{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "The Fisher King", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/17700239451/", "html": "

Chanced to see this at a bar the other day. Eh. I wonder if it’s because of actual perspective or just because of secondhand exposure that I’m appreciating the “Robin Williams as coked-up jerkface” thing a lot more now.

\n

Actually, you know what it reminds me of? August Rush, on the Robin Williams-in-homeless-magical-realism-that-sucks tip.

\n

Other issues: Amanda Plummer as off-brand MPDG, Mercedes Ruehl reminding me of My Cousin Vinny and Cyndi Lauper and I guess the moment when white ethnics merged into the white mainstream?

\n

Anyway, it just downright reeked of that ‘80s early-pop-postmodernist “OMG, Disney imagineering is artifice! (but so well done!)”/“you know what was authentic? Vaudeville and early Hollywood!” moment. What else? Uh, Brazil, An American Tail, Radio Days, Hook, maybe Princess Bride and Indiana Jones on the better side?

\u2026 actually I wonder how much of this was just “Jewish Boomers react to midlife crisis with retreat to imagined childhood.” The Goonies? Maybe.

As far as period tendencies that only I think of as such go, I generally prefer “Eccentrics of the New South”, which would include what, R.E.M., the B-52s, Pee Wee Herman, John Waters, Richard Linklater, John Carpenter, A Confederacy of Dunces?

And, uh, meanwhile, David Lynch, Tim Burton, the Coen Brothers, Chris Columbus and Troma, who productively straddled the two? Dude I dunno.

"}