Cutter's Way and Blow Out

This past weekend was the final night of the Paranoid Films of the 70s showing at the LACMA. The final two films were actually release in the early 1980s, Cutter's Way, aka Cutter and Bone and Blow Out, by Brian DePalma.

Blow Out was a film I was looking forward to seeing, Quentin Tarantino lists it as one of his top 3 films of all time. It features John Travolta as an sound man for cheesy movies who witnesses a political assassination while recording sounds. The most fun elements of the film are DePalma's fancy camera work and the focus on film sound and filmmaking and construction. But the overall movie was a little disappointing because of the cartoonish acting and plot and motivation of the "bad guy." It was fairly entertaining, though, overall and worth checking out simply for the fact that the early 1980s were an interesting and neglected period for American films...many of actors/writers/directors who made great stuff in the 1970s were still going strong, but the box office climate favored projects like Star Wars.

Cutter and Bone was a very weird movie. Two old buddies living in Santa Barbara, one who went to the ivy league and the other who fought in Vietnam, are played by Jeff Bridges and John Heard (Home Alone - the father). Bridges witnesses a car dump a body early on in the film and then thinks he sees the driver at a Fiesta Day parade, which turns out to be the rich head honcho of Santa Barbara. Heard, playing a cripple, becomes obsessed with proving this guy's guilt and the two men go back and forth the entire film trying to prove that this guy was behind the whole thing.

The style of the movie is odd...the dialog instead of following the tradition of Hawks of saying one thing and meaning another is what I call "over the nose," meaning so on the nose, it's over the top and original. The Heard character calls a tough group of black guys "niggers," in a strange earnest fashion, not being maliciously racist, but because he's attention starved and trying to be entertaining. He later crashes into his neighbors car because it's blocking his drive way and then proffers his wife's dildo to his neighbors wife...

Brigdes is in love with Heard's wife, played nicely by Lisa Eichorn. The setting in Santa Barbara is also neat, with tons of background players being Mexican or Native Americans in the presense of these middle class characters...and then this whole world of super wealth providing another back ground layer. What's interesting too, is how the three layers relate and how the main characters navigate through all three worlds - they eat at a shitty diner, watch a parade filled with beautiful college women AND native American folks, but also dine at a country club and polo club through this wealthy friend of theirs.

Just an odd overall film.

One other interesting tid-bit: the sound track had some subjective sound design. When we were watching the film, the guy in front of me turned and ask we stop crunching the bag of goldfish I was eating. It was finished by the time he ask, and I didn't respond.

Later in the film a loud, cell phone-eque sound came on and the guy shouted, "SHut the fucking cell phone off!"

We were a little stunned and frankly a little scared. Later in the film, the same sound came again and several members of the audience sighed...but it was odd, the timing of the weird sound was somewhat appropriate for the subjective moment of the characters in the film.

After the film was over and the lights went on, Phil leaned to me, weren't those sounds part of the soundtrack? The credits were rolling and the sound came on again.

We started laughing. The guy had yelled about the sound track of the film. The curtain closed, we were lingering, the guy was lingering as well. He looked angry. It looked as if he wanted to confront someone about their cell phone. Then, despite the curtain being closed, the sound occurred again. Huh? Now I was confused.

We left the film, Phil whispering to me - I think this guy is going to kill someone over the cell phone sound.

We get outside into the LACMA building...a weird futuristic, Stanley Kubrick movie, type of place and this guy is still lingering. After seeing these two paranoid films, we come out in a weird head space worried about this movie Taleban guy attacking someone over a perceived cell phone ring that may have been part of the soundtrack.

Fast forward to last night - my friend is at the DGA watching first look and apparently a cell phone goes off and a guy grabs it from the owner and breaks it in two. Pushing and fighting ensue.

What the hell is going on? I don't like cell phones going off in movies, but it hardly seems to me something worth yelling and fighting over. If it upsets people so much, why don't they just stay home and watch movies.

I thought again about the crunching of my goldfish. Does this guy ever go to the Grove? How does he stand people eating popcorn? Or laughing at an unfunny joke? Does he yell, "SHut up! That wasn't funny?"

I wish I could strap him down at a Magic Johnson Theater where people are talking to the characters on screen during the movie - now that would be perfect!