October, you have just brought back SO many incredible memories. Not really about how one element can throw a film off (of course) but rather when Mom walked in on the fucking in Trainspotting, the party in Weird Science, me blasting my (secretly purchased) House of Pain record…. So much wonderful panic in those moments.
Sounds like the Mom in that story is a psycho unforgiving bitch from hell who is also telling her children that no matter how good they are, she’ll always concentrate on the negative and rub it in their faces. “You cured cancer and AIDS, dear? How nice. However you still never made your bed, so you’re dog poop to me.”
@Tom
I’m with you about the sociopathic mom. Way to make your kids neurotic, mom of the year. Kids need instruction on how to feel about tough moral quandries, not a dirty sanchez in order to learn a simple moral lesson.
@October
I’m assuming the poop in the film for the mom was something she found morally questionable. This takes me back to JERRY MACGUIRE, watching it with my own mom as a teen. A jumpcut to a straddling a chair sex scene in the midst of warm suburban comedy: “Fack me, Jerry!! Fack me!!!”. And then a return to cute mini-nerd Jonathan Limnicky spouting unrelated trivia.
So to clarify, you are taking the “bit of poop” metaphor out of the moral realm (i.e. how to feeling about dirty words and partial nudity can ruin a film) and applying it to aesthetics (i.e. how a film should cohere, but can ultimately be undone by a single seriously distracting element).
Which are you looking for in this thread? Stories about embarassing collisions with parental expectations of “children/teen-friendly” entertainment or bits that don’t fit in films?
Moral collisions:
JERRY MCGUIRE: sex scene on the chair
WITNESS: some guy getting knifed to death in a bathroom stall, when the family thought we were going to watch a pastoral film about the Amish starring Harrison Ford
TRANSFORMERS THE MOVIE: “Holy shit, Optimus Prime!” (Still unedited in the Canadian DVD R1 release, unlike the US R1). I was 5. It was cool, and I still blushed and thought I did something wrong, or that we’d narrowly avoided danger, for an entire day.
Aesthetic Collisions:
THE UNTOUCHABLES: the volume of the music. The music is canned classical per Hollywood, but it isn’t equalized for dialogue. The music is another character in the film overtalking the actors. I’d like the film if I didn’t have to strain to differentiate what the actors are saying from the music.
25th HOUR: The 9/11 bit added to an otherwise great Spike Lee film, trying to be poignant during the Bush administration.
Husbands & Wives – Every scene with Juliette Lewis (she’s consistently dreadful – Woody shoulda had an actress who could act), and Judy Davis’ phone call (to Sydney Pollack) is a little too extreme for its own good as well.
Malcom X – The end, where the philosophy you’ve seen develop and be expressed is then explaned. No Spike, no. Hack off the last 3 minutes, and it would be a masterpiece.
That hideous family reunion ending of Spielberg’s WAR OF THE WORLDS, and everything after Little David begs the Blue Fairy to be a real boy in A.I. Brilliant disturbing films up until then.
Dirty sanchez… LOL! I agree with Tom and Vellaem, the mom was the one with the problem here. I consider myself fortunate: my parents were always very open-minded. They lived in New York City in the 60s and read a lot and watched a lot of great films, and they raised me to use my mind and appreciate all aspects of culture. I was seeing Godard, Truffaut, Rohmer, Fasbinder, Herzog, Koyaanisqatsi, et al from the age of twelve or thirteen or so. We were almost like a European family in that regard. I learned that art is separate from morality, and that you have to ask yourself what something means, not just how it makes you react. I don’t consider anything human to be really alien from me. I actively want to know, want to see for myself. And I’m not easily offended (except by people who want to limit possibilities). Did I grow up to be a warped freak? Maybe. But I’m almost positive I would have anyway (no one entirely escapes that fate in America), and anyway I’m not tortured by any pointless neurotic guilt over being a warped freak.
Vellaem-My point wasn’t about crazy mothers or debating about tough moral quandries open to young viewers, sorry to confuse you, I should have made that more clear.
Yes, my point was how “a film should cohere, but can ultimately be undone by a single seriously distracting element”. Great way of verbalizing my point-bravo!
