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I
saw Full Frontal twice, looking for answers.
I didn’t really find any.
I didn’t find any great questions either.
You’ve
probably read it all before… between the mammoth production
of Ocean’s Eleven and the mammoth production of Solaris,
Steven Soderbergh made a digital film for around $2 million
in 18 production days with many of his famous friends. He worked with a novice screenwriter, Coleman
Hough, who Soderbergh felt had a knack for capturing natural
language.
He
got a moment here. And he got a moment there. And if this were a festival entry with a no
name director, the press would be lapping it up like dehydrated
puppies at a desert mirage.
But it’s Steven Soderbergh and it’s Julia
Roberts instead of Catherine Keener and Catherine
Keener instead of some French actress attempting an America
accent and David Duchovny circa 2002 instead of David
Duchovny circa 1993 and Nicky Katt.
Is
there anything that I took away from Full Frontal that
really mattered to me? No. Marital
discord in the midst of show business was done better in The
Anniversary Party. So
was digital production that is intended to feel intimate.
Mel Brooks’ theatrical Hitler jokes would be
funnier than these even if they weren’t just 34 years old
and not part of a current Broadway smash.
Nothing
in this film seems to have any deeper meaning or insight.
I think young Anderson Jones of E! Online
missed the point completely about race and sex on screen.
One of the few things I did take away from a second
viewing of the film was the irony that the black star in the
film and in the film-within-the-film complains about never
getting to kiss the girl on screen. While Soderbergh manages to keep him from getting
a kiss on screen as well, resorting to a cheap gag in the
closing shot of the movie-within-the-movie, this black man
is also the only character who gets sex on-screen in the entire
film. During the course
of the film, he seduces four different women and sleeps with
three of them. The only other sex in Full Frontal is
the paid-for manual manipulation of one erection to a “happy
ending.”
That
said, is there any real meaning behind the sex or lack thereof?
I didn’t see any.
Is there any insight in the story of a selfish actor
and a self-delusional playwright/screenwriter?
Beats me! Is there anything about the film-with-a-film
or the actors in that film worth watching?
Well, if you find petulant actresses who just can’t
eat their lunch or wisecracking stars who blow takes with
jokes about their penis size or “movie cops” who don’t do
a whole lot insightful, you will get some insight.
I’m
going off on a coincidental tangent here… as I write this,
there is a TV show playing in the background that is premiering
as a summer fill-in on NBC. It’s called “The Rerun Show.” I haven’t read a word about it, but I would
bet every dollar I have that it was a live stage show somewhere
here in L.A. or New York or Chicago that some exec saw and
loved. And they were right. On
stage, it would probably be great fun.
But on TV, there is a different energy.
And it just doesn’t work.
If
Full Frontal was a live, mostly improvised performance,
I bet it would be a great night of theater.
Julia Roberts and the others would really be
on the tightrope. On
a movie, the moments of inspiration, for the most part, add
spice to the dialogue and an already well-structured story. We don’t sit there and think about it, any more than we do at the
theater, but our suspension of disbelief is different in a
movie. A few great lines in a scene is enough when
you go see the Groundlings or Second City.
And the truth is, you rarely get more than that. Yet, you leave the theater feeling satisfied.
But in a film, characters whose stories go nowhere
and funny moments that don’t end up meaning anything are not
acceptable.
I
enjoyed Full Frontal. I enjoyed it twice. I didn’t have any urge to get up and leave.
I liked watching the actors work.
I liked the in-jokes… especially ones so obscure –
like David Fincher directing the movie-within-the-movie-within-the-movie
– that they will never be anything more for most people than
impossible trivia questions. Soderbergh’s interest in the line between real and fake and really
fake is an interest of mine.
But this is no Eyes Wide Shut, where I figured
out the subtext and found a work of genius.
I’m
glad that Soderbergh made this movie.
I don’t know how it is informing his work on Solaris,
but I’m sure that it is. I’m sure that he will take lessons from this
film into all of his future work.
And I will always support the growth process of quality
directors. Period. Now,
I’m happier that Barry Levinson made his “quickie”
movie, Wag The Dog, which he did during a delay before
shooting Sphere. Let’s hope that Solaris is as good as
Sphere was bad. I’m
also happier that Bob Zemeckis made What Lies Beneath
in his down period between the start of Cast Away and
the second shooting period, after Hanks lost the weight.
For me, both of those films are testaments to quality
filmmakers – from the director down to the caterers – left
free to work because there wasn’t enough time to screw around
doing really good work. Soderbergh
played it faster and looser.
And he got a curiosity for his effort.
You
know, it wasn’t long ago that I was writing about how I admired
that Soderbergh had made a real effort to be a guy who just
made movies. No two
years between each films, waiting for the “right” moment. Soderbergh re-created the studio system for
his own mode of working.
He didn’t just make anything.
But he made films that are precious to me by not being
precious.
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