Here is where I will keep track of the flicks I've watched. If you see typos or errors, or you really like what I wrote, or maybe you flat out disagree with me. Don't be shy! Lemme know what YOU think.
Think Columbine but with media savvy film students documenting their process. That's giving away the story, but the beauty of this found footagey flick, is in how that unwraps. As they say, the devil is in the details, and this flick is devilishly clever in it's construction, but not so much in terms of saying anything new about the bullying and lateral violence that leads up to retaliatory spree killings.
I really enjoyed it though. It's so very film fannish. I didn't like how the crazy aspect was addressed, but it was accurate in how that aspect ISN'T addressed in our society too. Crazy gets short shrift and that's exactly why these kinds of situations happen. And it's crazy how callous we are in respecting other peoples' needs. It's distressing to see how violence in so many of our interactions is viewed as normal. WTF people, why can't we see that the other is our brother? Our mother? Sister? Father? We're all connected, and when we do things to others that don't honour that fact, it hurt us too.
It's got some good musics too, and style to spare. I recommend it.
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.
I really liked this one. I expected a very different movie though. I thought it was going to be about the formation of the Church of Scientology, detailing the scummy scammy cynical elements of the origins of the organization, and for sure it's got those aspects but more in a passing way than the straight up docudrama history lesson I anticipated. I was captivated by what all went down - it's really a story of Phoenix's elemental man vs Hoffman's cerebral controlling man with Hoffman trying to own, tame, control, and dominate, with his bullshit religious dogma and psychobabble. The methods might be suspect but the struggle and passion and belief are real as fuck.
Joaquin Phoenix plays a sailor, a drunken sailor, lost not so much at sea, but lost nonetheless. He can't find his place, he's always wandering and running from himself, running from one drunken debacle to the next. He's impulsive and wild, full of an angry passion and seems to yearn for meaning and love, but at the same time is afraid of both.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is the guru, the man at the apex of his fledgling cult - modeled on Scientology, but here called The Cause. He hides from everyone his true motives and I'm not even sure what he wanted aside from power. I kept wondering whether he really believed the fantastical garbage he was forcing down the throat of his followers, but I'm pretty sure he was just using their search for meaning, and plugging their holes with his ideas to feed his ego. I felt sorry for his duped followers eh?
I was really reminded of my father watching this. He wasn't old enough for this to be his era, but his sensibilitiy and resemblance to both men would be obvious to all who knew him. He was a drunk and a smart man both. Hoffman looked like him complexion wise and he was more similar to him in intellect, but his soul was more Joaquin's. A sad man, a man who felt adrift and unmoored often, yet still stupidly prideful and arrogant at his part in the making of his own misery too, and so continued to hoe that row of unyeilding dirt. Ain't gonna harvest nothing from there but sweat and pain.
Dichotomy and despair, it's served up raw with a side of bitter sweet cynicism in this tale of thwarted love.
