the groundhog day project

I wrote this movie. You'll get that later. I saw the trailer for Richard Linklater's Everybody Wants Some!! this past weekend. It was in front of 10 Cloverfield Lane (which was awesome), and the trailer kinda of made me less interested in seeing the film. Dazed and Confused was so effortlessly set in the 70s and Everybody Wants Some!! looks like it's trying a little hard to be set in the 80s. (To be fair, I don't remember ever watching the trailer for Dazed and Confused ; maybe it didn't seem so effortless cut down to a couple minutes.) The Squid and the Whale is quite effortlessly set in the 80s. Specifically, 1986. There's no Wedding Singer -style ridiculousness, no definitively 80s soundtrack more reminiscent of a VH1 special than the actual 80s. It's just set in that time, that place (Park Slope, Brooklyn).) A couple scenes in, dinner, the family dynamic is set. Frank (Owen Kline), the younger brother, randomly sticks a cashew up his nose and mo...

Scroll down past the parenthetical if you want to get to the movie. (Author's note: I have not committed to doing this film (and its versions) for the entire month, but I have excluded my original plan for the month because I realized that the next movie ( Blade Runner ) I was going to spend a whole bunch of days on wasn't going to leave as much room for discussion because its versions are just alternate cuts, not deliberately separate versions of the story. The movie ( Brazil ) I was going to end the month with fits a little closer to this, but its variations are all about meddling after the fact, not planning. And, both films have been written about so much I don't know if I could offer much in the way of original insight... Oh, I'd give you something. And, it would, at least at some point, be amazing. But, a lot of it would be repeating other sources' takes on the films in question, especially Blade Runner . (The most original thing I could do there is not act...

I realize tonight--seeing that opening dine-and-dash bit for the eighth time--that the opening scene sets up the dichotomy between Eleanor and Conor pretty well. I'm back to The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them tonight. And, if you know the film, or have been reading this past week's entries, this should make sense... First, a rundown: Opening line, from Conor: "Would you still love me if I couldn't pay for dinner?" Eleanor hesitates, Conor's seriousness taking a moment to sink in. Then, she answers, unsure, "Possibly." Conor laughs. Eleanor realizes for sure he's not kidding. She laughs, too. Conor, smiling, says, "Yeah." [Beat] "What do we do?" Eleanor: "I'm thinking." Conor suggests, "We could have a big row. And throw some shit. They might kick us out." Eleanor dismisses that option. "Uh, been done, and it would draw too much attention." She's already doing something with...

I haven't really talked about why there are three versions of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby yet. (I'm watching Her one more time tonight, by the way.) It was written as two movies-- Him and Her . Two separate scripts that shared a few scenes (with slightly different variations between those scenes). It was only after The Weinstein Company bought the film(s) that a third, combined version was requested. Editing began with Him . It's the easier film in terms of structure, because, as editor Kristine Boden tells Indiewire , Conor is "more reactive and just want[s] to keep going." Her , on the other hand, has "introspection and gravity." Conor's energy made Him a shorter film. Eleanor, being more contemplative, has the slower burn. Still, Her is only a few minutes longer than Him . And, Them is, as you might expect, longer than either one, taking pieces of each and combining them into one film for both characters. For the separate versions of...

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her has me thinking about versions of self. More accurately, how the self we project and the self that others actually experience are probably never the same thing. Not exactly, and sometimes barely at all. Like the difference for the class clown between the class laughing at you or with you. You hope for the latter, but it's usually the former. It's like that encoding/decoding thing again --you choose how to present yourself and other people get it or they don't. The interesting moments are not when they get you wrong in a negative way--that laughing at you bit--but when they get you wrong in a positive way. Like someone likes you and you don't get why. I feel that sometimes... mostly when I'm not feeling that great about myself so maybe it's an entirely different issue. My self-esteem issues and/or depression rearing its head. (Ten minutes before Stu shows up.) I understand Eleanor a little too well I think. That need...

Her . Damn, no Rom-Com opening. Just, straight to the bridge. This film is going to just go all dark (while, oddly being entirely lighter and more colourful than Him ). This is The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby . Ooh, no Conor at the hospital at all. This version of the movie is like, you know that bullshit of the other film. Put that behind you. We are moving on. A bit more with Eleanor and Katy as they leave the hospital. Eleanor tells Katy she can say anything she wants. I want her to says, "Velociraptor broccoli." Does that mean I'm weird?) Weird question, maybe: Mary says she closed Eleanor's wifi account. I assumed before that she meant the account at the apartment Eleanor and Conor shared, but that doesn't make sense. As far as Mary knows, Conor is still living there. Which means she has to be referring to some past wifi account in this house. Which mattered, what, a couple years ago at the most recent? So, 1) they have no wifi, which makes Mary a...

