Honoring The 10th Anniversary Of HIGH FIDELITY

Although it didn’t come in at #1 at the box office over its opening weekend, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE is certainly John Cusack’s most notable movie in years. 10 years in fact. For March 31st, 2000 was the US release date of HIGH FIDELITY, a defining film of Cusack’s career, and one of my all-time favorite films. So to honor the film on its 10th birthday here’s a personal look back at the film beginning with the original book:

When I heard, sometime in the late 90’s, that they were going to make a movie version of Nick Hornby’s best selling novel “High Fidelity”, I was very skeptical. This was more than just the usual “the book is always better” argument, I felt like this book was my personal emotional property.

Well, the kind of personal emotional property that one shares in common with a huge group of people, but it’s just that I was, and still am to some extent, one of “those guys” that the book described in excruciating yet hilarious detail. You see, in this case “those guys” are the guys who are rock snob geeks who have lousy love-lives but have amazing record collections.

A friend, another one of “those guys”, recommended me the book shortly after its publication in 1995. At that time I worked in a CD store in a strip mall in Greensboro, North Carolina – I moved to that area earlier in the decade because I wanted to be with my girlfriend of over 6 years. In the days after our painful break-up I toiled behind the counters of this new and used compact disc retail store making lists of favorite songs, joining my co-workers in belittling clueless customers, and trying to get over the piles of baggage I was still carrying from that doomed relationship.

The experience of first reading “High Fidelity” was actually a bit disconcerting – I felt it hit too close to home. I joked to friends that it made me feel like I had been bugged, like somebody had been recording all my conversations about what songs to play at a funeral or what’s the best album opening song ever and mixing in exact statements made in fights between me and my ex and turning in them into clever prose. I grew to love it and laugh with it but I still wondered – who was this Nick Hornby fellow and how did he know so much about me?

So by the time the movie was announced, the book was a pretty hardcore emotional touchstone in my psyche. I knew that it was the same for tons of “those guys” out there who all felt this book was about them – oh, no a movie could ruin our sacred text, making it into another rom com that doesn’t take any of this record store culture seriously! But when I heard John Cusack was starring (and co-writing) and “The Grifters” (a Cusack favorite of mine) director Stephen Frears was attached, some of my cynicism evaporated.

The cynicism that remained was directed at the fact that the book took place in London and was written in what I felt at the time was a very British voice. The book was also named after an Elvis Costello song for Christ sakes! What I didn’t consider was that “those guys” were everywhere and the location didn’t matter. So as protagonist Rob Gordon (his last name was Fleming in the book but ostensibly that would’ve been too British) says: “It’s not what you’re like, it’s what you like”, I had to realize that it’s not where you are, it’s still just what you like.

While the setting of the story moved to Chicago, and it contains lots of great locales (The Double Door, Lincoln Park, The Biograph Theater), people everywhere live their lives through the filter of pop culture so it could have been reasonably set anywhere.

I do believe though, that if it were a British-made movie it would be Elvis Costello, not Bruce Springsteen, in that pivotal plot point cameo role.

I also should’ve considered that Cusack himself is one of “those guys”.

He took the text seriously and worked hard to keep its heart and content largely intact. Viewing it for the first time on the big screen 10 years ago I was delighted at how faithful it was to its source. Hornby agreed: “At times, it appears to be a film in which John Cusack reads my book” he told the New York Times at the time of the film’s release.

The film got so many things right – the pop culture riffing wasn’t forced, the soundtrack (The Kinks, Stereolab, Bob Dylan, The Beta Band, The Velvet Underground, etc.) was well chosen, and I don’t think any movie has better depicted how it feels to try to get through a day at your workplace when your heart is broken to pieces.

I’ve been in many independent record stores that highly resembled Rob’s shop Championship Vinyl with every surface covered in rock ‘n roll posters, promotional stickers, and concert flyers. Between that and Rob’s apartment, there is no end to trying to identify every cool rock signifier in sight – oh, there’s Sonic Youth’s “Goo”! There’s a poster for pre-label Pavement! There’s Brian Eno’s “Before and After Science” on vinyl and then later held up by Rob on CD! This was also pointed out in this blogpost.

