D.J. Caruso...Friend or Foe?

For those of you who haven't been keeping up, there's this guy out there directing movies named D.J. Caruso. We've written about him a couple of times now, which got me thinking -- how do we feel about this guy? We want Sam Mraovich to keep making movies, but what about the man behind, most recently, Eagle Eye and Disturbia?

Here's the skinny on those films: They're Hitchcock films. The people behind Disturbia are currently being sued for creating an unauthorized remake of Rear Window, and check out what Boston.com has to say about Eagle Eye:

"Eagle Eye," [like Disturbia], is a movie only a copyright lawyer could love. It strip-mines at least three Hitchcock classics - "North by Northwest," "The Wrong Man," and "The Man Who Knew Too Much" - then commits unlawful assault on Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" just for the heck of it...Is it any fun? For an act of pillage, it's pretty entertaining. Bring earplugs and Dramamine, though, and keep "Vertigo" cued up on the DVD player for when you get home.

Now, The Deej, as I'll be referring to him from now on, is 43 years old. This is important, because if he was 25 and had just gotten out of film school, he might not know any better than to steal outright entire pieces of classic films. But as someone who's been directing films since 1995, he should know better, which means he probably does, but that knowledge is not deterring his quick fingers (intellectual property-wise). So what does it all mean?

1) The Deej could simply be a talentless hack who has built his career by aping luminaries who came before him, trusting that audiences/studio executives will be either so ignorant or so blase about his thievery that they'll let him continue unimpeded (which, if this is the case, it's worked according to plan - go Deej).

2) The Deej is someone who watched Hitchcock's catalogue and thought "Man, I wish I would've made those movies," and now is trying to do just that because no one's stopping him. I can understand this to a certain extent. After Back to the Future came out, I wanted a DeLorean. I'd still take one if somebody left it in my driveway.

3) The Deej, could, in fact, be a kindred spirit, and welcome invitee to the PSUA, who harbors the dream of one day creating a sort of arch-pastiche, a film constructed entirely of recycled pieces, a sort of mainstream cineplex-and-popcorn found-art experience. This we could get behind. So which is it? Well, I've had kind of a bad day, so unless The Deej contacts us and lets us in on the joke, at which point he will immediately inducted into the Practicing Surrealists Union of America, all dues waived, I'm guessing he's (1).

D.J Caruso, I propose you are a toolbox.* And yes, that is my gauntlet at your feet.

Vince out.

*Definition from UrbanDictionary.com: The term "toolbox" refers to someone who is such a tool that his supreme stupidity is on the level of what you'd expect from a collaboration of several tools.

The Digital (Eagle) Eye in the Sky

You probably haven't heard, but there's a movie coming out called Eagle Eye with Mutt from Indiana Jones and the girl who had half her face cut off in the Maid of Honor billboards, directed by the guy who accidentially remade Rear Window without realizing it.

Eagle Eye is about this all-seeing, all-knowing, tech-savvy shadow organization that controls people by ruining their lives. Or so the trailers tell me. To promote the film, all over LA they've put up digital billboards near big intersections that say things like "La Brea and Olympic: If you want to live, you will obey. Eagle Eye." and "Overland and Venice: If you want to live, you will obey. Eagle Eye." And so on. I have no strong feelings about the ads, but those digital billbaords are cool and they've given Dan and me a great idea for public-installation art.

Here's what we'd like to do: Buy some ad space on digital billboards, and set up traffic cameras by them so we can see the cars sitting in traffic near the signs. We'll get a license plate number of some car sitting in traffic, and somebody with a computer hooked up to the billboard will feed that license number into a message saying something like "Red Chevy Malibu, License Number 5VRU946. Your lights are on." Or "Black Ford Ranger, License Number 3FGW553. You are getting a parking ticket." These would be lies, of course, and hopefully very confusing to the drivers in question. We could also tap into the California DMV database to get the names of the people the cars are registered to, and get their names worked in. "Dan Knight, yes, you in the BMW 325i, your boss is trying to reach you." Or, "Chris Henderson, yes, you in the Prius, your wife Nancy just left your house with the pool boy." Things like that.

The real coup de grace, though, would be creating fake AMBER Alerts, things that read "Child Abduction In Progress...(insert make, model, and license number of the car directly in front of you)." If one purpose of art is to make people uncomfortable (and it sure can be!), then we think this is just the trick. I know it's not nice, but hey, we're Surrealists, not a couple of guys going around handing out Girl Scout Cookies.

So we're looking for funding for that. We're looking at you, NEA.

Vince out.

PS. We do recognize there would be a certain degree of Surreality in Dan and I -- two adult men with rapidly-evolving facial hair and a talent for non sequitur -- randomly handing out Girl Scout Cookies, but we feel the point remains valid.