little plot inconsistency that's always bothered me. Then again, maybe the whole day goes on without him and resets at the same time each night regardless of whether Phil is alive. I've never really understood this part. The older I get, the more thought I give this movie.

A couple great articles contemplate how many days Bill Murray spends living the same day over again. Here's one, and here's the other. Even Harold Ramis responded at one point. Great reading while it's still February.

There's even a film now with a Groundhog Day-inspired title. This is one of those films, like so many of Bill Murray's, that gets a little better every year, as nostalgia and anticipation play their part to make this film a classic.

I wonder if tonight is the last time I will watch Groundhog Day on DVD. I picked up a copy on Blu-Ray this year, and obviously the picture and sound quality are so much better. Knowing that, I nearly sold off my DVD copy this month, but I just couldn't skip blogging about Groundhog Day in February.

Grosse Pointe Blank

"I killed the president of Paraguay with a fork. How've you been?"

Grosse Pointe Blank is one of my all-time favorite films, and I assure you that's not faint praise from a guy who owns 600ish DVDs. I love this film in a way I can't explain without incurring a substantial amount of paperwork.

But before I get to that, a moment of disclosure: I'm trying something a little different tonight. I come to you from my boss's basement, where he has a giant projection screen and a fancy schmancy sound system. I haven't seen Grosse Pointe Blank on a screen this big since...well...

I saw this film in a theater in 1997 in Muncie, Indiana, on a date with my Second Ever Serious Girlfriend, a girl I flipped for, who broke my heart in half, won me over again, and then we just didn't work out, and then we sort of tried again, years later, and that didn't work either.

We both loved the film the first time, and every subsequent time we watched on glorious VHS, and really, to this day. We let the film wash over us like a big wave of Gen-X goodness, which is what I hear from quite a few people around my age. What can I say? Grosse Pointe Blank spoke to us, captured the ennui of the '90s or something, validating our view of the world and of ourselves.

I don't remember laughing much at the film the first time, though. I was too young, at 22, to enjoy a good dark comedy in the way I do now, after so many viewings (100?) and 14 years. Now, after much more life experience, I understand the anxieties of rekindling old relationships, of returning to your hometown after years of growth and change, and dear lord, the high school reunion.

I actually thought my high school reunion would be like Grosse Pointe Blank, except I never really dated much then. A few blips on the radar but no real flames. My class didn't have a 10-year reunion, so I spent 10 years wondering, and then another 5 before we finally got our acts (and ourselves) together.

I'd never really paid attention to the Violent Femmes, or The Specials, or The Clash, or any of those great songs that comprised not one, but two solid soundtrack CDs, until I caught this film. Hearing this soundtrack was sort of like walking into a great independent record shop for the first time on a day when the employees were just on fire. Although I didn't understand all the humor of the film when I was 22, I still had the presence of mind to pick up both soundtrack CDs and hang on to them ever since.

Only with time can you really see how much a film has influenced you. Sure, I knew immediately when certain lines stuck in my lexicon, but I didn't realize until years later how much this film influenced my writing, my taste in music, and really, my world view. I tend to write quirky little scenes with characters who see the world with a self-awareness and wry sensibility like the characters here. Actually, that's pretty much Generation X.

This film is Generation X's Harold & Maude. You get a dark comedy about a character who has a bizarre connection to death, featuring a compelling but messed up main character who has an unlikely romance, set to a kickass soundtrack.

But you also get a film that captures a generation's sensibility, sort of a mile marker for where we were then, all the while sort of hinting at where we were going...or maybe hinting at the fact that we had no idea where we were going and we were just trying to survive the world and not get any on us.

Grindhouse: Planet Terror/Death Proof

When I heard Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez were teaming up to make a double feature of B-movies as a tribute to the grindhouse films of the 1970s, I understood.

I'll admit, I'm a Tarantino/Rodriguez fanboy (Spy Kids and Sharkboy movies excepted — and yes, I even like The Faculty). But this is something different.

Anyone who grew up in Indiana throughout the 1970s and '80s should remember Sammy Terry, the late-night, B-grade horror movie host from channel 4:



I saw so many bad movies because of Sammy Terry, who might be the most compelling and interesting local celebrity around these parts. I used to hide behind the couch when his show started. That laugh, oh, that laugh used to scare the living shit out of me.

To understand the caliber of films he showed, you only need the titles: Invasion of the Bee Girls, The Swarm, and The Face of Fu Manchu.

Despite the awfulness of the films, I still stayed up late on many a weekend to catch Sammy Terry's show. Most of the films were awful, but Sammy's drop-ins were great. He'd provide these wicked little puns while talking to a plastic spider named George, who hung from the ceiling and sort of chirped at him.

I see the Grindhouse films as a tribute not only to an era, but to the campy, late-night hosts like Elvira, Count Floyd, and Sammy Terry himself. To me, there was nobody better.

Several years ago, I decided to dress up as Sammy Terry for Halloween. Long story short:

I bring all this up to show how much I was looking forward to the Grindhouse films. This wasn't just another outing from Tarantino/Rodriguez. This was a tribute.

They even pulled out vintage between-film reels ("Prevues of Coming Attractions") and used special effects and color correction to make these films look like shit. Add some purposely bad acting and writing and here you go. They still probably put more effort into making these films than any real B-movie director not named Sam Raimi.

I can see why the films don't work for modern audiences, though. Not everyone has a strong sense of nostalgia for the period. Not everyone was even old enough (or born enough) to remember how films looked in theaters of the time.

