The Sheila Variations

Detail in film that haunts me for some reason: Blade Runner. The police station. The camera is panning down inside the spacious main room to the police chief's office that is a small box-like room within a room. And as it pans down, you see that the roof of the office is dirty. It's dusty . Old papers have fallen there. It's an odd detail. And I suppose that's what happens when a former Art Director starts helming films. But it's fascinating to me.

...and I love that you think about that while looking at Rose's earrings. I bet you're a people watcher. The kind that wonders where people have been and can imagine a story for them.

My favorite scene in that movie is the one at the end, when the camera is panning over Old Rose's pictures from her life...where she did everything her and Jack talked about. Rode horses on the beach, learned to fly, etc. She LIVED, as opposed to marrying Cal and having her whole life be about just being somebody's pretty wife in the great dress.

I love little details like that. There's this moment early on in Tootsie, right after Dorothy Michaels gets hired on the soap, when we see a quick shot of an editor sitting in the editing bay watching footage on some monitors and he's drinking a soda...then, over an hour later, the whole climax of the film ("we have to tape today's show live!") is set into action because one of the editors spilled his drink on the footage they shot earlier that week. Whenever I watch Tootsie, I'm always in awe of that little scene early on because it's such a throwaway moment and you wouldn't ever think anything of it the first time you watched the film, but it subtlely plants the idea of one of the editors drinking soda in the editing bay...making it a foregone conclusion that we'll see that great scene where Dorothy reveals that she's really a man. It takes something that could seem "convenient" and makes it inevitable.

I love these other details you guys are bringing up!! I'll have to go back and look for them. They really just add to the sense of reality in a film, I think - and it's hard to do them well, don't you think? They could be too obvious, or too on-the-nose - whatever.

I think the earrings at the beginning of Titanic are done well - because it's subtle, and even when she is staring at the nude drawing of herself on television - and her earrings look exactly like that necklace - you might not put it all together. (I certainly didn't the first time I saw it) But now when I see the movie - the earrings are all I can see!! She has hidden away that diamond for years, and yet there she is - blatantly wearing "it" as earrings. It reveals her as a lovely and mischievous personality, I think - and also speaks to the love she has been carrying quietly in her heart for 84 years.

Ooooh! Cool visual details that nobody notices? In Pulp Fiction, when Jules begins his "I'm about to kill you" Bible verse, the crook Brett is cowering in his chair -- but behind him, out of focus and his head not even in the shot, we see Vincent Vega pull out his gun, get it ready, adjust his shoulders, and then hold it at the ready in a stance that people only use when they're in one of the "Stand up" portions of a church service.

Or that just some people notice? When I saw 'Tender Mercies', the Northern migration to the DFW area had only been going on eight years or so.

In the movie, some little thing would appear- like the choir leader with his comb-over- and there would be scattered laughter in the theater. Details that spoke to the native Texans, that the rest didn't pick up on. Heck, I owned the same Libbey glasses that they had on the kitchen table.

It was a perfect evocation of people and place.

Emily, yes I love that scene too. And in the first pottery wheel scene you can see all of those same pictures on the walls ... But its not till the end that you realize the true significance.I just love the forethought in that.

Erik - yes, that's the kind of detail I mean! Not just details that most people wouldn't notice - but stuff that silently connects events in the film - from one scene to another (although maybe, like in your example, there are 20 scenes in between the spillage and the live shooting - same with Titanic ...) I actually remember that thing from Tootsie - and remember thinking it was very cool and clever, how they tied it all together. That grounds a film, it really does.

Jaquandor - there are a couple of moments in Pulp Fiction that sort of tie the whole thing together, which seems especially important because the movie happens out of order. Like the book John Travolta is reading (awesome detail) ... and the elements in one scene that might seem unimportant when you first see them, but then are immensely important when you realize why.

Robert Altman's episodic Short Cuts is full of details - that show up in one episode - and then reappear 20 scenes later - and you realize WHY they were there in the first place. At first you may wonder - what the hell does THAT have to do with anything ... but it's crafted so skillfully that later it all becomes clear. Much of this seems to do with objects, I am realizing (at least what I am talking about) - "props", if you will (like the spilled soda in Tootsie) that might seem just like "atmosphere", but then become totally relevant. They are not filler, they are not 'details' - they are essential to the movie creating the feeling of a real WORLD.

To me, Rose's earrings - worn 84 years after the Titanic sank - and the fact that she has never spoken about Jack Dawson to anyone, ever - and yet there she is, wearing those earrings ... You don't need any dialogue to "explain" that - it just is itself, like a piece of symbolism in a book, or something ... that works. That makes the whole thing a deeper experience.

