Gossip Postmortem

Hi Aki,

Hi Aki,

Your answers here are funny. Still you are responding to characters as I describe what they do. If you saw the movie, you would also respond to the characters as played by the actors. Maybe you like the Derrick actor, maybe you don’t like the way he looks. That colors how we respond a lot.

But if I go by the way the movie sets things up, I think the filmmakers want us to like Derrick, be charmed by him in the beginning, but still have some doubts about him.

First scene, which I didn’t describe, because it’s not plot, more about positioning our responses to the characters: we see Jones studying in library, and hear her voiceover for the next scenes. This is bad, but it’s supposed to get us to identify with her from the start.

In the books she is reading are post-it notes on different pages, like ‘Why are you studying when you could be drinking with us?’ from Derrick.

Next scene Jones goes to the hip, trendy, too-fabulous bar. She joins Travis and Derrick at the bar. They are drinking, and Travis notices a cute girl, but he’s too shy to approach her. Jones and Derrick both encourage him, saying he’s cute himself, an artist, talented, and what girl would reject him? So Travis steels himself and goes to talk to the girl. We see him and the girl from Jones’s and derrek’s pov. It doesn’t seem to be going too well.

The bartender at this point butts in and calls Travis pathetic. Jones and Derrick look shocked and angry, but it’s Derrick who responds. At first he agrees with the bartender and even goes farther in insulting Travis over there. But then he says, ‘the reason is…’ and starts an elaborate lie about Travis being the son of a famous musician, and he’s shy because he can’t tell anybody who he really is, and that’s the problem.

So the bartender starts to try to guess what rock star is the father, and Derrick and Jones both say, ‘well, we can’t really say…’

When Travis gets back, very sad, to the bar, the bartender gives them free drinks on the house. And the people up and down the bar, who have listened in to Derrick’s lies, are now looking at Travis in different way. They are impressed and curious.

So outside the bar, on the way back home, Jones expresses some doubts about the morality of lying that way, and Derrick answers, ‘we got free drinks, didn’t we? And who really got hurt?’

So right off the bat we see that Derrick is a charming, impulsive liar. And that the theme of rumors and gossip is born. And that Jones is the one with a conscience, and Travis is the hanger-on, and not so great with girls.

This sequence is meant to position us towards the characters:

Jones is our main POV character, and the moral one, the studious one.

Derrick is charming, handsome, but at the same time…maybe he’s not so good or admirable. And he seems to have no conscience, so we wonder maybe, just how far would he go?

Travis is the hanger on, the third wheel here, less important. (later we will see what he does for visualizations of the gossip project, and it’s really impressive, and we get first-hand confirmation of Jones’s opinion that Travis is a really talented artist, maybe a genius.)

Then finally they are all back at the fabulous loft apartment and it’s further established that Derrick is the rich one, that Jones and Travis get to stay there rent-free, that they are not so rich. So again Derrick is attractive (because he’s not only handsome, clever, but he’s rich too) and yet we like Jones and Travis a bit more because they are not so rich, and more like us.

Derrick goes on to Naomi’s. He forces his way in, and they talk about the past. He finally says, ‘You ruined my life, with that lie, and now we’re even, because I ruined yours. I was there in the bathroom and I saw you and Beau and nothing happened, but I told everybody that he raped you, now your life is ruined like mine was.’

Her life is ruined? She didn’t rape anyone, though. I think they should have made her a rapist!!

Yes, this ‘I ruined your life’ doesn’t make total sense. When everybody thinks you raped a girl, and your family won’t talk to you, that’s almost ruining your life. When you think some guy raped you, and you have to go to the police to press charges, and so on, it’s very humiliating and hard, and you are subject to much gossip, and some people pity you, and Beau’s friends hate you (we don’t actually see any of this though) – then it’s not the same thing, though it is certainly not the sort of life at school anybody would want.

Plus we later learn that Derrick did in fact have sex with Naomi when she got scared in high school and asked him to stop. He did rape her. So if his life was ruined, he did it himself. And it wasn’t as bad as it should have been, because it was all hushed up by his family, and he didn’t have to go to jail, and he got his trust fund riches anyway.

*…next day Derrick and Jones start to reconcile. ‘Why should I let Naomi ruin my life?’ asks Jones. But then Travis comes in. He tells them Naomi is dead – she took pills or something and killed herself last night.

OH, and it’s another rumor??

Hey, you got it right away! I don’t think we’re supposed to guess right away, but I suspected it, and I bet a lot of the audience did too.

>

…who did it? Can you guess correctly? Can I guess?

Jones was in love with Naomi. But she found out that Naomi was actually a man. Feeling betrayed, Jones killed Naomi.

Come on! Play fair!

The entire story could be some experiment set by someone. Nobody gets hurt after all, they find out, maybe?

Well now you know the truth.

(written around 5 March 2009)