Sinister: Response for Megan in NY and anyone else who's interested in the film discussion

[McQuain, Chris]

Thanks to Megan for her heartfelt response to my [Safe] and Velvet Goldmine
plaintiveness. The films really are life-changing, and hopefully it won't be
another 4 years before we get a film from Todd Haynes again.

>>   i agree that those two movies are good, but you forgot to mention 
why. they were beautiful.  <<

Their beauty is certainly an essential component to why they were good, but
I would say the main reason I admire them is for their incisiveness and
refusal to go along with the idea that a film must be a visual 19th-century
novel- beginning, middle, end, plot, character development. Todd Haynes is a
rare writer/director who makes films of ideas and is artistically successful
at it. By using and address issues of class and environment [Safe], artistic
integrity (Velvet Goldmine), and above all, identity (both Safe and V.G., as
well as his first feature Poison). It is, of course, essential when one is
subverting the conventional notions of 'plot' and 'character' to fill the
screen with beautiful images to get your ideas across, which Haynes does
remarkably well. I also dearly appreciate Todd Solondz, but Haynes just has
a slight edge over him, to my mind. It's like asking if you want chocolate
cake, or MORE chocolate cake. They're both very good, though. Hal Hartley
is, to me, a mixed bag but his films are still intelligent and sometimes
even funny, just too often tainted by smugness.  

>>. i saw it as being 
about david bowie and iggy pop    <<

This is tempting, but the characters each embody so many characteristics of
all the glam rock stars that it's difficult to pin it down to any particular
real-life person. They are meant less to embody particular people than a set
of glam ideals, both aesthetically and philosophically; really, the film
isn't about bowie or pop or even necessarily glam rock, those were just the
best ways to get a discourse going on the screen about the exhileration of
self-invention and the accompanying identity crises. Haynes ALWAYS gives you
all sides, and lets you decide for yourself. This is without losing any of
his humaneness or empathy for the people in his films- if it comes off a
little clinical, it's because we as an audience are too used to being
manipulated by meaningless tear-jerking by cardboard characters and wooden
dialogue and one-sidedness, instead of a genuine emotional response provoked
by seeing a more objective view of a character's experience.  

>>>  i don't like classifying movie makers together based on how they live.
<<<

This is fair, but Hartley, Solondz, and Haynes (as well as Scorcese, the
over-maligned Wooday Allen and Cindy Sherman) represent a particularly 'New
York' kind of film-making/visual art. It's anti-Hollywood, independent,
usually their work is made with depth and flair. I don't think it's unfair
to any of them to place them together the way I do in my head, I wasn't
implying that they all have the same level of talent or are even the same,
they just all have an independent spirit that is very New York filmworld (as
opposed to the greedy and manipulative L.A. film scene). I like the idea of
an artistic community and sometimes this can be geographical (like the
Scottish scene featuring our beloved Belle & Sebastian, Arab Strap, The
Pastels, etc.)  Megan herself is in New York and seems to me to have a New
York frame of mind about film- I don't think this is a dismissive thing to
say or that it says anything about her personally, just that she (judging
from her excellent taste) has good ideas and is sure to be a fine
film-maker, belonging in the company of other good film-makers, and New York
is definitely the place in America to find that.  Good luck, Megan! Do you
go to any of those classes Scorsese teaches at NYU? Oh, and Ewan full
frontal we've seen SO many times before (not that it's entirely unpleasant
or anything!)- Christian B. is more my type and I don't even have to see him
naked to confirm it, he's got such a cute face and a lovely smile. 

Hugs all around- 

-Chris (favorite Arab Strap song: "The Clearing") :)    :)    :)   :) 
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