By jumping genres, Quentin Tarantino has made three straight revenge films without anyone really noticing. He’s been making his version of One-Eyed Jacks over and over, using different costumes to make it seem like different movies.

But a revenge movie is a revenge movie is a revenge movie. It provides a very limited emotional palette. George W. Bush showed us just how monotonous and silly a revenge movie can be when one tries to drag it out over a number of years. It’s a real narrow way of being, looking for payback blood. And as time goes on, and facts and connections come to light, revenge only becomes harder and harder to justify. It may indeed be best served cold, but it’s usually just stale. And stinking of lunacy and fear.

Kill Bill was a martial arts movie. Death Proof was a slasher/muscle car movie. Inglourious Basterds is a World War II film. Whatever. They’re all centered around the settling of scores with a bad man. And by the time Basterds comes along, with Tarantino standing up for Jews, African Americans, Native Americans and presumably all wronged people everywhere, it feels like a little kid with just one balloon, blowing that balloon up as big as he can. But like all balloons, Basterds is fragile, filled with hot air. It can be popped with a prick. I think the filmmaker knows this, somewhere, and the more vulnerable Tarantino feels, the more he lays on the bombast, raises his voice, and, of course, seeks revenge!

Revenge against who, I ask, wearily, for who can even think of more killing in today’s fucked-up world? Well, it doesn’t take Freud to see that Hitler, Bill, and Stuntman Mike are all father figures. And while Tarantino wants us to believe he is taking on fascism and evil for all of us, isn’t QT really just trying to get back at his old man? I mean, isn’t that what all these movies are about? Anger at Papa T? I don’t know their story, but it’s hard to miss.

I understand The Wrath Of Khan. I can get down with Death Wish. I’ve had nights with my cousin Ben when we thought we were vigilante heroes outside the 7/11. But these are moments. And ultimately, one has to pass through them. That, or get an army jacket, handgun, and stack of Xbox games.

America is filled with 40-year-old Charles Bronson wannabes clutching their Frank Miller collections, confounded by their own anger, man-boys who never served in Vietnam, but think they did because they have seen The Deer Hunter three hundred times. They act tough and detached, but mess with their 1970s G.I. Joe collection and you will see just how precious they can be. And these guys love their mothers. Hell, they often live with their mothers. But the father, that’s a different bag.

Robert Bly has told us all about how the American man is lacking in tradition, poetry, and wisdom. Our version of a vision quest is watching Avatar in 3-D. But who’s gonna have the patience for Rainer Maria Rilke or Antonio Machado when you can just mosey down the street and instantaneously fulfill your bloodlust for twelve bucks or so? You can even go back in time and kill Hitler. And you get to do all this with really snazzy dialogue.

In the meantime, in the present time, the confusion just builds. The confusion about war. The confusion about fighting. And there’s some 12-year-old kid out there in some Minnesota mall who actually sees through Inglourious Basterds, sees how weak and befuddled a film it is. But his friends are all yelling about how awesome it is and how cool Tarantino is and how rad Brad is. And that kid gets drowned out. Hopefully not forever.

When Tarantino does try to reach beyond vengeance in these films, it comes out corny. Like the scene with The Bride convincing a female assassin she is pregnant in Kill Bill. Or Shoshanna sitting quietly at a fancy restaurant with the killer of her family. Rather than being poignant, these scenes feel manipulative and contrived. It seems the more Tarantino seeks revenge, the less he is able to honestly convey any other human emotions.

I remember being in Nepal, practicing meditation with all these monks. On the weekend, we would go down into Kathmandu and drink orange soda and watch movies. There’d be like four movies back to back. First we watched The Jackal, with Richard Gere. And then Pulp Fiction came on. Mind you, the movies are playing in tiny dark restaurants, projected onto cracked walls. But still, Pulp blew us all away. The sheer movie magic of it. And it wasn’t all about getting even. And it wasn’t all about hate. There was violence in it, for sure. Even some revenge (Zed’s definitely dead). But there was so much heart that the violence meant something. It became like the violence of a Grimm’s Fairy Tale. When Vincent Vega is shot down, it’s a shock. We were just hangin’ with him in a diner. We were just rolling cigarettes with him, falling in love with him, and now he’s gone. The monks, most of them refugees, all nodded.

