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| Melanie Griffith stars in Jonathan Demme's 1986 comedy Something Wild. |
Bear with me a moment. I am going to get a little geeky. Of
course, if this site is evidence of anything, it is of my ability to be geeky
when it comes to films. Last Cinema Standing was founded on the idea that
seeing a movie in the theater is the best way to see a movie. Nothing matches
the experience of a room full of people awed into silence when the lights go
out. No matter what shines up on the screen next, that beautiful moment of
darkness before the movie starts is full of possibilities. I love it.
Everything is digital now – the projection, the sound, hell,
sometimes most of a movie. I am no purist. I understand how and why we have
moved in this direction. That is fine, but there is just something about
hearing the pop of a real soundtrack while watching celluloid projected, warts
and all, on the big screen. I like the scratches. I like the dirt. It is
tangible. You can feel it. You can sense it. It makes the experience more real.
Each month, the IFC Center in New York City dusts off the
projector and shows a classic film the way it is meant to be seen. I wrote last
year about the inaugural screening in the Celluloid Dreams series, Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo and a tribute to cinematographer Gordon Willis. Last Tuesday, I attended the latest
screening in the series, Jonathan Demme’s screwball comedy ode Something Wild (1986).
The film was followed by a question-and-answer session with
actress-writer Greta Gerwig, who was there to promote her upcoming film Mistress America, of which the audience
was then treated to a sneak preview. Gerwig talked at length about Something Wild and other films of its
ilk and the inspiration she drew from them in writing her newest paean to
Generation Y’s search for purpose. The discussion was a fascinating look into
the process of a gifted young writer and performer.
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| Greta Gerwig speaks at the IFC Center. |
“In some ways, your impression of [the movies you’re
inspired by] is more useful than what the thing actually is,” she said. “I
thought about that a lot when I saw Mr.
Turner. It starts when he’s coming back from Amsterdam, and the shopkeeper
asks him what he was doing, and I think he says, ‘I was looking at the
Rembrandts.’ And it placed you so much in that time when you wouldn’t have
access to those paintings. You’d have to go to the place, look at the
paintings, and do your best to remember what was great about them. It’s such a
different experience of art than having it be accessible to you all the time.
So while we would watch things, also sometimes our memory of things would be
the feeling we were looking to recreate.”
Among the many influences Gerwig named were Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose, Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Susan, and of course
Something Wild, as well as the films
of George Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch, and Howard Hawks and novels by Saul Bellow and
Phillip Roth. It is an eclectic list, to say the least, but the common thread
seems to be people trying to find where they belong or figuring out how to fit
in once they have found a place.
Something Wild –
which I highly recommend; it is on Netflix if you cannot find a 35-millimeter
screening near you – follows yuppie Charles (Jeff Daniels) on a weekend fling
with wild girl Lulu (Melanie Griffith), who, for all intents and purposes,
kidnaps him and coerces him into an odyssey of drinking, fighting, and law
breaking. It is the most fun Charles has had in a long time, breaking free of
the shackles of his mundane life and letting his hair down, albeit by force
mostly.
If that basic description sounds familiar, it is because
modern romantic comedies have taken the trope of the free-spirited girl who
teaches the uptight guy to have fun and turned it into a formula. However,
modern films of this type are almost exclusively about the man. The girl is
usually perfect, if a bit peppy, and the boy realizes maybe he needs more of
that in his life – both pep and perfection. Something
Wild and other like-minded films concern themselves with the stories of
their women. Lulu is a complex person with goals and desires of her own, a
fully developed female character, which Gerwig lamented the lack of in modern
cinema.
“Melanie Griffith in [Something
Wild] and Patricia Arquette in After
Hours and even Mia Farrow in Broadway
Danny Rose – it’s a kind of female character that I feel really disappeared
from movies,” said Gerwig. “They’re dangerous women. They’re not just being
delightful for you. They could maybe get you into something that might get you
killed, or you’re not fully sure their morality. Every third thing that comes
out of their mouths is a lie. They put on lots of costumes. They’re amazing
characters.”
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| Lola Kirke and Greta Gerwig star in Mistress America. |
Gerwig’s Mistress
America character, Brooke, is descended from this line of dangerous women. She
is a screw-up overflowing with self-confidence and a failure who senses success
is always right around the corner. She is no role model, but she fancies
herself one when she takes her soon-to-be step-sister (a fabulous Lola Kirke)
under her wing.
Even the dangerous woman, however, is a bit of a trope, but
the beauty of Gerwig and director-co-writer Noah Baumbach’s script is that it
deepens the character and subverts the cliché. Ultimately, the person to whom
Brooke is most dangerous is herself. Others will recover from her actions and
move on, but she has to live with herself every day.
In Something Wild,
Lulu faces the same dilemma. She does not like who she is or who she was, and
she has no idea who she should be. She lies. She puts on costumes. She goes by
fake names. No one in the world has to know the real her – but she does. The
audience may see the film through Charlie’s eyes, but he is not the
protagonist. That would be Lulu, and the movie hinges on her feelings and her choices.
For an ’80s throwback to the comedies of the ‘40s, it is a pretty radical idea,
but if we really take a hard look at the current cinema landscape, it might be
even more radical now.
