Strong and silent is not my type

I've been continuing to wrestle with Drive.

I posted once about it, very optimistically, in anticipation of its release. I then posted after seeing it, full of doubts and complaints (but recognizing some very memorable strengths -- I thought about the movie for days afterward).

Since then I've talked to a number of people about it. Most tell me I'm crazy. Some don't.

But I think it was last night that I finally came to understand my most salient complaint about it:

I don't relate to the strong silent type.

See, I hate pauses. I hate when no one is saying something in a conversation. And Drive -- particularly the scenes between Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan -- is chock full of pauses.

Interminable, pregnant, awful, uncomfortable pauses.

I'm a talker by nature. I have a lot to say, especially when I'm comfortable with a group of people. I'm excited to get together with people because I want to say things to them. Say things at them? Nah, I don't barrel over them -- there's definitely a give and take. But I am guilty at times of the sin discussed in the deleted scenes from Pulp Fiction, in which Mia asks Vincent if, as a conversationalist, he listens or waits to talk. I listen, but occasionally, I just wait to talk.

So a strong silent type -- who primarily listens, and doesn't contribute much in terms of speech -- is a person who makes me somewhat uncomfortable.

I have friends who I might characterize this way, but I prefer hanging out with them in groups. Their refusal to pathologically fill up the dead air with chatter makes me worried what will happen in a one-on-one situation. I almost feel like I should have a list of go-to topics ready, just in case I find myself in this scenario. I relate much better to talkative neurotics, who compulsively fill the empty spaces just as I do.

Gosling's character in Drive -- famously unnamed -- is the last guy in the world who would care about filling the empty spaces with chatter. He seems to thrive on the empty spaces.

Everyone who criticizes Drive, as I do, seems to agree that the scenes between Gosling and Mulligan are weighed down by unnaturally long pauses. It's a thoroughly intentional decision by Nicolas Winding Refn. But this to me is why they read as fake. Because I see the world the way I do -- holding the belief that human beings should fear awkward silences -- people who don't have this fear seem somehow artificial to me. Not artificial as in ungenuine, but as in actual constructions of fiction.

Before you go off on me, let me explain that I know this is irrational. The world takes all kinds of people. And if all of them were chatterers, we might go crazy.

I may not myself even be an extreme chatterer, except under certain circumstances, as when I have a lot in common with someone. In fact, I barely ever bore people I don't know with stories about myself. That's not what I want you to take away from this, the idea that I talk people's ears off. (Writing their eyes off on my blog is another matter.) But I do believe in lubricating social situations however I can, so that they flow more easily. This is where my verbal tendencies really come into play.

And so I don't relate to someone who will not only allow conversational dead spots, but actually seems to encourage them.

This realization came on my drive home from a friend's house last night, where five of us guys were hanging out. Lately these guys have teased me a bit about being too talkative, most notably on Facebook, where a joke has risen up that I explain in too much detail why I can't come to a particular social event. While the strong silent type might just say "I can't make it that night," I feel the need to say "I really want to come, but unfortunately, my dad and his wife are coming to town the next day, and we need to clean the house. Not only that, but I owe it to my wife not to be out the night before she has to start sucking it up for a week with her in-laws. Plus the baby has had a bit of a cold. And I've got a really big pimple on my nose right now." This is an exaggeration, but not a huge exaggeration.

As an attempt to prove them wrong, last night I told myself I was going to be that silent type, a person who receives more information than he sends out, a person who listens and laughs but lets others dictate the flow of the conversation.

Couldn't do it.

When I get together with these guys, I'm just exploding with the desire to talk about the pop culture we've consumed since we last saw each other. (Drive being one of these pieces of pop culture.) I don't hang with friends as often as I did in the pre-baby days, nor do we hang as long on a given night -- in fact, two of the five cleared out before 10 p.m. So it's even more important to utilize the available conversation time to shoot the shit about which new TV shows are good (and which suck), which movie trailers we love (and which we hate), etc. I tried as a test to shut off the part of me that's wired this way, but I couldn't. I just had to keep the conversational agenda moving along at a rapid clip. It's in my DNA.

But it's not in the DNA of Ryan Gosling's Driver, and it's not in the DNA of Viggo Mortensen's Tom Stall/Joey Cusack from A History of Violence. See, it wasn't Drive alone that helped me reach my conclusion about the strong silent type. For the first time on that drive home last night, I made a conscious comparison that might have occurred to me earlier -- the reasons I don't really like Drive are very similar to the reasons I don't really like A History of Violence.

