the diary of antoine roquentin

I had so much fun tonight, but I just got home. It’s 4 a.m. and my fingers feel too tired to type. So it’s a good thing that I have voice recognition software. I just fired it up for the first time in quite a while.

The first thing that I did tonight was go with Matt to the Whitney Museum to see Javelin and Warpaint. Both bands put on a really great show, and I got some adorable pictures of the main guy from Javelin.

Javelin

Warpaint

After that, Matt and I went down to the Whole Foods at Union Square to have a snack and for me to pick up some groceries. I was to meet Yevgeny at French Roast around 10:40, to catch some dinner (we ended up just having dessert and lots of coffee) before seeing the kitschfest that was Perfect.

I’m forced to agree with Jason’s assertion that the script, in and of itself, isn’t half bad. There are some moments in the script that have a certain poignancy to them: about body image, dating in the 80s, etc. However, any moments intended to have any sort of gravitas to them are drowned out by Jaimie Lee Curtis’ wooden delivery of the lines. There is this part in the middle of the movie where Jamie Lee Curtis is completely absent, and this secondary character who is obsessed with finding a husband is put into full view. There is actually an emotional moment that doesn’t ring false where, after talking to John Travolta’s character about how she plans to get extensive plastic surgery, she breaks into tears of desperation upon hearing that her friend is getting engaged.

There is this fragility to Jamie Lee Curtis’s character that is obviously in the script, but is completely absent from her performance. Also, the entire plot hinges on John Travolta being so sexually entranced by Jamie Lee Curtis that he gives up his job at Rolling Stone and any sort of career just to be with her. Now I don’t know what planet you’re from, but I wouldn’t give up a stick of gum from a full pack to be in the same room with a woman that looked like Jamie Lee Curtis, let alone flush my career down the toilet.

There are moments in the movie where Jamie Lee is supposed to be having an emotional experience, but her face is so absolutely blank that Jason and I ended up inventing dialogue to match her expression: “I wonder if there is a bagel in the kitchen… I bet there’s only poppy seed. Maybe I could have an English muffin instead?” [End scene] Those scenes ring so hollow that the sound is deafening, which is almost the film’s greatest selling point. It’s like a two-hour screen test for bad actors and actresses.

However, the movie shines (I don’t think I’ve ever said this before) in scenes where no acting takes place at all—those being the ultra-extended scenes in the fitness club, where Curtis’ character exhorts an army of preternaturally American Apparel-wearing (the movie came out in 1981) health club devotees to ever-more-sexually-suggestive aerobic workouts. There is this one (five-minute, but felt like five-hour) extended scene of the workout taking place. We were in stitches at the awkward contortions—you can see up to Curtis’ cervix in her tight leotard.

It was a strange and hilarious romp in spandex, which I can recommend only with the caveat that you are seeing what bad casting and bad acting can do to butcher a prosaic but acceptable script.