"Voiceover is the crutch of a poor screenwriter"

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I have a film critic friend who says this. Agree or disagree? When has voiceover worked, and when hasn't it?

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:11 (twenty-two years ago)

obviously Blade Runner is an example of poor use of voiceover.

― hstencil, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:14 (twenty-two years ago)

I think it's a bit of a film rockist cliché. When used well, it's very effective. In 'Badlands', for instance.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:16 (twenty-two years ago)

N. OTM ("notm"??). If it's just used lazily for exposition it's a dud, but otherwise it is as valid as any other creative tool that a screenwriter has at their disposal, to be (ab)used as is seen fit.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:18 (twenty-two years ago)

"Voiceover is the crutch of a poor screenwriter" is a cliché, I mean. Not voiceovers themselves.

x-post

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)

'Kind Hearts and Coronets' is probably the best voiceovered movie i've seen. 'Raising Arizona' is good too. If you took the track off the film they would tell their own story without missing the images too badly, tho i'm not saying that's positive criteria.
'Goodbye Lenin' was a good recent example.

― pete s, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)

say this thread title to terrence malick's face, i dare you

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:20 (twenty-two years ago)

(if you can find him)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:20 (twenty-two years ago)

I can't wait to see Goodbye Lenin. It looks like it was made just for me.

― @d@ml (nordicskilla), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:20 (twenty-two years ago)

anyway, VO can be awesome, expositional VO not so much though i agree.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:21 (twenty-two years ago)

(narrative expo i mean)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:21 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Billy Wilder was right when he said that it's great as an introduction but really should gradually go away as the viewer is, hopefully, into the story and no longer requires guidance. Some movies get away with it (High Fidelity, IMO) by providing information that wouldn't be able to be delivered on screen otherwise (of course this can be annoying if you find the info worthless - see the dozens of shitty mockumentaries out there). The ones that kill me are the movies that have gratuitous narration. I hate that scene in the Royal Tennenbaums when Alec Baldwin notes that Royal meant it when he said the last week was the best of his life, dude it's GENE'S JOB to make us see that (and he did!).

One movie I saw not too long ago that was really guilty of this horseshit was Wonder Boys, where the narration was either gratuitous (do you have to say where you are headed if I can see you pulling into the goddamn DRIVEWAY???) or a cover-up (let's have Douglas say how much he loves McDormand in voice-over cuz frankly no one would be able to tell from their non-chemistry).

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:21 (twenty-two years ago)

is this in response to the "Royal Tenenbaums" thread? 'cause someone's fixin' to get their ass kicked, possibly by Alec Baldwin :)

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:22 (twenty-two years ago)

It's great in 'Goodfellas' too, and yeah 'The Royal Tenenbaums'.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:23 (twenty-two years ago)

I will admit the narration in The Royal Tennenbaums really works in the beginning. I just think it's intrusive in the later parts of the movie.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:24 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm with Miccio re: Royal Tenenbaums. But I'm with N. re: Badlands. The flat affect of Spacek's VO is totally integral to the film.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:25 (twenty-two years ago)

Maybe you're right about TRT. I'll watch it again.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:26 (twenty-two years ago)

I hate that scene in the Royal Tennenbaums when Alec Baldwin notes that Royal meant it when he said the last week was the best of his life, dude it's GENE'S JOB to make us see that (and he did!).

actually this works because the audience would take him at his word without the narration, because of the acting, etc. But WITH the narration we realize that he didn't realize he was tellign the truth until he said so. I dont think the effect would be quite the same without the voiceover.

― ryan (ryan), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Worked in 'Goodfellas', as you could imagine the whole voiceover script as being Henry's witness box confessional.
Didn't work in 'C@sino' as it was too split between several of the main protagonists, and err, you can't imagine Pesci's character telling us anything in hindsight cos...he's dead.

