27 June, 2010

Rushmore


Rushmore was a turning point for me. That and The Big Lebowski. And maybe Clerks.

There's a bunch of movies that probably changed the way I look at things, that broadened my horizons, but Rushmore is more certainly on the upper crust of that list. My life, as it stands, would not, could not, be the same without the movie Rushmore. It's just impossible.

I remember when I first heard about Rushmore. It came out the same month that the Laemelle 7 opened up down the street. At first I had no idea what that theater was about. They didn't show any movies I had ever heard about and their lobby was decorated with even more movies I had never heard about, but they were in French, Italian, and German. What kind of movie theater was that? Movies were something I understood as what I would later call mass media. They weren't these obscure pieces of art that the Laemelle was showing.

But, then I started seeing ads on TV for this movie Rushmore. It stared Peter Venkmen and it seemed strange enough, yet funny enough, to meet my need as a movie. It was a turning point for me, I guess. Not that Rushmore met that need, but it hit me at a certain time and at a certain angle that it scored a hit. It stuck. Man on the Moon was another one of those movies that hit the younger me. That movie didn't stick with me like Rushmore did, but they were both a part of this emotional wave I had where I wanted to see movies that weren't about aliens wrecking shit or Bruce Willis blowing something up.

Rushmore, when it came out, was an incredibly attractive film. I said as much to my dad and he agreed. We never saw it in the theaters. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I saw the movie with my sister Amy (who also showed me my first Coen brothers movies and Casino and Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and a whole other crop of movies which escape me right now). From the moment I finished that movie, my life was better. It was funny and sad and clever in a way I had always felt was possible, but had never seen and had never put words to.

Rushmore, when I finished watching it on VHS tape on Glenarm, I was in love.

And that's all there is to say about that without sounding like a romantic jackass. The past, I've always felt, is for jackasses.

It's a Bit Like This


I should get around to watching a Tartovsky movie one of these days.

I spend so much time watching movies where people blow up or punch each other in the head that I feel like I'm missing out on something. I guess I always feel like that. There's so much out there to learn about and to know about, but I've never gotten around to most of it. As much as I love people getting kicked in the head, I realize there's a bit more to life than that (though, people getting kicked in the head, or wherever, is a pretty important aspect of life, I think).

One of these years I suppose I should make time for the more well thought out parts of our nature. There is a lot of it, after all.

23 June, 2010

Fires on the Plain





I'll write something on this soon.

19 June, 2010

METAL GEAR?!


Even now, as I read Kafka, Kipling, and McCarthy and watch films like Lawrence of Arabia and Hiroshima, Mon Amor and Fitzcarraldo, I still come back to the low-brow, B-movie, pulp-action sensibilities of Metal Gear Solid as a reference to what I want my writing to look like.

Even though it veers into babel an wankery, I still marvel at the characters and scenarios that game series creates and then injects into a very real world, one that looks not unlike our own. It's a model I wish I was capable of-- minus the drunken staccato, for year long gaps, and bizarre digressions. At their core, the Metal Gear Solid series is fun and still manages to find the time and space to be philosophical. I love Call of Duty, but there isn't a single moments reflection or meditation on morality in that entire series.

If anything Metal Gear Solid is too smart for its own good-- a genius series trapped in a moron's medium.

I'm drawn to all of this because I'm an idiot, inexorably drawn to trash. But I guess there's worse things to be, right?

Right?

14 June, 2010

01 June, 2010

Before Somebody Points This Out to Me


GET OUT OF MY MIND KIA
RAPPING HAMSTERS SELLING CARS
INVADING MY BRAIN

Galco's is Great


I gotta go there again.