— Noah Buschel

It was John Cassavetes, or so the story goes, who told Martin Scorsese to make personal films. Cassavetes had just watched Boxcar Bertha, and while he appreciated it for what it was—a solid Roger Corman B movie—he knew Scorsese had a lot more in him. A lot more to give.

A year later Mean Streets came out. It’s a film that feels so personal that there’s a home movie quality to it. A documentary molded into a drama, shot with the most lush reds and warmest doo-wop you could imagine. The characters are so bona fide, they couldn’t be just fictional. It was radical in its use of pop and rock music and slo-mo and dollies and on and on—it changed film forever. A new style. A new substance.

It’s easy to remember the audaciousness of Scorsese’s camera moves in the pool hall fight scene—the director seemingly being dragged against the wall by the brawl and The Marvelettes pleading “Deliver The Letter! The Sooner The Better!“—but it’s impossible to forget that more straightforward and classical scene where Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro talk in the cemetery of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Where De Niro, in that damn leather jacket, spookily, beautifully, lies down on a gravestone. It’s one of the most poetic and stunning moments in cinema history. Right there with Kanji Watanabe on the swings in the snow in Ikiru. You maybe even start thinking of Hamlet and Holden Caulfield. With no words, Scorsese tells us about fleeting youth.

We’re all haunted by our own Johnny Boy. Some electric kid who killed himself or O.D.’d or just disappeared. But they never really disappear. Because the troublemaker who created a stir, long ago, in some of society’s more refined circles is, after all, our self.

In some ways Scorsese never touched the depth of that cemetery scene again. Then again, no one else has either. And there have certainly been movies and moments since, where Scorsese shot right into the heart. Newland Archer grazing Ellen Olenska’s hand in The Age Of Innocence. Travis Bickle’s eyes merging with Bernard Hermann’s saxophone. The haunted golden, Philip Glass meditation dissolving dream/reality sequences of Kundun. Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas, with his egg noodles and ketchup. Nick Nolte, The Lion, attacking a canvas while blasting “Like A Rolling Stone.” Jake Lamotta crying after taking a fall. We could go on and on, late at night, in diners. And we do. Even his ‘missteps’ like New York, New York are worth watching a dozen times.

But I remember being shocked when I saw Bringing Out The Dead. It starts off the way you expect a Manhattan movie directed by Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, and produced by Barbara De Fina to start off. Nic Cage’s big eyes in close-up with red lights and his weary voiceover going. Then we get some urban religious imagery, Van Morrison’s “T.B. Sheets,” some Sinatra and Elmer Bernstein. Okay, so it’s feeling maybe like an imitation of a Scorsese movie, but you’re rooting for the film and Van Morrison keeps coming back to kick your ass and John Goodman is just so remarkable. But there it is, a half hour into it, your mouth drops. Because it is the first time you have ever heard Scorsese mess up music. He’s messed up a lot of things, but never music. It’s a scene where Goodman and Cage are off to an early morning emergency and R.E.M.’s “What’s The Frequency Kenneth?” comes on. And the greatest music director of them all suddenly seems… unsure. The moment feels forced and fallacious.

It happened again, not much later in the film. With Patricia Arquette and Nic Cage sharing a romantic moment in the back of an ambulance, Scorsese, inanely, throws 10,000 Maniac’s “These Are Days” into the mix. Maybe, I thought—half in hope and half in terror—these aren’t even Scorsese’s picks at all. Maybe some music supervisor is putting roofies in Marty’s espresso. Or Scott Rudin has a clause to pump up the soundtrack sales. At any rate, Scorsese, the man who practically invented pop/rock films, now had two scenes in one movie that felt like bad VH1 videos. If the track choices had been made with some amount of confidence… but they weren’t. It was like witnessing a shrunken Scorsese, no longer instinctual and very much pondering passing fashions.

