"Once Upon a Time...Inherent Vice."

*As always, I write these articles under the assumption that you’ve seen the film, so...SPOILERS. (This also applies to Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood.)

I’m still sticking with my current monthly plan of Van Damme, Oedekerk, and western, but getting a chance to see Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood inspired me a bit. That’s why I went ahead and wrote a review of that, but it also made me want to revisit Inherent Vice. Basically, I wanted to rewatch Once Upon, but that wasn’t a possibility for me, so I went with the film it most reminded me of with Inherent Vice. 

Once Upon a Time...Inherent Vice

There are some obvious connections between these two films (the setting, the Manson references, the comedic tone, etc.), but the main connection I found was both films’ theme dealing with the end of an era. It’s as if Inherent Vice’s world is what Tarantino wanted to prevent by changing history at the end of his fairy tale. That’s probably why Once is a much lighter, funnier film than Inherent Vice. 

In Inherent Vice, the overall point (as far as I’m concerned, anyway) was the death of the carefree ‘60s and the birth of the paranoid ‘70s. This is evidenced by the general tone, especially the music, of the film, but it’s pretty obvious with the plot, when you can follow it, that is. You see the co-opting of the hippie movement (Bigfoot playing a hippie in a commercial, Owen Wilson being planted within the community by a government agency), and the general fear of hippies and drug users because of Charles Manson (when the cop pulls over Doc with Dr. Blatnoyd, Japonica, and Denis he lists all the things they’re on the lookout for and Denis even namedrops Manson). You get the sense that within Doc’s own life things were simpler when he was with Shasta, but now things have changed and it seems like everything is controlled by sinister forces. So even when they seem to end up together at the end, Doc is still looking in the mirror behind him, as if someone might be following him. Things will never be the same. 

This is what Tarantino laments in Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. He’s more specifically concerned with Hollywood (hence, the title) than the general culture, but it’s still about how the Manson murders helped put an end to a carefree era. You get the sense of foreboding with Once Upon anytime you see the Manson women (hitchhiking, dumpster diving, etc.), and it comes to the forefront when Cliff ends up at the ranch, in an amazingly tense, creepy sequence. Overall, things are kept fairly light because Tarantino’s film is a fairy tale, not only for the main characters of Rick and Cliff, but for all of Hollywood, as well. Tarantino’s film posits that stopping Manson’s followers could let that world stay the same. You could argue that stopping Manson’s followers would not have stopped the change in our culture, but it is a fairy tale, so in that world maybe it could have. 

This is why I think Inherent Vice and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood make a great double feature. And it doesn’t matter what order you watch them in. If you go with Vice first, you see a more historically accurate change in the culture, and if you follow that with Once Upon, you get to what things were like before and how it could have been avoided. I think it works better with Hollywood first, though. In that order, you get to see this world and its alternate history, and Inherent Vice becomes this darker sequel about what would have happened if things went differently at the end of Hollywood. Either way, both films create a world I wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon in.

It’s weird feeling nostalgic for an era I never experienced.

Feeling nostalgic for the world of either film is strange since I wasn’t alive during this time. It’s nothing new to want to live in a fictional world that I don’t personally identify with (like, say, wanting to live in the world of Star Wars even if I would have probably just been a moisture farmer or nerf herder…), but to feel a bit of nostalgia for a real time period I didn’t experience is a strange feeling because it’s a world I almost experienced. 

I was born in 1984, so most of my childhood memories are late ‘80s/early ‘90s. To me, those were carefree times, but I’m sure they weren’t to adults who had grown up in the ‘50s and 60’s. So I think this feeling that the world changed because of one or more events is something that happens to every generation. For me, it’s 9/11. But that also happened during my senior year of high school, a common time for people to start thinking more about the world instead of their own silly lives. 

My generation is unique, however, in that we will be the last people to remember a time of landline phones, no internet (at least no internet in its current ubiquitous form[fun fact: Pynchon included a subplot about the beginnings of the internet in the book, so even that was covered to a degree]), no DVR, etc. I still remember a time when driving around was a thing, and people had to track each other down to hang out and make plans. We had to look things up the hard way, and the world could be more interesting and mysterious due to our lack of information. Now, with information both real and fake being presented at a nonstop rate, it’s easy to look back to my childhood, or an era like the ‘60s, and think, “Man, I wish things were like that again.” This is all ignoring the common issues with nostalgia, by the way, like the fact that no time period is ever as great or simple as you remember it, and odds are it was a terrible time period for entire groups of people different than yourself. But at face value, that’s where my nostalgia for an era I never experienced comes from.

