that movie

[Mark Kohut]

I, too, in my appreciation just played it as it lay re all the actors.
"Dont trust anyone over thirty"---that sixties motto entered my head
when I first read of Doc's age...the age one might think that entering
the establishment had to happen--for most.

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 1:14 PM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:
> It occurred to me the Phoene might be slightly too old, though in reading
> the book I found that whenever I was reminded of Doc's youth (29 is
> right--it's mentioned at some point that he's going to turn 30 'any minute
> now' though I don't have the book in front of me/can't cite the page) I had
> to sort of revise/refresh my understanding of him to accommodate that fact.
> Which need to revise, for me, is actually maybe essential to how to
> understand him: kind of world-weary, older in spirit than body, maybe in a
> way that relates to what I feel is an innate goodness, if I can reduce in
> that way. Doc has seen more human evil than probably someone his age has any
> right to (maybe small in scale but high in frequency, at least in his life
> that exists pre-page 1), and while he's picked up some skills of deduction
> and some necessary skepticism along the way, he is still in some way
> disappointed to find/unveil evil in the world--surprised not in the sense
> that he is ignorant to it but that it violates some hope he had not totally
> abandoned, at least in some deeply internal place. Kind of latent. Like a
> seed in a seed bank or something.
>
> Maybe the clearest example I can recall of this comes about 75% of the way
> through the book. Again, don't have it in front of me, but it precipitates
> what is really the first/only real fight he and Bigfoot have--the one they
> both apologize to one another for. This is the only time Doc displays any
> real vitriol toward Bigfoot (or anyone, for that matter) that I can recall,
> despite being Bigfoot's bureaucratic and occasionally literal punching bag,
> it seems. And it happens because he held, in some place in his heart, the
> belief that Bigfoot was, in some place in his (Bigfoot's, now) heart, a good
> dude. Which belief he is then temporarily forced to reconsider.
>
> [Halting this train of thought for the time being]
>
> I think Phoenix does a good job of conveying(/channeling?/evoking?) that
> innate goodness and hope--which is necessary to the function of the story as
> a whole, as it relates to the 60s coming to an end, etc etc. Also he's a
> good actor and fun to watch on screen. And he has the unteachable and
> unreproducible quality of leading man screen presence--I can realistically
> buy him going undetected in the reality of the movie and yet when he is on
> screen he commands the viewer's attention, if nobody else's. Which
> combination is tough to reproduce.
>
> Yes maybe old relative to Doc in the book but for the sake of my own
> enjoyment I tried very much to approach the movie as a separate entity and
> asked of it nothing other than just strangeness and fun--asking it to in any
> way reproduce or approximate the real virtues of the book is unfair to the
> movie and director and form in general, I think.
>
> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 12:27 PM, Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> I didn't realize Joaquin  Phoenix was 40 'til I looked it up just now
>> (I still remember him in To Die For [1995]).  Doc is, as I recall, 29
>> in the book. But I didn't register JP as all that much older, so ...
>>
>> Also, I (almost) never (unlike virtually every review published on the
>> subject) never found JP "mumbly" @ all, + I have ePete Townshend
>> hearing, so ...
>>
>> ... then again, Robt. Downey, Jr., ca. nine years older, was initially
>> cast (and admitted he was too old, so ...).  But JS?  You've got the
>> world's biggest Rushmore (1998) fan (a movie, and, esp., a soundtrack,
>> that might as well been made for me), but DEFINITELY NOT JS ....
>>
>> Do see, however, by the director of IMPOLEX (2009),
>>
>> http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3093546/
>>
>> http://www.filmcomment.com/article/review-listen-up-philip-alex-ross-perry
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 6:48 AM, Mark Wright <washoepete at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Although Josh Brolin and Katherine Waterston were wonderful, I've
>> > concluded
>> > that J Phoenix was miscast. Too old, playing the part too old, and
>> > fundamentally just not enough gum in the ol' shoe. The job description
>> > "gumshoe" refers to crepe soles, which are good for sneaky-pete-ing but
>> > not
>> > much better than leather at the beach. Anyway. As Coy Harlingen Owen
>> > Wilson
>> > worked beautifully. But for Sportello Anderson should have used the
>> > younger
>> > -- and congenitally more bewildered-seeming -- Jason Schwartzman. But
>> > then,
>> > wait, no... Then? Paul Thomas Anderson would have been Wes
>> > Anderson?...(thoughtful, he takes another drag)
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l