Paper Heart

Tonight I watched Paper Heart, a pseudo-documentary by "performance artist" Charlyne Yi, and guest-starring the neurotically amusing Michael Cera, about Yi's refusal/reluctance to believe in love, featuring interviews she conducts with bikers, people who have been married for 50 years, little black girls on a playground, and even (in a well-intended if slightly obvious attempt to be inclusive) a gay couple. Unfortunately I found this "documentary" (in quotes because about half of it is obviously scripted in an unconvincing attempt to make it seem like a documentary) problematic, to put it mildly. If Monster and Little Miss Sunshine are examples of indie films that make mainstream movies look phony and bland, Paper Heart is an example of another kind: it illustrates why people (usually older, more "establishment" film reviewers) make fun of indie films and the way the genre has become a formula, as genres are wont to do. Paper Heart isn't Juno, or Sunshine Cleaning (neither of which is great - they're just good); it's the equivalent of a 10-page zine badly xeroxed in black and white by a 12 year old (with the only sold copies purchased by her parents and one equally geeky friend).

The main problem, for me, is that I find Charlyne Yi disingenuous and, to put it bluntly, annoying. She makes a documentary about how she's never fallen in love as a sort of reverse-psychology way of finding a guy to fall in love with, and presents herself on film as a boring, apathetic, socially maladjusted "nobody" as a thin veneer to cover the truth, which is that she's a socially maladjusted, apathetic, boring nobody with no personality. Her voice is annoying. Her inability (or unwillingness) to communicate verbally is annoying. Her attempts to be mysterious and enigmatic by never revealing what she's thinking are simply dull. She pulls all the tricks out of the "indie movie" bag, including segments of (very poor quality) animation inserted at several points, breaking down the fourth wall by having her director argue with her on camera, and the seemingly obligatory scene in which she sings a bad indie song (sort of a low-rent version of the already rather low-rent Mouldy Peaches whose music featured so prominently on the Juno soundtrack).

If Charlyne Yi really is a performance artist - and that wasn't just some fiction cooked up to give this turgid film the appearance of verisimilitude - I'd suggest she stick to her day job: the one clip of her doing stand-up comedy is painful. (In the clip where she interviews the little girls on the playground I thought, "She relates to them because she is on the same level they are, intellectually and emotionally.") The concept of "fake documentary" has been done so much better by others - Christopher Guest comes to mind. The interview segments are obviously real, and are the only semi-interesting part of the movie, but Yi is such a piss-poor interviewer, making no attempt to ask interesting questions or follow up answers with intelligent segues, that they too fall mostly flat.

Ultimately I think Yi's roommate/friend interviewed over the phone early on gets nearest to the truth when she punctures this vapid act, saying she thinks Yi does actually believe in love very much and is just putting on a show as a sort of "hard to get" act for people with absolutely no social (let alone romantic) skills. "And I feel sorry for the guy she marries," the friend ads. Well, you might feel sorry for the audience of this documentary as well. Guest appearances by affable funnyguys like Cera and Seth Rogen can't save this one: Paper Heart needs to go to the paper shredder.

Reading this over, I kind of feel bad that I'm being so harsh on a film that is good-natured, gentle, and basically vulnerable. But should I let those guilty feelings get in the way of saying what I really think about a film when I'm reviewing it?

I can see, to some extent, what Yi and her co-writer/director were trying to do with this documentary, but the blunt fact is, they failed.

Onwards and upwards / Loins of Punjab

Walking down MLK yesterday afternoon a girl in the passenger's seat of a big white pickup stopped at a red light yelled to me, "Aren't you a tall drink of water?" I kind of smiled but didn't say anything and she said, "Don't you recognize me?" It was MS. SU'AD! I haven't seen her forever and to be honest, didn't recognize her. Her hair was kind of magenta colored. She said, "SMILE!" as the truck sped away. The funny thing is I think that "tall drink o' water" comment was the first thing she ever said to me years ago when we both slaved away in front of the keyboard at Bates Private Capital in Lake Oswego. Ahhh, how I miss those days.

NOT REALLY.

One problem with living in a town so superabounding with ultra-creative people is that no one has enough time to enjoy or appreciate everyone else's artworks and projects. I'm as guilty as anyone. I try to support other peoples' work - I'm volunteering again at the Love Show closing party on the 20th - but to get things done I find I have to devote the majority of my time and energy to my own goals. Another thing that bugs me about Portland is the low motivation rate or general slow pace of life here. I sort of don't fit in that way. Except when I'm flailing in a despondent rut, I am a high-energy, fast-paced, goal-oriented person, and sometimes - especially lately, with the new health regimen - I exist in a state bordering on mania. The sluggish response rate of other people, their failure to communicate, really bugs me. Of course, I haven't been working lately, but the truth is when I work (like, at a real job) I get even more driven and focused; my energy only ramps up when I'm in full-throttle getting-shit-done mode. Maybe I will have to move to a fast-paced city like New York eventually. My slacker days are ending. I'm actually looking forward to having a job again, if I can find one I like, but it doesn't make sense to start that hunt until I get to San Francisco. I'd love to work for a community media center there.

Speaking of community media, when I was at PCM yesterday telling Pam about my goal of starting an art collective in San Fran, she asked, "Why can't you do it in Portland?" Well, my love affair with Portland has been long and lurid (going back to 1990, if you count junior high/high school in Hillsboro, when I would occasionally escape to Portland and long to ditch the suburbs for good and live in this enchanted metropolis), but I'm not ready to give my life to one town just yet. There's a lot more of the world I need to see. And as great as Portland is, it starts to feel kind of small and suffocating after a while. I don't even see or speak with most of the people I used to be friends with here. It just feels kind of over to me.

Onwards and upwards!

I've moved past the basic pilates exercises now and have reached the intermediate section, and it's getting harder! But the beneficial impact on my body is already visible when I look in the mirror in the morning. Pretty soon I'll have the sort of belly you can eat cake off of.

I got my name on the cover of Just Out one last time, thanks to my awesome editor, Jim Radosta, to whom I will be eternally grateful. Mike, Kevin and Pat ALL thanked me for my articles the day the paper came out. That's always gratifying.

I went hat-shopping at Bearly Worn yesterday, but strayed to the T-shirt section and found this funny "Drama Queen" shirt, it even says San Francisco underneath, but I didn't buy it, just snapped the photo above.

Anthony called to ask if I remembered Viola, the crazy woman who lived across the river from us back in our Minnesota youth, who ended up driving her car into the river. We're certainly going to have a lot of fun recalling the highlights of our tragic, trashy, hilarious childhood. There is rich material there, to be sure. He also said he's recruited a friend of his to be the "bear" for our comedy sketch show, so we have three men, now we need some fabulous ladies to join the troupe! I picture us getting high on the beach and brainstorming ideas for comedy sketches.

I can't wait to be in the water again.

I'm watching "Loins of Punjab Presents" which I'm reviewing for Just Out. It's really funny, sort of the Bollywood equivalent of a Christopher Guest mockumentary.