Self Conscious 'quirkiness'

[Noir of the Night]

Maybe Gondry, but Kaufman's style is too brooding to really fit in with some of these other films I think. And the two Kaufman films Jonze directed were surreal and dark, so I don't know that he fits. I wouldn't call his music videos twee or whatever word we're using either, although I can see it for Gondry.

Does quirky also equate with happy? I'm honestly asking, because that could be part of the reason I'm having some trouble with this thread. I hadn't been working under that assumption, and to me, very little mentioned in this thread has more 'quirk' than Kaufman's meta-play in Adaptation. And nothing is more self-conscious.

I wouldn't say quirky equates with happy, but then, I don't know if quirky is the right word being used. It's more that, if you look at all of the movies listed in the first post (sans The Squid and the Whale), and all of the movies that have come up, the Kaufman/Jonze films don't really fit that template in my mind.

[Polybius]

Nothing pisses me off more than faux-quirkiness.

There are quite a few film-makers who attemp to reproduce the kind of odd-ball, eccentric character-oriented comedy-dramas that directors such as Wes Anderson and Jim Jarmusch have excelled in, but lacking the vision of these two directors, the end product comes across as hopelessly contrived. In Anderson's and Jarmusch's films, the quirkiness is usually just a thread in the tapestry, rather than the be-all and end-all itself.

Jim's an excellent example of a guy who can indulge in quirkiness without it taking control of him or his narrative. Maybe the single best example, actually.

And don't even get me started on Garden State: despite a great soundtrack, the "eccentric" jokes: Aunt with bad voice singing at funeral, dog humping leg, silly dancing, dusting a gamecube to discover who peed on it - come thick and fast with the grace of a machine tool - in fact, GS is nothing more than a litany of such gags.

With the added bonus of a protagonist who looks and acts exactly like an ambulatory penis.

[Andre Jurieu]

I'm guessing none of you like "Pushing Daisies", then. Curmudgeons.

I think the thing that saves Pushing Daisies is the fact that it aims to be a fairy-tale and while it embraces this viewpoint whole-heartedly in terms of visuals, it still contains a few skeptical voices amidst all those precious moments. Plus, not all the characters are peculiar just for the sake of being peculiar, so it avoids becoming entrenched in Burton territory. In fact the main characters act pretty normal for their circumstances, though perhaps a little too positive.

[Antoine Doinel]

Uh oh, quirk haters, Diablo Cody has infiltrated the Criterion Collection!

[Andre Jurieu]

Uh oh, quirk haters, Diablo Cody has infiltrated the Criterion Collection!

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of when I spotted her inclusion in the newsletter was a famous pretzel scene from The Simpsons?

Matt: And here come the digi-packs!

Matt: Esteemed auteur Chris Marker now on the forum pleading with the crowd for... for some kind of sanity.

Matt: Uh-oh, and a barrage of digi-packs now knocking Chris unconscious.

Jeff: Wow. This is, uh... this is a black day for DVD Forums.

[Jeff]

Uh oh, quirk haters, Diablo Cody has infiltrated the Criterion Collection!

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of when I spotted her inclusion in the newsletter was a famous pretzel scene from The Simpsons?

That's great, Andre. "And here come the pretzels" is one of my favorite Simpsons-derived expressions.

[Macintosh]

Uh oh, quirk haters, Diablo Cody has infiltrated the Criterion Collection!

Is it wrong that the first thing I thought of when I spotted her inclusion in the newsletter was a famous pretzel scene from The Simpsons?

Matt: And here come the digi-packs!

Matt: Esteemed auteur Chris Marker now on the forum pleading with the crowd for... for some kind of sanity.

Matt: Uh-oh, and a barrage of digi-packs now knocking Chris unconscious.

Jeff: Wow. This is, uh... this is a black day for DVD Forums.

Thanks, i just spit out my coffee reading this! Great one.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Not to snark, but "manga-heroine eyes" and Louise Brooks. I think that sentence could have used a little work. Cute pic of the lady, though.

[domino harvey]

Great article on the Indiewood movement from the Washington Post

[King Prendergast]

Great article on the Indiewood movement from the Washington Post

"There Will Be Hamburger Phones"....classic.

[Robotron]

Self-reflexivity is not directly related to the "indie" genre (which like any genre, really is mostly iconography) any more than it is related to any other one. The only place I see this argument holding up is Wes Anderson's overtly artificial method of frame composition and deadpan acting that has spilled over into imitators, but Charlie Kaufman is as "indie" as Fellini and Welles, unless we'd like to start criticizing their meta play as well.

