They all had budgets, directors, hopes. But their fate was the same ? to end up alone and unwanted in a discount bin. A moved Joe Queenan sets up an orphanage for forgotten films
At the convenience store up the street from my office stands a sad little rack filled with cut-rate DVDs. A sign proclaims "Great DVDs for less than $10", but that is false advertising. There are one or two movies on the rack that are not transparently awful ? Shutter Island, Public Enemies ? but almost without exception the DVDs, which cost $6.99 apiece, are bombs, duds, direct-to-video trash, flotsam and jetsam, bunkum, twaddle, slime and crap. Current fare includes Observe and Report, a Seth Rogen comedy about inept mall cops; Leaves of Grass, a goofy "comic thriller" starring Ed Norton as identical twins ? one an addled drug dealer, one a professor of classics; The Six Wives of Henry Lefay, a comedy starring Tim Allen; and A Perfect Getaway: The Unrated Director's Cut, a suspense thriller about a tropical vacation that goes woefully awry, in the way that tropical vacations always go woefully awry on film.
I had never heard of any of these films before I spotted them on the shelf at 7-11; neither had anyone else. The movies, I had reason to believe, were so bad that even the people who starred in them had never heard of them. There is no way that Susan Sarandon and Ed Norton are aware that they once co-starred in a movie about identical twins who get involved in an Oklahoma drug deal that goes south. No way. If you told Susan Sarandon that she was once in a movie about twins who get embroiled in an Oklahoma drug deal that goes south, she would probably say, "I seem to vaguely remember being in a movie called Lorenzo's Oil. And I might have been in a movie called Igby Goes Down. Or was it The Banger Sisters? But I have no recollection of ever being in a movie called Leaves of Grass. Are you sure you're not confusing that with A Perfect Getaway: The Unrated Director's Cut?"
Not all of the loveless detritus in the 7-11 rack were unknown commodities. In addition to movies no one had ever heard of, there were several high-profile disasters like The Lovely Bones and Br�no, movies that had huge pre-release buildups and that no one wanted to talk about ever again after their release. There were also a number of films like Couples Retreat and The Haunting in Connecticut that had fared passably at the box office but were forgotten as soon as they left the cinema. And then there were lots of films like The Six Wives of Henry Lefay.
This foreboding ensemble elicited an unexpected response, welling up from the cockles of my heart. There was a time when I would feel schadenfreude wash over me whenever I happened upon a once-ballyhooed motion picture that had fallen flat on its face. But now that I am older, wiser, nicer, I feel a tinge of melancholy whenever I walk past a rack containing The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call ? New Orleans and Drag Me to Hell and The Gold Retrievers. All of these films, no matter how bad, started out as projects that someone believed in. Just as Mussolini and Pol Pot and perhaps even Rod Stewart first drew breath as cuddly infants with at least one parent or aunt or neighbour who adored them, Br�no and Leaves of Grass and The Six Wives of Henry Lefay all started out as children that somebody loved. And now they were little more than orphans in the storm.
When there was still a video store in my town ? there used to be three ? I felt it served a useful function as a kind of old folks' home, perhaps even a mausoleum, where bad or forgotten films could go to die. Or fester. You could wander through the rows of decaying VHS tapes and come upon films that had not been rented for years and pay grudging respect to their memory and perhaps even quote a line from Shelley's Ozymandias: "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair." Though utterances like that were pretty rare in my video store. The movies, by and large, were horrid, sad, misbegotten. A lot of them starred Steve Guttenberg. Films like The Gun in Betty Lou's Handbag and Can't Stop the Music and Ernest Scared Stupid and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension were forgotten soldiers from a bygone war. The war had not gone their way. But at least the films were still there. At least there was some physical record that they had once existed. At least in some way their contributions to our civilisation ? however wan, however pitiful ? were being honoured.
Now the video stores are all gone ? there is not one within four miles of my house. The only place you ever see forgotten films is in places like the 7-11. There they sit, lifeless, unloved, for a few months until they are replaced by other movies no one really wants to own, even for $6.99. This makes me feel said. It was true, as I would soon come to understand, that Leaves of Grass and Observe and Report were not the stuff of which dreams were made, unless you were talking about bad dreams. But all of these movies, at least at the moment of their inception, were films that a studio had hopes for. All of these films had budgets, directors, soundtracks, hopes. A few even had screenplays. All of these films once had a chance to hit the jackpot. And now all of these films were languishing in the bargain rack, forlorn and forgotten.
The whole thing made me so sad that I recently decided to set up an orphanage for unloved and abandoned films. Here I would house unwanted films until proper homes could be found for them. Lots of people have collections that include The Seventh Seal and The Godfather and Casablanca. Who cares? Anyone can build a collection of great films. Building a collection of bad films, of films the public has turned their back on, requires a special brand of courage and compassion. Compassion, I have come to realise, has always been my long suit. Hidden, perhaps, but long. For deep inside I love all movies ? not just the good ones ? and believe that all motion pictures deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Maybe not the ones starring Jack Black.
My DVD orphanage, though small, is steadily growing. In addition to the films cited above, it now includes three Sandra Bullock movies, two starring Vera Farmiga, two movies about horses and one about a missing lynx. No DVD is admitted to the orphanage without my first viewing it, yet surprisingly few are turned away. And in the two months I have been doing this, I have noticed an eerie similarity between orphaned videos and orphaned children. Just as many children are put up for adoption not because there is anything wrong with them, but simply because their parents cannot afford to keep them, many videos have been cast out into the darkness through no failing of their own. State of Play, in which Russell Crowe plays a shaggy reporter investigating the murder of a woman romantically linked with a US congressman who used to be his roommate (Ben Affleck), is by no means a great movie, but it is not an atrocious movie, either. It is true that Crowe's hair is somewhat preposterous and bears no relation to the hairstyles that reporters at contemporary newspapers actually sport. It is true that Rachel McAdams, as usual, doesn't do much. It is true that Ben Affleck, as usual, doesn't do anything. But the story is catchy enough, and the film is at least as good as most other films released this year, at least as good as Source Code or Sucker Punch, at least as good as The Lincoln Lawyer. No, better. And the cruel irony is, in a few months, The Lincoln Lawyer will force State of Play off the $6.99 rack and down into the abyss of forgotten films. That is just not fair.
State of Play is not unique. The Lovely Bones is a lifeless dud, yes, but it does not actually make the viewer physically ill. It merely shows that director Peter Jackson works best with hobbits. A Perfect Getaway, which features Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich as hapless newlyweds on a doomed tropical honeymoon, is actually quite good, with a very, very unexpected twist toward the end. Drag Me to Hell is passable, The Haunting in Connecticut so-so, and even Observe and Report has a few chuckles here and there and a fine performance by Seth Rogen. These are all films that deserve good parents, films for which I hope to one day find proper homes, now that I have watched them. Already, the cook at my local restaurant has put in a request for A Perfect Getaway, and my daughter is willing to take in State of Play. On a trial basis. To see how things work out.
Are there any films I regret taking into my orphanage? Only one. Of the 35 movies I have adopted, only Br�no stands out as the evil child no one would ever take off my hands. With its intense contempt for gays, Americans, society, the world, everything and everybody, Br�no is the Bad Seed, the Offspring, and the Child of the Corn all rolled into one. Br�no is really Michael, the Jason who must be quarantined, the Damien who must be kept apart from the other children, lest he contaminate them. I see no adoptive parents in the future for Br�no; I see no happy ending to this tale. First thing tomorrow, Br�no's going back to that rack in the 7-11. It's where he belongs.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/19/unloved-movies-leaves-of-grass
No comments:
Post a Comment