Posted by HOTH ENERGIES at dialup-209.245.98.163.manchester1.level3.net on January 18, 2000 at 03:51:10:
Hey, I was reading about this PTA debate going on over here at pptanderson.com and I couldn't resist: I HAVE to get in on this.
Hey Kev, I'm as big a fan as yours as the next guy. Clerks, Chasing Amy, the new religious one, and yes, even Mallrats (no joke). Just wanted to get that out of the way. Actually, that had nothing to do with the next thing....I'm just rambling. Hmmmmmmm, oh yeah, Magnolia.
I've seen Magnolia twice. I like it. I've seen Dogma once in the theaters and once on laptop with a bootleg .mov with Tajikistanian subtitles or something (god bless technology). I like it. Ummmmmm, ok. So:
Mr. Smith, I thought your comments WERE pretty, um, not nice. Let's see...I'm having a real hard time phrasing this without coming off as ranting or in a way that you'll just blow me off as a PTA freak or something.
It's like this: if Magnolia is an exercise in self-importance and PTA has no emotional stake in his work...well, he freakin fooled me. He's repeatedly said that there's a lot of him in his films and while I can't speak for every theme he hits upon (don't know him personally and all), I sure as heck can hit upon one. It's known that he's estranged from his mom. Now I know a lot of people aren't so they don't understand it when a parent and his/her kid don't get along. And I mean DON'T (caps, bold, & underlined) get along. Well, I, me personally, am in that situation and I can totally understand what PTA is trying to say with the whole quiz kid / father story string. You're lucky Kev, I envy you. No, not because you're in the biz and are hobnobing with Hollywood's elite [on an unrelated note, would you please, please, PLEASE read a script if I sent it to you???? (j/k)] , but because you don't understand a situation where a son would go up to his father and say "You have to be nicer to me." I totally get where he's coming from man. Hell, that argument between Dirk and his mother in Boogie Nights makes me cry (I'm a man, I can admit it), cuz, well, it's like he transcribed one of me and my mother's arguments. So about the emotional stake thing, if he has none, like I said, he fooled the heck out of me.
Second, I don't know if you said it (I think that other director guy did, actually) but about the whole moving, fluid camera thing. Well....jeez, why bash camera shots? Why bash directing styles? Why bash a steadicam shot and cite where it came from? Scorsese wasn't the first one to use a damn steadicam shot peoples. Life did not start at Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction. Everyone stands on the back of others. Scorsese and Tarantino had their influences too. And their influences had influences. Etc, etc, etc. Everyone has their little tricks; do we bash Michael Mann's obsession with playing with focus? Altman's little "stationary camera", slow zoom trick? Kubrick's tracking shot? Coen bros. incessant use of wide angle lenses? Wes Anderson's slo-mo...hell, EVERYONE'S slo-mo? Tarantino's time fracturing? Etc, etc, etc? So.....look, I look at it this way. It's film. Movies. If you're gonna tell a story with film, use it to your advantage. If you're gonna just set the camera up and watch people talk, maybe film isn't the best thing to do this with; it might as well be a play or something. So...where was I going with this? Oh yeah:
Things have been done in movies. And they've been done again. And again. And again. And...you get the idea. So when someone tries something different, I think we should embrace it. Magnolia is something different, I think. It does some pretty audacious stuff and I'm not just talking about a 3 hour running time. There are extended monologues and everyone sings a song in the middle. And a frog storm. In a sea of sameness, I think it's myopic to condemn something different that was obviously (or, I guess, debatably) made with a lot of heart. Or something.
In the end, to wrap stuff up, to make things come full circle: I like Magnolia. I like Dogma. PT Anderson is a good writer who writes things that I'm led to believe are important to him. Kevin Smith is a good writer who writes things that I'm led to believe are important to him. When you can say those things about a couple of guys, well, what more do you want? Why argue who's good, bad, better, worse, blah blah blah.
For the record, my favorite movie of 1999 is Man on the Moon. Go see it. It's great. That and Being John Malkovich.
-HE
ps- Kev: Liked Clerks Lost Scene. LOL funny man.