Well, we do shrink when we get older. And it’s been suggested by more than just cocaine/adrenaline guys like Tarantino that directing is a young man’s game. Still, I don’t buy it. Not when Clint painted his masterpiece—Million Dollar Baby—at such a ripe age. And really the list of directors whose best work was made in the sunset years is long and distinguished. So I waited for Marty’s next movie. And I chalked up Bringing Out The Dead to being just one of those things, one of those uninspired things that just happens. I didn’t buy the soundtrack.

Then the DiCaprio movies came: Gangs Of New York, The Aviator, The Departed, Shutter Island. They came marching slowly through the years like glossy toy soldiers. What were they saying? What were they about? Who was making them? It was hard to say. But like Mick Jagger in Scorsese’s Rolling Stones Imax movie (Shine A Light), the line between human and robot was getting harder to locate. (A Tangent: Is Mick Jagger a robot? Did he steal Andy Warhol’s idea and clone himself to make millions and millions on the road? Is the real Mick Jagger living in an English cottage and writing Byronesque poetry and publishing the poems under a female pseudonym?)

I’m sure DiCaprio killed himself making all these movies. His work in The Departed was heartbreaking and stupendous. And I’m sure Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker worked their asses off to keep it all fresh. And I’m sure the world is a better place for Day Lewis’s Bill The Butcher. But all that said, there is a strange emptiness to these movies. And I don’t mean a Kundun kind of emptiness either. I mean a hollowness. They feel sorta faraway and processed.

It’s just that damn scene in the cemetery in Mean Streets, ya know? So human. But maybe once you’ve been in the industry long enough, maybe neighborhood humanity is not accessible so much anymore. Maybe that’s the sad trade-off. I think it was Ol’ Bob Dylan who drawled “You can sell your privacy, but you can never buy it back.” Still, it’s hard not to wonder what Cassavetes would have said after seeing Shutter Island. Maybe he would have applauded and seen it as Scorsese’s Vertigo, an intimate picture wrapped up in studio clothes. Or maybe, just maybe, Cassavetes would have told Scorsese to start making personal films. Again.

— Noah Buschel

(Having been genuinely moved by filmmaker Noah Buschel’s recent piece at Filmmaker Magazine titled “The Loneliness of the Long Distance Filmmaker,” we were thrilled to receive a new batch of essays from Buschel himself, which we are very proud to be publishing at Hammer to Nail. While I had planned on spacing them out, this one seems too timely to sit on—not to mention the fact that Buschel has expressed my own feelings infinitely better than I ever could. This is some serious truth. — Michael Tully)

Forgotten Phoenix

I know it’s silly to even lament the Oscar nominations anymore. Seems just about everyone stopped taking The Academy Awards seriously a long time ago. Whether it was Forrest Gump beating Pulp Fiction, or maybe when Crash won. Everyone has his own moment when he realized The Oscars were a bad joke.

Still, it hurts a tiny bit to hear that Joaquin Phoenix wasn’t nominated for best actor this year. His performance in Two Lovers was startling. Avatar didn’t give me hope for the future of movies—Joaquin did. Even if he is retiring, which I wouldn’t bet on.

I must confess I am one of those moviegoers who was hit hard by Heath Ledger’s death. No, I don’t have The Joker tattooed on my arm as some jokers I’ve seen. And it wasn’t even that movie I cared about. It was Ledger’s Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain. Somehow, in an age where everything’s moving faster and faster, Ledger slowed things down to the point where you could feel the beautiful lineage and tradition of screen acting. You could see Brando and Paul Newman and Sean Penn, but you could also see expansions and variations on those classic actors. It was old and new at the same time. And it tore one’s heart out.

Joaquin Phoenix as Leonard Kraditor in Two Lovers is another one of those essential performances that happen very, very rarely. Much like Ledger, Phoenix is giving you archetypal stuff while throwing new kinds of curves. There’s some Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. There’s some James Dean. There’s even some Chaplin as he follows Gwyneth Paltrow up to the subway platform.

