Great essay! I really like all your thoughts about this. I've seen this film probably more than 40 times over the many years of my C6D fandom, though I haven't watched it for a year or so, so excuse the weird mash in my brain from those two perspectives.
It had never occurred to me in all my viewings to think about the acid trip as Bruce's point of view, and now that you have put the idea out there, I can't image why it never did. In fact, it never occurred to me at ALL even to think about it as an artifact, as part of Movie!Bruce's documentary. I have no idea why it never sank in that way.
I really disliked this scene at first when I started to watch and rewatch this film. It seemed extraneous, silly, very film school, and I think that negative feeling kept it from becoming part of my own interior canon for many, many viewings. I didn't start examining the scene more carefully until after I read Hard Core Road Show. I can't find the section right now, but there is a long passage discussing how once the script with an acid trip and goat sacrifice went past the money people, there was a big threat that their entire funding would be canceled because it was too gross/disturbing, and not the movie that was funded. That's the way I remember the telling in HRS, anyway. Bruce had to really argue for and defend the scene, which I believe was the idea of, and written by Noel Baker, and not Bruce himself. He felt it was important enough to try to save at risk to reputation and funding, though, so I felt it might be worth a closer look.
(OTOH, Bruce also felt like it was worth arguing and saving the eventually cut (THANK GOD) rock star cannibal orgy. I can't imagine HCL with that scene intact....it would destroy the film, IMO. Also it would ruin the song Rock and Roll is Fat and Ugly, which I've always found to be a kind of poignant song, believe it or not, despite-because of the attitude of it. But I just digress in a slightly ranting way.)
I had no careful, rationally thought out way to consider the acid trip sequence, even after I started paying attention to it. I just started watching it on a very open, emotional level. Now that I think about it more in an attempt to analyze it, I still think a lot of the shots are still just silly film school fodder, and I've never been able to decide why they were shot that way. Was it made to be intentionally pretentious and faux arty like that? Maybe. And if I have to insert Movie!Filmmaker Bruce, that is a kind of decision he might make.
(continued next comment...I exceeded comment length, grrr)
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2007-11-22 12:28 pm (UTC)It had never occurred to me in all my viewings to think about the acid trip as Bruce's point of view, and now that you have put the idea out there, I can't image why it never did. In fact, it never occurred to me at ALL even to think about it as an artifact, as part of Movie!Bruce's documentary. I have no idea why it never sank in that way.
I really disliked this scene at first when I started to watch and rewatch this film. It seemed extraneous, silly, very film school, and I think that negative feeling kept it from becoming part of my own interior canon for many, many viewings. I didn't start examining the scene more carefully until after I read Hard Core Road Show. I can't find the section right now, but there is a long passage discussing how once the script with an acid trip and goat sacrifice went past the money people, there was a big threat that their entire funding would be canceled because it was too gross/disturbing, and not the movie that was funded. That's the way I remember the telling in HRS, anyway. Bruce had to really argue for and defend the scene, which I believe was the idea of, and written by Noel Baker, and not Bruce himself. He felt it was important enough to try to save at risk to reputation and funding, though, so I felt it might be worth a closer look.
(OTOH, Bruce also felt like it was worth arguing and saving the eventually cut (THANK GOD) rock star cannibal orgy. I can't imagine HCL with that scene intact....it would destroy the film, IMO. Also it would ruin the song Rock and Roll is Fat and Ugly, which I've always found to be a kind of poignant song, believe it or not, despite-because of the attitude of it. But I just digress in a slightly ranting way.)
I had no careful, rationally thought out way to consider the acid trip sequence, even after I started paying attention to it. I just started watching it on a very open, emotional level. Now that I think about it more in an attempt to analyze it, I still think a lot of the shots are still just silly film school fodder, and I've never been able to decide why they were shot that way. Was it made to be intentionally pretentious and faux arty like that? Maybe. And if I have to insert Movie!Filmmaker Bruce, that is a kind of decision he might make.
(continued next comment...I exceeded comment length, grrr)