That written, it’s not so crazy to feel like there was a time in my life that was similar to Inherent Vice and Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood. With Vice, the main thing that comes across to me is the generally hanging out feeling I get as Doc seems to randomly wander through the story. I feel like high school was like that a bit: just living in the moment, not worrying too much about the future. As for Hollywood, I feel like the movies I grew up watching aren’t really made anymore, so Hollywood has changed for me. Once again, I think this happens to every generation, and it has a lot more to do with getting older than it does with cults and terrorists. But who wouldn’t want to live in a fairy tale where these terrible things never happened?

Why do I own this?

It’s a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

Random Thoughts

“Someone might be watching.” The foreboding beginning is brought full circle in the final moments of the film as Doc keeps checking his mirror as if he’s checking for a tail. The era of paranoia had begun.

Brolin in that commercial at the beginning is the most subtly threatening hippie of all time.

“So while suspect, that’s you, was having alleged midday nap so necessary to the hippie lifestyle…”

Doc watching Bigfoot eat that chocolate-covered banana…

Now that I’ve seen Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood, I get the joke Doc makes to the FBI guys about “missing” an episode.

“What’s a Puck Beaverton?” Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from Game of Thrones: “What the fuck’s a Lommy?”

“[F]rom a bass player turned record company executive, which trend watchers took as further evidence of the end of Hollywood, if not the world as they know it.” I think of this and Once Upon as films very much about the end of Hollywood and the world as people knew it back then.

“‘Gee,’ he thought, ‘I don’t know.’”

I kind of disliked/didn’t pay much attention to Sortilege’s narration the first couple times I watched this. Watching it now, I feel like her narration, while nonsensical at times (the astrology stuff, but maybe that’s just me), actually sums up a lot of the film’s themes.

“Are you sayin’ that the U.S. is somebody’s mom?”

The Last Supper image with the pizza is one of my favorites. It beautifully visualizes Owen Wilson as Christ-like (mainly in that he has returned from the “dead”), and I remember reading about it in the book and PTA captured it perfectly.

I never give this film enough credit for being a love story. That scene with Doc and Shasta looking for dope after calling the number from the Ouija Board is a great moment that effectively captures what it’s like to be in a great relationship during a carefree time. It is the perfect subplot (in a film that seems to be nothing but subplots) for the theme of innocence lost as paranoia sets in. In the film, that theme applies to the changing culture in America at the time, but it can also apply to Doc and Shasta’s relationship in the end. They seem to be slightly back together, but the innocent, carefree love of before is gone. Doc is driving forward, as is their relationship, but who knows where it’s headed now? And when did he start worrying about where things were headed? Perhaps that’s the real loss of the hippie culture of the ‘60s. People stopped living in the moment are started living in fear of the future. But what do I know? I was born in 1984.

“You know it?”

“Shakes a tambourine.”

I have to remember to start using that instead of “rings a bell.”

This is the first time I noticed that Japonica’s dad was with the Voorhees-Krueger law office. Of all the unexpected elements of this film, a reference to Jason and Freddy is pretty high on the list.

“God help us all. Dentists on trampolines.”

“Did I hit you?”

I guess I just have a soft spot for movies that are about an end of an era without being too obvious about it.

“So you guys been working for the Golden Fang long?”

In the end, Shasta references it being like the Ouija day, and it being “Just us.” But Doc looks suspicious of this now. 

“Under the paving-stones, the beach!” I forgot this text was at the end of the credits. I think it fits in with my general thoughts about the theme of the film, in that the corruption, drugs, and paranoia in general became the paving stones while enjoying a simpler life was the beach.

"The Sisters Brothers" and "Deadwood" - Children in the Wild West

*As always, I write these articles as if you’ve seen the movie, so...SPOILERS.

I’ve slowly but surely developed a monthly plan for this site. I begin each month with a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie, and this past month I wrote about a random comedy I own and decided to make that a monthly entry. Then, after thoroughly enjoying Powers Boothe’s performance in Sudden Death, I decided to look back at some westerns I own. (So for the next few months, expect at least these three types [Van Damme, comedy, and western], with other films peppered in here and there.) It would make the most sense to start with Tombstone, which featured a very fun Boothe performance. But it reminded me more to rewatch Deadwood since the movie is coming out this weekend. I didn’t want to write about an entire TV series (perhaps I will one day cover the entire series of Deadwood), so instead I watched The Sisters Brothers, a movie I recently added to my collection. As you’ll read, this choice makes more sense than you might think in regards to Deadwood.

