charlie chaplin in a robot suit
I'm sorry everyone, but Iron Man kind of falls apart in the third act. Apart from that (and a heartbreakingly flat performance by Jeff Bridges?!) it was pretty fun, looked cool, and overall I was impressed. It is a fun movie. In fact, I was so impressed that I came home (many many hours later) and I had to put on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang while I cycled until I stunk. It's a Robert Downey Jr. night. But Iron Man still pretty much falls apart in the third act.
In fact, I still stink.
Met with Enie, showed her my rough cut of Open. As if I needed even more deflation right now. I tried (poorly) to express to Andy over whiskeys and burgers at the VC that I think I'm undergoing a kind of minor crisis right now. I'm really hooked on this idea that my art isn't engageable and fun and it ought to be. It occurred to me about an hour ago as I looked at myself in the mirror and tried to see the nearly thirty-year-old dude staring back at me (I don't see it) that this might even be an aspect of aging fears. Not quite mid-life crisis but something. My creative biological clock is fucking ticking, and any screenwriter worth his weight in sheafs of paper and brass pins knows just how powerful that ticking clock can be.
It's too early to tell, but The Slip, Nine Inch Nails' new free downloadable album, might be the most Nine Inch Nails work since The Fragile. I don't know how else to put it. They may be past their peak (by 14 years) but this album appears to not suck. On first listening.
I'm too tired and a little crushed under the weight of my own fears right now to go into more detail about the crisis, or Enie's advice for improving Open, or the very oblique-worthy experience of last night, or my thoughts on future projects, or the massive rewrites I want to do to Minus and TWOMP, or the possibility of fundamental shifts in the direction of my writing style, or the progress on the house-hunt, or the lack of progress on post-production, or how hungry I am right now.
Maybe some or all of that later. I'm gonna find a bite, watch some more Downey, and quietly debate with myself whether a 4am shower would wake the whole house up or not.