So I had heard that Gerry was simply Matt Damon and Casey Affleck just walking around for 90 minutes. It is. But after I was absolutely entranced by Kurt Cobain (or some facsimile thereof) walking around for 90 minutes I couldn't wait to watch Matt Damon do it.
Gerry is the pure experiment that sparked Last Days and Elephant. After Matt Damon & Casey Affleck (who I think should be in everything) get lost while trying to find "the thing" (what they were looking for is never stated) they walk around the most gorgeously blank landscape in the most beautifully composed shots having the most naturalistic conversations EVER!
They say that filmmaking is being inspired by every new challenge, the reality of filmmaking is that there's a challenge every two minutes. When filmmakers like Gus Van Sant in this trilogy and Steven Soderbergh in Schizopolis and Bubble just remove every crutch and all that's left bare when devoid of script and plot and performance and dialogue is the pure inspiration of every moment. That's why I like these quiet films, it's almost like watching a CAT scan of the director's brain for 90 minutes.
I was really into the film until the first conversation and then I fell in love. Matt & Casey have been lost for about five minutes and they walk silently for a full five minutes, and then Casey starts talking, clearly finishing a story who's beginning we didn't hear. "...so she asks for the letter D..." or something like that and after a minute we realize that Casey had seen a Wheel of Fortune and is finishing the story of how some girl lost. It's a great convo, much along the lines of Ricky Jay's in The Last Days, and even though there's no jokes in it, it completely cracked me up because of the casual manner in which it's discussed. They're not discussing the plot, they're just...discussing. Then after night fall, after they "Gerry" the rendezvous (they speak in a lot of weird slang), they sit around a campfire and Casey spends six minutes talking about how he lost a game of Civilization, at least that's what I think he was talking about, it just cracked me up, and I have no idea why.
Everything was shot in desert, rocky, mountainous, and in the end desolate backdrops, setting up great shots like Matt & Casey on opposing mountaintops (a quarter mile apart) having a conversation with each of them on opposite sides of the screen. It's absurd. And then when Matt walks to Casey we have switched locales and now Casey is on top of a 40 foot rock formation and doesn't know how he got up there, this is the "dirt mattress" scene. A priceless slang conversation.
Gerry: And then we Gerried off to the animal tracks. We went up the wrong fuckin' mountain. Okay?
Gerry: And our mountain scout-about was east, so we totally Gerried the scout-about
Gerry: What are you doing on that rock?
Gerry: Looking for you.
Gerry: Why didn't you just go to the spot?
Gerry: I did. You weren't there.
Gerry: I've been there. I was just sitting there.
Gerry: Dude, that's not the spot. The spot is like a half of a mile that way. I was at the spot. I was waiting for you forever. I was yelling your name. And I just came walking up here, and I saw this rock. I crow's-nested up here to scout-about the ravine 'cause I thought maybe you gerried the rendezvous. Sure enough, that's not the spot.
Gerry: All right, my fault.
Gerry: Come on, dude, let's go.
Gerry: I can't.
Gerry: Why not?
Gerry: Fucking marooned.
Gerry: Come on. You're not rock-marooned. Just climb down.
Gerry: But I am rock-marooned. I can't climb down. I'm gonna have to jump.
Gerry: Why don't you make me a dirt-mattress?
Gerry: No, Gerry.
Gerry: Come on, dude. I crow's-nested all the way up here to scout-about the ravine 'cause you gerried the rendezvous.
Gerry: Well, I gotta haul the dirt.
Gerry: Well, get haulin'.
Gerry: I can haul it from over here.
Gerry: Shirt basket?
Gerry: Shirt basket.
There's also some amazing 100-200 yard dolly shots that are entrancing, one in which their faces are shot with a long lens, they walkers walking fast, struggling to stay in frame. Gorgeous.
Elephant is a similar freewheeling experiment with lots of new experiments such as when, at random moments the camera overcranks and everything slows down, for just a moment, lots of Gerry inspired shots, but in a High School. It's Last Days in that it's about Columbine, but with far different inspirations than exploitation. And like the other two films in Gus Van Sant's "please forget about Psycho" trilogy super-cheap, super-small, super-intimate, and super-indie.
This is why I felt that Soderbergh was channeling Van Sant for Bubble. If you don't know about it, Steven Soderbergh went to a small Ohio town, cast the entire movie out of that town and shot it for nothing on video. Like the salt flats in Gerry and the woods in Last Days Soderbergh makes gorgeous with the banal location, speaks loudly with silence and makes the world of the simplest events. Small, intimate, cheap, challenging.
Next, how these films didn't exist until I needed them to, and how Stephe and I forced Marvel's New Universe back into existence and I unveil the secret to life itself. You still don't believe me do you?
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