I grew up a mile from a drive-in movie theater. Talk about films looking and sounding bad. But we're talking about an era when audiophile sound and cinephile print quality were not an issue. Most people just wanted to go see a movie. Half the time, it didn't matter what was playing.

That said, when it comes to the Grindhouse films, I don't give a crap what these films are about or how "good" they are because I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

For me, the Grindhouse films are necessary. They get at a part of our country's history that nobody really thinks about (and many would just as soon forget). For a time, this kind of film is how Americans found entertainment at the movies. That should be celebrated, preferably with grande nachos and a Shiner Bock.

Greenberg

[Note: I ordered a copy of Greenberg just so I could watch the film and write something. Then I forgot I ordered the thing, and went ahead with the Grindhouse movies. So now I have to back-date this and admit my folly. Enjoy.]

Noah Baumbach's films aren't always easy to take. He gets at the quirks of real people, and sometimes terrible people, and sometimes incredibly boring, messed-up people, and he does so with aplomb every single time.

If you've seen a Noah Baumbach film, you probably got awkward characters behaving awkwardly in awkward situations. He's good at getting at people. He's getting much better at films about deeply damaged people. I wish I could write more insightful stuff about this film, but I haven't seen this one enough times to really study all the nuances.

Ben Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, a former mental patient who housesits for his brother and basically spends the entire film trying to find a delicate balance between being a dick being an even bigger dick. He spends his free time writing complaint letters to various businesses and trying very hard to do nothing with his life.

Unlike a lot of films that take a selfish, loner misanthrope type and turn him (always a him) around in the span of 90-120 minutes, Baumbach makes no such attempt here. Roger Greenberg behaves in much the same way that a real misanthrope would behave, and doesn't get much better. He has a kind of existential revelation toward the end, but rather than going all saccharine or sentimental, we're left with this "new" Greenberg who isn't transformed so much as just slightly nudged forward.

My wife and I rented this one a few months ago, and she hated it. This thing is billed as a comedy of sorts, but really isn't. That's not why she didn't like the film. This is a super dry character piece about a total misanthropic asshole. In a way, I sort of identified with Greenberg, and in other ways I loathed him. I know there's a lot more here, though. I just need to look harder.

There are funny moments and some good lines, but the film doesn't seem stuck in genre conventions. There's a three-act structure at work, but again, the film doesn't seem bogged down in any kind of formula. I feel like I'm letting you down here, because I don't have anything revelatory to say that either 1) doesn't make me sound like a pretentious asshat and 2) hasn't already been written in any of the millions of reviews on this film.

Baumbach's films make me a little indignant. I write these little character pieces and have the toughest time getting anybody outside of friends and family to read anything. But this isn't about some self-loathing, staring-at-my-hands thing. If I let that take over, I turn into just another asshole like Greenberg, and the world has enough of those. I just have to keep nudging myself forward and letting my friends and family do the same.

Great Expectations

I love David Lean films, but I'd never seen his version of Great Expectations before tonight, when I found this in a bin at my local Half Price Books.

I'm not one to "blind buy" movies anymore, but I always keep an eye out for used copies of Criterion releases. Even if I've never seen the film, I trust that most Criterion DVDs won't let me down. I'm usually right.

There are misfires. For some reason, there's a Criterion edition of Armageddon AND The Rock. When people question the judgment of Criterion, they usually refer to these two releases, one of which is pure shit and the other is just okay. After these two, there aren't many bad films with the Criterion name attached.

Add to that, this film has David Lean's name attached as well. Before he directed Dr. Zhivago, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lean made a couple of films based on Charles Dickens classics: this one and Oliver Twist.

While watching this, I noticed something about Alec Guinness, who plays Herbert Pocket here. In short, for the first time, Alec Guinness set off my gaydar. Thoughts whipped through my head: Was Alec Guinness gay? Obi-Wan Kenobi? Couldn't be. Well, maybe. Doesn't matter, but...okay, let's do some research.

A quick Google search revealed several articles, including one that reported Guinness was arrested in 1946 for a homosexual act. However, when he was arrested, he had the quickness of thought to give a false name. That false name? Herbert Pocket.

So, the role Guinness was playing when he tripped my gaydar is, in fact, the same name he used to try to throw authorities off his real identity and keep his homosexuality a secret. For years!

None of this matters, really. I mostly think the trivia is interesting, not the orientation. I never knew this stuff about him, mostly because I just don't care (until there's movie trivia to be had -- then I'm awake).

What's most interesting about this story, for me, is all the social class stuff. You get this boy who grew up a commoner and because of the generosity of others, got an opportunity to live a different life -- one that he grasped tightly. He learned to be one of another crust, a refined gentleman, though he was destined to be a blacksmith.

Sort of reminds me of my own journey. I grew up in a middle class home, the son of a factory worker and the grandson of coal miners. We were not poor, but we weren't rich. We were not "white trash." We were just working class folks, and we still are, and there's nothing wrong with it. Great Expectations seems to imply that there is, but whatever.

I was one of the only family members to go to college, to embrace the arts, to try to make money from my imagination, and to take a "white collar" job as a teacher. My life turned out very different from the way I might've been destined. I might've ended up working as a grocery store manager, or I'd have gone into the military, or I might've ended up in a factory. I don't know. All of those things were plausible options given my working class upbringing.

I'm not saying those things are wrong or bad or worse or anything of the sort. I could've been happy doing any of those things...maybe. I never felt as though I fit into those roles, and I'm amazed at how things turned out.

It's strange because I never expected to be where I am, and yet, here I am. It's as if someone were looking out for me.