[King Prendergast]

What do you think the state of American independent film is today?
Just when we thought that the rise of the Indiewood film (with the likes of Juno and Little Miss Sunshine) was upon us, many indie divisions of the studios fold.
We have something like a viable "true" indie alternative (mumblecore, North Carolina School of the Arts-core) but these films do little business and garner little attention outside of NY and LA. Where do you think we are today? Is Indiewood dead? Is Kelly Reichardt the future? I struggle with this issue constantly.

[foggy eyes]

Indiewood is Hollywood.

I doubt Kelly Reichardt is the future, but you already knew that. Jim Finn seems to be very promising. Ken Jacobs, Lawrence Jordan, James Benning, Nathaniel Dorsky (etc.) have been practising the future for decades, but not enough people have been paying attention. Wiseman is great. [Note to self: really need to check out Jon Jost, Rob Tregenza and Nina Menkes.]

[domino harvey]

So much discussion of this already here

[King Prendergast]

So much discussion of this already here

Questions of content aside, where do we stand mode of production-wise? Can/should specialty divisions be considered "independent"?

[domino harvey]

To paraphrase Bill Boggs' false definition of indie music from the What's Up Matador? infomercial: "Indie films are films for independent people!"

[King Prendergast]

Anyone know where i could find some hard data on the demographics of the audience for american indie film?
I'm trying to back up the intuitive grasp of who watches these films http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01 ... festivals/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; with some real numbers.

[foggy eyes]

Matt Zoller Seitz bigs up Wes Anderson in a 5 part special.

My first thought on looking at the subheading was: "what on earth does Wes Anderson have to do with Bruno Schulz?"

[Marcel Gioberti]

I'm not sure what criteria we're using to describe films as "self-conscious" or "quirky" but from my perspective, the shoe-gaziness of Twilight was agonizing to watch. Quite literally every scene in the film involving the two leads was acted (and therefore, ostensibly directed) with a series of breathy gasps, wheezes, and sniffles, typically followed by the girl looking down and shaking her head while biting a pouty lip as the guy grimaces. ](*,)

Nevermind any other reservations I had with the film; it was quite honestly that style of gee/shucks/woe-is-me acting that I couldn't understand.

So I guess maybe this style of filmmaking is making its way into other generic film categories?

[MoonlitKnight]

Maybe it's just me, but I relate to these so-called quirky comedies much more than I do to all those raunchy, lower-middlebrow comic stylings of Judd Apatow and the like, which now totally dominate mainstream comedy. When I watched Old School with my family once, all I could think was, 'this makes Animal House look like a Truffaut film!' Mainstream comedy has gotten far too broad and all too blunt for its own good, IMO. As I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate a wider variety of comedic forms, thanks largely, I'd say, to my getting into Monty Python...who used virtually every type of comedy known to man in their work (surrealism, absurdism, slapstick, deadpan, irony, satire, puns, bathos, etc.). So I guess when it comes to comedy, I relate much more to stuff that's more unexpected and 'out there' than the usual run-of-the-mill man-child/fart/sex jokes.

[Lemmy Caution]

Just watched Mathew Harrison's Rhythm Thief (1994) the other night and it was decidedly an indie quirkfest. Grainy b&w filmed on the streets of the Lower East Side, with grungy apts, punk bands, elements of sex, drugs and crime. The story centers around a tough amoral (updated Bogart?) hipster selling bootleg tapes of underground music on the sidewalks. He has a couple of followers who try to buddy up to him -- one spunky and stoned with artfully messy hair, the other squirrely and strung out wearing some kind of head gear with flaps. Our street hustler is bonking some arty chick (we can tell because she always wears black and oversized glasses) who he could care less about. There's also a crazy girl from his hometown trying to get next to him. She has a habit of writing all over everything, including her arms, subway cars, his apt. walls.

One scene sums up its SCQ quotient nicely: the crazy girl sits at a bare table, makes grape Kool-Aid from a packet-- stirred with a fork not a spoon -- and then sips it through a long plastic tube which she's twisted into eyeglasses. One end in her mouth, one in the Koolaid, and so we watch the koolaid swirl around her eyes. Back and forth, as she plays with it. Koolaid glasses ... like something out of Brautigan.

Other retro references include The Little Fugitive, when our music hustler and the crazy girl flee the city for Coney Island and a little respite under the boardwalk.

Even though the quirk is heavily amped up, it's a decent enough indie film of the era. I liked the point-of-view shots from inside the litter box, as the main character scoops out the kitty droppings.

Apparently after seeing this film at Sundance, Scorsese got involved and produced Harrison's next feature, Kicked in the Head (1997) which probably explains the presence of Michael Rappaport, James Woods and Linda Fiorentino in an indie quirkfest with an IMDb average of 2.8.

[bunuelian]

Contributing nothing, perhaps, but this week I started reading "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and after about 100 pages, I think of this thread quite often.