In all the times I’ve watched the film over the years its arc never tires me – though the thought of enduring the same stuff in real life does. The boy loses girl, boy goes on a neurotic quest to understand why every relationship he’s had failed while wanting his ex to return arc is so amusing and empowering to watch here as a witty movie, but living through that is Hell. After a more recent break-up than the one I spoke of earlier I drunkenly considered calling my “top 5” exes like Rob does, but thankfully came to my senses with no misguided contact made.

Throughout the film Cusack addresses the camera directly, another move I wasn’t sure I’d be keen on, guiding us through his heartache. It’s an effective device because there is no other meta gimmickry or self referential winking going on – the words and his performance stand alone.

There are so many great lines, most of which directly from the Hornby novel, that still hit close to home, but after this long they sting in a good way:

“Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?”

“No woman in the history of the world is having better sex than the sex you are having with Ian…in my head.”

“Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many dos and don’ts. First of all you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing.”

That last quote, incidentally, I’ve gotten as a sound sniplet on many mix-tapes then later CDR comps – an obvious choice but a good one.

At this point I must note Jack Black absolutely steals the movie away from Cusack’s lovelorn lamenting with a full throttle performance that brought him to the attention of many. He owns the screen as the loud mouth rock fan with musical aspirations who shouts down anybody who disagrees with him. The way he aggravates Rob constantly saying such things as: “Rob, I’m telling you this for your own good, that’s the worst fuckin’ sweater I’ve ever seen, that’s a Cosby sweater!” is among the film’s best running jokes.

As much as I love this film I have some reservations.

In a scene set at the now defunct Chicago club, the Lounge Axe, Rob’s just as musically obsessive employees Dick and Barry (Todd Louiso and Jack Black) fantasize about wanting to date a musician. “I want to live with a musician. They’d write songs at home and ask me what I think of them; maybe include one of our private little jokes in the liner notes.”

Uh, no you wouldn’t. As obsessive as these guys are they would be jealously tortured by the nights when their dream musician would be at a late seemingly never ending recording session or out on the road sleeping in hotel or van with their fellow band mates. I’m just saying, because, yes, I dated a musician. Of course, I realize that their tunnel vision delusion may be a crucial point of social satire.

Rob’s ex girlfriend Laura is played by the still little known Iben Hjejle and while she has some chemistry with Cusack she seems a bit off. Likewise Lisa Bonet as the dream musician Rob beds on the side of his heartbroken agony. But, again, the fact that the women in Rob’s life are miscast may be precisely the point as well.

I would never call this film a “rom com” because the only thing our protagonist is truly romantic about is music. Even as it settles into a happy ending grove with Rob adding Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever)” to a mix-tape for Laura, you get the sense that the just reconciled relationship is still doomed. The film essentially plays on an endless loop as real life on again, off again relationships often do.

So, 10 years later the question isn’t does HIGH FIDELITY still hold up, because of course it does. As Rob puts it: “It would be nice to think that since I was 14, times have changed. Relationships have become more sophisticated. Females less cruel. Skins thicker. Instincts more developed.” But he comes to the pretty much the same conclusion that one of his heroes Elvis Costello did: “History repeats the same defeats, the glib replies, the same defeats.”

So the real question that remains is what Rob posits at the beginning of the film: “What came first, the music or the misery?” I would say the music because when the misery came later we had a soundtrack to it already picked out and waiting.

Of course, I may just be saying all of this just because I’m one of “those guys.”

In the decade since HIGH FIDELITY, Cusack has gone through a run of mostly mediocre movies including RUNAWAY JURY, MARTIAN CHILD, GRACE IS GONE, and 2012. It’s amusing that in his first truly funny movie in 10 years, HOT TUB TIME MACHINE of course, has him at one point heartbroken and drunk, sitting on the floor writing break-up poetry. Rob Gordon lives on.

The film itself lives on in a couple of odd adaptations. It was turned into a Broadway musical in 2006 by writer David Lindsay-Abaire, lyricist Amanda Green, and composer Tom Kitt. The production closed after only 14 performances and received only lukewarm reviews, but some of the songs are kinda catchy. Can’t really comment on the show itself because I haven’t seen it but it strikes me that the material may not be translatable to the stage.

