serai

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You know, I find I've become very fond of Josh's performance in August. Tom Sterling is SUCH a dick, but it's Josh's interpretation of his massive dickery that I find so fascinating. From that first little CNN snippet - where he flaunts his dickishness with such casual arrogance it's amazing he isn't snapping gum - I'm just hooked by him, the way one is hooked by beautiful footage of a 10-car pileup. He's utterly mystifying, opaque, in his headstrong refusal to be real in any way, as if he thinks he can hold off the world through the sheer force of his steely eyes. It's really a wonderful encapsulation in miniature of everything that went wrong in that culture - good intentions, short-sightedness, delusions of grandeur, greed, overweening pride, rejection of reality, and tons and tons and tons of money, none of it real. Smoke and mirrors. Fumes, as Tom himself says. It's a gorgeous performance, one I'm sorry didn't get much attention.

But I would still like to know if that opening scene - the one in the nightclub restroom - was actually written that way, or whether it was an editing-room choice to "enter late, leave early", as the screenwriting edict goes. It's hard to say, though it works quite well. I don't think we really need to hear anything Tom said to that girl to know what a son of a bitch he is - her expression says far more than words could, as does his and the way he walks out. Jesus, such a BASTARD. Just beautiful.