pixiedude

1) I saw an ad for a satire set in a Christian high school called "Saved" today. It's opening in Seattle tomorrow. I don't know if this is the nationwide release date. Anyway, it stars Jena Malone, who played Gretchen.

2) CUT SCENES SPOILERS (?)

I don't know if a spoiler alert is still relevant. What follows is info about some scenes in the D.C. that I gather from reviews and comments here may have been added back to the original. The Seattle Weekly said that some "family-bonding" scenes had been put back in.

There is a scene in the second half where Donnie's dad gives him a supportive speech about standing up to the conspiracy of bull****.

Later, when his mom is about to drive to the airport with the Sparkle Motion troupe, he hugs her and tells her there isn't something broken in his brain. She hugs him back and says she knows.

On the way to his last trip to Carpathian Ridge, with Gretchen's body in the car, he stops at home, and kisses his older sister's hair as she sleeps in a chair in the living room.


The movie ends with a plastic-covered body being rolled out of the house on a gurney as the NTSB guys go in. It's morning, Donnie's family are crying in the yard as a crane hoists the jet engine. Gretchen rides down the street on her bike. She stops across the street, and asks a little boy what happened. As he tells her, she looks at the house and people as though with a sense of deja vu, and makes eye contact with Donnie's mother. They wave at each other.

As far as "family bonding" scenes, there is the funny potty-mouth contest at the dinner table in the beginning, but I can't imagine the rest of the film without that, so I figure it must have been in the original release.

When I went to see it Sunday, at a theater near the University of Washington, I realized it was rated R, because a group of teenagers in line ahead of me wanted to buy tickets, but the cashier said they were too young. That is really a shame. There are so many dumb movies about teenagers. Here is a *smart* movie about teenagers for a change, and teenagers aren't even allowed to see it.

The song playing when Donnie dies, Mad World, has stayed with me all week. I looked it up in Google a few days ago, and read that it was the number one song in Great Britain in Dec 2003. Which surprised me quite a bit. First, because it was a cover of a song from over a decade ago, but also because it is so pessimistic. Chart toppers in the US more often express aggression, or seduction, perhaps sometimes dissapointment in love, but not the global sadness of Mad World. Perhaps this sheds light on some important difference between the US and the UK. In US pop culture, the "manly" way to handle sorrow is to substitute anger in its place.