And They Keep Pulling Me Right Back In

To blogging, that is. As I listen to On the Road on my trip up north via Fresno, I think to myself, a rest from blogging will do me some good. I need to think, get away from the computer, come about some ideas. Do more thinking, less writing, more reflection, less busy-work. The time is to think larger, get philosophical, not detailed and nuanced, which is what the day to day effort of writing ideas and screenplays and blog entries come down to. But alas, I couldn't last, I am sucked back to the computer to write about a movie I find offensive and dastardly, and that movie is the Squid and the Whale.

It harkens back to college and my dual with another member of my college class who championed Kicking and Screaming. It was a cult hit amongst the pretentious English majors who spoke of Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace in the dining hall. I was on the outskirts of this particular group, by association. My two closest friends were a part of this alt-group as my alt-group consistented of soccer jocks. It is healthy, I think, for friendship circles to be concentric, reflecting different personalities and tastes, and the timing factor, that we often under-recognize when it comes to how we end up hanging with who we do.

Anyhow, Kicking and Screaming was this big indie, intellectual flick, so clever in it's east coast snobby, bookiness. It made my California sensibility puke - I championed Office Space, they, Kicking and Screaming. I found it to be shit and reflective of this angry-intellectualism, uninterested in truth or self-deprecation, utterly serious about oneself and ironic about everything else. Drunk and stoned on mostly mixed drinks, framed posters of foreign films, dabbling in poetry and prose on the side. Name dropping Foucault and Nas in the same sentence, this type of thing.

It was in film school that I kept this covenent, that Kicking and Screaming was shit and anyone who championed it was nothing but a phony. If someone talked about the film admirably, I'd make a little side note about the individual - yeah, they're cool, but in they end, they're a little bit full of shit.

As I grow older, I feel I should become more tolerant, and I have. I lessoned my stance on Kicking and Screaming as trusted movie comrades have given it minor props. I wasn't about to trade in years of trust building and movie taste similarities over one lousy film that I admittedly haven't seen in a long time. After all, I'm not a fanatic. Plus, maybe it was I who was being a little ridiculous about the whole thing. Maybe I was just secretly jealous of the David Foster Wallace crowd cause I could never sit through Infinite Jest. Maybe I was being too hard on Kicking and Screaming and needed some Foucault. Maybe that's why I'm not a happier person or why I don't get more chicks!

It is with this newfounded optimism that I looked at what was playing in Marin while I would be home. Ahhh, the art theater has the Squid and the Whale and The Passenger. Now that sounds like a good double feature. I mention my plan to my dad who wanted to see the Squid and the Whale because he read it was good. My father has taken up seeing and reading a lot more about films since I entered film school. He has very good taste.

But my father won't sit through two movies, nor will he go 2 for 1, as I like to cheat and he does not. So we go just to The Squid and the Whale.

Ten minutes in, I hate the movie. And I realize why I hate the movie, and this'll sound odd, because I don't hear this criticism very often except by unsophisticated film viewers - philistines, if you will - because I don't like the ideology of the filmmaker. I don't like the way the filmmaker views the world. I don't have an issue so much with the writing, the dialog, or even the plain-jane filmmaking style (although as a director, this guy has nothing to offer, he's really just a writer who points a camera at actors). His view on human beings suck. His characters aren't sympathetic. Everyone is an asshole and completely unaware of it. It is not as if they are selfish, single minded characters, who inadvertently happen to treat others like shit. They are jerks for the sake of being jerks. They are loveless, and humorlessness about themselves. The movie simply laughs at others, that is the only humor of it. They are sad, depressing, and irritable. Jeff Daniels is so pompous, it's almost insufferable to see how he talks to people. And it's not funny. J. Peterman, on Seinfeld, is pompous and funny. Daniels is not. His older son is a phony, and treats others like shit so they'll feel as low as he does about himself. He is not a genius, like George Costanza, whose own miserable actions make everyone feel better about themselves. I would argue George Costanza is a great healing character of out time, because he makes us not feel so bad about the ugly side of ourselves. This kid in the movie is a more able and dastardly George. He lacks George's complete ineptiness, which is what makes him loveable.

Laura Linney is a slutty, miserable, cunt. The youngest son, is the most sympathetic and the most fucked up, rubbing sperm all over everything.

This is a real cynical look on human nature, a sad, miserable take on the human soul, cloaked in booky intellectual faux realisim. I used to write off the east coast - that's right, the entire thing, because of movies like this. But thankfully, I watched some more Sopranos last night, and damn, mama, thank the lord for that show....in one of the most intense scenes of the series, Chris and Adrianna talk about how they might get out of the life and Christopher looks at her straight and says, "I can finally write my memoirs." My lord, it's genius. Now that's love for ya, love for a character, love for all of humanity in all it's petty, egocentric, tragic-comic, greatness.

Noah Baumbach doesn't understand it. As for me, I will cleanse my soul with the Wild Bunch on DVD. Ahh, yes.