I'm on my third free wi-fi cafe of the night, trying my best to finish up as much of my real work as possible before the writing (the Writing) begin.
The streets of North Beach are filled with children dressed like witches and superheroes and agents from "The Matrix."
On the TV: boxing, real football, a rerun of the World Series of Poker.
On the east coast, it will be November in half an hour.
I can feel my psychiatric bills going through the roof.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: "Tick Tock," Mocks the Clock
Less than 6 hours to go. My jitters have descended into vapors of ennui. No longer do I worry that I can't do it. Rather, as the reality of the novel writing approaches, I'm struck by an equal yet opposite impulse: why should I do it? I'm young, industrious, working one job and starting another and applying for still another. I have a gym membership, a Netflix membership, a safeway card. I could just do it next year, or the year after. There's no rush.
Except there is. For much of the past year, I have often been struck by the truth of my own mortality. I can feel time floating away from me. I can feel it every morning when I wake up too late for breakfast, every evening I spent at fraternity parties or row houses. I think this might be the brazen shock of adulthood. Yet I also think of Monroe Stahr, Fitzgerald's unfinished hero. In some ways, Stahr is the hero America never had - a man who knows that he will not live to reap the fruits of his labor, and so labors for the mere sake of laboring. A man who works to work. That's Scrooge McDuck, in a way, too - he lives long, but never settles down.
I know that I will probably live an unnecessarily long life. I am always the last person to leave the party, even though I usually enjoy it the least. I will be a lonely old man at empty funerals. I will remember things the world has forgotten. But who knows? My best friend once told me that she wouldn't live to see 30. There's a season for everything: marriages, divorces, births, deaths. All we have is the time given us by God and science.
I need to write this motherfucker.
Except there is. For much of the past year, I have often been struck by the truth of my own mortality. I can feel time floating away from me. I can feel it every morning when I wake up too late for breakfast, every evening I spent at fraternity parties or row houses. I think this might be the brazen shock of adulthood. Yet I also think of Monroe Stahr, Fitzgerald's unfinished hero. In some ways, Stahr is the hero America never had - a man who knows that he will not live to reap the fruits of his labor, and so labors for the mere sake of laboring. A man who works to work. That's Scrooge McDuck, in a way, too - he lives long, but never settles down.
I know that I will probably live an unnecessarily long life. I am always the last person to leave the party, even though I usually enjoy it the least. I will be a lonely old man at empty funerals. I will remember things the world has forgotten. But who knows? My best friend once told me that she wouldn't live to see 30. There's a season for everything: marriages, divorces, births, deaths. All we have is the time given us by God and science.
I need to write this motherfucker.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: Crutches
A few nights ago, I bought a pack of cigarettes. Except there was a two for one deal, and you know how much I'm trying to save money. Then, at 1 or 2 last night - just before the rundown market on 20th and Valencia shuttered its doors - I was craving cigarettes, but hadn't brought any with me, so I bought a pack. That makes three. Unconsciously, I've stocked up for the long month ahead. Cigarettes, coffee, the gym: these, my crutches, for advancing through a month of solitary confinement in the torrid realm of my imagination.
And yesterday I went to meet a new shrink. My first shrink worked at the on-campus Health center. Our meetings were weekly, life-affirming, and gratis. He was a quiet-faced man with non-judgmental eyes and glasses. This new one is a woman, age uncertain, beauty profound. Will writing the novel make me less crazy, or more? Will I drown in disappointment and sorrow, ascend to glory, muddle through?
I need eccentric characters, is what I need.
And yesterday I went to meet a new shrink. My first shrink worked at the on-campus Health center. Our meetings were weekly, life-affirming, and gratis. He was a quiet-faced man with non-judgmental eyes and glasses. This new one is a woman, age uncertain, beauty profound. Will writing the novel make me less crazy, or more? Will I drown in disappointment and sorrow, ascend to glory, muddle through?
I need eccentric characters, is what I need.
National Novel Writing Month: 24 Hour Intern Proofread Chapter-title-Naming Sesh
Two days remain, or maybe three, I'm not sure. I write this from the end of an all-nighter - my first since college, my first at McSweeney's. A book needed finishing, and only closers get coffee. I was johnny on the spot - just walked into work at 5 in the evening, having spent the day telecommuting at home, with a quick spin over to the gym. 24 Hour Fitness charged me a couple dozen arm legs as an entrance fee - I intend to earn it back in muscle tone gained. At the very least, I might regain some of my lung capacity.
The book needed finishing by dawn. Proofreading. Giving the chapters titles that were whimsical yet informative. Factchecking. Grammar. Page numbers. The book is an anthology, a how-to guide for memoirists with advice from the key practitioners of the art. I've read practically the whole book, now - exhortations of where to start, where to finish, how you write and when and where, with whom or without anyone but yourself and your pen, or laptop.
I can feel it about to happen. I have far too much work to do this week, two job possibilities I need to explore. My roommate is gone - I must guard the castle alone. I have miles to go. But I must. I will. I can. Hopefully. So sleepy.
The book needed finishing by dawn. Proofreading. Giving the chapters titles that were whimsical yet informative. Factchecking. Grammar. Page numbers. The book is an anthology, a how-to guide for memoirists with advice from the key practitioners of the art. I've read practically the whole book, now - exhortations of where to start, where to finish, how you write and when and where, with whom or without anyone but yourself and your pen, or laptop.
I can feel it about to happen. I have far too much work to do this week, two job possibilities I need to explore. My roommate is gone - I must guard the castle alone. I have miles to go. But I must. I will. I can. Hopefully. So sleepy.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Gone Baby Gone: Phantoms Like A Motherfucker!
What a week for comedy writers in America. FEMA makes fake journalists. Dumbledore is gay. Ben Affleck directs a movie starring his little brother. A noir film set in Boston, no less - territory recently owned by Clint Eastwood and Martin Scorcese, who both won Oscars (and so did their films.) Except god damn my children's children if "Gone, Baby, Gone" isn't a real heartwrench trip of a movie. A dirty urban tale wrought with corrupt cops, cokehead mommies, drug lords with Haitian accents and Ed Harris with a serious-looking beard. Put this next to "Michael Clayton" - old-fashioned movies that turn, of all things, on characters making difficult moral decisions. Neither will do good box office. Both will live and breathe on DVD and TBS.
"Gone, Baby, Gone" starts off with hammy-sounding narration and a hammy-looking montage of low-end Boston. A little girl's gone missing; his grieving aunt and mustachioed uncle come and ask Little Affleck, playing a private investigator who looks all of 16, to find her. Yawn. But give the Affleck bros a second. They're just setting the stage, bringing us into their native city, lulling us so we aren't ready for the killer left hook they've got prepared.
Because while you watch this movie, you can see Big Affleck making up for all the dross he put his face on during the first half of the century. There are twists over twists, but what's even better than the story is the acting talent pushing it. Amy Ryan gives a star turn as the girl's mommy, a drunk with a couple dozen drug problems who barely seems to notice her child is gone. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris could play stern cop authority figures in their sleep - here, in a few key scenes, they get the chance to shade in the gray. And Casey Affleck, in the main role, tricks us with his boyish look - as the plot webs around him, you can see the pain, the depth, and most of all the desperate moral code, that fuels this kid. He's Bogart, basically, unwilling to compromise his values even if it means his soul.
The film's got its flaws. There's an awkward stretch right in the middle where the action shifts forward several months (it's puffed up with unnecessary narration) that probably worked better on the page. Michelle Monaghan isn't quite wasted as Affleck's partner and galpal - she's got a good little speech at the end - but she spends too much of the movie as the cute eye candy next to the brains of the operation. (Can't this girl get a break? After showing comedic chops in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," she's been the bland object of Tom Cruise's and Ben Stiller's affection in the worst movies of their careers. Here's your goddamn Wonder Woman, George Miller!)
