Silver Screen Fiend: Learning about Life from an Addiction to Film - Patton Oswalt (2015)

This was Patton Oswalt's second book, and I haven't read Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, which was also a memoir. I believe that one is more about stand-up comedy and this one is, obviously, more about cinema. That said, there is a pretty good amount of material on stand-up comedy in it. I would say it is actually about 50/50. 

I don't want to go into an exegesis of Oswalt as a cultural figure, but it is inevitable. He is most famous for giving the voice to Remy in Ratatouille and perhaps his role on "King of Queens." However, he is a very good actor in his own right (Big Fan and Young Adult are both excellent). In 2011, he was given the Vanguard Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival. And of course, as a stand-up comedian, he would be considered A-list. 

He did contribute to a third book, which was started by his wife Michelle McNamara before her untimely passing, and I'll Be Gone in the Dark seems like it might be better than Silver Screen Fiend, primarily due to the heaviness of the subject matter and context of its publication. (It was also adapted into a documentary for HBO.) It's not ironic that Patton Oswalt went to see Pulp Fiction with Marc Maron (and a third friend, Blaine Capatch), but it feels like it should be. Sometimes things happen and life is just unfair. Sometimes people become successful and get paid, and they pay for it in other ways. No lessons can be learned from such tragedies. Great art, however, can be made as a sort of salve for anyone in the audience whose lives have similarly been devastated by the cruel and arbitrary nature of the universe.

But back in the good ol' days of 2015, life was better than we appreciated it being, and Oswalt put out this book about self-education in cinema, which was undertaken in the hopes that it would magically transform him into a film director. 

***

Immediately, the concept is appealing to me. I did a similar thing when I was 18, but it was with Blockbuster's $30 for 30 days deal, and I did a new movie every night. When I was about to start NYU, I wanted to be a film director (or a critic, secondarily). I probably watched most of the Woody Allen catalog, perhaps to prepare for the move to NYC. And while my interest in making films soon waned, after appearing in one and experiencing the enormous obligations and extent of collaboration with tech personnel, I wanted to work on my own, because I didn't have the confidence to say, "this story is good enough to film, and good enough to ask you all to give me a huge chunk of your time to work on it with me." As an older person now, I recognize that spirit of collaboration as a beautiful thing, and that if tech personnel are actually being paid for their time, it is less daunting to ask for it. 

But I was young and dumb for many years (that continue to this day...), and I would not abandon wanting to make movies, such that six years after those first forays into cinema, I would move to California to try to insinuate myself into Hollywood. When I went to the movies, it was mostly to the bigger chains to see bigger films (Into the Wild, No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Wall-E, The Dark Knight) but one night, I went by myself to see the new movie about Joy Division, Control, at the NuArt Theatre in Santa Monica.

***

It feels appropriate to mention Peter Bogdanovich, as I just finished listening to his WTF Interview in memoriam. One of his films must be referenced here. It does not feel as appropriate to mention Roman Polanski, who is definitely referenced at least once or twice (Knife in the Water and Repulsion). Bogdanovich was very close with Orson Welles. As I listened, I followed along on his Wikipedia page. I haven't seen The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, or pretty much any of his other films (actually I have not seen any of them and now I feel like a fraud for thinking I had a decent education). The best parts of the interview were anecdotes about Welles, who is certainly one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, though ended his career in rather sad fashion (his final performance, five days before his death, was in Transformers: the Movie, one of my early favorites, as the voice of the super-villain Unicron, which is pretty perfect in a way).  

There is no index to Silver Screen Fiend, perhaps because this is not an academic volume, but there is an Appendix which lists all of the films Oswalt saw over the four years of his "addiction," from 1995 to 1999. The period starts with a double feature of Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole at the New Beverly Cinema, which was an institution, until its owner, Sherman Torgan, passed away; Quentin Tarantino (an offspring of Bogdanovich, in a way) has recently restored it and taken over management. It ends with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which is quite fitting.

In those four years, he saw 51 movies at the NuArt; I think I saw 2 in my one year nearby (Smiley Face after Control). But I went to the NuArt on my own, by myself, and it felt sort of special to me because nobody had ever really mentioned it and I had never really thought about it until I saw it written about in here. So that part of the book is personal to me, also. 

***

One could not do much better than starting off an education in cinema with Billy Wilder. I've seen Sunset Boulevard a handful of times, and Ace in the Hole once, fairly recently (it didn't move me nearly as much as Sunset, The Apartment, The Lost Weekend, Witness for the Prosecution, or what I consider his ultimate masterpiece, Double Indemnity--but it was on par with Some Like it Hot; I probably need to see it again, along with many others of his yet unseen). Donald Trump's most redeeming quality was his appreciation for Sunset, as he felt a kinship with Norma Desmond (his results bore more fruit, rotten as it may have been). It is an essential film, and perhaps the greatest on the subject of Hollywood. I don't think I have ever seen a silent film (further fraudulence) but at least I have seen Buster Keaton in that. William Holden and I are birthday buddies, so I felt connected to his element as well. It's beautifully shot, amusing and moving; one could not do better than start their education here. 

