Everybody talks about their “great idea for a
movie;” some people even harbour
delusions that their Citizen Kane-esque masterpieces will one day be made, and
deservingly recognized by the academy. I’ve heard every friggin’ kind of crackpot movie idea in my
day, and I’ve proposed a few myself,
although generally in jest. And let it be known here that I’m not
talking about documentaries; there are a million topics to make
documentaries on, and these often get done for real. I mean feature
films, that have to be written and cast and what have you.
And despite what I’ve just said, I even
have one idea which I think really could be a movie. I even think that
I could probably write the movie, if I ever had the time and honestly
sat down to do it. Yeah, I know, every armchair director who likes to
watch the director’s commentaries on DVDs says the exact same
thing, and claims near-exclusive (along with the ghost of the almighty Kubrick, of course) access to the muses of movies,
and admittedly, there is no amount of experience or extra inside
knowledge which separates me from them. I just can’t shake the
feeling, despite all this shit I’m aware of and completely
prepared to complain about myself, that my movie, if not different, is somehow good enough.
My flick is a type of college-slacker comedy,
with quirky humour and a little underlying
something-to-say... like every other movie. It stars a young Ryan
Reynolds-type as a guy who has gotten through a few years of university
without paying for food, just by eating exclusively at the catered
receptions of academic and administrative university functions. Any
time a talk or whatever is given, he’s there, and stuffing his
face (although he knows how to do it without looking like he’s
doing it) according to some kind of set of rules he’s come up
with for pulling this off without getting caught.
The hook, though, is that the Dean (a
benevolent but innocent type, who’s maybe just a little vain...
think of the mayor from Spin City)
and some of his staff are also always at these things, and get
accustomed to the dude’s presence, and eventually come to believe
that he’s somehow affiliated with the Dean’s office, and so
never question his presence, always assuming that he works with someone
other than themselves... until one day, the Dean’s personal
assistant is befallen by some tragedy, and our unwilling hero is roped
in to take her place. He can’t say no, of course, because that
would blow his cover, so he just tries to take it one day at a time.
It turns out, though, that he’s
actually better at running
things around there than anyone else, because he brings a fresh
perspective, blah blah blah.
Turns out university administration is his calling, or what have you,
and he just accelerates the efficiency and reputation of the whole
institution... all the time without a paycheque
of any kind, surviving, as he always has, on only reception food.
In the end, he’s exposed,
blah blah blah. The
thing writes itself, really, as long as we can throw in some kind of
just slightly star-crossed love interest. Why am I saying all this to
you, who might just now go out and plagiarize me, instead of writing
the flick myself and seeing my genius creation up there on the big
screen?
Because of The Postman.
You know how some musicians will say that
they have trouble ever writing any of their own music, no matter how
good they think it might be, because of The Beatles’ White Album, saying that
they’ll never be able to write anything that good, so why bother?
That’s sort of how I feel about Kevin Costner’s The Postman. Now, The Postman isn’t my favourite movie of all time (that dubious honour falls to Mary Herron’s American Psycho), although it is
up there. I honestly think it might be the most underrated movie of all
time (largely because of how bad people think it is, and not
necessarily because it’s that good... kind of the way I think
that Pauly Shore is the most underrated comic
of all time), but mostly, I think it’s just so brilliantly
written, as a screenplay. I’ve read the novel, yes, and the movie
is very different, to the point where I’m only really talking
about the movie. The whole thing, just genius.
Alright, it’s a post-apocalyptic epic
where Kevin Costner plays an unnamed and unwilling hero, but it’s
not Waterworld...
which was also pretty underrated, if you ask me. The US government has collapsed
from a combination of atomic warfare, rampant pestilence, famine, and
nuclear winter, finished off by a roving marauder army of survivalist
white supremacists known as Holnists, after
their founder and demi-god, Nathan Holn. Just to begin, I think this is the most likely
scenario for a post-apocalyptic epic I’ve ever seen, purely
because no one thing caused things to be the way they are. I just
don’t buy the way that in The
Road Warrior, say, you take away gasoline from the world, and
everybody goes totally nuts; I feel like we would manage to cope, or at
least not end up hiding behind barricades and tossing metal boomerangs
around.
But anyway, without giving away too much, all
the tiny little details of the American west coast, post-collapse, are
just so compelling! People
behave pretty much as they always have... except that they have to work
a little harder for their food, and there’s no government to
protect them from those who have chosen to make their way by living as
neo-feudal parasites on the backs of others (i.e. the Holnists).
That is, of course, until, to make a long
story short, they get a little hope and pride and dignity back when
they come to believe (falsely) that the United States government has been
restored, along with its brave postal service. This results in a
low-level, guerrilla-style conflict between the Holnists
and the young, idealistic postal carriers. I won’t go into the
details here, but let’s just say that the movie takes turn after
brilliant turn, and not in the cheap-hook, deus ex machina way that we’re
used to getting from Hollywood. Things just happen that no
one thought would happen, as a combination of dumb luck and human
error/triumph, just like in real life. And the somehow both understated
and cartoonish
vanity of the ruthless Holnist leader,
General Bethlehem, is just the icing on the cake.
Okay, that was a lie just now. Sure, General
Bethlehem is great (“Cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of
war!”), but here’s the real icing on the cake: at one
point, our eponymous hero, the postman, comes to Bridge City, in
western Oregon, and finds a secure but peaceful community of
survivors... led by Tom Petty. Yes, that
Tom Petty, great American songsmith. And no, not a character played by Tom Petty; the man plays himself! I shit thee not!
And at first, everyone’s reaction is like, “What?”
But when you think about it, doesn’t it make sense? I mean, there’s no reason why Tom Petty wouldn’t
survive the calamities as well as anyone... and once all government and
power structures have collapsed, someone’s
gotta lead Bridge City... so why not choose the
one guy in town who everyone could recognize? Tom Petty doesn’t
seem like a bad guy, and he seems smart enough, so what the hell?
He’s used to speaking in front of crowds, and he wrote
“American Girl,” for Christ’s sake!
And before you ask, yes, I did read the novel, and no, Tom
Petty does not appear in it. A screenwriter with brains and balls
the size of watermelons actually wrote Tom Petty into a movie set in
post-apocalyptic Oregon. And that’s why The Postman keeps me from being able to ever actually write
my movie. I don’t care that it ended up ruining Kevin
Costner’s once-promising directorial career (the dude beat Martin
Scorcese for a Best Director Oscar, if
you’ll recall... how many of us can claim to have been officially
recognized as having directed a movie better than motherfuckin’
Goodfellas?!?),
The Postman is the most
impressive and subtly nuanced screenplay ever made into a genuine
movie. So why should I even bother?
