A hot mess

I don't know when I first heard the phrase "a hot mess," but I think it wasn't that long ago -- almost definitely within the past five years. It could just be that "a hot mess" had been eluding me all these years, or it could be that some clever wordsmith strung these three common words together for the first time only recently.

In any case, I find it a very accurate descriptor for a person or thing in a particular state of chaos. Someone or something that is a hot mess is disjointed, disheveled and disorganized, and if this person or thing has hair, the hair is almost certainly sticking out in all directions. A literal element of heat often applies as well.

But the phrase is not entirely derogatory. There's an element of love to it -- a sense that the current state of this person or thing is an aberration, and that in most circumstances he, she or it is a lot cooler and cleaner. And there's also the implication that there's something interesting in this "mess" -- that it's "hot" in some way, perhaps in the way Paris Hilton famously said "That's hot."

The definition seems to apply in almost every way for Lee Daniels' The Paperboy. It's hot, but it's definitely a bit of a mess.

I saw The Paperboy yesterday as the last of my Monday matinees. You may remember in this post that I discussed my plan to go into work at 5 a.m. on Mondays for a period of about six weeks, to help with the East Coast rollout of my company's new rental software. And since I'd get out at 1:30 but didn't need to pick up my son from daycare until 5, I'd have a perfect opportunity to squeeze in a movie. It turned out to be only five weeks, only four of which was I actually the guy who came in at 5, and only three of which featured a Monday matinee. After Celeste & Jesse Forever, I saw Lawless the following Monday. Then missed two in a row before catching The Paperboy yesterday. The software is now rolled out, so I'm back to my usual 7 a.m. start next Monday.

I was drawn to The Paperboy for two reasons: 1) It was directed by Lee Daniels, whose first film (Shadowboxer) was definitely a mess, but not a very hot one, and whose second film (Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire) was a masterpiece; 2) It featured Nicole Kidman, one of my favorite actresses, serving as the embodiment of the phrase "a hot mess."

If you haven't seen an image of Kidman in The Paperboy, here's one:

While her hair is generally in order, that's about the only thing you could describe that way. Even if you saw no moving images of the things she's doing in this movie, you'd probably know just from this one shot that Kidman's character does not have her shit together. Not only is she dressed slutty, but she's also got a bra strap creeping its way down her right arm. She's been through the ringer and back.

If you did see some moving images of this film, you'd see that the film stock is practically sweating. The Paperboy is shot in a dingy, grubby style in which particles of dirt seem to hang in the air, and you can practically hear a chorus of cicadas in the background, adding extra dimension to the swampy Floridian summer in which the movie is set. In fact, the environment depicted here shares something in common with Beasts of the Southern Wild, which teems with images of swampy animals up close in all their wriggling beauty and ugliness. (I'm sure part of why I think that is that you see an alligator being gutted in The Paperboy, with its hot mess of guts spilling out all over the place.)

But Kidman isn't the only hot mess in this movie. How about John Cusack?

He plays an accused murderer so vile that he the sweat dripping off him is like malfeasance oozing out of every pore. If you don't think Cusack could play this role, check it out -- the hatred and ignorance simply emanate from him.

Even Matthew McConaughey, deep into the independent phase of his career that movies like Failure to Launch and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days seem to have financed, is falling apart at the seams in this movie:

He's got scars on both sides of his mouth, one of which you can see here, and in one scene he's covered with some kind of pox that gives him the appearance of a truly unwell individual.

Zac Efron still looks pretty much like a Tiger Beat pinup, but he appears in only tighty-whities about four different times in this movie. And if you recall this post from years ago (in a discussion of another film starring Nicole Kidman), tighty-whities are the favored undergarment for hot messes everywhere.

Of course, the biggest mess here is what we expect to be going on, emotionally, among the characters. Not only is Kidman sleeping with any number of them, which creates plenty of problems, but this being Lee Daniels, you know that there's a simmering racial element underneath it all. In fact, the movie is narrated by one of the film's two black actors, Macy Gray -- an actress/singer who has been a hot mess in almost every role she's played.

But is The Paperboy a hot mess you should check out?

A day later, I'm still undecided. My initial reaction to it was quite positive, as most of the performances and all of the filmmaking were executed at a very high level. However, I soon started wondering what it all added up to. In the end I couldn't figure out exactly what message Daniels was trying to leave us with. Or if he was only trying to leave us with a mess.

But I think the very nature of a hot mess is that you have to take the good with the bad. In the end, you're there because you know it's going to be interesting.

And since I didn't start to nod off once, even after my day began at 4 a.m., I'd say it definitely was.

Monday matinees

I wouldn't say I've been exactly killing it at work lately.

Oh, I'm not disappointing anyone -- I'm answering all my emails and fulfilling my requests in a timely fashion. But I haven't been striving a whole lot, and there are times I worry about that more often than others.

