Movie Mayhem

"Fatal Attraction" has been on my Top 10 list since its release in 1987. I wanted to see it again but real life intervened with the birth of my son a month later, and soon enough movies about princesses and forest creatures became a household staple. I remember loving the film not for its message, which is if you stray from your marriage your life will suck from that day forward, but for the interior decorating. The film's true star is a Manhattan apartment to die for which eventually matures into a shabbily chic estate in Connecticut that Martha Stewart would envy. The film's prop master had my exact taste in home furnishings, so it was fun to see how I might have lived had I married a rich New York lawyer.

And so last night, home alone with a bottle of vino, I settled in for a good time with a rented DVD. While it was a treat to see the young Michael Douglas pre-Catherine Zeta Jones, I gotta say: Wow, what a mess that movie is! Hello, Continuity--is anybody home? One minute it's autumn with golden leaves glowing, the next minute it's spring and all is bright green, then two frames later there's Santa's sleigh on a bare-treed lawn. Look--now it's 7:15 PM by the clock but still total daylight, yet it can't be summer because everyone's breath shows up in the air which only happens when it's really cold outside, except folks in the background are wearing shorts. The hands never move on the clocks in several scenes, so I guess time stands still in Hollywood. And that's just a fraction of the obvious errors, which include visible booms and reflected cameramen. With a list of credits a mile long at the end of the movie, you'd think someone on staff would spot those errors before calling it done.

Anyway, it's still a great movie despite the sloppy editing, and one of the very few where I could stomach Glenn Close. In fact, she utters one of my all-time favorite movie lines, which I use often: "I'm not going to be ignored, Dan!" Try saying it out loud--it is so cool, and a great way to end an argument, even if the person is not named Dan.