domo arigato to the sony products
the unlikely variety of bottled water griffin mill (tim robins) orders in the player (altman, 1992) isn’t the films only running joke, but it is it’s most expressive. the joke seems to have been added sometime after michael tokin’s first draft of the script from his own novel.
griffin, a movie executive being stalked by an angry writer, orders bottles water at restaurants, at his lawyer’s party, at screenings and during meetings, ordering obscure labels and sometimes sending it back like unacceptable wine. the gag parodies the bottled water obsession that flooded the us bourgeois psyche so relentlessly in the 1990s that the economy eventually floated a few water bars.
griffin’s water is the same sort of commodity as the pitches he traffics in, one of a series of such commodities circulating in the player. water is the base form of liquid, a degree zero almost without features. devoid of flavoring or coloring, water is resource from which other beverages are made, but in the later capitalist economy characterized by the ‘new hollywood,” resources can be directly commodified and consumed. water comes from a production phase prior to that of traditional libations. in fact, the spring water market depends on a sense that the water hasn’t been produced by humans at all, it must appear to have gushed forth from the earth into the bottle in it’s pristine state. in the economic world of the player production is strictly segregated from capital and consumption, the goal of this world seems to be to consume capital in as close to it’s liquid state as possible.
like bottled water manufacturers, the studio in the player has abandoned production. when studio flunky steve reeves (jeremy piven) describes the back lot to a group of japanese visitors as the place where many films are green-lighted, rather than where they are made.
griffin listens to pitches for new movies described as combinations of movies already made (“it’s out of africa meets pretty woman(1)”) he traffics in story ideas, commodities in a prior phase of production than movies. in his drive to eliminate writers, larry leavy (peter gallagher,) proposes the purest form of the story idea commodity, internal pitches improvised from stories in the newspaper.
if bottled water must be sold as not having been produced, the studio must disguise it’s lack of production. mills kills writer david kahane (vincent d’onofrio) when the writer points out that mills doesn’t actually do anything. mills hisses “keep it to yourself” as he beats the life out of kahane. interestingly, he dies in a puddle which his girlfriend, june gudmunsdottir (greta scacchi) refers to as a “red sea.”
(1) some of the films in the player have been made. most recently rumor has it (reiner, 2006) was seemingly based on the film buck henry (buck henry) pitches griffin: the graduate part 2.
griffin, a movie executive being stalked by an angry writer, orders bottles water at restaurants, at his lawyer’s party, at screenings and during meetings, ordering obscure labels and sometimes sending it back like unacceptable wine. the gag parodies the bottled water obsession that flooded the us bourgeois psyche so relentlessly in the 1990s that the economy eventually floated a few water bars.
griffin’s water is the same sort of commodity as the pitches he traffics in, one of a series of such commodities circulating in the player. water is the base form of liquid, a degree zero almost without features. devoid of flavoring or coloring, water is resource from which other beverages are made, but in the later capitalist economy characterized by the ‘new hollywood,” resources can be directly commodified and consumed. water comes from a production phase prior to that of traditional libations. in fact, the spring water market depends on a sense that the water hasn’t been produced by humans at all, it must appear to have gushed forth from the earth into the bottle in it’s pristine state. in the economic world of the player production is strictly segregated from capital and consumption, the goal of this world seems to be to consume capital in as close to it’s liquid state as possible.
like bottled water manufacturers, the studio in the player has abandoned production. when studio flunky steve reeves (jeremy piven) describes the back lot to a group of japanese visitors as the place where many films are green-lighted, rather than where they are made.
griffin listens to pitches for new movies described as combinations of movies already made (“it’s out of africa meets pretty woman(1)”) he traffics in story ideas, commodities in a prior phase of production than movies. in his drive to eliminate writers, larry leavy (peter gallagher,) proposes the purest form of the story idea commodity, internal pitches improvised from stories in the newspaper.
if bottled water must be sold as not having been produced, the studio must disguise it’s lack of production. mills kills writer david kahane (vincent d’onofrio) when the writer points out that mills doesn’t actually do anything. mills hisses “keep it to yourself” as he beats the life out of kahane. interestingly, he dies in a puddle which his girlfriend, june gudmunsdottir (greta scacchi) refers to as a “red sea.”
(1) some of the films in the player have been made. most recently rumor has it (reiner, 2006) was seemingly based on the film buck henry (buck henry) pitches griffin: the graduate part 2.
posted by louis-georges @ 6:35 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home