That's a lot of F's for a Friday.
I'm doing some film writing that I'm proud of each month that is getting lost to the ether of the internet, and I decided it was time to repost some of it here. As I've mentioned in passing from time to time, I'm involved in a Facebook group called Flickchart Friends Favorites Fiesta, in which each month you are matched with another person in the group and assigned to watch the highest ranked film on their Flickchart that you haven't seen.
You are supposed to then report back to the group your thoughts, though not everyone does. In fact, some people stick their hand up every month to say they are participating, even though they have no realistic plan for watching the movie they get, or they have a plan but no follow through. There are some people who are like six months backed up. I will never understand this sort of flake.
Me, I have never missed a month where I said I was going to participate -- which I think is every month since I started doing this about five years ago. In fact, I can only think of one month where I had to wait until a few days into the next month to watch the movie, and there was a specific reason for this. Barry Levinson's Toys was becoming available for streaming only a few days into the new month, so instead of paying to rent it and watch it in time, I made the quite defensible decision to hold off a few extra days. (And boy am I glad I didn't pay for that movie because I hated it. Someone in the group has it in her top 20. There's no accounting for taste I guess. Then again, many have said this of me with regards to having The Cable Guy and Jesus Christ Superstar in my top 20. These movies have not done well for me when others have drawn them.)
There are no guidelines on how you're supposed to report back, and I think it's really a function of how good of a writer you are. Some people will just contribute a sentence or two. They're not writers and that's totally fine. Others will give detailed analyses even if they aren't great writers or if it might be too granular. More power to them too. As long as you are watching, telling everyone you watched and then telling them where the movie landed on your Flickchart -- the customary last step.
I take it pretty seriously, in that I like to write a mini review of maybe six paragraphs. I almost always write them in about ten minutes just to get it out ASAP, but that doesn't mean I'm not proud of them.
I was pretty proud of this month's short review of Fandango, which I didn't know much about before watching it -- I'd only heard the title, and didn't realize it was the first collaboration between Kevin Costner and Kevin Reynolds. I ended up being blown away by it, eventually.
I may not post what I write every month, but I thought I would post my September movie at least. I usually like to keep some record of things I've written, but in the case of the posts for FFFF, I've tended not to. Sure I can search the group history to find my past writings, but will I? Better to post it here so I know where to find it.
So here's what I wrote about Fandango, removing the name of the person whose chart it came from to protect his privacy -- if that sort of thing matters to him.
I didn't know where [REDACTED]'s #46, Fandango (1985), was going, or whether it was getting there, or what I thought of any of it, until it got to the parachute school scene. A group of recently graduated friends, now eligible for the draft in May of 1971 (and some of them already drafted), led by Kevin Costner and Judd Nelson, are driving through the Texas desert when they come across a dilapidated parachute school. I'm not talking rough around the edges -- I'm talking airfields strewn with the discarded parts of old planes, which appear to have crashed on landing, as well as others literally smashed into the side of the hangar, most of whose windows have also blown out.
The guy running the school, a stoner named Truman Sparks, stumbles out of one of these crashed planes, the milk from his cereal and actual chunks of cereal dribbling down his chin. He can't believe someone actually wants to avail him of his services, but sure, he'll give a quick tutorial on how to parachute that is accomplished through an insane series of scribbles on a chalkboard and one giant run-on sentence. Nelson's character is that unlucky guinea pig, having agreed to the dare on the condition that his friends don't dodge the draft. He's sick to his stomach -- he's also afraid of heights -- but he really wants his friends not to flee to Mexico and do their civic duty. As the plane lifts off the ground, the airfield is again sprayed by the array of nuts and bolts that are supposed to prevent the plane from blowing apart mid-flight.
It was at this point that I realized that Fandango was not some Animal House wannabe where the characters do cheeky and improbable things just to annoy me. It's actually a deeply poignant contemplation of what it means to leave childhood behind, to enter into an uncertain world full of war and big decisions, to leave your friends behind abruptly, with the possibility that you will never see them again -- metaphorically, to always be embarking in an airplane that's missing some of its nuts and bolts, having no idea if the man flying the plane has any knowledge of how to land it, or if your parachute will actually carry you safely to the ground.
Costner plays the main character, Gardner Barnes, who seems always to be riling somebody up or getting them to do something they don't want to do. I sometimes find this sort of character, necessary though they may be as a narrative catalyst, unrelatable at best, unbelievable at worst. But there's something solemn and wistful underneath Gardner's bluster, as despite his apparent lack of belief in rules or concern about consequences, he's a romantic who pines for a lost love. These moments sneak up in the middle of other adventures, like lighting off fireworks in a cemetery, and suddenly he's transported to a romantic cutaway with this woman (Suzie Amis), whose complete role in the narrative is smartly hidden until later in the story.
I can see why Kevin Reynolds would go on to direct Waterworld, as there is something truly apocalyptic about Fandango -- even as it remains a surface-level fun time in the vein of the aforementioned Animal House. If I had to categorize it, I'd call it an apocalyptic, absurdist comedy, which exists more as metaphor than reality. However, there's a heart within that absurdism, and you'll be surprised at how regularly the movie rises up and fully surprises you with how well it does that. In fact, I have kind of always known Reynolds as a laughingstock because in most quarters, neither Waterworld nor Robin Hood is particularly well thought of. But there's a reason why Costner was so loyal to him. He made this.
Oh yeah -- and there is a fifth participant in this odyssey who is passed out literally the entire time.
Let's see how it does on my chart:
Fandango > Lucy
Fandango > Jesus' Son
Fandango > Tropic Thunder
Fandango < The Seventh Seal
Fandango > La Veronica
Fandango > Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Fandango < Zootopia
Fandango > Driving Miss Daisy
Fandango > Greenberg
Fandango > Pump Up the Volume
Fandango > Lethal Weapon 2
Fandango > A Beautiful Mind
I admit I pushed this thing a bit harder than I expected I would, giving it the victory over some films I never would have guessed it would beat. This is sort of why I wait to rank my films if I can, to allow the initial glow to wear off a bit. But the glow of Fandango was strong, and it may only get stronger with time.
Thanks [REDACTED]!
*********.
I usually also like when that person -- [REDACTED] in this case -- comes back to me with some sort of useful comment that engages with something I wrote. It's what I always try to do when my movies get written about. There can even be dialogues that run on for a dozen comments, depending on the movie.
At first I thought the guy had just responded "Thanks for watching" without even a period at the end of the sentence. I was so annoyed by this lack of engagement that I didn't even like his comment and was ready to move on.
Well, I sure am glad I decided to write this post, because going back to it to confirm, I noted that "Thanks for watching" was actually his second comment. The first was indeed quite a substantive response to what I'd written, so now that I've seen that, I've written him an engaged rejoinder as well.
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