The Arbitrary ChuckJerry

You may remember the cruise I took over the summer. I booked the cruise on Expedia and part of the promotion was that I got six free months of the Netflix service, which I just started last week. My feeling is that unless you are willing to really cut into your free time to watch all of these movies as soon as you get them, then paying for the service is probably not prudent. I don't know if I'll be saying the same thing after these first six months, but I can't imagine paying $18 a month to go out of my own way to watch these movies. Also in six months, I'll probably have already seen all the movies I've always meant to see, so I won't have too much use for it. Anyway, this is all beside the point.

One movie that I have always meant to see is Annie Hall. I had never seen a Woody Allen movie before last night, and I figured that was a good place to start. It was pretty great. If all of his movies are the same, then I feel like his style might be grating after a while, but this one movie was very entertaining. Like I say, I had never seen a Woody Allen movie before, but even though I've only seen this one film, I can see that tons of movie makers have been influenced by him and many have simply stolen from him, somewhat unsuccessfully.

What came to my mind throughout watching this movie is that Kevin Smith wishes he was what Woody Allen is. Annie Hall is not about movie making so much as it is about espousing a philosophy of life. There's not much that goes into the cinematography or set dressing or anything like that, but rather the movie is really just about the exposition of the characters. There are at least 4 or 5 scenes that last for minutes at time that consist of one camera shot of two people having a conversation. There aren't any edits or tennis match type one shots, just pure conversation. These scenes aren't stagnant because, first and foremost, the conversations are entertaining and interesting, and secondly because usually the characters are walking somewhere or he brings people from the background into the conversation, so he keeps you guessing.

Kevin Smith has tried to recreate this style, it seems, with much less success. His films are also all about conversation. A lot of the pivotal scenes in his movies have a stationary camera and two or three people just talking for a few minutes. Smith is less successful in pulling this off for a few reasons, I feel. First is that Smith's scenes are just still. No movement, no action, just conversation. That's not necessarily bad, but if the conversation doesn't hold up, then the whole thing falls apart. The second thing is that Smith's characters don't talk like real people. The whole point of his movie is often just laid out in a monologue or an overly one-sided conversation. His characters speak with an eloquence that goes against what's been established for them, to the point that it's almost unreal.

That being said, I like Kevin Smith's movies. In particular I love Clerks and Chasing Amy, but both of those movies fall into the traps I mentioned. In Clerks, Dante and Randal just talk for the whole movie. There are basically two sets, with the majority of the action taking place in the convenience store. I'm not saying that people don't think deep thoughts, but the conversations in Clerks border on the inane, especially given that they are coming from two guys who work at a convenience store and a video store, respectively.

Chasing Amy hinges on one scene in which Silent Bob breaks his silence and tells the story of his relationship with a girl named Amy. Without that speech the movie loses a lot of its impact, but again, this is not a true life situation.

I guess what I mean to say is that Kevin Smith's movies are all a bit contrived. They are clearly written with the ending in mind and the rest just sortof filled in to take up the rest of the time. As I say, I do really like those two Kevin Smith movies, but his other movies all really leave something to be desired, and some of them, like Mallrats and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, just downright suck. Dogma seems to be split between Catholics and non-Catholics in terms of liking it, so maybe there's just some inside jokes I'm missing there. Didn't see Jersey Girl. My main feeling after watching his movies is that his screenplays in the hands of a good director would make for some phenomenal movies. As it turns out his great screenplays left to his mediocre directing makes for a real hit and miss proposition.

Back to the point. What's great about Annie Hall is that the conversations are real. Woody manages to keep the real life stuff true to actual human behavior and step out of the situation to give his philosophy without adversely affecting the flow of the story.

On another note, there was one part that was just directly lifted from Annie Hall and plopped down into Good Will Hunting. At one point, Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are on their first date and Woody says something like "OK, well just kiss me now and then let's go to dinner. That way we won't have to worry about it later and we can digest our food." Matt Damon and Minnie Driver have essentially the same conversation on their first date. The conversation in Good Will Hunting, as per imdb.com goes:

Skylar: You were hoping for a goodnight kiss.
Will: No, you know. I'll tell ya, I was hoping for a goodnight lay, but I'd settle for a good night kiss.
Skylar: How very noble of you.
Will: Thank you. But I was, you know, hoping for a good night kiss.
Skylar: Well, let's just get it over with. Come on, come on.

Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.