The material works better coming from an unexpected platform: the recently released hip hop disc “Don Cusack In High Fidelity” by Donhill, a member of the rap trio Tanya Morgan. The characters and narrative are recast into a satisfying song cycle. Such lively tracks such as “Championship Vinyl”, “Laura’ Song”, and “Love Junkie” instantly prove that this universally relatable material could really be set anywhere.

More later…

Starting Out In The Evening & Some Pre-Spring Cleaning

This, of course is the post prestige Oscars season – a downtime in which theaters are so cluttered with crap that the occasional worthwhile film can get easily overlooked. This is such a film:

STARTING OUT IN THE THE EVENING (Dir. Andrew Wagner, 2007)

Wagner’s directorial debut is impressive for its purposely minimal staging methods as well as its crafty casting. The masterful but shamefully underrated Frank Langella plays Leonard Schiller – a reclusive writer whose time is seemingly past. His acclaimed 4 novels are long out of print and he has struggled for over a decade to complete a new work and create one final lasting impression in the world of literature despite being told that the market is dominated by “celebrity confessions and self-help books”. His relationship with his daughter Ariel (Lili Taylor) doesn’t help matters as she is fiercely protective of him and intensely defensive about the loud ticking of her biological clock. Coming into the picture is the young glowing Heather Wolfe (Lauren Ambrose) who fashions herself as Schiller’s protégé and wants to help republish his work and re-establish his place in the pantheons of New York literary society. Trouble is she is a bit too interested in the touchy possibly painful autobiographical sources of his earlier work which cause the agitated author to cut short their first sit-down interview. Schiller does however offer: “I’ll concede this, I have occasionally drawn from my own life but I have I only done so in the spirit of objectivity.” As to whether anything develops between them I’ll plead my no Spoilers defense.

In the best sense of a ‘filmed play’ STARTING OUT… is a meticulous machine of a movie; every scene is exactly as long as it should be and every beat whether a solid point of action or a floating notion feels natural as can be in the construct. Langella, in what has to be called a “career best performance”, has an enhanced elegance to his every gesture even when on the verge of emotional collapse. Ambrose (pictured to the left) and Taylor, who appeared on Six Feet Under as remarkably different but just as strained characters, both deflect different shards of the dying light from their powerful patriarch, each hitting their stage marks with aplomb. As Taylor’s hesitant to be a Baby-Daddy boyfriend, Adrian Lester also has a well chosen charismatic demeanor and is refreshingly likable especially when considering that the stock disagreeing partner character usually is an asshole set up for audience disapproval. That’s one of many well nuanced thoughtful touches in this moving film. When Heather questions Leonard accusing him of abandoning his characters, the crux of the ginormous “does art imitate life or vice versa” question hits hard. As one noted New York poet once observed “between thought and expression, lies a lifetime.”

Now I thought I’d do some pre-Spring cleaning out of my notebook and Word files and post some reviews of recent flicks I’ve seen over the last few weeks – both new and old:

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING (Dir. Noah Baumbach, 2007)

Another film about exasperated literary minded folk uncertain of what their choices are, let alone if they are the right or wrong ones. Nicole Kidman, as the title character, is a recently separated successful writer who travels with her son Claude (Zane Pais) to her family’s old home in Long Island for her sister’s (Jennifer Jason Leigh) wedding. It is immediately obvious that she doesn’t approve of her sibling’s groom to be – Jack Black, shaggy as ever with a mustache that he claims he’s wearing ‘ironically’. As Black is an unemployed rock musician and aspiring artist we can see why. There are other concerns for Margot – the clichéd backwoods looking neighbors who menacingly demand that a tree on the property’s line be cut down, her nearby lover (Ciaran Hinds) who she may have really come to see with the wedding as a cover, and her ex-husband’s (John Turturro) constant phoning all drained her and me as I waded through.

It’s a movie in which every character exasperates every other character – Black even says: “I have the emotional version of whatever bad Feng Shui would be!” Every actor is capable and has engaging moments but the malaise that inhabits their lives fills the screen and I was left wondering why I should care for these people. When sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) asks Margot: “What was it about Dad that had us fucking so many guys? ” I really wanted to leave the room rather than hear the answer. Like Leonard Schiller in STARTING OUT… (or more aptly Harry Block in DECONSTRUCTING HARRY) both Margot and her creator – director/writer Noah Baumbach have mined their lives for their art (Baumbach in real life much more successfully before in KICKING AND SCREAMING *, MR. JEALOUSY, and THE SQUID AND THE WHALE) but even with that illustrative insight this proceeding suffers from a severe lack of wit. And to truly ad insult to injury MARGOT AT THE WEDDING doesn’t even have a wedding in it! And I don’t care if that’s a Spoiler!

