A Glimpse Inside The Mind of Charles Swan III

directed by Roman Coppola (2012)

As usual, I didn't watch any trailers, and avoided reading about this movie before watching.  I wish I had read up on the director though, then I could have asked him about what it was like to work on his dad's Dracula film - he was responsible for some of the special effects there.  It's seriously one of my fav movies ever - at least the opening sequence is amongst the best beginnings of any film I've ever seen.  Yeah the rest can bite me some, but that beginning? Mmhhmm...  I've watched it hundreds of times, and I don't ever get sick of the baroque, romantic, excess.  It's so f'n great.

Now about Charlie Sheen: The Movie - I mean, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan. :P I have to say I was disappointed.  It had sooooo much going for it: great actors, great music, great style and feel, with an ambiguously weird setting.  It's supposed to take place in 70's LA.... kind of?  But I sure wasn't sure that was the era.  It could have been an affectation of Swan to have retro shit around his place, and drive old cars, I mean, 70's style IS pretty styley ya know?  Eccentric folk tend to wear crazy shit anyhow, and Hollywood is full of them types too.

I guess what disappointed me most about the movie is that because it's an independent film, it carries on it's shoulders the fate of other independent films.  When one indie triumphs or fails, it reflects that failure or glory, back at the films that follow, in terms of shrinking or expanding the pool of resources willing to invest in independent films.  When the host of the Q&A commented that, yeah, it was getting bad reviews, and asked Coppola how he personally dealt with that,  he said he didn't mind if people didn't like the movie, but it bugged him that a poor response would affect his ability to garner funding for future projects.

I had a few thoughts on Roman Coppola, and the life of 2nd generation film folk, after seeing the movie, and hearing Coppola share anecdotes on his career, and early life on his father's film sets.  One tidbit?  He cast Charlie Sheen because he had a connection with him from when they were kids together on the set of Apocalypse Now.

I've been to a few Q&As where the children of famous directors speak about their work, and it's inevitable that some questions relate to that relationship.  Think about that eh? How annoying would it be to be doing your thing while being constantly pitted against your parent?  How would that shape you?  It's inevitable that we are affected by our parents, and it makes sense to follow in the footsteps of a parent too, as the apparatus for success is so much more there, if a parent is willing to educate you on how they went about attaining success.  Of course, some parents aren't prone to that, and are actually threatened by the idea of their children's success, but most aren't mental that way, and they'll actively mentor their kids to succeed in whatever way they can. It's simply good parenting to aid in equipping your kids for the world by blazing the trail, and sharing with them the tricks of your trade.

I went to a lecture by Gabor Mate before the movie, and that had a deleterious affect on how I viewed the film.  A few things rankled: that the male characters and especially Charlie Sheen/Swan related in objectifying ways to the women in their lives, wasn't all that amusing.  But the fact that the character didn't grow, and that he was completely absorbed in trivial and selfish ego concerns, was just fucking boring.  He was like the Bill Murray character in Groundhog Day before he has comes to the realization that being a selfish fuck doesn't make him happy.

I wanted to ask about the casting and if he had the actors in mind while writing, but the host of the evening took care of that question. And a few more besides by the time she turned it over to the audience.  He thought up the characters before he cast the film.  He knew he'd drive that particular car - a old Cadillac with  a bacon and eggs decal on the side. Charles Swan heads up an advertising firm, so he's very concerned with image and design.  More of the bullshit ephemera we feed our egos with, but whatever, because I really did enjoy that aspect of the film - there's lots of cool retro imagery.

The absolute best thing about the film, aside from the joy of going to a theatre where I can eat popcorn AND drink beer without sneaking some in, was that I was introduced to an artist that I fucking LOVE. Liam Hayes does the soundtrack and even has a cameo near the end.  I'd never heard of this guy before but looking him up, that's not so strange.  He's not very well known, except he's big in Japan - really.  He was working so hard and long on his 2nd album that his label dropped him - he spent $100,000 of his own money producing it, then it languished for a bit until a Japanese label picked it up.  He's kinda mysterious.  In my research, various articles muse on how exactly he's financed his career.  Who's your benefactor, man?  Perhaps he's second generation wealthy too.  I dunno, but I sure like him.  He really reminds me of Harry Nilsson, and Ben Folds Five some too.  Very seventies sound to him.