There are definite stylistic similarities between the two films, such as the somewhat languid pacing interrupted by flashes of gruesome violence. Violence certainly moves things along faster, but there's something "man with no name" about Mortensen's character here, too -- having two names is almost as much of a comment on the meaningless of his name as having no name.

But the thing that aligns him most with the "man with no name" archetype is that he doesn't say much. He has intense, soulful eyes, as does Gosling in Drive. But he doesn't like to open his mouth any more than he has to. Perhaps he's only developed this laconic nature as a defense mechanism, to keep his Philly accent from bursting through to the surface. But the end result is the same: He's a guy who pierces you with solemn looks and speaks few words.

In other words, not my kind of guy.

What's troubling me now is to figure out how deep this runs in me. For example, I don't feel negatively disposed toward Clint Eastwood's Man With No Name character -- that I can say for sure. But I think that's because in westerns, that character is an archetype that's part of the very fabric of the genre. I accept more easily that strong silent types in westerns do their talking with their guns. I have never known any other way.

Tom/Joey and Driver, on the other hand, are modern men. And yeah, I guess they are each cowboys. But modern cowboys strike me as overly stylized, and somehow, false. We live in an age that is defined by chatter -- emails, texts and tweets fly back and forth across the world with such frequency that if you pictured them visually, they'd look like the world's busiest freeway projected at ten times its normal speed. I've gotten on board with this frenetic pace -- Tom/Joey and the Driver have not.

Does that make me right and them wrong?

No. But it does explain why I don't really relate to them.

Re-testing a theory

This is the third in my Second Chances series, which runs on Tuesdays. I'm revisiting films I didn't like as much as the average person liked them, to see if I mellow my negative stance upon second viewing.

My wife and I may have been in the minority with our distaste for A History of Violence. But at least we were in synch with each other.

As a matter of fact, our experience watching David Cronenberg's film helped me establish a personal filmgoing theory that I believe in pretty strongly.

You see, when my wife and I went to see A History of Violence, it was back in the days when we still tried to get to popular movies during prime screening times on their opening weekend. And so it was that for the only time in our moviegoing history together, we had to sit separately in the packed theater. When we met up at the end, we both had nothing but negative things to say about the film we'd just sat through. And that's when I knew we were soul mates.

Okay, not really, but it did make me realize something: When two people sit next to each other in a theater, it's very likely that their impression of the film will rub off on each other. Even if they don't emit a series of audible sighs, bursts of derisive laughter or snorts of disgust, their body language (restlessness, crossed arms, etc.) can indicate to the person next to them how they're feeling about the film. And even if the other person doesn't intend to be influenced by these cues, he or she probably can't help it. It's going on on a subconscious level, and it does have its effect. The effect is similar with a positive reaction -- laughter and other sounds of satisfaction can make your viewing partner view the film in a more positive light than he/she otherwise would.

A History of Violence proved that theory by proving its inverse, if that's not too convoluted. Since we were half a theater apart, we had no ability to influence each other's perception. (I should also point out that there were no distracting environmental factors, like ringing cell phones or yakking idiots.) And since we reached the same conclusion independently, the movie had to be bad, right?

Maybe. Or maybe we were just annoyed that we couldn't sit next to each other.

When I gave A History of Violence a second go on Saturday night, I did like it better. Maybe not a whole lot better, but definitely better. In fact, I think the only reason I didn't turn my thumbs down into a thumbs up in my official records was that I wasn't prepared to be viewing this film in a new light yet. My dislike of A History of Violence has been something I've actually enjoyed, and I'm not quite ready to give it up yet.

But the truth is the truth, and this is exactly why I'm doing this project: A History of Violence is better than I've been giving it credit for. Which you know already.

I'll outline my original complaints in no particular order, so you get a sense why I didn't like this film in the first place.

1) Viggo Mortensen. Although I like him well enough as an actor, I found his performance vacant and without affect in this particular film. I guess now I consider that part of the point. His Tom Stall is supposed to be sort of a blank slate, a guy who had to specifically repress the fiery aspects of Joey Cusick in order to evolve into a new identity. You'd expect a little blankness in that scenario. I guess I still find it a little problematic on a basic dramatic level, but I'm okay with it.

