(beware of spoilers)

So Shopgirl probably meant more to me then most. It was my first big job after a year or so of mostly unemployment. Nothing major, just an office assistant, but it was a real movie with real money and a great boss. One of my friends from CSF was an office PA and when the other office PA got called up for jury duty he recommended me. Things got busy and the production went into nights so they kept me on even after jury duty got back. They even set me up with my next job at "After The Sunset."

I did a lot of driving on the movie, sometimes six hours a day just doing drop offs and pick ups. I got to see where Bridget Wilson-Sampras and Jason Schwartzman lived, but neither were home. Claire Danes came into the office once for a fitting. She had lunch with the costume department on the other side of the cubical from where I sit. Because I'm stupid and shy I didn't leave my desk, so I didn't see her. I did talk to Steve Martin on the phone for all of three seconds though, he said "Hi, this is Steve Martin for Marcus (the producer)," and I said, "For Marcus? One moment."

I hadn't read the book when I started. I'm not much of a book person...and I hate that about myself. I wanted to read the script, but I wouldn't let myself until I'd read the book. My boss let me borrow her copy and I ended up reading it almost entirely while driving in traffic. Maybe not the safest way to read a book, but it was tiny and fit in my hand and the traffic was so slow I might as well have been parked. Only a couple near misses.

I might have cried a few times while reading. I can't remember now. I remember it most perfectly captured my life in Los Angeles. I am Mirabelle Buttersworth, minus the anti-depressants (which maybe I need, I've never looked into it). I hadn't seen anything tackle the subject of loneliness in Los Angeles before. I know there's loneliness everywhere but this city seems like it's designed for it. Don Cheadle gives a nice little speech about it in the otherwise awful movie "Crash." The book nailed everything for me: the constant battle between crippling shyness and suffocating isolation, the friends who are only a notch above acquaintances, drifting away from your art, the dependence on routine and habit to stay afloat. It occasionally slipped into pretentiousness but there were enough real moments to forgive it.

I read the script while Rick and I drove to San Francisco to see "A Mighty Wind" live. It definitely didn't make me cry. It sort of frustrated me actually. A lot of real moments were cut or exchanged for "quirky-cute" movie moments, but all of the pretension was still there. It read really generic for me, flat. Her family and friends had been mostly cut and what was left had none of the weight of the book. The script did have a narrator though, a female one. Earlier drafts had a male narrator and at one point dual narrators, male and female. Either way the narrator was underused. Martin's most elegant prose was in the narration of the book, not the dialogue, so the trimming of the narrator hurt. There were also a few gimmicks I wasn't fond of. For instance the script opened with an elaborate shot that would start way up in the sky and then come down to the street in front of Saks and then walk through the store before a crane takes it up three floors to meet Mirabelle. It felt overly flashy.

On to the final movie. I don't know what kept the movie (which finished shooting in 2003) from being released until 2005. Usually that points to major problems, but I don't think that's the case exactly. I think they wanted a Oscar season release and for some reason they missed the 2004 season. So instead they decided to sit on it another year till this Oscar season. Who knows if it will pay off for them.

The movie captures the melancholy mood of the book. It misses a few other things, but the mood is right. The elaborate opening shot is only partly there in the final version. Instead there's a montage of beautiful panoramic city-scapes that leads to a few awkward Saks crane/steadycam shots(perhaps left over from the original idea) and into a great sequence of the makeup counter shot in extreme close up (or CG), so the lipstick looks like skyscrapers. It's a shame they didn't just go straight from the city-scape to the makeup-scape.

The movie starts slow and quiet, which I like. Mirabelle's lonely life is laid out right away. The narrator device did survive to the final film. But instead of the female narrator of the script we have Steve Martin. I might have preferred a narrator who wasn't also one of the main characters, since the narrator that Steve is playing is in no way associated with his character Ray. Or if perhaps Claire had done the narrating. After all, it's her story more then Steve's.

