Writer’s block. Every writer dreads it. Every writer suffers from it at some point. And then as if encouraged by the snickering muses, every writer does the one thing within his aching power to overcome this numbing condition…he writes about having writer’s block. Hence this introduction.
Norman Mailer once stated that this condition we call writer’s block is the cause of a simple failure of the ego. After all, it requires a great deal of ego to believe you have something noteworthy to say; that you are talented enough to conjure the words to say it; and that you know enough people with enough free time in which to read it. Hmmm. Yes. I suppose my three-week hiatus from this blog could have been the result of a withering ego. Let’s see.
I write a movie blog. A movie blog wherein I use all of my enthusiasm for the movies to encourage you my readers to go out of your way to view movies you perhaps never had any interest in pursuing. I received one email from a reader, we’ll call him Mr. X, that he had been directed by one of my posts to see the movie In America. For months, Mr. X’s Netflix queue sat idle as his DVD player became the home of that movie, and his living room the theater in which to watch it, much to his wife’s growing annoyance, literally dozens of times. Another reader, let’s call him Colonel, just last week in fact, was inspired by my Inception post enough, I am told, to venture out to his local IMAX theater to catch a showing of a movie he had had absolutely no interest in seeing prior to reading my animated words. He wrote me an email the next day telling me he still hadn’t figured out what the heck that crazy dream movie was about. But then Colonel followed that up by informing me that he had just forwarded the link for my blog to a fellow movie lover over in California. Now that’s power you can’t buy people. Ego? Sorry Norman, but we’re all stocked up here.
No. My writer’s block can be attributed simply to a total lack of inspiration brought on by what is already being considered one of the most lackluster years in the history of the movies. Nothing released so far this year, except of course for the simply brilliant Inception (sorry Colonel) and one or two others, has gotten me at all excited about the movies. And nearly a hundred movies have been released this year. Now that’s just sad. And therefore my silence for the past three weeks. But then, suddenly…reinvigoration. The spark reignited. Inspiration struck. I remembered what made me fall in love with movies in the first place. I recalled the classics.
Growing up as a small boy in Jacksonville, Florida, singing mice and wisecracking sponges interested me far less than the names Hepburn, Stewart and Hitchcock did. I grew up loving the classics. The Philadelphia Story; Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; Vertigo. These were titles whose mere mention could invoke from me a long-winded and running commentary about the majesty and grandeur of the great silver screen. Of course, I probably didn’t use words like majesty and grandeur, but…never the less. I was a child who didn’t need color or any other indulgence of modernity to know what good was.
And so, yesterday, I found myself strolling the marvelously growing list of movies available now for instant viewing from Netflix. I determined to stick to the classics section, and there I found a great many titles with which I was vastly familiar, but before that day, knew of by name alone. I settled on The Big Sleep starring the great Humphrey Bogart and the luminous Lauren Bacall, a movie I had known of for some time, but embarrassingly had never seen before. What a thrilling experience. The Big Sleep is infamously, among movie aficionados, known for being one of the most confusing film noirs in the history of the genre. I found that to be a bit of a bum wrap. Sure it’s got some convoluted plot strands, some of which turn out to be much less important to the ultimate outcome of the film than originally expected. And one murder/possible suicide is never cleared up to today’s movie audiences’ required satisfaction, I’m sure.
But the plot isn’t what keeps us coming back to this one anyway. That charge belongs to the enormous chemistry that existed between the film’s two spectacular leads. Watching Bogie and Bacall trade one liners and sly, knowing double entendres back and forth, simply dripping with sexuality, is just thrilling. Nowhere will you find wittier or more quickly delivered dialogue than you will wondrously observe in this terrific masterpiece. Consider this rapid-fire exchange:
Mars: Who’s the girl?
Marlowe: Client of mine. Geiger tried to throw a loop on her, so we came here to try and talk things over.
Mars: Convenient the door being open when you didn’t have a key.
Marlowe: Yeah wasn’t it. By the way, how’d you happen to have one?
Mars: Is that any of your business?
Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Mars: I could make your business mine.
Marlowe: Oh you wouldn’t like it. The pay’s too small.
So if you have found yourself, like me, growing numb with dissatisfaction and endless disappointment by this year’s offering of new films, do yourself a favor and seek out The Big Sleep. It will end any negativity you may hold towards the art of cinema and make right the world again. At least it will help with the ejection of some seriously unwanted writer’s block.
Until next week, here is my hope that we all find our Shangri-La. Good night.
