In case you hadn't noticed, I'm pretty into hyperbole (and clearly, sarcasm). It's funny & bombast, and also ridiculous, which are all fucking great adjectives. I think I want to physically embody the idea of hyperbole. Like, that's my life goal. Lofty, ain't it.
So I was watching Auto Focus last night, because that's what Joe decided he wanted to watch while he was being responsible/productive and doing laundry and I was lying on the couch reading precious YA fiction on my Kindle (in defense of my laziness, I totally went to work yesterday and he did not). This movie is, whatever, fine, I guess, if you're OK with watching Greg Kinnear having lots of sex and destroying lots of lives. The glaring and abhorrent downside, I was realizing as I watched it, was that Willem Defoe is in it and he fucking terrifies me. So much so that the simple act of going to IMDB to grab that link has left me with a slight tremor. I had to look at a picture! IT WAS AWFUL.
This is where the hyperbole bit up there ties in. It is not uncommon for me to refer to things as fucking terrifying, despite the fact that they are probably only a bit eeky or mildly alarming at their absolute worst. Like, I'm pretty sure I said the existence of Two And A Half Men was fucking terrifying, but really ... not so much. It was not the same level of fear I felt when, say, I was up in the woods north of Ronovo, PA with no cell phone service, in the dark, drunk, standing watch outside of an outhouse with no door, tasked to fucking scare off bears. REAL BEARS, OK. The kind with teeth! And claws! And my weapon was a flashlight I bought at motherfucking FIVE BELOW. I think that is a fair assessment of what actually qualifies as fucking terrifying.
AND YET. There's this Willem Defoe thing, right? I was trying to think of one movie I've seen him in that did not make me want to crawl inside my own vagina and die. I could not think of one, except like maybe Spider Man? But I was sufficiently distracted by the presence of Vern Schillinger, and was puzzled why he wasn't leading an Aryan revolution. So anyway, let's break it down. There was Auto Focus, as mentioned. He plays a pervy freakshow murderer. He was in Antichrist. He plays a WTF-WHO-KNOWS-BUT-OMG-THERE-ARE-SO-MANY-JUNK-SHOTS-AND-MANY-OF-THEM-ARE-BLEEDING kind of ... dude. His character doesn't even have a name. It's "He." No really. Antichrist is the worst movie ever made. It has absolutely usurped Lunacy for the title. He was in Shadow Of The Vampire. And American Psycho. And Wild At Heart (!!!!!!). And The Last Temptation Of Christ! AS JESUS. There are probably more but I can't bring myself to look at his IMDB page again.
The man is -- honestly, inexplicably --terrifying to me. Horrifying. Revolting. He makes me feel physically ill and thusly doubt my own sanity. My palms are sweating right now just thinking about him. And this is probably a fine example of wolf-cryer-y, but I'm finding that the gravity of this situation (while admittedly borderline psychotic, seriously) cannot be fully grasped even by me because I spend so much of my headspace chronically suspended in hyperbole.
Does this even make sense? I'm hoping the absurdity of the reality is helping the point. I could have chosen any number of things that genuinely garner pure terror and anxiety, but I felt like Defoe was bizarre enough to forge the rule.
This realization last night sort of lined up with me stumbling across this great/weird blog and this great/weird little section of it called things that shouldn't give me anxiety but do and I'm like DUDE. This is a great time to have some ego-filled self-discovery trip where I try to actually identify what scares me, and not in like a "death/great unknown/unmitigated suffering" kind of way but definitely in a "Willem Defoe/missing my exit on an interstate highway/Pampered Chef parties" kind of way. Because these things DO genuinely give me panic-inducing fear and angst. And while I often say "x makes me want to pour battery acid in my eyes," the option really seems like a reasonable reaction to this particular list.
I kicked off with Defoe, and the idea of talking about him anymore would likely result in me punching the nearest living thing, so I'm just going to let this stand as a NON-BINDING commitment to actually write this stuff down for the enjoyment of all (at great risk to my fragile psyche, YOU KNOW).
No comments:
Post a Comment