Scene 2 - Chasing Amy

Let’s talk about Kevin Smith for a minute. There’s a million different opinions on the man, what he means to film and whether his work has any validity to it. For my money, he’s an incredibly talented writer of dialogue who doesn’t have the best sense of plotting or where to put the camera. Once he actually has his characters just chatting away, though, everything else seems to fade away. From Clerks up to Zack and Miri, he’s written some of the funniest and some of the most heartbreaking conversations in modern movies.

I, like most people, discovered Kevin Smith in high school (early 2000s) and thought he was the bee’s knees. I made everyone I knew watch Clerks and Mallrats with me, but Chasing Amy was a little different. It was clearly the most personal movie Smith had written at that point, and it was also the least funny.

Most young people who discover the “Jersey Trilogy” relate to Clerks or Mallrats because they understand what it’s like to have a job you hate, and they like to have long, meaningless talks about sex and Star Wars. For me, though, it was always Chasing Amy. Because when you are fifteen years old and hopelessly in love with the unattainable girl of your dreams, you latch onto any piece of art that seems like it’s communicating the same hopelessness. Throughout high school, all I ever wanted to do was say what Holden says to Alyssa here.

From a filmmaking perspective, it’s not that impressive. It’s raining outside because of course it is. The thunder even cracks at dramatically convenient pauses in the conversation. The long take outside the car is pretty basic too, even if it works as a real time chronicle. But like with so many of Smith’s better movies, none of that matters because it’s all about the words, and they are written and delivered flawlessly. It’s a testament to Affleck and Adams that this scene isn’t as hokey as it could be. Affleck delivers the bulk here, and he does a fine job. Adams is convincingly angry and confused too.

It’s absurd to think a straight guy could get a lesbian to fall in love with him, just as absurd as the idea of me convincing my tenth grade dreamgirl that I was her one only seemed at the time. I guess I always just wanted to think that if I could just find the right words, she could be mine, against all odds.

Scene 1 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit

I’m gonna start this project with a scene that I was obsessed with as a kid. I mean, I watched this one scene so many times that it was worn out on my VHS copy. My two all-time favorite cartoon characters are Donald Duck and Daffy Duck, and they have been for as long as I can remember. Children don’t typically have a frame of reference for things like copyright law, but I was well aware that the two of them belonged to different companies, that they were positioned as rival characters and that their one scene together in “Roger Rabbit” was something truly special.



There’s a lot going on in this scene. We’re first introduced to Marvin Acme, the man whose murder really gets the plot moving. We have some nifty little jokes (I still say “and I mean ice” whenever I order a drink on the rocks). We get Betty Boop’s heartbreaking cameo, a starlet of black and white cartoons reduced to nightclub cigarette girl. After all, “work’s been kinda slow since cartoons went to color.”

Sidenote, I read once that the script specified that cameo as being Felix the Cat, who found himself out of work once sound was introduced. I think it works much better with Betty, though.

Throughout all of this, almost in the background, are Donald and Daffy trying to get through a rendition of Hungarian Rhapsody without killing each other. The way their personalities bounce off each other is almost magical. The easily irritable Donald is a perfect foil for the early, screwball Daffy and both characters are in top form here. The insults, the catchphrases, the manic way they keep slamming each other into the pianos, it all works.

I’m particularly fond of how it ends. While Donald gets the last shot in with his cannon, there’s really no winner. They both get dragged off stage. I especially love the implication that they do this every night but they can never get through the whole act.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit” is a wet dream of a movie for golden age animation enthusiasts. Sure, there’s a few absent characters like Popeye, Tom and Jerry or the aforementioned Felix, but this is still a deftly handled mashup of the era’s most beloved characters. People tend to forget this scene, my favorite, because it’s usually overshadowed by what immediately follows: the introduction of Jessica Rabbit.

As for me, though, the movie works best as the ultimate Disney/Warner Bros. crossover, personified here by the Ducks.

Welcome to Scene Stealers

A couple days ago, I stumbled upon this countdown at IGN. Everything about it bugged me, and the list wasn't even done being compiled. Just painfully generic choices across the board. Think of a famous movie moment, and it's in that list. The problem, I think, stemmed from having a large group of people try to choose the scenes that go on the list. The more cooks in the kitchen, the more diluted the meal.

It would have been more interesting to allow each of the writers to put together their own lists. It would be more personal, certainly, and there probably wouldn't be a lot of repeats.

I guess that's the point of this blog. Every couple of days or so, I'm going to post a movie scene I really like and talk about it for a few paragraphs. This is not meant to be definitive in any way, and there's no actual ranking. It's just a way for me to talk about elements of movies I like, and maybe you can join in too.