Charles Spencer Anderson?  Coppola mentioned that he'd made Charles Swan work in advertising because he'd become interested in the imagery of the 70's and called him Charles Swan to recognize the achievements of Charles ????  I think he meant Charles Spencer Anderson, but I could be misremembering.  In any case Anderson is responsible for a lot of cool and iconic imagery.

Another interesting thing, Coppola used his own place as Charles Swan's, he swung around the skype camera to give us a looksee.  Behind the scenes magics. :)  Some women in the audience wanted to know if the bathtub scene was done in his house but I wasn't sure why they cared - do they love Charlie Sheen, or was it that they were drooling on the director?  Probably more they were grooving on the fame.

Oh yeah, before I asked my question about why the character didn't grow in the film, I was gonna ask about why he had a cowboys and Indians thing going on the flick.  Someone else asked after my question, before I could, and I guess he just thought it was cool looking and fit with the 70's thing since Westerns were popular then.  Whatever for cultural appropriation eh?

And the reason he didn't grow? Coppola said that it didn't feel right, that the character had a life of his own and "he wouldn't do that." My actual question related to a couple scenes bookending the film, where he throws a bag of his girlfriend's shoes off a cliff and the bag gets stuck in a tree.  At the end he goes to get the bag and you think oh, he's learned some empathy and he's gonna give back her stuff, but NO! He rescues the shoes from the tree so he can really give them the heave ho into the canyon and a big fuck you to his ex and the same time. Selfish petty action from a selfish petty man no?  I guess you could say he was ditching baggage, literally.  But meh.  I didn't like that. So yeah, this movie served with complimentary eye rolls.

William Castle's memoirs of Amelié

Last night I finished reading William Castle's memoir, Step Right Up: I’m Gonna Scare the Pants Off America.  It doesn't go into much biographical detail, starting off with his roots in theatre, and moving on to his career in Hollywood fairly quickly.  He was a director, and later a producer who quickly established himself as a master of marketing.  He was best known for promoting his films with gimmicks that enhanced the B movie offerings of horror and thriller fare.  He had genius ideas, like a device installed in the theatre seats that would goose you at key moments during the screenings of  The Tingler - a movie with Vincent Price as a mad scientist discovering there was a little creature in the base of your spine that would GROW and kill you if you were scared and didn't scream the fear out.  Totally ridiculous idea, but I bet it was super fun feeling like a little monster was loose in the theatre and it just jabbed you, then screaming your head off in a theatre full of other folk doing the exact same thing.  His movie gimmicks were popular, and got people lining up to see his shows.   His first gimmick was for Macabre, a movie he produced and directed himself that he showed to Warner Brothers when he was shopping for a distributor.  They stole his promotional idea of insuring the audience if they died of fright watching the show.  He threatened to sue, but nothing came of that except Jack Warner apologised and offered to buy Macabre.  Castle dropped the suit, seemingly out of respect that Warner begged him to, but he didn't bite on the sale since the offer only covered his $90,000 cost of production.

There's much more, but I'm gonna leave it at that.  He was a showman who brought the fun to the movie house.

I watched the beginning of Amelié.  I was very much enjoying it up to the point where she leaves the memorabilia box in the phone booth, then I lost interest.  I think that's OK, especially for rewatching movies, just seeing the bits you like best makes sense. 

I used to like watching the opening of Bram Stoker's Dracula - Gary Oldman over the top dramatical in his grief and tragedy.  Shakespearean mang! 7 minutes or so of sassifying Hammerhorrorfisted heaven.  Best I could find is these youtubes, broken into 2 parts and even pathetically pixelated, they can still barely contain the grand guignol majesty of the scenes.

Anyhow, Joe noticed the plot of Amelié, at least that beginning bit, was similar to Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  I noticed that they both had Aspergerian qualities especially the sensual attention to detail and the intense focus on surface and the now.  I think many of the characters in Amelié are on the Asperger spectrum, at least the way the film is shot gives a immediate sensesurround approaching the experience of what it's like to be autistic and find the world a little overwhelming.  And that's perhaps its main appeal; we get to go yeah, it's a beautiful world we live in.  Amelié performs psychic surgery and reattaches a sense of wonder you may have not even noticed you'd lost.