The Emperor’s New Clothes: through the Looking Glass.

Just like the rest of Humanity, I enjoy a good film and like it says in Arabic on the ceramic cartouches quoting the Koran on the façade of Pedro I’s palace in Seville: “Nothing is perfect but God”. 

A Photo of the palace copied from  http://lucylucia.blogspot.com.es/2011/07/sevilla-day-three.html 

Sorry to repeat the quotation from one post to the next, but I’m not perfect, you know.

We are not going to discuss the non-existence of God or the contrary here, but I do want to discuss perfection in films – or the lack of it.

I want to make it perfeclty clear at the outset that I am not one of those pimple-squeezing killjoys who pore over films frame by frame to find mistakes – anachronisms, continuity mistakes or whatever and then spoil everyone else’s enjoyment by pointing them out on You Tube. I find no pleasure whatsoever in smugly showing on the Internet that the colour of our hero’s tie changes twice during a conversation in a restaurant. There is actually more to life than pimple-squeezing and cinematic nit-picking.

Once my attention has been drawn to the colour-changing tie, I find that the next time I watch the film I am waiting for this moment with a horrible fascination. It spoils the enjoyment of the whole movie. It is like trying to avoid staring at the hairy wart on the side of a salesperson’s nose as s/he explains the intricate details of a certain product – details you’ll never hear as you’re too busy trying not to look at the wart. And it is all the fault of the You Tube rabble of I’m-Smarter-than-the-Director nerds who have less creativity than the dust bunnies behind my setee. Probably they are frustrated film makers themselves who never made it into film school.

This is just plain mean-spirited stupidity. I would like to see these people try to control a budget of millions, a cast of hundreds, plus hundreds, if not thousands, of behind-the scenes technicians. I would like to see these people try to deal with all of the unforseen problems that arise while making a film instead of drawing our attention to a minor, split-second flaw in a dynamic work of art. I doubt if half of these people can even spell correctly.

So now to my own gripe. How many times have we seen battle-scarred soliders, world-weary cops, down-and out bums or just plain poor people with shoes whose soles are brand new??? That is what I find annoying about quite a few films: seeing the soles of the actors’ shoes and noticing that they are immaculate.

These shiny-soled shoes or boots that have supposedly seen months of tough service in Iraq, on the streets of LA or wherever, do annoy me slightly. They draw my attention away from the action and dialogue. They do not provide me with a “ha-ha, gotcha Tim Burton (for example)” moment and I’m pretty soon back into the swing of things. But they do niggle.[1]

With so much money riding on any film, it is obvious that there are a lot of tests and protocols applied to a movie project before it even arrives at the production stage. My advice here is: why not provide the actors with the shoes they are going to use on set and require them to wear them in the months running  up to the shoot (no pun intended), during rehearsals etc.? Therefore, when it comes to filming, the shoes are not so obviously just out of the box. Why not put this in all contracts as a standard clause? I hope Hollywood takes me up on this and pays me handsomely. I hereby formally offer my services as Footwear Erosion Continuity Technician to each and every studio. I might even extend my services to include the post of Tie Chromatography Comptroller!

[1] Even worse, there is a Spanish TV series, Águila Roja set in 17th-century Spain – a sort of Spanish Kung-Fu – where absolutely everyone, even beggars and serving wenches in filthy taverns, wears beautifully clean and pressed clothes. Perhaps, they might sport a slight smear of dirt on one sleeve for authenticity. So much for historical accuracy. I don’t watch it, I can’t watch it.