* Not to be confused with the Will Ferrell family sports comedy KICKING & SCREAMING – directed by Jesse Dylan (Bob Dylan’s son for Christ’s sake!).

MARTIAN CHILD (Dir. Menno Meyjes, 2007)

Remember K-PAX? That lame ass movie with Kevin Spacey claiming to be from another planet? Jeff Bridges spends the whole film trying to figure out if he’s crazy or actually telling the truth? No you don’t remember it? Lucky you. Well anyway this is the kids version. John Cusack plays a successful science fiction novelist and a widower who is going ahead with his and his deceased spouse’s plans to adopt. He is told by the adoption agency that they have a match, a reclusive six year old (Bobby Coleman) who thinks that he hails from the red planet. He wears what he calls a “hold me down” weight belt made out of batteries and duct tape because he feels the Earth’s gravity is weak and he could float away without it. Cusack, who was an oddball outsider himself as a child, takes to the kid but worries about the mental celestial angle. He is encouraged by his dead wife’s sister (Amanda Peet in an extremely undeveloped role) and his own sister (once again real life sibling Joan Cusack) who is justifiably cynical about the situation. Don’t worry I won’t tell if the kid really turns out to be a Martian or not.

I read on the internets that Cusack was not happy with how this picture turned out and I can see why. The editing creates an awkward mood with many stilted scenes. The DVD has 27 minutes of deleted scenes that expose dropped plot-points and reveal how much trouble the filmmakers had shaping this material. Still it’s hard to be completely hating on this movie it looks like there’s a good script with plenty of spunk in there somewhere with many good lines like Joan Cusack’s about her own kids – “I’ve got to take Omen I and Omen II to soccer practice!” The crisp chemistry of the supporting cast helps too – Oliver Platt as Cusack’s smarmy agent, the reliable stern Richard Schiff (Toby from The West Wing) as a case worker, the underused Howard Hesseman as a child psychologist, and Cusack’s THE GRIFTERS co-star Anjelica Huston as a literary publishing giant in a short but sweet part. As the kid in question, Coleman is cute and affective like in the scene where he reacts to a museum Mars landscape: “This is not how I remembered it.”

As I wrote before about Cusack, he gets a film geek free pass for his work in the seminal SAY ANYTHING and HIGH FIDELITY among others so he can do rom com crap for the rest of his life if he wants and I’ll look the other way but it’s just that a film like this could’ve been so much more. It is such a lightweight movie that it needs its own “hold me down” weight belt to keep it from floating away. With its lack of real emotional impact it’s just future Lifetime Channel afternoon fodder. You could do a lot worse than to rent MARTIAN CHILD but just like Cusack you could do a whole lot better.

SORCERER (Dir. William Friedkin, 1977)

When actor Roy Scheider died a month ago I posted a top 5 Essential Sharkless Roy Scheider Roles list. I got a few comments and a slew of email calling me on not having seen SORCERER. I put it in my NetFlix queue and just watched it so I’m happy to finally chime in on this underrated 70’s spectacle. Well, first I’ll say I hated that the only DVD version available is full screen and that it takes almost an hour to establish the premise that was as Peter Biskind’s “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls” book puts it “SORCERER revolves around the attempt of a small group of desperate men to drive a couple of trucks loaded with nitroglycerine across treacherous mountain terrain.” To get to that we have to see each of the group, along with Scheider – Bruno Cremer, Amidou, and Fransico Rabal’s violent and sometimes nonsensical background to gather somewhat why they are in exile in South America. Once we get going though it’s quite a ride – that is, if you can get past the cryptic trappings.

