When I was young, art meant dirty, and that's the way it should stay. -John Waters
The late great Alfred Hitchcock once said, "Always make the audience suffer as much as possible." For some reason, that statement seems funny now, and that is what's wrong with Hollywood today.
When I was twelve or thirteen years old, my friends obsessed over films like Con Air and The Rock. I found them a nice, mildly entertaining escape, but it always irritated me how quickly I could push them out of my mind. Nothing about movies ever lingered with me. They were clean and superficial. Then, I discovered Harmony Korine's Dogme 95-inspired masterpiece Julien Donkey-Boy on the Independent Film Channel.
By my calculations, there's far less than a one percent chance you have seen or will ever see this film; so, I'll go ahead and give you a short little synopsis. Basically, Ewen Bremner (think Trainspotting) plays a schizophrenic, socially-retarded outcast who stumbles around the streets of New York, babbling to himself about God knows what. He's routinely belittled by his cough-syrup guzzling father (played by avant-garde legend Werner Herzog) and carries on a possibly inappropriate relationship with his sister (Chloe Sevigny). Early on, a young boy is also savagely murdered with a rock, and a dead, stolen baby heavily figures into a later plot line.
I was fourteen years old the first time I watched it. My hands shook uncontrollably, and my stomach grew progressively more queasy and unsettled. I wanted desperately to change the channel, but I couldn't turn back. I kept glancing toward the basement door, hoping neither of my parents would randomly wake up and stumble upon the horrors my fragile little mind was soaking in. At the film's conclusion, I felt dirty, icky, and miserable–like my best friend had sucker-punched me in the stomach. My psyche was traumatized, and it was, without question, the best movie viewing experience of my entire life.
The job of Hollywood, in short, is primarily to manipulate our emotions. Good motion pictures should make us cry, scream with delight, cheer, laugh, and even fuck. They should push the bounds of good taste, warp the entire world of younger viewers, and inspire the audience to go home and think. I fucking hate many of the best movies I have ever seen, and that is the way it should be. Martin Scorsese's magnum opus Raging Bull is a perfect example. It may very well be the most beautiful piece of art ever created, but sitting through its two hours of domestic abuse and pugilistic brutality still haunts me. I still scream at my DVD player, begging Joe Pesci not to punch Robert De Niro. I still turn away in disgust as the broken and bloody boxer refuses to go down in his last fight with Sugar Ray.
Whatever happened to discomfort? I feel uncomfortable every single day, but rarely, do I feel uncomfortable watching Hollywood films. In the great dinosaur epic Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum chastises the scientists by saying, "(You) were so preoccupied with whether or not (you) could, (you) didn't stop to think if (you) should." Well, Hollywood has the opposite problem. So much time is spent asking whether or not a movie should that very few films ever do.
Let's take Pink Flamingos, for example, a John Waters masterpiece filmed on a shoestring budget with his friends playing the lead roles. Is it the greatest cinematic achievement of all-time? No. Is it even the best movie John Waters ever made? No. And he would readily admit that, but was the film important for chicken-fucking its way through censorship barriers? Yes. I watched Pink Flamingos, in all its dog-shit-eating-glory, a few weeks ago with a couple friends, and one of them ran to the bathroom and vomited about twenty minutes in, screaming "What kind of sick human being would enjoy this?" in between dry heaves. Now, that's a goddamn movie!
There's a time and a place for superficial romantic comedies which allow the audience to walk away happy and fulfilled, but there's also a time and place for morally-depraved envelope-pushing which makes the audience walk away muttering, "Thank God that isn't my life." I'm looking at my DVD shelf right now. Everything is arranged in alphabetical order, leading humorously to Vincent Gallo's Buffalo '66, a movie in which a mentally-unstable man screams at another accusing him of looking at his cock, and Broken Lizard's Super Troopers, a stoner comedy about highway patrol officers and cartoon monkeys, sitting next to each other. And somehow that all makes sense.
I'm not one of those black-rimmed glasses wearing, i-Pod toting, mocha guzzling, only support independent film types. I'm just a dude who likes variety. Sometimes I like to watch people fucking. Sometimes I like to watch true love prevail. And sometimes I like to watch miserable situations slowly deteriorate over and hour and a half. If everything's a happy ending than nothing's a happy ending. That's why I like a little traumatizing discomfort now and again. It makes the happy endings that much more satisfying. And that is why Heath Ledger is having the best week ever.
Amidst all the Hollywood hoopla surrounding Sex And The City, Mamma Mia, Wall-E and a dozen other big-budget happy ending bonanzas, lies The Dark Knight and more specifically, Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight. It looks creepy and depraved, part Kevin Bacon in The Woodsman part Geoffrey Rush in Mystery Men with a dash of that old drunk guy with the bad teeth in Big Daddy. For the first time in my life, a major studio release seems poised to offer me high-tech explosions, a gooey love story, and a look inside the rotting soul of a zealous madman curling up against the precipice of insanity and virtue.
So, thank you, Heath Ledger for putting some filth inside my Buncha Crunch and a little arsenic in my Mountain Dew. It'll make the Rudy's that much better.
