1. 40 thots on 1998's wild things
   
2. sunshine noir is about los angeles, where the sun refuses to correct, or the city is so corrupt that even the sun cannot correct the filth, it cannot be bleached clean. to move the sunshine noir to flordia moves it into some kind of swamptrash aesthetic, where the sun aids in the mold and festering
   
3. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_6_45/ai_n24242080
   
4. or at least the sun/shadow become an explicit symbol of class, the sunny and the shadow side of the street, just as lizards in terrines, fished barracudas, and the like extend the idea of predator thru out the ecosystem of people, esp. women. (no one is sure about what is happening, the cops play less good/bad then suspsicious/gullible (the father of neve cambpells carachter wrestles alligators) (more about woman, the judge is, the two girls who ocherestate the double/triple cross, the cop who actually knows what is going on, the matriach) (not that it is a film of female enpowerment
5. the colours, the lurid green of the hotel room where the champagne is unveiled (the gun as a champagne bottle?) (modified phallus?)
6. neve campbell smoking grass while the sounds of frogs, crickets and cicadias in the background, and kevin bacon in an undershirt and a uniform hanging open, seduces and then threatens, he becomes one with the snakes, the alligators, even the cicadias,
   
7. the best thing that richards has been in, is this, which mocks the heavy acting, think of jodie foster in the accused, and then think of a teenage girl who is thinking of that as a way of learning how to play for the audience, and then think of a 30 year old pulp actress playing a teenager, who is learning from a teenager, how to be a teenage victim
8. the movie careens between bad and good, between over acting for the sake of charachter devolpment and over acting because they are just lousy at there jobs, esp the court scenes, the difference between good, good/bad, bad on purpose, and bad bad is a minefield.
   
9. the question then, is how self aware camp, can camp be created on purpose, can camp be defined as the gap b/w drama and melodrama, the after effects of wanting to do the right thing, and failed, ie is camp a textual mark of failed ambition, if that was the case, what about a movie that has an ambition of being trash, about not being about anything but guns and tits, but becomes a fable about class, money, gender, sexuality, desire, and genre.
   
10. if you shoot things low enough, then you can only extend the reach then, right?
    
11. the film is shot thru with oblique angles, thru video tapes, thru tracking shots that suddenly end, mise en scene crowded with tropical foliage, fog and mist, concentrating on the furniture and wpa murals of the courtroom thru first person shots that radically merge or whipchange into third, how the obligatory cat fight is shot in hypercloseups, mostly under water, and how exxaggerated that is, and how that turns into porn ( the formal choices of the film maker add it to the plotting.
    
12. compare the use of juried/judicial language, the language of investigation, guilt, innocent, and heavily mediated desire in this movie, esp in the complicity, and the difficult questions of guilt/innocence and the same questions used in to die for, van sant was more obviously working with satire, the line is clean and sharp, there is no question of guilt and innocence. though there are elements of satire (perhaps bill murrarys great lost role as a shyster lawyer)
13. the plot for the first hour or so, 45 minutes or so, does not indicate conspiracy, it seems to be a pretty standard procedual, the threesome is where everything hinges, and is as shocking because of issues of consent and conspiracy, it becomes an arguement about the liberation of teenager, and it is incredibly hot
    
14. the phyiscality, the sexualised swagger of matt dillion, and his every day boy kind of non acting acting, is really interesting here, because it might be his most self aware roll, and it is where he refuses to play simplified heros or romantic leads, he is better here then the oscar fest of crash.
    
15. it is also a movie, even if it has denise richards and neve campbell, it eroticises the flesh of men and middle aged men, with as much of the gaze as it does nubile women, it does not discrimiate, the steam that rises off the bayou makes everyone grimy and sweaty and wet.
    
16. or at least it as much female as male, the scene where denise richards and mat dillon talk on the phone after the murder, both are shirtless, both are shot from the waist up.
    
