I’ve been watching a great series on Netflix recently, “The Story of Film,” a multipart look at everything having to do with movies from the 1890’s to the present. Some of the history I knew (remembering local lore as an old Hollywood resident) but some things I didn’t (like that the great director Jean Renoir was the son of the great painter Pierre- Auguste Renoir). Produced in 2011, the “Story of Film” unfolds on several continents and is (thank goodness) not the same old Hollywood-centric story.
Just as my friend (and series–recommender) Joe promised, it would and has renewed my appreciation for the cinema as an art form. It reminds me of my long ago film class at NYU when Professor Wolf regaled us with films like “Hiroshima Mon Amor.” It was then that I really became a filmie (like a foodie, and just as pretentious). The series also reminds me of my trips to the Quad Cinema in New York, where (when I was in the mood) I’d go to see something a little different.
But most importantly, it reminds me of going to see movies when I was a kid, when a movie’s sequences were presented with different pacing, when the dialog was not just cut and pasted from neighboring movies and nearby soundstages.
OK….I’ll admit that along with being thrilled, the series has made me a little grouchy.
But I promise this isn’t just another “things used to be better in my day” diatribe. It’s a (hopefully) different and more refreshing diatribe. Maybe even vivifying.
A diatribe that screenwriters and directors should read and take to heart. Because there is a spirit in American popular cinema these days that is lazy. And lazy is trumping the creative. Like Jack Nicholson said in 1989’s “Batman,” “This town (Hollywood) needs an enema.”
You might say, “If you don’t like it, go see other kinds of movies.” Well, I wish it were that easy. I love movies too much and I’m going to see them anyway. It would be far easier to single-handedly overturn the entire pop culture paradigm than it would be to keep me out of the theater.
This constitutes my humble effort, if you will, my initial salvo (maybe my only salvo, because diatribes take a lot out of a person).
I noticed something odd a few years ago, when Bush II was President. There was some confirmation hearing or something going on, and the person questioned (by the press I think) said, “I serve at the pleasure of the President.” To me that was an interesting statement, because I’d never heard it before. Apparently the Writers Union thought it was pretty cool too, because it turned up in (by my count) no fewer than 10 TV shows and movies over the next few months.
I naturally notice things like this because I’m the guy walking down the sidewalk, laughing to myself as I count fellow pedestrian’s “likes.”
“I, like, told him, I’m like, not gonna go, OK?! Like, get over yourself, and then I was all, like……”
This is an example of what, across a large swath of our culture, constitutes conversation these days.
Oh, pardon me, that was a side-rant.
“I serve at the pleasure of the President” had a short half-life and died out after a few months but now there are other catch phrases and sayings that are spreading around movies and TV like a virus. Here are some examples (along with a plea to immediately desist).
- “Ohhhh-kaaaaay….”
- “Just sayin’”
- “Really?” (delivered in mock astonishment)
- “Seriously?” (see above)
- “Nope, no, no – not true” (this one’s a little harder to pick up: it’s a person next to and a little behind another person shaking their head and muttering this line as the speaker asserts something absurd)
- People walking coolly away from explosions
- Jumping off of something and landing in a three point stance.
- “Heeeey-aaay!”
- Any person being knocked out with one punch (or on that level…)
- Someone knocking someone out with a sleeper hold and going “Shhhhhh.”
- “Go go go go go!” (popularized by Shia LeBouf)
- Saying “super” in front of anything. (used as a qualifier)
- “throwing (fill in name) under the bus”
- Do NOT go there! (or take me there)
- Awk-ward! (sometimes even when it’s not)
-And now for my most and yet least favorite…
- How’s THAT workin’ out for ya?! (usually perkily delivered)
And while I’m ranting, why is everybody being “vetted”?
I could (and apparently will) go on and on and on.
Replies and reactions in dialog in popular movies are so similar to one another that I quickly forget the movie after I leave the theater. I’d have to collect and display all my ticket stubs to have a conversation about what I’d seen. I now have Cinematic Alzheimers. I’m like the guy in “Memento” writing things down and having to constantly review what I’d just experienced.
You might say to this, “You’ve just seen too many movies, that’s the problem!”
I’d reply, “I’ve just seen too many similar movies.”
Why not open a movie with something anthemic and epic? Why not try to make a grand statement while at the same time telling a human story that we can all relate to? Why not impress us and in so doing, maybe even each other? Let’s kill some clichés, and perhaps stop these mastubatory propensities.
Whether it is a little Indie movie, or a mega-expensive blockbuster; there should be things contained therein that we can aspire to, after all, isn’t that is what art is? Don’t just reflect back to us the dumbing down of our own language and potentials. We already hopefully have the self-awareness to know we’re dumb. If I wanted this I’d save my movie and popcorn money and just talk on online news blogs.
Instead of leaving a theater feeling triumphant, I too often just scurry back to my car, feeling blank, like a guy leaving a strip club at noon. Hey, I’m not here saying movies were perfect back when I was a kid; I too remember “Can’t Stop the Music” as well as the next forty-something! But can’t we take a little time and add more craft to the craft?
A shot from “Idiocracy.” Do NOT take me there!
I’ve never understood the expression “the exception that proves the rule” but I’ll apply it here anyway and say I’m glad that there are occasionally dense dialog American movies out there, like Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.” When our culture gets used to the saturation of social media (which is, after all, only a few years old) maybe things will level out and then the dialog can elevate. Until then, my fellow film lovers, check out “The Story of Film” and marinate with me in my existential despair.
