It hasn't got what you would call a plot; it's more a series of interconnected vignettes. It felt a lot like My Own Private Idaho, except without the pretentious faux Shakespeare crap and without Keanu Reeves. It has that same kind of gritty yet dreamy feel, a sense that you're watching a poem. The main character is known to us only as Fuckhead, based on his tendency to screw up everything he touches (or, perhaps, just his tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). As played by Billy Crudup, he's a sweet, vague, random junkie, sort of like a less saccharine Forrest Gump with a smack habit. Well, he's a little sharper than that, but what I mean is that he's completely unironic. He wears his emotions guilelessly out in the open, like a child. Crudup has a real knack for comic timing, inserting random, hilariously unironic comments. But the funniest part of the movie belongs to Jack Black, the bombastic record-store clerk from High Fidelity. He's not in the movie for very long, but every moment he's there is pure gold.
The movie switches oddly and abruptly from laugh-out-loud comedy to somber tragedy -- a lot like life, I suppose. But it's unsettling in a brief movie to have so many sharp changes of mood. I have the sense that this would read a lot better than it filmed; it's adapted from a collection of short stories by Denis Johnson, which I will definitely look for. The more I sit and think about the movie, the more I think I would recommend it, with the caveat that you should give it time -- while you're watching it and while you're letting it sink in. Though it might not seem like much in the theater, it's sneakily affecting. Crudup gives a moving performance without ever being obvious about it. Nothing in this movie is sentimental or sappy; it's just quietly touching.
It's got a terrific soundtrack put together by Joe Henry, who I vaguely remember being the flavor of the month sometime back when I was in college. I rarely notice instrumental music playing over credits, but I really liked Henry's composition here. And he puts together an eclectic mix including -- god help me, I'm not lying -- "The Ballad of the Green Berets."
Update: I recently saw Jesus' Son again, and my opinion of it has only improved. It's a unique, touching, funny movie, and I highly recommend it.
And now, some of my recent "Transitive Brushes with Fame":
* The president of the AIA, my new company, double-dated with Elvis Presley. I have shaken the hand that wiped Elvis' hair grease off his car window.
* The person we work with most at HUD (that's the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development to you outside-the-Beltway folks) is Kevin Bacon's sister. Now I'm just two degrees removed from him!
* My cousin Gabe is in a play with the Deer Lady from The Straight Story.
* I just received my Fight Club prize package which I won at www.iwin.com, which includes, in addition to the DVD, actual props from the movie, so I now have a bar of soap touched by Brad Pitt and possibly even Meat Loaf, a set of plane tickets in the name of Tyler Durden, and the Fight Club rules as photocopied by Edward Norton.
* One of my co-workers claims to have seen Henry Winkler in Dupont Circle and chatted with him about the Scott Baio "E! True Hollywood Story." I sort of take pride in the fact that I probably wouldn't be able to recognize Henry Winkler unless he was straddling a motorcycle in a black leather jacket with his thumbs up. I think it's funnier to imagine that the guy my co-worker saw was not, in fact, Henry Winkler, but someone who gets mistaken for Henry Winkler on a regular basis and has decided to fuck with people's heads by pretending he is, in fact, Henry Winkler, sort of like how I wish I had reacted when this guy stopped me on the street and asked me, in all seriousness, if I was "that X-Files chick." When I said, "Yeah," his face lit up. "Really?! Oh my god!" Unfortunately, I didn't have the presence of mind to say either, "Yes, and if you could step aside for a moment, you're blocking my camera shot," or "Yes, and as you can see, I've decided to give up my lucrative acting career for a thrill-a-minute job that involves waking up at the crack of dawn for an hour-long commute and schlepping a briefcase through a creepy part of the city in a cheap suit."
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