In Boozo Veritas #68 by John King

MEMO from The Secret HQ of The Drunken Odyssey

To: Teege Braune, Author of In Boozo Veritas

From: John King, Host of The Drunken Odyssey

Subject: The Unspeakable Awfulness of Eyes Wide Shut

Date: December 1, 2014

Teege, this obsession is unworthy of you, dear friend.

A year ago, on the platform of the Grand Floridian monorail station, with Christmas tunes oozing from the eaves, and huge wreathes prematurely dangling, you extolled Stanley Kubrick’s final cinematic hurrah, that turgid psychosexual melodrama that is part architecture porn, part Noh play (maybe it’s just the acting), and part predictable postmodern conspiracy narrative.

Tom Cruise’s tortured innocence as the private physician of the one percent was unbearable.

The notion that there is a privileged subculture in modern New York City so sexually repressed that only a black mass-style orgy (or is it an orgy-style black mass?) could liberate their Puritanical souls is ludicrous. Like the show Friends, Eyes Wide Shut imagines a New York City unpopulated by those actual New Yorkers who live there.

Nicole Kidman was even more unbearable than Tom Cruise.

Am I supposed to be enjoying it on a merely impressionistic level, as a sort of affectless tone poem that isn’t really about the human experience, but something sublimely inhuman, like the last sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey? Are hallucinogens necessary for appreciating Eyes Wide Shut?

Is the movie just something for the eyes to focus on while listening to Jocelyn Pook’s maddening music?

As a friend, I ask you these things, because your harassment on this issue has gotten out of control. The way you boom your mitts on my door after midnight, with that ratty VHS copy clutched in your hand is startling my poor neighbors. You’re like the Ancient Mariner with this wretched tape as your albatross that you are somehow proud of.

Apparently, the old woman two doors down from me invited you in, and you showed the movie to her and offered your own expert commentary on the film while she watched it. At least you found someone who had a VHS machine. You drank all her lemonade after you finished the Guinness you had brought. She thought you were very nice. Does Jenn know you are doing this?

Really, buddy. I’m getting worried.

_______

John King (Episode, well, all of them) is a podcaster, writer, and ferret wrangler.