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Blue in the Face, the love of Brooklyn

© Andrej Ristic

Wayne Wang, the director, and Paul Auster, the writer, were making the film, Smoke, about the joys of the life that a simple smoke store gives to the community in Brooklyn, were having way too much fun making the movie. They felt such richness of the character that they did not want to stop and persuaded Miramax to give them more money to shoot another film right there. It was a completely improvised film, in which they gave the ability to the celebrities they brought to talk until they were Blue in the Face.

The story within is a continuation of Smoke. Auggie (Harvey Keitel) fights the store owner (Victor Argo) who has an idea to sell it so that they could make a health food store there, part of a chain, something horribly impersonal and in contrast with everything that the little Brooklyn Cigar Company stands for. Auggie explains to him that the store is the reference point for the community, and the bits trail off to explain that when Brooklyn lost its Dodgers, a part of the city went missing.

Blue in the Face is a film of bits, sometimes documentary (Lou Reed's tales of his glasses and of Brooklyn Dodgers), sometimes not (Auggie's story). Keitel's acting serves as a stabilizing presence within the film, some of the bits look amazing. As Mira Sorvino gets robbed in front of the store, Keitel runs after the boy who did it and catches him. She is sad because the boy is so young and, despite Keitel's protests, doesn't want to press charges. So he takes her purse, gives it to him, and lets him get away.

Or, it's the overacted Jim Jarmusch's last cigarette where he talks about how it was Hollywood that made him smoke in the first place and now the same place does not allow him to smoke anywhere there at all. On the other hand, we have Roseanne, who plays the wife of the owner of the shop, who asks Auggie to help her with her marriage which is a complete failure. Contrasted with Harvey Keitel's ability to maneuver and improvise, she feels stiff, telling us that the camera is right there and it is bothering her.

This is more a film of the history of Brooklyn, of the romanticized story/documentary of life there. It should definitely be watched after Smoke and understood as footnote or as an explanation of the surroundings where the film was conceived.

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