The Sisters Brothers and Deadwood: Children in the Wild West

When I first watched The Sisters Brothers, I was a little disappointed. I was expecting something a little more traditional, but instead I got a very offbeat, surprisingly funny, modern western. Once I realized what the film was, I embraced, and it made my top ten list last year. I was mostly taken with the relationships in the film, mainly between the titular brothers but also between Riz Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal’s characters. These were grown men engaged in typically serious adult things (murder, greed, gold mining, etc.), but they treated each other like children, often getting into petty spats and talking of their feelings being hurt.

I found it funny and touching, which is why I liked it so much. Funny and touching is a difficult combo to pull off. I started rewatching Deadwood recently because of the movie, and I remembered what I loved so much about that show. While it also dealt with similar adult things, many of its characters were very childlike. Most of them simply want to make friends. A. W. Merrick getting giddy when he is able to walk and talk with Bullock, Star, and Utter; Calamity Jane and Joanie Stubbs (and Mose) finding friendship. Blazanov finding joy in acceptance in the camp. There are also multiple instances of characters getting their feelings hurt, and letting people know about it. The obvious example is E. B., who spends much of the series angry at being left out. But there’s also Dan, presented as one of the toughest characters, who nearly breaks down in tears when rebuked by Swearengen. And then there’s the fascination the characters have with children in general. Tom Nuttall (tragically) showing William Bullock his new bike. Mose and Jane’s interest in the school children. There’s certainly a metaphor there about how young our country was, especially in that time and place. But I think David Milch was simply using the western as a backdrop to show that no matter how serious our business gets, we are all still children in many ways.

The Sisters Brothers wholly embraces this. Charlie and Eli are killers, but they are also children. The brother relationship is an easy set up for this: teasing, fighting, etc. But it goes beyond that. Charlie basically has temper tantrums and is prone to hitting someone if he gets upset. Eli is more gentle, forming a bond with his horse, and inquisitive, as he is always amazed at new technology such as the toothbrush. With Hermann and Morris, it’s more the Deadwood route, as they embrace friendship over greed, although greed is steal a big part of their plan.

So what is it that draws me to such stories? I suppose, especially now that I have children, I am fascinated with how long a person can hold onto the simple feelings of childhood. I myself have taken to embracing my childhood love of dorky things rather than feeling too old for them. I find it amusing when an adult embraces their inner child, and I always find it touching when someone can admit they are lonely or their feelings are hurt and want to make things better. So a big moment that won me over in this film was the dinner fight between Eli and Charlie, and Eli’s confrontation of Charlie the next day. He was upset because Charlie hit him in public. The scene is emotionally effective, and it ends very humorously when the tension is resolved by Charlie letting Eli hit him for payback. That is why I love this movie so much. It makes me feel something and think about humanity, then it turns things around and makes me laugh.

Much like Deadwood, I think one of the messages of The Sisters Brothers is that despite out deadly serious actions, we’re all just kids playing and being adults. Just look at the ending. The brothers return home to be taken care of by their mother, and the final shot is a visual metaphor for the perpetual children theme: a grown man lying in his childhood bed, his feet now hanging over the end. It’s a very poignant ending, and it makes this western stand apart in my collection.

This is a weird western, but most are these days.

Once I accepted this as a modern, weird western, I enjoyed it very much. I love traditional westerns, but I’m also a big fan of films like this, which take expectations or tropes and shake things up.

The main aspect I like about The Sisters Brothers is how it shows elements of daily life not always shown in westerns. (Deadwood was pretty good about this, as well.) Some things I noticed included showing them cut their own hair, Eli’s aforementioned discovery of a toothbrush and his struggle to figure out how to use it, Charlie actually being hungover from drinking whiskey nonstop, how long it takes to travel from place to place, the dangers of sleeping outside (no scene made me cringe as much as when that spider crawled in Eli’s mouth), experiencing plumbing for the first time, and actually dealing with horses.

The Sisters Brothers isn’t the first movie to acknowledge these things, but there does seem to be a focus on them. Too often, westerns present this fantasy world, so I like it when one takes the time to show the mundane aspects of life at the time.

On top of that, this movie went in a direction I was not anticipating at all when the gold-finding chemical was introduced. The fact that it worked was one off part, but when Charlie dumped it all in at once and nearly killed everyone, the film took quite the turn. That is, in essence, what impresses me the most with films these days: the ability to surprise. More than that, the ability to surprise me without cheating. The Sisters Brothers is able to exist as a traditional western while also naturally going in a new direction with each scene. This is why I hold it in the same regard as Deadwood.

