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Lazy Filmmaking
I'm very curious about the Literary Hitmen who bust into
Luke Wilson's apartment and set fire to his laptop. Alex
and Emma gives us no explanation, but I've got to believe
that in the current climate of author-worship that publishing
companies have to resort to drug-dealer tactics just to get
these bastards to meet a deadline. Really, haven't we cultivated
this myth of the reclusive genius long enough? I think it's
about time we started hiring vicious hitmen to bust
into writer's apartments to threaten their lives and set fire
to their laptops—under that kind of pressure, perhaps
Ms. E. Annie Proulx wouldn't ramble on two-hundred pages too
long about Quoyle's goddamn knots. In fact, I think it an
imperative that, for the good of American prose, publishing
companies start hiring Colombian drug lords to bust into Cormac
McCarthy's ranch house and threaten to cut his balls off.
These are the things you think about during Rob Reiner's
stultifying, half-ass Alex and Emma. Alex and Emma
is a take on a Anton Chekhov story in which a writer is
given deadline else he'll be killed, so he hires a stenographer
to type the story as he dictates; they fall in love when the
writer discovers his muse as he explores the meaning of love
in his fiction. Of course, this plot is a tough sell in these
modern times, but logic is not going to stop Rob Reiner, who
solves its problems as Donald Kaufman would: He throws two
cute people in front of the camera and lets them mug through
impossible set-ups.
That might work as romantic comedy version of The 3,
but here, the leads are too interested in being cute than
interesting. Luke Wilson's shtick works in Old School
because Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn require a straight man,
but here, the romance needs some sort of spark. Kate Hudson
is spunky enough, I guess, but I can't get a handle on this
Alex guy. Wilson's dullard-nice guy persona plays nicely in
Charlie's Angels because the joke is that we're supposed
to believe that a stay-at-home like Pete catches an action
girl like Natalie. But the joke in Charlie's Angels is
the problem with Alex and Emma. Alex is a Wal-Mart
romance writer with a mediocre personality, so why do we care
if he hooks up with Emma? She can't be too interesting,
else we can't buy the relationship; but if she's not interesting
either, then why should we care about this relationship at
all? As Alex informs us, "I know the characters, and
they tell me where the story goes." But if the characters
are static, then the story doesn't go anyway either.
In fact, I think we're supposed to sense that Alex's book
is pretty mediocre. Which is fine, but this notion isn't played
for humor; we're just supposed to accept mediocrity and that's
that. This happens to be the same terms on which we're to
take this movie. But wouldn't it be much more interesting
if this manic set-up was played closer to the fringe? For
instance, with just a month to write his book, couldn't Alex
have been flustered into writing something uncalculated, with
Emma there to infuse the passion, and thus he accidentally
comes up with something ground-breaking? Couldn't it have
been about the madness of the artistic process?
No, that's not Rob Reiner has in mind. We're just supposed
to accept that Alex is a dispassionate writer and this is
a dispassionate film. I could barely believe my ears when
I heard Rob Reiner tell his writer, "You have a major
talent, but you're pissing it away" while drinking scotch
in a bathrobe—but, ultimately, that's the truest insight
into his artistic process in the whole film. Reiner has just
given up and decided to cash in on the legacy of When Harry
Met Sally, certainly the best romantic comedy since Annie
Hall. Harry and Sally are both title-worthy because they
are complex, interesting characters in a complex, interesting
situation that requires them to navigate emotions they've
not confronted before; Reiner puts us through the wringer
such to earn his "destiny" ending. He even bumpers
different scenes with "interviews" of older couples
who enjoy love in their waning years, telling tales of hardship
and love's "destiny." The message is not that love
is some mystical union of fate, though fate (or luck) introduces
them, but forgiveness and sincerity ultimately triumph over
heartache. This transcendent understanding arises from a relationship's
hardships; the tougher the trials, the tighter the glue that
holds them together over the long haul. That's why we believe
it when Harry and Sally end up sharing a loveseat of their
own: Genuine intrigue in each other's personality moves them
to explore each other's emotions so deeply. When Harry
Met Sally is a tense movie that teeters on the tragic,
yet keeps the audience interested by the wit of the characters.
We know why Harry can't let Sally go: She proved, beyond any
shadow of doubt, that women can fake it. In a restaurant.
In front of God and everybody.
The fake orgasm scene is more than just a temporary release
of Sally's repressed free-spirit; it punctures Harry's inflated
sexual ego. Compare that multi-layered effect to a similar
love-in-bloom scene in Alex and Emma: Kate Hudson throws
a football about ten yards to some kid in the park. Wow, that
is free-spirited—had this been a Miramax movie, at least
they could have brought in Ashley Judd or Kate Winslet to
make out with Kate. Another scene comparison compounds the
point: Harry and Sally are at the mall, where Harry finds
a karoke machine, and busts into a few lines of Oklahoma!
right there in the store. Sally is amused, so, despite her
horrible singing voice, she jumps into the serenade. Then
she spots her ex-boyfriend at the counter and confronts him.
He wears an expensive suit under his wool trench coat, sporting
a young blonde on his arm. He is uptight and upwardly mobile,
but we see immediately that Sally saw him as security and
was probably more concerned with not embarrassing herself
and "driving him away" than being the witty, funny
girl he met. When her performance as his girlfriend no longer
measured up to his vanity, he dumped her. As the audience,
we see what she doesn't: Harry is a deeply flawed individual,
but she doesn't have to perform for him out of vanity; she
performs for him (in the restaurant, in the mall) because
she's not really performing at all. There's no pretension,
just Harry in a flannel shirt with his sleeves rolled up singing
show tunes in the mall. Of course Harry is unworthy of her
at this point, so the story continues...the point is that
we get all of this, and more, from just one damn scene.
That's called "writing," my friends—something
Rob Reiner movies used to be interested in: Remember a little
Oscar-winner called Misery? But in Alex and Emma,
Reiner develops the same plot construct thusly: Alex is talking
to his ex-girlfriend at an outdoor cafe; Emma sees them, calls
him an asshole, gets on a bus, and Reiner throws on a melancholy
pop song. Most indicative of lazing storytelling is substituting
pop songs for dialogue, pretty much telling the audience that
your characters have nothing interesting to say. Alex and
Emma's big fall-in-love afternoon is set to some pop song,
probably Jewell or Sheryl Crow; I don't remember and that's
the point. Emma's cute and that's all the insight she has:
Her literary advice on "heaving bosoms" is like
using the Oprah Book Club as your test audience. She's no
Sally, Mr. Reiner; that's the truth, and if you think otherwise...YOU
CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!
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