"}Just came out of a showing of Death to Smoochy. Audience participation for the howl scene, good stuff.
\n\nWeird that never became more of a cult movie. I think might be because it represented an apex of several movie trends that didn\u2019t continue on past.
\n\n1. the transitional \u201890s urban plot, where American cities were still depicted as playgrounds for white ethnic crime but the plot was kinda about how they were becoming playgrounds for professionals. Get Shorty, Analyze This, The Sopranos
\n2. Robin Williams\u2019 self-deconstructive period (One Hour Photo, etc.) After he suicided it turns out everyone had always treasured him, but post-Aladdin into the 2000s there was a growing consensus he had always been just a cocaine-sweaty narcissist hack.
\n3. The Nora Ephron adult romantic comedy revival. Towards the start there\u2019s hints toward the \u201880s/\u201890s backlash \u201cjaded businessbitch thaws out and realizes what\u2019s important (nurturing children)\u201d plot but it turns into a neo-screwball tension-between-equals. Even more than The 40 Year Old Virgin - 3 years later as Apatow supplanted Ephron - Catherine Keener\u2019s is a specifically 40something fuckability, and the movie\u2019s refreshingly upfront that the reward for being a good man is eventually a guarded but mature relationship with someone people in your circle used as a toy when she was younger and tighter.
\n\nAlso, it\u2019s a pretty good example of a 5 (as vs. the standard 3) act plot structure.