[eljacko]

first post in a thread about indie movies... huh. (also it's 2 in the morning so this post may not make sense)

Maybe Gondry, but Kaufman's style is too brooding to really fit in with some of these other films I think. And the two Kaufman films Jonze directed were surreal and dark, so I don't know that he fits. I wouldn't call his music videos twee or whatever word we're using either, although I can see it for Gondry.

Does quirky also equate with happy? I'm honestly asking, because that could be part of the reason I'm having some trouble with this thread. I hadn't been working under that assumption, and to me, very little mentioned in this thread has more 'quirk' than Kaufman's meta-play in Adaptation. And nothing is more self-conscious.

I wouldn't say quirky equates with happy, but then, I don't know if quirky is the right word being used. It's more that, if you look at all of the movies listed in the first post (sans The Squid and the Whale), and all of the movies that have come up, the Kaufman/Jonze films don't really fit that template in my mind.

There was an article a year or two ago in The Atlantic that addressed the whole "quirk" phenomenon. Assuming I'm getting the point correctly, the general idea was that the basis behind the "quirk" was to make everything seem "odd" and "different" but never to the point of substantial difference in characters, because then it crosses a line from "weirdly cool" to just weird, neurotic, etc. I think this sort of "odd" versus "fuckin' weird" generally carries over to character (and plot) conflict.

I like to think of the differences between Napoleon Dynamite and the Michael Cera character in Juno versus, say, Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, or the male lead in The Squid and the Whale. While the latter experience real conflicts (both internal and external) as a result of their neuroses, the former characters just, kinda, I don't even know really. They just kinda exist as funny strange weirdoes. Plus, both leads are never really hated, or suffer serious social consequences as a result of character traits/development, while Charlie Kaufman and that guy in TSatW most certainly do.

Sorry if this makes no sense, I am far too tired to even be thinking about this sort of thing...

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I like to think of the differences between Napoleon Dynamite and the Michael Cera character in Juno versus, say, Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, or the male lead in The Squid and the Whale. While the latter experience real conflicts (both internal and external) as a result of their neuroses, the former characters just, kinda, I don't even know really. They just kinda exist as funny strange weirdoes. Plus, both leads are never really hated, or suffer serious social consequences as a result of character traits/development, while Charlie Kaufman and that guy in TSatW most certainly do.

I think this is a good point. In Juno you can't relate to any characters or care about their welfare because it's all treated thru that scrim. The two most interesting characters for me were Juno's dad and Jennifer Garner's "husband" but the former does not get much time and the latter gets dropped by the time the film wraps up. The scrim of quirkiness insulates you from caring about them. Obviously, this film won't let anyone suffer or have an unhappy ending, but it robs the characters of any humanity. The Squid and the Whale is a divorce drama so it's not gonna be funny so maybe I shouldn't compare it to Juno, but in the film you have to weigh your sympathies towards Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels. I could try to relate to them or to the boys and by the end come out of the film a little richer. The quirkiness insulates you from having to feel one way or the other. To bring up another comparison, think of Mr. Blume and Royal from Wes Anderson's films. In what way do you feel more for one than the other? I think of lot of the quirkiness we see now can be illustrated by these two characters or at least how wee feel towards that quirkiness. Blume feels like a real guy while Royal comes off as stunt.

[Antoine Doinel]

Will Oldham doesn't think much of Wes Anderson:

AVC: You mentioned talking to Richard Linklater and Caveh Zahedi about your ideas on movie music. Can you summarize those ideas?

WO: Well, for a while, it seemed like you were always seeing movies where all the music was determined by the music supervisors and their special relationships with certain record labels. And I just felt like, “Wow, I’ll bet they spent months or years writing this screenplay, and I’ll bet they spent months shooting this, and I’ll bet they spent months editing this, and now they’re spending no time at all picking these completely inappropriate songs with lyrics to put under a scene that has dialogue.” How does that even work? How can you have a song with someone singing lyrics under spoken dialogue and consider that mood-music, or supportive of the storyline? As somebody who likes music, when that happens, I tend to listen to the lyrics, which have nothing to do with the movie. And then I’m lost in the storyline. Not only is that a crime, but it’s a crime not to give people who are good at making music for movies the work. It’s like saying, “We don’t need you, even though you’re so much better at it than I am as a music supervisor.” Like the cancer that is that Darjeeling guy… what’s his name?

AVC: Wes Anderson?

WO: Yeah. His completely cancerous approach to using music is basically, “Here’s my iPod on shuffle, and here’s my movie.” The two are just thrown together. People are constantly contacting me saying, “I’ve been editing my movie, and I’ve been using your song in the editing process. What would it take to license the song?” And for me it’s like, “Regardless of what you’ve been doing, my song doesn’t belong in your movie.” That’s where the conversation should end. Music should be made for movies, you know?