What’s not to like about Vince
Vaughn? He’s tall, reminds me of Paddington Bear, and seems like just about the
most entertaining people on the planet. The “Vince Ramble”, that way of talking
without breathing that he does so well, is the main reason I love his acting.
No matter what project, he brings himself to the screen, and I admire that.
I think my love for Vince Vaughn is
what made me dislike the movie, Into the
Wild, written and directed by Sean Penn. While trying to read the script
and simultaneously watch the film, I was sad to see that many of Vaughn’s
scenes didn’t make the final cut. From the get-go, this put me in a bad mood
with the movie (even if that isn’t fair, its the truth). So for the rest of the
film, I waited for Penn to win me over once again.
Like many of Vince Vaughn’s movies, Into the Wild similarly told me a lot
about who Sean Penn really is. What was clear to me throughout the script was
that Penn definitely had a lot of movie experience. In contrast to the other
scripts I’ve read thus far, Into the Wild
had a lot camera direction embedded into the scene descriptions. I have to
give the guy credit for teaching me so many “film” terms, such as “HELICOPTER
SHOT”, “REVERSE ANGLE”, “TILT DOWN”, “HIGH ANGLE”, “FOREGROUND”, “CRANE SHOT”,
“TRAVELING SHOT”, “B.G. SOFT FOCUS”, “CU”, and many more I’m sure. IMDB.com,
any movie lover’s true best friend, confirmed what all of these terms
suggested: Sean Penn has been in a LOT of movies. However, like a fortune teller looking at the palm of a hand, Penn's writing also
showed me that he had little experience with writing at the same time.
The question mark must be the
least-used form of punctuation for any screenwriter. Yet, as my eyes scanned
the Into the Wild script, I got
fish-hooked by the squiggly at the end of multiple sentences. In dialogue, I
can see how a question mark would be useful. However, Penn’s use of the
question mark in his scene descriptions showed us reading the script that he
was unsure of what he was doing. In one particular scene, Chris, the college
graduate who leaves all his worldly possessions behind, and Tracey, a girl he
meets along the way, visit this art exhibit in the middle of the desert. I see
why Penn had a hard time describing it; the art exhibit was this cave-like
mural with a car door as a makeshift sunroof, embedded into the rock. (I would
recommend watching the movie to see it for yourself.) However, I did expect
Penn to at least attempt to describe the scene in the script, instead of simply
putting, “Salvation?”. If a screenwriter doesn’t even know what a scene is
supposed to look like, how is anybody else going to recreate it? Perhaps this
was why Penn decided to direct the movie as well.
In addition to confusing me, Penn’s
writing made me uncomfortable at times as well. When he did decide to describe
a scene, he used phrases such as “those nipples keep saying hello”, “they were
Charlie Manson wannabes”, and “he took a whore’s bath”. While I understand that
these things were never said in the movie, I found Penn’s writing to be
unprofessional and unnecessarily vulgar. While Vince Vaughn’s work portrays him
as a funny yet sweet-hearted guy, Penn’s work showed me that he is a man over
50 could still sound like a teenage boy. Some might argue that a writer must do
whatever it takes to get their point across, and while I agree with that
statement, I would argue that if you can’t think of more than one way to make
your point, than you aren’t really a writer at all. In comparison, American Beauty was a rated R movie that
I watched while reading the script, with the same amount of nudity (if not
more), and writer Alan Ball was still able to write his screenplay with more class
than Penn.
Despite this, I did think that Into the Wild had a few redeeming
qualities. First off, I loved the use of voiceover in this film. What stuck out
to me the most was how Chris’s sister would be talking about their childhood,
but we would still be watching Chris hitchhiking along the highway. This was
the first time I realized that a voice over doesn’t necessarily have to be
narrating the visual that the audience is receiving. I also really enjoyed the
way in which his postcards, letters, and diary, would pop up onto the screen
while the only background sounds were of nature. Since Into the Wild is based off of a book, I thought this truly captured
the textual essence of the story. By forcing us to read the screen for
ourselves, Into the Wild constantly
reminded us as the audience to pay close attention. Through voiceover, visual,
or text, Penn did teach me that there are many different ways to tell a story
on screen.
I also liked how the movie did not
proceed in chronological order, but jumped from scenes of Chris in Alaska to
scenes of Chris’s journey getting there. While I can’t accredit this to
“screenwriter” Penn, since the script was actually chronological (making it
near impossible to read while watching the film), I have to admit that this was
a good choice made by “director” Penn. By jumping around, Into the Wild became a creative twist on the Homeric journey story
structure, and kept me engaged when I might have not been otherwise. By showing
bits of the end throughout the movie, I found myself wondering, “how did he get
to that point?”, and had to keep watching to piece it all together. Once specific
example of this was when Christ keeps tightening his belt throughout the film:
Penn’s way of showing us that Chris is starving to death. In a scene towards
the end of the movie, Chris meets a man named Ron who teaches him how to make a
leather belt. The artful connection between the past and present tense in this
film justified the movie’s critical acclaim.
Reading/ watching this movie taught
me both what to do and what not to do. But above all, it showed me that even if
I don’t personally like a movie, there is usually a reason why other people
might.
MOVIES WATCHED: 5
SCREENPLAY PAGES WRITTEN: 16
NOVEL PAGES WRITTEN: 60
PAGES LEFT IN MISS PEREGRINE’S HOME FOR
PECULIAR
CHILDREN: 170
PAGES LEFT IN THE HOURS: 178
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