Okay, here's the deal. I was over at the Carver Point Diner the other night, sitting at the counter in my usual seat (third stool over from the wall, next to the cash register), and, for reasons I may never know, the conversation in the room took a turn to the hypothetical. Somebody, Bobby Lee Mundy, I think it was, asked one of those questions like, "If you were stranded on a desert island, and only had three books with you, what would you want the books to be?"
I hate stuff like that, because, well, I'm never sure if I should choose books I've never read but always wanted to, or books that are my favorite. Choose your favorites, and, eventually, you'd hate them because you've read them so much. Choose ones you've never read, you're libel to wind up with a stinker in the group, and then you're out one choice.
After a rousing debate over whether or not you could make up books that don't exist, like if you could combine the entire Louis L'Amour collection into one big hardback, somebody else finally came up with a question I liked. Somebody, I think it was LuAnn Sharpers, asked, "If you could ask anyone one question, who would it be and what would you ask?"
Lots of pondering there. I thought about that one for a couple of days, not wanting to commit myself to an answer until I was sure. There's stuff I'd like to ask a lot of people, you know? Love to ask Lee Harvey Oswald a thing or two. Same for Houdini, Charlie Chaplin, and the guy that invented the Slinky. I'd love to ask Catherine the Great about that whole thing with the horse, but I probably wouldn't get a straight answer.
And, now, thanks to the recent release of Eight Millimeter, there's another question I'd like to ask of a famous person. I'd like to walk up to the director, Joel Schumacher, and ask him one question. I'd say to him, "How many more movies are you gonna ruin, just so I'll know?" Because, folks, this movie had a lot of promise, and it had a talent base better than most, but it all turns to sewer slime, and I don't mean because of the subject matter.
Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) is a P.I. who is hired by a rich widow to find out why her late husband had a reel of a porno film in his safe, and whether or not the film is actually what it appears to be, namely, a "snuff" film that ends with the on-camera murder of a teenage girl. Tom's investigation takes him from the nice world of Pennsylvania all over the country trying to track down the filmmakers. After hitting L.A., he hooks up with a porn-store clerk named Max (Joaquin Phoenix), who becomes his guide into the lowest depths of the porn underworld. Not only are Tom's ethics challenged, but his very sense of morality goes up for grabs as he has to learn to work with some of these people if he is to find the truth he is looking for.
On the surface, this would seem to be a very tight plotline, and you'd be right to expect such. In actuality, though, the movie made from this plotline is pure ignorance. And, before I go any further, I will plainly state that most of the blame has to be aimed at the director, Joel "Bat Killer" Schumacher. There's a basic precedent that should be set forth in a movie of this nature. This is a dark subject. It is, sadly, more of a reality than many people are willing to allow themselves to believe. This subject should be approached as such, in order to make its points. If one wants to make a story chilling and hard, one would think the appropriate attitude, cinematically, would be to keep the photography dark. Keep the "film noir" look. Darkness and shadows are perfectly acceptable on film. Any second-year film student knows you can say more with a shadow across a face than you can in a page of dialogue.
Schumacher, for reasons unknown to anyone but himself, decided to make this whole subject into an EC "Tales of the Crypt" comic book, full of gaudy colors one minute and gothic the next. Some scenes look like a 150-watt bulb on a string is lighting them, others with prison searchlights. I realize that Joel came into being from the world of TV commercials, where visual is 98% of the sell, but it doesn't work worth a tinker's damn here. It throws the harsh reality of the subject out the window like a bag of trash, and jacks the movie up to an almost-surrealistic level that cheats the actors and the script out of a full understanding by an audience.
And it's even more of a shame, considering the waste of a talented cast. Nic Cage spends half the movie trying to look horrified by what he's learning, but he comes across looking like he's in dire need of a bottle of Excedrin and a shot of tequila. Catherine Keener (Your Friends and Neighbors), who plays Cage's wife, is left on the editing floor, except for her hand wringing and lip-nibbles. Only Joaquin Phoenix gets any chance to do anything, and he ends up scamming the movie out from under Cage. James Gandolfini, who's making a lot of noise on HBO's "The Sopranos", plays one of the filmmakers, and, while he is becoming quite a find everywhere else, he ends up being a stereotypical "baddie," two-dimensional as cardboard and just as dynamic. With Gandolfini's star beginning to shine, it becomes even more of a wonder as to why Schumacher didn't expand the role some, and let Gandolfini find some depth.
But, then again, Schumacher has never been strong on depth. He's all about superficial flash. He let a lot of characterization go in order to preach about racism in A Time to Kill. He made soft and easy eye candy for St. Elmo's Fire. He redecorated Gotham City to suit his own neon palette and "Miami Vice" mentality, destroying a series that may never be able to rebuild itself. Would that I had the ability to jump Mr. Peabody's Way-Back Machine and give this project to someone like Bryan Singer, who waltzed in the dark for The Usual Suspects. Even better, David Fincher, who kept the world in shadows in Se7en. I can guarantee either one of these guys would've recognized the potential of the script and the talent at hand, and let the darkness drive the film instead of driving the darkness out in favor of zippy new light fixtures and grammar-school mentality behind a camera.
And, before you go hitting the e-mail button, let me ask you this - how would you feel about watching a snuff film? How would you feel about watching the actual murder of someone on film? Not that stupid Faces of Death garbage, but the slow and systematic murder of a human being? How would you feel if you had to watch it over and over in order to try to figure out who the person was, and who committed the crime? That feeling is what should've been captured here, not some leg-kickin', glitzy popfest. When Schumacher finally realizes that a motion picture is not an ad for the Gap, he may actually become a filmmaker. Now, he's still just an over-hyped performance artist who works in a 45-second world, regardless of the other two hours he has to work with.
It's one of the tragic wonders of this year so far, people. Eight Millimeter could've been a very good movie; one that kept you glued to the screen and tense as an ironing board for the full two hours and four minutes. If you needed to turn away, it should've been because the tension of the subject matter got to you. Instead, thanks to Jingle Joel, you have to turn away in wonder over how anybody could've made a movie so bad with a story so good. Joel, if this is an example of your best work, I think a phone call is on order. Call the Gap and ask for a new job. Not filming ads, though. Ask if they need a stockboy.
Image copyright Columbia Pictures.
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