17. kevin bacon with the white short sleeves, the conserative ties, the avaitor glasses, looks like how he did in jfk
18. the interesting thing about bacon and dillion in this film, is that they are the two actors who are in everything, (Dillion: 15 Roles as an Actor in the Decade since the movie was released) (Bacon: 20 Roles as an Actor in the Decade since the movie was released)
19. Daphne Riga who is the only person of colour in this whole movie, is the moral centre, no one knows what is happening, but she is the first to disbelieve the rape, and the first to suggest a conspiracy, and does not want to look for the body,
    
20. great one lines: ken, i dont fuck my students; you wont shoot her will you, i dont believe she is armed; what if someone was trying to strangle me or fuck me in the ass even; you skank, you slut; i want you to nail that shysters balls to the walls, why dont you start fucking her again you can spend it together, you dont think that little freak susie is gonna hold out, do you?, if you want to give this idiot something to do, you can get him to look into the kennedy assination; was this before or after little you whacked little susie with a wine bottle; thats just like you sam, you always wanted to cruise
    
21. the sound track, all salsa, merinuge, cuban drums, sinous drums, swamp rock, that upbeat rap rock shit that was popular for 30 seconds in the late 90s
    
22. this could have been made with robert mitchum in the 50s, or by cassevetes in the 70s, or even as a 60 minute pre code thing
    
23. goth equals reading celine's death on the installment plan,
    
24. the outsider, the goth becomes a truth teller, the first 60 minutes work in the template of perry mason or law/order, but with actual language, with sex, with fucking, with scandal, of the words, all of the acts that you cannot say
25. except everything is voiced
    
26. the sex cliches are a mark of american trash, the scandal and the opedial under currents are expected, the thing that isn't the thing that becomes shocking, is that it becomes a trenchant study of class--like erin brokovich, but outside the oscar winners model--the scene where the van ryan woman is visiting the wrong sign of the tracks, with the pen used as a weapon, with murrary being contemptous of money, is much more of a transgression then even the threesome, that the teacher of the year trophy is shattered by richards charachter, over anger about breaking the family trust,
    
27. The second third of the film, after the first being the procedual, is a study then of how to get out of debt, how to aquire capital in ways both nefearious or not, it becomes an illustration of woody gutheries line in pretty boy floyd about the fountain pen
    
28. best scene with bacon: his whole little speech about the inherent instability of a triad, that he delivers both scenes back to back, one at the pool house, one at the shotgun shack of neve's charachter, giving just enough informaiton in just enough way, one realises how good of a sleaze he is
29. egoyan;s where the truth lies, which is a high class version of the same themes, less poverty, more hollywood, but with the three somes and the tits, and the eye for real estate, has the same kind of sleaze, and so did jfk, and there is great pleasure in bacon doing that repteillion evil thing, and how little he gets to actually play it---(one is reminded of hickey's essay on hank williams and how money makes everything cleaner, that you have more kinds of soap)
30. the second threesome scene, where the first is about unadularated pleasure, the second becomes a geniune rape murder scene, where the champane bottle becomes the murder weapon, and that 5 second scne, with three whacks, then crimson liquid, like blood, like semen, splattering across the screen, and dillion looking like mitchum in cape fear, they kill the poor one, and then him in hip waders and a black t shirt, thru the swamp, burying the body
31. a deliverance thing? (Walter as the blind banjo player)
    
32. my mom would kill me if she knew i took the rover (one liner, but one deserving its own point, because its such a nice coda to the death)
33. i wonder if those two muder scenes that are shot in an oblique angle, is done because it is cheaper (the scene where van ryan tells about the murder to the cops, begins with a tracking shot thru venitan blinds though)
34. bacon's ia investigation qoutes the kissenger line about enemy action
    
35. the only true nude scene is bacon's
36. and it happens, when they are together, and the discussion is only vaguely about the deaths of two women, it is mostly about money.
    
37. does it become a variation of 10 dead indians, with the last person left
38. but the interesting thing is, to explain no loose ends is an orgy of expoisiton, for a movie with almost no exposition about mystery, that it ends with "no loose ends", plus it has that great little suprise hook of one of the kids who should have been dead killing kevin bacon as shark bait
    
39. and matt dillion is poisoned, by the person we think is killed, the question of who is alive and who is dead becomes an almost permenatly unstable task
40. so the last one alive at the end of it is the swamp trash
41. and what we know is stattaco coda, little anecdotes caught in between the closing credits