Be Kind Rewind
After reading Nobo's sweded review, I had to see this movie to find out what "sweded" meant, and it was enjoyable research. I haven't laughed as hard in a long time as I did at some of the sight gags in Be Kind Rewind. For those of you who didn't catch the extraordinarily self-explanatory trailer, this film is about a couple of guys in a Passaic, NJ video store who, after accidentally destroying their whole inventory, start filming their own 20-minute versions of movies to rent to customers.
It's not only hilarious, but also makes a running commentary on several ideas surrounding the film industry. Very briefly amongst all the Jack Black posturing and Mos Def mumbling and bumbling the film will slip in a question, like is what these guys are doing only miming (badly) the work of others or are they making creative decisions? Do they deserve 3 billion dollars in civil penalties for copyright infringement, or have they really hurt anybody, and who do these stories belong to once they've been so blended into pop culture? Interestingly, the film never lingers over any of these questions and never really finds a meaningful conclusion to any of its various potential subplots, except maybe one.
The closest it comes is in the homemade film about Fats Waller that intersperses much of the action in Be Kind Rewind, a short film that becomes so untethered from Fats Waller and from history in general, and falls so short of its intended purpose that we're left wondering what the point of it was. But there is a meaning to that little homemade film: when everything in the theaters is a 10th generation copy that can be boiled down to a one-sheet and a couple scenes to stick in a trailer, why not get off the couch and make your own movie? Create your own content, be part of building something rather than consuming and buying copies. Yeah, you're probably not going to change the world or even save the video store, but it's still a lot more fun than Transfomers.
Third
The unwillingness of Be Kind Rewind to pursue a line of thought until it could be nailed to a particular conclusion really reminded me of one of the best plays I've read and seen in the last year. (This year it was 1776, The Home Place, and Third that I wish could run forever until everybody I knew could see them or maybe just until Benjamin Franklin sprained his ankle jumping over Richard Henry Lee's whip in their big dance number.) The play is about a middle-agd feminist professor who collides with a young student, nicknamed "Third", over his analysis of King Lear, and that's the great thing about both Third and Be Kind Rewind: I can tell you the problem that forces people into conflict or into action, but that isn't what either work is really about.
I could write a book about Third, because there are so many different ways to attack Wendy Wasserstein's final play, but part of the point is Third is everything that Professor Laurie Jameson and the other people around her are not. He's young and vital where Laurie's body is reminding her she's old enough to have two adult children, and her father's mind is fading fast while her best friend is quietly succumbing to cancer. He's a white man born in the 80's who doesn't resent the man or remember any of the various revolutions in academia and culture that formed her character. And most of all in an environment of people trying to redefine themselves and sharpen that identity to an edge that will slice apart the dominant memes around them, Third actually likes who he is.
The indefinable nature of the play is also why I loved the Guthrie's production, because it was so different from what I envisioned. Third was more social than I read him, and Laurie less angst-ridden and more witty. And it was so unbelievably beautiful. As I'm sure I've raved about before, the set was a white box onto which all of the sets were projected, while furniture slid in front, occasionally with Sally Wingert seductively draped across it. The scene of Laurie finding her senile father disoriented and out in the rain, with these gorgeous moving projections of nautical charts behind them, it was an absolutely beautiful scene where they both blessedly regress a bit, dancing in the rain. As his light fades, Jack isn't entirely sure who he's dancing with, but he excitedly tells her all about his beautiful daughter Laurie, who's so smart and looks just like Marilyn Monroe. Laurie the commanding professor, embattled mother and cultural warrior goes back to be her father's darling child for a few more minutes in the rain, and even lets him lead.
Playing the rapidly fading Jack Jameson was Raye Birk, actor and educator with a host of film, television and theater credits, for instance he delivered the mail at Cheers (the bar wasn't on Cliffie's route). Sally Wingert and Angela Timberman brought a very different energy to Professor Jameson and her ill friend Professor Gordon, but the two characters who were practically all-new when I saw them on-stage were Tony Clarno's Third and Emily Gunyou Halaas who brought a strange name and a very natural presence to the role of Laurie's daughter Emily, whose failure to emerge as a rebellious bisexual vegetarian driven to found her own ecotopia is a major disappointment to her mother.
I can only hope more theaters decide to share this play with the world, because that was just a brilliant show. Topping the job Casey Stangl (one of the few women directing in the theater) did bringing it to the Guthrie stage would be harder than dubbing Nicholas Cage into Cantonese, but I hope people continue to try. Five years after its premiere, the atmosphere of this play set in the run-up to the Iraq War with the Blue State-Red State simplified political map waiting in the wings seems even more relevant, and more insightful with hindsight. Just so long as they don't make a movie and cast Gwyneth Paltrow playing Laurie as a teenager afraid to raise her hand in class, with lower lip in full quiver. (Not that anybody would do that or anything.)
*--Title of this post shamelessly borrowed from "A Bit of Fry and Laurie", which proudly advertised itself as having bits of Hugh Laurie and bits of Stephen Fry, with pictures of their ears and noses and other "bits" in the opening credits. And that was damned funny as well.
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