Pecker VS. American Psycho

who said there needs to be a comparison?

Then stop taking viagra.

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I'll F* you with a loaf of french bread,eventhough you're on atkins,im like tough actin tinactin

You didn't like Pecker?

"Family" is just another word for "Censorship"

hehe

At first, I was just going to take your comment as an instance of two people with different tastes, but a couple of things you said, as well as the way you said them, makes it clear to me that there is something else going on here.

First of all you said you couldn't leave my comment unaddressed, and you state your view as fact ("...you just can't compare the two, cause it's just that much better."), as if it were a crime to let me and readers of this thread go on believing such a mistaken belief. So, since we're not talking a matter of taste but objective fact, I feel that you invite a thoughtful challenge. Maybe I'm right, maybe you're right, or maybe there is a middle ground, but to find the truth, I think I should lay out my views next to yours.

You pointed out things you found weak or lacking in "Pecker", but these can also be found in "Citizen Kane". For example, many people find "Citizen Kane" a pain to watch, that it goes on too long, and that the characters and acting are unbearably dull. If you look at the performances side by side, you might find similar speech patterns, similarly feelingless dialogue, and dead eyes in the actors. Both come across as wooden. The difference is that in "Citizen Kane" this comes across as the way normal people are supposed to talk, it is as life-like or dramatic as the director could get. In "Pecker", however, the characters are all abnormal in some respect, everyone has some kind of imbalance, and the speech patterns and mannerisms all illustrate the quirkiness of the world we're being presented. It's slightly dream-like, slightly nightmarish, and slightly comic, but there is something very refreshing and somehow real despite the zombie-wooden population. You state that you could tell from a couple of scenes back how things would go in "Pecker", implying that "Citizen Kane" is a whirlwind of surprising twists and turns. First off, twists and turns aren't necessarily desirable, as you seem to have agreed with. And secondly, what isn't straightforward about a man with big ideals who rises to fame and wealth and then dies lonely and corrupted, pining for his youth? On the opposing side is the story of a young man with a passion which leads him to success and fame but finding that fame destroys his purity, he revolts against it. Sure, "Citizen Kane" is structured in a way that was fairly radical, having most of the story told in flashbacks by multiple narrators, but that doesn't alter the dreary end-product. [I greatly prefer "The Great McGinty", which came out the same year, and "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari", which came ot twenty years prior, for movies told almost entirely in flashback. And "Rashomon", which came out ten years later, left the structure of "Citizen Kane" looking almost as quaint and out-dated as mobile pagers are today.] "Pecker" may be structured chronologically, but the editing which meshes photography with cinematography, the use of color, and the vibrancy of the characters all help raise the revolutionary spirit of the movie to the level of a glorious hymn. The story doesn't need flashbacks by multiple characters, and yet the end-product is powerful and catalyzing.

Lastly, you label "Citizen Kane" an "untouchable classic". This comment seems to show that you're infected by a bug that has been going around movie critics, scholars, and the general public since the late 50s, early 60s, when certain French directors started raving about and hyping up certain American directors and movies. I used to have that bug and grew very annoyed when people didn't appreciate "Citizen Kane" or other such "classics". Since then, I've come to realize that there are lots of movies which have unwarrantedly come to be known as great and noble works, and lots of movie-makers who have unwarrantedly come to be regarded as geniuses or holy saints of cinema, all based on hype. Sometimes an award makes the hype, sometimes it's praise by critics or scholars or other movie-makers. And sometimes it comes from the fact that so many people have seen a movie and enjoyed it at the time that it becomes etched in history as great, when really its quality was very shallow and its benefits short-lived. I think it's dangerous to go along with what others say and it's important to make sure we are always probing ourselves while watching movies and while reflecting on them, whether we actually like them or whether we are trying to justify them to match the opinions of so-called experts and the world at large. Our pure individual perspectives are our only hope for quality in the future. If you think about it, that's also a theme of "Pecker".

In short, I appreciate the passion and reverence you hold for cinema, but I believe "Citizen Kane" just isn't worthy of it.




My attempt to list the best movies of all-time: http://www.themoviecanon.blogspot.com