True tale: Vanessa & I are driving up Thusday from NYC to Massachusetts to take our son Mike to see my 80 year old mum. We stop in CT for lunch at a place we let him pick in order to celebrate him ace-ing an admissions interview for school. He picks a sushi place. We sit down and the guy at the table next to us soon is critiquing THE ICE STORM for utilizing a deus ex machina ending device; I keep my mouth shut.
But when Mike asks about why Japanese aesthetics seems based on minimalist principals, and I trot out that the West calls conflict “drama”, but the East favors harmony, the guy calls bullshit. We discuss and I reveal my Ice Storm connection, and he reveals….he’s Robert McKee — pulling an ANNIE HALL moment. Too funny.
I think the Cinema Gods are playing pranks on me now. When we flew into NYC from SF the day before, when I exited the restroom a director friend that I had been missing phone calls with was standing in front of me seemingly out of the blue. I wonder what will happen next since the Law Of Order requires this sort of stuff to come in threes. And all of it before April Fools no less!
