Guys and dolls
The Movie Network played a movie "Second Best" that I first thought was a short film so I started to watch it. I thought that I recognized the voice of Joey Pants
in the beginning narration voiceover, but he looks rather different in
this movie than in his usual fare, looking more like Armin Shimerman.
This turned out to be a full-length movie, but no problemo, since it
also turned out to be quite good and refreshingly different so that we
happily watched it all the way to the end.
This low-budget movie made in style and spirit of "American Splendor" has kind of a home video style of feeling, since it is shot on location in an ordinary lower middle class neighbourhood and filming is mostly done with a handheld camera. The main character Elliot is a suit salesman who once had a shot of being a publishing executive but blew it and then became an ordinary guy or a "loser". Since Elliot is a failed writer and thus has some literary skill, he self-publishes one-page bittersweet columns of what it means in practice to be a "loser", and eventually becomes a local microcelebrity by distributing these columns in public bulleting boards, windshields etc. (In addition to these methods, I might have suggested him another, more efficient method of self-publishing.) He had to play golf on public fairways and dines out in cheap restaurants each week with his three similarly normal friends, sharing a new column with them each time. Occasionally Elliot mooches off his successful ex-wife and her new husband, with whom he is in friendly terms. After setting up the characters, the main story and its problems and twists start when a childhood friend who is now an ultra-successful Hollywood producer comes to stay with him for a few days, with foreseeable results.
I had a little problem with the premise of this film, assuming that I understood it correctly. The main character has a modest house and a job that reportedly pays him $46K a year, so if this is what makes a man a "loser", then there are helluva many people out there who are not even in the game. Now, I have learned that there is something inherently comical in Joirnsey itself which might explain this but which I haven't been able to decipher so far: if so, please feel free to enlighten me in the comments. But perhaps it is not where you are, but what you compare yourself to. Of Elliot's three friends, I could see two earning the moniker of "loser", but I don't think that a doctor is a "loser" for being "only" an ER doctor instead of a heart surgeon or something fancy like that.
Speaking of monikers, we also watched "Beauty Shop", which was pretty much what we expected. After all, there must be a market for non-gangsta movies made for black audiences that the white mainstream audience can also enjoy. After the main character, a sassy sister played by Queen Latifah, has quit her job working for a prissy and ridiculous flamingly gay white man (apparently minorities are allowed to make cruel stereotypical mockery of other minorities) and walks towards a bank, I said to my wife "I guess the stuffy white bank official with bad hair will..." and did not even have time to finish that sentence. Fortunately, some impromptu hairdressing work saves the day and our heroine gets a loan to start her own beauty shop, which after some initial troubles and hassles from The Man then becomes a popular spot among the fabulous and bootylicious sisters in the 'hood. And a few middle class placeholder white women who like to live on the edge for a moment, of course.
Since this movie is set in a ghetto, reality has to twisted somewhat to make it easier for the mainstream audiences and to make the whole setup possible in the first place. For example, the writers brilliantly sidestepped the need for men and their cool-pose culture in many ways. For starters, even though the main character has a daughter, there is no father around. It is strongly implied that he is dead, but this is never explained. Since there is no father figure in the family, the mother is free to do whatever she wants and still live in a nice suburban house and drive to work in a SUV. (One has to wonder why getting a $30K business loan was so difficult.)
In the street scenes, you can see many young black men sitting around, but they know their place and thus don't really make their presence known much, despite all the hot young women who strut their stuff around the shop. One of them is an exception so that he follows girls and films their hot booties with his video camera, but he is so young and weak that the sisters can easily slap him around, in a symbolic rejection of the hip hop culture. The beauty shop does employ one male character, though: a handsome and muscular jailbird gangster who can be a strong and violent protector when needed, but who is otherwise gentle, intelligent, fashion-conscious and knows his proper place as a minor character with the girls to the extent that the sisters believe him to be gay. In other words, the ideal man, as far as most women are concerned. When the beauticians go celebrate their success in a black nightclub he turns out to be straight as he pairs up with the only white beautician of the shop, who is coincidentally played by Alicia Silverstone. Inexplicably, the sisters don't take a slightest offense of this pairing but happily accept it, the same way they accept the white beautician's attempts to talk and act black. Comedy needs comedy fodder.
Another male character conveniently lives upstairs from the beauty shop. He is an electrician from Africa who is a literate and well-cultured gentleman who plays classical music with his piano, in a total rejection of the surrounding hiphop gangsta culture. Why this impressive catch is still a bachelor is never really explained in the movie, although of course he has to be single so that the story sets him up with the main character. The story is then concluded in a way that allows the viewer to imagine him and the main character either getting together or not, depending on what the viewers would like. Best of the both worlds, as they say.
