Ask the Dust Review

“It tasted pretty much like coffee, but it wasn’t worth the nickel,” thought struggling writer, Arturo Bandini as he sat in a Los Angeles diner, inhaling a cigarette and praising Joe DiMaggio, all the while avoiding the looming reality of paying his overdue rent to the landlady at the Bunker Hill Hotel. “Either I paid up or I got out...”

In just the first couple paragraphs of his novel, Ask the Dust, “pre-beat” author John Fante paints the intricate portrait of an Italian-American writer (much like himself) dealing with the everyday battles involved with living amidst the only financial era in American history that is arguably worse than that of our own: The Great Depression. Clearly, there are vast differences between the times (i.e. a nickel today would barely get you a coffee bean, much less an entire cup) but the irony exists in the crisis that lies within each, from the recognizable troubles of a starving artist in this 1930’s tale to the grim reality of our present day job market.

Fante’s Ask the Dust is a ballad to daily life in the City of Angels performed through the manic mental and emotional processes of his main character, Bandini. Many strange encounters occur throughout the novel involving drinking, women, racism and poverty, all skillfully woven within a mixture of Bandini’s internal and external conflicts. After a couple days of following Bandini in a chaotic pattern of abiding hardships and bizarre interactions, we find our main man sipping another unworthy cup of coffee down at the Columbia Buffet. Here, he encounters Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress who he is both fascinated with and disgusted by. “She was a racial type, and such she was beautiful, but she was too strange for me.”

Nevertheless, Bandini was entranced and naturally, he proceeded to take the steps that any logical man attempting to impress an attractive woman would take. In utilizing the foolproof method of picking up women, Bandini begun by shamelessly criticizing her footwear, then to liven things up, he added in a bit of directed racial slander and finally, to seal the deal, he intentionally spilled his coffee, ensuring he left a hot mess for her to clean up. Needless to say, Camilla was hooked.

These backward antics continue between Arturo and Camilla (and eventually a few additional characters) throughout the entirety of their unconventional, tumultuous, dysfunctional, hostile and obsessive love/hate relationship. However, their interactions are as substance-less as their motives are confusing. As much as the plot is undeniably adorned with profound insights and overarching themes regarding substance abuse as well as the racist tone of Los Angeles (and perhaps the entire country) at the time, the characters’ actions are severely lacking in purpose, ultimately rendering them to seem quite excessive.

Conversely, Fante’s writing style is in no way lacking or excessive, but is a rush of literary brilliance. Fearlessly, Fante throws caution along with sentence structure to the wind, and what remains is an imaginative, eclectic (at times manic) array of thoughts purposefully arranged on the page. His tone is witty, clever and incredibly honest, while his writing is fast-paced yet still intricately crafted with detail. Above all, Fante manages to be passionate and sincere without using sweet, sugary anecdotes. Aside from its flaws, Fante’s indisputable talent as an author shines through, and for me Ask the Dust was definitely worth the 279 nickels.

Gervais- The Inventor of Predictable?

To tell the truth…after hearing an initial rundown of the premise of The Invention of Lying, a savvy viewer may immediately delegate this film as a reverse replication of the popular 90’s flick Liar, Liar.  However, co-writers/directors Ricky Gervais and Mark Robinson successfully took a familiar concept and twisted it into a sharp, fresh and un-linkable comedy.

 

Admittedly, the first 30 minutes of The Invention of Lying may well be the only truly inventive part of this quirky and inspired tale, as they are jam-packed with the majority of the jokes and laugh-out-loud humor.  These few opening scenes are absolutely brilliant…smartly written and seamlessly layered —as one would expect from the man who created BBC’s highly acclaimed shows The Office and Extras (Gervais).  Amongst the laughter, these scenes introduce the movie’s two main characters Mark (Gervais) and Anna (Jennifer Garner) and set up its premise of a parallel universe in which lying does not yet exist.  Unfortunately, the remaining 60 minutes of the film slowly wane in excitement as the unsustainable plot takes one too many predictable turns and the humor becomes tiresomely repetitive.  Yet, despite its dwindling dissent, this film’s initial hilarity, witty gags and quality cameos (including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jason Bateman, Christopher Guest and Edward Norton) do, indeed, carry it through.

 

Set in an alternate reality reminiscent to that of Pleasantville, Gervais and Robinson place us in a world that is seemingly more perfect than then our own—however there’s always a catch!  In this world, humans have no concept of fibs, falsehoods, or fabrications, but it goes beyond just plain honesty.  Everyone in this world is completely unconscious of embarrassment and shame, and their highly uninhibited truth telling becomes blunt bursts of the most blatant of thoughts running through their minds.  This is clearly illustrated in one of the opening scenes where we find Mark picking up Anna for their arranged date.  Staged in a familiar and intentionally cliché “blind date” manner, a slightly overweight and average looking Mark nervously approaches the door as slim and beautiful Anna is waiting on the other side.  The movie then breaks the cliché tense exchange, introducing its truthful and frank humor.  “How are you?” inquires a hopeful Mark.  “Depressed and pessimistic about our date tonight,” Anna replies at the sight of him.  She then proceeds to express that she had just engaged in some tension relieving masturbation, which she hopes to finish up before dinner.  Literally… no one holds back anything. 

 

The plot momentarily digresses from the not-so-budding romance between Mark and Anna, and focuses on Mark’s dismal life as a writer for Lecture Films Motion Picture Studios (where, naturally, all non-fiction productions are made).  Here, we further encounter the casual exclamations of thoughts going through each character’s mind with the introduction of Mark’s domineering secretary (Tina Fey), his loathsome co-worker (Rob Lowe) and his advertising executives who use slogans like: “Pepsi.  When They Don’t Have Coke.”  With already nothing going right in his life, Mark has just been fired for failing to complete an assignment on 14^th century Plague in Europe.  With perfectly predictable timing, the turning point arrives when Mark, troubled with insufficient funds for rent payment, has a “light bulb” moment at the bank: What if I tell the banker that I have more money in my account then I actually do…? 

 

Boom. Lying is invented. 

 

From here, Mark tactfully uses his revelation to his advantage (especially in respect to his romantic interest, Anna).  You can probably predict how the plot unfolds at this point, but to its credit, the film is still sufficiently supported by good acting, surprising cameos, slightly profound undertones and occasionally unforeseen gags the whole way through—not to mention a clever and witty Biblical twist. 

 

So, in the spirit of compulsive truth telling, The Invention of Lying was probably made on the budget of a television sitcom and due to this and possibly many other unrelated circumstances, it has many flaws.  But, in the spirit of quality humor and entertainment these flaws can be easily overlooked… honestly!