I walked into a PTA movie yesterday. Actually, maybe I’m just thinking of the one scene from Punch-Drunk Love; it might have a bit more Lynch in it. Anyway, I was outside in the middle of the night, putting my Netflix movie in the mailbox after I watched it so I wouldn’t forget. The road was completely deserted, no cars, nothing. Totally silent. Then I heard a truck coming. It quickly overwhelmed the crickets and general night sounds, for like 5 seconds, then it was gone. Immediately when the sound had died down, I noticed a cat under the streetlight across the street. It seemed to glow, the light was hitting it so perfectly. It walked over to my side of the street, stopped about 10 yards in front of me, and stared at me. I wanted it to come over so I could pet it because that would have been awesome, but it didn’t do anything but tilt its head at me, so I started walking slowly towards it. Then it got a scared look and ran away. I stood there for a moment, just reveling in the deepness of what just happened, and then turned and went back inside.
It was awesome.
That actually sound more like a scene out of Azumanga Daioh
That actually sound more like a scene out of Azumanga Daioh
I’m probably the only person on this site who will get that reference, Ray :) Funny show.
you lost me when you wrote: “I just bought the DVD because it was a nice package, it would look great in my collection”
“I just bought the DVD because it was a nice package, it would look great in my collection”
What I mean is that it has a good number of special features, for a very well renowned film. As I said it gives me a second chance to see why the film is so famous.
One interesting thing I forgot to mention. The murder victim and I share the same name.
Here’s what you should do:
Make a movie about a 1st time filmmaker trying to figure out how to make a movie out of this location. Then, as he’s pondering, he gets trapped in some surreal type of real life murder-movie scenario. He then decides to film what’s going on and try to make a movie out of that. But then it starts to fall apart when the mob (who owns the construction company) hears about said movie and comes after the movie maker.
Maybe the hit was actually on the movie maker and not the construction guy since they share the same name. Come to find out, they wanted the movie maker dead because they heard that he wanted to make a movie set on the location that they own and they wanted to teach the community a lesson that you DO NOT make any movies around said location (for fear that the filmmaker might be able to dig up some dirt on the mob owned businesses).
Ah man, I hope I’m not targeted now!!! Are they watching me? Raysquirrel, what the fuck did you get me involved in?!
“I hesitate for a moment because I know he has seen me working at the theater, and I know that he knows that I know that I work at the theater, so why is he asking me if I work for the local news.”
that sentence should be.
“I hesitate for a moment because I know he has seen me working at the theater, and he’s gotta know that I know that he knows I work at the theater, so why is he asking me if I work for the local news.”
RaySquirrel
I had a weird experience today. I will attempt to relate it in such a manner as to not give away where I live and work. Though somehow I think I will be unsuccessful.
Ever since I first wanted to make movies I have always thought I would make a movie in the town where I live. Specifically I always wanted to make a movie that is set on major portion of road. It begins at a lake that is the center of the town and runs to the edge of town before merging into the expressway. I cannot count how many times I have walked up and down this particular road. It is close to my old Middle and High Schools. It contains all of the major shopping centers, all the major chain restaurants, all of the major non-chain restaurants, the fire station, the guitar store where my friend gives music lessons, the empty lot that used to be the location of the guitar store where my friend used to give music lessons, and the movie theater where I have worked for the past four years.
I had to imagine what kind of movie that would be. I knew if I was going to make a movie in my home town, it would not be a conventional narrative. It would probably be multiple narratives interlinked by a series of intersecting stories, like Richard Linklater’s Slacker. I know I would not use any kind of cliched narrative choices, such as murder. It would be shot on a shoestring budget, casting friends and shot on hand-held DV cameras. Perhaps the running time would revolve around conversations that are held in one pizzeria to the next. Where I live is famous for it’s local pizza. You could positively identify anyone’s location by triangulating their distance from the closest three pizzerias.
Recently this idea was resurrected in my mind. Now the road is going through some major renovations. Construction crews have been at work repaving and installing new sidewalks. The construction is half way done, a good metaphor for past, present and future is it not?
Another aspect worth mentioning is where I live is not really a very gentrified place. The town is mainly white but we have a little bit of every ethnicity and has been getting more diverse over the years. We got a little poverty and a little affluence. As my buddy Brian has stated “the only place where you can find crackheads just down the street from debutantes, and sometimes their the same person”.
Just recently, I pulled out my Criterion Collection edition DVD of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless. I have gotten into a bad habit as of recently. I have bought a lot of DVDs that I have never watched. I am not even a particularly big fan of Jean-Luc Godard. I just bought the DVD because it was a nice package, it would look great in my collection, and for once and for all I may finally understand what all the hub-up is about. The first two or three times I watched the film it was the Fox Lorbell edition, and I found it boring and uninteresting. “So it looks spontaneous, doesn’t make it any more interesting” was my general attitude towards the film. Though with this Criterion release it has really shown me what a good translation could offer. Not only is the translation can tell you what the characters are saying but pull you into the rhythm and mood of the story.
Now I tell you that story to finish my initial story. I assume that everyone reading this story knows that the aesthetic characteristics of Breathless are similar to the cinematic aesthetic characteristics that I laid down in the description of my hypothetical movie. Now for the narrative similarity.
Earlier the previous afternoon I was walking down the road as I normally do and I run into this guy I know from the movie theater. He does not work their and neither do I think he is a paying customer. I am told that he a friend of the manager so that is how he is able to frequent the theater without paying for tickets. I look above the horizon and I see a communication tower standing tall in the shopping center parking lot next to my theater. The guy comes up to me and asks “You with the local news?” I hesitate for a moment because I know he has seen me working at the theater, and I know that he knows that I know that I work at the theater, so why is he asking me if I work for the local news. I had heard that the guy was “not quite right”. As it turns out he just laughed it off and told me it was a joke. Though he didn’t know why the local news van was parked in the shopping center parking lot.
I continue to take my stroll down the road and arrive just in time to catch my friend as he exits the guitar store. He continues to chat with his co-workers as they all prepare to quit for the day. They enter the parking lot and my friend say “Hey make sure to look out for any black SUVs”. Meanwhile there are six or seven black SUVs in the parking lot of this very small shopping center including the car my friend drives. They all laugh it off. I for one am not in on the joke. So I ask about the relevance of a black SUV. He tells me, “Didn’t you hear? Somebody got shot in front of the ********* on ******* road. Police say they are looking for a black SUV.” I am stunned for the moment. That particular store that he mentioned was the store right next to my theater. “Really I’ve been walking up and down ******* all day.” “Yeh, it happened at like 7 in the morning”. I was not up at that time but my friend was. He had mentioned how he had gotten up early to run an errand and if he had taken the opposite path that morning he would have seen the event take place.
We tried to piece the story together in our heads. The consequences of the event suggest that the crime was premeditated. The victim was a construction worker, and he had arrived on site early that day, repaving and reshaping the road. When you are where I come from, you immediately associate construction with mob activity. My friend thought the point was interesting. He had added how none of the local news reports had mentioned the construction company that man worked for. The owner had divided the company between his two children. Could these events be related we thought. Once we noticed the similarities to King Lear we just stopped there.