by Nathan Wolfson

The latter 1980s and the 1990s have been characterized by a financial terror called "derivatives". Somewhat similar in concept to "futures," derivatives are essentially "bets" made by investors with regard to how financial markets will behave in the future. With futures, one might "bet" that the price of wheat will be at a particular place six months from now--and make an investment based on that hunch. A wrong hunch and one can loose big.

With derivatives, the betting gets more complicated. For instance, one might bet that the price of wheat when divided by the change in the exchange rate of the dollar to the yen will be greater than the square of the German inflation rate when that rate is growing at a greater pace than the wholesale price of oil being sold by non-OPEC countries. Or something like that. In reality, derivatives are substantially more complicated. And the suggestion is that many of the people creating them (and most of the people buying them) don't really understand how these investments will fair.

There have been numerous stories of various municipalities loosing their working capital, pension funds, and so on, due to the unpredictable and incomprehensible nature of these investments. Orange County is one example.

In art there are derivatives, too. These are similar to the derivatives of financial markets in only two major ways. First, both share the same word (derivative). Second, both are dangerous if not handled properly. Get Shorty, now playing locally, is at least a partial example of this danger. Get Shorty isn't a bad movie. But it is frightfully derivative.

Sometimes a piece of art is useful not because it is a particularly notable work but because it reminds us of (or introduces us for the first time to) other, better creations. Sonnenfeld's Get Shorty is just such a film. In its derivation it underscores the quality of the films it draws from while inadvertently failing to deliver their pith.

There are two principle films from which Sonnenfeld's film (adapted from a novel by Elmore Leonard) takes its cues. First, we have shades of Altman's The Player, right down to the crowning glory of a struggling-outside-the-mainstream-movie-maker with an Altman-esque goatee. Here we have a double-derivation. First, Sonnenfeld is making a direct reference to The Player's creator. Second, the constantly self-referential nature of each of the stories becomes an integral part of the plot device. In The Player the plot pivots around a murder whose story becomes the possible basis for a future film--and the discussion of which becomes the a means for the characters in the film to deal with a murder that has actually happened.

Get Shorty uses the interplay of part of it's plot and a discussion about the same series of events by the characters in the film (in the context of creating a movie) to similarly move the story along. Whether one prefers The Player's use of this device to Get Shorty's may be a matter of personal taste. In Altman's film, most of the characters are unaware of the interplay occurring. The audience is the main confident and insider into the parallels between the action on the screen and the movie ideas being discussed by the characters.

In Get Shorty, everyone is in on the interplay. And, when one of the characters is slow to catch on (for example, in the interrupted discussion between Zimm and Palmer the evening of their first encounter), this lack of savvy becomes the source of a joke. If one prefers the more complex interaction of the audience with the film elicited by The Player, one is bound to be disappointed by Get Shorty's appropriation (and watering down?) of this device.

The other major recent film from which Get Shorty derives many of its elements is Pulp Fiction. It appears that John Travolta may have gone from being typecast as teen idol to a cuddly gangster. Not a bad move, but there are many instances in Get Shorty where he seems to be reprising his Pulp Fiction role rather than charting new territory.

The similarities in casting are mimicked in the similarities in musical selection. Here again are powerful sounding rock-and-roll tunes underscoring the major events and mood shifts of the film's narrative. Unfortunately, Sonnenfeld (or whoever he hired to select the songs for the film) doesn't possess the keen, dark musical sense of humor (combined with an impressive breadth of sources) to pull off the "hip score" trip in the manner Tarantino achieved.

The direction, the gangsters, the dialogue and the music all strive to reach the kind of synergy Pulp Fiction created but consistently fail to do so. What we are left with is a decidedly less ambiguous discrepancy between the source and its derivation than when examining the manner in which Get Shorty draws on The Player. Undoubtedly, Pulp Fiction--flawed as it may be when contrasted with Tarantino's masterpiece, Reservoir Dogs-- played this game much better.

II.

Throughout most of the United States, repertory cinema was in rapid decline during the latter 1980s. Except for a few metropolitan areas, these days the only way to see classic American and foreign films is on video tape. No longer can one pick-and-choose among the daily changing programs of a well maintained repertory cinema schedule.

There are two sides to this dilemma, of course. With the repertory style, one was beholden to the selections presented by the local theater. If I wanted to see Wild Strawberries I might have to wait months (or years) for the chance. And then I'd have to plan the rest of my life around when the film was going to be shown (often only a one or two night stand).

With video tape, all one has to do is find the movie and rent it at one's convenience. This is the good thing about video tape. The technical negatives of videotape are--to name the most basic--the remarkably inferior picture produced by even the best video equipment (lower resolution, less contrast, poor color integrity), the smaller screen size, and the usually inferior sound system.

And, lest we forget, there are tremendous sociological differences between the two mediums. The theater is an enveloping environment in which people who would never share their living rooms with one another to watch a film gladly sit side-by-side and share an intimate experience. Most home video viewing environments afford little of the aesthetic focus and social camaraderie that even the worst movie theater provides.

So while repertory cinema may be the commercial victim of the VCR and our increasingly privatized culture, it is cause for a minor celebration any time a classic film receives a theatrical re-release. It isn't repertory cinema, but it's a taste of that delight. The theater-going public owes it to itself to support the efforts of local movie-houses to bring back classic films.

This week proffers just such an opportunity for support. Luis Buñeul's Belle de Jour (a French/Italian film from 1967) is making an appearance in Arcata. Two caveats are in order. First, I have never seen this particular Buñeul film (though I tend to trust those that have recommended it to me). Second, I find Buñeul troubling and the subject of this film is bound to play into the kind of unease Buñeul delights in creating.

That said, this is bound to be an interesting evening at the movies. Catherine Deneuve plays a "virginal" employee in a brothel while her newlywed husband carries on without knowledge of his new wife's job. This promises to be a ripe situation for Buñeul to make some inspired, unsettling jabs at middle class prudery and "Republican" morality. And he'll probably manage to make the rest of us uncomfortable with our emotional, spiritual and ethical gray areas, too.