2004 February

When I was 15 I met Wes Craven, the director of this film, just after he had filmed it in Haiti. I didn’t realize then how truly chaotic the country must have been. The story takes place during the build-up to the flight of president Jean-Claude Duvalier in 1986. Almost as we watched, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide fled Haiti in a sad repetition of history. I now find it amazing that Wes managed to make this film at all.

The first half of the movie is an intriguing foray into shamanistic drug use and its relation to zombies. Unfortunately it slowly degrades into a horror flick with cheesy effects. When one of the characters pulls his own head off and throws it another, any question of taking the movie seriously goes out the window. It’s too bad, because Ann and I both felt it had the potential to be a moving portrait of Haiti’s struggles and a peek into its mysterious mystical traditions.

It’s a gorgeous morning, and Ann stayed warm during the cold night. We’ve now tried a number of different ways for her to keep warm at night. Read on if you’re interested in what we’ve learned.

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We only have time for a couple of short hikes this weekend, but we also want to test some more gear on a cold night. So we work through the morning, pack up, and are on the Pacific Crest Trail by 3:30 PM.

We are treated to vibrant sunset, Mt. Jenkins basking in the last light. It’s getting dark when we find a snowy campsite at the first saddle below Morris Peak. Exposed water starts to freeze immediately. I think we’ll get our cold night.

The idea of a Jewish kid so consumed with self-loathing that he becomes a neo-Nazi has potential, but runs into problems here. The characters’ motivations and philosophies are too muddled to be believable. Ambiguity in a character is good, but eventually it has to be explained.

I feel like nothing I say will be worthy of this film. The was some kind of amazing confluence of talent and circumstance that made this movie greater than the sum of its parts. It’s stunning.

I’ll risk one bit of commentary. The circus freak is a fundamental human archetype. To use it cheaply or ineptly would be a travesty, but in the right hands it makes for a story of unusual power. Such a story shows us both the circus freak in ourselves, and the humanity in the circus freak.

I coded up this nice little button that allows you to reverse the current sort order of posts, so you can look at earliest or latest posts first. Right now I have the button just below the page header - try it out. It’s a nice, clean, satifying bit of code. I’m running WordPress-1.0.1, but it will likely work with earlier versions too. Read on for details.

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At last, the rest of the wedding pictures have been posted in the wedding area. For the families involved there are some gems. I admit I’ve omitted some of the blurry ones, and a few unbelievably dorky shots. (Of course, those would be the most fun to look at, wouldn’t they? Maybe I’d post them if I got lots of requests)…

Several things surprised me about this movie. Ann and I both wanted to see a James Dean movie, because he is still so glamorized by our culture. We had an idea of him being aloof and cool, which doesn’t describe his character in this movie at all. Here he’s sincere, well-meaning, loving, and sensitive in addition to angst-ridden and rebelious. The movie tackles some of the stickier aspects of parent-teen relations too. Dad is dominated by Mom and Grandma, or inapropriately attracted to his daughter. It’s real stuff.

We noticed something about the soundtrack too. It was the same orchestral style as ’40’s noir movies like Lady From Shanghai, but the overbearing aspect was gone. Also, the soundtrack fit the scenes better. It may have been a step towards the “feel like this now” soundtracks that come out of Hollywood now, but I’d say that’s certainly an improvement over those bombastic predecessors.

Ann picks me up at 11 today to go to one of the few restaurants we like in town, the Bangkok House. Our experience this time particularly shows something about how our expectations have changed.

It hasn’t opened yet when we get there. Ok, we wait a couple minutes, no problem.

Once inside we are greeted by the familiar scowl of the lunchtime waitress who hates us because we like to order things. I check out the buffet and decide to order from the menu as usual. As I’m sitting down she barks, “That’s not your table!” Obediently I stand up and look around, but she just walks away. Ann shows me our table.

The waitress ignores us. Finally Ann chases her down and tells her we’re ordering from the menu. “Wait 10 minutes,” she says, “I have a lot of orders.” What else are we going to do? The food is worth it. We wait. Ann is shivering because they don’t turn on the heat until they open the doors. We laugh at ourselves. Would we have tolerated this treatment in Chicago or Sante Fe? No, it would be easier just to go somewhere else. In Ridgecrest it’s a treat, and if you don’t like it the alternatives aren’t pretty.

We do finally order and the food is good as always. We start to fantasize, though, about eating out when we get to Denver. Ethiopian! Indian! Places that actually want to make you happy! Of course, we won’t have any income and will probably fret over the bill. Or maybe we’ll just be too ecstatic to think of it.

For the amount of self-reference packed into this movie, it’s surprisingly easy to follow. So it would be a little misleading to say it’s the story of the script writer writing himself into the script, because it all seems pretty natural as you watch it. It does come close to getting too twisted up near the end, but pulls through. The are lots of good pokes at Hollywood, and Nicholas Cage does a great job as the fat, insecure screenwriter.