But more than all that there’s this new kind of acting. A kind of acting where Phoenix is a different person from scene to scene. And I don’t mean in a LOOK AT ME performance art way, like Nic Cage in Bad Lieutenant. I mean in the way that we all are so different from moment to moment, hour to hour. Phoenix captures this flux on screen in a subtle but mind-blowing way. It’s almost too good—you start to wonder if he’s fucking up. One scene he’s yelling at his mom, next he’s laughing, next he’s deathly still, next he’s rapping. And less than showing us that this is a manic and disturbed character, he shows us ourselves. Yeah, that’s kinda what my day is like too. I’ve just never had a mirror held up on a big screen to let me see it. It’s one of the most natural and real performances I’ve ever seen. In fact, you couldn’t even really call it a performance. When he’s on the train with Paltrow, as good as she is, you see one actor working and one actor not. And isn’t that who the best actor award should go to? The actor who found a way to go beyond acting? Or under it? Or around it? Or whatever the hell he did.

Phoenix reminds you of your friends. Oh there’s my pal Dave. Or that’s Dave’s little brother, Zach. Or there’s those guys from Brooklyn I used to play basketball with. Or there’s that crew from the Deli. Oh, and there’s my dad when he was younger, walking around Philly, obsessing about my ma. And then maybe, if you’re like me, you start to cry a little.

Phoenix’s heartbreak in Two Lovers is not of the cute Cameron Crowe unshaven pizza box variety. It’s the kinda heartbreak that seems like his heart might literally break. Like, his aching might literally kill him. And somehow, strangely, this is comforting. Maybe it’s like Leonard Cohen’s Roshi said after listening to an album of wrist-cutting ballads from the poet: “Write sadder songs.”

Anyways, give the gold guy to Jeff Bridges—you can’t go wrong with Bridges in any year. But it’s just kinda funny that a truly monumental performance happened and hardly anyone noticed. Maybe it happened too early in the season. Or maybe James Gray’s lovely film was just too modest and quiet (the film, the director, and Vinessa Shaw all deserve nominations.)

Or maybe, just maybe, after Heath Ledger and River Phoenix and Joaquin’s latest (to some) disturbing behavior, maybe people don’t want to open themselves up to shooting stars. Maybe everyone is too raw to celebrate the kind of pain that is most definitely in Phoenix’s Two Lovers work. Maybe they’re scared that if they do, they’ll have to say goodbye to another whiz kid soon. Be hurt all over again.

Hopefully this is not the case. Hopefully Phoenix will be around for a while and rap or act or do nothin’. Do whatever he wants. But the future doesn’t exist and can’t be predicted. I just know the compassion Phoenix shows in Two Lovers is so great, so big, one can only express one’s gratitude right now.

— Noah Buschel

Distance From Weird

Having been in Park City last year for my movie The Missing Person, I was very happy to not have any movie there this year. I could just read about busy, snowy, bustling Sundance from the warm streets of Santa Monica. With no one sneezing cocaine on me, and no Billy Bob Thornton rockabilly, and no Lee Daniels closing down restaurants to talk in hushed tones about his deep feelings on poverty.

So I’d just open the LA Times, or the NY Times, and read. Amy Ryan was promoting Jack Goes Boating, and when asked about her character, she said, “Well, she’s just a weirdo. But aren’t we all?” Amen to that. And isn’t that what Sundance is all about? Celebrating the weirdo in us all.

But I was thinking, as I walked back from the sunny Starbucks, loaded on Chai, I was thinking, does a weirdo even know he/she is a weirdo? I was thinking of the Starbucks crowd on the Promenade at 6:30 AM. The one I had just left behind. Homeless kids, wheelchair vets, unshaven men in pajamas (that be me). I don’t think we regarded ourselves as a particularly strange crew. It never really came up actually. Mostly we just played checkers and argued about Kobe or Lebron.

But how come Sundance always feels like a freak festival that is goin’ out of its way to be freaky? How come it always seems like a place for straight-laced directors to make off-beat films? Or for nose-jobbed ingénues to be unadorned? Or for hair-plugged leading men to wear funny beards in WireImage? Or for young Brooklynites to rock suspenders and bow ties?