But those are quibbles. Here's a movie to absorb you, to challenge you. Issues of race and class are bubbling under the surface at all times. This is the first film that can stand next to "The Wire" - no accident, perhaps, that Ryan and supporting star Michael K. Williams are veterans. Critics who compare this to "Mystic River" and "The Departed" are missing the point. "Gone, Baby, Gone" is a movie about a man trying to do the right thing in a city and a world where no one knows or cares about right - this is "The Third Man," in thick Bahstonese.
"Gone, Baby, Gone" starts off with hammy-sounding narration and a hammy-looking montage of low-end Boston. A little girl's gone missing; his grieving aunt and mustachioed uncle come and ask Little Affleck, playing a private investigator who looks all of 16, to find her. Yawn. But give the Affleck bros a second. They're just setting the stage, bringing us into their native city, lulling us so we aren't ready for the killer left hook they've got prepared.
Because while you watch this movie, you can see Big Affleck making up for all the dross he put his face on during the first half of the century. There are twists over twists, but what's even better than the story is the acting talent pushing it. Amy Ryan gives a star turn as the girl's mommy, a drunk with a couple dozen drug problems who barely seems to notice her child is gone. Morgan Freeman and Ed Harris could play stern cop authority figures in their sleep - here, in a few key scenes, they get the chance to shade in the gray. And Casey Affleck, in the main role, tricks us with his boyish look - as the plot webs around him, you can see the pain, the depth, and most of all the desperate moral code, that fuels this kid. He's Bogart, basically, unwilling to compromise his values even if it means his soul.
The film's got its flaws. There's an awkward stretch right in the middle where the action shifts forward several months (it's puffed up with unnecessary narration) that probably worked better on the page. Michelle Monaghan isn't quite wasted as Affleck's partner and galpal - she's got a good little speech at the end - but she spends too much of the movie as the cute eye candy next to the brains of the operation. (Can't this girl get a break? After showing comedic chops in "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang," she's been the bland object of Tom Cruise's and Ben Stiller's affection in the worst movies of their careers. Here's your goddamn Wonder Woman, George Miller!)
But those are quibbles. Here's a movie to absorb you, to challenge you. Issues of race and class are bubbling under the surface at all times. This is the first film that can stand next to "The Wire" - no accident, perhaps, that Ryan and supporting star Michael K. Williams are veterans. Critics who compare this to "Mystic River" and "The Departed" are missing the point. "Gone, Baby, Gone" is a movie about a man trying to do the right thing in a city and a world where no one knows or cares about right - this is "The Third Man," in thick Bahstonese.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The Setting, The Structure
Part of what I want to do with my novel (aside: for the title, I liked "Why Is Johnny Pope" at first, but now I'm souring on it. I can't decide whether to go more paperback - "The Ice Desert of Kalahari," say - or more macro-sized superthematic - "Beyond The Infinite," or "Infinity's Ascension" or "Ultimate Infinity" or something) is explore a quality fantasy world.
I dig science fiction/fantasy, always have, always will. Right now the genre is having its moment in the pop culture sun. Comic books are cool. Tolkien is cool. Batman, by way of Christian Bale and his tanker-truck batmobile, is the Dirty Harry icon of our generation. It's not going to last. I can sense an oncoming wave of realism approaching on the horizon. Raymond Carver is plotting his eternal revenge. We will look back on this era someday as shallow, full of empty spectacle. I need to strike while the iron is hot.
I think I'm going to divide the story up into four or five segments - taking a bit off of "The Gunslinger," I know, but I like the structure - individual parts building to a climax, while they all build to a larger climax. I need a goal, though, and I think it's going to be, simply, to see the face of God.
The problem is that I already know what I want to do with the third part, but not how to get there.
I dig science fiction/fantasy, always have, always will. Right now the genre is having its moment in the pop culture sun. Comic books are cool. Tolkien is cool. Batman, by way of Christian Bale and his tanker-truck batmobile, is the Dirty Harry icon of our generation. It's not going to last. I can sense an oncoming wave of realism approaching on the horizon. Raymond Carver is plotting his eternal revenge. We will look back on this era someday as shallow, full of empty spectacle. I need to strike while the iron is hot.
I think I'm going to divide the story up into four or five segments - taking a bit off of "The Gunslinger," I know, but I like the structure - individual parts building to a climax, while they all build to a larger climax. I need a goal, though, and I think it's going to be, simply, to see the face of God.
The problem is that I already know what I want to do with the third part, but not how to get there.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
20 Hours At Home, Part 1
12 AM - Buzzed off a birthday celebration I had to leave early to catch the last train southbound. There was a cute girl at the bar that made me think of my last girl. I am morose, and for lack of a cigarette, I spend the train ride reading fifty pages of Stephen King's "The Waste Lands," a book which features a monumental train ride. When I realize this, I can sense the walls of reality closing in on me, so I put the book away. Outside the window there are no tall buildings, only hills, and trees, and rows of houses that have space for yards. I'm far from the city.
1 AM - I get off at Mountain View, the train stop where I used to board the train when I was in high school. Here is where I met my good friend, here is where we bought out first porno rag, here is where I was sitting when he strolled up wide-eyed one Tuesday morning and said unconvincingly that planes rammed into the World Trade Center. I catch a taxi and ride home. My parents are gone for the week. The house where I grew up is all to myself. The street is quiet. I hated being here all summer - hated everything about suburbia - but now there is something quite comfortable about it. It is so peaceful. I want to grab a blanket and lie in the middle of the street, and watch the stars. I wonder for the first time if I was not born to live in a city.
1:45 - I have an appointment at 9:00 and I will have to drive to get there. I should sleep. I watch "Friday Night Lights" instead. This is the third episode of the second season, and it is much better than the second episode, which was much better than the first episode. In a sense, the show is suffering from the same fatigue as "Heroes" - both had first seasons which built to a defining climax (for "FNL," it was the State Championship; for "Heroes," saving the world); now, both shows are struggling to find a new overarching path. "Heroes" has the ratings to spend time on a narrative comeback; "FNL" will probably fade.
2:30 - Fall asleep, worrying that I won't fall asleep. Which comes first - insomnia, or the anxiety about insomnia that spurs insomnia? I hate the chicken and the egg.
8:30 - I wake up from a splendid dream feeling like I maybe slept four hours. I put on my gray warm-ups and a T-shirt my brother gave me for christmas, one of the only two T-shirts I own that weren't bought cheap in some foreign city or handed down from the family closet.
9:00 - Physical therapy is very often painful. I have terrible posture and an inability to relax many key muscles - lower back, stomach, calves. Half of PT is comfortable massage, the other half muscle-twisting pain. Because the physical therapy helps wuth the pain, I keep doing it; because it doesn't cure the pain completely, it also makes me feel very depressed, and trapped. There was a time when I didn't feel as if my body and mind required constant care from professionals. That time has passed, for me. I don't think it will ever return.
My physical therapist asks me how things are going. Groggy, wanting to sleep, I say Fine. She asks, Have I seen the girl? No, I say, I haven't seen the girl.
10:00 - Blessed release. My physical therapist reminds me to do my stretches. I nod, knowing that I won't and then will feel bad about not doing them. I feel too tired to feel sad. I feel numb, and yet I cannot appreciate the numbness - I cannot just be. Consumed with self-hatred, my leg and back muscles screeching, I go to Lucky's for a bunch of chicken strips, and go home and cover them in Tabasco, and watch "30 Rock."
11:30 - I have an appointment at the Apple Store to replace my electronic cord. The appointment is at 12:30. I don't like driving to that area - it reminds me too much of the summertime, and of high sprung emotions that I don't like to think about. But I need an electric cord. I feel like I have a cold - my nose is stuffed and my throat is sore. I speak to a friend on the telephone. I watch "Chuck" on my mother's computer, but pause it before the the credits are finished. I gather my computer into my bag, rub the stubble I haven't shaved in days, and consider my arms, which are long and skinny and not particularly useful. The dark weight in my mind presses tears against my eyes. I hold them back, then realize that I am alone in a house on an empty street, and then I collapse, and I sob.
