A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

a post from last year...
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is a collection of essays by the late David Foster Wallace that includes several of his most famous works in the form. DFW was, in my opinion, a better essay writer than he was a novelist, but that's not as harsh a criticism as it sounds as I think DFW was one of the best American essayists of the twentieth century. In fiction DFW takes himself a little too seriously for my taste even when he's being humorous, but in non fiction, he's funnier, sharper, deeper and more observant. In A Supposedly Fun Thing there are good essays on television and writing (and a rather boring one on tennis) but my favourite piece in this collection is the one about David Lynch that he wrote for Premiere Magazine where he profiles the director without actually meeting him and reviews one of his masterpieces, Lost Highway, without actually seeing the completed movie. You might not think that this would be a successful strategy for a piece of reportage, but it is. The Lynch essay is a work of genius, up there with the best American movie criticism: just as literate as something from Cahiers Du Cinema but much funner and funnier. 
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The piece I really want to discuss though is the title essay which concludes the book. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is the story of a cruise DFW took around the Caribbean with Carnival. Although not a deliberate humorist in the style of Mark Twain this essay is probably David Foster Wallace's comic masterpiece. Just as it was a great idea to send the landlubber Twain off on the USS Quaker City, it occurred to Colin Harrison, the editor of Harper's at the time, to send the even more nautically challenged DFW off on a vessel named the MV Zenith (that DFW rechristens the Nadir). He was sent on this cruise by Harrison with the aim I think of showcasing American crassness and vulgarity on the high seas but the essay is richer and more compassionate and more interesting than that. While not exactly blue collar himself DFW has sympathy for blue collar aspirations and most of the time he is not a snob. A lot of the essay, clearly, is a pack of lies but lies for comic effect which I think is entirely forgivable especially in a tall tale of the sea. Jonathan Franzen has criticised his friend DFW for making shit up in his non fiction, but I think DFW was pledged to what Werner Herzog calls ecstatic truth - a kind of emotional truth that is truer than what actually actually happened. (Franzen has only been as funny as DFW once when he too had a very funny scene coincidentally set on cruise ship.) A Supposedly Fun Thing has moments of high comedy, low comedy, slapstick, sarcasm, dry humour and of course dead pan irony. 
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As I say the editor for this essay was Colin Harrison who was my editor for four books at Scribner and the general editor for the one article I wrote for Harper's. Harrison does a pretty good job here. One wonders how long the first draft DFW handed in actually was because the final version runs to over two hours (for an essay) on audiobook, but, I should strees, it's two hours that fly by. I can't predict anyone else's sense of humor but I laughed out loud many times listening to this piece and there were quite a few Sedarian moments of wry amusement too. If I had to fault DFW and Harrison for one thing its the use of the word 'vector'. If you were to have a vodka shot or a glass of wine every time something is being vectored in Fun Thing you would be pretty much shitfaced by the end of it.
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If you want to check out a riposte to A Supposedly Fun Thing you can read Tina Fey's Bossy Pants which apparently includes a positive cruising story that riffs on DFW. You can read it. I think I'll give it a miss.  

