Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Wednesday, July 21, 2004 The Pitch: It's like Every Bergman Movie Ever Made meets La Dolce Vita! Yes, having finally recovered from the soul-crushing that was Van Helsing (although Tim seemed to like it just fine), and moved to the next stage of my cinematic obsession (talking about all the Indian movies I'm too lazy and/or busy to actually go see), it's time to ascend to the final peak of my movie obsession: the ranting about all the great movies at the Castro I'm never gonna see.At this little point in time and space, I am utterly consumed with the idea of seeing La Dolce Vita at the Castro. Considering I last saw this movie on the big screen approx. twenty years ago (and by "big screen," I mean projected on a wall during a "European New Wave" weekend seminar), I feel I owe the move nothing less than to see it all seven nights it's playing in August. Well, four. At least four times. Maybe if I shoot for four times, I can make it twice. Because it would be an enormous crime to see it only once at the Castro (which, knowing me, means I'll be getting the electric chair--check back True Believer, to see if I even see it once! Excelsior!) And then! Nine Bergman movies in seven days! Followed by Fanny & Alexander! In fact, even though Edi's got a throat so sore she can barely speak and has expressed little interest in the last two days in anything that wasn't sleeping or dying, I'm sitting here going "Hmmmm, it's the last night for that newly restored cut of Jacques Tati's Playtime. When am I gonna get a chance to see that again? And Tarkovsky's Nostalghia is at the PFA tomorrow? I've never even heard of it!" I feel like there should be a word for this concept, this experiencing the expectation of experience that is, arguably, better than the experience itself. I know it's how I spend too many of my hours at the Internet. Am I really gonna get off my butt and hike to see a Tarkovsky movie about paint drying? When I've already got a rented copy of So Close, the Corey Yuen HK flick I've wanted to see for two years now? And a girlfriend for whom I should try and bring home a nice hot and sour soup and some throat spray? While The U.C. Theater was still open (I'm sure every semi-hardcore movie geek has a rep house theater in their past that they considered "their" rep house theater, and that was mine), I used to fantasize about what it would be like to go there every night for a year. One idle day at work, I scratched out a rough average of how many movies that would be (like a lot of theaters, the U.C. would do different double features every other night for a week or two, and then a full week of a single feature), and how much it would cost (lessee, with the Landmark discount card being 25 bucks for five admissions, that's approximately $1300 a year...). It was one of those great idle fantasies about being idle I still have--living around a corner from a rep house theater, not working but spending the days in the cafe writing and thinking, and then at night, taking my place, my favorite seat, in the dead center of that dying cinema... It's taken me a long, long time to see that a good chunk of that fantasy isn't so much seeing all those movies, as being the sort of person who would see all those movies: the nearly disembodied soul, shifting in the reflected lights and loves of the movie screen. I think it's a fantasy about being alone without being lonely. And maybe that's why I can both feel the fantasy's familiar hold, and recognize the reins for what they are: because I'm neither alone nor lonely. It sucks when the person you love feels horrible, and you can't do anything about it but wonder if that hot and sour soup she likes is going to do the trick. No wonder I can feel the pale and flickering palliative attempting, again, to hold sway over all. posted by Jeff Lester | 7:46 AM | |
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