Doctor Detroit

"there is no doctor."
"there is if you believe in him brother."

argentine writer césar aira has this idea he calls "flight forward" that basically means he never allows himself to feel stuck as a writer cause at any point he can invent something to unstick himself. seems like this concept has always existed, but i like that aira cherishes it to the point that it's gifted a name and implemented as a central feature.

doctor detroit, directed by michael pressman (tmnt ii: secret of the ooze) is a silly fun movie that ignores the weight of reality in order to allow the imagination flight.

a character in doctor detroit making a face one might make while watching doctor detroit

basically the entire movie is a "flight forward" cause it's the telling of the creation of a character invented by another character at the story's beginning. what happens is this pimp can't repay his business partner (named mom) the 60k he owes, and so invents a person named doctor detroit, who then must be made real. associate professor clifford skridlow (dan aykroyd) is the person trapped into this role, which role is mostly the opposite of his normal everyday role, although the plus side is the task allows him to access parts of himself previously unrealized.

the invention of doctor detroit prompts a series of problems which in turn require more inventiveness. the movie, thankfully, often uses fun as an ingredient of invention.

to me its value seems to be not so much an examination of an interior self or the root of human problems, but a stimulation of the human animal's creative faculties and a reminder of infinite possibility.

Dispatch from AFI: Post Tenebras Lux

the greater los angeles area has over 17.9 million people, a stat which i think makes the area endlessly fascinating and surprising. one interesting city and an OK place to live i think.

but fact is, because we're all different from each other and live our lives in at least slightly different ways, there are 17.9 million+ great los angeles areas, because each person creates their own metropolitan area through personal experience and perspective.

carlos reygadas, director of post tenebras lux (after dark, light)(FYI), has proven in each of his four movies that the spectrum of human experiences exist within each person regardless of geographical location or network size. 

each person, to the toppest highs to the lowest lows, contains the full ingredients. and only a moviemaker like reygadas, who seems to care in a deep and earnest way about each person he places in front of the camera, is able to make this point. 

i feel like reygadas might possibly lol at the idea of a "supporting character," or in other words a person whose perspective is a narrative or structural obligation. i feel like reygadas wouldn't insert a character in order to insert a character. i feel like reygadas cares about his characters in a way that suggests a person who cares about people too much to reduce them to narrative ornamentation. he's a moviemaker who holds on characters for extended periods but with shots so cinematically hypnotic and captivating and compelling that his longest shots feel short. any cinephile in 2012 can tell you how rare that quality is. you don't hold long to hold long -- something lives in the duration of a shot, in pure duration (which itself is a symbol of the human condition), and reygadas, i feel, knows what lives in the light, in the shadows, in the space of time, and elsewhere.

he probably doesn't know, of course. but he's curious. and i think the curious are brave. i really do.