What Caused the Hangover?: 30 Rock
I’m sad that 30 Rock is ending. I mean that’s probably a foregone conclusion, seeing as I am a human being who lives of a college campus, but I’m sadder for reasons that go beyond “What will I do without any more Tracy Jordan lines to parrot?” or “Will Alec Baldwin do something stupid like run for mayor if he isn’t sufficiently occupied?” 30 Rock nails a particular tone that hasn’t been effectively done on American television since the heyday of the Muppet Show. Indeed the most effective description for the tone I can think of is something that has been famously used to describe Jim Henson’s production, “affectionate anarchy.” Everything is going wrong at once, and no one is (that) angry with each other so much as annoyed that there’s something more that needs to be done right now. That said, I didn’t expect this French movie from 1973 to exactly nail that tone.
Hair of the Dog: Day for Night (dir. Francois Truffaut)
Approaching Day for Night, I expected something much more esoteric than I got. The title is a reference to the technique of applying filters to a camera to make day scenes look like they were shot at night, for convenience sake[1].
Like this
So, I was expecting a loose ramble-y thing with lots of digressions and nonsense, which for the record I’m totally down for. Instead, what I got is this droll comedy about the difficulties of creating a film. Francois Truffaut (the guy with the ear piece) plays a director directing a movie called “Je Vous Présente Paméla” or “Meet Pamela,” which seems to be a melodrama about a woman who falls in love with her father in law. Through his struggles to get the film out the door he has to deal with an over the hill actress who can’t remember her lines, a failing marriage of a famous English actress, and the various little difficulties of the cast and crew.
So what makes this a perfect antidote to the despair of no longer having 30 Rock in our lives? Well, there are the superficial elements – an actress literally locks herself in her dressing room –but there are other similarities which makes this an eerily good match to 30 Rock. Chiefly, as mentioned before, the tone of struggling against the specter of failure with your friends and narrowly succeeding every time is really well done, including a very cute scene in which a kitten refuses to act as prompted.
30 Rock and Day for Night both have a similar approach to female characters as well. As far back as his second film, Shoot the Piano Player, Truffaut had a knack for writing interesting and proactive female characters. There are about equal amounts women and men on the film crew, including Liliane (Dani) who is the “script-girl” which basically boils down to “person who gets all the shit done.” The relationship between Liliane and Ferrand (Truffaut’s character) in particular is very reminiscent of Liz and Jack.
Meet Pamela and T.G.S. with Tracy Jordan are held up by their respective shows as basically terrible. Revealing mistakes in Meet Pamela are not even mentioned; just in the way that no one on the T.G.S. writing staff ever stops to think that the Robot/Bear Talk Show might be a terrible idea for a sketch. But it doesn’t matter, because they’re all too busy to even think about that sort of thing. Similarly, and this is a way Day for Night could have gone, neither ever indulges in long winded speeches in the importance of their art. This isn’t a Hair of the Dog for Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, and let’s be honest no one never needed to ease out of watching that show.
Now I know what you’re definitely not thinking: “But Peter,” you say “you will passionately defend incomprehensible euroshlock without blinking an eye, how do we know this will be good for me?” Well, hypothetical reader, Day for Night won the Best Foreign Language Film at the 1973 Oscars, and bizarrely for a foreign director, Truffaut was nominated for Best Director. Now, any other year, I would be really angry about the loss, except that he was up against John Cassavetes for Woman under the Influence, Bob Fosse for Lenny, Roman Polanski for Chinatown and they all lost to Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather II. So that’s, by my count, at least three amazing directors producing their best films of their careers[2]. 1974 was a great movie year.
I can see why many of you, maybe all of you, have soured on books about writers, songs about musicians, and movies about filmmakers. The common complaint about all those things is the air of self-importance that immediately turns people off. What attracted us to 30 Rock[3] in the first place was the frankness with which it treated television production. Day for Night might be just the thing you need to ease yourself into a post-30 Rock world.
[1] This technique is prominently displayed in Lawrence of Arabia, among other films.
[2] I happen to like The Godfather better than its sequel and I haven’t seen Lenny because I’m young and I’ve got other more important to do, like vandalizing buildings and being a hooligan.
[3] And repelled us from Studio 60.
Peter Guilherme 