SO THEN

[salsburysteakjr]

Okay. Please, I would like ONLY THOSE who know factually what I'm going to ask. Even if the factual answer is, "nobody can be 100% sure", that is fine. Gossip seems to be the flood drowning most of any truth to either sides angle on the story, so please lets have us a very intellectual conversation full of what we DO know and nothing more

Comments

[salsburysteakjr]

I can't find Mysterious Skin in any bookstore and it drives me nuts. The movie is hideous, and after reading his In Awe I KNOW the novel has to be better than the movie. Araki is one of the crappier directors of the last decade or two, and his adaptation proves his lack of any ability to create an atmosphere or feeling of mood and setting and character. The dvd has the two lead cast members reading quite a bit from the novel and it's obvious the film did a great disservice to the book.

I know I'm sounding like some grouch who just can't stand any film made from a novel, but we just happen to be discussing two particularly bad films. As the giantest film nerd fantatic in the world I fetishize over the details and always hope for GOOD stuff. Have you ever seen The War Zone? A great film directed by Tim Roth, from an equally great novel. The two aren't spot on the same, but manage to each service a rather harrowing story of incest. This kind of dark material is often handled poorly, and as someone who rather plans on making films about some of this really taboo subject matter, I get very critical. I'd REALLY REALLY endorse The War Zone, the unrated version. While I'm suggesting, also you'd REALLY love Eye of God, and Clean, Shaven. Both are grim but so rewarding cinematic experiences.

[salsburysteakjr]

Uh this is totally off-topic but I was so shocked to find out on the dvd, the reader of the novel who is not Joseph Gordon Levitt, but the actor portraying the meeker science fiction lover character is one in the same. I thought maybe it was the writer of the novel, as he has a very effeminate aura about him and I knew the author was gay. But no it's the actor. He's like shockingly charming and adorable and I want to cast him in a movie just to seduce him. I'm sure you agree or would if you haven't seen the dvd extra but will sometime soon. This has nothing to do with anything but I wanted to gossip about him to somebody and you are the poor victim. I hope you aren't to terribly traumatized.

[_cherryvanilla_]

Brady Corbett, the guy who plays Brian? I haven't seen the DVD, I saw it at the movies, but I'll keep an eye out for it if I'm watching the movie. He's only 18 or something, I thought he was great.

[_cherryvanilla_]

Well I haven't read Scott Heim's novel of Mysterious Skin (though I hear it's far from perfect) but I quite liked the film. I saw it when it was released at the cinema so I should watch it again to refresh my memory. At the time in my lj I wrote "Mysterious Skin was good but could have been better. The story is about child abuse really, yet there was such a studied sexiness in the portrayal of one of the boys that it just came across a bit too stylised". I remember feeling quite uncomfortable about the portrayal of Joe Gordon-Levitt's character. I also just felt that it was rambling and overlong. But I disagree - I think it DID create a mood, setting and character, it was a very moody film, he succeeded with that. But it's not enough to just create a mood.

Haven't seen Clean, Shaven or Eye of God, but wasn't Eye of God directed by Tim Blake Nelson? I like him as an actor. Does he act in it too?

Yes, I've seen The War Zone, it was on TV here last year. Stellar cast, but I didn't love it - it was a bit English kitchen-sink melodrama for me with nothing to hook me in. Very unsettling though and it has stayed with me.

[salsburysteakjr]

Okay, now I HAVE read both his novels, Mysterious Skin and In Awe. I'm confused you heard Skin was far from perfect, when I'd only heard it was a brilliant debut impossible to top. Anyways it's rather wonderful reading actually. In Awe is shockingly more composed and articulate but I think this is because both novels have completely different aims and Heim simply over time improved as a writer. Anyways I'd certainly endorse reading any Scott Heim. Both novels are good.

Now Mysterious Skin, ironically, although a terrible and flat and lifeless and unatmospheric motion picture (like all the films it's director made), is a far closer adaptation to the novel than Heart is Deceitful is. And both novels are just as graphic. What Skin does is present much of the material unfilmable just an inch out of frame. In this way he manages to get the point of the scene itself across and not cross any barriers. I never felt it was overlong like you did, myself.

I NEVER thought I'd be complimenting the film Mysterious Skin, but in at least this one way, it is a very steady adaptation. What you see trying to be photographed compellingly on-screen is always from the quite affecting novel.

I believe the director's name is spelled Araki. Greg Araki. He's made nothing but smutty, second-grade crap his entire career, and much like Larry Clark, seems to like photographing young boyish males far more than feels warranted. Both directors are usually called on it, but not nearly as much as it seems they should be. They're NEVER subtle in their fetishistic portrayals.

Yes Eye of God through the help of apparently the Sundance Institute was directed Tim Blake Nelson, the actor from most memorably, O Brother...

He does not act in it.