― pete s, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Royal Tenenbaums also has that whole storybook aspect running throughout the whole film, so maybe a "narrator" makes sense.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:29 (twenty-two years ago)

frankly, ryan, I would have prefered some ambiguity at that moment (and I think Hackman's silent self-registering beat after saying it makes it clear enough that he means it). but I'm guessing Anderson wanted it as blunt as humanly possible.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:31 (twenty-two years ago)

and, while I don't think it burdens the movie tooo much, I think Anderson's whole book conceit was superfluous to what was most effective in the movie. Sometimes those initial inspirations should be jettisoned.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:34 (twenty-two years ago)

I've just been reminded of Adaptation's riff on voiceover snobbery.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:36 (twenty-two years ago)

(x-post)
This is the same feeling I have about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre stuff in Some Like It Hot (evidently Wilder wanted to make a comedy with the murders in it BEFORE he even thought about the cross-dressing stuff)

I haven't seen Adaptation, N. What did they say about voiceovers in that?

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:37 (twenty-two years ago)

Nic Cage's screenwriting character is very anti-voiceover. The film uses his voiceover.

I'm not sure if it's a failing in L.A. Confidential or not.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Oh, how could I forget Jules et Jim and... Babe?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

everything about la confidential is a failing!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:48 (twenty-two years ago)

anyway, voiceover is basically the same thing as dialogue in terms of what you should and shouldn't use it to do

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:48 (twenty-two years ago)

i should've signed that one "david mamet"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:49 (twenty-two years ago)

I didn't want to say that because so many people I respect like it, and I've only seen it the one time, but yeah - it didn't do much for me.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:49 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's a rec.arts.movies.current-films thread on the same subject.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:57 (twenty-two years ago)

you know it's bad voiceover when it starts the movie, dissappears, and shows up late enough for you to go "oh yeah, this movie has a voiceover!"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 00:58 (twenty-two years ago)

S: Raising Arizona
D: Dances with Wolves

― oops (Oops), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:02 (twenty-two years ago)

watching Badlands and Days of Heaven as a double feature on the big screen(or as big as the Film Forum is...) was not only one of the finest afternoons of my life but really educational in the similarities of Sissy Spacek's voiceover and Linda Manz, how they're used, what they're saying, what their viewpoint is, you could probably draw parallels between Martin Sheen and Richard Gere as well, now that I think about it. Thin Red Line was a variation but more of the same. All three movie's voiceovers equals disassociated and naive observers in the midst of the action?

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I like the voiceover in Blade Runner... it gave it sort of a hardboiled, noir feel: "It didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back..." etc.

I missed it when they took it out. But I think that whole director's cut was a sham. So is metric, and so is stereo: sham.

― andy, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:13 (twenty-two years ago)

but what about the beautiful unicorn

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:14 (twenty-two years ago)

What about gratuitous use of asides, though? Like "Malcolm in the Middle". Serves the same function as a voice over, but seems kind of wacky too. Brutally overused these days.

― andy, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:16 (twenty-two years ago)

I saw Blade Runner's director cut first (haha I saw BOTH versions in film school for different classes, the studio version in a class about DIRECTING, reaffirming how ignorant that place could be). Maybe it was in hindsight, but I found a lot of the narration gratuitous. It did give the noir feel, but it was chock full of "so we went to the place that you see me walking into right now."

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:16 (twenty-two years ago)

malcom in the middle is gross and wrong

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:16 (twenty-two years ago)

even when I thought the show was decent (saw like 4 episodes, the last being the only horrific one) I thought Malcom's asides were totally unnecessary. Plus the kid's got face-scrunching issues.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:18 (twenty-two years ago)

He's going through his awkward phase. Extremely highly-paid awkward phase.

― andy, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:21 (twenty-two years ago)

that's spelled face

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:23 (twenty-two years ago)

Wonder Boys, where the narration was either gratuitous (do you have to say where you are headed if I can see you pulling into the goddamn DRIVEWAY???) or a cover-up (let's have Douglas say how much he loves McDormand in voice-over cuz frankly no one would be able to tell from their non-chemistry).