Why do I own this?

I consider this a companion piece to Deadwood, so in the future when I inevitably Deadwood again and again, I will also revisit this movie, so I should own it.

Random thoughts

Okay, the amount of production companies listed at the beginning is insane. Thankfully it's just on a single screen. If they each got their own title sequence the movie would be five minutes longer.

This movie made me wonder: would I instinctively know how to brush my teeth, or would I try it as John C. Reilly does?

I love how Phoenix keeps talking shit about the pretentious (and Western cliche) language of the letters they read.

"We can kill anyone we want here!"

I like how Phoenix announces that they are the Sisters Brothers when they go from place to place to see if anyone has heard of them. It plays on the Western trope of all these gunslingers being famous and known in each town they go to when the reality was most likely that a lot of hired guns and whatnot were never known.

I love the bluntness of Phoenix throughout the movie.

John C. Reilly and Gyllenhaal are toothbrushing buddies!

Jake Gyllenhaal is doing this faux fancy accent, and it works since Charlie constantly complains about how fake and pretentious he is.

This movie is darkly comedic to me because every time it seems like things are going to calmly, some violence ensues, usually instigated by Charlie. His dumping of the chemical that eventually kills Ahmed and Gyllenhaal is the most tragic example. That moment, among many others, shows how unpredictable this movie is.

Richard Brake is given about as much to do as Rutger Hauer.

"Have you noticed how long it's been since anyone's tried to kill us?"

And the most unpredictable showdown with the bad guy: stopping by his funeral to punch his dead body to make sure he's dead.

John C. Reilly punching the Commodore's dead  body is what really put me over the top with this movie. It just caught me off guard and made me laugh. The whole movie is so random, and that's why I love it.

That has to be the ancestor of Carol Kane's character from Kimmy Schmidt.

"With the participation of Rutger Hauer" That is the most accurate credit I've ever seen.

..

Crappy Nic Cage Movies that Aren't Actually Crappy #2: "8MM"

*As usual, SPOILERS throughout. Don’t read any of my articles unless you’ve seen the movie or don’t care if you find out what happens.

8MM is one of those forgotten Nicolas Cage movies. According to most critics (it’s at 22% on Rotten Tomatoes), it was an ugly film through and through. But I like it, a lot. Maybe I’m sick, I don’t know. This film works for me, I think, because I didn’t bring many expectations to it. I didn’t expect this to be an indictment of the porn industry. I wasn’t expecting some amazing mystery. I was expecting a dark, straightforward detective story filled with colorful, and terrible, characters. In that regard, 8MM is a success.

This is such a dark movie, and I just dug it from the start. The amazing cast features Cage, Joaquin Phoenix, James Gandolfini, Peter Stormare, Catherine Keener, and Anthony Heald. Phoenix is great, and he provides much needed comedic relief as he plays the weirdo to Cage’s normie. Gandolfini is perfect as porn producer scumbag whose pornos are so poorly produced that people try to return them to video stores. And Stormare steals the show with a delightfully weird performance; honestly, if this were made today, Cage would play his role. It is a detective story, but it’s nothing amazing in that regard. It’s very by the numbers. Cage follows the clues, and they lead him from one disturbing porn dungeon to another. It’s never really a mystery whether or not the video is real. The mystery is whether or not Cage will be changed by his journey, and will those responsible pay for what they did. Maybe the film gets a little simplistic with its Paul Schrader-esque violent final third, but there is still plenty left to absorb once it’s all said and done. I truly do not understand what other people saw to make them react negatively to this film. Once again, however, maybe I’m sick. But I’m sick, so is Roger Ebert. Yes! Once again, Ebert and I are in agreement. He is one of the few high profile critics who liked 8MM.

Also, I wrote about this before on my site, but I didn't go into much detail aside from, “Give it a chance!”

Should we automatically believe screenwriters when they disown a film? Also, what have I done with my life that led me to read the script of a 1999 Nicolas Cage movie? I'm starting to think these articles are saying a lot more about me than the films they're supposedly about. Oh well.

Andrew Kevin Walker was one of the most sought after screenwriters after Se7en hit big. He was synonymous with early David Fincher work, even though Se7en is his only screenplay credit with him (he’s credited as a “script doctor” on The Game and Fight Club [Fincher considered him important enough that he named three detective Andrew, Kevin, and Walker to technically get his name in the credits], and he has a cameo in Panic Room). It makes sense. Fincher’s early work is very dark and nihilistic. In fact, 8MM was originally going to be directed by him.