I do not know what I am so sad about. It may be the girl, or memories of my childhood, or my misformed muscles that cannot relax. As I lie curled on the floor of a kitchen, a young man without a real job with long hair who spends much of the week reading and writing in coffeehouses, I worry, not for the first time, that I am becoming a cliche.
1 AM - I get off at Mountain View, the train stop where I used to board the train when I was in high school. Here is where I met my good friend, here is where we bought out first porno rag, here is where I was sitting when he strolled up wide-eyed one Tuesday morning and said unconvincingly that planes rammed into the World Trade Center. I catch a taxi and ride home. My parents are gone for the week. The house where I grew up is all to myself. The street is quiet. I hated being here all summer - hated everything about suburbia - but now there is something quite comfortable about it. It is so peaceful. I want to grab a blanket and lie in the middle of the street, and watch the stars. I wonder for the first time if I was not born to live in a city.
1:45 - I have an appointment at 9:00 and I will have to drive to get there. I should sleep. I watch "Friday Night Lights" instead. This is the third episode of the second season, and it is much better than the second episode, which was much better than the first episode. In a sense, the show is suffering from the same fatigue as "Heroes" - both had first seasons which built to a defining climax (for "FNL," it was the State Championship; for "Heroes," saving the world); now, both shows are struggling to find a new overarching path. "Heroes" has the ratings to spend time on a narrative comeback; "FNL" will probably fade.
2:30 - Fall asleep, worrying that I won't fall asleep. Which comes first - insomnia, or the anxiety about insomnia that spurs insomnia? I hate the chicken and the egg.
8:30 - I wake up from a splendid dream feeling like I maybe slept four hours. I put on my gray warm-ups and a T-shirt my brother gave me for christmas, one of the only two T-shirts I own that weren't bought cheap in some foreign city or handed down from the family closet.
9:00 - Physical therapy is very often painful. I have terrible posture and an inability to relax many key muscles - lower back, stomach, calves. Half of PT is comfortable massage, the other half muscle-twisting pain. Because the physical therapy helps wuth the pain, I keep doing it; because it doesn't cure the pain completely, it also makes me feel very depressed, and trapped. There was a time when I didn't feel as if my body and mind required constant care from professionals. That time has passed, for me. I don't think it will ever return.
My physical therapist asks me how things are going. Groggy, wanting to sleep, I say Fine. She asks, Have I seen the girl? No, I say, I haven't seen the girl.
10:00 - Blessed release. My physical therapist reminds me to do my stretches. I nod, knowing that I won't and then will feel bad about not doing them. I feel too tired to feel sad. I feel numb, and yet I cannot appreciate the numbness - I cannot just be. Consumed with self-hatred, my leg and back muscles screeching, I go to Lucky's for a bunch of chicken strips, and go home and cover them in Tabasco, and watch "30 Rock."
11:30 - I have an appointment at the Apple Store to replace my electronic cord. The appointment is at 12:30. I don't like driving to that area - it reminds me too much of the summertime, and of high sprung emotions that I don't like to think about. But I need an electric cord. I feel like I have a cold - my nose is stuffed and my throat is sore. I speak to a friend on the telephone. I watch "Chuck" on my mother's computer, but pause it before the the credits are finished. I gather my computer into my bag, rub the stubble I haven't shaved in days, and consider my arms, which are long and skinny and not particularly useful. The dark weight in my mind presses tears against my eyes. I hold them back, then realize that I am alone in a house on an empty street, and then I collapse, and I sob.
I do not know what I am so sad about. It may be the girl, or memories of my childhood, or my misformed muscles that cannot relax. As I lie curled on the floor of a kitchen, a young man without a real job with long hair who spends much of the week reading and writing in coffeehouses, I worry, not for the first time, that I am becoming a cliche.
Monday, October 22, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The Preshow Jitters
On Friday, I couldn't wait for National Novel Writing Month to start. I wanted nothing so much as to devote myself without fail or rest to something greater than myself. I looked forward to becoming a zealot. I prepared myself for a monk's life. I told all my friends I would party hard through October, reach out and touch the stars themselves on Halloween, then wake up the next day with a pen in my hand and a goal in my heart and write, write, write the living hell out of 50 thousand choice words.
Then I woke up yesterday and realized there was no way in hell that I could actually write a novel. It's too big. Too hard. I don't know what the story is, or where it will go. But that's not right. That's not the real reason I was scared. Because I know that I can do it, and that's what really frightens me.
My whole life that I can remember, I've always wanted to be a writer. I read so many books when I was a kid - my peak was definitely junior high, when school was easy and I didn't have any really good friends, when I could read the latest iteration of the Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. I can still remember how it felt to finish Stephen King' "It" - I think that was getting into high school, though with Stephen King I can never quite keep it straight. I can remember the feeling of tremendous accomplishment, King for writing it, me for reading it. I can remember how it felt to hold an adult book rather than a children's book.
My dad used to take me to bookstores and buy several books at once - fiction, history, biography. He wouldn't finish many of them. I do that, now, too. My mom gave me so much of what I think of as my writing ability, but my dad was the one who taught me about the weight of books. To this day, nothing pleases me more than buying several books at once. It is my one real luxury. I am doing everything I can to cut excess spending during this long dark night of unpaid internshipping - no more video games (I left the playstation at home), no more music (iTunes beckons me like a loathsome quick-pay siren), no more DVDs, no lavish dinners (I'm learning how to cook).
I went to City Lights last night late and thought I might suffer a panic attack because I looked around me at all these books - all the worlds contained within the binding - and thought, I could create one of these things, I might have a book here certainly within the next decade at least. Books to me are sacred objects. If I can create one, does that make them less sacred? I am not Icarus, nor was meant to be.
I bought several books and came up with a new title.
"Why Is Johnny Pope"
Then I woke up yesterday and realized there was no way in hell that I could actually write a novel. It's too big. Too hard. I don't know what the story is, or where it will go. But that's not right. That's not the real reason I was scared. Because I know that I can do it, and that's what really frightens me.
My whole life that I can remember, I've always wanted to be a writer. I read so many books when I was a kid - my peak was definitely junior high, when school was easy and I didn't have any really good friends, when I could read the latest iteration of the Star Wars X-Wing Rogue Squadron series. I can still remember how it felt to finish Stephen King' "It" - I think that was getting into high school, though with Stephen King I can never quite keep it straight. I can remember the feeling of tremendous accomplishment, King for writing it, me for reading it. I can remember how it felt to hold an adult book rather than a children's book.
My dad used to take me to bookstores and buy several books at once - fiction, history, biography. He wouldn't finish many of them. I do that, now, too. My mom gave me so much of what I think of as my writing ability, but my dad was the one who taught me about the weight of books. To this day, nothing pleases me more than buying several books at once. It is my one real luxury. I am doing everything I can to cut excess spending during this long dark night of unpaid internshipping - no more video games (I left the playstation at home), no more music (iTunes beckons me like a loathsome quick-pay siren), no more DVDs, no lavish dinners (I'm learning how to cook).
I went to City Lights last night late and thought I might suffer a panic attack because I looked around me at all these books - all the worlds contained within the binding - and thought, I could create one of these things, I might have a book here certainly within the next decade at least. Books to me are sacred objects. If I can create one, does that make them less sacred? I am not Icarus, nor was meant to be.
I bought several books and came up with a new title.
"Why Is Johnny Pope"
Friday, October 19, 2007
National Novel Writing Month: The Story
Here are four stories that I have been working on or thinking about, in one way or another, for almost one and a half years, without ever fully committing to turning them into a book. Literally, the furthest I've ever gotten is page 20. Single spaced, so that's not that bad, but still.
