all i have to look forward to are the second and third installments of the pokemon saga.
A place where you and your accursed kind can live in peace.
Darin, Harry, I went to see Being John Malkovich yesterday. It definitely ranks as one of the weirdest--and darkest--movies I've ever seen. Half of it is one of the funniest movies I've ever seen; the other half is just bizarre. I recommend it, though it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a deep movie. It is simply weird.
In case you don't know about this movie, it's the story of Craig Schwartz (John Cusack), embittered puppeteer, whose street production of Abelard and Heloise isn't garnering him acclaim (actually, rather the opposite). He lives with his dumpy wife Lotte (Cameron Diaz) and her menagerie of animals. Reluctantly, he takes a job at LesterCorp, using his well-trained puppeteering fingers to file, and meets Maxine (Catherine Keener), a virulent bitch with whom Craig becomes violently infatuated. In the course of his workday, Craig discovers an interesting feature of his office at LesterCorp: a tiny portal into the consciousness of John Malkovich, actor extraordinaire.
Yes, the movie is this bizarre. The best part of it is how deadly seriously everything is presented, from the idea that you can enter John Malkovich's mind simply by crawling into this tiny space to Craig's envy of his fellow puppeteer's success with a 60-foot Emily Dickinson performing "The Belle of Amherst."
Columbine is right: these are annoying, not-very-sympathetic characters (is the trademark of the off-beat movies like this and American Beauty going to be severely unsympathetic characters?) and that makes watching parts of this movie difficult. Why is Maxine considered so attractive? And what is Craig's damage, anyhow? Malkovich comes off as the most likeable character, simply because he's an unwitting victim of everything that happens.
In fact, Darin ascribes most of the success of this movie to director Spike Jonze, not to writer Charlie Kaufman. Whereas the script loses its way several times, the tone of the movie is kept fairly steady, even with all the mania going on. (I'm not sure if I agree with him, only because I'm never quite sure what to ascribe to whom, which was probably my biggest weakness in directing classes.)
Act III is a total mess--explain these metaphysics, wouldja?--but you don't much care by that point: what's gone on before more than makes up for the fact that they clearly didn't know how to end it. (Can't remember where I heard this, but evidently Act III went through lots of revisions.)
John Malkovich gets many snaps up for having the best sense of humor of any humorless, pompous actor out there. (He just strikes me as humorless and pompous; clearly he can't be if he agreed to do this script, which was always entitled Being John Malkovich, from the first draft.) The Malkovich Dance of Despair is classic, as is the "Malkovich?" "Malkovich, Malkovich!" scene. (It's impossible to spoil the good bits in this film--they simply don't make sense out of context.)
When Darin and I got to the theater yesterday to buy the tickets, there were about 3 times as many people there as we were expecting to see, even on a Saturday afternoon. Then we realized that most of them were about three feet tall and we relaxed: as long as we weren't trying to see Pokemon, we were doing okay. (Being John Malkovich did turn out to be sold out, but we got there early and got good seats.)
Darin said that he heard the guy next to him in line tell the clerk, "Three adults and four children." The clerk had to ask, "For what movie?" The guy looked at her as though she were clearly stupid and said, "Pokemon!"
Okay, today's annoying revelation about being pregnant: you have to pee all the time. It happened some during the first trimester--the change in hormones and all--and I had heard that this condition struck during the third trimester, but it's happening right now and it's very annoying.
I have to go every hour. Sometimes more often. (BJM tip: go to the bathroom during the Craig-Maxine-Lotte dinner scene. Do not, under any circumstances, go anywhere before Charlie Sheen shows up.) Going to bed at night is a real trick--takes several practice runs before I'm ready to settle down--and I wake up once or twice every night. Perhaps this is to prepare me for the first few post-partum months.
The scenario I envision is that Bug has found herself a warm, squishy, comfy chair and she's enjoying sitting on it. Hopping up and down on it is more like it.
The answer to Thursday's question: If the US doesn't pony up the money it owes the UN by December 31, it loses its vote in the General Assembly (until such time as we pay up, I assume). The US will not lose its vote on the Security Council, strangely enough--you'd think that would be the club the UN would use to beat us over the head. (When are they going to change the outmoded post-WWII Security Council voting arrangement?) Of course, perhaps the US reminded the UN that we're still a nuclear power and they're just a dinky building on Manhattan's east side.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com