MovieChat Forums > The Paperboy (2012) Discussion > So what was the point of the interview /...

So what was the point of the interview / narration?

posted 11 years ago by bmoCalC
5 replies | jump to latest

I just finished watching this and the last lines are Macy Gray's character, Anita, narrating about how Jack became a writer and never got over his first love and how no one ever found out who killed the Sheriff. So, I have to ask; what was the point? Why would anyone be interviewing Anita in the first place? She wasn't involved in any of the interactions between Jack and Ward or the Van Wetter case and she knew nothing about the murder of the Sheriff, so why would any reporter be contacting her years later for her account of any of this? And, why bring up the murder of the Sheriff in the first place? Nobody knows anything and apparently it never tied into the plot of the movie. The performances in this movie were great, but the story was just ridiculous.

[–] the_frog_princess 11 years ago

It feels like a lot of the story got left out.

[–] micirisi 11 years ago

It's simply a story telling technique and likely Anita was being interviewed by another newspaper hack from Miami trying to revive Hilary's story as Ward and Yardley did with mixed success.

[–] bron-tay 10 years ago

I haven't read Pete Dexter's book, but it strikes me that the reason for this particular storytelling technique is that Anita is one character who knew just about everything -- the innermost thoughts of Jack, the way both Blacks and Whites behaved and were treated, and the facts that formed the basis of the novel Jack apparently wrote at the end of it all, thus redeeming himself.

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[–] Steamboy 10 years ago

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Maybe because Jack, by then, is dead and she's the only one left alive who know the whole story? At any rate, Jack's book is dedicated to her.

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[–] vibe 10 years ago

This seems to be a common complaint about the film and it seems pretty simple to me: this is her version of the story, which means she could very well be just making a load of it up.

It's almost up there with the narration for Usual Suspects (without the big twist of course), just because we're listening to this narrator's story, doesn't mean it's all true.