1 - Overwhelmingly Huge Polyglot Fantasy Novel - Intercutting between three separate storylines, this one would seek to top everything that has ever come before; an overwhelming "Lost" style mystery, a Neil Gaimen-esque treatment of gods and monsters, a coming of age story, a jilted love affair, death and life, a character named Marcello who bears a striking resemblance to his namesake in "La Dolce Vita." Storyline 1 - the Big Island of Hawaii, late August, 2005. An old man watches the television news. Hurricane Katrina is whipping through New Orleans. Iraq is starting to go to hell. He is old, but not dying. Meanwhile, two mysterious men, one loud and fat, the other deathly pale, hire a boat to take them to a leper colony. Storyline 2 - a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." Storyline 3 - a young boy in a massive fantasyland continent meets a strange girl and sets off on an adventure that will ruin his life.
Problem: Too big. Almost preciously elaborate. Biting hardcore off of Stephen King.
2 - A Little Death in Amsterdam - a loner meets a girl in Amsterdam, fucks her, ditches her. The next day, she's floating upside down in the canal. Who killed her? Can he even find out? Does it even matter? Who was she?
Problem - How does an American find a killer in Amsterdam? I want to do a story about Europe, not just Amsterdam. Maybe he finds the killer and tracks him all across Europe?
3 - Drags - Fantasy story about a country with Dragons. I've written the beginnings to at least ten different stories set in this world, no luck.
4 - A semiautobiographical story based on my college life.
Problem - It will be narcissistic and self-loathing at the same time.
1 - Overwhelmingly Huge Polyglot Fantasy Novel - Intercutting between three separate storylines, this one would seek to top everything that has ever come before; an overwhelming "Lost" style mystery, a Neil Gaimen-esque treatment of gods and monsters, a coming of age story, a jilted love affair, death and life, a character named Marcello who bears a striking resemblance to his namesake in "La Dolce Vita." Storyline 1 - the Big Island of Hawaii, late August, 2005. An old man watches the television news. Hurricane Katrina is whipping through New Orleans. Iraq is starting to go to hell. He is old, but not dying. Meanwhile, two mysterious men, one loud and fat, the other deathly pale, hire a boat to take them to a leper colony. Storyline 2 - a retelling of Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." Storyline 3 - a young boy in a massive fantasyland continent meets a strange girl and sets off on an adventure that will ruin his life.
Problem: Too big. Almost preciously elaborate. Biting hardcore off of Stephen King.
2 - A Little Death in Amsterdam - a loner meets a girl in Amsterdam, fucks her, ditches her. The next day, she's floating upside down in the canal. Who killed her? Can he even find out? Does it even matter? Who was she?
Problem - How does an American find a killer in Amsterdam? I want to do a story about Europe, not just Amsterdam. Maybe he finds the killer and tracks him all across Europe?
3 - Drags - Fantasy story about a country with Dragons. I've written the beginnings to at least ten different stories set in this world, no luck.
4 - A semiautobiographical story based on my college life.
Problem - It will be narcissistic and self-loathing at the same time.
National Novel Writing Month: The Title
There are two schools of thought about titling your novel. One school says you just start writing and a title will reveal itself. The other school says that before you write anything you write the title, and then, whenever you can feel the story wandering and your heart flagging, you've got something concrete to hold on to. I read both of those theories in a "how do you write" type interview in some shi-shi magazine like Time or Newsweek. I have come to believe that you can understand modern life by reading Time and Newsweek.
Working Titles, take 1: "Miscreation" "Together We Spiral" "Dis and That" "Implode-Explode" "Devil Up" "The Bachelor from Bulgaria" "Apocalypse Tuesday" "Fire and Dice" "Johnny Pope and the Quest for Reality" "The Girl"
Working Titles, take 1: "Miscreation" "Together We Spiral" "Dis and That" "Implode-Explode" "Devil Up" "The Bachelor from Bulgaria" "Apocalypse Tuesday" "Fire and Dice" "Johnny Pope and the Quest for Reality" "The Girl"
National Novel Writing Month: Prologue
In the next two weeks, I have to finish research on a book about undocumented immigrants and a book about the stock market. I need to continue my intensive study of "The Dark Tower" saga by Stephen King, which means reading another 4000 words or so of small text. I need to get a job. I need to see as many people as possible.
Because starting on November 1, I am going to monk out and write the shit out of my first novel. National Novel Writing Month. By my rough estimate, I need to write about ten pages a day, no breaks for weekends or holidays or long nights of high emotion with women I kid myself into thinking I love. I am trimming the excess fat out of my life. I am converting all the money I usually spend on club fees and iTunes into coffee and cigarettes. Lots of cigarettes. I've been holding off the inevitable addiction for as long as possible.
I hope to trace my progress on a day-to-day basis. If I miss one day, then I will miss another day, and then my whole plan will come tumbling apart. I must be strong. I am a ninja lurking in the shadows of the sea. I am a samurai warrior, hear me slash. I am a mongrel dog in the junkyard, making a living off scraps of food people throw into garbage cans. I am Shiva, the god of death.
I'll get better, I swear.
Because starting on November 1, I am going to monk out and write the shit out of my first novel. National Novel Writing Month. By my rough estimate, I need to write about ten pages a day, no breaks for weekends or holidays or long nights of high emotion with women I kid myself into thinking I love. I am trimming the excess fat out of my life. I am converting all the money I usually spend on club fees and iTunes into coffee and cigarettes. Lots of cigarettes. I've been holding off the inevitable addiction for as long as possible.
I hope to trace my progress on a day-to-day basis. If I miss one day, then I will miss another day, and then my whole plan will come tumbling apart. I must be strong. I am a ninja lurking in the shadows of the sea. I am a samurai warrior, hear me slash. I am a mongrel dog in the junkyard, making a living off scraps of food people throw into garbage cans. I am Shiva, the god of death.
I'll get better, I swear.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Babylon Revisited
I had a horrible feeling when I woke up on Saturday that something bad was going to happen. Choose your own adventure: which of the following events was my premonition anticipating?
1) The bitter, whimpering end of a relationship that dominated my life, in one way or another, for over half a year, consuming all of my mental and emotional energy, sending me into fits of ecstasy and deep depression?
2) The end of a month of sobriety, a month in which I rediscovered Saturday and Sunday mornings, wrote more, smoked more cigarettes, drank more coffee, found an apartment in San Francisco, met the next unrequited love of my life, and made the disturbing discovery that I could stay in on a Friday night watching TV on the internet and playing old PlayStation games and feel perfectly happy, content, serene even?
3) Stanford's loss to TCU, which would have been a fine game if all the eyes of the nation weren't upon us after our photo-finish defeat of number-one-asshole USC, a match-up worthy of its own 80s movie, us as the dorks with anarchic facial hair, USC as the diving team fascists?
4) The horrible moment, which recurred at least thirty times at the recent graduate reunion before the game, when people with actual jobs asked me what I was doing. Four months out from college, I'm falling behind in the race to financial independence.
All of the above, unfortunately.
1) The bitter, whimpering end of a relationship that dominated my life, in one way or another, for over half a year, consuming all of my mental and emotional energy, sending me into fits of ecstasy and deep depression?
2) The end of a month of sobriety, a month in which I rediscovered Saturday and Sunday mornings, wrote more, smoked more cigarettes, drank more coffee, found an apartment in San Francisco, met the next unrequited love of my life, and made the disturbing discovery that I could stay in on a Friday night watching TV on the internet and playing old PlayStation games and feel perfectly happy, content, serene even?
3) Stanford's loss to TCU, which would have been a fine game if all the eyes of the nation weren't upon us after our photo-finish defeat of number-one-asshole USC, a match-up worthy of its own 80s movie, us as the dorks with anarchic facial hair, USC as the diving team fascists?
4) The horrible moment, which recurred at least thirty times at the recent graduate reunion before the game, when people with actual jobs asked me what I was doing. Four months out from college, I'm falling behind in the race to financial independence.
All of the above, unfortunately.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Drunken Places I've Been Sober In the Last Month
-My Triple-Ex-Girlfriend's Birthday Party, at a tiny bar on El Camino run by a guy with the same name as the author of "The Da Vinci Code," literally fifty feet from the apartment of my then-ex-girlfriend, who I'd broken up with one week earlier. The hangover from break-up night convinced me to take a sober month.
