Two Unconnected Brief Thoughts

1. The DVD of Todd Solondz's Storytelling gives viewers the options of watching the R-rated or unrated version of the movie. Assuming that the unrated version was the one less market-driven and closer to what Solondz wanted, I watched it first. Out of curiosity, though - since, while I was watching the unrated version, I couldn't figure out what the MPAA would have wanted cut to make it an R - I watched the R-rated version (okay, at 4x speed with subtitles). As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two versions is this: in the sex scene set at the professor's apartment, the unrated version shows him thrusting from behind as Vi leans up against the wall. It's a medium-long shot, from across the room, and nobody's business is visibly on display - but apparently, the MPAA gets the heebie-jeebies at thrusting (or, as in the unrated version of Y Tu Mama Tambien, head-bobbing).

This strikes me as deeply weird. I mean, it's not as if the rest of the movie is all Bambi, flowers, and babies petting puppies: anyone who's watched the movie that far will know that the Christian Mothers' Temperance and Decency League will not be screening this movie at any of its meetings. I'm trying to imagine a hypothetical viewer who has no problem with any other part of the movie, but is suddenly deeply offended at the sight of thrusting. Or (to take the MPAA's rating system rather more literally than it's applied in practice) some parent needing to explain things to the naive teen he or she is accompanying (remember, "R" means "under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian"), doing fine with everything else in the movie, but suddenly blushing and stammering: "avert your eyes from his thrusts, Junior, and we may yet be saved!" For that matter, I can't imagine someone renting this from Blockbuster and complaining about that scene - at least not if the rest of the movie generated no complaints. I can only conclude that the folks who rate movies are batshit crazy.

The best part, though, is what Solondz did to keep his R-rating and allow Storytelling to terrorize suburban DVD renters everywhere. Most directors, asked to modify this scene for an R rating, would probably have reshot from another angle, or perhaps digitally zoomed in on the longish shot for a closeup, thereby avoiding the terrible, awful thrusting might of Robert Wisdom's pelvis. Solondz, in a move that I can only interpret as a gigantic "fuck you" to the film ratings board, instead blocks out both figures with a gigantic, bright red rectangle. That all by itself, I think, justifies the R-rated version - and not incidentally, adds an interesting frisson to his examination of what happens when "stories" are documented, published, and set loose in the world.

Of course, it also spares viewers the trauma of seeing Selma Blair's frighteningly thin, pre-pubescent -looking body. Somebody give that woman a cheeseburger.

2. It's a sad time when once-intriguing cartoonists devolve into repetitious shtick. Two cases in point: Matt Groening's "Life in Hell," and Bill Griffith's "Zippy the Pinhead."

At this point, I think even a relatively small number of monkeys could provide captions for every damned Akbar & Jeff cartoon - certainly, Groening's not exactly stretching his draftsmanship on the visual end. And it seems like for the last several years, 75-80% of "Life in Hell" cartoons are Akbar & Jeff in their endless, "Cathy"-like roundelay of angst and thwarted desire. (Yes, I just compared "Life in Hell" to the execrable "Cathy": that's how painful things have become.) Of course, the repetition makes it Angst Lite, now with lower carbs, and lo-fat, sodium-free, pasteurized, sterilized-for-your-comfort Desire; there's no longer even a hint of the darkness that "Life in Hell" once cleverly examined.

And "Zippy"? The former clown prince of the non sequitur has been reduced to a catatonic spectator of Bill Griffith's obsession with nostalgic roadside shlock: okay, Griffith loves the stuff, and enjoys rendering it (certainly he's a more technically skilled visual artist than Groening), but why not stop drawing the daily strip as an excuse to fetishize the roadside icons, and just put out a coffee table book already? Griffith at least had the wit, a few weeks back, to refer to this obsession as an obsession - but he seems to have gone back to just merrily dragging Zippy from icon to icon, with Zippy's increasingly zombie-like, flat remarks reading more and more like the last few, inadequate squeezings from a spent tube of toothpaste.

Berke Breathed and Bill Watterson retired before they ran out of ideas. Much as I miss Breathed in particular (although apparently he's returning with new cartoons), the decline of Groening and Griffith suggests they were onto something.