Greta, writer/director of Ladybird and Little Women, wasn’t always an esteemed, hot-shot writer and director. About a decade ago she was acting in a bunch of films dubbed “mumblecore” for reasons which would be obvious if you had ever seen one.
She was by far the best thing about these films. She was prettier, more daring, a better actress and a better writer than any of her co-stars, and I use the word “stars” with great hesitation, although one of her fellow cast members, Mark Duplass, was also quite competent and managed to move into the world of real movies and TV.
Greta also looked great naked, as she demonstrated here in the immortal classic Hannah Takes the Stairs (2007), in which she was naked a lot.
Greta didn’t just star. She also wrote Hannah Takes the Stairs, for which she should probably be followed around by those “Shame” women from Cersei’s naked walk in Game of Thrones. (Hey, Greta got better.)
My comments on the film, and mumblecore in general, follow in the “read more” section.
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It isn’t that appealing to be a rebel in the film business, because the primary thing to revolt against is not incompetence, but artificiality. Hollywood movies pack an unrealistic amount of larger than-life-events and improbable plot twists into a short time frame, and the characters speak in “zingers” and clever one-liners that real people would never think of in life-threatening situations. I’m not defending those things, but simply noting that when you decide to reject them you don’t have a lot left to work with. The opposite is to have movies reflect real life, in which nothing “cinematic” is likely to happen for years, people speak in trite everyday phrases and most quotidian humor consists of repeating catch phrases until they become clichés. Real-life “plot developments” – changes in jobs or lovers, deaths of people you know, arrests – come around very rarely. In the movies everyone is a cop or a crook or a vampire, or works in some glamorous business like advertising or show business. In real life everyone is an associate sales representative or a webmaster. A film of my life would not be very exciting. It consists of typing. In all my life I’ve never seen a big explosion, never lost anyone close to me in a violent or suspicious way, never been swindled out of any insurance money, and so forth. Where’s the movie?
The nature of reality has been a major obstacle for the development of a real independent film movement. If you want to reject convention and artifice, the alternative is reality, but most of the time reality is tedious, even if you choose to portray the lives of cops and junkies. The cops I know spend most of their time filling out forms and parked in their cars waiting for something to happen. The junkies I have known spent almost all of their time nodding out. Reality is not especially spectator-friendly. Of course, that doesn’t stop some filmmakers from portraying it. Remember Andy Warhol’s films back in the sixties? One of his classics was an eight-hour fixed view of the Empire State building in real time. There’s your reality! Today’s Warhols are a coterie of do-it-yourself filmmakers who make the rounds at some of the more underground film festivals like Slamdance and SXSW, and are loosely bound under the rubric of “mumblecore.”
Here’s how to make a mumblecore film: come up with a very basic outline of how you might spend your summer, or how you spent last summer. Get some friends to play the characters in that scenario: your boss, some co-workers, other acquaintances. Do NOT write out a script or any dialogue. Gather your friends together in an apartment with a digital camera and “role-play” various situations, using your kitchen as the office break room, your bedroom as the bedroom, your pool and a nearby park for the outdoor scenes. All the words will be improvised. It is unlikely that you’ll come up with much that’s interesting in this manner, unless one of your friends is Larry David, but just shoot a lot of footage. Unlike film, video is cheap. Some of your scenes will be better than others, so you can throw away the worst material and use the better stuff to string a movie together. Do not add non-diegetic sound or special effects. Go with reality. The result will probably not be either funny or dramatic, and it will certainly not be either artistic or entertaining, but it will reflect real life in ways that Hollywood never does, for better or for worse.
If you’ve been paying attention, you realize that mumblecore films are not very different from the home movies that your dad makes on family holidays. All well and good. Sometimes your dad comes up with some great stuff and it can be a lot of fun to watch those films. Most people watch them twice – once shortly after they are made, and then again many years later to laugh and reminisce and see how everyone aged. But the market for your dad’s home movies is very small indeed, basically restricted to people in the films and others who know them. The same is true of a mumblecore film. If you know the people involved in making the film, you will probably enjoy seeing what they came up with. Otherwise, there are way better ways to pass 90 routine minutes of your life than to watch some random strangers pass 90 routine minutes of their lives.
Hannah Takes the Stairs is a mumblecore film, but one of the better ones. It may be the Citizen Kane of mumblecore. A woman just out of college has a job and a boyfriend. She breaks up with the boyfriend and takes up with first one, then another co-worker. She settles (temporarily, we presume) with one guy because both of them enjoy playing the trumpet poorly.
(SPOILERS)
They play the trumpet together while they are naked in the bathtub.
The end credits roll.
(END SPOILERS)
Now THAT’S entertainment.