-A bar in the Mission right next to where I work, with several of my fellow interns and a couple of actual people. There was some sort of party happening in the bar that involved taking pictures with a gigantic flashbulb which filled the silence between words like a lightning flash.
-My cousin's engagement party. My uncle bought a couple weddings' worth of catered food and professional drink. There were several toasts. I spent the night coming up with new and interesting euphemisms for "intern." Free booze alert!
-Gaieties Retreat. "Gaieties" is an annual Big Game tradition - a comedy-musical about how much Cal sucks. Kind of like "Beach Blanket Babylon" with lots of college humor. I was on the writing staff of the show three times. Gaieties Retreat is a legendary bacchanalia where the actors, crew, and assorted hangers-on retreat to a cabin in the woods, drink profusely, make out in hot tubs, and smoke out in teepees. I explained to my friends that I was the sober monitor. "Yes, you are!" insisted some. "Vag-face!" shrieked others. Ended up driving my two drunk friends home. Free booze alert!
- A sports bar near my new apartment, where my roommate and I went to watch the USC-Stanford game. My school, which was never better than mediocre while I was an undergrad and achieved a 1-11 record last season, beat the number one team in the nation on their home field. The smug faces of USC undergrad richfuck pussies crying their eyes out made me happier than I've been in years. No one in the bar was a Stanford fan, but everyone, even the guy in the Cal shirt, hated USC.
- A trendy bar on Polk Street where I saw two of my fraternity brothers for the first time in over a month. When I walked in, they insisted on buying me a shot. "Can't do it, " I said, trying not to sound smug or cowardly, "I'm sober tonight." They concluded that I was both a woman and a homosexual.
- An Alumni golf tournament for my high school. There was free beer in the clubhouse, coolers full of coronas and bud lite scattered throughout the course, and a gigantic truck with October Fest and Pilsner beer pouring out of spigots in its side. We saw only two other guys from our era. "I'm just hear to get wasted!" they said. "Me too!" said my friend. Free booze alert!
- A Beirut concert. Beirut plays a kind of folk-rock-waltz fusion with Eastern European influences and every kind of instrument you can imagine. His performance was so extraordinary that it made me reconsider my life and how I try to live it. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to fall asleep on that beach on Mykonos. I wanted my former ex-, now maybe-girlfriend to be there, but I wasn't sure if she would appreciate it.
-A bar in the Mission right next to where I work, with several of my fellow interns and a couple of actual people. There was some sort of party happening in the bar that involved taking pictures with a gigantic flashbulb which filled the silence between words like a lightning flash.
-My cousin's engagement party. My uncle bought a couple weddings' worth of catered food and professional drink. There were several toasts. I spent the night coming up with new and interesting euphemisms for "intern." Free booze alert!
-Gaieties Retreat. "Gaieties" is an annual Big Game tradition - a comedy-musical about how much Cal sucks. Kind of like "Beach Blanket Babylon" with lots of college humor. I was on the writing staff of the show three times. Gaieties Retreat is a legendary bacchanalia where the actors, crew, and assorted hangers-on retreat to a cabin in the woods, drink profusely, make out in hot tubs, and smoke out in teepees. I explained to my friends that I was the sober monitor. "Yes, you are!" insisted some. "Vag-face!" shrieked others. Ended up driving my two drunk friends home. Free booze alert!
- A sports bar near my new apartment, where my roommate and I went to watch the USC-Stanford game. My school, which was never better than mediocre while I was an undergrad and achieved a 1-11 record last season, beat the number one team in the nation on their home field. The smug faces of USC undergrad richfuck pussies crying their eyes out made me happier than I've been in years. No one in the bar was a Stanford fan, but everyone, even the guy in the Cal shirt, hated USC.
- A trendy bar on Polk Street where I saw two of my fraternity brothers for the first time in over a month. When I walked in, they insisted on buying me a shot. "Can't do it, " I said, trying not to sound smug or cowardly, "I'm sober tonight." They concluded that I was both a woman and a homosexual.
- An Alumni golf tournament for my high school. There was free beer in the clubhouse, coolers full of coronas and bud lite scattered throughout the course, and a gigantic truck with October Fest and Pilsner beer pouring out of spigots in its side. We saw only two other guys from our era. "I'm just hear to get wasted!" they said. "Me too!" said my friend. Free booze alert!
- A Beirut concert. Beirut plays a kind of folk-rock-waltz fusion with Eastern European influences and every kind of instrument you can imagine. His performance was so extraordinary that it made me reconsider my life and how I try to live it. I wanted to fall in love. I wanted to fall asleep on that beach on Mykonos. I wanted my former ex-, now maybe-girlfriend to be there, but I wasn't sure if she would appreciate it.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Sunday Sunday
Woke up today in San Francisco without a hangover. I didn't have anything to drink last night except coffee, coke, and apple juice, and I still couldn't wake up before my brother. My mind was still reeling from "Michael Clayton." Tilda Swinton makes great acting look dirty hot in corporate attire, George Clooney lets you see the gray in his hair and the bags under his eyes, Tom Wilkinson plays a manic-depressive corporate lawyer like it's King Lear for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Sydney Pollack reprises his role from "Eyes Wide Shut" as the kindly uncle figure who acts surprised when you can't believe he's evil.
Had an argument with my brother over "Hotel Chevalier" last night. This is our second loud argument in the last two months about Wes Anderson. Last time I was anti-Wes - I've never liked "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" as much as I wanted to, frankly thought it was $100 Million hipster cumshot, but B made a passionate plea for Anderson's artfulness, his European influence, the sheer amount of STUFF that you've never seen in any other movie. Potato potato. I figured, then, that B, the devoted apostle, would like "Hotel Chevalier" even more than I, the scornful cynic would. Nope. He hated it - the stilted Anderson-speak, the little cutesy affectations like Natalie Portman's toothpick, everything.
I've disagreed with people about movies before, but there's something about "Hotel Chevalier." Two of the people I love most in the world have expressed nothing less than complete disdain for the short, and on both occasions I've felt equally hurt and angry - like, how can you not understand this? Maybe it's personal. Maybe you have to have been to a tourist wonder metropolis like Paris or Berlin and wanted nothing more than to lay in bed and order room service. Maybe you have to love a girl and hate her at the same time. Maybe you have to be at a particular time in your life - lonely, jobless, aimless - to really love the movie Or maybe you need to be as infantile as Wes Anderson. This whole "Hotel Chevalier" episode is not reflecting well on me. I can sense friendships breaking and mindsets shaking. I wish I could go back to a few days ago, when I just wanted to hate Wes Anderson some more.
I drove back home to clean out my room. Watched "Aliens" in the meantime. I know I shouldn't put a movie on while I'm trying to do something, but I can't help it. Like the Girl, I always have to have something on in the background. I'm listening to music right now because "Sopranos" is on commercial. Fucking "Sopranos" on A & E.
Had an argument with my brother over "Hotel Chevalier" last night. This is our second loud argument in the last two months about Wes Anderson. Last time I was anti-Wes - I've never liked "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" as much as I wanted to, frankly thought it was $100 Million hipster cumshot, but B made a passionate plea for Anderson's artfulness, his European influence, the sheer amount of STUFF that you've never seen in any other movie. Potato potato. I figured, then, that B, the devoted apostle, would like "Hotel Chevalier" even more than I, the scornful cynic would. Nope. He hated it - the stilted Anderson-speak, the little cutesy affectations like Natalie Portman's toothpick, everything.
I've disagreed with people about movies before, but there's something about "Hotel Chevalier." Two of the people I love most in the world have expressed nothing less than complete disdain for the short, and on both occasions I've felt equally hurt and angry - like, how can you not understand this? Maybe it's personal. Maybe you have to have been to a tourist wonder metropolis like Paris or Berlin and wanted nothing more than to lay in bed and order room service. Maybe you have to love a girl and hate her at the same time. Maybe you have to be at a particular time in your life - lonely, jobless, aimless - to really love the movie Or maybe you need to be as infantile as Wes Anderson. This whole "Hotel Chevalier" episode is not reflecting well on me. I can sense friendships breaking and mindsets shaking. I wish I could go back to a few days ago, when I just wanted to hate Wes Anderson some more.
