Full Frontal

[mullaney]

Speaking of Full Frontal (see other thread about the Panasonic camera)... yikes! I saw it today and the video looks very bad to me, and most of what he shot was not worth shooting. A few good moments, but it was just puzzling. I almost wish that big name directors would stop experimenting with video. "Partially improvised video movie" is becoming synonymous with "boring pointless waste of time".

Nicky Katt was really funny. I liked him.

[Choo Choo Andee]

First off, Nicky Katt rocks, I've started following his stuff since Suburbia, I'm glad he's doing well for himself. Also, Soderbergh said that the digital image was a lot crisper, but he degraded it to give it a "grittier" feel. I think it's a bad example for movies shot on minidv.....I think Chuck & Buck looks pretty good for minidv transfered to film although I didn't see it in the theater and that's where you see a lot of the flaws. I feel like Soderbergh shot it on DV to say "hey, I'm cool, man", like it's a trend or something, like rich people shopping at thrift stores....

[Millicent Cho]

New York Times Editorial/Op-Ed 8.4.02
Sex, Lies and Bad Lighting
By MAUREEN DOWD

Hollywood -- It's hip to mix high and low.

In fashion, women wear Old Navy with new Gucci. On TV, executives schedule classy dramas and cheesy reality shows. In politics, Senator Hillary Clinton is a saint on family issues and a sinner on soft money.

At the movies, Steven Soderbergh sandwiches "Full Frontal," a low-budget "sketch," as he calls it, between his glossy big-studio hits "Erin Brockovich" and "Ocean's 11" and his upcoming George Clooney sci-fi thriller, "Solaris."

"It's just the equivalent of walking around downtown after having been uptown," the director told Stephen Hunter of The Washington Post. The 39-year-old, who shot to fame after the 1989 indie "Sex, Lies and Videotape," tries to balance the pampered and primary. He hangs with Clooney in L.A. and takes the subway in New York. He's the high priest of the indie sensibility sweeping the culture — small is better than big, stripped down is more soulful than sumptuous.

As my friend Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, observes: "Like everything that sizzles, the indie ideology is just another theory of marketing. Integrity as a brand. Aesthetically, it's a load of bad faith: the simplicity of the complex, the homeliness of the glamorous, the modesty of the immodest, the insouciance of the careerist. Sometimes small is as awful as big."

The same affectation infuses the magazine Real Simple, which advises the affluent how to be ascetically luxurious. Sundance is now Cannes with snow. Even big-budget films like Sam Mendes's "Road to Perdition" have been infected with pretentious, metaphor-heavy indie self-absorption.

"Tadpole," an indie with Sigourney Weaver and Bebe Neuwirth, is hailed for its originality and for tapping a trend of "tadpoling," older women dating younger men. But it's merely a pale version of "Rushmore," a pale version of "The Graduate."

"Full Frontal" is not an indie in the great "Easy Rider," "Raising Arizona," John Sayles, Jim Jarmusch sense, scraping together a little money and putting on a show. What true indie would star Julia Roberts playing Julia Roberts? She did a movie-within-a-movie a decade ago in "The Player," a terrific account of Hollywood behind the scenes (as was the indie "Swimming With Sharks").

"Full Frontal" is, as The Hollywood Reporter puts it, "indie-looking." (Like Martha Stewart's "suggestion of molding.") It's supposed to be a knowing insider peek at Hollywood, with hot stars like Ms. Roberts, Brad Pitt and David Duchovny mocking their images. But it isn't even as edgy as TV. One of Mr. Soderbergh's plot lines, a massage with a "happy ending," was already featured on two HBO shows, Larry David's and "Mind of the Married Man." Autoeroticism is a tired topic, and figuring out your "porn name" (using your middle name or pet's name and the name of the first street you lived on) was long ago exhausted by Regis and Kelly.

Like Moses breaking the tablets because of the golden calf, Danish directors founded Dogma 95, a 10-point "vow of chastity" meant to free filmmaking from technology and cosmetics. Mr. Soderbergh echoed that vow, writing up commandments for his golden players, including "You will drive yourself to the set"; "You will pick, provide and maintain your own wardrobe"; "You will create and maintain your own hair and makeup"; and "There will be no trailers."

But it turns out when the A-list self-consciously slums in B movies, independence becomes a style accessory. When Hollywood luminaries are less self-indulgent, they are more self-congratulatory. Bad lighting and sloppy dialogue allow them to feel as though they're throwing off the platinum shackles of the studio system that cranks out all that expensive rubbish.

Just because something is grainy doesn't mean it's cooler. Just because it's shot in 18 days with a hand-held camera that cost $4,000 doesn't mean it's more creative. Just because it's a neo-Godardian deconstruction of cinematic reality doesn't mean it's more interesting. And just because it has an erotic title doesn't mean it's sexy.

David Thomson, the great movie scholar whose "Biographical Dictionary of Film" is being updated and reissued this fall, says that "the veneer and tag of `independent' is just used in Hollywood to get people bragging rights and give them clout. It's a way of saying `I'm higher than you, better than you,' when they're really still doing it for the money, the women, the glory and the whole bag of tricks. I prefer people who admit they're doing it for the money."

[Nick Mougis]

Just because something is grainy doesn't mean it's cooler.

amen.


The guy from the Hives said something like "I hate how all these bands equate being dirty with being real. If you can afford guitars, you can afford soap."

[Choo Choo Andee]

I think they think that taking a shower is washing off all of their coolness.

[cinnamon_altoid]

To me history is like a big pendulum -- it swings one way and then completely to the opposite direction. It rarely settles in the middle.

Its probably way too early to really understand the zeitgiest of the 90s, but to be sure things like "politically correct", the coolness of the geek, the abundance and and wealth and the extravagence associated with it will be in their somewhere.

I think these things are just examples of how people have swung from one extreme to another.

[macoule30]

Digital video arguements aside, I liked Full Frontal. Initially I was really hung up on the tech aspects of it ("Please Mr. Soderbergh, don't point the camera near a window). But I thought they were interesting stories. And I don't care if you shoot an interesting story with pinhole camera, I'll watch it.

I love Nicky Katt, but I thought his parts seemed the most forced. Granted he's playing a prima-donna, part-time actor. And those dudes force it everywhere. But I thought his was the least interesting part. I was much more beguiled by his dancing SS henchmen.

I think, initially, I liked the Limey references. Only because I felt like I was being let in on a joke. I'm probably sour on it today. But tomorrow I'll like it again.

[John Bolger]

"Full Frontal" does help the digital medium earn more public credibility, or for those who hate it...less. Hey macoule30, don't know if you have seen it yet or not, but if you like "good story" then you would love the film TAPE (also shot on digital film).

Bolger