Black, White and Red (Sometimes) All Over

During my many hours of TV watching last week, I came a across a show that I swore would have been directed by Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill Vol.s, Pulp Fiction and the like). And sure enough, as I read in the entertainment section of the newspaper, it was.

What gave it away were scenes ripe with pop culture references, an imaginative presentation of gore (the show was CSI) and his trademark new style: using black and white film in particularly violent scenes.

The two-hour season finale of CSI saw one of the main characters getting buried alive in a glass coffin, much like Uma Thurman in the second Kill Bill. The rest of the team spent the remaining time trying to find him and dig him out without setting off the explosive charges rigged to the coffin. This is trademark Tarantino 'creativity.'

During the show, the man who buried the c.s.i. blew himself up in an attempt to take out other c.s.i. When the explosion was shown, the film switched to black and white to show the results. The film switched back to color to show that another c.s.i. had survived the blast.

Still later in the show, the man buried alive had either a dream or hallucination that an autopsy was being performed on him while he was conscious. When the blood began to flow and the organs were passed around, the film was in black and white again. After it was over, the man dreaming was shown from the neck up in color, slighty bloody (althouth not flowing). To end the scene, the doctors jokingly picked up the man's heart and told the subject's father, "He had a good heart." You gotta love that creativity and wit.

Tarantino used the same method in the Kill Bill Vol. 1 in order to not disturb a 10-15 minute scene where Uma Thurman slaughters an 88-man Japanese hit squad in some pretty disturbing ways. The color instantly disappeared when Thurman took out an eye of one of the men, making it an interesting style and transition to black and white. It returned to normal when Thurman blinked her eyes in a facial close-up after most of the team lay throughout the scene in varying degrees of slaughter.

Tarantino and Robert Roderiguez used similar techinques in Sin City (See Love, BaSin City Style). Most of the movie was already in black and white to begin with but when even the brutality was too much for black and white, the film took another step. Black and white cut-outs of characters were used to portray what happened, almost like flannelgraph figures on a felt board. This was used to show Elijah Wood's character get eaten by a dog.

Somehow, the color swap makes the violence not as visceral or real. And that's why the MPAA says okay to an R-rating for the above mentioned films. Kudos to Tarantino on the creative use of style to make us almost enjoy watching violence.

But woe to us if we are enticed to sit through this style in a movie which lacks any redeeming qualities.

Palahniuk Inspires

“Maybe people have to suffer before they can risk doing what they love.”
You told Misty all this.
You said how Michelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Shumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist.
…
You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spine bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O’Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.
“According to Thomas Mann,” Peter said, “‘Great artists are great invalids.’”

The above is an excerpt from Diary, a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, who also wrote Fight Club. So far (78 pages into it) I’m hooked and (despite the cliché-ness of it) inspired by it. The above talk about artists and the writing style of the book itself is inspiring.

The nihilistic tone made famous by the rants of Tyler Durden is the basis for the book; yet in the blunt, crassness of the writing all that is faux is stripped away, leaving raw nerves, harsh realities. But those nerves and realities are what lead to authentic change.

In the book, an artist named Misty married young in art school and was swept away to some idyllic small town on an idyllic island home where she could paint pictures that would change people’s lives. But the island was spoiled by tourists, advertisements and commercialism, and her husband, Peter, shot himself in the family car.

While the husband sits in a hospital hooked up to life support, Misty gets calls from summer home owners in the idyllic towns near the island where Peter had done some remodeling during the winter. Everyone complains of kitchens or linen closets missing from their homes, leading Misty to find that Peter sealed in entire rooms from the house.

Inside the rooms are nonsensical, yet prophetic scrawlings covering the sealed-in rooms. Some of it is nonsense while others are crass descriptions of life on the island. Intermingled with the nonsense are random quotes from various artists that somehow apply to life on the island or Misty.

I don’t know what happens from then on as Misty tries to figure out what all that means but I know that Palahniuk is an engaging storyteller. And the artistic dialogue is spurring me on to produce something.

From Homicide to Espresso

Change is good. Especially when you're able to change the types of conversations you have during the normal course of the day.

I used to have to ask, "Well, how many times was the man shot and where? Were there any shell casings at the scene? Was the shooting gang-related? Are you currently questioning the mother in connection to the shooting?"

But now I'll have to ask, "Would you like that frappacino affogato style? Would you like to try our new Chantico drinking chocolate? How's it going, do you want your normal double-shot soy latte? You're asking me if refills are free?"

I have succumbed to working for the man, the Big Brother of coffee, the corporate, suburbanized chain store I have always tried to avoid if possible. But to avoid advertising for them, I shall call them the coffee-chain-that-shall-remain-nameless.

Call me a sell-out but the benefits, flexibility and quality tips seemed a good offer at the coffee-chain-that-shall-remain. This would be career suicide if I were to pursue journalism but since I'm not, the coffee-chain-that-shall will work fine.

It's kind of a career twist but who doesn't need a change now and then to refocus their lives, reevaluate career choices and rediscover what a person's passions are. And the coffee-chain-that-shall seems to be an ideal place for that.

And if you know me, that means that sometime in the near future, you'll be getting a pound of beans from the the coffee-chain-that.