Instead, Joel Schumacher ended up with the job. Schumacher is unfairly written off these days largely because of his work on Batman Forever (a film I will always love because I was obsessed with it as a kid) and Batman and Robin (a film I do not love). Sure, those were two very cartoonish Batman movies, and I can see why people hate them. But that doesn’t undo films like Falling Down, A Time to Kill, The Lost Boys, and Tigerland (a movie I will definitely revisit on this site). So because 8MM was Schumacher’s first film after Batman and Robin, and because it starred Nicolas Cage, whose last film, Snake Eyes (coming up next), was destroyed by critics, it wasn’t that surprising that the film’s screenwriter disowned the movie. Of course, Schumacher and Cage fucked up a great Andrew Kevin Walker script! One critic (Ron Wells from Film Threat) even mentions that “it’s too bad the script didn’t find its way to another David Fincher who could understand it.” Schumacher was too stupid to work with such material!

Walker gave an interview to The Guardian in which I assume he was supposed to promote the film, since it was published on April 9 and the article ends with “8MM opens on April 23.” (It opened in February in the US, so at least he waited until the British release to start bashing it.) He pretty much disowns the movie, claiming that Schumacher ruined the film by including a letter from Mary Anne’s mother at the end that meant “everything is going to be OK.” He claims he didn’t watch it, and only watched a preview. (Click the link to read all of his complaints.) I decided to look up the script (I had some time to kill, okay?) to see just how different the final product was.

I skimmed through his original script (close enough to catch a typo), and I think he's being too precious with his work. He feels that the addition of Mary's mother's letter at the end made everything okay (I disagree, but perhaps it added more closure when he wanted things to end more bleakly). I think the audience needed that letter since the mother played a big part in Cage becoming emotionally involved in the case.

He also complained about a bowling scene being left out to establish Cage as a suburban guy. I guess I get that, but those two scenes, and some general cutting and switching of dialogue is not enough for him to trash talk the movie upon its release, in my opinion. When I went through the original script, I expected entire characters to be added or cut. What I read felt, to me, like the movie I watched.

Some changes are for the better, by the way. In the script, Longdale is clearly a villain upon introduction (he flat out says he disagrees with Cage being brought in and refuses to have anything else to do with the investigation). In the film, it's not that big of a surprise, but it is less obvious. Also, instead of the snuff film being in his trunk near the end, it's in a bank and he has to drive with Longdale to get it. And Max is killed offscreen while this happens.

Machine calls Cage at home in the script, which seems odd. The bigger difference is the encounter with Machine at the end of the film, and I side with Walker on this one. In the script the whole sequence is basically wordless, and it ends with Machine dead, mask still on. He lived and died anonymously in the script. He was no one and everyone. If we’re looking for commentary about bad men who do bad things, it’s a profound statement. In the film, he is unmasked, even putting on some dorky glasses (how did they not break during the fight?). He then gives a speech about doing what he does just because he likes to. There’s no reason. No monster. It’s the same thing Walker accomplished in the script without dialogue. I guess Schumacher wanted this to be extra clear, and he probably thought people would want to see a face.

Mrs. Christian's death is seemingly due to illness in the script. No letters and money left for Cage. I guess one could infer she killed herself. But this is just another example of Walker wanting it to be just a shitty world with no resolution and Schumacher adding resolution.

I do wish Max's monologue about the future of porn in America stayed in the film. His prediction was that eventually medical videos would be the only thing left for people to get off to. Maybe leaving that in would have appeased the critics that felt the porn world wasn’t analyzed enough.

A writer has a right to defend his work, but it looks to me that Walker paid the price for that interview with The Guardian. He has not had much produced since then, and in the late 90s, this guy was THE screenwriter for edgy, interesting material. But who gets the blame for 8MM? Cage and Schumacher because they're easy targets.  I think it's a good movie, so I don’t think anyone should be blamed for anything.  But if you dislike it, just know that Walker deserves blame too. Just because he claims his script was butchered doesn't mean it was, and it doesn't remove his vast input for this movie.

Is there a better version of this film from this script? Maybe. But I think Walker is wrong about the ending. He wanted it to be bleak, and he took issue with Mary Anne’s mother writing a letter that vindicates Cage’s actions. I see the complaint, but I think Schumacher looked at his film and realized, “Holy shit, I better allow just a little hope or something at the end.” Did we need Cage giving a silly grin at the end? No. But I don’t think the letter automatically makes it all okay. I’m pretty sure Cage is still going to be a bit messed up for the rest of his life because of the case and his own actions. The letter, to me, was more about showing that Mary Anne’s mother might be okay. I’m okay with finding out that there’s hope for her to move on with her life.

