Day Three: The TV Set

I don't know if I would have ever discovered The TV Set (2006) without my favorite one-stop shop for semi-elitist pop culture news and reviews: The Onion A.V. Club. The film, directed by Jake Kasdan (better known for directing Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), has been mentioned multiple times by the site's writers as being a sharp, funny, and woefully underrated look at the making of a TV sitcom pilot. I finally got around to watching it through Netflix's watch instantly feature, which will surely be the source for many of my daily movies on this blog.

I liked the movie a lot, because I love movies and TV shows about movies and TV shows. Also because it's hilarious. Sigourney Weaver's batty variation on the Faye Dunaway character from Network had me laughing with almost every line. The comparisons to Network are obvious--an inside look at the running of a TV network, the ruthless desire for ratings, the souring of everything into crass entertainment--but while that film has some great scenes and performances, it's pretty harsh and stilted. Maybe it's just that I'm familiar with current TV, so I know what The TV Set is commenting on: lowest common denominator reality shows become "Slut Wars," and sitcoms with bland leads, shallow jokes, and meaninglessly zany titles become "Call Me Crazy." But The TV Set is not only realer to me than Network, it's also funnier, and with more sympathetic characters for the most part.

I'm often depressed by the anti-intellectual strain and tendency toward mediocracy in American society, as only a properly snobbish hipster can be. I despise the celebration and rhetoric of politicians like Sarah Palin, who claim to be just your average red-blooded Americans, and the distrust and labeling of those like Barack Obama, whose Ivy League education and oratory skills are seen as being out of touch, rather than important assets for a world leader. The idiocy of some sitcoms was of course exaggerated in the film, the writing made cartoonishly horrible. But while watching the film, although much of my laughter was rueful and cringing, I did think to myself that it's really not so bad. There are some pretty smart and hilarious shows out now, and a lot of them are on network television. The dumbing down of Hollywood is real and at times hugely depressing. (Just think of those movies Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer keep churning out--Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, etc.) But despite my elitism, I'm a movie and TV optimist: I'll prefer to hunker down and watch The Office and Milk, keeping dubious faith in the people who make what I love.

Day Two: Synecdoche, New York

I watched Synecdoche, New York for the second time in two days. My friend Ben, who loves watching and discussing classic and acclaimed films even more than I do, told me that I would have to watch it at least three times, but I think I'd have rewatched it even without his advice.

I knew I would enjoy the film, because director Charlie Kaufman wrote the scripts for three of my favorite movies: Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It is definitely even deeper and more postmodern than those films, but it is just as emotionally resonant--for me, anyway. It centers on Philip Seymour Hoffman as a theater director, Caden Cotard, using his MacArthur grant money to create a huge, years-long, audience-less play that recreates New York City inside a warehouse and his life and relationships in scenes, played out by actors who in turn become part of his life, until the lines blur between what is real and false. His play is about death, what everyone is going towards, and it's about love, what everyone wants.

Synecdoche means a part that comes to represent the whole, and I think that's what the film, and Caden's play, is about. It's a microcosm of life, the search for meaning, the long years of waiting for something to happen that will probably turn out very differently from what you expected. And then you die, as the character ultimately does in the last second of the film. You think you are the center of the world, and you only see yourself, as the character does. But you're not the only one: "There are nearly 13 million people in the world, and none of these people is an extra. They're all the leads of their own stories."

Near the end of the film, everything begins to be connected, in shattering and melancholy ways. And that too, I think, is like life: "Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true." It's this vision, this fractal-like view of the world, that I would like to believe. Everything connected, in ways we can't even imagine.

Ben told me to watch the movie imagining that it's about me. I didn't wholly do that--the characters are interesting and fully realized enough--but I can see how that makes sense. One thing that I got from it, though I don't know if this message was intended, was that we never know how things will turn out, except that we'll all die. Caden's relationship with Hazel ends uncomfortably when they are young, and when they run into each other on the street years later it's fairly awkward and impersonal. In another movie, maybe that would be the last of them, signalling that their love has turned into cold politeness. But years later, when they are old, they reunite again and become lovers for a brief, happy moment.

Maybe because I'm overly influenced by movies, sometimes an awkward conversation with a friend or a long stretch of not talking to someone will lead me to gloomily believe that we're not close anymore, that we never will be. But then we talk again and are friendly. As in the film, life keeps going until you die; there aren't resolutions until the final one. I don't know exactly what that means--and oh, there's so much more in the film I can't really begin to understand--but I think it's true.

Day One

GUIDELINES

As the title of this endeavor implies, I will, from now until the end of April, watch one movie per day. More than one is perfectly acceptable.

Movies seen in the theater count; movies screened in class do not.

A day may pass without a movie being seen, but it must be atoned for by the end of the week with two movies in one day.

Each movie will be logged here.