See, I disagree with both of these. Douglas' character is a writer (cue Rip Torn: "I... ... ... ... am a WRITER.") who clearly takes himself a little too seriously (see 'under the influence' preaching to the choir, or Katie Holmes, schpiel) and is used to having Godlike monologues make sense of things in his head. Of course, nobody can hear these monologues but him, so to everybody else he just looks like a ridiculous fuckup. Which he is.

― Dave M. (rotten03), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:27 (twenty-two years ago)

The voiceover in Y tu mamá también is easily the most effective I've seen/heard. I love the way the sound drops out a second before the voiceover begins. It takes you halfway out of the present scene before returning you there with a different knowledge of it. The first time I realized this wasn't the movie I thought it was going to be was when the voiceover detailed the accident the characters would have seen had they been on this certain stretch of road sometime in the recent past, just as the roadside crosses come into view. And the voiceover is why the last scene just kills me.

― brian patrick (brian patrick), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Ach, the last scene. I hate that so much.

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:31 (twenty-two years ago)

the last scene is what completely killed that movie for me. (xp)

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:31 (twenty-two years ago)

seriously though, it's like "surprise! this movie you thought you were enjoying has actually sucked all along!"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:32 (twenty-two years ago)

SPOILERS YOU MFUCKERS AAARGH

― Dave M. (rotten03), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:38 (twenty-two years ago)

What was wrong with the last scene? At the diner, you mean?

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:43 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the Blade Runner voiceover is grossly overhated.

― captain gay, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:49 (twenty-two years ago)

well i can't really get into it without spoilers, but

[MILD SPOILERS]

the dramatic "reveal" of that VO at the end of the diner scene made it a completely different, way crappier and more melodramatic movie, like a teenage poem of a film

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:50 (twenty-two years ago)

Paul Schrader uses VO quite well.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:51 (twenty-two years ago)

(x-post)

Wow, I'm surprised to hear that. I didn't think it revealed anything that wasn't already suggested. It didn't hit me as false or unearned or anything.

It does smack a little of "after that summer, things would never be the same again," but some summers carry that weight.

And it's not such a spoiler. We've been vague on the details.

― brian patrick (brian patrick), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Paul Schrader uses VO quite well.
urm. the only thing I couldn't stand in Addiction was Willem DaFoe's arty VOs.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 01:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Pootie Tang

― Kingfish Cowboy (Kingfish), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 02:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I like how in Casino you have Joe Pesci narrating a scene near the end, and then when his character is thwacked with a Louisville Slugger his voiceover is cut off with a sudden "AWK!"

― Nate in ST.P (natedetritus), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 02:30 (twenty-two years ago)

is a terrible film.

― Dave M. (rotten03), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 02:30 (twenty-two years ago)

Louis CK bitches about the narration in that Onion Pootie revisiting.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 02:32 (twenty-two years ago)

"Taxi Driver", man. "Light Sleeper" as well.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 03:02 (twenty-two years ago)

i like the joe pesci casino VO! come on, they've been doing the dead man VO since sunset boulevard and probably even earlier than that

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 03:05 (twenty-two years ago)

I liked the two VOs in "Casino", you have two narrators bitching about each other the whole time, plus Pesci's was funny. Not like the usual VO.

― Gear! (Gear!), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 03:15 (twenty-two years ago)

Bernie Mac plays heavy into the asides, though he rarely directly calls me "America" anymore. The fucker.
And Ron Howard's VO on Arrested Development is probably my least favourite part of the show. But I still sorta like it, because, well, I have a feeling it'll mean something more someday. It's a supertext that implies the Bluth family is somehow...I don't know, it sort of, I mean, they're too fucked up to be counted on to keep their story straight. And holy fuck, I just realized that with Henry Winkler as the lawyer, AD is practically a goddamned Happy Days reunion!

― Huck, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 04:04 (twenty-two years ago)

The defenders of "the best week of his life" and the Wonder Boys narration are OTM - the former is exactly how the cliche storybook would go, reiterating the obvious for the kiddies. Douglas' character is the high-minded lit-fic writer cliche, he writes/narrates his way through life.