Reading the reviews for a film like 8MM reminds me that it is impossible to review something objectively

That’s obvious to most people, but I always try to write reviews based on the film by itself and to judge the film by what it sets out to do, not what I want it to do. It’s hard, though. How do you review a sequel, for instance, without commenting on the original? How can you review a movie like 8MM objectively if the very subject matter disgusts you? Also, how can you review 8MM by itself when you’ve seen Hardcore, the 1979 Paul Schrader film that is extremely similar? The answer is, you don’t, as evidenced by the reviews I came across on Rotten Tomatoes.

Going through the many negative reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, something occurred to me: critics’ moods and sensibilities affect their opinion. This is why it has always bothered me when a critic states their opinion as fact. Perhaps I add “In my opinion,” “I think,” and “To me” far too often in my writing. But I want to make it clear that these are my personal reactions, not some grand judgment on the film. Trust me, there are times when I am in no mood to watch a movie like 8MM, and if I watched this movie in such a mood, I would probably have a very negative response. But I watched it in no particular mood. I just wanted to watch the new Nic Cage movie. And I liked it. But mood can change that. How else can you explain why some critics decried it for the violent retribution of the third act while others, like Roger Ebert, praised it for showing that depravity has consequences?

Maybe it’s not about mood, but expectations. Many of the negative reviews seem to want the movie to do something it never set out to do. They focus on the porn aspect and feel that the film doesn’t have anything to say about it. I never watched this movie and considered it to be about porn. It’s part of it, of course; it’s the background of the entire movie. But if we’re following the trajectory of Cage’s character, the biggest revelation for him is that people, even rich people he respected, are capable of the same depravity as the lowest of the low. Even then, he wants to know why terrible people do terrible things too. Of course, there’s money, but he questions both Longdale and Nicky about whether they masturbated or got off to the death. It is about porn, in a way. Cage seems to accept the purpose of typical porn; it’s the escalation to murder that confuses him. He doesn’t seem to make the connection that perhaps porn had to lead to this. This is something Max mentioned in his monologue in the original script. Critics may have been more pleased if that monologue had stayed in, and if Cage had been more revolted and confused by all the porn dungeons he encountered along the way.

But instead, Cage was a detective, and all the porn stuff just happened to be part of the case. I saw this movie as a detective story, not a commentary on the porn industry. I think the presentation of everything makes it clear that this is an inherently terrible industry. But Cage is just trying to solve one (of most likely thousands) case of a woman destroyed by the porn industry. There’s nothing in the film that serves as an endorsement of pornography; the underground porn industry is presented as, unfortunately, just part of the world.

But hey, that’s just my opinion. Is that a cop out? Yes, it is; just as much as asking yourself questions and answering them in an article is a weak writing ploy. That’s just how I do things.

Is this an unofficial remake of Hardcore?

It’s impossible to watch this movie and not be reminded of Paul Schrader’s film, Hardcore, which was about George C. Scott venturing into the porn underworld to find his daughter. There’s a (now internet famous) scene of him watching a porno and we only see his reaction, much like Cage watching the snuff film at the beginning. Scott teams up with a porn star, and Cage teams up with a porn store clerk. Both characters end up being disposed of (Scott’s partner is no longer needed, and he abandons her, Cage’s partner is killed). And both films end in violence. Walker mentioned Taxi Driver (which Schrader wrote) as the type of movie he intended 8MM to be. How did he not mention Hardcore? I’m not saying it’s a ripoff; the guy obviously likes Schrader, so I see this is as his homage to that film.

Critics loved Hardcore (84% on RT), so why did they hate 8MM? I think it’s because of the difference twenty years can make. Hardcore was meant to be an eye-opener for the viewers. “Look at this world! That could be your daughter!” In that way, it was more focused on the porn industry and what it does to young women. 8MM does not attempt to make that statement, and for good reason. 8MM is the dystopian sequel to Hardcore: we were warned, but we didn’t listen, and now look where we are. There’s nothing shocking here for anyone. This is the world now. It’s a much more bleak look into the underground porn industry because it presents it as matter of fact. Of course this stuff and these places exist; there’s demand for it, and it’s never going away.

