Eccentric Flower:199906/The church of latter-day myths

Yesterday, before dinner, I made a few book purchases. I bought Hannibal, feeling like I needed to wash my hands afterward, and An Instance of the Fingerpost so that I'd have representation from the other end of the highbrow-lowbrow spectrum.

O, all right, that paragraph isn't exactly accurate. Hannibal is going to be sensationalist trash, but it'll be well-written sensationalist trash. As for the other - a meandering, complex tale of a murder told by four separate (unreliable) narrators, set in the Middle Ages - I confess that I worry about my ability to follow it, especially since I'll be reading it in small installments. Nonelvis says it was a dense book; she also said it was fabulous. (I wouldn't have been able to carry it around with me in hardcover. The paperback is two inches thick. Cryptonomicon is going to look like that in paperback.) Hannibal, of course, will be read in one go; it'll take me about forty-five minutes.

I also bought a book which I would never have known about if Wordsworth, bless them, hadn't had it on display at the cash register. It's a British book called Gilliam on Gilliam, one of a series where each book is a long interview, with the person in question doing most of the talking.

I am devouring this book. In fact, I had to go out and rent Time Bandits again last night because of this book - and I kept reading it, even while the movie was playing.

I also rented Jabberwocky, which Gilliam has convinced me got a bad reputation it didn't deserve. When I have (finally) seen Jabberwocky, that will leave out only Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the only Gilliam film I refuse to see.

I'm rather fond of the fellow (barring Fear and Loathing, which I will assume was a moment of weakness). The book makes me like him even more. There is so much that's quotable in this book that I don't even know where to start.

Gilliam says at one point that his wife says he always makes the same film, just with different costumes. When I read that to Nonelvis, she replied, "Yes, but it's a really good film."

I don't know if it's fair to say that Gilliam always makes the same film, but he does return to the same themes again and again. Watching him ring the changes on these themes - themes few other directors want to even touch, much less experiment with - is what keeps me coming back to his films again and again.

It probably shouldn't surprise you that - given how much of my life I've spent collecting myths and folklore - Gilliam and I see eye-to-eye. Basically Gilliam is one of the few people doing interesting riffs on the idea of heroism. Examples: What does heroism mean? In this day and age, what exactly does it take to be a hero? Was the chivalric idea of heroism ever applicable, or was it unrealistic even in its own time?

There are any number of writers who visit these ideas, but not a lot of filmmakers. I understand that the young, burned-out, realistic school of filmmakers doesn't want rosy sunrises and happy endings - but I don't think that dark times and heroism are mutually exclusive. If anything, dark times cry out for heroes - although maybe not the Indiana Jones kind. Brazil is completely about heroism and Sam Lowry's flawed ideas about what that means ... yet I don't believe anyone would describe the film as having a rosy vision.

Interestingly, on the subject of happy endings, Gilliam notes:

The happy ending of Blade Runner so appalled me that I was all the more determined I would end Brazil as we did.

Well. I have never had a problem with the ending of Brazil because it was the only reasonable ending there was; but I have never understood why so many people hate the original-release ending of Blade Runner. I think I'd have felt tremendously cheated if the film hadn't ended that way. No. I haven't seen the director's cut. I understand that Deckerd's voiceover narration is removed and that's the main difference; I like the narration.

But it occurs to me that my take on Blade Runner is hugely affected by the decision to cast Harrison Ford. I suppose an actor or director would call this a flaw: I bring preconceived notions along with me when I see Ford. He carries baggage. I will never be able to see him as anything less than a basically White Hat kind of guy. Yes, he may be a scoundrel, he may cheat and steal; but he's a good guy. I didn't believe Ford as a villain even when he was the dragstrip rival in American Graffiti.

With Ford in Blade Runner, I want the happy ending, however implausible. He deserves it. If someone else had played the part - someone a little more Bogart and a little less Flynn - the ending would have left as bad a taste in my mouth as it does for other viewers.

(Notice I am not discussing whether this change would have made the movie more faithful to the book. First off, it's not germane; a movie becomes its own entity as soon as it's scripted. Second, I don't care for the book; I believe it is a work of empty pessimism with little to say for itself. I realize this amounts to High Treason in some SF circles. Well, that's what you get for having an argument with a romantic.)

As for Sam Lowry, he deserves the ending he gets. Is it a happy ending or a sad one? I wouldn't know. I officially retired that argument years ago. Jette and I declared it a tie so we could move on to more important things.

People are beginning to come back to mythology. Some years ago the trend in "urban myths" began, devoted to examining what happens when mythology is transplanted into the present-day reality.

That's an apt metaphor, actually. Some myths wither and die in their new surroundings; some flower weakly, others flower well ... and some hybridize and start doing things that no one ever anticipated.

My favorite Gilliam movie is The Fisher King. Until the last two minutes, which are ham-handed sentiment, the film doesn't miss a step. I think I like The Fisher King because it was one of the few times that the Bad Thing in a movie has actually scared me. It's not just the Red Knight - it's the reality the Red Knight represents, that of the unexplainable, unavoidable tragedy - what Peter Greenaway calls the Violent Unknown Event.

Demons and monsters don't frighten me, but crazed people who have decided to go 'round the pike and start shooting things do. And Gilliam recognizes that, in a way, we have taken the person who's Gone Postal (the existence of that phrase implies as much) and turned him or her into the stuff of fear and legend.

That is how a latter-day myth gets created.

But [the South] was also a place - and this is before the civil-rights movement started - where everybody you would meet on the street - whether black or white - seemed incredibly friendly. That was as long as everybody knew their place and stayed in it. For many people - those who weren't frustrated and just wanted a quiet life - it must have been very pleasant. Everybody in their place - not so different from how England used to be, with its class system.

But nowadays America is totally structureless. For those with ambition and drive, everything's possible. But for anyone who wants a safe, secure life, it's a nightmare. And those of us who write or draw - the artistic ones - we're fucking it up for those other people who just want a nice steady solid life.

-Terry Gilliam
Gilliam on Gilliam