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 04:17 (twenty-two years ago)

The fact that this thread has gone this far without a mention of The Big Lebowski is an outrage.

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 10:42 (twenty-two years ago)

in film it's not as much the crutch of a poor screenwriter as much as it is a crutch for studios who want to "improve" the film. I hate it.

― don weiner, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 12:38 (twenty-two years ago)

Generalizations are the crutch of a lazy curmudgeon.

― dave225 (Dave225), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 12:57 (twenty-two years ago)

slocki otm

as a device it's neutral, it can be used effectively or not

a lot of my favorite film have extensive vo's, used in very different ways

how green was my valley has a vo in which the pov of the speaker constantly clashes with the representations onscreen

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:02 (twenty-two years ago)

Movies that you forget have voiceovers in them:

"Friday"

"American Beauty"

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:04 (twenty-two years ago)

"adaptation"--wasn't sure whether the film was ridiculing this idea--of vos being a crutch--or vos themselves

if the latter it's really out of date since vos are pretty uncommon in hollywood these days, have been for decades

"american beauty" was a good example of a poor vo, although not really terribly annoyingly so, and i guess it's just emblematic of a poor film in general imo

is "friday" the ice cube film?

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:06 (twenty-two years ago)

"you know it's bad voiceover when it starts the movie, dissappears, and shows up late enough for you to go "oh yeah, this movie has a voiceover!" "

i think about this too, but there are even good examples of this (the time to live and the time to die for example)

some excellent voice overs i know:

- spring in a small town (original version) -- astonishingly good
- how green was my valley (duh)
- the thin red line
- gertrud
- lots of hindi films

i do generally favor, for biopics, a more limpid style that avoids or deemphasizes vo, as in "an angel at my table"

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Yeah, there's a part where Ice Cube starts doing a V.O. out of nowhere, it's bizarre.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:09 (twenty-two years ago)

oh yeah and casino and goodfellas have amazingly inventive vos

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:11 (twenty-two years ago)

haha tracer has discovered the "voice over as vestige of earlier draft of script" phenomenon

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:11 (twenty-two years ago)

"the big lebowski" was pretty great too, vo as total red herring

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:13 (twenty-two years ago)

red herring????

― RJG (RJG), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:14 (twenty-two years ago)

mmmm herring

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:15 (twenty-two years ago)

pop-cult palimpsests!

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 13:16 (twenty-two years ago)

hey've been doing the dead man VO since sunset boulevard...

VO from the grave --- DUD
I can't think of a one that was any good right now. Casino, bleh. American Beauty, bleh.

Glenn Close narrating as Sunny von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune from inside of a coma? Not quite as dud as the ones listed above, but still a DUD.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 14:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I think voiceover's great if it cuts against the image instead of describing it. Or if the narrator is much older than his or her character onscreen, as in David Copperfield - givi9ng you two different versions of the same character's consciousness.

But a voiceover should be consistent, in my opinion. In "Trainspotting", for example, Ewan McGregor's character narrates most of the film - and we see right inside his head - but then there are scenes he's not in, like where the goofy bloke goes to an interview. That seems to me illogical, from a point-of-view point of view.

― Bunged Out (Jake Proudlock), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 14:39 (twenty-two years ago)

as i recall those were played like he was telling a story he had heard.

another good use of vo: The Rules of Attraction, where the Ellis effect is captured, playing van der beek's character's assholeness to great comic effect.

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 15:09 (twenty-two years ago)

goodfellas really is the best, the VO + freeze-frame combo is pretty insanely effective there, and as somebody pointed out, when you see him at the end and he's in the courtroom--when he gets up and actually starts talking TO THE CAMERA, that is such an amazing moment.

however i don't think the VO is intended to be his courtroom testimony or anything like that.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 15:11 (twenty-two years ago)

pleasant plains i don't see why you have more of a problem with VO-from-beyond-the-grave than not.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 15:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm trying to think, are there any movies with multiple voiceovers by different characters? I'm sure there are, and that could be potentially effective in shifting the movie's perspective, but none leap to mind.

