Advice, Like Youth

Life ain't exactly fast-paced for a security guard at the Greenwich Country Club. I have doors to lock, rounds to make, and so on, but mostly I'm just paid to monitor the security cameras, which rarely show anything interesting, and the phone, which almost never rings. So I typically take a couple of DVDs to work with me, so I'll have something to occupy my time. Hey, it's a living.

Usually, Netflix keeps me in new DVD rentals all week, but tonight I was out of Netflix movies, so I chose two DVDs off my shelf randomly. I have probably a hundred or so to choose from. That's an important point, that I chose two DVDs randomly out of a hundred.

When I got to work, I saw that someone had left a shopping bag behind the desk. Not a grocery store shopping bag, mind you, but a fancy-shmancy shopping bag from some store that probably sells women's shoes and expensive handbags and whatnot. The reason the bag caught my eye was because it had words printed on the side -- a lot of words: "Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth . . . Do one thing every day that scares you. Sing. Don’t be reckless with oher people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours." Etc.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's Mary Schmich's famous essay "Wear Sunscreen," also published under the titles "Sunscreen," "Advice, Like Youth," and its full original title, "Advice, Like Youth, Probably Just Wasted on the Young." The authorship is usually falsely credited to either Kurt Vonnegut (due merely to Internet rumor) or Baz Luhrmann (who produced a spoken-word "song" version of the essay) but Schmich is the author.

But I didn't know any of that as I read the words on the shopping bag (which doesn't mention either the author or the title of the essay, or even that it was an essay, and not just some random b.s. somebody printed on the side of the bag). All I knew was that it all sounded really, really familiar, but I couldn't place where I'd heard these words before.

After doing my rounds, checking the cameras, locking everything up, etc., I settled down to watch the first of the DVDs I'd brought along. It was The Big Kahuna, a very well-performed, and wonderfully, brilliantly written one-set drama starring Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey. I highly recommend the movie. I vaguely remembered enjoying it when I first purchased the DVD over a decade ago, but after that, I simply forgot I had it, until I picked it up off the shelf tonight without giving it too much thought.

During the closing credits, guess which song was playing? Luhrmann's musical version of "Wear Sunscreen," the same essay I'd just read on the side of the shopping bag.

Now at this point, you may be thinking "ho-hum, so what, minor coincidence, you're boring me." But to me, it was really striking. First of all, out of the dozens and dozens of DVDs, I just happened to choose this one, which I hadn't watched in years. Second of all, how many stores print Chicago Tribune essays on the sides of their shopping bags? I actually have no idea, but I imagine the answer is, "not many." Third of all, just to put things in perspective, how often do you randomly encounter the same piece of literature on the same night? I mean, okay, yeah, maybe the Bible. But aside from that, maybe, just maybe, you might hear two or more quotes from Shakespeare or Conan-Doyle in one night (although most likely not from the same piece of work). But how often do you randomly encounter and read an essay, without knowing its source, author, or title, and then, just a few hours later, just as randomly hear that exact same essay read back to you?

And if you still think I'm reading too much into it, here's a link to the essay itself on the Tribune's webpage. Tell me what you think.

retro movie review: After Hours

Along with Schindler's List (albeit for very different reasons), 1985's After Hours is probably the best movie that you'll ever have trouble sitting through. Almost inexplicably, it is usually described as a black comedy, but while the film does admittedly have occasional comedic elements, I feel that referring to it as a comedy of any kind is really a gross inaccuracy.

Griffin Dunne -- a rising star at the time, but now a relatively obscure character actor -- stars as Paul Hackett, an everyman and a genuinely nice guy who has the worst night of his life after briefly bonding with Marcy Franklin (Rosanna Arquette), an attractive stranger who happens to spot Paul reading a Henry Miller book in a diner. Turns out Miller is her favorite author too, and their conversation eventually leads to her inviting him to her apartment -- ostensibly to buy a sculpture from her roommate, but it's clear that this is really a hook-up waiting to happen.

Paul's bad night begins with the date with Marcy -- probably the most excrutiatingly awkward date ever depicted on cinema -- and gets progressively worse after Paul flees into the night to escape the pure emotional discomfort, only to experience a series of mishaps, coincidences, misunderstandings, and misadventures that lead to one uncomfortable situation after another.

As I said, there are some comedic elements to this, mostly in terms of the performance by Dunne, whose reactions as Paul are just so right -- like anyone might react in his situation, he just can't quite believe all of this is really happening to him -- but I think that the real reason why critics and film analysts mistake this for a comedy is because the script really does utilize a lot of comedic structure; experts in comedy might recognize such familiar comedic concepts as the Rule of Three, the Sane Man in an Insane Universe, and Absurdist Escalation.

But make no mistake, comedic structure and comedic performance aside, After Hours is no comedy, nor does it really try to be one. I would describe After Hours as one half suspense film and one half horror film, although here, instead of conventional horrors like monsters, insects, or homicidal maniacs, we have the horrors of pure social anxiety. While this may be an unusual -- perhaps even unique -- subject for a horror film, the advantage it has is that we're all very familiar with this particular type of horror. Face it, few of us have been chased by werewolves, zombies, or serial killers, but every one of us, even the most confident of us, know the horror of an awkward date or social faux pas all too well.

In addition to many other events in the film, Paul is, at various times in the story, invited into the apartments of three different women, played by, in order of appearance, Rosanna Arquette, Teri Garr, and Catherine O'Hara. Each of these women is ostensibly kind, good-intentioned, and even a bit seductive, and yet ultimately proves to harbor deep cruelty, paranoia, secrecy, and even insanity. A cynical viewer might be tempted to view this pattern as a bit misogynistic, but I tend to instead interpret the female characters as an (only slightly) exaggerated depiction of what it feels like to be on the dating scene. After all, there's a reason why single men so often lament that "all women are crazy!" -- not because it's actually true, but because when you're dating, that seems to be the only type of woman you encounter. It makes you wonder what this movie would have been like if the protagonist and screenwriter had been women.

Now, do I recommend this movie? That really depends on why you watch movies. If you watch movies just to have fun, this is not the movie for you. Sitting through it is a challenge, and the intentionally sparse laughs, combined with the very real tension that runs throughout the film could leave you exhausted afterward. But if you want an interesting experience, and you're the type to admire a film due to the sheer craft of the writing, I say check it out.