Posted by Hal Phillips at 199.79.168.252 on April 01, 2002 at 02:23:13:
I've showed this DVD to so many people that I swear I must've seen the film more times than Vincent himself by now. And almost all of them have liked it, too. I showed it to someone a couple of days ago, and I also watched all of the deleted scene commentaries, so I've gone through almost the entire DVD now. A few thoughts came to mind, including some criticisms.
1) The one actor in the film whose performance I didn't like was Mark SaFranko, as Todd's father.
2) Speaking of performances, my favourite Eion Bailey delivery: "You vicious fuck. You told him." It's just after he knocks out Jason Lee, and Eion nails the perfect combination of anger and betrayal.
3) Stuff which still makes me laugh every time: most of Jason Lee's lines, most of Brian Lynch's lines, Lee Bendick's "God, I love this place" line, and Rob DiPatri's horrified reaction after Ryan's big monologue about wishing everyone were dead.
4) The one edit which I don't like: the removal of the beginning of Augustine's supermarket theory. Now that I've heard the deleted scene commentary, I see what Vincent was trying to do, but I don't think it worked: it just seems confusing. Almost every person I've watched this with has had the same reaction to it: "Huh? Wait, what's she talking about? Did I miss something?"
5) Speaking of edits: Vincent has said that he wishes he'd left out the vice dealer. I disagree, and I'm glad that ended up in the film. Sure, getting a gun is easy and the source doesn't really matter... but it's not SO easy and casual that Ryan could just pull a gun out of nowhere without that seeming very jarring and confusing. I think the film would suffer if the vice dealer scenes were gone. (Except for the one which WAS cut, of course. I was kinda glad to hear Vincent say that watching it with audiences made him cringe, 'cause it was definitely the one really bad scene the first time I saw the film.)
6) Question for anyone else who's seen the film: the first time you saw it, were there any points where you thought the film was gonna go a certain way, but it didn't? I remember thinking the first time that some sort of romance was foreshadowed between Barret and Augustine (like when he asks if she's dating Eddie).