I drove back home to clean out my room. Watched "Aliens" in the meantime. I know I shouldn't put a movie on while I'm trying to do something, but I can't help it. Like the Girl, I always have to have something on in the background. I'm listening to music right now because "Sopranos" is on commercial. Fucking "Sopranos" on A & E.
Friday, October 5, 2007
An Overlong Email I Sent To My Best Friend About Why "Hotel Chevalier" is Such a Good Movie
I don't think I've looked forward to any movie as much as I looked forward to "Life Aquatic." All the descriptions of it read like a millenial film geek's giant wet dream - Wes Anderson gets a $90 Million Dollar Budget to go to Europe and do whatever he wants; Bill Murray and Anjelica Huston as a married couple; deep sea diving adventure; claymation imaginary sea creatures; Cate Blanchett as a pregnant love interest. I went to go see the movie on ski trip sophomore year. Have I ever told you about this ski trip? So much craziness - hook-ups and drinking games and skiing at the top of the world. And the whole time, me and my friend Roddy couldn't stop talking about how much we all had to go and see "The Life Aquatic." It was a different time. I think Hunter S. Thompson was still alive. Bush had just been re-elected. Anger was settling into malaise and casual annoyance.
I can remember the exact moment that I knew I didn't quite like the movie. It's the moment when Bill Murray breaks out of his bonds and shoots up a bunch of pirates, action movie style. It's a moment that Steve Zissou seems to become the great man that everyone is always saying he is, and after that scene, I was expecting that Bill Murray would finally come to life. It's strange to remember now, but he used to be a vital, crazy presence onscreen. He was never madcap - never a John Belushi - but there was a certain madness in his best performances, in "Caddyshack" as an idiot savant waging war on a gopher, in "Scrooged" battling his own inner asshole to find true love, and most especially in "Groundhog Day," where he covers an incredible range of moods - anger, madness, exasperation, existential regreat, and ultimately contentment. Anderson revived his career in "Rushmore" by making Murray play the same kind of man twenty years after the party - sad, quiet, mugged by the passage of time. That gunfight seemed to indicate a return of the old Murray.
But no. After the fight, he remains trapped in his little malaise - for the whole movie, really. In a sense, "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic" are the same sort of story, in that you hear, over and over again, how the characters' greatness has passed them by. The difference is that "Tenenbaums" has Gene Hackman, who absolutely holds the movie together. Every other character is trapped in that particular Andersonian stasis - they stand still in elaborate diorama-sets without really noticing anything. Hackman gives the whole film its life force - he's the burning, half-drunk, scheming supernova that casts light on everyone else. Bill Murray in "the life Aquatic" is just the opposite - every character onscreen loves him, can't stop talking about how great Steve Zissou is, and he's just at the center, hanging out in a steam room. He's the black hole. I think, frankly, this is because Hackman is a genuine actor and Bill Murray is just Bill Murray. Murray plays the same character in each film, and sometimes it's genius ("Lost in Translation") sometimes it's just monotone ("Broken Flowers.")
There are moments of "Life Aquatic" that make you laugh and moments that make you choke up with tears, and what they both have in common is that they come completely out of nowhere. Anderson doesn't write narratives that advance or grow - he comes up with a single idea and has characters circle around that idea for the whole movie. There is always an elephant in the room in Anderson films that characters never quite get around to talking about. In "Royal Tenenbaums" and "Life Aquatic," no one can ever quite bring themselves to admit what failures they have become.
The worst thing, though, was the cuteness. "Royal Tenenbaums" was cute, but there, within the film, it actually made sense - all of the characters suffered from arrested development, so it made complete sense that they all still acted like children. In "Life Aquatic," the cuteness is ruinous - you can't believe that any of the characters could steer a canoe, much less make a series of true-life deep-sea adventure films. You certainly don't buy Steve Zissou as a genius. Leaving the theater from watching "Life Aquatic," my strongest feeling was frustration - the whole movie, all I could think of was how much I wanted to crawl on the screen and shake everyone out of their stupor. You have a fucking boat with a fucking submarine! Life isn't so bad!
Hackman is that shaker in "Royal Tenenbaums." The teacher is that shaker in "Rushmore" - she never gets carried away by Max's dreams, never once buys into the fact that he actually loves her, is quite aware of the fact that HE'S A TEENAGER.
And that's exactly the role that Natalie Portman plays in "Hotel Chevalier," from the very first moment she steps into the hotel - "What the fuck is this music?" Jason Schwartzman's character has arranged his whole room just so, Wes Anderson style - he selects a particular soundtrack of late 60s music, he starts a bubble bath, changes his clothes, orders food. Natalie Portman is exactly the breath of fresh air that keeps Wes Anderson films from being empty whimsy. Gwyneth Paltrow was narcotized in "Royal Tenenbaums" - she never changed her expression. You could argue that it made it all the more potent when she did emote - the bit where she starts crying when she hugs Luke Wilson is beautiful - but you could also argue that it's strange, after her knockout performance in "Shakespeare in Love," to see the woman who was then the greatest actress in the world give a Jessica Biel performance.
I didn't read all of the race thing because I noticed it had spoilers for "Darjeeling," and even for movies I don't want to see I hate spoilers, but it seems that the main argument is that Anderson uses ethnic characters and cultures on the periphery and makes a joke out of his character's inability to understand them. Here we are getting into dangerous post-PC territory. There was just a big flap over a comment that a character made on "Desperate Housewives" - Teri Hatcher (who, everyone knows, is the ditzy housewife) said that she wanted to see her doctor's credentials and make sure he "didn't have a med school diploma from the Phillipines or something." Instantly, the Filipino government issued a massive public statement about how the comment was entirely misleading - that Filipino doctors are some of the most educated in the world, etc, etc. But was the line meant to make fun of the Phillippines, or was it meant to make fun of the characters' stupidity, or was it meant to portray a silly yet common prejudice in modern day America? Was the joke morally defensible? Is "Desperate Housewives" anti-Filipino?
This is an important question for the modern age, because the thrust of Slate's argument is essentially that Wes Anderson makes movies about upper class white people with no understanding of the rest of the world, and hence, Wes Anderson has no understanding of the rest of the world. Gene Hackman makes racist comments in "The Royal Tenenbaums" and people laugh at them, because Gene Hackman's delivery is very funny. Does that make us racist if we laugh at that? Archie Bunker said much worse for much longer on "All in the Family,"and that was one of the funniest sitcoms ever. If you were to watch an episode of "All in the family" and "Friends" back to back, which one has aged better? "Friends" is offensive to no one, and yet it is entirely deracinated as a result - FAR more hermetic, I would argue, then anything Anderson has done.
Is the Indian guy in "Royal Tenenbaums" funny? Hell yes. Does he have as big a role as other characters? No. Does he have a fascinating backstory? Yes - he stabbed Royal and took him to the hospital afterwards, and he stabs him again. For comparison, consider the movie "About Schmidt," one of the most heartbreaking films ever made about old age and loneliness which is also hysterically funny. The running joke of the film is that Jack Nicholson has taken part in one of those "save the african orphans" program and sends money to a child named Nduku - they encourage people to write their orphans letters, and so throughout the film, Jack Nicholson begins his letters, "Dear Nduku." Because people in America find the name so alien, and so when it's placed in such a quaint context of a letter, it becomes insanely funny. One critic (I don't remember who, so sorry if this is just a straw man argument) said that that bit was racist.