― spittle (spittle), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 17:12 (twenty-two years ago)

I've never seen the film of 'Last Orders', but maybe that does it?

― N. (nickdastoor), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 17:20 (twenty-two years ago)

s1ocki
From-the-grave VO's just generally suck. I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason to it. I'd love to hear some examples of this where it did work. (It's a Wonderful Life is the only one that I can think of right now...)

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 17:25 (twenty-two years ago)

as mentioned upthread...Sunset Boulevard is a great and fun example of from-the-grave VO, done as much for exposition and summation as for the very kitsch value of a dead guy reminiscing.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 18:22 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah the end of goodfellas is one of the most effective and least showy uses of breaking the fourth wall

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:41 (twenty-two years ago)

What movies besides The Big Lebowski do the at-first-invisible narrators make actual physical appearances?

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:45 (twenty-two years ago)

tony wilson talking to the camera in "24 Hour Party People" was fun, too.

xpost -- Days of Heaven?

― Kingfish Cowboy (Kingfish), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:47 (twenty-two years ago)

ha ha good one

I think the VO work in Lebowski actually sorta set the scene like an old-timey cowboy movie with The Dude as the loner hero, Donnie as the scrappy kid, etc.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:49 (twenty-two years ago)

oh wait retract that ha ha I thought you said Days of Thunder

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:50 (twenty-two years ago)

PLEASE DO NOT CONFUSE THOSE TWO FILMS AGAIN

― amateur!st (amateurist), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:51 (twenty-two years ago)

IT WON'T BE HARD.

― nickalicious (nickalicious), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 21:52 (twenty-two years ago)

oh, haveing Tom Cruise being followed around by his little incoherent sister would have made the flick BETTER!

"Locusts! There's locuts on the racetrack!"

― Kingfish Cowboy (Kingfish), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:06 (twenty-two years ago)

I liked it when N. mentioned the film Babe.

― the babefox, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Sterling made this point about certain scenes in "Trainspotting".

"as i recall those were played like he was telling a story he had heard."

Except, the narrator fell silent in those scenes. And how would he know that much detail? For me, a voiceover by an onscreen character implies that he or she sees and is present at what occurs.

― Bunged Out (Jake Proudlock), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:24 (twenty-two years ago)

What movies besides The Big Lebowski do the at-first-invisible narrators make actual physical appearances?
Again, It's A Wonderful Life maybe?

How about movies where the narrator is an incognito celebrity, i.e. John Malkovich in Alive or John Larroquette in Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:31 (twenty-two years ago)

Or Alec Baldwin in Tenenbaums, for that matter.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:39 (twenty-two years ago)

Ooh, Christina Ricci in "The Opposite of Sex". I liked that one (I am going to be piss poor at explaining why though).

― ailsa (ailsa), Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:42 (twenty-two years ago)

As the critic friend who actually said such a silly thing, allow me to clarify.

Good screenwriters can use voice over appropriately. Malick would be a good example. But poor screenwriters use it as a crutch when they have no other way to get across their ideas. When I hear a voice over nowadays (and it's far more common than you think), it immediately raises a question in my mind -- why? And that can be a huge hurdle for a film because it allows for little critical middle ground. It's rare to find an "OK voice over". In other words, the answer to the "why" question is almost always going to be "because it's a poor screenwriter using it as crutch for his inability to show and not tell" or "it's a great writer using it delicately and carefully to elaborate on his ideas". VO puts me in a defensive state ready to love it or hate it. Maybe I should just try and ignore it more.

― Brian Tallerico, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 22:57 (twenty-two years ago)

APOCALYSPE NOW and CLOCKWORK ORANGE

― sexyDancer, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 23:09 (twenty-two years ago)

What movies besides The Big Lebowski do the at-first-invisible narrators make actual physical appearances?

