Warming Up

Tooth hanging on. Childhood extended by another day.

Tonight I watched “The Cobbler” for the second time in my life. It was a bit different than I remembered, but I might not have been paying too much attention the first time. I remembered it as more of a knockabout comedy in the style of Sandler’s hit movies, but weirdly it’s actually an attempt at doing a more arthousy movie in the style of Vice-Versa or Big. It does not work in the least, but this time I sort of respected the conceit a bit more. Making art should be about taking chances and the writer/director has an amazing pedigree and has won an Oscar (not for the Cobbler though) and worked on brilliant movies like The Station Agent and Up.

Both he and Sandler were attempting something different, by making a sort of more serious comedy film about magic realism, but falling between two stools and making something that wasn’t funny or revealing of the human spirit and which made no sense either.

I was doing my non-director’s commentary thing on this one, but to spice things up a bit and experiment with the format a bit (making art is about taking chances) I decided to have a guest. 

This had been my intention when I first thought of doing something like this as a podcast. I knew Nick Helm hated Sliding Doors and wondered if he’d come round and watch it with me and trash talk it and point out its sliding flaws. We never got round to it as in the end I thought the podcast format was probably too limited for it - you’d need to track down the film, start it at the right time. It would be an odd way to spend some alone time.

But with Twitch, I realised, this can become a live and more community experience, though I’ve done Sliding Doors already and as Nick Helm is not my cleaner (yet) I couldn’t have him over. I wondered if my wife would like to experience the film for the first time and thought that might be fun. So we gave it a go. Download a copy of the film (it’s on Netflix and Amazon Prime) and have a look.

It’s a bit of a struggle to talk about a film for two hours on your own and so having a conversation makes it more fun and Catie was very funny and made some excellent points. 

Of course I could easily have a remote guest every week and this afternoon I wondered if there might be “Probably Best Known For” format in which I watched an obscure film with one of the stars or writers. It would be cool to find out what Adam Sandler or writer/director Tom McCarthy give us the lowdown on The Cobbler for example. They’d have to be thick-skinned and game for a laugh, but it wouldn’t just be a piss-take though. I am interested in what makes a film a failure almost more than what makes one a success. This idea got the financing and support to be made and has an incredible cast and writers. They must have seen something more in this than the chance to make money (which I would say is the impetus for some of Sandler’s other work). Sure not many people are going to enjoy a lazy man who has never made a film in his life being critical of their work, but they might enjoy the chance to discuss their noble failures. 

My own version would be “I Killed Rasputin” which I believed in enough to sink in a large amount of my own money, but ended up my biggest commercial failure (like The Cobbler was for Sandler, though I suspect the film’s budget was greater). Sadly or luckily this was never committed to film so I can’t analyse the mistakes, though I have no one to blame but myself. And the stupid world for not recognising my genius.

The Cobbler is fascinating though (or I found it so this time) as it will satisfy no one. The comedic possibilities of being able to turn into anyone with the same sized feet (as you as long as you have stitched their shoes on a magic stitching machine) are barely and inconsistently explored. Sandler marvels that he has got a Chinese accent when he’s a Chinese man (in a scene that looks like straying towards the casual racism of his other work), whilst not remembering that he’s literally just had an Indian accent when in the shoes of an Indian man. He is a sad and miserable cobbler, unhappy with his lot and looking for redemption, but the film barely gives him that. 

The morality of taking on someone else’s persona is not really explored. He steals from a restaurant and is all for basically sexually assaulting a woman in a shower (if you accept that taking on someone else’s persona in order to have sex with their partner is rape) and only fails to do so because he can’t wear his shoes in the shower and doesn’t have the imagination to fake a phone call, leave and work out a scenario where he can go through with his crime fully clothed (or at least shod).

He suddenly gets a conscience later, confessing to the police about his accidental murder of Method Man and attempting to return money to Ellen Barkin. Which seems odd as they are all very guilty people, whereas the restaurant he stole from and the woman he ogled in the shower had done nothing wrong.

Rather than a pretty unzany heist, it might have been nice to see him wrestling with the issues of his less murdery crimes and at least spending some time enjoying the freedom of being other people (we see him on a swing at one point, but there’s no reason he couldn’t do that as himself). A Groundhog Day approach might have worked better and could still have included some darkness in it. But you don’t warm to Sandler in the way you do to Bill Murray and there are close to zero laughs. Sandler fans would be very disappointed and art house film fans would also be unsatisfied. 

The ending is terrible too, with the unsurprising twist (spoiler alert) that Steve Buscemi is actually Dustin Hoffman wearing Steve Buscemi’s shoes. He’s been working next door to his son all this time to avoid some people who would harm him if they found him. And has only revealed himself after all this time because his son has chanced across the stitcher machine and got into trouble. He’s left his wife sad and alone and now dead, but why? He has no explanation. Even though he has a sure fire way of escaping from himself at any time, he has decided to watch over his son, but not tell him who he is and only goes to see his wife once she is dead. It’s horrible. He also has a subterranean room full of all the magic shoes that he and his father made on the machine. But why? They are useless unless they want to be the zombie of the dead owner. 

It turns out he’s some kind of billionaire, which again seems a bit rich (in both senses) given that his son has been struggling along without him and is about 50 and could have been resting up somewhere and let someone else run his cobbler business for him. But Dustin Hoffman must have had some bigger reason for abandoning his wife and not helping his son, that I presume would have been covered in The Cobbler 2. 

It then seems to transform into a different kind of film all together that implies all tradespeople have similar stuff going on and the world is full of dry cleaners and probably grave diggers and condom manufacturers who are abusing their position to commit all kinds of crimes. And it’s worked well enough for Dustin Hoffman, so screw his stupid family.

It’s such a monumentally confusing mismatch that it’s almost my favourite film of all time. A fun way to spend an evening with my wife though and hope the people who watched along enjoyed/endured it too.