“Drive: An Illustrated Response” by Lisa Hanawalt
For all you folks who went gaga over the movie Drive, check out this brilliant piece of satire by Lisa Hanawalt. Some excerpts:
I like Ryan Gosling. I liked him in The Notebook, Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, and Google Image Search. And driving around LA at night while listening to pop music is my favorite thing on Earth, so seeing Drive was a no-brainer.
WARNING: CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS.
• The opening of the movie is so cool, with the Kavinsky music and the retro font and everything. I’ll be happy if this is all that happens for the rest of the movie.
• Ryan Gosling’s character reminds me a little of Clint Eastwood in The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, maybe because they’re both nameless. But there’s also a touch of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; He doesn’t have much personality, he does specific things with expert skill, and he always has this goofy, savant-like, “I dunno why I’m doing this!” expression, whether he’s fixing cars or stomping skulls.
• But maybe I’m just thinking about Rain Man because they both like toothpicks.
• We keep having to second guess what Driver actually does. He’s a getaway driver. Now he’s a cop! Wait, now he’s a stuntman … and a mechanic! Now he’s a U.S. Marshall and a bounty hunter! Now he’s a beauuuuuuuutiful lady!
• I can tell this theme song, “A Real Hero,” is going to be stuck in my head forever. It’s really good and catchy, but the lyrics are sung by a girl with weird standards when it comes to what makes dudes worth singing about. “You have proved to be a real human being!!! And a real hero…and a REAL HUMAN BEING!!!” Maybe she’s dated a lot of robots?
• The costume department did a good job of making “the Driver” look really, really cool.
• But I think they could have gone a little further and given him a couple more accoutrement (“accooltrement?”):
• Brian Cranston is as craggy as Albert Brooks is puffy. This is like watching an english muffin talk to a marshmallow.
• “Cranston & Brooks” sounds like a brand of marmalade I would spread on an english muffin. They should do a marketing campaign for Thomas english muffins and talk about their “Brooks and Crannies.”
• There are surprisingly few exciting driving scenes in this movie, but I’ll try not to be a baby about it because I can always watch something dumber and with a higher VRRRROOOM! factor later. 2 Fast 2 Furious? Or Crank 2? Oops, gotta pay attention now, the main characters are falling in love.
Absolutely brilliant stuff! Check out the rest of the piece here.
Kudos to my cooler than cool UNC screenwriting students who surfaced this: @Si_Carpenter for finding it in the first place and @LeStoltz for Tweeting it to my attention.
Drive is a good movie. But the way folks, especially those in L.A., were Tweeting and emailing about it during the film’s opening weekend, I went in expecting to see Martin Scorcese meets Sam Fuller with a twist of Jean-Luc Godard. Turns out the movie is “Pretty in Pink with a head smash”.
Hanawalt is my new “real hero.” And her response sets up perfectly for my analysis of Drive when I compare it to… Dolphin Tale. I’m serious. Coming soon!
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