Ralph has no story arc in the Them version of The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby . We only see him once, when Conor brings him to Spencer's house and Spencer says hello. Ralph is, of course, the fish. In Them , he's just luggage with a name, a random bit of trivia. Spencer knows his name and maybe we find that odd, maybe it's just a passing confusions that doesn't seem important. But, Ralph has a life. Ralph has a purpose. And, damn it, Ralph serves a specific sort of role in this film... the Him version of the story. We first see Ralph when Conor goes for "a stroll" ostensibly to go home and check on Eleanor who is still in bed at 6:30pm. Conor feeds the fish before he crawls into bed with Eleanor. Ralph, then, is the first thought. A stand in for the dead child. Eleanor comes second. Ralph is Conor's preoccupation with his dead son. Ralph is responsibility aborted, responsibility perverted. Ralph is something that should be easy to take care of. Elea...

Moving on to Him . The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him in case you're just joining us. So far, I have managed to write three blog entries on the Them version, all three of which were completed at least a half hour before the movie came to its end. This is one of those movies that just grabs me and distracts me from being distracted away from it. Thing is, I've never seen the Him version before. So, the aforementioned problem may be exacerbated tonight. (I also may be inclined to short, relatively self-contained comments as I livetweeted through the Democratic Debate and The Gallows earlier tonight. We'll see.) Same Rom-Com opening as Them --the dine and dash, the park, the fireflies. Since this is Conor's (James McAvoy) version of the story, I'm guessing this will be very different right away, maybe even skip us seeing Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) try to kill herself... Yep, we cut from the titlecard to Conor in his restaurant (sorry, his "bar with un...

(I'm writing a thesis because my memory is not always what it used to be. Throw some movies in there and they'll stick. But, throw a communication theory and I will absolutely be able to understand it and explain it back to you but later I will have to look up the specifics again. Tonight, I wanted to start with a reference to encoding and decoding in basic communication, and I wanted to reference whoever first used the terms in the way I mean them here, but my theory book is... Well, it's either on a shelf in my office or another grad student borrowed it. Probably the latter. Instead of the book, I google it and find it's totally someone obvious--for we communication scholars, anyway, maybe not for the rest of you--Stuart Hall. 1973, he wrote a piece calls "Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse" and apparently that's where people started using the terms as I'm about to mean them.) Backtrack to The Beatles and "Eleanor Rigby"-...

The first awesome thing about The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them is how it starts like a romantic comedy and then makes a jarring turn with Eleanor's attempted suicide. Then, it's mostly dark, in different ways. That's what happens when your story begins after a child dies and his mother tries to kill herself. You also get an exploration of self, or an exploration into the exploration of self. Both Conor (James McAvoy) and Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) are trying to figure out who they are. Without their son. Without each other. Lillian (Viola Davis) even teaches a course on Identity Theory. (That and the broken down relationship... No wonder this film is right down my alley.) Stu (Bill Hader) doesn't know how to be Conor's friend anymore because Conor is.... Well, he's occasionally belligerent, a bit isolated, refuses certain conversation. One identity affects another. Lillian reads from Selfhood, Identity and Personality Styles , part of the followin...

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them was not supposed to exist. There were supposed to be two movies-- Him and Here --but we'll get to those later. First, the amalgam. Opening sequence: a happy couple acting younger and more in love than they will be through the rest of the movie. Next scene, Eleanor (Jessica Chastain) jumps off a bridge. A scene framed well. She walks, leaves the frame, then we hear what happens. She survives, is hospitalized and we're left to wonder how she got from Point A to Point B. As Eleanor leaves her hospital room she also briefly goes out of frame. I've seen this film once (just the Them version as the other two, even here in LA, were available too briefly for me to get to them), but I don't remember if this is a thing, something writer/director will keep doing, let the camera remain still as characters (maybe just Eleanor) step outside the frame. [Later note: in the flashback where Eleanor and Conor dance by the car, sure enough, C...

Cinderella ‘s kind of a horrible story, too. The idea that love can be found in one dance, that the prince can rescue the girl from a bad situation... except, love can feel like a rescue, I suppose. And, it’s loss can feel like... whatever the opposite is. I saw The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them today and it’s a sad story that invokes the shadow left when love (and romance) are gone. It’s an awesome film, a tragic film with the vaguest sense of hope in the end. Comparatively, Pretty Woman is a slight little thing, hardly worth another thousand negative words... Instead, I offer this. There’s a simple reason that we buy into the “romance” on display in Pretty Woman . Money and the things it can buy are important to us in this country, in the whole of the Western World, to be sure. Where other romantic comedies focus in on the other items on Dowd and Pallotta’s (2000) “norms,” Pretty Woman recognizes that all love is a transaction. Recall my discussion of social penetration ...