wired

I had a couch-jumping epiphany while listening to Robert Towne expound last Friday evening at Santa Barbara’s Victoria theatre. I’m referring to the media meltdown that Towne’s friend (and Ask the Dust producer) Tom Cruise went through last year, which led to the term “couch-jumping” or “couch-jumper” being added to the dictionary after Cruise’s burst of athletic jubilance on Oprah Winfrey’s show last summer. Listening to Towne led to thoughts of Cruise, and it suddenly hit me that we’re all seized at one time or another by a couch-jumper mentality (exuber- antly manic, a hyper-edgy attitude). We all go there from time to time, depending on the breaks or the turns in the road. Cruise’s error wasn’t to be in this head-space, but to allow this phase to be dramatized in the media.

There’s no such thing as a good time or a bad time. There is no love or hate, no happiness or sadness…no short or tall, black or white, hunger or gluttony, sweet or sour. The Bhagavad Gita teaches that all changes and transitions are temporary illusions, and whether it’s heads or tails it’s always the same cosmic coin. Only suckers feel happy when their ship comes in and their bellies are full, and lament when their milk is spilt and their lovers have left.

It took me two hours to write a piece this morning about a Harry Nilsson documentary that I saw Saturday night. Then the browser crashed because of a too-large Quicktime video file I tried to watch, and I hadn’t saved the article so I lost the whole thing and I’m livid, on top of which I haven’t kept up with the WIRED items over the last couple of days, I have a screening to catch in 90 minutes, there are three or four invoices that need to be sent in and there’s a phoner I have to do with Rupert Murray, director of Unknown White Male and I don’t care if this sounds like whining (which it is, of course)…sometimes burnout comes so quickly.

This is desperate-sounding chitter-chat on one level, but on another level it’s kind of fun. It would be startling, of course, if Crash were to take the Best Picture Oscar away from Brokeback Mountain. It won’t happen, but it would be fascinating if it did. I would survive and so would Ang Lee and James Schamus, and the world would not be that different a place the morning after…but c’mon. We’re all pretty sure what’s going to happen. I think.

I missed mentioning this yesterday, but there’s a second showing of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man — in my view the finest and without question most critically honored documentary of 2005 — on the Discovery Channel this evening (Saturday, 2.4) at 8 pm.

Carlos Reygadas’ Battle in Heaven, a follow-up feature to his widely acclaimed Japon, is getting most of its attention because of a depiction of a dull schlumpy guy being orally serviced at the beginning and end of the film. It’s a blowjob that seems rote and passionless and is certainly boring to watch (it isn’t remotely in the league of the Brown Bunny finale). The provider is a pretty and sophisticated young girl of 17 or 18 from a wel-to-do family, and the receiver is a homely middle-aged lump with inexpressive eyes and a gross pot belly. And he’s not reacting in any noticable way — he could be standing in front of a mirror with a tailor measuring the cuff of his pants. For me, the nothingness of this scene is indicative of the nothingness of the film itself.

For me, the gruesome story of the Black Dahlia murder peaked when I watched a fascinating passage in a Vikram Jayanti doc called James Ellroy’s Feast of Death, a study of the life of the fabled crime writer. The passage showed L.A. Times copy editor Larry Harnisch explain why be believes the would-be actress was killed by a middle-aged surgeon named Walter Bayley. It’s a very convincing theory, and chilling to think about. Does anyone else find it suspicious that Pat Broeske‘s N.Y. Times story doesn’t hint or even ask whether Brian DePalma’s upcoming film about the murder tale, simply called The Black Dahlia, will deal with Bayley or go with some DePalma-level b.s. fictional scenario. If I know DePalma…

I’m way late on this one with all the Santa Barbara activity, but that story from last Monday or Tuesday about Grizzly Man direc- tor Werner Herzog coming to the aid of Joaquin Pheonix after his car rolled over in the Hollywood hills is curiously haunting. Not because Herzog tapped on Pheonix’s upside-down car window and did the decent thing by trying to help…that’s standard. I’m referring to the part about Pheonix being out of the car and standing up and clearly okay, and Herzog suddenly gone. No hanging around or talking to the cops, but into the night like an angel, like vapor, like a shadow, like a coyote.

Alex Gibney, the director-writer of the Oscar-nominated documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, was handed the Writers Guild award for documentary screenplay last night (i.e, Wednesday, 2.1). Gibney’s triumph happened two days after the start of the criminal trial in Houston of former Enron Corp. executives and Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skillingn. At issue is whether Lay and Skilling were the spinners and bad guys behind accounting scheme that crashed Enron, once the seventh-largest company in the country, in December 2001. Watch Gibney’s film and tell me your verdict

Another possible inclusion in Oscar Balloon ’06, for perform- ances if nothing else: Andrew Dominik‘s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros., late ’06). Based on a reputedly strong novel by Ron Hansen, with period- sounding dialogue said to make Missouri (and the characters) in the 1870s seem very strange and exotic. It’s apparently the first film Dominik has done since Chopper, which harbored Eric Bana‘s breakthrough role. As tabloid readers know, it stars Brad Pitt but also Sam Shepard (as Frank James), Sam Rockwell, Mary-Louise Parker, Zooey Deshanel and Michael Parks. Kinda sounds like Son of the Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, don’t it?

Still another addition to the Oscar Balloon ’06 list has been sent in, this time by reader Nate Meyer: Kenneth Lonergan‘s second film Margaret (Fox Searchlight), which seems to contain echoes of Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter since it’s about a 17 year-old Manhattan high-school girl (Anna Paquin) on a major guilt trip because she believes she played a role in a bus accident that took a woman’s life. Pacquin’s costars are Matt Damon, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick and Jean Reno. Will this come out in ’06 or…?

All Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez want to do is wallow in comfort. To them it’s all about hangin’ back in the parlors of grindhouse, guns, babes and blood…in style and pizazz and dime-store machismo. Neither wants to reach deep inside and create something half-original about love and desire and struggle on the planet earth. They obviously don’t have the temperament to do this, but I’m starting to formulate an idea that they don’t even have the nerve. The latest wallow is going to be funded by the Weinstein Co., with both Tarantino and Rodriguez planning to direct a 60-minute horror tale. Rodriguez’s will be a zombie thing called “Planet Terror,” and Tarantino’s, to be called “Death Proof,” will a slasher piece. They’re a pair of middle-aged teenaged wankers…wasting their time and pissing away their talent.