I got this feeling that Sundance was somehow a bunch of people posing as kooky. And they were very condescending. Not just to me, but to my friend Louis on the corner. He’s a 90-year-old Joe Dimaggio fan, and there’s no way you could convince him that Joe D. is not alive and well. I myself suffer from mild agoraphobia and can go for days without seeing anyone. But not me, not Louis, not one of The Starbucks Crew, none of us regard ourselves as weirdos. Or even misfits. You’d really have to distance yourself from your own eccentricities in order to regard yourself as such. And that’s maybe the vibe from Sundance that makes me so uncomfortable. If you go around talking about being a misfit, you’re not. I mean you are, but you’re actually using the idea that you are to distance yourself from your true misfit nature.

Did Cassavettes think his characters were weirdos? Or that he was a weirdo? Or did he think that his characters were humans? And that he was human. And that humans have gotten a bad rap from mainstream society. That we have been told so many times by billboards and commercials what we’re supposed to look like and sound like and feel like that the only real thing to do as an artist would be to cast aside all that and make something human. Not weird—human! The very notion of weird pays homage to the billboards and all that bullshit.

The Marlboro Man and The Playboy Bunny sure have messed up our minds. These distorted images of ourselves have been ingrained in our collective consciousness real deep. But The Bunny and Marlboro Man aren’t beauty. Or truth. Or normalcy. They’re just a lie and a nightmare created out of fear, built to play on teenage insecurities. We’re a race that is evolving and changing. And what we may be evolving into… who knows? I have a suspicion we will look a lot more like E.T. than Jennifer Aniston.

But most Sundance movies aren’t human. That is to say, most of them just feel like mass media brainwashed people making movies about peculiar people. As opposed to Hal Ashby or Sam Fuller or Kubrick. Their movies all felt singular and curious and fresh. Not because they were trying to be different. Simply because we all are different. And if an artist stops trying to blend in and just does his/her own thing—it will be inimitable. It will be truly weird, in the sense that to be a human is truly weird. We are floating in the vast universe after all.

Could there be any idea or concept more dangerous to an artists’ creativity than the idea and concept of weirdness? I mean, we wouldn’t have Blonde on Blonde if Dylan was wondering if he was being odd. Pollock would have never dripped, Salinger wouldn’t've Seymour’d, Van Gogh wouldn’t've Sunflowered, Malick wouldn’t've made a car movie killin’ spree poem. Brando wouldn’t've Tango’d. Captain Beefheart wouldn’t've Trout Mask Replica‘d. Basho wouldn’t've became a frog. Miyazaki wouldn’t've Spirited Away. Downey Sr. wouldn’t've Putney Swope‘d. Phil Guston wouldn’t've gone all hoody and toony. Charlie Bird Parker probably wouldn’t've even been born at all.

That’s not to say if you’re sticking to your guns it immediately equals genius. But geez, what a relief even to see a bad movie that comes from someone’s heart. Like even The Boondocks Saints 2. I felt better coming out of that movie than most of them. It wasn’t a filmmaker manipulating himself into someone else. And it wasn’t a filmmaker trying to fit into the latest fads or the coolest movements. I’m not sure any of my movies are any good either. I just know I’m makin’ a real effort for them to be from my heart and not somewhere else.

No one wants to be alone, but if we really wanna be able to sleep okay at night, maybe we have to risk being alone. Maybe we have to risk being unpopular. And maybe that means not playing the weirdo. Maybe it means actually being as weird and wonderful and dynamic as we really are. To not be scared of our own strangeness and shadows. Like not being scared if one night we’re writing and we go into the bathroom to brush our teeth and see an alien in the mirror.

Maybe that’s just reality staring at us.

So here’s hoping that at next year’s Sundance no one even mentions the word weird. Then maybe the rebellion and the indie spirit will have truly returned. And the movies will polarize. And the movies will scare. And the movies will be hard to sell. Critics will be scratching their heads, making big condescending statements because they won’t know what’s going on. And agents will be confused and angry. And it will be good.

Until then, I guess I’ll just watch Elaine May’s Mikey and Nicky.

— Noah Buschel