I’ve been trying to put my finger on the specific vibe I sense in early ‘90s (pre-Tarantino) indie-cinema. We hit on the topic with GAS FOOD LODGING, RUBIN & ED and NIGHT ON EARTH (though the latter is almost too accomplished a version of it to feel like the same category). These are movies that are very different from each other in most respects, but they share a lack of interest in traditional Hollywood storytelling or narrative structure. They’re a little more like dreams, or real life, or poems, or at least meandering novellas than tightly woven tales of adventure. You’re following a story, picking up on themes, wondering what it’s building to, or what it’s saying. But often you have to face that it’s more stream-of-consciousness than that. It’s not about that. It’s more about spending some time with some odd characters, in a specific place, with a distinct tone. What you get out of the experience is up to interpretation.
My instinct is to want a tighter narrative, but there’s something appealing about movies like this too. Some freedom in letting go of any expectation that it’s gonna make itself clear.
I was thinking about it last month on my vacation/Covid isolation in Knoxville, Tennessee. My aunt-in-law showed us writer/director Tom DiCillo’s third film, BOX OF MOONLIGHT (1996), because it was filmed around there. And now, coincidentally, here I am watching his debut, JOHNNY SUEDE, in the final stretch of my summer of ’92 retrospective. It was released August 14, 1992, but DiCillo says on the DVD commentary that it played for a week and a half in New York and then a week and a half in L.A. and that’s it. Somehow we all knew about it when it was on video, though. (read the rest of this shit…)
Remember after THE ROAD director John Hillcoat had this movie called THE WETTEST COUNTY IN THE WORLD that was written by his THE PROPOSITION writer (and famed singer) Nick Cave, he had at-that-time-hot-stuff Shia LaBeouf signed on and everything but nobody would fund the fuckin thing. Then suddenly a mysterious benefactor named Megan Ellison comes into Hollywood and gives him money and gives P.T. Anderson money to make THE MASTER and Andrew Dominik to do KILLING THEM SOFTLY and a bunch of other guys like this. So the legends were true, there are some good rich people out there.
The Burns Gang, three brothers, recently attacked some family, raped and killed a pregnant woman. I don’t know about you but I’m against it and in fact so is middle brother Charlie (Guy Pearce) who was so offended he decided to take little brother Mikey (Richard Wilson) and run off. But of course it’s those two remorseful brothers that have been captured by Ray Winstone now, not the ringleader Arthur (Danny Huston). Since we didn’t see the attack we don’t know for sure how guilty they are or how much of a chance they had to stop it, but Winstone seems to believe this Arthur is the guy to get. So he takes Mikey, lets Charlie go, says I’m gonna kill little brother on Christmas Day unless you kill older brother. That’s the proposition.
