deep thoughtz 008: THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE + UPPER BODY BEDROOM WORKOUT
Good evening haters, this is your blogger speaking. We at $CHIANG_MAI_ELVIS$ would like to provide you with a comfortable reading experience, and invite you to sit back, consume the contents of that mysterious bottle of medicine, kick off your socks, get your Gangsta Pat YouTube mix playing, and get ready FOR DEEP THOUGHTZ 008 BEEEEEEEECH
On tonight's episode we gotta dissect an unsung champion of neo-noire cinema, a genre exclusively dedicated to the plights and pitfalls of being a white guy. Given the history of the world, it should surprise no one that there are literally millions of these kinds of movies and MAYBE three are worth watching. Those few movies tho... are pretty fuckin sick; they are movies which demand creativity and passion on the part of their creators, and who else could bring the MAJOR PAIN outta a camera lens other than my man John Cassavetes?!
"You think I wanna watch bullshit movies? You don't know Elvis Anaporn!"
For the uninitiated, Cassavetes stands as a symbol to all artists of the world who don't wish to exist in artistic squalor. His films, largely self-funded and distributed, challenged what people expected from movies and paved the way for future independent filmmakers to create movies beyond the limited scope of the mainstream. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie may not be his best film, in fact it's probably one of his lesser works, but it's probably the only one that can sell you into giving it a chance on its premise alone.
The Killing of a Chinese Bookie concerns (shockingly) the murder of a Chinese American at the hands of a club-owner (the late n great Ben Gazzara give it up!), too proud to fit his failures and too oblivious to recognize his pride. The plot you can read fo free on wiki-pee-dia, but a deeper understanding of its elements can only be achieved through the act of bearing witness. There is sickness present in this film: avarice, addiction, pride, misogyny, exploitation (of the body and soul), very riveting stuff! Don't think of this blogpost as a critical essay of the film's cinematography or even a review of its quality. I'd rather you think of this as me, The Lord Hanuman reborn as Elvis Anaporn, simply doing my part as an enthusiast of violent cinema and spreading the gospel as far as the Internet can take me.
aw yea this shit looks cool and u kno it... but its ruined by the fuckin criterion logo!
It's not very often that we are treated to a spectacle of loserdom as we are in this film, and Gazzara nails the part; he's greedy where he should be conservative, he dresses up for a night of gambling with his strippers like he's taking them to homecoming, and when confronted with the foolishness that brought him to murder a stranger he retreats into self-pity. And despite it all we maintain the complicated relationship that is essential for genuine connection. We don't root for him to succeed, we don't root for him to be killed, Cassavetes rarely settles for such simplicity. The film ostensibly concerns a gritty tale of assassins and gambling debts, but its message is more universal than that.
I've had a lot of time on my hands after being critically wounded in a bizarre skateboarding incident (ELVIS ANAPORN SKATE VID COMING SOON), and I've used much of that time to dissect what it is I'm trying to do with this here shinding I got goin on. If one skimmed this blog, they might think my life is made up exclusively of machoist imagery, smokin flowah, and upper-middle class neuroticism. While none of these things are untrue in the slightest, I relate to Gazzara's character in this film because we both believe we are more than that. More than what definitions people ascribe to us, and more than what this world set out for us to be. The world will eventually destroy us all, empty out the contents of our soul and leave us husks for the combine to break down and spread amongst virulent crops, but before that day comes we can attempt to make something beautiful out of it. Be it a gangsta rap mixtape recorded in the back of a car in Memphis or a shitty strip club in LA, it's in our nature to defy this inevitability. Systems of governance and control have convinced billions of our fellow brothers and sisters that to want for more is a cardinal sin, and the existence of art that defies this is the only Gospel that I wish to spread. That and my legendary fitness 5x5 program...
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