This brings me back again to that monologue from Max. Here it is in full:

                                                                      MAX

You've got Penthouse, Playboy, Hustler, etc.  Nobody even considers them pornography anymore.  Then, there's mainstream hardcore. Triple X. The difference is penetration. That's hardcore.  That whole industry's up in the valley. Writers, directors, porn stars. They're celebrities, or they think they are.  They pump out 150 videos a week. A week. They've even got a porno Academy Awards. America loves pornography. Anybody tells you they never use pornography, they're lying.  Somebody's buying those videos. Somebody's out there spending 900 million dollars a year on phone sex. Know what else? It's only gonna get worse. More and more you'll see perverse hardcore coming into the mainstream, because that's evolution.  Desensitization. Oh my God, Elvis Presley's wiggling his hips, how offensive! Nowadays, Mtv's showing girls dancing around in thong bikinis with their asses hanging out. Know what I mean? For the porn-addict, big tits aren't big enough after a while.  They have to be the biggest tits ever. Some porn chicks are putting in breast implants bigger than your head, literally. Soon, Playboy is gonna be Penthouse, Penthouse'll be Hustler, Hustler'll be hardcore, and hardcore films'll be medical films. People'll be jerking off to women laying around with open wounds. There's nowhere else for it to go.

Now, if that monologue gets left in, and people think of this as the new generation’s Hardcore, would critics have seen this in a more favorable light? I think so. It makes the movie more about porn in general, and what’s going on in America. It definitely broadens the scope of the movie a bit, but there’s really nothing more in the script about it, so it might not be as effective as I think it would be.

Making Max a porn actress instead of male porn star clerk could have gone a long way to make this more about the industry, especially since the character is killed at the end, instead of just being abandoned, like in Hardcore. Why didn’t Walker just do this as a remake of Hardcore? It would make so much more sense, and I think people would have responded to it favorably as the darker version of the story that fits our world today.

And while the girl Cage is looking for is not his daughter like it is in Hardcore, there’s still an element of that in 8MM. Cage’s infant daughter is a prominent fixture in the film. While it’s never overtly stated, it’s easy to imagine he’s thinking that one day it could be his daughter he’s searching for in these terrible places. Perhaps that needed to be more obvious in the film, anyway. As it is, his daughter seems more like a prop than an actual person he cares about (more on that later).

The similarities to Hardcore are undeniable. It’s just unfortunate that the filmmakers didn’t acknowledge what they were making.

"I like how sharp knives are, Machine."
"Sharp is great, but their murderability is what does it for me, Dino."

Terrible, terrible men

I mentioned that making the Max character a female could have improved the film in regards to having something to say about the industry, but that’s breaking my own rule. Judge a movie by what it is, not what you want it to be. If that’s the case, then it’s clear to me that this film wanted to focus on all the terrible men that are responsible for such an industry. Think about it, are any of these people good? I suppose Max is, but he’s on the fringe. He’s not responsible for it. Obviously Longdale, the dead billionaire who commissioned the film, Dino, Machine, and Eddie are all terrible. But what about Cage?

Cage is the “good guy,” no doubt. But look at the evidence. He is a terrible husband and father. (Yes, part of his motivation at the end is to make sure his family is safe, but it’s his fault they’re in danger in the first place.) He treats them like they’re props in his world, only to be dealt with with an occasional phone call, and even those stop after a while. As the father of a 1-year-old, I cannot imagine the hell that would befall me if, after just returning from a weeks-long job, I immediately set off on another job that kept me from home for months, and then I stopped calling altogether, and then I call screaming at my wife to get the baby and get out of the house. I’m sure my marriage would survive that just like Cage’s did. Why does Catherine Keener put up with this? I can only assume that this means something. Cage’s character is a plain, shell of a man, really. That way, he is an everyman. And the everyman is where all this porn ends up. It’s a common claim when porn is brought up: are the people watching this stuff just as responsible as the people making it? You know, there wouldn’t be drug dealers if no one did drugs. So even though Cage isn’t watching porn and loving it, he’s still consumed by it, and his family, mainly his wife, is relegated to prop status. She is no longer a woman to him. She is a thing. And what turns women into things more than porn.

Am I looking at flaws in this film and turning into surprisingly deep insights hidden under the surface? Yes, I am. But the fact that I’m able to makes that a moot point. There is much more going on in this film that the critics were just unwilling to delve into because they didn’t like the grimy surface. And isn’t that itself a metaphor for how we perceive the porn industry today?

How did they not choose the back cover image for the front? I dig creepy Cage staring into my soul, but screaming Cage is always better.

Is it crappy?

