Things I Owe People I Don't Know

THIS ENTRY is not about the movie "Factory Girl."

It's about the film "American Beauty." (And enough with all this crap about the distinction between a "film" and a "movie." They exist on film and the pictures move. If it's really something that alters me at an existential level, then I think I can still call it a movie if I feel like it.) Part of the impetus is that "American Beauty" is a scam job that someone oughta de-bunk, and, as far as I have read, no one has to my satisfaction. The nudge that sends me over the cliff, however, is that the last two times he has commented on my blog, Joe has insisted that I expand on my criticism of it, on the grounds that he saw it and hated it and wants someone to help justify his nearly uncontrollable rage before he is moved to commit crimes involving property damage and the violation of certain very explicit state statutes.

I remember "Factory Girl" generating alot of heat when it first came out, mostly by people who thought the flick's subject, Edie Sedgwick, was given short shrift. Also, there seemed to be a fair number of people who thought Andy Warhol came off as to much of a self-involved prick. So when it came on night before last, after the Wifey had toddled off to bed, I watched it.

Truth is, there isn't much to this film. It's pretty and ugly at the same time, and in that, it captures the time period and social set it is depicting pretty nicely. But that about all there is to say about it. New York was rapidly becoming a cesspool, and these fairly shallow people were having a great time being famous for knowing Andy Warhol and taking drugs to distract themselves from the fact that Warhol had a tendency to be a self-involved prick. To quote my President: Mission Accomplished. So the @#$% what.*

One of the better reviews of this is by my non-pal Nathan Rabin (not to say that we are enemies, but more that I have taken up the habit of calling him Nabin, which he probably really hates) at the onion AV Club (I also ought to point out that I don't actually know him) sums things up rather nicely by calling this a "dreary cartoon." I fell asleep almost precisley before the "talking heads" summation that runs thought the credits, so if those offer some contradiction to my critique, I would gladly accept it, considering they were there and I was not. But until I am told otherwise, this film is a successful failure: an acurate depiction of of a time when things were rotten. Blech.

Now: American Beauty. Spoilers follow, not that it matters.

Let me first explain why I am not including a picture of the poster. I do not know why I am not including a copy of the poster. I just don't want to. Probably because it is the fist part of the scam the viewer will have been aware of. Yeah! It's a movie about beauty! Virgins and flower petals! Not about a smarmy blackmailing "writer" and his @#$%ed up family. Let the baiting and switching begin!

I have known alot of fake writers. Alot. And the first thing that is true about them is that they secure positions from which they can arbitrate what is and isn't writing. And then they feel all empty inside because what they're doing isn't really writing, and they go and foul up other people's writers' clubs or workshops. Or else they sit around wishing they could quit this crap job, which they would, except the money is really good. And they're convinced--convinced-- that the real reason they can't write is this crap job, which, ironically, they took because they couldn't write and wanted to pretend they can. So I am primed not to like this chracter.

Now, Alan Ball claims-- and I have no doubt it is true-- that the central inspiration came when he saw a plastic bag caught in a whirlwind on the Plaza at the World Trade Center. So naturally, the plot involves a writer whose skills are wasting away at a corporate job finally growing the balls to blackmail his boss, throw dishes across the table at his wife, and revert to his youth by smoking pot lifting weights, and wishing he could @#$% young girls.

I very often explain that I could not enjoy this movie because, as a writer, I could see all the seams where this Frankenstein piece is stitched together, and I maintain that this, too, is true. If this had been a manuscript at a workshop, by the time the scene came up where the ex-Marine tried to kiss the writer, I would have finally had to call Bullshit. Back about the same time period as this was being written, people were developing and launching computer programs that they claimed would allow pretty much anybody to write a novel or screenplay just by sticking in a few key elements and clicking "Begin." The first time I saw this I realized that there is no way such a program could have put this bastard together, because computers simply are not that smug.

Someone MUST have got there already, but I have to do it anyways: this is like Walt Disney Presents: Lolita!

Which is yet another level of the bait-and-switch: we would all love to think that we are redeemable, and alot of us would love to think that we have deeper souls than we are commonly allowed to demonstrate in American society, that we are better than the hundreds of acres of conformity and mediocrity in which we live. But screwing teenagers is just icky! Unless you're another teenager, of course. So the appropriate way to explore this theme of having a deep appreciation for youth and beauty without becoming irredeemable is to cop out at the last moment.

The one thing I did really like was the envelope: having the story being told by a dead guy. I really liked that. But everything in between came right off a component's shelf at Narratives R Us.

I watched this once, after it came out on VHS, and I just felt robbed. Great performances, good title, neat images, cool metaphors, funny in spots. But it all just seemed like a State of the Union address: no matter how credible it seemed, I couldn't help but know I was being lied to.

*No one ever says it, but the "Mission" that was "Accomplished" was the occupation of Iraq, so given that they hadn't actually planned anything beyond that at the time, they could pretty unironically have that banner displayed for the moment.