also: dorothy rothschild and the thomas crown affair!
(Don't send me your answers. This is just a little way to expand your horizons. Honest.)
My stomach's been feeling a little better lately, thank you--I no longer feel a deep-seated need to propel myself out of bed in the morning to get a bowl of Cheerios in order to quell the roiling in my stomach.
Why, just yesterday I managed to wait to eat until Darin and I had brunch with Dorothy Rothschild, who was very patient and did not chew us out for being 40 minutes late to picking her up. We picked her up and drove over to Jerry's Famous Deli, which had the extra bonus of being fairly close (long drives still not my thing), where I was once again forcibly reminded to eat deli food and no other kind, such as eggs and bacon, which is what I had.
I don't know what I expected Dorothy to be like--some kind of fast-talking incarnation of Dorothy Parker, I expect--but she's not like that. She's actually very quiet (n.b.: gotta speak up around Darin to get a word in edgewise!). And this goes without mentioning, very intelligent. Knows something about just about everything.
We discussed Dorothy's upcoming relocation to Romania and what she'll be doing there. We also talked some about Ben Stein, who is friends with Dorothy's dad (but whom we did not get to meet, darnit). We did not talk about other journals until the meal was over. Dorothy said, "That took us a while!" It hadn't even occurred to me to talk about other journals--isn't that funny? Despite that being how Dorothy and I know one another.
Hey, I was pleased I didn't call her Dorothy all day. (And...Ha! I know her real name!)
We came home and I felt so good that I did the only thing possible: I went back to bed. This course of action was not universally admired, however, as both damn phone lines started ringing about every twenty seconds thereafter. (Darin asked me later if I was aware of that; I gritted my teeth and said, "Yes.")
I did eventually fall comatose, pretty much staying in the same position for the whole time I was asleep. I had a dream in which Darin was talking to someone else in the other room of a hotel suite, and I couldn't make out what he was saying. When I woke up and told him about it, he cracked up: he was on the phone for much of the time I was asleep, speaking fairly quietly (for him).
Fernando came over--to work more on their electronics project--and then we had dinner at the Out Take Cafe in Studio City, which was just okay this time. Fernando really enjoyed his cod, I thought my turkey ravioli were good, but Darin was underwhlemed by his steak. The potato vareniki were, as always, magnifico.
On Wednesday Darin and I were supposed to have dinner with Tori, a friend from up north who's relocated down in Los Angeles to make her fame and fortune. But I forgot--which suited Tori, who was bushed, just fine. She's working on the Emmy broadcast and working 12 hour days. We promised we'd get together as soon as she wasn't crazily busy.
Darin and I substituted Fernando, who is cute, though not as cute as Tori, and went to see The Thomas Crown Affair. I've seen the original recently, which may have been quite daring and experimental for its time but does not, trust me, stand up in the slightest. Steve McQueen is just silly, the plot ludicrous, and that chess-seduction scene? Oh puh-leez: very, very laughable. Those are the remakes Hollywood should be making: taking an old film that isn't very good and making a better one.
The new Thomas Crown movie is better than the old one. This is what we call in the Biz "damnation with faint praise."
The plot is better. Pierce Brosnan makes a way better Thomas Crown than McQueen did. We get to see something of the process by which Rene Russo puts the whole caper together, which is more than we got in the old version. And everything's very stylish and wonderfully shot.
But it's dull. No mincing of words: I was bored and so was Darin.
I'm not exactly sure why. Darin and I were restless through most of the movie. I know one of the problems was that one of the big "moments" is telegraphed in the opening credits--how surprised are we supposed to be? It's a movie ostensibly about smart people that isn't.
Fernando liked it: he came for a caper film and that's what he got. So mileage will vary.
On Thursday night Darin and I got to use some sneak preview tickets I'd gotten via the Web some weeks ago to see American Beauty, a new movie (opening September 15) from Dreamworks starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening. I've heard a ton about this film and I read the script two weeks ago.
From the vantage point of Saturday afternoon, I still don't know what to tell you about it.
It's an odd film. There's no easy way to tell you what it's about. Here goes: "A middle-aged middle-class man decides to live his life the way he wants and finally achieves equilibrium." Oooo--not quite. Is it a comic tragedy? Well...maybe. Is it (as some on the Well have speculated) an American take on Buddhist philosophy? (The American Beauty rose being the American lotus, of course.) That seems to be an okay description. As okay as anything else.
The film has a very uneven tone. Some parts are really funny, and some parts elicit a lot of nervous laughter from the audience. A lot. The dramatic scenes finally drew the audience in, once they knew the characters, and stuff that would have elicited the same helpless laughter at the beginning didn't toward the end.
But there are a ton of things in the movie that just don't work. (I haven't yet decided if they work better in the screenplay, because there are a number of elements that were excised in the movie.) That keep me from saying, yes, this is a great film. It is, however, one of the best written films of the year, with 7 quite distinct characters that I can name off the top of my head, and some of the best delineated scenes I've seen in a while.
(One of the most interesting aspects of this movie that many people have latched on to is that Kevin Spacey's father falls deeply in lust for his teenaged daughter's best friend. As if, you know, gross. And I feel like saying, "Hello, looked at the society around us? What kinds of females are put forth as the desirable ones? A society where models are washed up at twenty-two? Where actresses better hang it up by thirty-five?" This aspect of the movie produced the most nervous laughter--I think because it was the most true.)
Kevin Spacey is fantastic. (However, as Darin said, he reminds you in the "Pass the asparagus" scene that he's not a guy you want to fuck with.) Annette Bening is great as the wife who's gotten too locked into the American cult of success. Thora Birch is Jane, the teenaged daughter who hates them both, and Mena Suvari is her lust-inducing friend. Then there's the family next door, with the colonel father and the quiet mother and the disturbed son (who's the least disturbed of any of them) who falls in love with Jane...
American Beauty is certainly a thought-provoking film. Like, what makes life worth living? What do you give up to have a comfortable existence? What makes you feel alive? I recommend seeing it, but only if you accept that I don't guarantee what you'll think of it.
The answer to Wednesday's question: Attorney General Janet Reno, ostensible head of the Justice Department, says she's shocked, shocked I tell you, to find out that the FBI used incendiary devices at the Waco/Branch Davidian standoff that led to the place going up in flames and about 80 people dying. Not, of course, that those incendiary devices had anything to do with the resulting fires.
She could have saved herself a great deal of trouble (not to mention surprise) had she simply watched Waco: The Rules of Engagement, an Oscar-nominated documentary from 1997 that has that information and quite a bit else besides. Has anyone told Janet about the military "advisers" who were hanging about? And can she spell "posse comitatus law"?
The documentary will show on HBO-Signature on September 7.
There will be an alignment of journallers from Southern California in September. If you're interested in attending, helping plan, covering the event for the media, or which weekend you should be as far away as possible, email Meg (of Blue and Green).
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com