by Schuyler Bates - November 14, 2007
He is a first-rate director with a wonderful eye. He is a terrific writer with a singular sense for the inane. His comedic timing verges on the ridiculously sharp and his subtlety is matched only by that of Michael McKean. That is not why I hate him.
His cool wife refuses to have any cosmetic work done. That is not why I hate him.
Christopher Guest left "This Bulging River" on the cutting room floor when editing Waiting For Guffman, and the movie is still perfect. That is why I hate him.
Guest cut two numbers from The Blaine Community Players' production of Blaine's sesquicentennial ("That's the 150th.") celebration and musical, Red, White And Blaine: "Nothing Ever Happens In Blaine", and "This Bulging River". What he forgot to cut out is the musical reference to "Bulging River" in the overture. It takes nothing away from the movie, but I believe it still bothers him that the most poignant part of the overture is not even in the show.
This is precisely why I hate Christopher Guest. He has the temerity to sacrifice a part of his art - a brilliant part no less - for the greater project. I would have left it in. But Guest strikes me as being uncompromising when it comes to the final product and would not care what I thought. Though I think he would be impressed with my having taught myself to play the entire show, including the overture, by ear. (Adding insult to injury is that the whole thing is in C. Oh, sure: The overture starts out with a G pedal tone, but each and every last song in the show is in C major. Shit.)
Which is another reason I hate Christopher Guest. Because Red, White And Blaine, in its entirety, when played from overture to march, runs barely 30 minutes, and that's including the intermission! It is not so much a suspension of disbelief as an ascension of disbelief, where we are led to believe that the show itself is Broadway-length, not twenty or so minutes. To that Corky St. Clair would say, "It only seems that long."
You can be sure that all directors, without exception, are absolutely in love with the sound of their own cinematic voice. Guest masks this, not only by putting himself in his own movies, but also by taking on characters that are not shown in the best of light.
Take a look at Oliver Stone's director's cut of Alexander. I have not seen that much filmmaking masturbation since, well, Ridley Scott's director's cut of Blade Runner. Disgusting.
All of Christopher Guest's movies are director's cuts because he answers to no one but himself. He is responsible for his work precisely because he is working without a net.
Guest's last movie, For Your Consideration, was totally misinterpreted by Guest's audience, critics and colleagues, all of whom having apparently decided, before even sitting down in the theater, that it was a slam on the movie making industry. It was. But Robert Altman's The Player was a punch in Hollywood's face while Guest's message in For Your Consideration is a little more complicated.
Altman's punch line was that modern movies lack substance because studios need to dumb down the film for the lowest common denominator. Guest would say that the process is more like doing a crossword puzzle with disappearing ink.
It is pedestrian to say that many artists see their works of art as having lives of their own. However, at some point the artist needs to get a life of his own, or his art is little better than a reflection of his own ego. And nobody wants to to pay 20 bucks to see that again.
Because nobody is better at holding the mirror up to an audience's collective cultural face while throwing some fill light into the oft unnoticed corners of unselfconscious perception, and because he's the guy that had a major hand in inventing the "mockumentary" - Christopher Guest, I hate you.
Schuyler Bates is a former snowboarder who'd like to make enough $$ to be a stay-at-home-drunk. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama and rarely blogs at The Outer Sanctum.