Naturalism vs. Surrealism

The DVD for Vampire's Kiss came in the mail this week. What a terrific movie. Nick Cage at his finest. It had a commentary track, which was an unexpected surprise. It wasn't a special edition or anything, just some film company milking their back catalogue. It was the director and Nick Cage both talking about the movie, recorded cerca 1998 but I know the DVD wasn't available then so I would guess it was recorded for the laser disc (remember those?).

It's going in my top ten best commentary tracks ever. There is no discussion of what anybody ate, or things that happened off camera, or how hot is she, it's all about the craft. I love when people talk about the craft. I'm not even that particular about which craft. Here it was film making and acting (the director was not the writer, so there is no discussion of writing here).

Nick Cage spends a lot of time talking about his acting choices for the role. I think I said before that this is my favorite role of his. Better than Leaving Las Vegas. Honestly. On the commentary track, he talks about the difference between naturalism and surrealism and that while the vast majority of people are always striving for naturalism, what they don't get is that this is a style, just like anything else.

Wow. That clicked with me. As some one who does not strive for naturalism, it's great to hear him say that. I've never called what I like "surrealism", I call it "hyper-realism". Whether I made that up or read it or heard it, I don't know (man, I wish my brain came with footnotes). Anyway, the goal of naturalism is to recreate life as exactly has possible. As Cage said, there are many different styles of painting, only one of them is photo-realism.

I'm talking just from my own thoughts here, but I think the goal of my writing is not to recreate life as exactly as possible. Big surprise, I know, since I write fantasy, but there it is. I want to create certain experiences inside of the reader's mind and hopefully invoke certain emotions.

I don't think I'm explaining this well, I have to keep stoppping to help someone with his math. Let's try this: Shakespeare (ah, she plays the trump card!). Not natural. The very farthest from natural. Come on, solliquies? Who talks to themselves out loud, let alone in iambic pentameter? But this would fall under my category of hyper-realism. Ask someone to quote some Shakespeare to you. I guarantee what they peak will come from one of those solliquies.

And as most of you know, I have this lttle altar to James Joyce in my office. But that to me is setting the bar just a little too high. I would love to hear a commentary track of Joyce tearing apart the idea of naturalism. That would be something worth listening to, I guarantee it.

The problem with choosing not to work in the style of naturalism is that the vast majority of people prefer it. It's hard enough breaking into the world of publishing without deliberating doing something people aren't going to like. So it's a compromise. Oddly enough, I'm not one of those who thinks "I'll write one break-out novel and then I'll be free to write whatever I want!" because honestly the world doesn't work that way. When your second book tanks, your career is dead. Also, the whole idea is artistically dishonest, not to mention condescending.

Duty calls. Perhaps I can revisit this topic later. I never got to mention what Nick Cage did in that movie he did for Francis Ford Coppola, the one where Kathleen Turner goes back in time to high school. That's a brilliant example of one actor doing something surreal in a movie where everyone else strives for naturalism.

I think he did it just to stick it to his uncle.