14. Stranger Than Paradise (1984)

Stranger Than Paradise is in black and white.

black and white movies as an artistic choice are a tricky thing. i sort of hate "film noir", especially if it's put out recently. (for clarity: stranger than paradise is NOT AT ALL film noir). it seems like the actors are acting like the actors from past... in other worse... worse, sort of. newer film nourish stuff just seems too cheeky (a british word meaning "resembling ass cheeks") or something. picture george clooney, if her were british, wearing a suit, staring in the mirror laughing at how good-looking he is, in black and white, with really hot women who really know how to dress well (covering up is sexy, instead of bikini's or titties swinging loose) but are horribly annoying and slutty, or at least they kiss a lot of dudes and then the scene cuts and it's implied they did it doggie, without a rubber.

maybe film noir is just fun for the actors.

stranger than paradise is great in black and white.

Stranger Than Paradise is a minimalist film.

in other words, there ain't a whole lot of shit going to happen, ain't a whole lotta fluff (or maybe it's all fluff.)

i find minimalist films, whenever i recognize them to be so, are the closest films come to portraying "real life" (a thing i imagine, and am told about, although am not sure if i have ever seen myself, especially since the epic film dan in real life). real life is minimalist. you drive the car, it's quiet in the car. in minimalist film, the big things become small. small movements of objects in a room, or a mumbled three words after minutes of silence, become bigger, more... "meaningful". watching, you become sensitive to small changes, so the small changes become just as big as the big changes in a big movie, where big things happen (bank heists, orgies, bombings of small towns, etc.)

look at it this way: I'm listening to recording artist the books right now and they use an audio sample of a woman singing "you get used to hangin' if you hang long enough." if you watch silence for long enough, it becomes the norm, your brain gets into a rhythm with it, you start to breathe its pace. this might be why it took me a few minutes of "trying" to watch, before Stranger Than Paradise stopped feeling a tad... slow. then you slow down with it. it goes at the pace you normally go at, just ya know, living. you get in the groove. (too be watched in company of wine, not cocaine)

sidenote: i wish people went to the bathroom on camera more often, and almost "randomly", in movies. like in a serious movie when someone's got some heavy pondering to do... maybe an early thirties woman choosing between two men, one to become her romantic, fuck-everyday, eventually do her-in-the-butt, get married, get kids, stop fuckin', renew their vows in hopes of jump-starting their sex-life, failing, cheering V for Viagra, and then dying holding someone's hand instead of... not. the one not chosen by our indecisive woman gets their dick chopped off at the hand of a weak midget with a dull knife in a dungeon, and right before he dies, he's told that the matrix is real and that they are in it.

anyway, why not cut to the perplexed woman taking a shit? what if she "DROPS THE KIDS OFF AT THE POOL" and then "REALIZES WHICH DICK WENT DEEPER"?

Stranger Than Paradise has three main characters, 2 guys and a girl.

i find this amount of people, in this gender ratio, to be one of the most interesting small groups in both real life and movies. 3 is the smallest "group". one can die and ya still got two, enough for them to not have to masturbate or commit necrophilia, but to simply do it out of the kindness of their hearts, wide-eyed spewing the beauty if simply-being-alive out of all orifices (a juicey substance resembling the popular beverage "kool-aid" if it came in a flavor called "soul of the poet").

The female character in the film comes from Hungary to new york and carries around an audio-cassette-tape-player that always has the same tape in it: screamin jay hawkins.

"it's screaming jay hawkins, he is a wild man."

minimalist movies become about the details, about the tiny strange things that make real, real. normal movies have a box of cheerios, minimalist movies have screamin jay hawkins on tape from Hungary. and i would argue, this is why it can feel so real. for instance, my buddy conor has a "screamin jay hawkins" t-shirt (which is, if i remember correctly, black and white). he's had it forever, i know it well, and it is really the only relationship i have with the name "screamin jay hawkins". specifics are easier to personally pocket and organize than... having to imagine being part of an oil-drilling team which gets chosen by NASA to land a space ship on an ASTEROID and blow it up with NUKES. (see armageddon, on TNT nightly.)

and when stranger than paradise is all over, you care about the characters as if you saw horrible things happen to them, as if they saved little timmy from being killed by a bus (launched by an asteroid), as if they were bruce willis in die hard, barefoot, bloody, mp5 automatic machine gun in (one) hand, right after he's saved an entire building of hostages from some foreign terrorists with bad morals, bad hair, bad fashion. i like to think you simply like these three characters cause they are people. people you could meet. (nevermind about caring for them as much as bruce willis in die hard, he went through that whole movie with no shoes...)

i dont actually know much "fact" about minimalism... anyone know more? off the dome?

but be sure to catch stranger than paradise. it is moving without moving too much, twisting my nipples without too many plot twists, jerking me off without jerking me around (or causing undue chafing)... you get the picture.

love,

Alec

do watch the preview. it's "epic".