Eccentric Flower:199910/The Scale of Potential Dubiousness

What a night. It's one a.m. and the bag I've tried to pack my things in won't fit everything. "I theenk I'm gonna need a beeger box." I haven't washed my hair or shaved - there will be no time to do it in the morning.

I wrote mouth organ tonight, and then an article for another commitment I had completely forgotten about. Augh! I thought I was going to write a Stay Tuned on weird millennial products, but no way. I am foolish, but not crazy. Bad enough that I have a zillion loose ends to cover here before I go.

I'll sleep on the plane, I keep telling myself, I'll sleep on the plane.

It'll be nice just to get away from the Mad Drummer for a while. He's making our lives hell, all day, all night, but I'm reaching the point where I'm not sure I want to try to complain again, because I can't figure out whether this guy is incredibly dedicated, or just nuts. I mean, he's got to be drumming at least sixty percent of the time he's awake. He's going to give himself an aneurysm.

I was going to write about some news stories that annoy me, including a really old article by David Madden that I unearthed when cleaning my files, and have been saving to rant on in honor of my getting to meet Toni. But I am now in no fit state to rant.

I still owe a lot of emails. I thought I was going to clean out the mailbox tonight, as preparation for my absence. I took a big leap at it, but didn't get far; most of what I cleaned out was mouth organ stuff, which means I still owe you Ardent Readers a lot of replies.

So I'm going to clear a lot of them this way: Thank you for the film comments. If you'd like to keep the discussion going, that's dandy - I shall read it all when I come back. But let me forestall some of the things I've already heard:

Trick is apparently not as focused on the physical, sweaty bits as I had been led to believe. Eric says it's a romance almost exactly like Better Than Chocolate, "but the writing is much sharper, and the characters are believable." I didn't find the characters in the latter that unbelievable, but I'm perfectly willing to retract my opinion on Trick. After all, I haven't seen the film. Yet.

Several people who have seen the film Black Cat, White Cat commented to me that it's actually a very fast-paced comedy of errors. I stand corrected on that one too.

I have been flooded with American Beauty mail - the consensus (sometimes in these exact words) is that there's more going on in the film than I think. I am also told by several people that "redemption" is exactly what Kevin Spacey's character goes through, and that's good ... but then why, from a story standpoint, is it necessary for him to die?

Even so ... even so ... enough already. I shall see it as soon as I get back. I have to. Jette and others want to discuss certain aspects of it with me, and they can't do that until I've seen it.

Oh, and Rose noted that the original release of Caligula was twenty years ago, not fifteen.

I got a lot of other comments. I'm quoting bits of two specific replies here, because they lead me to a Larger Point.

REM writes, on the subject of Good Baseball Movies:

Now you're getting on my turf with baseball movies. You're forgetting a lot of good movies and probably remembering the abominations such as The Natural (I nearly came out of my chair in the theater when they changed the ending of the book). Costner really has made two great baseball pictures; don't forget Field of Dreams. Yes, it was flawed (Joe Jackson was a left-handed hitter, and it's a horrible endorsement of a Reaganite view of the world), but I'll bet you are maybe one in a hundred American men who did not tear up at the end when he realizes who the catcher is and what the Voice was talking about. It's simply the best film capture of what baseball is to America.

Sorry to not reply in person, REM - I'll get to the rest of your messages when I return, honest.

I have not seen Field of Dreams, actually. And I haven't seen it precisely because it looks like it is calculated to tug all the correct heartstrings and get me a little weepy-eyed from the sheer glory of it all at the end. I detest having my strings jerked in that way. I am almost wholly without patriotism, I'm sorry to say - too disillusioned - and my sentimental streak lies somewhere else entirely. Certainly not with baseball. I bet if you like baseball Field of Dreams is a great movie. Perhaps I should have said that there have only been two good baseball movies made from the point of view of non-baseball fans.

Chris Bridges writes that:

I liked Clerks. I loved Chasing Amy, and I'm waiting fairly patiently for Dogma. I'm a sucker for fast, clever dialogue, even if people don't usually talk that way. Well, other people.

It's funny, Chris, that we can be looking for the same thing but mining separate territories. I like to tell people I'm looking for that - in almost exactly the same words you used - but when I say it, it leads to a rant about why no one's writing screwball comedies anymore - Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday and Some Like It Hot - which, by the by, is my vote for funniest movie of all time (with the exception of the mirror sequence in Duck Soup).

If the screwball comedies have evolved into Clerks, I'm in trouble. But, hey, you know what? I haven't seen Clerks. Sensing a theme here?

That was the point that a lot of people may have missed the first time around: I often don't see movies, not because of their actual quality, but because they look so dubious to me that I won't risk it. Clerks was one of those movies. Depending on how dubious I am, the number of voices it takes to change my mind may vary. One strong voice was all it took to convince me to risk Trick. Five or six voices have convinced me to risk American Beauty. I have been hearing good things about Clerks for years, and still haven't risked it. I probably will never risk Field of Dreams.

I am not sure how this Scale of Potential Dubiousness works, but I know it's there. Anyway, that's why I like having readers who like to tell me when I'm wrong!

Thanks for all your film comments - I'm sorry I couldn't respond to them all in person. But I have a plane to catch.