I’m paraphrasing some of the bits below:-
Connie :”Ooh, Dostoyevsky, so dark, so gritty, so existential”
Jerry Falk (aside, thinking): “Who cares about Dostoyevsky when Amanda’s there talking to him?”
(and that is precisely the damn point!)
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Dobel stops the car, and turns to Falk. “I have this producer friend and he needs a team of writers to write comedy for him. And I was thinking maybe you and I, we could do it. ‘Course, it’s in California.”
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Just random scenes I’m paraphrasing from memory from the movie ‘Anything Else’. Take 3 principals: Dobel played by Woody Allen, Jerry Falk played by.. is it Jason Biggs? and Amanda, played by Christina Ricci. Engage them in a chaos of conversation the likes of which Mr Allen has become a master at fashioning and… what?
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Falk’s psychiatrist never talks, and he comments on this in the movie as an aside. This comes right after Dobel delivers his version of human history: we have always lived in fear and we have always had priests, shamans or psychiatrists tell us, “It’s ok I can help you, but I’ll have to charge you for it”.
Of course- God doesn’t talk back, now does he? So of what use was Falk’s psychiatrist again?
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Falk’s girlfriend Amanda can’t have sex with him anymore, can’t get orgasms. She therefore goes out, and sleeps with her acting coach, and then she reveals in excrutiating detail the quantity and quality of her orgasms with said coach, while in tears begging Falk to forgive her and stay ‘coz “you know how much I need you!”.
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The size of Falk’s own masculinity is in proportion to the space he’s allowed to do his work in (he’s a writer); he dodges Amanda’s mum (Stockard Channing), he lives with her piano, his girlfriend’s refusal to sleep with him.
Crazy survivalist that Dobel is, he buys Falk a rifle. They bring it home, of course, and simultaneous responses of “I am not staying in the same house with that rifle!” Chaos ensues.
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It’s never “in vino veritas”, it’s always “in eros veritas”.
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Falk resembles a younger, taller Woody Allen, with no flappy ears, thick-rimmed glasses or squarish face.
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A ‘coming of age’ movie, calling it that is kinda cheesy. Maybe that’s why calling it such would denigrate it further, implying that I’m ascribing ‘cheesiness’ as an attribute of the movie. It really isn’t. It’s brilliantly funny in parts, especially if you’ve been paying attention to the context of the conversations. It isn’t as ‘real’ in the manufactured way ‘Before Sunset’ is, but it’s still an enjoyable watch.
The movie hasn’t done well, though. A random statistic I suppose.