Fellowship of the Ring

― juju, Tuesday, 23 March 2004 23:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Dreams That Money Can Buy

― otto, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

the 4th wall/VO stuff in 24 hour party people is totally amazing, good call

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 03:38 (twenty-two years ago)

(I hate to generalize like this, but every time someone says that American Beauty is a great movie I lose all respect for them on every level. Is that so wrong, though?)

― Dave M. (rotten03), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 05:54 (twenty-two years ago)

naw

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 05:55 (twenty-two years ago)

"I ain't never seen the Queen in her damned undies, as the fellow says"

― Donna Brown (Donna Brown), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 07:01 (twenty-two years ago)

"True Romance" was on television last night, and th Patricia Arquette voiceover at the end is one of the most clumsy I've ever seen. It's bad for several of the reasons enumerated above. It deviates from the perspective established as the film's center, and the voice isn't heard until the wrap-up of the film. I don't know much about how many changes were made to the Tarantino script, but maybe it's one of those cases where the vestige of an earlier draft remains. But sticking it in the unsatifying end pulls the film down from mere mediocrity to dross.

― Dickerson Pike (Dickerson Pike), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 09:27 (twenty-two years ago)

More babefox please!

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 09:41 (twenty-two years ago)

I'm in the city.

― the babefox, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 14:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I never saw that, but sensed it was no Crocodile Dundee.

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

I think there's some truth to the love-it-or-hate-it use of VO, though the VO in Tenenbaums inhabits the middleground for me. I love the movie; I think the voiceover works but maybe could have been finessed to be a little less intrusive at moments.

This discussion reminds me of the beginning of Stephanie Zacharek's review of Big Fish on Salon and the old showing-vs-telling problem:

Why are people always gassing on about the power of stories when it's so much more effective just to knuckle down and tell one already? We don't need a shaman to inform us that good stories are powerful. But since the '90s, at least, in both books and movies, there's been a marked trend toward reminding us just how important stories are, instead of just laying them on us, the old-fashioned way.

We get wordy preambles -- often delivered by a wise elder, usually a Southerner -- about how stories tell us who we are and where we've been. In a state of innocent hopefulness, we wait to hear the tale: Who knows? It might actually be good. But more often than not it turns out to be some magic-realism baloney about a giant fish in a stream or some similarly numbing metaphor for the unpredictability of life, or the brevity of life, or the importance of taking chances in life -- choose your own larger meaning and insert it here. Maybe the story would have been OK without the big windup. Then again, maybe it needed the advance advertising campaign because it wasn't such a great story to begin with.

I'm not interested in starting a discussion of Big Fish, but I think her criticism here and the extent to which the audience is overtly made conscious of "telling" is one of the main problems with VO in general. VO often brings an omniscient narrator to the film or endows the narrating character with a little too much knowledge and wisdom to be credible when we'd rather just trust the camera lens to give us a window into the story. In print, we're more comfortable with a narrator, omniscient or limited, to serve as the primary mode of storytelling (and this is almost certainly why VO often creeps into film adaptations of novels as well as films with storybook frames). In film (unlike the narrator in a novel), VO is obvious and difficult to ignore, and, like almost anything that can be categorized as a "device," it can get clunky in the hands of anyone who isn't skilled.

― alexandra s (alexandra s), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Butcher Boy is an example of a good movie that suffers from excessive voice-over.

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:27 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm actually in favour of telling not showing!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:36 (twenty-two years ago)

I love that Zacharek review, btw.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:43 (twenty-two years ago)

this is the part where i'm supposed to go "OOOOHHH ZACHAREK gnash gnash"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:44 (twenty-two years ago)

I just remembered "Croupier", in which the VO details the fact that the character is essentially becoming a detached sociopath.

― Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:46 (twenty-two years ago)

good VO that.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:47 (twenty-two years ago)

s1ocki, I know you have issues with Zacharek, but that review (and the NY Times review -- I don't remember who it was by, A.O. Scott, maybe?) really nailed what I hated about Big Fish.

