Eccentric Flower:200906/Not Quite Recidivism
From Eccentric Flower
Not Quite Recidivism
On Friday night we watched The Taking of Pelham One Two Three - a great movie. I'm telling you this because I hadn't ever seen it, and you probably haven't either, and it's really good, and in a minute or two the remake is going to come out and it's going to be a pile of shit, and all anyone under a certain age will ever know was that it was a pile of shit, and they will never ever know that there was a good version, or what an atrocity was being committed. And thus history turns to dung. So, um, see the good one from 1974 if it passes your way. For great justice.
Today I dealt with an off-kilter wife and restored my MP3 setup (hooray!) and re-read and cleaned the July 1999 journal entries, which should also have been a (hooray!) except it's depressed the hell out of me. For a month in which I finished a full-length manuscript, you'd think there'd be a lot more cheer and goodwill.
Rereading and checking the entries took a lot longer than it should have. The main problem was that, unlike usually, there were three or four entries where I felt a need to add extensive latter-day comments at the top. I will want those comments later; they're further evidence on things which I am still, ten years later, trying to unsnarl. Things where I feel people consistently get me wrong - not that I'm not neurotic in those directions, you understand, but that I'm not neurotic in the way other people think I am.
Some of you will surely be amused that I'm still wrestling with some of the things now that I was then ... but it will just as surely be a wry amusement, because some of you have been trying to convince me otherwise for just as long. Some of you weren't around in 1999, but many of you were, and I hear some of the same things from you today that I did then.
I need to say this: I appreciate having you as friends. Do remember that. I feel that there are very few people in the world willing to put up with me, and I am grateful for the handful of you who do. I realize I don't show it well. I realize that sometimes I repay your friendship by snarling in your faces, and I'm sorry about that. But I do appreciate you, and I don't say it often enough. I couldn't possibly say it often enough.
Anyway, I've marked some of the good ones in the monthly index, as is my ongoing habit, but I've also marked two of the bad ones, because they're important to me. If you are brave you can read "The Game of Who Knows What" and the two entries immediately after it; but only the truly determined will go look at "In which the bottom falls out", which is about what its name implies. I didn't mark that one, but I sure did write a long comment atop it.
There's also a nice little bit of semi-smutty fiction which was a false start for one of the Twenty-Six stories, a folktale, a hilarious dialogue on the subway, and other goodies - and yet, the meltdowns eclipse everything. They always have. I have been reluctant to embark on these archives because all I remember of my past is the bad stuff. I am doing it, despite my misgivings, to remind myself there was also good stuff.
In one of the last entries of that month, I added this latter-day comment:
"I sometimes wonder just how many of my rants are because I either need to talk to a live human, or because I need to eat something, or because I need to take a walk away from the computer."
It's the first of those causes that has come to my mind a lot lately. I have a hard time saying this because I worry that it will make my wife mad, but: I think I am very lonely, and I am just now becoming aware of it. I don't feel lonely. But the math keeps coming up with the same sum no matter how many times I do it.
The problem is that I am still very uncomfortable with in-person contact, for some reasons which you know and some that you don't. As I say in the comment to "In which the bottom falls out," I don't hate myself, but I don't expect anyone else to like me. I don't think I play very well with others, and I assume that if I see other people in person it will just go badly. It's safer not to do that - and you know I always choose safety. The problem is that in choosing safety I have apparently also chosen isolation.
It's a real problem. On one side I have unacceptable risk and on the other side I have unacceptable isolation. I don't think I can choose either road; I don't believe there is a way to win.
I had hoped that being in a good long-term relationship would save me. It is a wonderful thing and I'm not knocking it at all, but apparently there are several different itches here and that only scratches one of them; the kind of interaction I have with my wife is not a complete diet.
I had hoped that online contact would save me - all of the rewards, none of the risks - but it doesn't, because everyone else handles that differently than I do, and I can no longer waste time and disappointment sitting by the email or rechecking comment counts waiting for something to happen, or going into a tailspin because I've posted something I think is good or important and no one else notices it. For everyone else the online world is a background activity, a pastime. For me it's the universe. This isn't acceptable anymore.
And yet going out and showing people what I am in person, knowing what they will think of me after I leave the room - it hasn't gotten any easier, and it may never get any easier. I interact with people much better than I did fifteen years ago, I have acquired so many social skills since then - and all that means to me is that I fake it better now. I know the truth.
Sorry, I'm not trying to dump any of this on you. It's just been kind of a sad night for reading, and I needed to let a little of it out.
You have at least one real-time person who has said, on a number of occasions, that maybe we should grab lunch, which would give you some interaction with a real-life person AND get you food.
