Why Always So Deep, Edward Norton?

Okay, look. I’ll start by saying that we rented Down in the Valley and Ben really dug it and I daresay he got it (BTW: do not read on if you do not want this movie spoiled). I thought I was getting it, until the second half, where things changed rather dramatically and I began the slow descent into deep confusion. Initially, it seemed to be the story of this headstrong teenage girl in the valley – you know, the LA valley – who meets this age-inappropriate but kind of sweet cowboy guy, and their ensuing love affair that’s naturally disapproved of by her disapproving father. Except no one ever mentions the fact that Edward Norton is about forty and the girl, whose name is October (of course her name is October), is seventeen, only that Edward Norton is increasingly a little weird. About halfway through, when he begins to exhibit overt signs of weirdness, like playing cowboy games in the mirror and ‘borrowing’ horses that don’t belong to him, the story turns into more of a Western with guns and more horses and then, this is where I got really lost, first a bunch of Hasidic Jews and then an abandoned ghost town, except the next thing you know it isn’t abandoned at all, Edward Norton is suddenly talking to people who seem to exist in an alternate, 1800s universe, and then just as suddenly we discover it’s a scene on a movie set. Further adding to my confusion, at one point Edward Norton has a handlebar mustache, which led me to believe some time had passed, but then just as quickly the mustache is gone again but they’re wearing the same clothes. Meanwhile Ben is going This is awesome and I’m going But what about the mustache he had a mustache and then he didn’t what does that mean? And Ben says You’re still stuck on the mustache?


Look here, even the movie posters are confused:









No Mustache


















Mustache























So then I had to go look for some interviews about the movie, to see if I could find out about the mustache, and the Hasidim, and listening to Edward Norton talk about it, I see that it was completely his and the filmmaker’s intention to leave many questions unanswered, and so I’d like to say to them that they have succeeded in that, and that the question of the mysterious mustache will continue to haunt me.

But here’s the real thing. This has happened to me more than a few times with movies over the years, where I’m totally into it for a while and then it takes a turn and I’m really disappointed because what I was hoping for was a different story entirely. A couple of examples come to mind: 1) While You Were Sleeping. I totally related to Sandra Bullock’s lonely Chicago girl dragging her Christmas tree up the stairs by herself and falling for a guy she barely knew. But I never understood why they had to have the complete and utter contrivance of the guy being in a coma while she falls in love with the guy’s brother. Would it not be a complicated enough, and more importantly, a more believable story, if you had a woman interested in and/or involved with one brother and then she falls in love with another? But no. They had to go and make it all screwball or whatever the hell. A better example, and I know I’ll get some flack for this, but I’ll go ahead and mention it since in one of these interviews, Edward Norton actually mentions that he considers the two movies companion pieces, which, kudos, Edward, makes total sense, is, 2) Fight Club. I know, I know, y’all loved Fight Club. I had two problems with Fight Club: one, considering that a big part of this movie was about consumerism, I couldn’t get past the idea of Brad Pitt, who I’d seen promoting the movie and talking about all the heinous and terrible consumerism, while leaning myself toward the belief that it was unlikely that Brad Pitt, then married to Jennifer Aniston, slept on anything less than like, a billion thread-count sheets, and that was just a start. (Fine, he’s a humanitarian now, I dig it, but Brangie's not living on a kibbutz.) But the other problem I had, which was exactly no one else’s problem with this movie, was that the single most interesting concept in the movie was pretty much just a minor point, the part where Edward Norton is so psychically tortured that he starts checking out all these different support groups, none of which he really belongs in, just to try to get some help. That to me could have been a feature-length film. Anyhoo, back to the movie I wanted this one to be, here we start the film with the lovely, feisty, bored valley girl Evan Rachel Wood/October, who picks up the cowboy Edward Norton at a gas station and they fall believably in love, to me, and that is the story I wanted to see. It wouldn’t have to have had a happy ending. But what seemed notable, this point of their age difference, was never one time mentioned – and I just kept thinking, 99 times out of a hundred I’d be disapproving of a relationship like this, but what if this is the one that’s right? He was very childlike, and she was wise, and I thought, let’s see more of that. Isn’t that an interesting story? Also, if I must confess, referring back to my own peculiar fantasies, this is the sort of romance that I DREAMED of when I was sixteen or seventeen; sexy, mysterious stranger rides into town and he UNDERSTANDS ME. Back in the heyday of made-for-TV movies, there was one called Sweet Hostage, where Martin Sheen plays a sexy escaped mental patient who takes Linda Blair hostage and gives her some learnin’ and lovin’. Oh yeah. I remember being CRUSHED that that didn’t end well.

