Future Bar
You know you shouldn’t be smoking around the machine. Blah blah blah, delicate fancy balls film equipment and all. But you’re smoking around it anyway, even if you’re taking care to blow the smoke in the general direction of away.
They’re unfiltered. Cowboy smokes. You hadn’t meant to buy them unfiltered, but you supposed you deserved it for being picky about the brand. And buying them in Jersey.
You pick a shred of tobacco off your lip and turn your attention back to the film.
It’s the bar scene. Protagonist Cortez walks into the future bar and sees lots of interesting future people so that the audience knows that they’re in the future and things are really interesting there.
It’s a sci-fi film. It would’ve maybe been cut-rate Blade Runner, but you’re not entirely shit at being clever, so it’s not. It’s turning out pretty good, even.
It might not be as good as the house it buys.
“Cortez” is played by Ben Summers, who was born Spiegel but thought Summers sounded better. In five years he’ll wear sunglasses whenever he’s in public and have more coke in his system than 3/5ths of Oasis. And also be a multi-millionaire, because he’s pretty damn good at this acting thing.
You like him because he’s not a prick, but he’s not going to be one of your go-to ensemble guys.
Anyway. He’s looking around the future bar. And now, more importantly, the camera’s looking around the future bar.
You have a love-slash-hate relationship with the bar scene.
It’s just…it’s so obvious. It’s a cliché, and you know it. Badass heroboy walks into the bar, looks at all the weird people, moves on to the next plot point. Every movie even remotely like this has a scene just like it, and it makes you feel hacky.
There’s the monster-y alien guy. Holy crap, says the audience, the future has funky cool monster guys!
(Five hours in make up for three seconds of panning. And snarling. Guy’s good at snarling, even with all that stuff on his face. He’s got four kids, and he’s one of those quick-draw experts when it comes to showing pictures of them. Even in monster make-up.)
There’s the two girls with the cyber bits. Holy crap, says the audience, the future is sort of sexy in an uncomfortable way!
(You think the girls are actually better looking without the makeup, but you generally do. You’re weird like that. And if you weren’t the director, you’d ask one of them out. You’re also weird like that…but you’re not sure if you’re talking about the fact that you want to ask them out or that you won’t because the director’s chair is a sacred seat of authority. Or something.)
And there’re some other denizens of the future and…and you finish the cigarette and try to resist the urge to take giant chunks out of the bar scene. Not for plot, just on principle, out of a need to be “unique” that you picked up in film school like a STD.
A brain STD. Syphilis?
Anyway. You light another cigarette to give your inner auteur cancer, and keep watching your movie. With editor eyes, not an art punk’s.
