Coffee And Cigarettes (And Tea And Rock and Roll and Tesla)

So here's the thing about a film that is just a series of vignettes, it's not particularly easy to analyze, especially when combined with the sheer obtuseness of the dialogue of this film. It is a black and white film made in the early part of the Noughties when something like this could be completely accepted. I feel like the best comparison is Clerks, though this does not have anywhere near the amount of dirty humor that Clerks had, and replaces it with a determined awkwardness. The best way to look at something like this, with somewhat interconnected themes and repeated dialogue but not characters is on a scene by scene basis. I'll do a summary of what the segment means, and any other things that come to mind based off what is seemingly a series of random conversations.

Strange to Meet You

This segment introduces a number of elements that will come up later: chance meetings, the awkwardness of strangers,  the drive behind our obsessions, and most importantly coffee and cigarettes in combination. This bit is one of the funnier segments, whereupon at the end one man agrees to go to the other's dentist appointment. In summary, the world's weird and that's okay, just shut up and drink your coffee.

Twins
  
Steve Buscemi believes that Elvis is still alive and it was his evil twin brother that took over and made him fat. Things that seem similar are often quite different and what we see is oh so rarely what we get. That and the fact that twins aren't the same person, bit of an important thing to remember should you ever meet any.

Somewhere in California

Awkward conversations where it is proved that no one is as famous as they want to believe they are. That and doing a tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen is just a normal day in the life of a musician. Of course anything interesting like that is shoved to the side for passive aggressiveness and general spite.

Those Things's Kill Ya

Cigarettes are actually bad for you, who'd thunk it. That and for some reason the silent treatment works on fathers, especially when it's for a good cause like pea snacks. There was no metaphor there, just another regular strange occurrence in the lives of these people who are similar to us but also quite different, but only as we all are.

Renné

Just wanting to talk to someone is a damn shame when they reject you. That and don't trust the lady with gun magazines, I'm sure she could be perfectly nice, but just don't fuck with her coffee. It's not a polite thing to do, even if you're a waiter or busboy as the case may be.

Cousins

Fame and non-fame at a collide, but all wrapped up in one package as two very different characters are played by the same actor. There are a lot of things to say about how differently society treats celebrities for good and for bad, and this little bit has some good stuff to say on both sides, though it ends up a bit for the negative. 

Jack Shows Meg His Tesla Coil

No metaphor here either. Just a guy who wants to show off his neat little electricity bringing death defying machine. They resurrected the monster I'm sure it's great for showing off to a girl who may or may not be your sister. Of course given the actual actors and all that there's other stuff going on, but just looking at the scene there are equal chances of girlfriend, girl he likes, and sister. Interesting how that is. 

Cousins?

An awkward guy tries to convince a famous actor they're related, and that should mean great things for the both of them. Unfortunately it turns out that fame isn't everything it was cracked up to be, and then everything starts to get recursive, with earlier dialogue playing out exactly again. This is past the halfway point and it is clear this is the real meat of human relationships the film wants to explore, but never quite does in a full way.

Delirium

Bill Murray meets the Wu-Tang Clan. Hilarity ensures.

Champagne

Death is inevitable, deal with it.

In summary, people talking about boring subjects in a drab way can be a fascinating insight into the human condition and what it really means to be any number of adjectives, but in the end it can also be really bloody boring. Luckily Coffee and Cigarettes maintains just the right amount of humor and that kind of stiff deflated tension that echoes throughout all British history and still manages to be entertaining. Good on them for a solid film that seeks to do one thing and never stray from the path. Good on them for Bill Murray too, that man is a genius.
 

Those That Service Us

They live life everyday, bored of their seemingly tepid existence. All this is compounded when one clerk, Dante, is bullied into coming in on his day off. This classic 1994 film by director Keven Smith is one of the defining movies of the indie movement, and it's development is amazingly entertaining. He maxed out 8 credit cards by pretending to be his boss, and work night and day to make sure the film got done. Overall he got about one hour of sleep for many night, nearly driving himself insane.

The film has its problems, and its limited budget shines through in numerous instances. The most obvious of this is the fact that it is in black and white, a trend that ended just more than 25 years before this film came out, but the incredibly limited budget made it the only option. The actors are also, not the highlight of the film, the limited budget meant friends and family of Smith's had to come in and 'act', but sometimes the silences are obviously the actors forgetting lines, and some of the reactions seem stilted.

This is also Smith's first real film, and the camera angles and the technical stuff are all obviously amateur. Despite all of this, I still love the film. This is a result of the dialogue, it is so well written that the rest of the movie is excused from its many faults. The movie is funny, it's full of pop culture references that are more than just quotes, and has a loving knowledge of comedy.

It is also a very human film, from the customers who come in just wanting a pack of smokes, to the main characters Dante and Randal who are characterized as normal people, they contrast each other extremely well with Randall openly spitting in the customer's faces, sometimes literally, and Dante bottling up his anger until it bursts at the climax of the film.

This is what makes the writing so impressive, it just seems like a group of friend's talking, because that is what it is. You don't need to make up dialogue when your typical conversations fit the characters, and it adds realism because they are the kind of conversations that go on. It also helps define the target audience and makes it so much more enjoyable by drawing you in. For example the Star Wars conversation in the middle sounds exactly like something we would say, in fact I'm sure I've had a similar discussion in real life.

Clerks is one of my favorite 90s films, I feel it really represents the decade. The Seinfeldian nature was right at its peak, and the conversations are so real, that the faults of the film just fade into the background as the witty dialogue takes the show. I suppose I love the film because if it comes to that I could see me in that position, it's not favorable but it is a distinct possibility, and that makes it real, and a real movie like this is strictly superior to all those with painstakingly written dialogue, that it stands as a gem in a shit.