Lloyd Dobler is Dead (?)

On the frame around my computer monitor there is a picture of John Cusack as the greatest movie character of all time, Lloyd Dobler, with his arm around Diane Cort (played by Ione Skye, but you already knew that). They are in his car and he has his arm tentatively around the back of her neck. She has her head leaned back and is in mid laugh as he stares at her with a grin on his face and a bemused wondering glow in his eyes.

On the TV above my head, John Cusack is Rob Gordon in High Fidelity. He is shouting to his ex-girlfriend Catherine Zeta-Jones “Charlie you fucking bitch, lets work it out”.

I think the question needs to be asked: What happened to you John Cusack?

You could say it was the 90’s. You could say it was life and age and its attendant cynicism. You could say it was the fact that Charlie is no Diane Cort. You could say a lot of things, but in the end what you’re left with is the reality that symbolically, Lloyd Dobler has aged into Rob Gordon, a narcissistic, depressed, burnout record-store owner who hates his job, his life, and has a love life no one would envy. Age and time have taken their toll on him unkindly. Charming innocence begat hardened cynicism. His optimism and lack of fear have dissipated into a protective shell of self-absorption. He is angry, frustrated and insecure.

So I guess you could say ultimately, that seems about right.

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I have for years wondered why I don’t like High Fidelity. Well “don’t like” isn’t really accurate. I do enjoy it, but not like I should. It should, on paper, be my favorite movie ever. It features guys who work in a record store and obsess over music and making lists. They are neurotic and consumed with pop culture. The movie features great writing based on great source material from Nick Hornby (who I love) and has tons of quotable lines. The art of making mix tapes is discussed at length. Jack Black features prominently in a breakout role that is my Blockbuster employee daydream fantasies come to life, in terms of customer relations (ie- he berates their bad taste, mocks them, and tells them to fuck off). It should be by all measures a Top 5 All Time Favorite Movie. But it’s not even close. I don’t know if it’s even Top 100.

Say Anything on the other hand, I should by all measures not be enthusiastic about. It has dated very badly. It’s cheesy, almost to a fault. It has an entirely unnecessary subplot about Diane’s Dad that receives way too much attention. It features unbelievable and unrealistic characters and some really not very good acting, to put it nicely. And the entire central conceit of the movie- that Diane Cort is some sort of unattainable goddess-like figure who lives in another world from Lloyd is completely unbelievable and ridiculous (partially the fault of the casting director, but whatever…). And yet. If Good Will Hunting had never been made, Say Anything could very well make a strong case as my favorite movie of all time.

So how and why is this?

On paper, it would seem the opposite would be true- the movie I find only passable I should love, and the movie I love I should laughably reject.

This of course says something about paper.

It also says something about the purpose of movies and why we watch them.

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I don’t know about you, but I am surrounded by real life. It’s all I ever see. I’m surrounded by real life every day. Then I come home and I turn on my TV and there it is. I pop in my new Ashlee Simpson CD and I hear my life contained in her words (okay I lied about that last part). Point is, I’ve got enough life without having to pay to see it in a movie theater. In fact movies are usually the place I go when I want to escape life. That’s maybe the biggest function they serve.

Now I can hear your arguments already - he’s saying we should support mindless junk, realistic movies are bad, blah blah blah, but just stick with me here. Stop me if I start sounding like an “AFI 100 Years…100 whatever” special, but movies are there to let us escape for a few hours, to let us experience a little magic before ending and dumping us back into reality. If you don’t think this need for fantasy, this need for escapism, this need for release and for hope is one of our basic human needs, then tell that to your dreams.

The ones you have when you’re asleep, not the ones you wrote about in your college admissions essays.

Now this isn’t to say we should support mindless escapism, because for the most part mindless escapism is just that, mindless. And if your mind isn’t into it then it isn’t exactly escaping very far is it?

So then what about a movie like Lost in Translation? That is a realistic rumination on real life and not some escapist fantasy.
Au contraire, unless unbeknownst to me you are an aging movie star in a midlife crisis or a newlywed questioning your marriage while accompanying your husband on a photo shoot in Tokyo.
"But that movie seems so like my life, or at least like a life I can relate to", you say (or at least I did, and do). Well yes that’s the point now isn’t it. To create a world that seems so like life that it draws you in and allows you to (key word alert) escape into the reality of the situation; to present you with universal feelings and themes while making them seem so personal; these are the goals of movies, and really of all art. Its like how we all feel that we ARE Hamlet, or that that song was written about OUR lives.

The point is we don’t want to see REAL life in the movies; we want to see some version of life other than the real one. And THIS (getting us back on topic finally) is why Say Anything is a classic and High Fidelity leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

High Fidelity gives us an unlikable main character that displays some of the worst characteristics in all of us. His life seems far too familiar, his sad situations all too real, and he ends the movie not much better off than when he started. Where is the hope, the escape, the fantasy, and most importantly the heart in all of this?

(As aside note: isn’t High Fidelity really the movie Cameron Crowe should have made instead of Singles? I know the source novel hadn’t been written yet, but still, this is a movie that just cries out Cameron Crowe and deals with the same themes as Singles: disillusioned, narcissistic 20-somethings, music, and relationships in the 90’s. With the infusion of heart Cameron would have given it we might have really had something great. Plus then Singles would have never happened. Of course in my book that’s already the case…)

Say Anything on the other hand, gives us all of these missing things and then some. It’s the life we want and hope for and believe exists, unlike the life High Fidelity shows us, which is the life that DOES exist. Call it an example of the Dirty Dancing phenomenon, call it trite wish fulfillment, call it whatever you like, but the readers (and writers) of Entertainment Weekly call it the #1 modern romance movie and I just call it a damn good film.

You can also call it being lied to, or being given false hope, but I want my movies to lie to me; that’s what we pay them for.

In a world where “dare” is far preferable to “truth” we all want to be lied to.

We don’t want to see the guy that played Lloyd Dobler failing in relationships and burned out by life. We don’t want to see him buying things that are “sold or processed”. We don’t want to know that his spirit is dead in today’s world.

We want the lie.

We want hope.

We want “Say Anything…”



Top 3 & ½ of the Week:
1.) Shakespeare (the playwright)
2.) Rilo Kiley
3.) Frou Frou – “Let Go”
3 & ½.) Shakespeare (the bookstore)