A Meditation on Lazy Writing with a SPECIAL GUEST BLOGGER!

Consensus from last week’s blog about using voiceover, flashbacks and phonecalls seems to be that they should be used when they add something that maybe only they can add to the script not just out of laziness because it’s easier to have some voice tell the audience what’s happening than to show it.  Speaking of which, I recently re-watched one of the laziest movies ever…a little film called Legends of the Fall.  So that we might discuss it, I have asked one of the film’s protagonists, the Julia Ormond Character, to recap the plot in case, as it was for me, you haven’t seen it since you were in high school. Take it away, Julia Ormond Character.

 

Hi Guys!! Here goes: I love Henry “Eliot from E.T.” Thomas with a girlishness that comes of never having experienced true, stupid passion.  Now I am meeting his brother, Brad “Tristan Ludlow” Pitt. He is wild and untamed.  I know this because he has long hair.  He is also extremely romantic, passionate and sensitive. I know this because he has long hair.  Oh crap.  Henry Thomas is a naive hothead going to war.  I am so sad.  Hug me, Brad Pitt.  I need to be comforted. Oh god.  I am looking in your eyes and there is a fire burning next to us, so even though we’ve barely spoken two words to each other, obviously there is nothing we can do to keep from almost kissing…Fuuuuuuuck, man, your other brother caught us.  I did NOT see that coming.

 

Off you all go to war. I stay here thinking about Henry Thomas with my head and you with my areas.  Oh shit. Henry Thomas is dead now.  You go crazy with anger and scalp a lot of people in Germany because a wild beast roams your heart and you are untamed and they never made you cut your hair when you enlisted, so that’s still an issue. Now you are back and your older brother, Aidan “i represent the establishment/conformity/civilization in this movie” Quinn, wants to marry me but that’s out of the question, obviously, because he wants to live indoors, get a trim once in a while and be nice to me.  I mean, like, what a turd!!  Meanwhile, you weep for hours next to Henry Thomas’s grave because you are so sensitive that you will NEVER get over what happened to you.  Because it happened to you and your pain and trauma is more valid than anyone else’s, mostly because your hair is longer than anyone else’s.  The other million veterans who are not as deep or sensitive as you are and tried to move past their shell-shock are fucking pussies.  Let me hold you while you blubber like you’re the only one who ever has. Have premarital sex all over me until your hair gets all tangled in my hair.

 

Oh noes! You are still depressed? Sure I will wait for you for ten years while you become a sailor and kill exotic animals, have group sex with ladies of the orient (indicating empty, lonely sex, because that’s what Asian Women stand for, doi), and then cut some hearts out of some shit and rub the hearts on your face and weep while I sit in your dad’s house gathering dust on my vagina. See? I totally, like, get you.  Because of all the long talks we’ve had?  Not so much.  We don’t really say much to each other.  It’s more the hair (see above) and the face and the fact that you won’t ever talk to me about anything (you’re so complicated) and wake up from your nightmares with a knife to my throat (hott!!1!).  Would you like me to send you anything? My youth and vitality? A rubber band to tie your hair back? No? Really? You just like to let it hang free while you hunt and hump and tie bowline knots and it doesn’t get in your way? Mine totally does and all I do is sit around crying and looking pathetic and wondering what kind of accent your father, Anthony “not really from Montana” Hopkins, is doing.  It changes, like, daily.

 

Wait, what now?  You don’t want to stop fucking and hunting and come back and marry me? Ok. I said I would wait forever but I guess I will go and marry your brother (who has been waiting for me for like eight years because there are NO OTHER WOMEN in Montana –it’s like some last man, post-apocalypse movie up in here) and live in a big house with servants. It’s not like it’s is a fate worse than death, right?  Oh, you’re back now and you have learned to tie your hair back in a ponytail (indicating demons conquered yet sensitivity intact)?  I guess it is a fate worse than death. I’m going to blow my brains out to give you some fresh shit to cry about.

Cecilia here. I forgot Julia Ormond Character is not around for end of this film. Here’s an epilogue: Brad Pitt lives almost forever with his long hair and his ability get to the truth of a scene thanks to Stella Adler and a belief that he’s actually Marlon Brando. But then a bear kills him, which he apparently thinks is an awesome end to an awesome life of taking shit too seriously. An old Native American Guy who should have way better stuff to remember, like what happened to all the other Native American Guys, saves all his letters and talks about him all day every day around his campfire to no one in particular. I guess he just likes to run his mouth. The End.

Still can’t believe this is the film that made women weep from their vaginas for like six hours.  My friend wanted to name her teenage pregnancy after Tristan “Brad Pitt” Ludlow, never realizing that Fabio from the cover of a romance novel is still Fabio no matter how much dramatic music James Horner puts behind him.  When wardrobe and music stand in for actually showing something interesting and original or even a coherent explanation of why people are doing what they’re doing, that’s lazy. When hair=character, that’s lazy.  When sex in Asia is a signifier for meaninglessness in the 1990’s, 50 years after it should be? LAY-ZEEE! Oh, and there’s a lazy voiceover, too. Fuck this movie.  That’s right, I’m saying it.  13 years after anyone cares.

“Leave me alone. I am writing you a letter about all of the brooding i have been doing. Why yes, I do use Pantene.”