The Perks of Being a
Wall Flower is a pretty good title…though my vote would have been to call
it Mixed Tapes. Then maybe I would
have skipped it?
As someone who has fit in and not fit in, in serious
absolute value and in cramping quick sequence, I have to say this movie hit me
hard. In fact, to rub my Matrix-like layered nose in it, even the independent
company that made this film has included me and not included me at times in
real life in their esteem for and understanding of me as a writer and as an actor
and I them, as I introduced them at one point, underestimating their value, to
a Japanese commercial producer with claims to financing I once worked for who,
in turn, had felt accepted and rejected at many times in HIS life, working with
Madonna and Brad Pitt, on and off and then off for good. (It was a weird lunch.
Promises to connect again. Which never happened.) In the end, I have fond memories of this film
company for all their interesting work and our mutual respect. From the
Japanese producer’s office, I cadged seven pairs of Brad Pitt’s pants from a
commercial shoot, which all eventually had to be hemmed, but I can honestly
say, not let out at the waist.
But I digress.
The movie was well acted. The girl from those Harry Potter
movies is going to be a great adult actress star. Some call her Emily Watson. I
call her a younger, sane Jennifer Jason Leigh. And this Logan Lerman…call me a racist bitch with no
grace and a presumptive negativity, but where are all these gorgeous young Jews
coming from?
They were both wonderful.
I wish I could say the mushy script wasn’t laughable. But
maybe that was the point? That teenagers are overwrought and overly
sentimental? I’m being generous here. I don’t think so.
I love that it took place in Pittsburgh, one of the great geologically
interesting cities in the country…with those rivers coming together and the
high bluffs. My high school girlfriend, long suffering with me as her
ambivalent mate, went to college in Pittsburgh
for only a semester. I drove out west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, late on a
Friday night, through awful fog in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, with my sister to
visit her. My sister went to visit a friend of hers in another nearby town. I stayed
in my girlfriend’s dorm room and spent most of the weekend smoking cigarettes
and truly, fully falling in love with Joni Mitchell as I turned the vinyl over
and over again to listen to both sides of Court
and Spark. It was the suspended chords and the sad lyrics. I think I was
sad. I think my girlfriend was sad. Joni was certainly sad. All three of us
wanted to be pop stars and only one of us succeeded.
Back to the creators of this movie. These are smart people.
All of them. And stylish. And able. At the lunch I put together with my
Japanese boss at some standard fancy Italian Beverly Hills eatery, I was all
but forgotten as they sat there trading stories about this or that A-lister and
others they had in common. But lucky for me, the very cool S.C. was right next
to me (See, I withheld that information…why? Why do we wait to give certain
information when we tell our stories? It’s so manipulative. Baah!) S.C. was the
mule of their office and a big fan of mine and we got through it together, that
Hollywood lunch that went nowhere. Our support never waned. She’s writing plays
now. Go S.C.!
This movie made me remember how sad I was, on and off, from
14 to 20. How, at times, you were so elated and life was so incredible. And how
at other times, you really thought you were going completely fucking crazy.
And, at least for me, how you did go crazy at one point and then you just had
to piece it back together. Just trying to hold on. To insist upon being part of
the population even though you had no idea what that part was.
I’d say it is worth watching. As long as you can forgive the
clunky storytelling. You do get ahead of it as it rolls by. But hey! You’re
watching kids!
Perks. Wallflowers.
Spoiler Alert: What happened was_______________. Okay, I won’t spoil it. You’re
smart. You’ll figure it out quickly enough yourself.
Not everything has to be amazing. Sometimes, if it’s messy,
you get to focus on other great aspects. And maybe those aspects are more
important, which they were, for me, the emotional ones.
Sometimes, something truly lived, is a much bigger experience
than that which is turned into a movie. Shit. We all know that.