It was during one of these periods of worry last Friday that I volunteered to start coming in at 5 a.m. on Monday mornings.

You see, my company -- a party rental company -- has been rolling out a new version of the rental software. So far, the rollout has focused on locations on the West Coast. But now it's time to hit up our East Coast sites, and we don't have a technician in the Eastern time zone.

On Friday, I overheard a conference call between one of the trainers and a couple of my co-workers. There was frustration being expressed on both sides, with the trainers wanting us to do more prep work to minimize the possibility of technical problems on the go-live day, and my side explaining that certain problems were impossible to prepare for and would inevitably arise. At one point, I heard the trainer say "Are you going to come in at 5 a.m. to help them on Monday?"

Why, yes. Yes, perhaps I will.

The question wasn't directed at me, but I popped into my boss' office about 15 minutes later and volunteered to do it. He was incredibly pleased. "It'll just be for a month or so, right?" I asked. "Yeah, six weeks," he responded.

No problem.

Of course, I probably wouldn't have been so quick to volunteer if I didn't immediately sense the opportunity this schedule provided me.

On Mondays, my wife takes my son down to daycare, and I pick him up. I'm usually there to get him around 4, but we technically have until 5:30 before we're actually late to pick him up. Just lately I've realized that the traffic is not that much worse if I wait longer, so I've been trying to fit in errands or other time-killers, to get a little time to myself between my duties at work and my duties as a parent.

With my normal 7:00 to 3:30 schedule, I don't have time for anything more than a couple short errands.

Working 5:00 to 1:30, on the other hand, would allow me to see a movie before I have to pick him up.

As long as I can get to something that starts by 2:30, or even quarter to three (if it's short), I'm in the clear to hit a matinee ... and just hope that waking up at ten past four doesn't leave me comatose in the theater.

Yesterday's first installation of the new schedule was not a great way to start. Four friends and I had gone to the Los Angeles County Fair the previous evening, meaning I didn't get back to my house until just before 11, having indulged on too much food and too much beer. This after I'd gotten only four hours' sleep the night before (I started Silent House after midnight on Saturday, a kind of celebration after cleaning up in my poker game).

But Zombie Me made it into the office at 4:59 nonetheless, and good thing too -- my first two hours may have been my busiest of the day.

When 1:30 finally rolled around, I was still standing -- barely. And Celeste and Jesse Forever was still starting at 2:05 at the nearby Arclight. Hard to believe, since this little movie had been out for a month, and I had already flirted with seeing it several times. I figured it wouldn't last this Friday's new releases, and it was only 89 minutes -- a perfect length for a body on the verge of collapse.

I figured I should probably get the largest caffeinated soda the Arclight would sell me, but I was already reeling from the fact that there was no matinee price at this theater, meaning I was paying a full $12.50 to see a movie on a Monday afternoon. Besides, I'd drank two consecutive Diet Cokes just to keep me going in the past two hours. Since I didn't feel like taking on any more liquid, I'd have to hope that the lingering effects of that caffeine intake would sustain me.

And I did survive the whole movie without falling asleep. Even though I wasn't getting the small bursts of adrenaline that laughter provides.

Yeah, I didn't really dig this movie. While it's not a straight comedy -- there are times when it feels like a downright drama -- I figured that its comically talented stars (Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg) would be good for a few laughs. As it turns out, not really. The lack of laughs would have been alright if I'd found the movie poignant, but it failed me there as well.

I won't go into too much of a review of Celeste and Jesse, except to say that it commits dual sins: it's way too formulaic in parts, but it's also way too scattershot and unconventional in others. It's basically a mixed bag of mediocre filmmaking, which is disappointing also because I realized afterward that it was directed by Lee Toland Krieger, whose The Vicious Kind really worked for me a couple years ago.

It pains me to say this, but it was Rashida Jones who kind of let me down here. Serving as a co-writer in addition to executive producer and star, Jones is probably the most dominant single creative force behind the film. And though I love her -- really, I've had a thing for her ever since she first appeared as Jim's new girlfriend on The Office -- I don't know if she's quite capable of carrying a film. (It ends up being her story much more than it is Samberg's.) There are some people who are simply delightful in a supporting role, but they just don't fly when someone makes them the lead. That could be the case with Jones, though I never would have guessed it coming in, given the ample charisma she's brought to everything she's done.

Of course, I can't discount the fact that it may just be a bad idea to see any movie after you've only had eight hours of sleep in the previous two nights.

Maybe I'll use next Monday's 1:30 release as an opportunity to go swimming in the nearby Pacific Ocean. That'll certainly wake me up.

After all, watching movies is not the only thing you don't get to do as much of when you're a husband, a father and a new homeowner.

But the pull of this unique Monday matinee opportunity will be strong enough on most weeks to bring me back to the theater.

I mean, I'm a guy who loves movies -- which, like Celeste and Jesse, is also forever.