Take it one step further. There is a burgeoning question online about race in Peter Jackson films. There were no black people in "Lord of the Rings," but there were orcs (who had monstrous big noses and were generally ugly and scruffy looking and talked with Cockney accents) and there were also the Uruk-Hai, a warrior race of big dudes who painted their faces and could smell Man from miles away. They were black as soot, and looked like lions. They were unrepentantly evil, and unthinking. Are they meant to be African? Is "Lord of the Rings" secretly a story about gentrification - Aragorn, the long lost King, is after all a Numenorian, a member of a master race that lives a very long time and hangs out with the Elves, who stand still and statuesque like characters in a Wes Anderson film.
Even more problematic is "King Kong" - Peter Jackson envisions the natives of Skull Island as african-esque people. I say "african-esque" because the roles are played by actors of several different races who are colored more olive than brown. Jackson wanted Skull Island to incorporate aspects of several climate zones - plants from all over the world, different sorts of animals, and he wanted his people to have the same hybrid look. But does the fact that they were dark skinned and primitive mean that Jackson sees all African people like that? He makes fun of the earlier King Kong's treatment of the natives in his own film, but is his treatment any better? Does it matter that one member of the supporting cast is African American, quotes "heart of Darkness" from memory, and takes a young orphan under his wing?
So lets say, for the sake of argument, that Wes Anderson's whole point with race in his films is to show how his characters are silly in their prejudice. Where does that leave us? Royal gets his comeuppance - the man he insults ends up marrying his wife and becoming a surrogate father to his children. Conversely, nothing really happens in "Life Aquatic" to connect the characters to their environment. The treatment of the Pirates, in particular, is complete fantasy land - they're just a bunch of Filipinos who hang out on a broke down boat and keep a secret base on an island. My brother thinks that "Life Aquatic" has a particularly Mediterranean style - that Anderson absorbed the best of France and Italy and Spain. I don't see any evidence of the film styles of those three countries in the film. "Life Aquatic" is the ultimate tourist movie - Steve Zissou goes cool places without every really trying to understand them, doesn't seem to speak the language, doesn't try.
WHich brings me back to "hotel Chevalier," where the whole point, I think, is that Jason Schwartzman's character is hermetically sealed, and Natalie Portman is there as the eternal Breath of Fresh Air. I think there is something unbearably sad about the short, and I think that has everything to do with Portman's performance - the way she absorbs the whole diorama layout of Schwartzman's pristine room and asks, "What the fuck is the deal?" Most characters in Anderson films refuse to let even the simplest emotion out of their face, but Portman is all emotion - yearning, annoyance, hatred, sadness, confusion, amusement, everything. It's fitting, then, that she's essentially naked by the end of the film and Schwartzman hasn't taken off a single article of clothing. How perfect that the film ends out on the deck, because that's exactly the kind of view Wes Anderson's characters take of the world - they see it without being it, slightly removed in their lavishly designed, empty hotel room. The first and last shot of the film are the only two that aren't inside of the hotel room.
Wes Anderson's films are all about the tension between stasis and kineticism, between silent people who can't formulate a word and manic people who can't help but speak their mind. "Hotel chevalier" captures all of that in 12 minutes. The one wrong note in the film is the slow motion penultimate shot, but only because it feels so mannered - but notice how Anderson twists his own style, and our own expectations. Yes, there is the same old "British Invasion song playing over slow motion walking" bit, but it's the same song that was playing earlier - that Jason Schwartzman arranged for his perfect tableau scene - and it isn't actually the last shot - when Anderson cuts outside, they're moving back in normal motion.
One more thing about the song - in "Life Aquatic," you could tell that Anderson was just making his soundtrack quirky for the hell of it. "Search and Destroy" is a great song, but the montage it accompanies does nothing for the movie - it seems like a scene that exists purely to showcase "Search and Destroy." But "Where do you go to My Lovely" is exactly the right song for this film. It is rife with references to High culture and Europe and pop culture and names and places - it could have been written by Bret Easton Ellis ("you talk like Marlene Dietrich/ and you dance like Zizi Jeanmarie/ your clothes are all made by Balmaire) - but because Anderson is making a film that's specifically about an American abroad hermetically sealed in his hotel shell, the song becomes a bit sad - you get the vibe that Jason Schwartzman's character knows who Marlene Dietrich is but has never seen one of her movies, that he knows Picasso is great but doesn't understand why, that he knows Naples is cool but couldn't find it on the map.
The song is also important because it's easy to misunderstand the intention. The chorus runs, "WHere do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed, tell me the thoughts that surround you, I want to look inside your head." Because it's a man singing, one might automaticaly assume that the song is about Natalie Portman's character. Just the opposite. Jason Schwartzman is the "lovely" of the title - alone in his bed, surrounded by thoughts. Natali Portman's whole role in the film is to try to get Jason Schwartzman to open up - to leave his little hotel room, to tell her what he really thinks, to get a RISE out of him. It almost kind of works.
I dunno. Maybe I just see alot of myself in the movie.
Cheers,
Darren
I can remember the exact moment that I knew I didn't quite like the movie. It's the moment when Bill Murray breaks out of his bonds and shoots up a bunch of pirates, action movie style. It's a moment that Steve Zissou seems to become the great man that everyone is always saying he is, and after that scene, I was expecting that Bill Murray would finally come to life. It's strange to remember now, but he used to be a vital, crazy presence onscreen. He was never madcap - never a John Belushi - but there was a certain madness in his best performances, in "Caddyshack" as an idiot savant waging war on a gopher, in "Scrooged" battling his own inner asshole to find true love, and most especially in "Groundhog Day," where he covers an incredible range of moods - anger, madness, exasperation, existential regreat, and ultimately contentment. Anderson revived his career in "Rushmore" by making Murray play the same kind of man twenty years after the party - sad, quiet, mugged by the passage of time. That gunfight seemed to indicate a return of the old Murray.
But no. After the fight, he remains trapped in his little malaise - for the whole movie, really. In a sense, "The Royal Tenenbaums" and "The Life Aquatic" are the same sort of story, in that you hear, over and over again, how the characters' greatness has passed them by. The difference is that "Tenenbaums" has Gene Hackman, who absolutely holds the movie together. Every other character is trapped in that particular Andersonian stasis - they stand still in elaborate diorama-sets without really noticing anything. Hackman gives the whole film its life force - he's the burning, half-drunk, scheming supernova that casts light on everyone else. Bill Murray in "the life Aquatic" is just the opposite - every character onscreen loves him, can't stop talking about how great Steve Zissou is, and he's just at the center, hanging out in a steam room. He's the black hole. I think, frankly, this is because Hackman is a genuine actor and Bill Murray is just Bill Murray. Murray plays the same character in each film, and sometimes it's genius ("Lost in Translation") sometimes it's just monotone ("Broken Flowers.")
There are moments of "Life Aquatic" that make you laugh and moments that make you choke up with tears, and what they both have in common is that they come completely out of nowhere. Anderson doesn't write narratives that advance or grow - he comes up with a single idea and has characters circle around that idea for the whole movie. There is always an elephant in the room in Anderson films that characters never quite get around to talking about. In "Royal Tenenbaums" and "Life Aquatic," no one can ever quite bring themselves to admit what failures they have become.
The worst thing, though, was the cuteness. "Royal Tenenbaums" was cute, but there, within the film, it actually made sense - all of the characters suffered from arrested development, so it made complete sense that they all still acted like children. In "Life Aquatic," the cuteness is ruinous - you can't believe that any of the characters could steer a canoe, much less make a series of true-life deep-sea adventure films. You certainly don't buy Steve Zissou as a genius. Leaving the theater from watching "Life Aquatic," my strongest feeling was frustration - the whole movie, all I could think of was how much I wanted to crawl on the screen and shake everyone out of their stupor. You have a fucking boat with a fucking submarine! Life isn't so bad!
Hackman is that shaker in "Royal Tenenbaums." The teacher is that shaker in "Rushmore" - she never gets carried away by Max's dreams, never once buys into the fact that he actually loves her, is quite aware of the fact that HE'S A TEENAGER.