October: That was a great initial story about the cake, in any case, even if it got everyone off topic. I can’t think so much of specific moments in any film that would sort of ruin it for me, except to say, in general, I hate happy endings that feel contrived or tacked on. Episodes that don’t work for me in a film, I tend to ignore, or bypass, but a fake or sentimental ending will ruin it for me in any film where it really doesn’t belong. Anything reeking of the stench of sentimentality, in any scene, at the beginning, middle , or end, will ruin it for me. Hence, my problem with almost any Spielberg film, or Ron Howard, or any recent typical Hollywood type films. They need to put in a cloying moment, a poignant moment, a cute kid moment, a cute alien moment – too damn many cute moments. All these moments collectively spoil it for me and make me feel like I’ve just tasted that stuff that was in that cake you were talking about earlier.
Take a film like Polanski’s The Pianist as a good example of a film that doesn’t leave a bad taste. Yes, there is the ‘happy’ ending of the pianist surviving all the horrors he has experienced, but it doesn’t feel happy or contrived – it is real (as it was also in real life). We feel the pain and despair of the survivor (surely this is a very personal film for Polanski) – not the ‘joy’ that he had indeed survived. No sentimentality, no dog pooh, just life at its most bitter and ironic.
But I feel like LADYHAWKE might be an exceptional example of the single-element-detraction…that soundtrack is PARTICULARLY bad and inappropriate. Bad scores do taint the entire thing, as poop in cake would since it’s mixed throughout. Discreet, self-contained scenes that are bad more often distract momentarily and then get moved past. In which case, I’d liken them more to finding a knuckle-bone or toenail-clipping in your hotdog. You pick it out, but then you’re like, “MAN! The rest of this hotdog is still REALLY good and juicy and meaty!” Right? RIGHT?!?!?!?!!??!!?!?
Speaking of bits of intentional poo, I love Douglas Sirk films, because he plays with the happy end in this manner. He had to append a happy ends to all his Hollywood films because he worked there in the 40s and 50s. Sirk had a much more pessimistic philosophical view (half Danish, half German, escaped the nazis) and disliked what he felt was put-on American optimism. So, in his later pictures, he corners his characters in situations where it would be impossible for them to be happy or escape, and then tacks on a jarring happy end, where all the harm and pain is miraculously undone. Thus, the unhappy happy end. This intentional collision and distracting element is quite welcome, because it embues the entire foregoing film with a sly wink and large sense of camp. So this is a good bit of chocolate in what should be a poo cake, I suppose.
Sorry to get off topic with this inversion.
I love the intro to this thread, October : )
For me, it’s films about musicians, especially pianos…
sorry Bob, but The Pianist hacks me off completely because despite Brody’s “practice” it’s obvious that he’s not playing. Same with The Piano. Both films could be so perfect. Both films stink of fake. On the same basis, I really loved The Cotton Club right up to the moment when Richard Gere gets on the cornet, at which point it’s a walk-out. It just makes me cringe. Although at least that is him playing. It’s just… bleurghh, no!
And so on.
There are a ton of examples.
First off, they really should have on The Aueters a word count maximum for topic postings. If it takes 2,000 words to get to the point, then it’s time to move on to the next posting, but I’ll indulge this one, because I think it’s a good topic:
Movies that are top-heavy with the F-word. I do not understand why writers feel the need to pepper their scrips with the F-word. Perhaps I just don’t hang with the skirge of the earth, but I don’t know anyone who says the F-word as much as characters in Quentin Tarantino movies. The mobsters in Scorcese’s films don’t even swear that much. The wearing out of the F-word in the Blair Witch Project also killed the impact, but not much. But was it really neccessary?
The F-word? What are we, back in grade-school? FUCK. It is a word, people use it.
Joe, I completely disagree about the length of posts. This is a forum, not a chat room. Sometimes an argument or a point takes many words to convey with any weight behind it. Eloquence and wit are dying arts online. If people haven’t the stomach for reading or the eyeballs for a few minutes of concentration, then they can move on. But no restriction should be placed upon those who do. What’s the rush? There’s no urgency. Brevity has its place, but in a stampede of soundbites, what true communication/learning/exchange/debate is possible?
