deeplyshallow // shit town

shit town

I keep half-finished posts saved as drafts in Wordpress. I always get around to finishing them all in one burst, and then deal them out like playing cards in a very slow game of poker, one post every day or two or three, so that I can alleviate the pressure that I feel to publish sometimes. This is nothing new; every blogger does this. (Or maybe should.)

But for a week I have sat on a draft entitled ‘almost famous’. It’s exactly what it sounds like, a review of a movie I adore. I have been unable to write a single word about the movie, however. I’ve tried several times, and get nowhere. When I thought about why this might be the case, I came up with two possible explanations:

1. It’s really hard to write a good review about a movie you consider pretty much perfect. I’ve seen Almost Famous and its untitled, expanded edition thirty times, easy, and it’s never failed to completely absorb me. There isn’t a single scene that feels extraneous, and yet the film never feels as if it’s moving from plot point to plot point; it just flows, sort of like that rock and roll vibe everybody in the movie seems to be spacing out to. I could write this sort of shit for another few hundred words, but what would be the point? I love this movie, and whether I keep rambling or not, that’s really the only point to be made.

2. I’m afraid that when I watch the movie it will suck. I know, I know, that seems like a weird thing to say, particularly after what I just wrote. But here’s the thing: Cameron Crowe has always written from the heart, okay. And after Almost Famous, which he threw his whole heart into, he started doing shit a little differently. Vanilla Sky was an experiment for him, something completely different from anything he’d ever done before. But then he made Elizabethtown, which he wrote as if he were writing from his audience’s hearts, and the movie completely sucked. It was schmaltzy and incoherent and basically nothing more than a parade of moments, all set to some perfect song and then acknowledged with sad, knowing smiles. Almost Famous, on the other hand, is a terrific story that’s also filled with moments and sad, knowing smiles, and every last one of them works so intuitively that you never feel as if you’re watching a montage of sappy bullshit. … But: I am afraid that E-town’s foul aftertaste will spoil Almost Famous if I don’t give the former a little time to wear off.

So I haven’t written my review, despite having gathered the necessary photos and etc. And I might as well delete the draft, I guess.

Lately I don’t have the kind of time I used to have for watching movies, and I miss it, sure, but then again, maybe not as much as I’d have thought. It recently took me four days to finish Ghostbusters 2, and that was pretty much okay (although it might have been less about my lack of time and more about Ghostbusters 2 being a piece of shit). Four hours ago I started watching the first episode of Carnivale, and while I like what I’ve seen so far, I’ve only managed to watch thirty-one total minutes. There are just too many other things to be done, I guess. And I can’t remember what any of them are. I think I read a few pages of a novel, but that might have been last night. I checked my mail, I remember that much. There was just a Netflix envelope inside, and in the envelope was the fifth disc of Carnivale’s first season. I figure at the rate I’m going, that disc won’t see any action until, oh, ’round December or so. I figure, the rate I’m going, I probably won’t even finish this first episode until next Tuesday.

But there are always special circumstances, and despite my lackadaisical movie-watching habits lately, I’ll make an exception this Friday night, when E.T. is being screened outdoors in Santa Barbara. Susan’s never seen it — I can’t believe the movies this girl has missed out on — so we’re going. Of course, there is a condition: if they’re showing the “restored” version of the movie that was released a couple of years ago, then we’re not going. Because that ain’t the E.T. I grew up on, and I refuse to see it on principle. What principle I couldn’t tell you, so please don’t ask. Besides, you feel the same way, so get off my back. Replacing those guns with walkie-talkies was a bad, bad move, almost as bad as recreating E.T. himself in CGI, although neither would be as shitty as removing Elliott’s great “penis-breath” insult. I can’t remember if that was left in or not. That was the great thing about E.T.: kids are shitheads, just like Elliott and his older brother. They talk like that. And when they do bad shit, they don’t jump on their bikes and pedal for their lives because they’re being chased by men with radios. What the shitfuck.