2) William Hurt. Hurt's third-act appearance as Richie Cusick was what I considered the most laughable part of A History of Violence. I thought it was an utterly ridiculous example of scenery chewing. Again, I was not as bothered this time. I sat through the movie waiting to burst into hysterics at the horrible acting of this great actor, but it never came. But again I retain a shade of my initial disapproval. I would have interpreted that role differently.

3) The opening scene. I was always a bit bothered by Cronenberg's choice to start on the two criminals that Tom/Joey blows away in his diner about 20 minutes into the movie. It's this wanky single-take shot following Steven McHattie and Greg Bryk as they roll along in a car alongside the motel they've just shot up, and it ends with the revelation of two dead bodies in the manager's office, with Bryk taking a third life (a little girl) right as the action cuts to the Stalls. I didn't really find this necessary -- it concentrates energy on two essentially minor characters, with the purported goal of showing that they deserve to be killed later on by Stall. But I prefer not knowing anything about them -- it's a better proof of Stall's amoral killing instincts. Showing us the bad behavior of the people he kills is an unnecessary -- and possibly counterproductive -- attempt to make the film's morals more black and white.

4) The staircase sex. I almost always find scenes in which two people who are arguing end up having angry, brutal sex in some unconventional location to be melodramatic and stagy. The staircase sex between Stall and his wife (Maria Bello) was no exception, full of histrionics and wild tears. Still bothered me this time, but since I was doing better with the movie overall, I took it in stride.

5) The narrative structure. A History of Violence is only 96 minutes long, so it necessarily has a brisk pace. I appreciated that better this time than I did last time. Last time, I thought the structure felt a bit off, with certain important incidents occurring at unusual junctures of the film, and other incidents not paying off the way they would in a more conventional script. I guess I still think a little character development is lost in the way this story is told, and maybe that's inevitable given the choice to have Ed Harris be the antagonist for the first chunk of the movie, then switch it up to a new character in the final scene. It's a similar problem to what I have with Sexy Beast -- it feels like it's all first act and third act, with no second act. (And stay tuned for my Second Chance viewing of Sexy Beast.)

This viewing also reminded me of the strengths I appreciated during the first go-around, drowned out by my complaints though they may have been. There's something interesting about the idea of a gangster who went straight for so long that he didn't think there was any chance he'd be pulled back in -- a proof of the idea that violent men have long memories. I also liked the brutality with which Cronenberg showed some of the violence, in a way that totally deglamorized it -- specifically, McHattie taking gurgling breaths of his own blood after he's been shot through the head in the diner, and the guy whose nose Stall breaks, seizing on the ground with what looks like a bloody pig's snout.

Second Chance Verdict, A History of Violence: That thumbs up may, reluctantly, be coming soon. Even if it means I have to sell out both my wife and my theory about proximal film viewings.

A time for projects

With my wife out of town this weekend, I already knew that I was going to spend most of my time indoors.

Yep, when I've got a block of time in the house alone, I'm one of those men who lets the place get within an inch of a health hazard before washing his first dish. I eat terribly and I watch a lot of movies. Not that I couldn't watch a lot of movies with my wife around -- she's been known to like a movie or two in her day -- but she doesn't have the stamina for a good movie marathon or three. I watched three movies Saturday, two Sunday, and am expecting to end up watching two tonight. It's getting late and I haven't started the second one yet, so we'll see.

But I also spent a lot of time watching baseball, and a smaller amount of time watching football. Neither of these things requires 100% of your attention 100% of the time, so having them on in the background is perfect for ...

... projects.

Yep, projects. And I just love projects. But I'm not talking about your typical husband projects, like drywalling or cleaning out the gutter. No, these are movie projects, pure and simple. New lists. Expansions of current lists. That kind of thing.

I first wrote about Flickchart almost two weeks ago, and I'm going to let you follow the link to read what I wrote then, rather than recapping what Flickchart is here. Although I haven't mentioned it again since then, that's not because it hasn't been dominating my brain. It has. I've been building up my list of movies to rank, and ranking like crazy. I crossed 20,000 rankings at the end of last week, and 2,500 movies earlier tonight.

But I didn't rank much this weekend, because I had a different project in mind: To start tracking my rankings over time.

