SPOILER ALERT:
I don't often get too excited about the plot of a film (most are either banal or too artificial in a movie that's supposed to be realistic, and most exist just to keep the pages turning, so to speak), but that business of being totally blindsided by losing almost all of the money you've been working for all those years, with no previous indication that that was about to happen, shot from the perspective of the Brooks character's consciousness (without the all-seeing omniscient eye, so that it _is_ a blindsiding), and this is on the very first day of the "drop-out" life, coming just after you've lost the promotion you thought you had coming, so you get this one-two punch effect, with the second punch being so much harder, so hard it reframes your whole reality and makes the first punch (the loss of the promotion) seem like a total nothing-burger, and you wish to God you could go back to that earlier situation, because as bad as you thought that was, you ended up wishing it were that good...I don't know, something about the utterly merciless gut-punch nature of that whole thing struck me as absolutely true to life.
And then, when she says something to the effect of "And another thing -- when you're really gonna drop out, you do it with nothing," that struck me also as the kind of thing somebody might say. I mean, what _would_ you do in the first few hours after you lost your entire life savings, and the only house you had now was on wheels, and the money for gas and food was going to run out soon? It's happened to _somebody_, you know. And when it does, you would have exactly the range of reactions you saw in this film. Disbelief, life review, despair...one partner trying to make the best of it, because what else is there to do? You'd also have an employment counselor in a small town who, upon hearing that you'd give up a $100K job to go touch Indians and now you're desperate for a job, and upon hearing you ask him whether there wasn't another file or box somewhere with other open positions, something more appropriate to your education and experience, would say something like, "Oh, you mean the hundred thousand _dollar_ box!", and then laugh himself practically off his chair.
These are the kinds of things that make this film so much better than almost any comedy done today, the vast majority of which are just poo-poo-caca-humor farce that have no tie to the kinds of things that actually could happen. Not that there's not a place for farce; not that that can't be funny in some measure. But I don't think a good fantasy-comedy will ever beat something like LIA when it's done well.
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Piperson
11 years ago
SPOILER ALERT. I'm laughing just thinking about the scenes you mentioned.
Another one I think is so true-to-life is when they are standing on Hoover Dam and they get into a discussion about what to do with thE pitiful remainder or the money and Linda, who has broken the nest egg all over the floor of the Desert Inn, suggests that they split what's left. She thinks that would be the "fair thing". There is just something about the reasonable gentle way she says it that would just make me want to hurl myself over Hoover Dam.
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emncaity
11 years ago
I seriously just about fell off the couch the first time I saw the movie (must've been at least 25-26 years ago) when she said that. It was SO EXACTLY what you would've heard from a real person like her character.
Also: "You may not use the term 'nest egg.' And don't use any part of it, either. Don't say 'nest,' don't say 'egg.' Birds live in a stick in the woods, and you have things overeasy with toast for breakfast." Just the fury...totally justified, and yet when he carries the verbal bludgeoning too far, there is a certain amount of sympathy for her. Then the walk down the road and the impulse to jump into the car with the first guy who'll get her away from it -- it just all has the quality of somebody who really understands flawed human nature and who sat down with a script and said, "OK, if you had two people who started out this way, what would happen, and then what else would happen?" Just nailed it. You wonder where this kind of writing is now (although I don't want to wax too nostalgic -- there were plenty of terrible comedies then too).
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Piperson
11 years ago
I'm going to mention Larry David but only from a distance. I haven't really understood Curb YOur Enthusiasm although I have always been a Seinfeld fan.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is just a little too gritty and doesn't make me laugh. ( I think that is because I am a little too much like Larry to think he is funny.) But that idea you mentioned of "What else would happen?" is one of the forces that helped drive Seinfeld IMO.
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emncaity
11 years ago
For reasons that might be hard to explain to a Seinfeld hater, I actually think that's a helluva good example. The show was "about nothing," but it was about everything, for exactly the reason you say here. When the writers weren't completely contriving its plots (that tends to happen in the later years of a sitcom, a sure sign it's on its way out), events tended to unfold in exactly that meandering and sometimes unexpected way that feels like real life. The trick is to make what seems meandering and unexpected when you're looking forward seem like something that makes some sense looking backward, which is what actual life events tend to feel like, as opposed to pure randomness, which I would contend is just about _never_ the case with real life if you look close enough. In LIA, there was a logic to the way things unfolded, even an inevitability to it, even though the characters as they experienced it moment to moment found it unexpected and shocking. That kind of thing. Hell, if screenwriting were easy, I guess everybody would do it.
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cbartal
11 years ago
Oh I love that you are posting on the Lost board emn.
And I love that you are referencing Curb and Seinfeld.
But I just don't understand your post at all.
I don't know what you are talking about.
I am drunk. I'm always drunk.
Usually I can read a post and muster up a response in favor, or opposed.
But I can't here. Can you break your point down in small pieces, so the more inebriaated of us can grab a sandwich, and hunker down and digest your post?
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emncaity
11 years ago
You want me to explain this to a drunk person? I'm not sure I have that kind of skill, but here goes:
Lost in America has a script that feels like real life, and one reason it does is that the things that happen feel unexpected as they happen (as the characters experience them moment by moment), but when you look back at the trail, you think, "yeah, given these people and these situations, that outcome makes a lot of sense," just like such moments happen in real life as well. C
Also: Certain other TV shows and films have the same sort of feel to them. One of my all-time examples for that is Terms of Endearment, where not only is character destiny (as is so often stated, and accurately, IMHO), but so is the onset of a fatal condition, which in real life doesn't announce itself with foreshadowing, dramatic music, foreboding plot events, etc. It just happens, and there it is.
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dchatz10
11 years ago
That was very well put. That should clear things up for all the drunks.
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cbartal
11 years ago
The drunks are happy, but never cleared up.
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linusb_89
11 years ago
I don't understand, how is this movie funny at all? 6.9? I'd say it's like a three. There were really only two or so good punch lines, or "jokes". This movie was quite frankly very boring.
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cbartal
11 years ago
Brooks is not about punch lines. David Brenner is about punch lines. Heeny Goodman is about punch lines. There is a time and a place for that, but not in an Albert Brooks film. Yeesh, Brooks comes at things from a different perspective. He's not trying to make you belly laugh. It's not the Three Stooges, and it's not Woody Allen. It's Albert Brooks. Many can appreciate it, many can't. You can't I imagine. But don't force him into some crazy punch line count. It's a straw man you set up and then pound down.
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