And if you haven't figured it out by now, it's not just because I'm a charitable person who reaches out to folks who are feeling lonely, but also because I don't have that many non-work interactions in my everyday life either, so it'd work out on both sides.
Besides, in the hour or so to have lunch at Mary Chung's, I don't really have enough time to judge you as a person, so there's very little faking necessary!
-- 12:45, 7 June 2009 (BST)
I know, and I'm not doing great about that. Although some of it is the phobias, lunch is often very problematic. On the work days when I get to take a normally-timed lunch at all, I tend to want to get food somewhere where there is no human contact whatsoever! Both of these factors have conspired to have me take lunch at 1 pm or later - sometimes considerably later - because by then it's usually calm enough for me to go, and by then the lunch crowd has left the restaurants.
-- 15:05, 7 June 2009 (BST)
I recognize that the last part of the post is the important one, but you've heard me on this subject before, and I have nothing new to add. So I'll go with this: The original The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three is one of the great movies of all time. I remember when it came out, and I remember New York in the 1970s, and the film captured it perfectly, both the grimness and the black humor it engendered. I'll likely see the remake, but I dread it. I sat through the horrid TV movie version -- horrid not for the cast (Vincent D'Onfrio as Mr. Blue, Edward James Olmos in the Walter Matthau role, and Lorraine Bracco in the Jerry Stiller role), but for BEING SHOT IN TORONTO. (This is the opposite of the problem I had with the U.S. Life on Mars, shot beautifully in New York City, but utterly miscast. I've been meaning to rant about that for months over on LJ, but haven't gotten around to it.)
I'm not a film geek, as you know, but I'd love to curate a New York in the '70s film festival with Taxi Driver and Pelham to open and close. (Manhattan would be in there, too; I'd have to think about the others I'd include.)
-- 16:24, 7 June 2009 (BST)
Who says the last part of the post is the important one? heh.
It struck us over and over as we watched the film what a perfect snapshot of New York in the mid-seventies that film is. But that may work against it. One of the two bits of trivia on the film I found very interesting, on its IMdB page, was that
I think you almost have to be in an urban environment, or have spent a lot of time in one, to appreciate the film fully. Which is not to say it's not worth seeing for everyone else; it's just that having been there adds that extra frisson.
Also, the film almost wasn't shot there, which would have been a huge disaster:
-- 16:58, 7 June 2009 (BST)
I keep wanting to see the original Pelham and not doing it. Which is unfortunate, because I'm probably going to see the remake Tuesday morning as a way to get my mind off stuff going on Tuesday afternoon. OTOH, seeing the original first may make it seem even better.
I get you on the feeling lonely thing. I am often fine with in-person contact, it's just that I somehow don't know a lot of people well and don't see them often enough. And I can hardly ever go out to lunch with non-coworkers because it's logistically difficult.
-- 22:55, 7 June 2009 (BST)
Jette, I think you'd really like the original. The script is fantastic, which made perfect sense once we realized it was written by the same guy who'd written Charade.
-- 00:12, 8 June 2009 (BST)
Follow-up on Pelham 123: I saw the remake yesterday and thought it was your basic entertaining summer action film. Tony Scott gets a little crazy with the camera but it didn't bother me. But a) a lot of the critics with me didn't like it as much and b) I've liked Scott's previous two films and others haven't, so it's obviously a matter of how much you can put up with his directorial style.
I'm watching the original movie right now; it's available for streaming on Fancast. It's a little dark and grainy but still good: http://tinyurl.com/l8kupq
-- 17:44, 10 June 2009 (BST)
@Jette: Did the remake have the dark humor of the original (and I don't mean Travolta mugging for the camera)? I don't think I could stomach the remake if it were turned into a straight action-thriller.
-- 00:25, 11 June 2009 (BST)
Yes, the remake has a good streak of humor in it. James Gandolfini plays the mayor and this is one area that improves on the original. I haven't finished watching the original yet but I think I prefer Travolta over Robert Shaw ... on the other hand, no one is better than Walter Matthau.
-- 14:27, 11 June 2009 (BST)
Phoenix review seems to match what has been said here: Travolta good, Washington good, Gandolfini better than the original, good script ...
-- 19:20, 11 June 2009 (BST)
Mel:
Well, let's just say that if you truly didn't play well with others, we never would have lasted, what, three years and counting playing games together. On the other hand, I am sort of in the same boat as you about in-person friends. Or actually, you're ahead of me because you have some. All mine are people I know from some particular something: they quilt, or I used to work with them, or I'm related to them. I don't have any people who are just my friends. And I don't seem to know how to find such a thing any more.
-- 05:41, 7 June 2009 (BST)