I often write somewhat long posts, I try to make them entertaining, lol. I do feel like it’s necessary sometimes to give a lot of details when I’m explaining what I think of a certain film. Sorry to be taxing of anyone’s attention. But regarding the F-bomb, people in movies do a lot of things excessively that most of us don’t do every minute of the day. People in movies kill for instance. Or they have crazed monkey sex with total strangers (okay, this can happen to anyone sometimes). But you see what I’m getting at? The fact that they swear more than usual is part of what makes them characters in a film; it’s part of what makes them larger than life. I think I’ve said before that nothing is more absurd to me than the way the swear words are defanged in Scorsese’s films whenever they’re shown on cable. These hardcore gangsters saying “Stuff you” and “Forget you.” I’d rather they didn’t cuss at all than to speak in such juvenile playgroundese. Now, having said this, there was a marked increase in f-words somewhere in the early 90s. If you look at Scorsese and Schrader’s work in the 70s and 80s, the scripts have hardly any swear words. And they are very riveting with believable and intense characters. But beginning with Goodfellas and then Casino, and of course with Tarantino, cussing becomes very prominent. Is it lazy writing? Probably. Is it having a harmful effect on anyone? I don’t know, but I’d say probably not.
@Joe
Do what I do when I see a long post on a topic or by a poster I could care less about: skip it. You aren’t obliged to read it all, unless you were assigned the thread by an English/Film prof.
Sometimes I have attacks of logorrhoea about very particular media-related subjects. BARF! BLARF! I can’t BLARF help BLARFING about my favorite films and their nuances to people who may have similar inclinations. At least, I think I wandered into the right site.
If you want be concise, demonstrate it, and maybe it’ll rub off on us verbal freaks who love film.
FACK FACK FACK FACKITY FACK :-)
About slang… realism in any artform has always been both decried and celebrated in equal measure. There are those to whom dropping f-bombs and depicting scenes of violence and sex is troublesome, and those who think it reflects their reality, their actual experience of life, and eases them in to accepting the story.
Use of slang can act as both celebration and condemnation simultaneously. Check out the work one of the oldest and most important storytellers in the English language… Chaucer’s Bawdy Tongue—-
“unexpected volumes of blasphemy, profanity, foul language, and xenophobic insult. Furthermore, Chaucer gives us many insights into swearing, namely class differences, gender factors, and different levels of awareness of the seriousness of oaths. Although he lived in a totally different society six centuries ago, Chaucer makes the modern reader aware of the vitality, creativity, continuity, and dangers of swearing. He used the whole gamut of the lexis, from the most technical and philosophical to the most vulgar and obscene. In his work can be found the whole range of “four-letter” words: ferte, erse, pisse, shiten, queynte, collions (testicles), and swyve , which predates the arrival of fuck around 1500.”
You going to be arguing with him? Anyway you’re not obliged to read any of this, because I’m not an English or Film Professor.
@Tobias – … length of posts. This is a forum, not a chat room.
Right. I think of theauteurs as somethin’ like a lazy Sunday afternoon in a cafe, or a pub where I’m having a nice discourse about films over a brew with the folks from the neighborhood. Yes, I myself is a guilty party regarding long posts. But these postings only show the knowledge and passion of many members about the medium, and no policing restriction should be necessary.
Also with regards to profanity (which I’m also guilty of numerous times), some people just write the way they talk. My excuse? I’m a sailor dammit, I live the life as one so I swear like one!
@JustinB – Great point on “defanged” Scorcese films. I’ve never seen Raging Bull on the tube, so I always wonder how they ever dub Joe Pesci’s line “Your mother sucks elephant dicks!”
lol Noel, that is some eloquent profanity that I forgot about. They show Raging Bull very infrequently, the last time was maybe a year ago and it was on TCM at 3 in the morning.
@Noel. re: swearing… yeah me too. It can be its own poetry, which is why I bought up Chaucer :) I like the lazy Sunday afternoon cafe metaphor. Is why I come hang out here. Smoke drifting over the tables, people slumped back in chairs, the easy noise of banter and debate…
Totally off main topic:
Thanks to Tobias and other defenders of those l-o-o-ng post people. As a very guilty party, a person of few words in real life, but many words here, I am living out my fantasy of being a writer here on site. If you aren’t amused, just pass on. I love how these threads morph in all directions once we get started – that’s what I love about this site, and the posters both long and short.
Re swear words: I personally never use them, well maybe if I hit my thumb with a hammer, or under my breath at the odd poster here (no names will be mentioned, as you are all exonerated), so I don’t like hearing them spoken every second word in a film. I blame Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind for saying, “Frankly, Scarlett, I don’t give a damn!” which finally opened the floodgates not that many years back. Of course, in contect, and it a certain milieu, say a film set in the ghetto, for example, swearing is not only appropriate but it would be silly if they didn’t – that’s the way they talk. It’s all a personal thing. Like Tobias, I prefer creative swearing, of which the master must have been, with Chaucer, Rabelais. Now there was a man who had about 50 vulgar terms for codpiece, for example, each more vivid and revolting than the next. If you have to swear, swear creatively, or shut the forniculator up – oops – can’t believe I just said that… Remember guys, this thread started with dog poo, so we can keep it clean, if it not, try Rabelaisian.
