I've been thinking about that Hitchcock "bomb under the table" idea. I suspect that the reason the idea doesn't make any sense to me is that it flatters the audience. "Hitch," (that's what us director types call him) often talked about the importance of putting an audience in a superior position. But to me, giving someone an unwarranted position is flattery—something I'm not inclined to do.
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Scanned through Love me if you dare today. It was even more beautiful and stylish than I remembered it. But the story is depressing, sort of like an Amelie of the grotesque.
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I was at Border's today and I thumbed through Mike Figgis' book on filmmaking. The fact that it came out two weeks ago and there are now 33 copies on sale at Amazon starting at $6.50 should tell you something. It's more of a pamphlet than a book, a collection of anecdotes and not-particularly-helpful tips. I suspect what's making this book so unpopular is Figgis' anti-aesthetic. While DV Rebel is about making your stuff look more movie-like, Figgis tells you that he would have shot a huge expensive medieval set on DV because it would be more visually striking in a reality show kind of way. In general, the book comes off as grumpy and quirky, a how-to book that is more about the director's idiosyncracies than anything else.
In general, the more books by directors I read, the more I realize how I'm not one of them. The directors I feel the most kinship for are the ones who use technology to transform the filmmaking process like Robert Rodriguez and George Lucas. They are also known for writing their own material and working outside the traditional Hollywood system. Maybe my next project should be a space movie with lots and lots of blood. And vampires.
2 comments:
here's my most recent experience appreciating the bomb under the table idea: i'm reading a great short story (yes, i am in the middle of it - that tells you about my attention span) about a failed pothead screenwriter who finally gets a meeting to pitch a hackneyed horror script, then goes out gambling in City of Industry the night before the big meeting to "relax" and gets mixed up with Russian mafiosos. The story is full of funny observations, but it's pretty clear that the element that propels it is the fact that he might miss his big pitch meeting, and that his wife may consider this failure "the last straw". The bomb is 2 things in one - high stakes and time pressure, it addresses 2 pretty good questions an audience has: why should I care, why should I care at this particular time, the audience superiority thing is not at work in this particular story, because the main character/narrator is fully aware of those 2 things all along and it still works.
Actually that wouldn't be a bomb under the table... in the idea of dramatic irony, the people in the movie by definition don't know that the bomb is there and they continue on with their everyday lives. Only we, the audience know it's there. Curiously, in the illustration of this idea, the bomber himself looks like a Middle Eastern terrorist!
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