Month: October 2024

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

there are moments in Werewolf where a much better movie shines through. the scenes in the Slaughtered Lamb are both funny and unnerving, working on the trope of creepy insular rural community to great effect. John Landis has the good sense to make you wait almost 2/3rds of the runtime before witnessing the (still shocking) transformation David suffers under the full moon, but he dangles plenty of grotesque and gory fun to keep you entertained along the way: Griffin Dunne’s decomposition, the absurd dream sequence where monstrous shock troopers with Uzis mow down David’s family. but I wasn’t crazy about this one. right from the start, the dialogue between Dunne and Naughton felt too artificial, and not in an expressionistic anti-realism way that sometimes heightens the effect of certain films. the two had chemistry but maybe were directed poorly?

right after finishing the movie I felt satisfied by its abrupt, anti-Hollywood ending. it’s a pretty funny joke to have Alex tell David she loves him, and, for just a second, suggest that maybe her expression of love got through to the monstrous wolf that’s been terrorizing Piccadilly Circus, only to immediately shoot such a saccharine ending down with what would actually happen in such a situation, namely, the police shooting down the murderous werewolf. but then I started to think that it wasn’t particularly well delivered, given that the mechanics of the plot felt a little rickety throughout.

it’s fun, I’m probably wrong to be so critical of it. it’s certainly more interesting than most major horror movies. I would recommend it if you’re a horror fan and somehow haven’t already seen it, mostly on the strength of Rick Baker’s iconic practical effects work. it’s a real shame they don’t make movies like that any more.

Ring (1998)

a simple story, well told: a girl lives a short life and dies a violent death. her spirit, unresting, seeks vengeance on the world that wronged her. the rage she projects from beyond death can not be contained. it must spread, virus-like.

there’s a fairy tale quality to the film responsible for an international craze for horror pictures coming out of East Asia. when the dread is conjured this well, the details of the story don’t actually matter all that much. exactly what’s going on with Sadako or the Izu Peninsula is a little convoluted, as is the supernatural world that Ring inhabits (why is Ryuji also sort of psychic?). and, to offer some criticism, a lot of the dialogue tells you exactly what’s animating the plot, in a way that’s ponderous yet not terribly helpful. but what’s significant about the film is how it utilizes elements of folklore to spin a yarn about an extremely modern phenomenon: image culture, and the possibility that our new networked world can spread archaic evil. it is a parable of the Spectacle, told with all the earnestness usually forbade by the Spectacle. I place Ring alongside (not in terms of quality) such works as Videodrome, Twin Peaks: The Return, and Ghost in the Shell, films that try to grapple with how electronic media have warped our bodies, dreams, and minds. despite that warping, though, we nonetheless remain human, even as what “human” means is strained to its very limit.

I’m interested in this idea of using fairy tales or folklore to help orient us in the strange new world we find ourselves in after the detonation of the atom bomb. we are still reeling from the shockwaves that technological advances sent through the 20th century. it seems to me that maybe, rather than hoping to find new plots or new characters, we as writers and artists should find new ways to vivify those archetypes that have long guided us in the shape of stories. Sadako is a onryō, a vengeful spirit of the kind that populates every culture’s imaginary in some form or another; her videotape is a curse, dark magic that all people, no matter how secularized, fear in one way or another.

I do remember the American version being scarier, though. and I kind of wish Hideo Nakata’s version weren’t so explicit and allowed the dark enigma of the story to exist on its own terms.

Blood and Black Lace (1964)

ahh giallo. what a genre. I’m toying with how to write a sort of crypto-giallo, but my conceit effectively makes it not a giallo, in that it’s from the point of view of the would-be “killer”, obviating the element of mystery from genre. I’m also wondering if it’s a story or if it’s a film. or if maybe it’s a story, and I should write a giallo-influenced film. god, do I want to make movies. but they’re so hard to make!

writing is hard too, but at least with writing all you need is something to put words on and a room to shuffle those words around in. with a film, you need that (assuming you’re the writer-director, which I would want to be), then you need film equipment, sound equipment, actors, locations, means for editing and sound mixing, days for shooting…excuses, excuses.

I really do wonder sometimes if I’m, at heart, a lit bro, or a film bro. not that it’s impossible to be both, but my original artistic dream was to direct. novel writing and directing seem very similar to me, especially if the director is also the screenwriter. idk I’m losing the thread on keeping this interesting. just something I can’t quite resolve: where to put my energies.

I finished a draft of a story today. all it took was devoting time to writing, and what do you know, writing happened.

yesterday, the first of October, I did something I often consider doing but haven’t yet until this year: I set out to spend the month finally reading all of House of Leaves. I’ve read the first 119 pages something like 3 times, but on each previous effort, I put the book down after finishing Ch. VIII and never mustered the courage or time to dive into the notoriously bonkers Ch. IX. I’ve always enjoyed that first section, so I feel obligated to at least push through the barrier and see if the rest of the work earns my attention.

a kind of “joke” in the first chapter I never caught until this read was that The Navidson Record, the fictional film that the novel is supposedly an exegesis of, was distributed by Miramax. Harvey Weinstein is mentioned by name. it’s an interesting metatextual wrinkle to know what eventually became of the king of 90s independent cinema. not that it bears much on the novel.

by happenstance, last weekend I went to a screening of the 4K restoration of the movie most associated with Miramax, Pulp Fiction. a friend of mine once posted a review on Letterboxd of Magnolia describing it as “pulp fiction but you adjust the ‘written-medium-to-filmed-medium’ dial a few notches to the left.” I mention this only to point out what’s been pointed out innumerable times before, but Tarantino makes movie movies, films that operate on the logic of what cinema does that other mediums don’t lend themselves to. he writes tight dialogue and his narratives are well constructed, but he primarily asks “what do I want to see on screen.” this is signaled somewhat ironically by the line Fabienne delivers after telling Butch she wants a pot belly: “It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same”

watching Pulp Fiction brought to mind a question I often wonder about, and have probably posted about here: why are genre exercises, or crime stories, or surrealist pastiches, more likely to make for “good” movies than novels? why are novelists expected to be more “responsible” and stick to “relatable” stories than filmmakers? I realize I’m making a generalization that immediately brings to mind a million exceptions—plenty of novels from the last 100 years aren’t exactly “relatable,” and the demand for “relatability” in art has warped the direction that non-comic book, non-horror movies have taken as of late.

it wasn’t until writing this that I realized my issue is with this idea of “relatability.” I’m desiring more freedom in what I’m making, and I imagine that filmmaking gives people greater freedom than what writing fiction does. this obviously isn’t true. I’ve internalized some norm that I should do away with. ironic that I feel this as a result of reading a novel about a movie, even more so than I did when I watched the movie about movies.

I’m frustrated with the thing I’m working on in part because I feel like the technique I’m using is too…basic. it’s also pretty close to mundane lived experience in a way I’m generally not particularly interested in in fiction. but what I’m working on is important for personal, therapeutic reasons, and I recognize the desire to throw it away just as I’m digging into something genuinely felt is me trying to self-sabotage. nonetheless, I feel the need for some project that allows for greater latitude in plot and technique.

this week is the first week where I’m being very deliberate and protective of my writing time. these are your hours, show up to work. this will involve working out what exactly my process is, and maybe it’ll be beneficial to have a couple, wildly different projects to alternate between. maybe I’ll even get around to actually writing a screenplay.

I should start taking photos again.