Do I even need to ask myself? This article, which I thought would be one of the shortest I’ve ever written, is now possibly (probably) the longest article I’ve ever written about a movie. Is this not evidence that this film has been unfairly dismissed by critics and the public? I like to think this crazy article of mine will dwell in the bowels of the internet for years, and one fine day another fellow lover of 8MM will find it and know that he/she is not crazy. There is another person out there who gets it. Or better yet, maybe Joel Schumacher will come across this, read it in full, and nod knowingly. If you’re reading this, maybe you think this is actually Schumacher writing it, pleading with people to like his movie. How will you ever know? In all seriousness, I feel like I’ve had some kind of Vulcan-mindmeld thing with Schumacher as I’ve revisited this movie. I saw things and had lengthy thoughts about stuff that never occurred to me the first few times I watched this. And I can’t stop. A little bit ago, I went down a rabbit hole in my mind about Cage’s daughter in the film, and the meaning behind his nickname of Cinderella for her. Sure, her name is Cindy, and it makes sense, or does it mean something else? Calling his daughter a Disney princess while he investigates the opposite of Disney purity? Is there a link between the two? Does raising young girls with the impossible dream of being a princess lead them to the same place Mary Anne ended up? Okay, I have to stop. Anyway, great movie! Thumbs up from me!

My favorite Nic Cage moments (Peter Stormare edition)

Cage is pretty tame in this one...for Cage (but I still have a few Cage moments I liked). So most of my favorite character moments belong to Stormare as Dino Velvet. I like to think that Cage lobbied Schumacher to let him play both roles, and Schumacher turned him down, but only because he didn’t have the budget. But imagine if that happened. My God, what a movie this could have been!

Cage is hilariously bad at hiding his smoking. This guy gives no fucks about his wife.

Max, reading Anal Secretary. Cage: “Catchy title.”

Stormare’s delivery of “hot sauce.”

Stormare putting the picture of Cage’s family in his mouth. Not that you want anyone to put a picture of your family in their mouth, but you really don’t want Peter Stormare doing it.

Speaking of that family picture, what a shocker that Cage isn’t in it. Was he there for the birth? The conception? Whose baby is that?

“Kill them, Machine. Kill them all.”

“Machine and I were just discussing the beauty of knives.” Really? Just Dino and his masked beast man talking about fucking knives? Where was that scene. Incredibly, in the original script, he elaborates even more about the knife discussion.

Random Thoughts

Sexy World was the original title. Wow.

Two raking scenes in a minute. I get it, it's fall.

If you read the negative reviews, many took issue with the violence in general, not that the film wasn’t bleak enough. I can’t imagine anyone finishing this movie, and thinking, “What’s with this uplifting ending? Suffer more, every character!” So I don’t think Walker’s intended version would have gone over much better.

The pic from the back of the case should have been the front.

I love the strange music and score.

The DVD is a flipper! Full vs. wide used to be an issue for me.

The DVD has that worthless scene selection card that I love for some reason. Actually, it’s a fold-out with promotional material...but why? You only get the booklet if you've already bought the movie. It's funny that it includes a quote from Walker, especially since he has never seen the film. And Schumacher, who ended up changing the script.

Walker wants a remake. Doesn't like the devil line, neither do I. But him calling for a remake is hilarious, especially since he won’t acknowledge the film itself is a remake.

Double Chekhov's gun scenes. Not only does he load it and whatnot, but we also get the scene of him putting it in the trunk with the camera lingering on the trunk. Something tells me that gun is going to show up again...

Take care of the baby, honey, I'll be solving porno mysteries for the next few months!

Cage finding the diary in the toilet tank always bothers me. Maybe I'm a weirdo, but it seems like I need to take the lid off the tank once every couple months or so. No one has lifted that lid in years? It had water in it, so it was functioning...why leave it there if she wanted her mom to find it?

Daryl! Mopping up in prison, being a general shithead. Such a pre-zombie-apocalypse Daryl thing to do.

So many phone calls. The point is to show the different worlds of the film. But mix it up. It seems like Keener says, “Aww, she's sweet" every scene she's in.

Cage’s line delivery on the phone is so awkward at times. A simple hello or goodbye can sound so odd in his voice.

Acknowledges the future of porn. This is a film that would not make sense only a year or two later.

“Sick shit. Buy five get one free.”

Inexplicable DTV sequel. Never watched it. Why try to turn this into a franchise?

Cage’s Oscar is in Gandolfini’s porn office. Is that a metaphor?

I could listen to Gandolfini’s character’s phone calls all day. “You know how bad a skin flick has to be for some jackass to come back into my place with a fucking receipt and try to fucking return it?”

Dwelt a bit too long on that enema scene…

Do they own the 4th of July place or did she have to rent it again?