Jason Schwartzman's Jeremy shows up early and wow, he just takes over. The movie is at it's peak when he's on screen. Jimmy Fallon was going to play Jeremy originally...I'm curious, but I can't imagine him doing a better job, Jason nailed it.

A lot of people are going to compare Steve Martin to Bill Murray for obvious reasons. It's sort of too bad cause Martin does a good job with a few really honest moments, but it's no "Lost In Translation" or "Rushmore." Ray Porter is a cold character who does some pretty shitty things. But at the same time, he's a loser. It's in those loser moments that the character really works. He's just a numbers nerd who has very particular tastes and childishly wants specific, calculated things that Mirabelle possesses. It's too bad they left out the narration that explained his attraction to her. He sees a glimpse of her creamy skin through the buttons of her blouse and gets lost in his head trying to figure out if it was skin or silk underwear. The movie cut most of the fetish angle of the book, but kept some in the way they shot the physical interaction and sex scenes. Loved the lingering shots of his hand on her back.

Claire Danes probably has the best shot at an Oscar out of the three because her role is the strongest. She just is Mirabelle. That's all there is to it. I was waiting for the scene where she goes off her meds cause those were the most emotional for me in the book. I've never had meds, but I've had those days (weeks, months, years). There's the big snap at work, which was a nice shot, but the can't-get-out-of-bed montage didn't quite hit for me. I wanted it to be longer, to sit on her in bed and really drive home that she physically can't get up. The rest of the movie she juggles the emotions really well. There's a lot of crying and almost-crying but the best scenes are when she forces out glimpses of assertiveness, amusement or seduction through Mirabelle's cocoon of awkwardness.

Mirabelle's friends in the movie probably could have been cut entirely. They only have one scene and neither of them really register. Mirabelle's parents on the other hand are a perfect example of character efficiency. Sam Bottoms and Francis Conroy do an amazing job. With almost no dialogue their scenes enter some bizarre level of transcendence.

There were a few things I missed from the book (and script). Mirabelle going to art galleries with her friends and having enough wine to become what she thinks is the center of attention but in actuality she's merely risen to the level of normal human interaction. The other scene is when she joins the conversation with Ray's friends in New York, breaking free of her role as a young trophy girl on Ray's arm and earning respect.

I never saw "Hilary & Jackie" so I didn't know what to expect from Anand Tucker. There's some interesting choices in the movie. A lot of pretty panorama shots. Some really great locations (wooo Silverlake!), the exterior of Mirabelle's apartment was perfect with it's funky up and down steps and disconnected balconies. An odd choice of music. There's a really heavy score that sounds very old, right out of classic Hollywood, almost ironic. A few oldies songs also popped up in the soundtrack curiously too. It all sort of works for the most part though. A lot of location/panorama cutaways in the editing, a lot of hopping around in general. There were a few scenes I wish they hadn't cut out of so quickly. I already sort of mentioned the narration. It's not as good as it could of been. When Ray and Mirabelle have their first date, the narration was awkward. If the movie had had more narration it wouldn't have been so noticeable, but since it was used sparingly it made the scene stick out.

More special effects in the movie then I expected. And the slow downs...oh man the slow downs. I work in post production now so these tricks are really transparent to me, but there's a lot of shots they slowed down after the fact for this movie...and it doesn't look too hot. Trailing, blurring, strobing, ick, ick, ick. I know I shouldn't bad mouth a popular effect that keeps me employed but too many films are relying on fake slow motion when the technology just isn't there yet. Either give it a few more years or put some damn forethought into it and shoot the scenes in real slow motion.

I wasn't expecting a credit so I got a little giddy when I saw my name on screen. Made me wish I hadn't seen the movie alone cause I really wanted to elbow someone and say "hey that's me!" Instead I just smiled like an idiot for a good fifteen minutes after I left the theater.

This turned out longer then I'd anticipated. Sorry about that. I sometimes wish I was a movie critic.

Labels: critiqua