Oswalt weaves in and out of anecdotes from the actual moviegoing experiences. One of the best is a story about watching Citizen Kane at the New Beverly with Lawrence Tierney in the audience:

"For about fifteen minutes he sat there, talking to the screen as if he were just out of view to the other characters, admonishing Kane. 'Don't clap for that squawking bitch, she can't sing. Siddown, ya chump!' 'Aw Jesus, what's he staring at? You gonna cry, fancy man?' It was the best DVD commentary I've ever heard." (96)

He weaves in and out, talking about his burgeoning career in stand-up, television and film (I never had any desire to see Down Periscope, but now, I think I will). He primarily does this through his "Night Cafe" motif. 

Briefly, "The Night Cafe" is a painting by Vincent van Gogh, which came out of a moment of inspiration where he sort of locked in and figured out what he was trying to do with his art. The idea of the Night Cafe is a place where you go, and having been there, your life is changed forever. Oswalt goes through six such venues, one of which is the New Beverly Cinema (a few other comedy clubs mostly fill out the six). This is not a bad framing mechanism for the memoir and seems like a truism for anyone in the arts: there will always be certain spaces where a particular person will enter, find inspiration, and start from a new beginning. 

So, a lot of this is about working out a stand-up routine, and making the transition between regional comic on the Mid-Atlantic Coast to featured act on the West Coast. I do not do stand-up comedy (though I have wanted to try, against my better instincts) and so writing about it may expose further fraudulence. And frankly, even though none of this material is bad (probably the most beautiful writing comes out of these sections), I felt it detracted from the exercise that is this book, perhaps in the name of readability or entertainment. I would rather read an arch, academic, scholarly text on cinema by Patton Oswalt than a hybrid stand-up/film memoir. Clearly, with all of the knowledge Oswalt displays at random moments in the text, along with the intellectual pedigree he also exhibits, he is capable of writing that book. But it probably would not sell as well. And perhaps, there is the comedian's impulse, to turn every observation or anecdote or explanation into a punchline, and so a more serious book is improbable (I have not read his section of I'll Be Gone in the Dark, and I would imagine there are not many punchlines, but I would not be surprised if there are a couple). 

He starts his education, after seeing Sunset Boulevard and Ace in the Hole, by going through five of his books on film and reading up on those he has seen: The Film Noir Encyclopedia, Cult Movies (three volumes), and Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film. He then decides to see as many of the movies in these books as he can, marking an asterisk next to each, and the dates and places he saw them. That is the "plot." 

***

I'm not sure what else to say, except that the book is very good and anyone who appreciates cinema or stand-up comedy should find something to admire in it. It made me laugh out loud at several points. It will probably refer you to a film or two that you haven't seen. 

For me, this was La Jetee, which I had seen in Paris while studying abroad as part of a course on film, but which I had forgotten about completely. This reminded me that it provides some inspiration for 12 Monkeys: 

"Chris Marker's moody, near-motionless meditation on the costs of time travel and nostalgia--barely half an hour long but leaving you feeling like you'd just been dragged through a lifetime's worth of emotion and loss. This must have been showing with other movies--Sans Soleil? Maybe a Tarkovsky? But all I wrote down was La Jetee." (103)

I remember feeling sort of bored and confused when I saw it the first time, so now I feel like I need to again. It's not a huge investment of time. Just now I have reserved the DVD at CPL, and yes, it is packaged together with Sans Soleil.  

Sure, I would have liked for Silver Screen Fiend to be more Against Interpretation than Bossypants, but I also probably enjoyed the experience of reading the latter more than I enjoyed the experience of pretending like I understood the former. So overall, Oswalt did well with this. With these two under his belt, it is inevitable there must be a third. He is in the very rare category of artist that can do pretty much whatever he wants, now; he is one of those people that is pretty much great in everything he's done, and I don't doubt it would be compelling.  

Writing this review though, I am dismayed. Having written the word "Oswalt" this many times, with Batman on my mind (which is frequently the case), it is enormously sad that he will not be playing The Penguin in The Batman. Jonah Hill would have made a pretty good Penguin, and I am sure that Colin Farrell will do a totally decent Penguin, but a Patton Oswalt Penguin (where Robert Pattinson is Batman)....perhaps that would be too close to a Jim Carrey Riddler (a movie that does show up in the text)....but it would be brilliant casting, nonetheless. It's too bad there are no time machines. Yet.