After Thoughts #2

On Legends of the Fall, Superpumped, Persuasion, Theater Camp, and The Great.

Hello friends!

I am back with more After Thoughts on things I’ve watched recently. Let’s begin, shall we?

Legends of the Fall (1994)- I have been wanting to watch more old classics lately; I am starting to feel like I do with books. There are so many classics that I have not yet seen that I feel so behind on. Behind on what exactly? I don’t know. The conversation, socially, culturally. And aside from that it’s just pure fun, besides I’m craving the old coloring of these classic films. Nothing quite like it. I wish we would stop with the harsh saturation and over-detailed lighting in most modern films/TV. So anyway, I was scrolling through Netflix and came upon this film.

Ugh, Nostalgia, sweet nostalgia! Pure nostalgia baked and warm for 2 hours and 13 minutes. I thought the movie was going to be about the war, what I didn’t anticipate was that it was going to be a love story. In the movie, we have a Native American narrator which brings me back to my early childhood when I watched this one tragic story about Native Americans on VHS. For the life of me I cannot remember the name, but one day it will come to me. Also the old Paramount days of the Indian in the Cupboard (problematic I know). Brad Pitt stars in the movie as the “bad boy” the troubled son who is wild and the one who took to the Native American the most. He stays on the land with his dad while the other 2 brothers go off to school and get interested in politics. I don’t really want to ruin anything, but there is so much drama! Like a telenovela. I gasped and screamed and took 2 days to watch it. There is something oddly satisfying about splitting up a movie in 2 days. I am able to digest it more and tell Hayden everything scene by scene. “And THEN Brad Pitt’s brother in the movie... No not that one, the other one…” It’s been a while since I have seen a film with so much old-school drama, not like in Shonda Rhimes shows where the minute you like someone they die, though there is a lot of death in Legends of the Fall, but I can’t explain it. Nostalgic drama, nostalgic theater, a little ridiculous and over the top. Actually, that was some of the criticism on Rotten Tomatoes, that it was too much drama, too many tones, too unbelievable. But what didn’t work for them, worked for me, and by the end of it, (after of course making fun of Brad Pitt trying to cry, he really is a terrible actor) but by the end of it, I was breathless, tears in my eyes, saying to myself what a beautiful film.

I also think it bares mentioning that Julia Ormond who plays Susannah in the film was blacklisted shortly after this because she got sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein and told her CAA agents about to which they basically shrugged and told her to get over it. You can read more about it here. I hope she makes a comeback, though I do not blame her for writing off Hollywood forever. At least, we have this beautiful performance by her in this film.

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Hayden and I started but did not finish Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber (2022). We did not finish it because it made us so angry. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who by the way has one of those great names that you have to say the full name anytime you speak of them) plays the CEO and founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick. Basically, Travis is a huge douche, and it will make you so angry that people like him are somehow always in positions of power. Though I might argue, that Arianna Huffington (played by Uma Thurman) is even more evil. That’s really what sent me over the edge when Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post who is famously known to not pay any of her writers but yet she is famously rich, or something like that, came into the scene. I kept trying to figure out her angle in liking Travis Kalanick but turns out she really did like him and wanted a seat on the board of UBER. Anyway, Hayden and I would lie awake in bed after watching two episodes at a time, fuming and annoyed that someone like him “ran a business”, so we stopped watching. Travis is no longer CEO of Uber and that makes me happy. BUT I will say, Joseph Gordon-Levitt did an excellent job playing him because I usually love him in anything he is in, but I really hated him (the character) because he played it so well, which I didn’t know he had in him.

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I get a lot of slack for liking musicals. Sorry, I have a taste for history and good fun!? Songs in theater and storytelling have been around for centuries. It has always been an integral part of storytelling and the modernization of it is still just as important. You can read more about it here if you want. I will never understand people who think it’s lame because they are singing. Do you also not like music? I was actually going to write an essay on my love for musicals, but that might be a bit much lol. I grew up in the thespian community what can I say? I appreciate the art of it. I grew up on Hairspray and Grease and Little Shop of Horrors for God’s Sake! Anyway, now that I got that off my chest. I finally got around to watching Theater Camp (2023), which is more of a mockumentary meets musical and very much a love letter to people who grew up in Theater with Ben Platt starring in it who I love, and Molly Gordon also starring in it, who I also now love. I don’t know what it is but I don’t think I’ve ever not cried or teared up in a musical. There’s just so much feeling and emotion! Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Nick Lieberman who were real-life childhood friends wrote the film together which was apparently 6 years in the making, shot in 19 days, and a lot of improv. Molly said they had strict “guardrails” for what they wanted out of the movie but allowed for comedic freedom in what would be said within the blocked-out space. A movie about friendship, and Theater kids and how they are misfits and quirky but dedicated to themselves being that way, and really just like everyone else, some are narcissists some are shy, some are codependent, some are afraid to pursue their dreams, some pursue them brashly, all in the name of theater. It can feel like a club you are not a part of if you are not really a part of it, and even I felt like that sometimes as a thespian in High school, but nonetheless, it will make you smile and laugh and shit I guess I should write that essay on theater…

