“Why can’t your driver’s license photo not
suck?”
This was the question [producer] Divi [Crockett] first posed
in August of 2004 after a less-than-ideal renewal photo relegated
her to join the legions of shame-filled drivers. My license photo
was nothing to brag about, but hey, I haven’t been carded
since my hairline receded beyond my temples.
While I agreed it was a funny notion and could make for a humorous film,
it also struck a chord for me that resonated with some deeper themes
that I found worth exploring. The whole notion of someone taking such
zealous pride in his work is funny but it also makes me somewhat nostalgic:
I mean, wasn’t there a time when people actually cared about their
jobs? Maybe not to the extreme of David’s character, but once upon
a time, waiters and crossing guards weren’t always closet actors
or opera divas, they just found satisfaction in doing their day jobs
well.
Okay sure, I know I’m idealizing a little, but perhaps the malaise
and vague dissatisfaction that plagues the growing global middle class
comes from this inability of most folks to simply seize the day a little
bit more. Perhaps Prozac prescriptions could be reduced, obesity curbed,
the national debt erased...
It seems perfectly clear to me that the key to enjoying life is to stop
standing outside of yourself and wondering how cool or successful you
appear, and just be present and engage in life fully.
What I love about our character is that he’s such a geek, so laughable
and silly, and yet you can’t help but love him, root for him, and
feel that wonderful catharsis when Don talks him down off the ledge.
I think that as much as we don't want to admit it, most of us don’t
have the guts to live our lives with that kind of passion and so we can’t
help admiring someone who does. We all love to make excuses about how
our circumstances prevent us from taking charge of our lives, but here’s
David, in one of the most dehumanizing environments imaginable--and through
his dedication, he’s able to find the beauty in the world, even
in the most unlikely of places.
Artistic License is also about
the struggle for individuality and identity in an increasingly
automated and computerized society. In David’s despair,
when his world has been crushed and his magic depleted, he
sees how the licensing process is converting people into
faceless autonomatons. Of course, we wanted to keep it somewhat
funny, but his vision of Hell is a terrifying world where
he is being carried towards the pit of darkness and there
is no one to help or stop him. It is what the world looks
like when no one puts his or her heart and soul into whatever
it is they do.
The nod to The Wall is not arbitrary: That work is about a man
who becomes so lost in his own psychosis that he cannot engage with the
outside world. That is David’s (and perhaps my own) worst nightmare.
So in some small way, this film is a treatise against that kind of eventuality.
Throughout the process I always thought of David and Don as a sort of Batman
and Robin duo, and I tried to keep that sense of pure goodness of
intent present throughout the story. I didn’t want the movie to
look like a Batman and Robin episode (that comicbook/noir style has been
so overplayed), but I did want to illuminate that simplifed notion of
good and evil. I also used that model for Don as the innocent Boy Wonder
providing David/Batman with an admiring reflection to give him renewed
confidence in the face of calamity and doubt.
Visually, I used models like Brazil, Raising Arizona and The
Hudsucker Proxy to inspire the look of a stylized world of vast
beaurocracy seen through the eyes of a naive and idealistic neophyte.
The deliberate use of subjective camera angles, a simplified color scheme
and dynamic match-editing all aided in realizing David’s simplistic
view of the world. I think this contributes to emphasizing the innocence
and purity of heart that permeates the character and utlimately the whole
film.
I believe that it is only when we are able to put aside our cynacism
and see the world the way David does that we can engage it with the zeal
that he does, and thereby find the pleasure and the beauty that is there
all around us, even in the most unlikely and unexpected of places...
even in the DMV.
-Michael Wohl, March 2005
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