Two Characters in Search of an Author (Another View on The Spectacular Now)

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A lot of people are involved in the production of a film. I’m not surprising anyone by pointing that out. But who is really “responsible” for the success and/or failure of the film? I’m not talking financially (there are obvious people to blame for that); I’m talking creatively. Is it the director, who controls what images we see and what words we hear, and which ones we don’t? Is it the screenwriter, whose story is being told? Is it the producer, who manages the whole project, and without whom there wouldn’t even be a movie? And what about the actors? Do they have any creative responsibility? What if the film is based on a book? Does the book’s author have any stake?

Questions like this pinball through your mind as you watch The Spectacular Now, which is certainly a good film (maybe even a special one), but is a tough egg to crack. Critics have applauded it (even our own Russ Stevens, in his great article from a few weeks ago) for existing outside of the typical clichéd teen-movie universe we’re always fed, and that’s a fair comment. However, it’s also vaguely ludicrous to suggest that Amy Finicke and Sutter Healy are in any way representative of actual teenagers, either. It’s not that it’s a relief to see teenagers who act just like real teenagers; it’s that it’s a relief to see characters who’ve never existed anywhere, ever, at all.

The characters in Now exist in a world where people still have paper routes, where people run stores that sell bow ties (!) to men who buy them unironically, where you can still smoke in bars. The people drive pickup trucks and listen to country music (suggesting it takes place in the South) but they also take buses to Philadelphia (so maybe it’s in the Northeast). The protagonist is a teenage alcoholic (which probably do exist), the kind of alcoholic who sips from a flask during school hours and drinks by himself in a bar next to some old men (which probably don’t). The good thing about the film is that it by no means seems to suggest that this is supposed to be an extension of the real world in any way, happy to set itself in its own private universe.

But if that’s the case, then you have to judge the quality of the film based upon the world it’s set up for us, and to do that you have to figure out who’s doing the setting up in the first place, and here is where it gets tricky. Director James Ponsoldt’s prior film was the underseen but awesome Smashed, about a couple of casual alcoholics trying to stay sober together. However, Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber, the screenwriters, have (500) Days of Summer as their previous effort, a not charmless film that was amiable enough until its rose-colored glasses derailed the whole enterprise. I’ve never read the source novel, a young adult book, but it’s super easy to detect which plot points stem from the novel and which don’t, because you can feel Ponsoldt & Co. throwing a handful of stuff in out of obligation rather than because they thought it would be in any way a good move artistically (SPOILER, huge SPOILER, but necessary to put in: Amy getting hit by that car, for instance, happens and then more or less may as well have not, since she heals within the next like forty-five seconds of screen time and then it’s never mentioned again; you get the feeling that the film thinks the fight itself—Sutter pushing her away and going so far as to say Get the fuck out of my car—is enough, and leaving her on the side of the road to find her own way home would have been even more hurtful).

But even with the source novel stuff figured out, the writers and director seem at war for exactly how this film is supposed to feel. Neustadter and Weber want an optimistic, seize-the-day valentine to youth, whereas Ponsoldt wants something much darker, much angrier, and maybe even much more morally ambiguous. Ponsoldt (I mean, see Smashed so that you know I’m not just guessing at his contribution) is at his best and most comfortable in for instance the heartbreaking scene where Sutter’s boss (played by Bob Odenkirk!) offers to keep him on permanently, but only if he can promise never to come to work drunk again, and Sutter, a guy painfully in touch with his own limitations, simply can’t do it. (“If I was your father,” says the boss, “this is where I’d give you a lecture.” “If you were my father,” Sutter replies, “you wouldn’t have to.”). Speaking of the father, Ponsoldt’s also great at keeping the whole father-confrontation angle nice and restrained, showing Sutter’s dad as not some sort of monster, and no big speeches or tears (there, at least), but instead the guy’s just a loser, in whose footsteps Sutter is unknowingly following.

So here’s where the edge comes in though: during these dark, sharp scenes, these little paeans to youth and love keep springing up, and you go, Where did that come from, and then you listen to the line again and hear it in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s voice and you go, Oh, right, I forgot who wrote this. Like, for instance, Amy’s declaration at the awkward drunken family dinner that “it’s important to have dreams” (totally out of place, immediately following her unguarded confession about her dad’s drug overdose, not to mention that I could pretty happily go through the rest of my life without ever again hearing the word “dreams” in a movie about teenagers)—but then Ponsoldt makes sure to underline the dark irony of it, and has Sutter toast, “To dreams!” (any time an alcoholic toasts to something, it’s unsettling). Or the film’s title itself and the many references to “now” that the film throws around: Neustadter & Weber want it to be positive advice for your life, as in, Don’t live in the past, live in the Now, but actually it ends up taking on a dark little reference when Sutter’s father uses it, and living in the Now means not living in (or looking at) your future—Now as a defense mechanism to avoid the terrifying scope of your life. Or the declaration at the prom that, “This is our time, this is the youngest we’ll ever be!”—which, again, is an oddly enthusiastic celebration of where they are, since Sutter just gave Amy a personalized flask as a prom gift.

I mention Amy there and you’ll notice how seldom I mentioned her anywhere else, and that’s another tough little egg to crack, because I don’t know what to do with her. As in Summer, she’s written as a savior, as a girl who exists to salve the protagonists every issue. Ponsoldt sees that this is not only offensive but artistically bankrupt, and does his best to turn it into an actual problem (she’s called out on her inability to focus on herself, forever trying to help others instead, etc). It’s not quite enough because of the film’s ending (why not just end with the car driving away? Why the silly close up on the words “future” “hardship” and “overcome”? Why that gooey “it’s not too late for me” line? Discuss), but the film and the character are totally redeemed by Shailene Woodley, who I’ll be damned if she isn’t one of the best we’ve got. Where the hell did she come from, anyway? It can’t be an easy task to play a teenage love interest whose last name sounds like “finicky” and to introduce herself with a straight face.

Ted McLoof

About Ted McLoof

Ted McLoof is a writer at Rookerville and teaches fiction at the University of Arizona. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Minnesota Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Gertrude, Monkeybicycle, Sonora Review, Hobart, DIAGRAM, The Associative Press, and elsewhere.He's recently been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. He is very cool and very handsome and he'd like to buy you a drink.

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