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:49 (twenty-two years ago)

[ / beating a dead horse]

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:50 (twenty-two years ago)

i concede she & hubby occasionally have a point.

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:50 (twenty-two years ago)

It was around that time that I realized s1ocki was a bright chap, and it would be wise to keep him on my side.

― Gear! (Gear!), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:52 (twenty-two years ago)

I still think he's a bright chap!

― jaymc (jaymc), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 17:59 (twenty-two years ago)

alexandra s has a good point; there is a marked difference between the selfconscious voice over narration of "big fish" and even the sarcastic selfconscious voice over of "big lebowski", and the sort of voice over we find in "how green was my valley", etc. the former seems to go hand-in-hand with the metanarrativity of much recent literature, the latter is just the similar "here's what happened to me" from a million books. i think both styles can be used well, and i'm not sure zacharek is correct in noting a trend toward facile uses of the former type; i don't see enough new hollywood movies to agree or disagree honestly.

― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:37 (twenty-two years ago)

there's a type of modernist film, where--like in some calvino novels--the voice over is just one part of the film's move to confuse different levels of narration. like "the hypothesis of the stolen painting".

― amateur!st (amateurist), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:38 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm trying to think if there are any movies where the VO is revealed to be the voice of one of the characters when all along you think it's an omniscient narrator (like in nabokov's "pnin")

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:39 (twenty-two years ago)

"The Wonder Years" VO:
DUD, DUD, A THOUSAND TIMES DUD!!!

― sexyDancer, Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:42 (twenty-two years ago)

I think the narration by a character thing works well in "Amadeus" and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off".

― o. nate (onate), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:43 (twenty-two years ago)

when all along you think it's an omniscient narrator

i meant to say "you've thought"

― s1ocki (slutsky), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:44 (twenty-two years ago)

Croupier! That's one of the most laughable pieces of tosh I've seen. That plodding voiceover. Dreadful. What's good about it, I've always wanted to know.

― Chuck Tatum (Chuck Tatum), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 20:48 (twenty-two years ago)

Like Last Year In Marienbad?

― N. (nickdastoor), Wednesday, 24 March 2004 22:04 (twenty-two years ago)

i'm trying to think if there are any movies where the VO is revealed to be the voice of one of the characters when all along you think it's an omniscient narrator (like in nabokov's "pnin")

It would be harder to do that on film--voice recognition would make it too obvious if the VO is done by a major character (unless the character is silent until the end of the film or something). It could work if the VO is the character as an old man/woman played by another actor and the film is a flashback. A film adaptation of Atonement seems primed for that trick.

― alexandra s (alexandra s), Thursday, 25 March 2004 14:25 (twenty-one years ago)

the other hard thing about it would be that very few films have voice-overs that are supposed to be the voice of an impersonal, omniscient narrator (at least anymore, tenenbaums exempted). that kind of narrator stands out in a movie, unlike in novels, when the third-person narrator can be taken a little more for granted. in movie terms it'd be like discovering at the end of the film that the entire thing was SHOT in first-person!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Thursday, 25 March 2004 14:50 (twenty-one years ago)

wait, doesn't Heathers have a VO, too?

― Kingfish Hypercolor (Kingfish), Thursday, 25 March 2004 15:31 (twenty-one years ago)

Isn't it just when Winona Ryder reads aloud what she's writing in her diary?

― N. (nickdastoor), Thursday, 25 March 2004 15:37 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

http://www.avclub.com/articles/oh-im-chasing-this-guy-no-hes-chasing-me-34-essent,36890/

― Hoisin Murphy (jaymc), Sunday, 17 January 2010 16:19 (sixteen years ago)

The 1970s Ed Gein film Deranged actually had an onscreen narrator, he was great. Every so often he'd wander on in the middle of a scene to tell us what Ed was thinking, wearing a jacket with leather elbow patches as I recall it.

― Ork Alarm (Matt #2), Sunday, 17 January 2010 22:43 (sixteen years ago)

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