MovieChat Forums > Short Cuts (1993) Discussion > Anyone else agree?...

Anyone else agree?...

posted 12 years ago by hexedd
8 replies | jump to latest

This was probably the most unflattering portrayal of L.A. in almost any movie ever. Almost every single character was an immoral, hedonistic, drug/alcohol fueled, crazy piece of %^*&. Aside from the Flannigans and the doctor, almost every single character had no empathy or humanity whatsoever.

The grandfather (Jack Lemmon) who slept with his wife's sister...

The fishermen who keep fishing for two days after finding a dead body...

The wife who makes ends meet by having phone sex chat right in front of her kids...

The "artist" wife who is completely shallow and cheats on her husband for a guy who was clearly using her (even though he's not shown it's definitely implied)

The baker who is mad that people don't respect how hard he works so he stalks and makes predatory phone calls...

The drunk limo driver who just drinks and drives casually and tries to have sex with his "girlfriends" daughter

The waitress who hits a kid with her car and then just takes his (7 year old) advice and leaves the scene of the crime because he says he's fine...

The crazy husband of the phone sex woman who beats a girl to death for no reason just because he is sexually frustrated and jealous that his wife gets off on the phone with men for money...

The couple who agree to take care of people's apartment and then just wreck the place and make it their party pad...

The jazz singer who doesn't even care about her daughter's obvious cries for help and doesn't even care when she hears the next door neighbours little boy is dead...

Even the peripheral characters were terrible people (e.g. the doctor in the limo at the beginning who is destroying the limo while philandering with a prostitute)

I know Altman likes to do character/humanity studies, but man, this is possibly the most depraved and lunatic bunch of characters I've ever seen in one movie. I enjoyed it, but man I wanted to punch all of them in the face with a passion.

[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

"Almost every single character had no empathy or humanity whatsoever".

That´s a rather gigantic overstatement you´ve got there; in fact, I don´t think one single character could really be accurately described as such - even if there´s indeed plenty of callousness, thoughtless egoism and otherwise ethically questionable conduct to go around. I think the picture Altman paints, is reasonably realistic. That´s the way people are.

As for films with "the most depraved and lunatic bunch of characters"... well, for an easy candidate from top of my head, take another 1990´s masterpiece Goodfellas with its gallery of murderers, thieves and generally violent thugs and their wives/mistresses who have no problem with what their men are doing for a living.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] hexedd 12 years ago

I don't think it's very realistic at all. If you took an average number of people there would never be that many people making that many whacky and thoughtless decisions, society simply wouldn't survive. Generally speaking the majority of people just don't act like that.

As for your second point, I think it's a bit of a stretch to compare an Altman film to Goodfellas lol. It is not unexpected at ALL to observe mafia men and their wives acting that way, that is part of the whole sub-culture of organized crime; the only people that usually get into that culture are people with sociopathic tendencies. It would be equally unsurprising to see people acting that way in a drug-ridden project (e.g., television portrayals like The Wire). What is shocking about the Altman film is that it's "average" people acting that way, and in my opinion, you'd have to have a significantly larger cross-section of society to come across the list of characters I posted about in my OP. As I said I think it's a solid film, but I think you'd be hard pressed to come across that many people with such little empathy. I've accidentally not returned a lot of phone calls and not made appointments I was supposed to make, and I have yet to be phone stalked by my local baker.

By the way, I don't know what your definition of a "good" person is, but in my mind callousness, thoughtless egoism and ethically questionable behaviour don't usually leave too much room for empathy or humanity lol. My point is just that the characters in the film are very extreme examples of these qualities, hence why I said I think it's an unflattering portrayal of LA. Certainly there are bad people out there, but I think what kept this film from being a 10 to me was that the character behaviours were way over the top. I believed the grandfather sleeping with his wife's sister (infidelity is common after all), and I believed even the corrupt cop (likewise corruption is common), but I could not suspend my disbelief about the phone stalking birthday cake baker.

[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

I don´t think Altman´s view of humanity ever was unrealistically rosy, but most of the negative behaviour the characters in Short Cuts exhibit, is morally no more than mildly ´deviant´, if you will, quite far from any extremes - even if some of their actions are a bit on the eccentric side. Either way, chainsawing up an apartment or making occasional stalking phone calls doesn´t make one evil, exactly (and how can one possibly question the ability of a drunken Lyle Lovett to behave in ´any´ strange manner... just look at him!). Perhaps the percentage of people engaged in some form of bizarre (mis)conduct, is unusually high here, but then again it´s sort of common that in fiction, it is more often folks that are up to various strange stuff that are portrayed, rather than people who never do nothing interesting. Oh and also, I didn´t obviously mean that all characters here are all of these things - callous, egotistical, unethical - simultaneously... or that the callousness exhibited by some stretches quite as far as full blown sociopathy. To put in baby talk, I´m not sure everyone´s a "good" person here, but there really aren´t any unambiguously "bad" folks, either.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] hexedd 12 years ago

You make some good points, but I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. :) I just think the character's actions were far too over the top in many instances for me to see it as a realistic study/portrayal of human nature. Though it was much maligned by some people, I think Crash (2004) was a much better example of human nature, and could think of several other movies that did a much better job also. I guess in a nutshell I'm just trying to say that I thought the movie was great but that it didn't need to be so over the top with some of the plot-lines. I think the extreme behaviours were what took it down a notch for me. The infidelity and revenge aspects made sense, and even the over-the-top has-been jazz singer was too obviously a caricature but still somewhat believable, but the baker making stalker calls or Chris Penn's character just suddenly beating a young woman to death in broad daylight when he had exhibited no signs at all of abusive behaviour were just too unbelievable to me. Anyway, thanks for your input though, it's nice to know that rational and intelligent conversations can still be had on these boards, which so often degenerate into Nazi allusions or "pee pee poo poo" commentary.

[–] franzkabuki 12 years ago

The actions in themselves, over-the-top or not, are merely symptoms anyway... but nevertheless I can´t think of anything done by anyone in SC that would stretch credibility beyond breaking point. People DO weird sh-t and, as they say, life is often even stranger than fiction.

To call the jazz singer "over-the-top" or a "caricature" is more than a little mystifying though - obviously, she´s had a tough life full of heartbreak and appears to have been shrouding herself in a numbing haze of alcohol and weed for a long time, living more in her memories (she sure seems to talk about the past mostly). As demonstrated, the only thing to pull her fully back to reality, is another personal tragedy. Also, I still don´t get what´s the problem with the baker - he´s pissed off, drunk and has got a lot of time on his hands while his little muffins are in the oven. So he makes these calls. And Chris Penn had been steadily building towards this climacting eruption of violence for the whole movie; makes perfect sense to me.

"facts are stupid things" - Ronald Reagan

[–] sticksstoneswwiv 12 years ago

I never read any works by Raymond Carver (author whose works the script is based on), however, I view this film as an attempt to do the same thing for LA that James Joyce did for Dublin in the Dubliners.

[–] 12 years ago

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[–] hexedd 11 years ago

Wow what a thoughtful post, thanks for that. I didn't say none of these characters were realistic or could be real people, but just that I think Altman went over the top with how many of them there were. Glad you took the time to insult me instead of actually address anything I said. A-holes like you make me wonder sometimes why I bother.