Rian's Forum

another question (hopefully your running man battle armor lets you answer this one ...)

in the brick talk pamphlet i picked up at the angelika, there is a picture of laura sitting on the edge of the bed naked, which was cut from the film.

is there some sort of context you can give about the shot. you said you cut mostly inessential parts, which leads me to believe that she did NOT have sex with brendan, but i wouldn't be able to place why the shot would be in there otherwise.

hopefully, it's on the dvd as a deleted scene, but (if possible) i would still like some sort of information about it.

thanks again.

It is indeed included in the DVD as a deleted scene. It was a post-Sundance cut I decided to make, just that one shot of her sitting on the edge of the bed putting on her shirt between the make-out scene and their bed conversation. I just felt that it was better left ambiguous as to the amount of hanky panky that occurred. It's the one cut I made that I occasionally second guess, but there it is.

I have to admit that is one thing I endured a fair amount of ribbing for. It is usually something like, "A cigarette? Wow, that must've been one hell of a kiss!" I've been talking about this movie so much that my friends seem to think that it is somehow my movie and that all comments should be directed at me personally... shall I give them your number Rian?

Oh, and because I have nowhere else to rant about this, those bastards never paid me back. I'm seriously considering getting my head examined for paying $70 to go to a movie that I'd already seen for free.

_________________
- Em
www.calebkane.com

In all fairness to the power of not so subtle implication, we DO show them kiss passionately while writhing in bed, we fade to black over climbing rhythmic music, then we come up on them lying sedate some time later with her smoking a cigarette. Errrrm, some kiss indeed, I suppose. (cough)

but it's also a bit too vague. in the sense that they kiss passionately, however brendan is also totally out of it, having swallowed buckets of blood and sustaining numerous punches to the head and body. i almost saw it as them kissing after him sobbing then him passing out before things progressed. i feel like if they did get it on, they wouldn't have woken up totally dressed, maybe just partially.

if it were my movie, i'd put that scene back in, cough cough hint nudge.

Well on the flip side then, does it make sense that they would (to coin a phrase) "do it" at that point in the story?

Honestly it was mostly a gut reaction to it rather than a well reasoned arguement that made me cut it. I'm still trying to figure out exactly why it felt wrong with it in there.

Actually, I thought the ambiguity was great. Considering these are high-schoolers, and ignoring the steadily declining age at which kids become sexually active these days, I was thinking that maybe they _did_ just make out.

Seems like it would have fit in with all the other situational oddities that came with the high school setting, like the brilliant "You got a discipline problem with me, than either detain or suspend me," or however it went. Ahhh, just like an undercover detective and his captain.

right, i understand the high school ambiguity, but it's also been made clear that they're sexually active. they're ALL more mature for their age, clearly adults in kid bodies (which is a central part to why the story works so well), and brendan has clearly consummated his relationship with emily.

i can't help but feel like her motives with brendan aren't so clear cut. sure, she's using him, but she also has feelings. she mentioned how she noticed him, despite his best efforts to make sure no one did. and you can sort of see her feelings throughout, especially in the end. and that charged moment actually works a lot better in my opinion had they just slept together. it shows brendan's dedication to emily and his "case," turning on laura despite having just slept with her. kissing is one thing, but the sex actually makes that scene really stand out character-wise and also in the sense of finality. more is at stake for both characters when she begs him to believe, almost pleading for him to think back to their newfound closeness, appealing to his trust, essentially.

it's definitely multi-layered and the movie certainly is fine without it, but i think that their dynamic is better with than without.

ps the above guest comment was me on campus, apparently not logged in.

I still assumed they had sex even though that scene was taken out.



I actually didn't get the feeling that Laura was really into him at all, but that she really was just using him. She just knew what to say to manipulate him to try to get him to trust her. She knew that Brendan was going to try and find out exactly what happened and she was doing whatever she could to get him under her thumb.

And if they did sleep together, I don't think it really meant anything to Brendan. He was obviously emotionally distraught at that point and was thinking of Emily when Laura came to him, and I felt that maybe he was even using her in a sense, for comfort. It was the first time in the film he couldn't hold up anymore and let himself break down and cry over the death of his girlfriend. And I'm not sure exactly how much he had figured out at that point, because Laura had already stolen the brick by that scene. And even if he didn't see the cig until after the sex, she was still probably a definite suspect to him. I don't think he ever once gave his trust completely to her, but instead just made her think he trusted her and then was able to use her to help him (rides, watching his back, etc.) without making her think he suspected her. Because he did always tell Brain to stay away from her, because I think he knew just how manipulative she was.

Just my opinion, I think I need to watch the movie again...

right but regardless of being distraught, which i definitely think speaks for why the situation was available to them, there is definitely a huge act of will in sleeping with her.

when emily left him, brendan shut down completely. he didn't randomly go out and sleep with other girls, just sat alone. clearly, his need for intimacy wasn't so much a ragining libido as much as someone to be there while he finally cried. but the kiss, which she initiated, and was also superfluous in his healing process (if she just held him while he cried, she would have gained the same as if they had slept together theoretically), so the sex was a conscious choice for both of them that, in my mind, transcended the obviousness of the situation.

and when she kept saying that it wasn't true, there was definitely a hint of fear in her eyes and i don't think that it's necessarily totally from knowing she's caught, but also watching things dissolve with brendan, realizing that he will never want her. just because she's a femme fatale and manipulative doesn't mean that she doesn't want him for reasons other than personal gain. that's actually what makes her such a complex character, and in my mind, succeed as one.

I've seen this thing twice --- gotta say, I wondered too - because of the smoking. But then I thought about how the genre had been lifted and grafted onto a high-school world and it worked in a playful way ... to imagine that they had simply made out ... and then she lit a cigarette. (I'm not one who actually believes that high-schools are repositories of innocence - but the joke functioned in the moment.)

but it's not supposed to function in a joke manner (normally they'd have sex, but since the setting is now hs, they just kissed and it served the same purpose).

i think without that scene, the implication of sex is too vague to even be one.

I also agree with this statement. Laura played her hand close the whole time, but she wasn't acting at the end. She cared about Brendan. She wanted, also, to be adored by him the way he adored Emily ... she more or less said it. "I see what you're trying to do for her and yet I don't know anyone who would do that for me." In his mission to find out the truth about Em's death, he didn't care if he died. That kind of love is enough to hook any woman. We like 'em a little crazy.

i almost wanted them to end up together, in all honesty, but more due to her being so incredibly attractive and sweet, despite a good amount of it being pretense.

I agree that Brendan's fierce dedication to completing his mission is what hooked Laura. She wanted him bad, but I don't know that I'd say she actually cared about him. I think she had a rare moment of truth when she said, "I don't know anyone who would do that for me." She wanted someone to care about her enough to want to go to those lengths and she saw that Brendan was capable of that kind of emotion. But that, in my opinion, is where her connection to him ended.

_________________
- Em
www.calebkane.com