I recounted some story I got off of a documentary about a screening of Diner<\/i><\/a> – and now I read that James Wolcott was there at that screening<\/a> back in 1982. Exciting!<\/p>\n Yup. The love for Diner<\/i> rolls on.<\/p>\n I got together with Ted <\/a>last night and we had a great talk about the movie. Ted was raving about Kevin Bacon and how good he was … I forget the exact word Ted used for Bacon’s performance. Was it my third glass of wine that has obliterated the memory? Ted loved, in particular, the scene where Kevin Bacon stages his own death early in the movie, tipping the car over and lying dead and bloody for his friends to come upon him.<\/p>\n I love when Bacon gets wasted (well, he’s wasted through the whole thing) and punches out the Wise Men in the nativity scene on the church lawn. It’s so absurd.<\/p>\n But then I love the counterpoint scene of Bacon sitting by himself in his apartment, shouting out the answers to a television quiz show questions. “HERODOTUS. HERODOTUS.” or “THOREAU.” He gets very little joy out of being right, he’s more contemptuous of the ones who didn’t get the answer than anything else … but I just love how Bacon plays that scene. You realize: Huh. This guy has some gifts I hadn’t seen before. He’s sharp, quick, not just a self-destructive mess. I wonder what happened to him. I wonder why he is so lost<\/em>.<\/p>\n That’s all because of how Bacon plays it.<\/p>\n Well, and how it’s written, of course.<\/p>\n Wolcott writes:<\/p>\n At first the movie didn’t quite click. The rhythms seemed disjointed, the staging of the fake car wreck didn’t quite work, there was a sense that we might be witnessing yet another Americanized version of Fellini’s I Vitelloni gone askew, but then came the diner-booth scene where the characters converged and fell into place and the hilarious argument over the sandwich escalated into a guy spat and from then on Rourke and his smooth moves seemed to contour the entire movie to the bittersweet fade. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Diner<\/i> fans – go read Wolcott’s piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recounted some story I got off of a documentary about a screening of Diner – and now I read that James Wolcott was there at that screening back in 1982. Exciting! Yup. The love for Diner rolls on. I … Continue reading