P.S. I also hate it even more when an obvious swear word is bleeped out or changed to something else. I once had the experience of watching Silence of the Lambs on two stations at the same time: the Canadian station had all the appropriate swear words and innuendo, in the opening prison scene with Jodie Foster. The US station changed all the words and anesthesized the scene. It was hilarious! Needless to say, I watched it on the Canadian station.
Back on topic:
Excessive violence is something that can ruin a picture for me – it’s just a personal thing. If it is cartoon-like or excessively vulgar, like The Wild Bunch, I can live with it. If it’s too real, I just turn away or fast forward. But this, like swearing, is a totally personal thing, that really doesn’t reflect one way or another on the film, just my own experience of it. Yes, I am squeamish. Sex scenes, well I can take them as long as they are believable, but I never turn away (except to maybe smirk)
I love when things drift off topic personally, Bob. I agree with you. Let’s all meander about and change tacks halfway through and explore ideas, for f#$%s sake! It’s the Don Quixote way, and it leads to (s)words drawn at windmills, which is all film/art debate is anyhow. Just for you, I bleeped myself—- this is the American anesthesitized version.
Anyway, back to poo-cake and films… nowadays, I mostly get f%$@ed off by inane sexism in films, passively drawn female characters, underscripted roles, absurd suspension of disbeliefs where we are expected to believe that there is no truth in the words “the female of the species is more deadly than the male” etc etc.
TM: Not to be self-promoting on some one else’s thread (Oh, well – what the hades), but check out my thread ARE THERE STRONG & REALISTIC FEMALE CHARACTERS OUT THERE as we need to explore the lack of strong female characters in film, which as you relate, is a form of reverse sexism. Where are those Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, or Lana Turner types who could blow the #@%&ing brains out of any man who stood in their way? Yet another thing wrong with so many films these days – more dog poo…
October
You know how when we were little, we’d be watching a movie and if there was one bad scene, like some scene with slight nudity our parents would walk in. Right at that exact moment someone drops a “motherfucker” or a nipple is exposed-thus we’re caught and they demand us turn off whatever bad movie we were trying to get away with in watching. Then we justify it saying “its really a good movie, its just this one bad part that you JUST happen to walk in on, its just this one small part.”
Well my Mom told me this story to prove his point, and get us to shut up about having to turn the movie off.
She told us how this same thing happened to some kids she knows. They were watching a movie and their Mom told them to turn it off because it had inappropriate content for kids, and they argued that is was just this one small, tiny, little insignificant scene…BUT THE REST WAS GREAT!
Well this Mom knew her kids loved chocolate cake, so one afternoon she went to the store and picked out the best chocolate, and the richest ingredients and decided to make then a nice chocolate cake. She spent all afternoon working on the cake, and adding a little of Mama’s love to it.
So the kids get home, and they see this beautiful looking chocolate cake, and their Mom cuts them all a slice. As they start to eat the cake she tells them all the rich and wonderful ingredients she put into the cake. As she is listing them, one of the ingredients catches their attention like a record scratch.
Dog poop
The kids spit out their cake, and their Mom said…oh but it doesn’t matter it was just a small, tiny, little insignificant amount of dog poop.
The kids exclaim, we can’t eat dog poop. The whole cake is ruined
But if it’s just a small amount, the greater part of the cake is just fine. Replied the Mom
Needless to say, the Mom proved her point about the movie-sometime the one scene or one aspect of the movie can ruin the film entirely.
So with this thought in mind, and to start off the film argument of this thread. What film would you have loved, if it didn’t have that one small thing that just killed the entire film for you.
For me, it was Ladyhawke. The music was so off. It was some god-awful new wave heavy synthesizer bullshit. Honestly it killed the whole viewing experience of the film. I really liked the story, and cast was killer,…Matthew Broderick, Rutger Hauer, and Michelle Pfeiffer was so hot. But Andrew Powell really screwed the pooch on the music.
I tried to watch it the other night with my wife who has never seen it, and she laughed her ass off the entire movie, the music was so misplaced it was distracting to the rest fo the film. She compared it to listening to “The Wiggles” while watching those grotesque documentary films that PETA puts out on animal testing.
So it’s dead to me, I can’t even enjoy it for nostalgic viewing.