[Industrialblog,
March 13, 2007]
Stranger than Fiction
Two of my favorite books are Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds and Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller. In the former, an Irish writer (who is a character) ends up personally impregnating one of his characters, other of his characters drug him and run amok. In the latter novel, the reader is a character in the book. Both play with the relationship between author and character, and I usually like that stuff very much.
As far as movies, I enjoyed Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation as well. Adaptation concerns an individual asked to adapt an unadaptable book to the big screen -- however, the book (the Orchid Thief) is a New Yorker-style meditation on various shit, and Kaufman realizes it's impossible to take that book and meet the requirements of a movie, as explained by screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The result is a closely run thing -- it's a little like watching five drunken blind midgets run across the grand canyon on a tight rope -- and you think at some point, wow, they're actually gonna make it. So much so that it doesn't bother you so much when the whole thing goes up in flames.
Zach Helm's Stranger than Fiction seemed something along these lines, and so I rented the movie with considerable enthusiasm.
And wasn't disappointed. It's brilliant. One particular moment of genius: The lead character realizes at a certain point that he's a character in a novel. He gets no help from a psychologist -- so he turns for help to a professor of literature. The professor asks him a series of questions to get a sense of what kind of work he's in. ["Are you the king of anything?" "Has anyone left anything outside your door?" "Did any part of you used to be part of someone else?" "Do you have any magical powers?"]
Every character in this movie is smart. No cheap gimmicks, no cheap gags, just smart the whole way through.
Of course, I'm a literary geek, and most of the humor is literary in nature. Thus, your mileage may vary. But I loved it and give it 72 stars!
As far as movies, I enjoyed Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation as well. Adaptation concerns an individual asked to adapt an unadaptable book to the big screen -- however, the book (the Orchid Thief) is a New Yorker-style meditation on various shit, and Kaufman realizes it's impossible to take that book and meet the requirements of a movie, as explained by screenwriting guru Robert McKee. The result is a closely run thing -- it's a little like watching five drunken blind midgets run across the grand canyon on a tight rope -- and you think at some point, wow, they're actually gonna make it. So much so that it doesn't bother you so much when the whole thing goes up in flames.
Zach Helm's Stranger than Fiction seemed something along these lines, and so I rented the movie with considerable enthusiasm.
And wasn't disappointed. It's brilliant. One particular moment of genius: The lead character realizes at a certain point that he's a character in a novel. He gets no help from a psychologist -- so he turns for help to a professor of literature. The professor asks him a series of questions to get a sense of what kind of work he's in. ["Are you the king of anything?" "Has anyone left anything outside your door?" "Did any part of you used to be part of someone else?" "Do you have any magical powers?"]
Every character in this movie is smart. No cheap gimmicks, no cheap gags, just smart the whole way through.
Of course, I'm a literary geek, and most of the humor is literary in nature. Thus, your mileage may vary. But I loved it and give it 72 stars!