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I almost forgot how much of a sucker I am for rom-com movies. I put on Persuasion (2022) on a whim. Now, I am not a huge Jane Austen fan (I know, I know.) I have tried reading Pride and Prejudice and kept falling asleep, I have tried the audiobook and kept forgetting to care. I didn’t get why we needed so many pages for the story. What was it about again? Marriage? Courtship? Traditions? Etiquette? Rules on how to be a woman? I know Jane Austen was important to literature though. I am not knocking her, I never really had much interest in those old royalish movies about marriage and whatnot. But I am realizing what it was, was the language and the way the subjects were approached. (Though for clarification I always did appreciate the interior design in these films.) So I put on Persuasion first because I like Dakota Johnson and second because I heard criticism about making every Jane Austen or period piece like it into a comedy, and if someone is saying something negative about something that usually makes me want to watch it more. To my or maybe their dismay, I loved it. I laughed out loud, I loved that they broke the fourth wall, I loved Mary Musgrove (played by Mia McKenna-Bruce) and the constant jokes about leaving the children and why do the women always have to stay with the children? I also really love how they were always just lounging on the chaise lounges, nobody ever sits to relax, they lay. We really need to bring back the proper chaise lounges or the term I prefer is fainting couches.

The thing sometimes about movies that are as funny as this one is that the affection I feel for the protagonist’s love pursuit takes me by surprise. I am at once swept off my feet and seriously watching the screen in hopes for her to find her love, hoping for a happy ending. And while I hold tears in my eyes at the end I realize the quest for love is not such a silly thing after all. Or maybe it is a little silly sometimes, but aren’t all the best things a little bit silly?

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And lastly, what I am currently watching and I hope never ends, though obviously it will is The Great (2020-2023). I have seen this on Hulu for a while and I don’t know why it took me so long to start watching! Another period piece, I guess I’m in an era (ha), another piece about these old royal times, another comedic approach to it (I’m sorry but it just works for me! I can’t get enough of it). I also deeply love the modern language's take on it. I love how much they curse and say “Fuck”, it brings a sort of relevancy that would otherwise be lost on me. This is loosely based on Catherine The Great who was a reigning Empresses of Russia between 1762-1796. She advocated for education reform and championing the arts. And now I must immediately read everything there is on this woman. In the show, she is played by Elle Fanning (Yes, Dakota Fanning’s little sister) and she plays it marvelously. And Peter the Emperor is played by Nicholas Hoult who actually reminds me of a young Hugh Grant in a way.

The show is a shit show, in that I mean, the emperor is a disgusting but sort of hilarious pig who fucks anyone he wants, the parties are filled with drugs and orgies, and shooting guns at both people and animals, and really anything goes. The women do not know how to read and aren’t allowed to, and the library is filled with cobwebs as no one goes in there because they are all too busy, well, fucking, eating, doing drugs, shooting things, and playing “hand ball” for the women, and dances and gossiping. It’s hilarious and barbaric and sad that this is probably actually how it all went down, and mind-blowing how the people at the top are almost never very bright because they don’t really have to be (nepo baby anyone?). It’s a more truthful look at the royal empires. I appreciate the truthfulness and the non-romanticized glamour of the royals. I know some people who would find it offensive but to each their own. So for now, I am enjoying the hell out of this show. Huzzah!

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I don’t know what any of this means, my current watches, (surely they mean something right?) maybe that I am just a big old sap, and I don’t know why that continues to surprise me, as if it’s something I’ll grow out of. That I love the truth, and even if I can’t always stomach it, I must know. That sometimes I do love fantasy too, that I love seeing behind the curtain, that sometimes all there is is a curtain, and sometimes I regret looking behind the curtain (there’s no going back really.) That at the heart of me is a less shy, more outgoing theater kid landing the lead role and stupidly giving it away for love (true story), and the want for laughter, and friendship. Is that so much to ask for? If so, and even if not, I will continue to search for it in film and TV and literature (and life of course.)