I love DVDs for the commentary tracks since I love the behind the scene perspectives into the creative process. Usually, I'll watch a DVD once, watch it once with the commentary track, and then watch the movie again before I send it back. The problem with the "Auto Focus" DVD is that it includes three (3) different commentary tracks (director, writer/producers, actors). To minimize the number of times I ran the DVD, I decided to watch all the commentary tracks before viewing the actual movie.
It was fascinating. The DVD also includes a documentary on the Bob Crane murder, which adds a totally different dimension to the movie. Needless to say, I got pretty immersed in the work and the somewhat minor legend of the Bob Crane murder. Paul Schrader did a great job portraying Crane's decline into the circumstance that "led" to his murder. The progressively dark tone and sense of mental decline really got to me.
I wouldn't mind being found dead in my bed. I wish I had some dark secret or something sordid about me that would partly explain everything to everyone. The evidence I leave wouldn't be very juicy or informative or interesting. I suspect the most deviant aspects of my life still fall within a comfortable range of "normal", given the proper contexts. And cutting has been demystified and is a fairly well-known and documented behavior by now, no shocks there.
They say that when you're dying, your life flashes before your eyes like a movie. I want to get it right. I think mine will follow the basic contour of Auto Focus of a decline. The third act with washed out colors and shaky hand-held camera, almost revelatory. All the threads that held things precariously together coming apart.
The difference being that Crane was murdered at a crux where he wanted to pull his life together, and that Crane maintained his "best friend", the lead suspect in his murder, John Carpenter, to the end.
My movie will have me isolated and solitary, with even the most important people in my life being non-interactive, non-engaged except in my mind. And again, my movie will focus on the psychological decline, rather than the consequences of socially "deviant" behavior.
July 7, 2003; 1:17 P.M. - Potrero Hill, San Francisco. Don't take the 41 Union bus if you have somewhere you want to get to. Although many might say that's true for all Muni lines.