And that's exactly the role that Natalie Portman plays in "Hotel Chevalier," from the very first moment she steps into the hotel - "What the fuck is this music?" Jason Schwartzman's character has arranged his whole room just so, Wes Anderson style - he selects a particular soundtrack of late 60s music, he starts a bubble bath, changes his clothes, orders food. Natalie Portman is exactly the breath of fresh air that keeps Wes Anderson films from being empty whimsy. Gwyneth Paltrow was narcotized in "Royal Tenenbaums" - she never changed her expression. You could argue that it made it all the more potent when she did emote - the bit where she starts crying when she hugs Luke Wilson is beautiful - but you could also argue that it's strange, after her knockout performance in "Shakespeare in Love," to see the woman who was then the greatest actress in the world give a Jessica Biel performance.
I didn't read all of the race thing because I noticed it had spoilers for "Darjeeling," and even for movies I don't want to see I hate spoilers, but it seems that the main argument is that Anderson uses ethnic characters and cultures on the periphery and makes a joke out of his character's inability to understand them. Here we are getting into dangerous post-PC territory. There was just a big flap over a comment that a character made on "Desperate Housewives" - Teri Hatcher (who, everyone knows, is the ditzy housewife) said that she wanted to see her doctor's credentials and make sure he "didn't have a med school diploma from the Phillipines or something." Instantly, the Filipino government issued a massive public statement about how the comment was entirely misleading - that Filipino doctors are some of the most educated in the world, etc, etc. But was the line meant to make fun of the Phillippines, or was it meant to make fun of the characters' stupidity, or was it meant to portray a silly yet common prejudice in modern day America? Was the joke morally defensible? Is "Desperate Housewives" anti-Filipino?
This is an important question for the modern age, because the thrust of Slate's argument is essentially that Wes Anderson makes movies about upper class white people with no understanding of the rest of the world, and hence, Wes Anderson has no understanding of the rest of the world. Gene Hackman makes racist comments in "The Royal Tenenbaums" and people laugh at them, because Gene Hackman's delivery is very funny. Does that make us racist if we laugh at that? Archie Bunker said much worse for much longer on "All in the Family,"and that was one of the funniest sitcoms ever. If you were to watch an episode of "All in the family" and "Friends" back to back, which one has aged better? "Friends" is offensive to no one, and yet it is entirely deracinated as a result - FAR more hermetic, I would argue, then anything Anderson has done.
Is the Indian guy in "Royal Tenenbaums" funny? Hell yes. Does he have as big a role as other characters? No. Does he have a fascinating backstory? Yes - he stabbed Royal and took him to the hospital afterwards, and he stabs him again. For comparison, consider the movie "About Schmidt," one of the most heartbreaking films ever made about old age and loneliness which is also hysterically funny. The running joke of the film is that Jack Nicholson has taken part in one of those "save the african orphans" program and sends money to a child named Nduku - they encourage people to write their orphans letters, and so throughout the film, Jack Nicholson begins his letters, "Dear Nduku." Because people in America find the name so alien, and so when it's placed in such a quaint context of a letter, it becomes insanely funny. One critic (I don't remember who, so sorry if this is just a straw man argument) said that that bit was racist.
Take it one step further. There is a burgeoning question online about race in Peter Jackson films. There were no black people in "Lord of the Rings," but there were orcs (who had monstrous big noses and were generally ugly and scruffy looking and talked with Cockney accents) and there were also the Uruk-Hai, a warrior race of big dudes who painted their faces and could smell Man from miles away. They were black as soot, and looked like lions. They were unrepentantly evil, and unthinking. Are they meant to be African? Is "Lord of the Rings" secretly a story about gentrification - Aragorn, the long lost King, is after all a Numenorian, a member of a master race that lives a very long time and hangs out with the Elves, who stand still and statuesque like characters in a Wes Anderson film.
Even more problematic is "King Kong" - Peter Jackson envisions the natives of Skull Island as african-esque people. I say "african-esque" because the roles are played by actors of several different races who are colored more olive than brown. Jackson wanted Skull Island to incorporate aspects of several climate zones - plants from all over the world, different sorts of animals, and he wanted his people to have the same hybrid look. But does the fact that they were dark skinned and primitive mean that Jackson sees all African people like that? He makes fun of the earlier King Kong's treatment of the natives in his own film, but is his treatment any better? Does it matter that one member of the supporting cast is African American, quotes "heart of Darkness" from memory, and takes a young orphan under his wing?
So lets say, for the sake of argument, that Wes Anderson's whole point with race in his films is to show how his characters are silly in their prejudice. Where does that leave us? Royal gets his comeuppance - the man he insults ends up marrying his wife and becoming a surrogate father to his children. Conversely, nothing really happens in "Life Aquatic" to connect the characters to their environment. The treatment of the Pirates, in particular, is complete fantasy land - they're just a bunch of Filipinos who hang out on a broke down boat and keep a secret base on an island. My brother thinks that "Life Aquatic" has a particularly Mediterranean style - that Anderson absorbed the best of France and Italy and Spain. I don't see any evidence of the film styles of those three countries in the film. "Life Aquatic" is the ultimate tourist movie - Steve Zissou goes cool places without every really trying to understand them, doesn't seem to speak the language, doesn't try.
WHich brings me back to "hotel Chevalier," where the whole point, I think, is that Jason Schwartzman's character is hermetically sealed, and Natalie Portman is there as the eternal Breath of Fresh Air. I think there is something unbearably sad about the short, and I think that has everything to do with Portman's performance - the way she absorbs the whole diorama layout of Schwartzman's pristine room and asks, "What the fuck is the deal?" Most characters in Anderson films refuse to let even the simplest emotion out of their face, but Portman is all emotion - yearning, annoyance, hatred, sadness, confusion, amusement, everything. It's fitting, then, that she's essentially naked by the end of the film and Schwartzman hasn't taken off a single article of clothing. How perfect that the film ends out on the deck, because that's exactly the kind of view Wes Anderson's characters take of the world - they see it without being it, slightly removed in their lavishly designed, empty hotel room. The first and last shot of the film are the only two that aren't inside of the hotel room.
Wes Anderson's films are all about the tension between stasis and kineticism, between silent people who can't formulate a word and manic people who can't help but speak their mind. "Hotel chevalier" captures all of that in 12 minutes. The one wrong note in the film is the slow motion penultimate shot, but only because it feels so mannered - but notice how Anderson twists his own style, and our own expectations. Yes, there is the same old "British Invasion song playing over slow motion walking" bit, but it's the same song that was playing earlier - that Jason Schwartzman arranged for his perfect tableau scene - and it isn't actually the last shot - when Anderson cuts outside, they're moving back in normal motion.
One more thing about the song - in "Life Aquatic," you could tell that Anderson was just making his soundtrack quirky for the hell of it. "Search and Destroy" is a great song, but the montage it accompanies does nothing for the movie - it seems like a scene that exists purely to showcase "Search and Destroy." But "Where do you go to My Lovely" is exactly the right song for this film. It is rife with references to High culture and Europe and pop culture and names and places - it could have been written by Bret Easton Ellis ("you talk like Marlene Dietrich/ and you dance like Zizi Jeanmarie/ your clothes are all made by Balmaire) - but because Anderson is making a film that's specifically about an American abroad hermetically sealed in his hotel shell, the song becomes a bit sad - you get the vibe that Jason Schwartzman's character knows who Marlene Dietrich is but has never seen one of her movies, that he knows Picasso is great but doesn't understand why, that he knows Naples is cool but couldn't find it on the map.
The song is also important because it's easy to misunderstand the intention. The chorus runs, "WHere do you go to my lovely, when you're alone in your bed, tell me the thoughts that surround you, I want to look inside your head." Because it's a man singing, one might automaticaly assume that the song is about Natalie Portman's character. Just the opposite. Jason Schwartzman is the "lovely" of the title - alone in his bed, surrounded by thoughts. Natali Portman's whole role in the film is to try to get Jason Schwartzman to open up - to leave his little hotel room, to tell her what he really thinks, to get a RISE out of him. It almost kind of works.
I dunno. Maybe I just see alot of myself in the movie.
Cheers,
Darren
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