SORCERER is horribly titled; of course when you first hear it you think of wizards ‘n goblins ‘n such. Well, there’s nothing like that here – in fact it is so named because well, I’m not sure why it’s named SORCERER. I think I read it was because that name is on the side of a truck but I watched it with that in mind and didn’t see such. Tangerine Dream’s score as noted by Jim DeRogatis as his favorite progressive rock movie music on a recent Sound Opinions (the NPR rock radio talk show) episode about great soundtracks is definitely a synthesized symphonic wonder. Anyway as the tale goes this film opened a week after STAR WARS at the famous Chinese Theater in Los Angeles in 1977 then was again replaced by STAR WARS the week afterwards with Friedkin lamenting “I dunno, little sweet robots and stuff, maybe we’re on the wrong horse.” Maybe it was the wrong horse but Friedkin’s crazy literally off the rails (the truck on the wildly frailing wood bridge in the storm sequence is monumental in the annals of Hollywood ‘how the Hell did they do they do that?'”) movie is not one to be forgotten. I hope it gets a deluxe treatment on DVD or Blue Ray or whatever. At least let’s get a wide screen version out there. Just sayin’.

More later…

BE KIND REWIND – Viewed, Reviewed, And Returned To The Dropbox *

* It’s a film new to theaters but I couldn’t resist the old school videotape lingo.

When STAR WARS: EPISODE III – REVENGE OF THE SITH – was the first in the series to not be made available on videocassette, many reported it as the death of the VHS format. Well BE KIND REWIND is here to capture one last gasp of the magnetic medium as the final nails are hammered into the coffin. As a former video store employee who has worked for various chains over the years (most are out of business now and the remaining ones will be soon) I was really looking forward to this movie and excited that it was coming to my hometown theatre. So let’s pop it in and push play:

BE KIND REWIND (Dir. Michel Gondry, 2008)

The premise is simple – after all the rental videotapes at a neighborhood store in Passaic, New Jersey get erased, the employees who are strapped for cash and in danger of being evicted remake the films in the inventory with themselves as actors. Sounds good so far, right? I mean we get Jack Black and Mos Def playing out scenes from GHOSTBUSTERS, RUSH HOUR 2, BOYZ N THE HOOD, 2001, and many others in homemade costumes with half remembered mostly improvised dialogue. For some reason they call these 20 minute D.I.Y. versions “Sweded” and they become so popular that their store soon has a line around the block. Danny Glover is the owner of the business and the building it resides in, which he claims jazz legend Fats Waller was born in. Glover soon sees the value of the “Sweded” videos and takes part in them as do most of the customers oddly including Mia Farrow (appearing a bit frail and out of it) whose character is far from defined. Melonie Diaz is recruited to be the love interest in the remakes and she sparks some feelings in Mos Def – but that’s not fleshed out either. Also it’s cool to see Marcus Carl Franklin (the young black kid who was one of the Bobs in I’M NOT THERE) in a small part as one of the local loyal customers.

“Far from defined” and “not fleshed out” pretty much state my problems with this film. Early on the magnetizing accident which causes the blunder to set the plot in motion is a foreteller of many clunky contrived plotpoints ahead and much of the film feels extremely disjointed. Jack Black’s shtick wears out its welcome within the first 10 minutes (or sooner) and Mos Def is likable but too lackadaisical to give this material the needed zing it requires. As I suspected with his previous film THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP, Michael Gondry doesn’t appear to be the greatest writer – he really should have only directed here and let somebody more experienced with film comedy take a pass at the screenplay. The best parts are obviously the remakes – it’s great to see Glover and Farrow redo DRIVING MISS DAISY (albeit briefly – Black and Mos Def do their own version earlier on), Black’s ROBOCOP outfitted with kitchen pots and pans has its moments, and the cardboard cut-outs when they attempt THE LION KING get some laughs too. It’s amusing as well to see Black remake KING KONG because, you know, he was in a real KING KONG remake! This time however he plays the ape which might have been the direction Peter Jackson should’ve taken but I digress.

The second half with its jazz soundtrack and the neighborhood communal sentiment (which I could never completely buy into) seems stolen from Spike Lee. Not quite the ode to the soon to be extinct VHS format, nor the definitive videostore movie (not that there is such a thing) BE KIND REWIND is not without its charms but it’s a tad undercooked. Definitely not a must see on the big screen – I would recommend waiting for video. Digital video that is, that way you can go right to the good parts (the film recreations – duh!) and you can Fast Forward, I mean chapter-skip through the forgettable rest of it.

Okay, now hit Eject!

More later…