I’ve been traveling and working so much lately, I didn’t have time to gift wrap this. But I thought you could use a little piece of perfect to get you through the end run of the year. This movie clip is clearly one of my favorites, with pitch-perfect art direction, outstanding casting, and sick-sick dark humor. I love it.
It’s a story from Woody Allen’s dark, self-reflective comedy, “Deconstructing Harry.” Underrated in my book.
“Perfect” in a scene is a much more condensed, and satisfying slice of perfect. Perfect dialogue, perfect casting, perfect performance, perfect narrative arc, perfect lighting, perfect set direction, perfect visual tone, perfect costuming, perfect camera angles, perfect editing, and perfect sound. A scene like this provides me with an excellent high. (Radiohead concerts & Prince performances, by the way, fall into this “excellent high” category. Specifically Radiohead at Santa Barbara Bowl, 2008)
I’ve been working on a side project. For two years, and now the deadline is less than a month – and we’re in a panic. Almost all we do right now is work on the book. In about two weeks, it’ll be all that we do. So to say I’ve watched two movies in the past week is actually a big deal. To say that I’ve watched the same movie twice is actually a bigger deal.
But I have never enjoyed a Woody Allen film so much and I think it’s incredible that I never hear people talk about “Deconstructing Harry.” That’s actually why I watched it twice. To see if it really was as good as I thought. It really is. Very dark humor. Really imaginative set ups. The screenplay is killer. And some of the characters are just seriously outstanding.
(Except one. Judy Davis is so maddeningly cartoon-ish she almost ruins the movie. But once you are firmly past her first soap operatic performance, everyone else nails it.)
Onto the perfect scene – it is so good it makes me clutch my hands in tiny fists and shake them like I’ve won a pony. It’s the scene with the two old Jewish ladies. If you’ve never seen it, I’m not going to tell you anything about it. Because the best thing about this scene is that you are completely unprepared for every second that reveals itself.
Those of you who have seen it – how about those actresses? Are they actresses? Because I don’t know how anyone could’ve “acted” those parts. And if they weren’t actresses…the dialogue! How could they have delivered that so perfectly?? I loved everything. Their clothing. The set design of the bar mitzvah before we see them again at the apartment. Her husband! Good god where did they find him?
Rent the movie. The whole movie is exceptional. But you’ll know what I’m talking about when you get to this awfully perfect moment.
And just a quick bonus: the scene between Woody Allen and Billy Crystal? When they are talking about sleeping with women? If I ever wrote dialogue like that, I would seriously fall in love with myself.