I recently came out of my own PTSD (that’s Post-Tribeca Stress Disorder) and have been trying to get back to “work.” What that means — since I do not only refer to job-related activities — has been a bit complicated. I’ve definitely had this hardcore writer’s block, in the sense that whenever I’ve been inspired to sit down and start typing, I stop just short of doing so. This blog has obviously been affected, but it’s not the only thing to which I refer. I’ve put a lot of boundaries and restrictions on what I want to write, how I want to write, where I want to write it … what this blog should be? And now, I’m trying to let it go. And simultaneously, I seem to have been waiting for a catalyst … something to spur me on and make the thoughts in my head just explode to the point where it became more important getting them down on “paper” than being lazy and … well … not.
Last night, I saw Passing Strange on Broadway. I’ve been all atwitter about it ever since. And I’ve resisted typing/writing/thinking? all day. Could it be that catalyst?
More than a month ago, I thought the catalyst would be thoughts on this year’s festival, particularly about some movies that were very important to me and which I had a somewhat large part in helping program.
Nah.
A few weeks ago, I thought it was going to be the release of Weezer’s latest “Red” album. Some have found the fourth track “Heart Songs” a bit cheesy. Some appreciate the nostalgia. I fall into the latter, but even more so, I found myself looking at much of the album (certainly the first several songs) as Rivers Cuomo’s musical equivalent of Fellini’s 8 1/2. I don’t mean to say that it is of the same caliber, but simply in its attempt — a look back at his own life, career, and what worked as inspiration for his own creativity. There’s a line in “Heart Songs”: “Then I heard the chords that broke the chains I had upon me.” Cuomo describes how hearing Nirvana’s “Nevermind” helped inspire him to get off his ass and make his own music, but not simply in a, “Hey, I’d like to do that,” way. Rather, more of releasing something that was always in him and making him yearn, but he had never been able to tap. I thought that line and that song — which I listened to repeatedly probably 45 times that week, something I rarely, if ever, do with one song — might push me to unlock my own chains, ones I had unconsciously, or not, placed upon myself.
Nope.
Then there was the start of Entertainment Weekly‘s “New Classics” lists. “The 100 best films of the last 25 years.” That sure as hell got me riled up, and anybody who ever spent any time reading this space (during its more active periods) over the last several years (I think it’s been four?) knows that nothing gets me ranting like getting me riled. Could there be a worse list? Maybe if you’re calling it the 100 most important to pop culture films, you’d have a valid argument. But there’s so much wrong with this list, I didn’t know where to start.
So I guess I didn’t.
Then I went to see the beautiful and magnificent Wall*E. Pixar’s best ever? I don’t know. I still worship The Incredibles. I’m a huge fan of Ratatouille. Both films (both made by the fantastic Brad Bird) took filmmaking — not just animated films — to new places. Pixar has managed repeatedly to do something utterly unique, innovative, and unmatched by any other maker of animated films: repeatedly produce stories and movies that can be magical, imaginative, and loved by both three-year-old toddlers (without ever talking down to them) and they’re grandparents (by dealing with incredibly substantive and complex themes) and everone in between. The Incredibles was a personal story about identity and self-confidence. Ratatouille was a peak inside the mind and determination of a creative — artistic, even — genius who just happened to be a rat. And now Wall*E took silent slapstick cinema, merged it with a little rom-com, tied it all together with an incredibly timely and important environmental theme, and made a robot with binoculars for eyes (and not much else) extremely and emotionally expressive. All while telling the most simplistic (but fulfilling) of love stories while also reinforcing the themes that even the smallest and most forgotten of us can still influence huge change if we simply let nothing get in our way.
Oh Wall*E … not even you.
So I was waiting … waiting until tomorrow night’s 7 PM screening of The Dark Knight, a film which I’ve been nearly desperate to see even before it was announced; ever since the lights came up on the first time I watched Batman Begins. I raved several times (here’s the first) about Christopher Nolan’s first Batman film. I still think it was the best film of 2005. So surely, when the lights come-up around 9:45 or 10 tomorrow, I would be ready, and inspired … or something.
But then I didn’t need to wait.
(To be continued in next post …
Out of Focus 