An Audience "Under the Influence"

I've been somewhat MIA for the past two weeks (occupied with my various jobs, applying to full-time ones...), but this weekend I knew I needed to write about a particular film screening I went to yesterday.

I got my "film snob" fix last night when I caught John Cassavetes' 1974 masterpiece A Woman Under the Influence at the MoMA. Many people may read this and think, "Okay, Jose, we get it. You go see artsy films in museums and fraternize with turtleneck-wearing, uber-intellectual filmgoers," but that's not really 100% true. Yes, I go see films at the MoMA a lot, but it's more due to the fact that I have a museum pass that gets me in for free, and in this specific case, they were screening a film that truly impacted me when I first saw it in college. I had rented a cheap, grainy version and watched it one weekend during my Freshmen year (and yes, this is how I spent most of my nights my first semester in college). I'm not ashamed to say that I cried a couple of times throughout the movie, and sat transfixed at the raw emotions and affecting performances that Cassavetes presented. After that night, I Netflixed all of his movies available on DVD and soon bought and read a biography of his (Marshall Fine's Accidental Genius, which I highly reccommend). To this day, A Woman Under the Influence has continued to enthrall me every time I see it, and so, when I saw that MoMA was not only screening it, but also having Gena Rowlands in person to introduce it, I immediately jumped on the chance and bought my ticket.

I arrived semi-early, about 45 minutes before the screening started, in order to stay in line and get a good seat. However, as people started congregating outside of the theater - and the line grew longer - people began clamoring to go inside. A MoMA security guard came over and was completely unaware of how the line had been formed, and he proceeded to start an entirely new line with the people at the tail end of the main line, thereby angering every single person (myself included) that had arrived early and had been waiting for over forty minutes. The minute the guard set up the new line, people started clamoring - "Where's your manager?! I need to speak to your manager NOW!...No, you weren't here before, we're not doing that!....", even to the point that an odd-looking British man yelled "You're a FOOL!" to the guard for disregarding our protests. As the yelling died down, we all made the most of it and incorporated ourselves into the new line, while I chuckled to myself at the sheer ludicrousness of what had just happened. This was, after all, a screening of a John Cassavetes film - one of the most obscure, artsy, marginal filmmakers that ever existed - and people were behaving as if they were at a town hall health care debate.

Finally, we were let inside, and after I chatted with the person next to me - also a big Cassavetes fan - the lights dimmed and in walked Gena Rowlands, with the entire audience giving her a standing ovation. She thanked everyone present for attending and introduced the film in an affectionate way, deeming her experience shooting the film "the most beautiful" in her career.

The movie deals with the disaffected marriage between Mabel (Rowlands) and Nick (Peter Falk), and how he struggles with her troubling behavior and tumultuous mental state. Cassavetes painstakingly scrutinizes their interactions in long, sometimes taxing scenarios, with the scenes themselves delving into an array of contrasting emotions. One minute, Mabel is having a laugh with Nick and his work buddies, and in one split second, she embarasses one of them and is crudely yelled at by Nick. What's always astounded me by Cassavetes' narratives is the realism he injected into his characters' expressions and idiosyncrasies. Although the actors' behavior all seem improvised, they mostly followed Cassavetes' thematic "blueprint," which blended his ideas with those that the actors contributed to the material. The social climate presented in the film has shifted greatly since the movie's release (i.e., the gender clashes between Mabel & Nick regarding her illness), but it nevertheless amazes me how well Rowlands' and Falk's performances have held up. The movie is raw and uncomfortable, but startlingly real in evoking restrained, hidden emotions.

For those interested in catching this newly restored landmark film in American independent cinema, head on over to the MoMA (11 West 53rd Street). It'll be screened there 'till Friday, October 30th.

college.

My Best Frenemies

Picture in your head a group of your closest friends. The ones that are indispensable, always hear you out - and also put you in your place when you get a "big head." You may have ten years invested in the friendship, or perhaps just ten months, but there's a palpable, close link between each other. It's not a rocky rapport or a fleeting bond, but something steady and enriching. These friends of yours, despite living far away from you, still remain in active contact with you and call you up to see how you are (regardless of whether it's your birthday or not...)

Now, of that cluster of great friends, how many of those did you really, really like when you first met them? How many of those buddies were somewhat obnoxious on the first impression? Did any unnerve you a bit when you started talking to them? If you've had the same experience as I have, then you've probably thought about these questions before. But don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining about the friends I have. I've actually been missing these people a great deal since I graduated college (when they all moved out to the West Coast), and so recently I've been thinking back to when I first crossed paths with them in such a misconstrued way...

In two separate situations, two girl friends of mine have told me that their initial impression of me was negative. Last year, my friend Becca revealed to me that, during a class we took together in college, she disliked me for actively participating in daily discussions. Although we sat next to one another, we never talked, and every day after class she'd complain about my "know-it-all" attitude to her housemate. Then, at one particular party, she came up to me and confronted me. We spent the night talking and dancing, and we quickly "clicked" and became friends, probably because she realized that her perception of me had been flawed.

Another girl friend, Mollie - with whom I lived with for an entire school year - told me soon after we moved in together that she straight up didn't like me when a mutual acquaintance of ours introduced us. She had mischaracterized my "jokester" nature and sociable demeanor as being self-involved and obnoxious. My personality has apparently been misinterpreted by a couple of my friends, but I have to admit that I have also formed incorrect opinions about most of them.

Case in point - on my first day of freshmen orientation in college, I had to attend a group meeting with fellow Communications majors. I didn't know anyone there, so everyone pretty much kept to themselves. Ten minutes into the meeting, a tall black-haired dude with black glasses walked in somewhat awkwardly and looked around for a seat. As everyone stared at him, he very ably made a wise-crack about him starting college on the wrong foot, and his affable nature clearly came through, making others laugh and smile. Yours truly, however, thought to himself, "Geez...who's this jackass? Who does he think he is, making everyone laugh like that?!"

That tall guy, Steve, ended up becoming one of my closest friends months after this initial encounter. He is very much one of those type of friends I categorized in the first paragraph above, yet my initial reaction to him was unabashedly narrow-minded and brash. So, much in the same way Becca and Mollie had misconceptions about me, I also had misconceptions about them (and Steve). These three people are some of the best individuals I know, but their upstanding true selves weren't enough to override my powerfully immediate "first impression" of them.

Why do we behave this way when we meet our "eventual friends" in situations like these? I think it's because their initial behavior and quirks resemble so much our own that we're instinctively wary of embracing their familiar personality, thereby putting our guard up as a defense mechanism. We're allured to, yet also somewhat threatened by, their innate quality - whether it's charming introversion or unabashed sociability - because they exude something identifiable to us. Either they remind us of ourselves ("Who do they think they are?! There cannot be someone else like me. I'm unique") or they show us the kind of person we aspire to be ("How do they pull that off?! What a guy/girl!"). That love/hate vibe we initially feel upon meeting our "eventual friends" becomes the link that cements the rapport. We immediately note their weaknesses because they're similar to ours, whereas their strengths make us want to get to know them better. The result therefore ends up being a satisfying one, if anything for the fact that people can start off disliking one another because of certain quirks or attitudes - and then have those same qualities be what endears them together...

Well...this is only on those lucky and very rare occasions. Usually people like this do end up being total dicks.