In My Own Quiet Way

Right after talking up “Random Roles,” the section decides to serve up the shittiest installment ever. David Duchovny’s on-screen careeer goes under the microscope, and they only managed to mention six roles: “Hank Moody,” Californication; “Mike Klein,” The TV Set; “Tom Warshaw,” House of D; “Bill/Gus,” Full Frontal; “Dr. Ira Kane,” Evolution; and “Fox Mulder,” The X-Files. Yikes. No Red Shoe Diaries. No Henry Jaglom. No Rapture. Double yikes.

What A.V. Club taketh, they’ll try to make-uppeth with other awesomeness. Oswald Patton gives a great interview where he makes a bold statement saying that current television is hitting it out of the park artistically. Hmmm. I double-taked at that one. All I see on TV is craptastic American Idol, irrelevant idiots so desperate for attention they’ll learn the bossa nova, and other atrocities committed in the name of reality programming. But, Patton sees Warren Beatty strapped in a chair being visually bitch-slapped by the U.S. government.

“Oh yeah. What’s really odd now—trust me, I love doing movies, but right now, television is the way Hollywood was in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The dream era I would have loved to have been part of in Hollywood then is happening right now, but it’s happening on television, with these big complicated story arcs and real character-driven shows and sheer ambiguity left and right.”

Patton goes on to name-check or discuss United States of Tara, Caprica, Breaking Bad, Damages, The Venture Bros., Tim and Eric, The Wire, Deadwood and Battlestar Galatica. As Patton puts it, “Every genre is being re-thought.” I haven’t seen most of these shows, but I’ll co-sign on Deadwood. ( I miss you Al Swearingen, you stalwart cocksucker, you!) Notice that none of these shows are from the Big Three Networks. I’m not sure if Damages is from Fox or FX. Whatever. Fox still ain’t legit due to their paltry support of talent and for making Paula Abdul a topic of conversation.

Patton gives the best praise of The Wire I’ve ever read. Which is saying a lot because there are a lot people who lose their shit over this show.

“What’s brilliant about The Wire was, it starts out as a cop show, and just becomes its own genre of ‘This is about an entire city.’ It’s almost like…what did James Joyce say about either about Dubliners or Ulysses? If Dublin were ever destroyed, you could rebuild it from the books. If Baltimore were ever wiped out, you could rebuild it by looking at The Wire.”

Patton is comparing it to frickin’ James Joyce. That makes sense. I’ve never read him either. I’ll sit down with the opus that is The Wire after I wade through Ulysses. Isn’t one of those Joyce titles a stream-of-consciousness retelling of one guy’s day while he jacks off on the beach? Pffft. I flee from dead white male authors. Actually, they can be dead or alive. It’s the “white male” part that curdles anticipation. They’ve been in power for eons and writing/singing about themselves for nearly all that time. What’s there left to say after The Ramones?

Back to Oswald. The interview is given to promote his new movie, Big Fan. The film peeks in on the life of a diehard Giants fan after a tumultuous interaction with one of his football heroes. One of the film stills displays his character wearing a t-shirt proclaiming, “DALLAS SUCKS.” Dallas and NY Giants are in the same division. Ergo, they loathe each other. On the other hand, Dallas DOES suck. It’s just truth.

I probably could relate to this character on some level, but just barely. Let’s face it, the Giants are NFC and have only won two Superbowls—not SIX. Patton’s fan is described as a classic type of fan:

“In a way, Paul seems like he’s almost this old-school enthusiast, because it’s not the Internet or the Twittering or the text-messaging. It’s just flat-out, ‘I will go and worship this team in my own quiet way.’ Which is a very real way, but it’s almost a form that’s dying out now. Rob sees that type of fan sort of flickering a little bit.”

Well, I was raised in a traditional Black and Gold home. Daddy said you weren’t a real Pittsburgh fan until you punched a Cowboys fan in the face. My “confirmation” took place in the spring of 1977. Some chucklehead new to the playground (his dad had just been transferred from Chicago) was boasting about America’s Team (italics = sneer). Oblivious to the dead silence and a million stink-eyes being thrown his way, he kept nattering on about how Dallas was superior, one reason being their cheerleaders. Something about a dozen Farrah Fawcetts with pom-poms. Ugh. I was a raging feminist at the time as well as your typical Steelers fan. I sauntered up, planted my feet, and socked him square on the nose. I’m not sure if that is what Patton means when he says “quiet way,” but it works for me.

Patton brings it all back to the beginning by comparing his character to the protagonists of those films from the golden age of cinema, “I loved that about the script. It’s like a lot of the movies from the ‘70s, where they kind of embraced the fact that people don’t fucking change.”

Which brings me back to the shittiest entry ever for “Random Roles.” I raged for a weekend about the lameness of the Duchovny coverage. Finally, I went back and the first thing in the Comments section is from Noel Murray who conducted the exchange:

“I was given 15 minutes to talk to Mr. Duchovny, which I stretched to 20. Given time, I would've asked about TWIN PEAKS, RED SHOE DIARIES and KALIFORNIA.”

Aaah, so, Patton's correct. People don’t fucking change. Duchovny’s still a dick. I’m assuming there was some assiness being pulled by the subject. I could be wrong. He could be that busy (doubtful). Maybe we can go try a redo when he’s older, divorced and his career is in the dumps. Then, we might get some meat to this entry, and less gristle. I would love to hear his impression of the young Brad Pitt, and someone needs to confront him about the decade of Jaglom. Was it that or the soft-core porn (Red Shoe, y’all) that irretrievably damaged his ego? I’m betting on Jaglom because Mickey Rourke survived Wild Orchid (barely) and got an Oscar nom. But, Rourke has an ocean’s reserve of talent and doesn’t have to rely on looks and a nonchalant delivery of quips