The War Zone I have to disagree with you on. I felt no melodramatic aspect to the picture, it's why I profoundly adored it so much. Nobody overacts, no scenes are overplayed or scored with forty violins blaring. What happens is very emotional and dramatic, but I always felt it's director (another actor, Tim Roth), was very mature in just presenting the events with an unfazed, calmed eye. Difference of opinion strikes again.

An author who is relatable to Leroy and Heim is Dennis Cooper, and I'm just now getting myself aquainted with his novels. They're quite dark and full of a rather violent sexuality, which is unsettling but he's quite compelling in his way of writing about it. If you're in a gusty mood find some of his earlier novels and see what you think.

[_cherryvanilla_]

I guess we just have to disagree on Mysterious Skin - it's far from perfect but its mood and atmosphere stayed with me and its central performances definitely raise it above "lifeless, flat and terrible"!

Gregg Araki & Larry Clark are constantly called on their fetishistic portrayals of young boys and for me it lets down their movies. I interviewed Clark once, when I was a teenager. It was...strange. He'd just made Kids. I'd seen his photography before then. I liked Kids, disliked his photography, wasn't too keen on Bully (good performances though) and haven't seen anything since.

"[The War Zone] felt no melodramatic aspect to the picture, it's why I profoundly adored it so much. Nobody overacts, no scenes are overplayed or scored with forty violins blaring"

Sorry, by "kitchen sink melodrama" I meant, umm...how can I describe it...
Have you seen Look Back in Anger - a 1958 film starring Richard Burton based on a John Osborne play? It, and the play before it, caused huge controversy at the time and sparked a new breed of filmmakers/writers/playwrights/artists to start making art which was rooted more firmly in banal reality, a form of social realism, usually about working class characters and their struggles etc. This style became known as 'kitchen sink realism' - the drama is more muted, more grim and gritty, but nonetheless as/more effective than the musically-scored, over-acted melodrama you would usually see. So, when I said "kitchen sink melodrama" I was referring to that type of film - a certain form of "melodrama" which prides itself on not being melodramatic at all. Does that make sense? :)

We wrote about Dennis Cooper elsewhere. He updates his blog daily if you're interested, it's at: http://www.denniscooper.blogspot.com/

[salsburysteakjr]

Nothing shall raise Mysterious Skin from the dead and I will just have to live with it! I was so happy that the copy of the novel I bought was not the "now a major motion picture!" poster cover version. Again, In Awe, Scott Heim's second novel, is something equally wonderful though oddly dismissed at large.

Tell me more about having met Larry Clark! As somebody who looks vastly younger than 23, I'd be afraid to shake that man's hand. Kids and Bully are fair examples of his work, although oddly everyone forgets his single rather good film Another Day in Paradise, which is the only thing he's made that resembles actual cinema. I read James Woods had to help in the editing for it's director at that time was back into a heroin-habit, though that could simply be hear-say. In any case I sortof like that movie. But otherwise he's like Harmony Korine; obnoxious.

I'm entierly ignorant to this phrase, kitchen-sink melodrama. It does make sense and although then you could probably call The War Zone as much, I like it no less. But I'm a morbid fiend for disturbing subject matter.

It's probably why I liked Frisk, Dennis Cooper's novel, so much. I love anything that gets so deeply into the marrow of my bones with such unease. Reading the plots of other novels of his, I feel I will probably be stuck on him for a while, with that chilly guilty pleasure sensation in my belly the whole way. His blog is a 50/50 brew of unreadability and pleasing informative nuggets of interest, it seems. I'd like for David Lynch or somebody to make a film out of a novel he wrote, though maybe Lynch is too much similarly a planet unto himself for that combo to taste right.

[trashcanpoet]

My favorite Cooper novel will always be Period, the last book in the Miles cycle. The first time I read it, it totally blew my mind... I kept gasping at how all the little pieces linked up in these total head-trip ways. As soon as I finished it, I started right back at the beginning to try to understand it better. For a new fan I would recommend reading the cycle in order (Closer, Frisk, Try, Guide, Period) but look forward to that one! It's delicious.

[salsburysteakjr]

Yeah I tried very hard from the library to the Powell's bookstore (largest used and new bookstore in the world) to find Closer and onward in the proper order. But they only carried Frisk in Powell's and Period in the library. Frisk being profoundly affecting and Period so jumbled I could not get into it. I'm going to re-read it, for I hate feeling duped when others seem to see with such clarity its twisty turny branch like path. I can hope with the help of Frisk I am more ready for Period, the first book of his I attempted to trudge through. And I tripped over branches crawling from the floor and never quite stood rightwise up from the first ten pages on. It seemed so obsessed with technique over storytelling I grew frustrated with a pant and a grunt.

But I really so very fell for Frisk. I will go headlong again into the void of Period. I hope to find or buy some other books of his in the meantime, namely Try, which sounds so so very morbid and fascinating for my sickly taste in literature. And of course the few others not in the series God Jr. first probably. I want to read The Sluts, I managed to find a legthy sample online and it seemed rather compelling, but wouldn't you know I'm actually hesitant and shy to carry the cover of that novel into the hands of a clerk? I'm such a lameo.