Suicide in the truck. It's a rage. Front page. Newspaper sprawls: "Man kills self in truck"
Then we learn of the crippling conscience of the clerk. And we see other renters coming in and out, in and out. The clerk changes by the end of the film. His fellow clerks have mini-changes. The fear is that he'll get caught. He overcomes this by stopping. But a long road of stopping, mind. And the main conflict is the characters - these people are bludgeoning themselves with videos and entertainment - and not with their families...not with their minds.
Someone's returning something while someone else is getting an earful. The clerks aren't the usual elitists (maybe there's one), they are down-to-earth. They know what's what, but they have personalities beyond that. The stories are what fuels it. Gives it attitude. And they interweave. And have meaning beyond their simplicites. And they give each other meaning. And their plot points intersect - or they don't. More Zemeckis than Altman. I've said too much already.
What if so much unbelievable, quirky, wild, again - unbelievable - shit happened to these people at home, but that shit was universal enough that everyone could identify with it. And what if we called it...Why would these people need entertainment? (Or, failing that, There Ain't No Entertainment).
To compound on the idea that videos and DVD's act as a pure pacifier, mood enhancer, as a drug for the masses.
Tutorial-style, or at least voice-over quick-fix film style, to tell the story of how these people become such video junkies and the addictive, borderline dangerous nature of fiction.
I love the way people have begun to transpose the
meaning of the term
"literally". Using it to weigh the magnitude of a situation they've
come
upon: "I was literally up to my neck in papers," someone might say.
Not only
is this abuse of a perfectly legitimate term, but it begs the question:
Why
must we continue talking in hyperboles. Why isn't the reality of a
situation
enough? Why do we have to exaggerate its proportions? If you had a
ton of
work to do - say so.
If for some reason, you find yourself in a room full of paper and you
look
around and realize that it measures up to a spot just below your chin,
be
thankful we a word for that.
Sometimes, when I'm seated, I want to narrate. Other times, I want to
come
up with chapter after useless chapter, hopelessly chronicling the pain
and
rigor of the strange mindset that has created this approved way of
life we
live at the office. The rhythm of this cult of business somehow negates
the
energy I might tap in which to perform such warranted literary surgery
on a
topic as universal and deeply disturbing as cubical culture.
If I weren't involved with a wife and child, I'd seek out grant money
to hop
from office to office, simultaneously writing about how easy it is
to appear
to fit in since, essentially, everything in every office is, in a relative
sense, the same. The nuances mean nothing because the ends are the
same:
Profit. Were some of the places I'd worked interested in the well-being
of
others (can you imagine staying late to catch-up on paperwork that
details a
crusade in feeding the hungry?) - I might have felt less inclined to
insist
that their very being had declared war on my very being.
More than once, I've questioned, quite directly, just who's idea this
shirt
and tie thing, this wearing a belt thing, this looking your best thing,
this
starting at the crack of dawn thing, this working long hours thing,
this
passivity in the face of our lengthy commutes, this awakening of a
mind that
can't help but think about work when it's not working, and this necessity
not to get ink on our hands. I've seen some of the deeds of businessmen
-
who look impeccable, mind - recreated in popular feature films. I can
tell
you that it's nothing until you've witnessed firsthand that it is
embellished only in the bare minimum sense that it's dramatized into
a
fictional story.
I'm afraid to notate a chapter about ______. The privacy issue is not
only a
golden rule, but one that I extend beyond the unnamed technician reading
my
mail from some remote location. I've seen people tinkering with other
people's computers. The tempting, wish-I-hadn't-read-that-but-glad-I-did
nature of ______ leaves me no choice but to continue to make you wonder
-
just what is ______? Maybe I'll tell you later.
On the other hand, when I talk up this life I've let choose me - and
have
thus embraced, I don't take the positive spin off of it. I'm not attached.
I'm not committed. And the beauty is - most of the time, no one seems
to be
the wiser. That I create these pithy little outlets should be enough
to foot
the bill, methinks.