This low-budget movie made in style and spirit of "American Splendor" has kind of a home video style of feeling, since it is shot on location in an ordinary lower middle class neighbourhood and filming is mostly done with a handheld camera. The main character Elliot is a suit salesman who once had a shot of being a publishing executive but blew it and then became an ordinary guy or a "loser". Since Elliot is a failed writer and thus has some literary skill, he self-publishes one-page bittersweet columns of what it means in practice to be a "loser", and eventually becomes a local microcelebrity by distributing these columns in public bulleting boards, windshields etc. (In addition to these methods, I might have suggested him another, more efficient method of self-publishing.) He had to play golf on public fairways and dines out in cheap restaurants each week with his three similarly normal friends, sharing a new column with them each time. Occasionally Elliot mooches off his successful ex-wife and her new husband, with whom he is in friendly terms. After setting up the characters, the main story and its problems and twists start when a childhood friend who is now an ultra-successful Hollywood producer comes to stay with him for a few days, with foreseeable results.
I had a little problem with the premise of this film, assuming that I understood it correctly. The main character has a modest house and a job that reportedly pays him $46K a year, so if this is what makes a man a "loser", then there are helluva many people out there who are not even in the game. Now, I have learned that there is something inherently comical in Joirnsey itself which might explain this but which I haven't been able to decipher so far: if so, please feel free to enlighten me in the comments. But perhaps it is not where you are, but what you compare yourself to. Of Elliot's three friends, I could see two earning the moniker of "loser", but I don't think that a doctor is a "loser" for being "only" an ER doctor instead of a heart surgeon or something fancy like that.
Speaking of monikers, we also watched "Beauty Shop", which was pretty much what we expected. After all, there must be a market for non-gangsta movies made for black audiences that the white mainstream audience can also enjoy. After the main character, a sassy sister played by Queen Latifah, has quit her job working for a prissy and ridiculous flamingly gay white man (apparently minorities are allowed to make cruel stereotypical mockery of other minorities) and walks towards a bank, I said to my wife "I guess the stuffy white bank official with bad hair will..." and did not even have time to finish that sentence. Fortunately, some impromptu hairdressing work saves the day and our heroine gets a loan to start her own beauty shop, which after some initial troubles and hassles from The Man then becomes a popular spot among the fabulous and bootylicious sisters in the 'hood. And a few middle class placeholder white women who like to live on the edge for a moment, of course.
Since this movie is set in a ghetto, reality has to twisted somewhat to make it easier for the mainstream audiences and to make the whole setup possible in the first place. For example, the writers brilliantly sidestepped the need for men and their cool-pose culture in many ways. For starters, even though the main character has a daughter, there is no father around. It is strongly implied that he is dead, but this is never explained. Since there is no father figure in the family, the mother is free to do whatever she wants and still live in a nice suburban house and drive to work in a SUV. (One has to wonder why getting a $30K business loan was so difficult.)
In the street scenes, you can see many young black men sitting around, but they know their place and thus don't really make their presence known much, despite all the hot young women who strut their stuff around the shop. One of them is an exception so that he follows girls and films their hot booties with his video camera, but he is so young and weak that the sisters can easily slap him around, in a symbolic rejection of the hip hop culture. The beauty shop does employ one male character, though: a handsome and muscular jailbird gangster who can be a strong and violent protector when needed, but who is otherwise gentle, intelligent, fashion-conscious and knows his proper place as a minor character with the girls to the extent that the sisters believe him to be gay. In other words, the ideal man, as far as most women are concerned. When the beauticians go celebrate their success in a black nightclub he turns out to be straight as he pairs up with the only white beautician of the shop, who is coincidentally played by Alicia Silverstone. Inexplicably, the sisters don't take a slightest offense of this pairing but happily accept it, the same way they accept the white beautician's attempts to talk and act black. Comedy needs comedy fodder.
Another male character conveniently lives upstairs from the beauty shop. He is an electrician from Africa who is a literate and well-cultured gentleman who plays classical music with his piano, in a total rejection of the surrounding hiphop gangsta culture. Why this impressive catch is still a bachelor is never really explained in the movie, although of course he has to be single so that the story sets him up with the main character. The story is then concluded in a way that allows the viewer to imagine him and the main character either getting together or not, depending on what the viewers would like. Best of the both worlds, as they say.
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