Speaking of small details and Robert Altman...one of the dining the scenes in Gosford Park, where they're all sitting around making mindless chatter and somebody brings up who did what in World War I. One of the women says "well, as long as our sons are spared what you all went through." It was the early thirties. All of the couples there were of the age where their sons would have been around 18 at the start of World War II...it's absolutely chilling once you catch it. That's the thing I love about Altman movies. You have to be invested in them enough to watch them more than once without blinking, or else you'll miss something incredible.

And Sheila - I'd never thought about the earrings. I barely even like that movie and I'm going to re-watch it to see that. What a great detail. "I must have those." Indeed.

And you remind me for the 500th time how much I love Gosfard Park and how much I can't believe it that I don't own that thing!!

What a rich rich movie - God. I never EVER get sick of it.

That detail you talk about ... yes, like a goose walks over the collective grave. So protected, and isolated ... but it's already over, they just don't know it.

And please. Can we just have a moment of love again for Bob Balaban??

Like him on the phone:

"Is she, like, affected or is she British?" - about Claudette Colbert ...

Like - dude. You are staying in the home of British people. You are their guest. And with that comment you are insulting them ... openly ... loudly ... into the phone ... So oblivious!

But also - he is so beneath them that they wouldn't even care if he DID insult them.

i looooove that movie.

I always have a moment of love for Bob Balaban. I love those scenes where he's shouting into the telephone, talking about how hard it is for him to put together his Charlie Chan murder mystery set in an English country estate, and he's got one going on right underneath his nose. And he's so clueless. Like, someone comes and wants him to get off the phone so they can report a MURDER and he's all "I'm kind of in the middle of something important..."

That's one of my favorite things about the movie, Sheila. They don't know that way of life is coming to an end and that everything was about to go upside down. Like, when Maggie Smith snivels down her nose at Ivor Novello for being a meager "entertainer." Hahaha. We'll see who's more beloved and remembered in the end, Countess.

And the fur coat he wears to go hunting. I mean. It is so so so funny and yet also strangely pathetic. Like - that coat!! He has NO IDEA how ridiculous he looks!

"I'm kind of in the middle of something important..."

hahahahahaha

Nobody plays pompous ridiculous self-absorption like Bob Balaban. Or that kind of self-important puff-puff of a man ... He just NAILS that kind of guy!!

I think it's amazing the way he's so subdued as an actor. Look how different his character is in Close Encounters. Shy, humble, has to basically SHOUT to be heard by other people...totally opposite of that character who talks just because he's awed by the sound of his own voice.

And that moment where he's talking Ryan Phillipe's actor-posing-as-a-valet character, making him pick up his dirty clothes off the floor and carry them away for him. It's so patronizing, so mean, so unnecessary other than to be cruel. "You don't want them to think you don't care...?" All because Phillipe said "I don't think we should risk it." He had his pride stung and he hit back HARD. He was brilliant at that.

Yes! Close Encounters!

And then there's his anal-retentive humorless passive-aggressive music director in Waiting for Guffman (just thinking about that guy makes me laugh) - and yet, God, watch him conduct that "orchestra" at the end and how focused he is! It makes me want to cry!

"Corky will be directing this year, which will be...different for me."

And his intensity after Corky quits in a fit of hysterics because the town council won't give him like a billion dollars to produce his play...he's just thrilled to be taking over, but he doesn't overdo it. He's totally down to business, but there's a real subtlety in the obvious pleasure he's taking in the fact that he's going to get to run the show.

Oh, God, it's that pause before "different" that makes that SUCH A FUNNY LINE. You know that what he really wants to say is, "A FUCKING NIGHTMARE, THANKYOUVERYMUCH ..." but he decides to say "different" ... but still, you can totally tell how infuriated he is.

Hahaha. I know. Absolutely BRILLIANT. And when he's conducting the orchestra...yes! That's so funny. Everybody in that cast, the way they play taking this dinky town play so serious, like they're performing Mamet on Broadway or something. It's so perfect.

Ah, Bob Balaban! What a thread this is. Balaban, by the way, kept a diary during the filming of CE3K that was later published as a book. It details the friendship he formed with Francois Truffaut during filming, among a lot of other things -- he was actually hired for the film based on his ability to speak French, and then he spent his flight to Wyoming for the first days of filming listening to Berlitz tapes.

Jaquandor - I just read that book by Bob Balaban last year - the Francois Truffaut, Spielberg and Me book and you're right - it's a marvelously insane story about an actor in a movie kind of by default but then having this amazing experience ... I love that book!!! Wonderful stuff! THAT'S my kind of actor. He's just terrific.

And Sheila was awesome enough to send me a copy of it last year. Oh hell, yes. Great stuff. Balaban is just so funny and unassuming. A very likable guy by his tone. We've talked about him before...how possessive he got of Truffaut. "The inscription he wrote on the last book he gave me wasn't as warm as the first. I wonder if he doesn't like me as much anymore?" Hahahaha. That's part of the reason why it's so impressive to see him play these cold and clueless characters. It's so contrary to the guy that wrote that diary.