See, I want to know when I've got a list that actually looks like the right rankings. A list where Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull isn't as high as #985, and Eight Men Out isn't as low as #1,597. With Flickchart, the movies you duel are random -- though there are some funny thematic similarities in certain duels that can't be coincidental -- so it's hard to know how long it will take before Eight Men Out will come up against some worthy opponents, or enough movies will leapfrog Crystal Skull and force it downward to where it belongs. It'll happen over the course of time, but only by recording the changes in the rankings will I actually know when I'm getting close.

So here was the idea: Take a snapshot at 20,000, then another at 30,000. Then compare. And then again at 40,000. And so on.

Problem was, I didn't actually think of this idea until I was already past 20,000. So I stopped myself at 21,400, and will hit the others every 10,000 on the dot.

So how to do this? Flickchart unfortunately does not provide an easy-to-export listing of your movies, one per line, as many as you want per screen. Rather, you have to plod through, page by page, with each page holding 50 titles and some of their relevant stats, taking up a good 1-2 inches in height on the screen. That meant to record all these rankings, I'd have to go through 50 such pages.

(Another reason I wanted to do this: In case Flickchart craps out and loses all my data, I don't want all of this ranking to have been for naught. The site has a lot to handle and it frequently times out, so I need to make backups).

So I made up an Excel spreadsheet with four columns: ranking, title, year, director. This forethought would allow me to explore later on which years are the best quality, which directors make my favorite movies, etc. etc. Not strictly necessary, but I'll thank myself for it later on.

And went through, page by page, painstakingly recording all 2,484 titles. All the while getting more feverish, because I would soon find out which film actually ranks last of all the movies I've seen.

I first started by going slowly, moving the cursor down just enough to see the title, then seeing if I could guess the director and the year. At about 200 titles this got tedious, and I sped up. I'd do 50 at a time, then break -- and then when the Yankees-Angels game went into the 10th, 11th, 12th and 13th innings, I just went as quickly as I could without stopping. I got through about 1,300 on the first day, and managed to get to #2,484 a little after midnight last night. With breaks in between to watch movies and stuff.

What I hope to do with this data, when I get to 30,000, is see which movies have moved up, which moved down, and which held. (Very few of them will probably hold the exact ranking). Then I will compare to the previous ranking, and include a new column, which shows the total positions jumped or the total positions dropped. Though I'm curious about whether it's up or down, I'm more curious about accuracy. So it's an absolute value of that number, the number off from the previous 10,000. The theory is, when I add all those up, I'll have a base number of total position changes. Then at 40,000, I'll have another number, which will hopefully be smaller. As I go onward, the number will get smaller and smaller until the films are more or less where they should be.

Did you get exhausted just reading about it? Well, I won't have to do as much work next time. Next time, I'll at least already have all the titles in, so I won't have to write those again. (I'm also keeping track separately of the new titles I've added, so I can just group those in). I will have to do a lot of clicking to find the new ranking, but hopefully that will take less time. And if it doesn't ... well, this process is a work in progress.

And tonight the project continued. Not only have I been allowed to start ranking again after my pause to take the snapshot, but I've also gone through my big daddy of all lists, the Excel spreadsheet that contains all the movies I've ever seen. I checked off all the movies I was already ranking, and looked to see how many others I was still missing. Finished that, too, so now all the movies I've seen, that are available to rank on Flickchart, are in there.

And one great thing about Flickchart: you can add movies yourself for the site's editors to consider. You fill in the details -- director, stars, year, etc. -- and they check your work before going to find poster art for each movie. The four I added today are now listed as in pending status, which means hopefully I'll be able to rank them soon. If I want another project -- which I most certainly do -- I can go through and add all 300-some titles that I've seen that they don't have. And then we'll really be in business.

Sound crazy? Ah, but isn't that the essence of all hobbies?

Oh, so you want to know what #2,484 was? You've probably figured it out already: David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. Which, in a way, shows how far this project still has to go. No, I don't like A History of Violence, though I will stop short of saying I hate it. And because I stop short of saying that, there's no way it could truly be last in my rankings. But I can see why Flickchart would see it that way -- reviewing my personal stats for the film, I saw that I had ranked it 53 times, and it had only won a single solitary duel. Just bad luck, I guess -- it had yet to come up against any of the 300-400 films it would certainly beat. (I felt a little better about things when it did come up against such a film today, and jumped up to #2,044).

You've got your projects. I've got mine. Don't judge.