The fall of 1995 will always have a cinematic place in my mind. I had just returned from two years in Asia, the second of which was spent teaching in South Korea. After seeing edited films including a two-hour version of Pulp Fiction instead of two hours and thirty-four minutes, I was hungry. The independent film movement was well under way. As I'd give any mainstream movie a shot, a friend and I saw Showgirls, directed by Paul Verhoeven who had done Robocop, Total Recall, and Basic Instinct. I had yet to see The 4th Man, which got him international attention in 1983.
So we went to see Verhoeven's latest with many other guys and a few elderly couples. The theater was packed on a Saturday afternoon. About ten minutes in the script by Joe Ezterhas, then the highest paid screenwriter in history, went from bad to worse. The direction, the characters, everything was so obvious, trite, and insipid, I left after an hour against my friend's wishes. I walked out, nodded with a smirk to the smiling people behind concessions, and entered The Usual Suspects, which I'd seen a few weeks earlier and was still thinking about. I joined about five others in the theater and watched about forty minutes. It was early in the story with characters getting to know one another with their distinct personalities revealing themselves. The first thing that occurred to me was that I walked out of a forty million-dollar movie and into a vastly superior six million-dollar movie.
I walked back into the movie we paid matinee price to see. "Did it get any better?" I asked my friend.
"Man, this is the worst thing ever," he said.
Sometimes we give talent leeway, and we have to hold the talented accountable, which can be ultimately good for them. Or, sometimes, we have to see what a proven artist is up to, what he/she is working on these days, and boy can they stumble. More remembrances of that great season to come.
So we went to see Verhoeven's latest with many other guys and a few elderly couples. The theater was packed on a Saturday afternoon. About ten minutes in the script by Joe Ezterhas, then the highest paid screenwriter in history, went from bad to worse. The direction, the characters, everything was so obvious, trite, and insipid, I left after an hour against my friend's wishes. I walked out, nodded with a smirk to the smiling people behind concessions, and entered The Usual Suspects, which I'd seen a few weeks earlier and was still thinking about. I joined about five others in the theater and watched about forty minutes. It was early in the story with characters getting to know one another with their distinct personalities revealing themselves. The first thing that occurred to me was that I walked out of a forty million-dollar movie and into a vastly superior six million-dollar movie.
I walked back into the movie we paid matinee price to see. "Did it get any better?" I asked my friend.
"Man, this is the worst thing ever," he said.
Sometimes we give talent leeway, and we have to hold the talented accountable, which can be ultimately good for them. Or, sometimes, we have to see what a proven artist is up to, what he/she is working on these days, and boy can they stumble. More remembrances of that great season to come.
