GUY: I would have to say that my favourite drink is beer. GIRL: Really? GUY: Yeah. Not just my favourite alcoholic drink; it's my favourite thing to drink. GIRL: Really. GUY: I like beer.
That exchange marked the tail end of what I'm fairly sure was a first date between a square-jawed white-shirted air force pilot and a woman that he must have picked up at one of Regina's finer booty-call establishments: skin tanned to leather, muscly arms with shoulders starved down to knobs of bone, taut webs of skin marking the armpits, utterly implausible breasts. Other highlights, aside from the soul-searching exchange about beer: Mr. Pilot attempting to order for both of them without consulting the menu, choosing instead to rely on his vast knowledge of Japanese cuisine ("We'll start with some udon noodle soup, if you have any"); Mr. Pilot's fifteen-minute monologue on the Canadian air force, delivered to a complete stranger at an adjoining table while Ms. Booty looked patiently on; the occasional moments when Ms. Booty would turn her head to the side and afford me a glimpse of her leathery profile, with a hooked nose and pitiless glittering eyes.
A COMPARE AND CONTRAST ESSAY
by Palinode age 13
On the weekend I saw two films. They were called Blade II and Auto Focus. Both were very interesting films that were very exciting, but in different ways. Both films had a lot to say and made their points in different but interesting ways. I would have to say at this point that there were many similarities and differences between these films.
Both movies are movies that are about fictional creatures. Blade II is about vampires, which do not exist. Auto Focus is about television stars, who also do not exist. The main difference is that vampires are in books and movies and old stories, but television stars are only found on televisions and in remainder bins. That is what my Dad told me, and he laughed really hard, and drank right from the bottle instead of pouring it into a glass. Then my Mom was in the kitchen but I could tell she was crying.
The films are also similar in terms of location. Blade II seems to take place in Prague but also in America, unless there is a special country where all the signs are in Czech but all the people speak English and eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Auto Focus is set in hotel rooms and dinner theatres all over America, and it is very hard to know where the movie takes place much of the time. This may be a problem for some people, but I didn't mind, and thought that it added to the sense of dislocation and spiritually vapid ennui that the main characters shared.
Blade II had Blade and Whistler as main characters who were friends, but Auto Focus had Bob Crane and John Carpenter as main characters who were friends. Blade and Whistler kill vampires together. Mr. Crane and Mr. Carpenter masturbate together. That did not happen in Blade II! In that movie, Blade rescues Whistler from a vat of blood, and later Whistler pushes Blade into a vat of blood. Mr. Crane does not rescue Mr. Carpenter from a vat of blood! Later Mr. Carpenter beats Mr. Crane's head in with a camera tripod, and then there is blood.
Moreover, the movies were different in other ways. Dad told me that Blade II is awash in an eroticism sublimated in a theatrical rococo of gore and violence, whereas Auto Focus promises a display of violence but instead subjects you to endless scenes of artfully edited debauch in a series of interchangeable hotel rooms and swinging bachelor pads. My dad works at the unversity but he is taking time off to work on his novel, which he started before I was born! I think that sex and violence are very different things, but these films don't always know the difference. In Blade II, when the vampires bite people, it looks like they're giving them hickies. Also, everyone in this movie dresses in tight black leather. In Auto Focus, when Bob Crane is kissing a woman, she pushes him against the wall and says "I want you to nail me to the fucking wall". This surprised me, as this was what happened to vampires in Blade II all the time. Blade says that you should keep your friends close and your enemies closer. In Auto Focus, Bob Crane keeps women really close to him. Did Mr. Schrader, the writer and director of Auto Focus, want to make a movie about vampires but changed his mind and made a movie about the star of Hogan's Heroes instead? That would explain a lot.
All the gore and blood in Blade II is cool because the people who made the film were very creative in showing as much blood and guts as possible, even showing the insides of the Reapers, these cool vampires who feed on other vampires! How cool is that? If Auto Focus showed as much sex as Blade II showed guts, Dad would have put the movie behind his bottles like he does with those other movies, and it would be much harder for me to see it and write this essay. All the sex in Auto Focus is really not so sexy because you are watching people watching acts of sex, and you are made to feel like you are somehow dirty for watching what Paul Schrader has decided to put up on the screen. I did not understand why Mr. Schrader would do that, but I think that he enjoyed making a movie with naked women in it because he likes to look at these naked women and be in the same room with them, but he doesn't want you to know that or think that you've paid money to watch Paul Schrader exploit the power of the camera so he can be in a room with lots of naked women. Then the movie would be a joke on us as well as on the people whose story Mr. Schrader is telling!
Furthermore, the last scenes of both movies are very interesting. Blade II is all about violence but it ends in a peep show booth where a vampire is hoping to watch and kill a young naked woman, but Blade is there instead. Auto Focus is all about sex, but it ends with Mr. Crane murdered and there is a lot of blood. In Blade II you do not see the naked woman (because Blade is there instead) and in Auto Focus you see lots of blood splattering on the wall, but there is no fighting and you don't really see the murder.
Both movies have valuable lessons to teach us. Both films show us the dangers of having a secret life where you kill vampires or film yourself having sex with drunk women. The films also show you that vampires "thirst" for blood and television stars "hunger" for sex, which sounds like a full meal to me! Just kidding. Also, both movies show us that experimenting is bad. In Blade II the chief vampire experiments with DNA and makes a really bad vampire that kills other vampires in a cannabilistic orgy of gore. In Auto Focus the main characters experiment with sex and destroy all the love in their lives in a self-obsessed orgy of voyeurism. We should stay away from sex and DNA because bad things can happen. Also, television stars enjoy light lounge music but vampires like techno. Overall, I would have to say that I will keep Blade II in the living room and Auto Focus under my mattress.
