That Cold Day in the Park
This comic short has been playing before every feature shown over the last three or four days at the Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by David Gray for Ogilvy New York, it’s about a nebbishy flasher (Doug Moe) who hits it off with one of the women he’s tried to shock. Moe and the women playing the would-be victims (Jennifer Morris, Jennifer Bowen) are appealing and amusing, but the piece doesn’t work after the friendly-flirty stuff begins. I’ll explain why in a second.
Ogilvy creative directors Dustin Duke and Jon Wagner have been quoted as saying that the short’s “basic premise is that New Yorkers have seen everything — flashers, drug dealers, prostitutes, muggers, mobsters — and have become immune to it all. [So the short is] honoring New Yorkers’ resilience and optimism and ability to turn an unpleasant and negative situation into something that is positive and opportunistic.”
That’s true regarding the smiling 40ish brunette who’s open to having coffee (i.e., Morris). New Yorkers aren’t easily shocked and are open to spontaneous feeling, etc. Except the short only half-expresses this because Moe’s flasher doesn’t adapt.
Humor isn’t humor unless it connects to reality, and flashers, make no mistake, are about aggression and rage. Like rapists, they’re expressing contempt and loathing for their victims. So what should’ve happened (i.e., if Gray had been a better director) is that Moe would have stopped flashing after he hits it off with whatsername. He’d drop the hostility and fully surrender to her smile and spirit instead of what he does, which is laugh and grin and flirt and continue to show the monster.
By the end of the piece Moe’s character is saying (a) “hey, I’d love to go out with you!” and (b) “I still despise you so much that the possibility that I might continue to inspire revulsion despite our repartee gives me a wonderful sense of sociopathic satisfaction.”
This is what mediocre directing is all about — i.e., failing to take the reality of the human condition into account. If Alfonso Cuaron or Luis Bunuel or Wes Anderson or Mike Nichols had directed this short, it would have ended — trust me — with Moe buttoning his coat.
Exactly.
Even the way he holds his arms is distracting.
I see your point, although on my initial viewing of the clip I kind of liked the fact that he kept his coat open. My take on it was that he had gotten so used to repeating the same behavior, i.e. opening up his raincoat and flashing people who responded negatively to him, that he wasn’t aware of how rude it was for him to keep flashing her while she was flirting with him.
Congratulations. An all time low in mediocre film criticism.
Hey, right now it’s either discuss this or Obsession. Not a difficult choice for me…
i.e., failing to take the reality of the human condition into account.
If flashing is rooted in some deep psychosis, then it would be UNrealistic for him to instantly stop flashing. He’s met this woman who might eventually change him, but it’s a first step….it’s called therapy, not healing, for a reason.
So Wes Anderson may have shot it differently than David Gray, but he certainly wouldn’t have taken the approach you suggest of “a better director” either, Jeff.
Lord this is an absurd dicussion.
What do you expect from an ad agency?
Wells to SHR: What makes it an all-time low in mediocre film criticism? There’s no basis for you to say that. I know how to write and what I meant and I said it clearly. What’s your problem? I hate people like you.
The dichotomy here lies in the film makers desire to make something ‘funny’ and their decision to try to wring humour out of a situation which inherently isn’t. Jeff is quite correct to say that at some point the flasher should have closed his coat. In fact, the moment one woman reacts positively towards his actions should completely disarm him. Flashers want and expect to see women upset and shocked by their behaviour. This empowers them. The moment a woman isn’t shocked and upset by being flashed is the moment that they’ve failed and are at an immediate disadvantage. This man would have closed his coat and scurried off immediately as the next action he’d expect is for the police to be called.
This would leave the script with an almost insurmountable problem. For the woman to have tried to engage him in further banter would have painted her as a lunatic.
Of course there’s humour to be had in that, if the denouement was a complete turning of the tables with a flasher trying to escape the attentions of a deranged nymphomaniac. An idea if, had they ever toyed with it, the film makers probably abandoned because they would have imagined it to be an offensive portrayal of a woman.
Ad’ agency scripts are rarely well written, rarely funny when they try to be and often completely offensive despite intending to be as inoffensive as possible.
The irony.
This short is embarrassingly shit on so many levels though so it’s hard to care.
“What makes it an all-time low in mediocre film criticism?”
I have mixed feelings on this. The thing is a dumb sketch which, like pretty much any dumb sketch you’re going to see anywhere on-line or in NYC, isn’t really “directed” at all, so to single out one element of the direction as bad, to even criticize the direction at all, seems to be missing the point of it. And, beyond that, justifying the thing more than it deserves.
But, at the same time, I don’t think what you said is wrong. And I guess that if it’s playing in front of every movie at the Tribeca festival, it would get annoying fast. It does a seem a little bit like writing a film criticism about the Fandango ad with the paper bags, though.
Also, this whole thing was done years ago by Bruce McCulloch (he was a stalker, not a flasher, but it was exactly the same), and it was much better, not only because he did maintain the deranged crazy side of the character.
Does anyone remember a scene in which a flasher is heckled and/or laughed at by his victims and runs away in confusion? Was it Pink Flamingos?
It would have been truer AND funnier if he’d been intimidated. He closes the coat and starts to slink off and she follows him, trying to make conversation and hand him her card.
Of course, it would be offensive in an entirely different way by making her look desperate (remember that “a woman is more likely to die in a terrorist attack than get married after a certain age” business?) — but then, it already is.
Cool! Armchair director time -
1. The guy was immediately too articulate once the woman started engaging him. He should have been more hesitant in the beginning. He could have also started closing his overcoat but gotten stopped by the brunette who was still drinking it all in.
2. The blonde gets a bag of dog shit thumped in her chest and she just takes it like it’s the other lady’s handbag? No, Fuck No, and Nuh-Uh. She does something else with the bag, seriously…
3. The joke would have had a better third act if the guy were taking more of an interest in the blonde (seeing as how she was reacting more the way a flasher would wish his target to react). But the brunette could stay oblivious to that, which would’ve added some cross tones to the bit.
4. He was standing there holding his jacket open for so long, it would have been funny if he had a cell phone that started to go off. Then you’ve got room to play with which ringtone he’d have. Hopefully something NOT on the nose. Also would have given him a reason to excuse himself and end the piece.
5. After the date was set up, I would have had him walking away in the background out of focus, throwing his coat to the side in a proud bliss and striding up the path without a care in the world (but if you’ve got the Gabardine bit in there, you can’t have him chucking the coat he got for a bargain) .
I also agree that cast is fine. The guy is charming and not repellent, which can’t be easy under the circumstances, and the brunette is cute. Why, I’d be proud to flash her myself.
I thought it was funny…get a life!
As an ardent feminist and a former flasher, I take offense to these comments!
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