Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie?
This was one of those random chance happenings that perfectly suits the movie. I was flipping through cable tv and would often check out the documentary channel, because I like documentaries. And I remember the very first scene I saw of this movie. It was Speed standing on the Brooklyn Bridge talking about having a reciprocal love affair with a flower. I would come across this movie occasionally, but always at some mid point. It took me forever to get to watch it in its entirety. I remember trying to find a copy of it and requesting it through the library, and when it came in watching it every day that I had it checked out. I remember a friend in college had taped the audio and would listen to it over and over throughout the day on headphones.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning?
This movie should have been the one that made the director of Capote famous. It is not just a documentary of a New York City tour guide, it is also a documentary of New York. And the tour guide himself, Speed Levitch, is the most amazing tour guide you could only wish to have guide you. He is philosophical, poignant, narcissistic, wounded, intelligent, witty, sensitive, enraged, enlightened – all of the things that New York itself is.

3 What are your favorite parts?
There are so many great lines. His long rant about the grid system, his Brooklyn Bridge meditations, his version of  “But Not for Me” bleeding into Chet Baker’s, everything.

4 What do you relate to in the movie?
I love his outlook on life. “Where there is cruise, there is an escort of anticruise,” he says. The cruise to Speed is the hidden wonders that are buried in plain sight everywhere. But then, also the notion that for every silver lining there is an accompanying grey cloud. And it is our mission as cruisers to guide our fellow travelers to focus on that which is uplifting. This is the essence behind my novel, Alien Sone.

5 Who is your favorite character and why?
Well, Speed is really the only character. He suffers but he also learns and educates and explores and discovers.

6 How did this movie make you feel?
Inspired. I wanted to go to New York and get a tour. I wanted to live my life as one long bus ride. I could watch this movie over and over and still find it fresh and fascinating.


After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie?
Really accurate. As I said, I have probably watched this movie more times than any other movie.

2 How much had you forgotten?
I forgot the moment when Speed is fondling the sculpted wall of a building. He caresses it like a lover, and his face is enraptured. 

3 Do you still like this movie?
  You have to see this movie. But here is a clip that begs watching the whole film.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences?
I always wanted to figure out how long Speed talks about the grid plan. He starts talking about it when he sees a homeless person huddling under a comforter at what he later identifies as 34th and Broadway and keeps talking until he is standing in front of the Flatiron Building. According to Google Maps, this walk takes almost an hour. 

5 What is the take-away?
It is important to search for those moments and experiences hidden and tucked into the banal routine of existence that illuminate and enhance the wonder and miracle of life. The sincere pursuit of that which is real and beautiful is more important than all of the trappings of society and civilization. And most people, even the people who were fortunate enough to go on this tour, are blind to it. 

6 How do you think watching the movie impacted/ will impact your future actions if at all?
This movie is inspiring to me to seize not just the day but every moment as an opportunity to experience joy and love and mystery and magic. These are things I believe in and every time I watch it, it renews those principles. If you are open to these ideas, Speed will foster them in you. If you are closed to them, he may be like a seed in the concrete that infiltrates new life. 

Before the movie

1 How did you first come to see this movie?

I didn’t see it in the movie theater, I don’t think. It’s one of those movies that, even if you were alive and watching movies at the time it came out and you hadn’t seen it, you would absorb it through the collective unconscious, which we now call the internet. Fargo came out in the infancy of the internet, but somehow you still knew about it.

2 What makes it a movie worth owning?

I guess what I am describing above can all be called cult status. Remember movie rental stores? Am I older than anyone who would read this? Remember being able to rent VHS tapes and going back into that warren of a darkened corner somewhere that had this collection of Cult Films or Midnight Movies? And what made these films all belong to the same group despite their genre or director or any other criteria was that they spoke to some darkened corner warren of the film watcher’s soul. The content might be questionable, addressing taboos, penetrating unmentionable quandaries, or setting an eerie mood like thin gauze over a necrotic corpse. These movies left a mark, and over the course of filmmaking, they also became more mainstream. So here is Fargo, distilling a strain humanity that is depraved and depicts to what lengths the human animal will go to preserve itself.

3 What are your favorite parts?

I feel like the things that stick with the watcher are the scenes that make this movie iconic. The vast North Dakotan/Minnesotan landscape and the naïveté of the accent juxtaposed against the brutality of the actions. Steve Buscemi.

4 What do you relate to in the movie?

I am not sure that this movie is supposed to be relatable. Although it depicts the human condition, it never implicates its audience. The lines are pretty clear as to who the bad guys are (nearly everyone), and who we are supposed to route for (the pregnant cop).

5 Who is your favorite character and why?

I like the way Frances McDormand and her husband relate to each other. I feel sorry for William H. Macy, but not empathetic. In classic noir style, he is given many opportunities to undo the course of events, but he can’t see his way to them. He feels trapped, as if what he does is the only course available to him. I don’t like the ultimate bad guy, but I don’t think you are supposed to. He doesn’t even seem human. He functions emotionlessly and perfunctorily. He is not a killer with a heart of gold. Given that, he is perhaps the only person who does exactly what he is supposed to at all times. He is like the Coen Brothers’ other notorious bad guy, Anton Sigur. There is this code of behavior that must be followed and he follows it precisely. Even Frances McDormand breaks the rules of her good cop role by flirting with someone who finds her attractive.

6 How did this movie make you feel?

I think the frustration this movie makes you feel is very intentional. The sprawling white snow-laden fields are in direct opposition to the claustrophobic trapped feeling that threatens to strangle William H. Macy. Despite the fact that nothing good happens to anyone and there is a high cost for absolutely no gain, I don’t remember feeling what I might have expected: utter despair. I guess we will see what happens this time.


After the movie

1 How accurate were your memories of this movie?

Pretty accurate. There were some details like the painted mallards I had forgotten. But overall, it sticks with you.

2 How much had you forgotten?

When WHM’s wife is being kidnapped, she tries to run away and locks herself in the bathroom with a phone which is yanked out of her grips while she is trying to call the police. WHM, after he lost the deal he was trying to present to his father-in-law that would help him make some legitimate money, goes outside to his singular car in the middle of the parking lot and has to scrape his windshield. His efforts are ineffective and he reacts to his inability to remove the ice with rage. And then he calms down and applies himself again to the task.

3 Do you still like this movie?

Yes.

4 Did you have any new feelings or experiences?

I mentioned self-preservation before, but now I am thinking there is more to that. Self-preservation is in the movie. It motivates William H. Macy to commit the fraud for which he is trying now to cover himself. It motivates the criminals to act in the ways they do, escalating their crimes. But there is also the lady cop who is pregnant which represents the hope of new life, the way we preserve ourselves by reproduction even if we don’t understand the horrors which present themselves before us.

5 What is the take-away?

“There’s more to life than money,” FM says towards the end. Yes, but if you don’t have any money, life becomes harder. WHM saw money all around him, just none of it was flowing in his direction. The last scene of the movie seems to suggest the answer to the question as to what more there is to life if not just money. FM and her husband are lying in bed watching television, a nature channel documenting all the different kinds of life cycles, and the camera turns on them so that as the viewer watches them, they are implicitly also watching us. And the husband says to his wife, with regards to her swollen belly, “Just two more weeks.” Life is what more there is to life.