My point is, it’s fine to be deep and all, Edward Norton, but there’s deep and there’s confusing. In the end, all I really need cleared up is the mustache.

My Fantasies Aren’t So Fantastic Anymore: The Clooney Edition

So the other night I couldn’t sleep even though I was really tired so I tried one of my old tricks to put me to sleep which I don’t do very often anymore because it feels weird since I got married which is: I fantasize myself to sleep. When I was single that’s what I used to do, every night almost; I’d think, who should be my boyfriend tonight? And I’d make up a story about that person in my head, and it could range from Benicio del Toro to someone, you know, who I actually knew, but the one thing that was consistent was that I had to set up the scenario so that I could actually believe it might happen. (The writer in me? I can only suspend my disbelief so far.) So let’s say if I were to meet Benicio del Toro I would contrive some situation where I get bumped into first class because there’s no room in – whatever it’s called where I usually sit - low class? – and of course he introduces himself but I don’t really understand him because of the mumbly thing, but he understands me, I can tell this by his nodding and also looking into my eyes in a sexy meaningful way, and I say I’m not really that kind of girl when he seems to be suggesting we join the mile-high club, but when I make it clear that I will be expecting a long-term relationship, then we do join the mile-high club, and then we land and become a couple. Yeah, I know, whatever.

So but I had to kind of train myself out of these fantasies after I met Ben, because it felt weird, and because there was actually someone I wanted in my bed and in locations outside of my bed, again and again, and eventually I started going to sleep without immediately going to fantasy. The other night, bored and sleepless, I tried to fantasize about George Clooney and to say that it went wrong would be past inadequate.

George Clooney used to be a staple. It was always easy for me to conjure up a scenario in which we’d meet – we have actually met, in a manner of speaking, I daresay he flirted with me. In my fantasies, this would always be the conversation starter, wherever it was that we’d meet, this night we met at a Sundance screening of the film of my story, and he’d say You look familiar and I’d say something like, You probably don’t remember me but I used to work on the same lot when you were on ER, and you used to play basketball with... and he’d say I couldn’t forget you, blue Doc Marten girl, you were Donny Ward’s assistant, the one who used to pretend she didn’t notice me, and I’d say, Damn, it was that obvious, and he’d say It’s okay, I thought it was cute. Then we start talking and he asks me out (and I should say, in keeping with the quasi-realism of my fantasies there now needs to be a reason why Ben is out of the picture, and because I don’t want him to be out of the picture, this is a difficult proposition – we absolutely cannot be divorced for any reason, but him being deceased isn’t an option either, it’s along the lines of a weird superstition even though I’ve decided I’m not superstitious, where I can’t write about a character based on a relative who’s sick or injured or something bad has happened unless it’s actually already happened just in case I make it happen with the superpower of my writing, so it’s here that the fantasy begins to fail) and I say I don’t think we’re really right for each other, George, and he says Don’t you think we should go out first before you decide that and I say It’s just that I have a hard time believing you’d ever be faithful, plus we’re like, the exact same age, I know you like the sexy young babes and I’m fine with my sexiness level, really, but this here is an all-natural, 100% real, 46-year-old babe who doesn’t even work out or anything, plus I’m pretty sure I would not at all be into having people take my picture every day, I am not very photogenic, sexy as I am, also I already don’t love driving and so I would seriously not be into being chased by paparazzi and possibly ending up dying a horrible death in a multi-car pileup and then my NY Times obituary would not say Elizabeth Crane, Acclaimed Short Story Writer, dies at 108, it would be a headline and it would say Six Paparazzi and Others Die in Fiery Crash, and here I would be ‘others’, or best case scenario, my Times obituary would say ‘Elizabeth Crane, Once Dated George Clooney, Dies, also, I just really like my privacy, and I shouldn’t admit this but I care what people think, and I don’t really want anyone thinking badly about me because I went out with George Clooney, and although most people would probably say Right on about both of us, a lot of people would say all kinds of things like Who does she think she is, what does he see in her, she’s a star-fucker, whatever, I don’t know and George Clooney says Um, I have a villa in Italy. And I think about that, because that’s good, I’ve seen pictures of it, and I say That I would like, can we go live there most of the time? And George Clooney says Sure, whatever you want, and still I say, I don’t know, George, you’re bright and funny and obviously handsome and everything, but you’re not Ben. Well except I don’t say that last part because I don’t want to hurt George Clooney’s feelings. In my fantasy.

So, to recap, basically the fantasy here is that George Clooney really wants me and I turn him down and if there is any sex at all, it’s incidental or not in the fantasy.

I tell this to Ben and he says Wow, men and women are actually different. Do you even understand what a fantasy is?

And I say, I guess not.