Spun :: SimplyScripts Screenwriting Discussion Board

Remember a lot of kids talking about this one at my high school when it came out. Never got around to watching it. Always wondered what it was like. Saw a documentary in Paris about music video directors and never realized that Jonas Akerlund, one of the biggest music video directors today, directed a film. When I found out it was Spun, I decided to check it out.

Not sure Spun could be a simpler film storywise. A deadbeat meth head (Jason Schwartzman) gets hired to drive a meth cook (Mickey Rourke) around town, struggles with addiction and strives to pay back his ex-girlfriend a pathetically small sum of money (don't remember the exact figure but definite <500). That's it. No particular story structure to speak of. Just several random events loosely centered on this one guy but not exclusively so.

I think a lot of people who see Spun will assume it's influenced by Requiem for a Dream. That's a fair assessment but anyone who thinks this is the case probably isn't familiar with Jonas Akerlund.

Jonas Akerlund is probably most famous for Lady Gaga's ridiculous but breathtaking slutty video for Telephone. He's also slightly known amongst metalheads as one of the first drummers for legendary black metal prototype Bathory who hit it big after directing Madonna's Ray of Light video (how else would Lady Gaga end up with a studded jacket sporting Doom and G.I.S.M. patches?). What's really to be said about the guy is that he's one of the pioneers of the MTV/music video style of directing. Quick-cut editing, over-saturated colors, time lapse imagery, Steadicam, goofy sound effects... Akerlund had his hands in this stuff even more so than Zack Snyder did. So while both Spun and Requiem had a ton of extreme closeups of eyes every time someone shot up or took a snort of meth, both films are different animals all together as well as Akerlund and Aronofsky different directors.

With Spun, Akerlund takes everything from his music videos into the film world. That said, it's safe to say this is one of the most in-your-face films of all time. It's even got the world record for most cuts (the quickest cut is two frames long). Seeing as Akerlund actually had a hand in creating the style so many music video directors rip off today, it's even more in-your-face than usual. Within five minutes, you'll feel like you're own meth yourself and it only gets worse. Even more, Akerlund comes from the metal world so he's not afraid to take things a little further than most. One of his signatures is disgustingly gross closeups, often times of people's teeth, eyes, fingernails... etc. and seeing as most of the characters are filthy meth heads with zits and gingivitis, well... prepare to be sickened is all I'm saying.

Unfortunately, it gets tiresome pretty quickly. The editing is all over the place, as it is one of Akerlund's trademarks, but what's worse is the cinematography. It's not inherently bad but a lot of shots seem like they'd be better suited for music videos and end up recurring quite a bit. It gets very redundant after a bit. That's not to say it doesn't fit the film. It does. But it's just not my bag.

There are a few interesting animation sequences that recall Natural Born Killers and some interesting use of censor bars and bleeping out profanity. Once again, it's a little jarring but it fits the film. The sex scenes actually feel more graphic with the censor bars than without as they permit a lot of shots you couldn't otherwise get if you wanted to receive an R rating. There's also a pretty hilarious montage meant to recall 70s cop shows like Starsky & Hutch though here, I wasn't sure if I was laughing with the film or at the film. Maybe both.

Storywise, character-wise, dialogue-wise... I was reminded a lot of Crank in that both seemed to be the movie that didn't know where to stop. Only Crank was the movie that knew where to stop and didn't stop... then it knew where to stop to be "the movie that didn't know where to stop"... and didn't stop... then kept going and going and going until the filmmakers ran out of ideas... then they thought of some more and threw them in at the last minute. Crank II was that movie times a billion gajillion whatever. Therein lies the charm of those movies (if you can call it charm).

Spun only knows how to be the movie that didn't know where to stop and in a weird sort of counter-intuitive way, it seems tame. Still, all the characters are cartoons. No one acts (or reacts) in a realistic way and the dialogue in jam-packed with "fuck you's," "shut the fuck up's" and childish one liners like "I'll let you lick me where I pee." I've never commented on costumes in a film before ut a lot of the shit they had people wearing in this one was really strange. It was almost like the cast and crew were enjoying a white trash/racist stereotype costume party for the duration of the shooting. I doubt these outfits would've been worn by the characters' real life counterparts (who exist, apparently). Pretty much everyone is a deadbeat junkie who sits around all day except for Rourke who is naturally the character who facilitates this kind of behavior. So yeah. None of the characters are supposed to be likable... except Schwartzman's, probably. But his character duct tapes a girl's mouth and eyes shut and leaves her in an apartment with a skipping CD on full blast for four days. What a scumbag. Peter Stormare and Alex Arquette made appearances as feds. I actually thought they were pretty hilarious but only because their dialouge and outfits were so ridiculous. I know it was supposed to be that way but just the same...

I won't comment on the acting because I think the writers (who were actually meth heads at one point) wrote the entire cast into corners. I also won't comment because almost everyone in the cast are people with genuine acting chops. In addition to Schwartzman and Rourke, we have Brittany Murphy, John Leguizamo, Mina Suvari, Patrick Fugit... maybe not the cream of the crop but certainly decent actors who had no choice but to take this shit as far as it could go. Nobody with any acting ability (or sense, for that matter) would've tried to play it straight.

Okay. So one thing's for certain at the end of the day. I know why so many people liked this movie in high school. Because everyone who liked this movie at my high school was a cokehead/cidhead loser (my high school had 60 kids so I'm hardly generalizing). As for the movie itself... it is what it is. I think if it were done a different way, it wouldn't be the same. Might even have be worse. I mean it's better off at being a stupid cartoony movie about drugs then some kind of Requiem wannabe. At least it's got a cult following. Those don't come easy. I will say it wasn't my cup of tea. I don't tend to like "so bad, it's good" films because all the "so bad, it's good" films I like are actually really good. This was not one of those.