I went over to my friend Stefan’s place tonight. To watch “a movie”: we hadn’t quite determined which one. I’d brought the three DVDs I bought today (Bogart&Bacall in To Have and Have Not and in The Big Sleep, and Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shanghai), but mostly to show them off. He had quite an impressive amount of films on his computer. We almost settled on In Cold Blood, but it was over two hours long, and considered Punch-Drunk Love instead.
“What’s it about?”, he asked. “I’m not sure”, I answered honestly. “I think it’s supposed to be an oddball rom-com. It’s from the guy who did There Will Be Blood and Magnolia.”
Punch-Drunk Love it was. A housemate was called in, and got the same reaction. And in the first fifteen, twenty minutes, many “huh?”s ensued.