Vertigo Versus Rear Window

Put down the binocs, Grace Kelly's standing behind you

This summer, in the influential Sight and Sound poll, Vertigo finally replaced Citizen Kane as the "Greatest Film of all Time" thus ending a 40 year run for Orson Welles's masterpiece. What Sight and Sound do once per decade is to ask 1000 directors and critics to list their top films. The ratings are then collated and an interesting top 50 list then emerges. The poll has taken some criticism for being out of touch and ignoring many recent films but I don't know about that. The only recent films that have sneaked onto the list are Wong Kar Wai's In The Mood For Love and David Lynch's Mulholland Drive both of which made my list from a couple of years back of the best films of the decade. 
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Anyway this isn't a post about the Sight and Sound poll which can be checked out here, no, this is a post about Vertigo. I've never liked Vertigo. Before this week I'd only seen it once and found it flat, dull and uninspiring. The greatest film of all time? I don't think it would make my list as one of the top 5 Alfred Hitchcock movies. But my chance to reassess this opinion arrived via my local cable company which is having an Alfred Hitchcock season in its "free movies on demand" section. Although many of my favourite Hitchcocks aren't there (no North By Northwest or The 39 Steps or The Lady Vanishes) many other good films are available including two classic Jimmy Stewart Hitchcocks: Rear Window and Vertigo. So, I got some popcorn, a couple of microbrews, a comfy chair and watched both. 
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Vertigo is the story of a San Francisco detective who follows a troubled woman and because of his fear of heights is unable to prevent her from killing herself. He later finds another woman who looks uncannily like the first. Complications ensue...The first thing to be said is that my estimation of Vertigo has gone up a little since my first viewing. Jimmy Stewart's performance is very strong, Kim Novak is a capable actress and the direction (apart from the cheesy back projection driving scenes) is visually striking and innovative. This was the film that introduced the "dolly out/zoom in" technique and the San Francisco exteriors are gorgeously shot. There are some nice surreal close ups of hands and parts of the face and the interiors are intentionally claustrophobic and eerily lit. The story is ridiculous but this isn't really a film about plot. Vertigo works best when Hitchcock allows Jimmy Stewart enough rope to let himself go ever so slightly unhinged in front of the camera. Stewart is a man who flew dozens of bombing missions over Europe in WW2 and who killed hundreds - maybe thousands - of people on those flights. Stewart's face is fascinating to watch in the final act of Vertigo. His eyes really are, in the words of that old cliche, windows into his soul. This is a complex human being letting us peer into the abyss with him. It's chilling and it took someone of Hitchcock's ability to get that performance out of him. Even with all that though, Vertigo is still more an academic's film that a film buff's film. It is boring and during those driving scenes its actually better to close your eyes and listen to the music. Bernard Hermann's score is extraordinary. At times soaring, lush, terrifying, beautiful. I think I still prefer his brilliant score for North By Northwest but the Vertigo soundtrack is his most romantic.
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Rear Window is the story of a photographer with a broken leg stuck in his New York apartment; he's been spying on his neighbours during a long hot summer and he suspects that one of them might be a murderer. Rear Window is so light and fluffy and enjoyable that I've probably watched it 5 or 6 times before now. And as of last weekend it still holds up. The dialogue between Jimmy Stewart and his insurance company nurse sparkles; Grace Kelly, as Stewart's fashion model girlfriend, is radiant, funny and drop dead gorgeous in a series of lovely frocks; the visual story telling is witty and charming; and the plot is just about credible. The score isn't quite the masterpiece of Vertigo but who cares about the music when Grace Kelly is standing there in soft lighting offering you take out from 21. Stewart's performance is subtle and creepy: he and we are shared voyeurs who take delight in his crazy plan to put his beautiful girlfriend into jeopardy by invading the murderers apartment to look for evidence. If there's such a thing as a perfect Hitchcock film Rear Window might be it. I can't think of one thing I'd want to change. North By Northwest might be improved by a different female lead, Dial M For Murder might be more credible with a younger male lead, Vertigo and the Birds could have less back projection etc. But Rear Window, Psycho, The 39 Steps and a few others are so good that they shouldn't be messed with. 
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Who wins the battle of Vertigo versus Rear Window? Well I just read the Guardian review for a film about obsessed fans of The Shining called Room 237 which sounds great and I guess if you are an academic or one of these film obsessive types then Vertigo has got to be the one for you; however in my view Rear Window is more enjoyable and certainly if you haven't seen either it's the one I think you should check out. 

Louie S4 E12

the great David Lynch and the great Louis CK, if only Werner Herzog
were in there too I'd be in some kind of fanboy heaven...

A couple of posts ago I was talking about English comic Stewart Lee who is virtually unknown in America, in this post I'd like to talk about Louis CK who is virtually unknown in the UK and whats interesting about that is the fact that Louis CK is a kind of American Stewart Lee and Stewart Lee is a bit like a British Louis CK. Lee does more politics than CK but both Lee and CK approach comedy with an honesty, intelligence, dryness and patience that other comedians do not. Both Louis CK and Stewart Lee consider stand up comedy to be an artform and an artform that takes a lot of work and practice. Both dislike "hacks" who put forward cheesy old fashioned material that pleases big crowds and both Louis CK and Stewart Lee have seen much of their material ripped off by more successful "hack" comics (Dane Cook in CK's case, innumerable British comics in Lee's case). Both also in the last couple of years have finally had a measure of TV success after decades on the fringes of wider recognition. 
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Louis CK's sitcom Louie which has been running on FX shouldnt really call itself a sitcom at all, its more of a 30 minute drama about a comedian with the occasional laugh thrown in. Dont get me wrong, its good, its very good but its not a barrel of laughs. My better half went to high school with Louis CK and she remembers him as smart and witty but not particularly funny and thats my impression of the show too. More wry than funny. But I like that. People who dont get Stewart Lee make a similar complaint, yes he's clever, but he doesn't deliver the belly laughs. That said the last three episodes of Louie have been the strangest and best of a rather patchy season. Cameos abound in the three episode arc Late Show pts 1,2,3 where Louis CK is offered David Letterman's job by a rather sinister Gary Marshall after a killer appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Louie is hounded for the job by Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld, warned off by Leno and finally sent for training at a cockamamie "hosting school" run by David Lynch. Lynch is playing a version of the character he created for himself on Twin Peaks and as you'd expect from a Lynch-CK collaboration it is surreal and actually quite brilliant. The arc follows a predictable but enjoyable course: Lynch coaches Louis into becoming an acceptable late night host and with the endorsement of his two daughters Louis delivers a great trial show telling guest Susan Sarandon a very funny (and very common I suspect) story about how Louis processed his first encounter with her when he saw her on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I wont tell you how the episode turns out but I thought the ending was a perfect showcase of Hollywood duplicity...
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Louie S4, E 10, E11, E12 Grade A