I Wanna Be a Cowboy

Again, I decided to watch the director's commentary. As I've said before, this can be an ordeal. You've spent somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours watching a movie. To watch the director's commentary is to double the amount of time--time that you may not want to spend. Most people would find the commentary incessantly dull, but I find it compelling.

It's not entirely clear, to me, who the commentary is directed to. I suspect it's for people who find the filmmaking process compelling, which I do. The director's commentary often reveals the director's passion for the film. Even awful films often have directors that care a great deal about how the film is made. It can make you appreciate something that can be otherwise dreck.

Taken at face value, Cowboys and Angels might be seen as an odd story that tries to tell three different stories at once. One is about Shane's character, a shy civil servant who knows there must be something better in life than what he's doing. This is an issue that isn't addressed much in American films because Americans are far less class conscious than Brits.

A good referencee point is the 7-Up documentaries "directed" by Michael Apted, which follows the lives of about a dozen British youths of varying background, from age 7 to current day. The documentary team visits the group every 7 years. Until recently, you couldn't really watch the documentary. With places like Amazon, which now carries tens of thousands of DVDs, this series has a chance to be watched by many more people .

Some of the youths come from working class families. Others come from markedly wealtheir families. Perhaps the sad thing is the lack of social mobility. The one youth that may have leapt the furthest is the physics professor, who grew up on a farm, and eventually made his way to being a professor at the University of Wisconsin. Many of the others are doing fine, but seem trapped by their income level.

The director of Cowboys and Angels, David Gleeson, made a fairly autobiographical film, at least, in parts. In particular, Shane's job as a civil servant, even to the exact building Gleeson worked in, is completely autobiographical.

People often say you should write films based on experience. It makes it that much more realistic. For example, in Atom Egoyan's, Speaking Parts, the main characters work in a hotel where they clean rooms and fold sheets, etc. It turns out, as a teen, Egoyan did exactly that. Gleeson, too, wrote about his own life, and found it very odd to watch the places he worked put on film, even though he was the one who put it there.

Gleeson has several objectives in this film. One was to represent Ireland in a more realistic way. He didn't want a film about the IRA. He didn't want a film about the really popular guys that go to clubs. The film is set mostly in Limerick, which is one of two or three major cities in Ireland (the other two I can think of are Dublin, and Cork).

To this extent, there are many overhead shots of Limerick, as well as the phone booths (what few exist in the US always seem much older than their European counterparts), the trains, the busses, the pubs, the nightclubs.

I've always known that films are filmed out of order, often because it's convenient to group many scenes together, and it all depends on what's available. If you watch the behind-the-scenes documentary on the LOTR DVD, you discover a key conversation in Return of the King was filmed separately nearly a year apart. That has to be pretty wild. (The scene, in case, you're wondering, is when Frodo and Sam are climbing up a largish mountain, and Frodo tells Sam to go home, that he no longer needs Sam.)

Other things you learn from the director of an indie pic is how tough scenes are to film. In particular, getting a scene lit correctly (which means making everyone look great) can require a great deal of work. There's a scene where Shane and Vincent talk to each other. The guy playing Vincent says it's like his head is glued to the back, and the reason he doesn't move his head much is the lighting in the scene. If he moved more naturally, it would create bad lighting on his face. It's a testament to the acting that one doesn't notice it.

Directors also seem to notice continuity errors. For example, there's a room that has no graffiti at one angle, and then at a different angle, there's graffiti. Sometimes there are anachronisms. For example, currently, there's no more smoking allowed in Irish pubs. Thus, the smoke filled pubs shown in the film is no longer realistic.

Directors often sneak in a variety of people who aren't actors in the film. Thus, friends, relatives, etc. make guest appearances.

OK, back to comments about the film.

What worked well for me. Overall, I thought the actors were pretty good. In particular, Michael Legge, who plays Shane, has to convey a fair bit of information (as do actors in general) with his face. A lot of acting is really in the facial reactions, which you can see in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role in Mysterious Skin.

I also thought, given the general ludicrousness of the idea, that the actors involved with the drug running worked out better than it really deserved to. Unlike, say, Blue Velvet, where Dennis Hopper's character basically harasses Kyle MacLachlan's character, Keith ends up befriending Shane, which is somewhat unexpected.

Vincent's character works out well too. While he's made to be a stereotyped queen who's into fashion design, Allen Leech (who plays Vincent) doesn't camp it up in his dialogue (is that just an American gay affectation), and initially, doesn't even seem to care that much for Shane. And his character actually seems to care about fashion. This is not just one of those character traits that's added to make his character more gay.

One of Gleeson's goal was to make a film that was about a straight and gay guy sharing a flat. To that extent, Gleeson doesn't make the film I thought he might have made. The trailers make it seem like it's about how Vincent takes a shy kid and makes him more self-confident while he remains rather emasculated (sort of like Queer Eye). That's not exactly what he does. If anything, it's Keith, the drug runner, that makes Shane turn out the way he is, or at least his civil servant mentor. Also, his relation with Shane veers in an unexpected direction.

Lately, many films have treated being gay rather matter of factly. Cowboys and Angels is no exception. No one seems to react to it at all. The director was asked in Q&A's whether Ireland was this open, and he felt that Ireland had become more accepting of gays in society. Obviously, the upcoming film, Brokeback Mountain is going to deal with these issues where things have to be kept secret because of social backlash.

Having a film set in Ireland was interesting. I wouldn't say that I know that
much more about Ireland after than before, but still, I like seeing different
settings.

What doesn't work. Hmm, well, I still think it's a bit ludicrous how Shane gets involved with Keith, but at least, the film addresses this point. Also, Gemma, who plays something of a fag hag doesn't have her character developed very much. There are some deleted scenes where they explore her background some. Still, those scenes dragged (it's about Shane asking her about bisexuality), even though they make her an edgier character, but also somewhat unlikeable.

I read one reader's comment who complained about a key scene. During the drug pickup, two guys are driving Shane, and they hit a car. A woman is injured, and her boyfriend/husband want to call the police. They proceed to beat him up and then run away. The idea, I know, is to show the dark side of what this kind of life is like, and it's a key step in Shane deciding not to take this route with his life. I'm not sure there's an easy way to resolve this.

There's also the rather pat resolution, where all the drug runners are captured (it's hinted at to be sure, with police staking out the place), but where Shane and Vincent manage to get off. The resolution is thought out, however, unlike many films where they just tack something on. It feels tacked on, but the director hints what's to come throughout. Still, it knocks out Keith's character when it's convenient that he should no longer be in the film.

Gemma's character is relatively bland, so she doesn't get much development. Again, the film doesn't necessarily suggest that Shane and Gemma will get together after all is said and done.

Whether Shane would be both a person that would get into trouble and also get himself dressed up by Vincent is another point that I quibble with. Still, Legge's acting does enough to hide this strange dichotomy in Shane's life.

As I said in the previous post, I ended up liking this, mostly because it had the potential to be awful, even in its first hour, and turned out not to be that bad. I guess this damning with faint praise, but it is really a bit better than that. I'd put it about 5 out of 10, meaning decent, but flawed.