I had just finished watching Memento on DVD with a friend when we realized that The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was on TV. I’d seen both movies many times in the past and knew that they shared a star, but even so, watching them back to back like that was an interesting experience.
Guy Pearce IS gritty film noir antihero Leonard Shelby, a man with a rare memory condition whose only goal in life is to avenge his wife’s death!
No, wait, Guy Pearce IS glittery drag queen Felicia Jollygoodfellow, an obnoxious young Australian whose only goal in life is to have fun while looking fabulous!
So, what film combinations blew your mind? I’m not looking for movies that were simply very different, but movies that were very different but shared an important and obvious similarity such as (but not limited to) star, setting, or basic plotline. Or to put it another way, pretend you were asked to host a themed film festival (“movies starring X”, “movies set in Y”, “movies about Z”) and wanted to pick a set of movies that would fit the theme but screw with the audience’s heads.
When I was a kid of about 17, and had all the time in the world to see any movies I wanted, I saw Born on the Fourth of July and Glory in the same evening (in that order), with only a short bike ride separating the two. In the theatre, even.
Both movies about war, both visually stunning, and both very good… but in so many ways, they couldn’t be more different. I was literally dazed after the second movie, due to a slight overload I think. I haven’t repeated the experience since. But what an experience!
When I rented “Gosford Park” on DVD, I ended up watching it 3 times in 2 days for the director’s and writer’s commentary tracks. Then, I popped in my DVD of the first series of “Jeeves and Wooster”. Of course, Stephen Fry appears in both of them, as completely different characters, and of course, they portray the same period and the same social groups in completely different ways, but that isn’t what blew my mind.
Toward the end of one of the “Jeeves and Wooster” episodes, I recognized a distinctive John Singer Sargent painting at the bottom of a distinctive staircase. It was the same house that had been used for the interiors of “Gosford Park”! I probably would never have noticed if I didn’t watch them on the same day.
One night in college, my roommate and I and one of our hallmates watched two movies neither of us had ever seen before: Deliverance followed by The Conversation.
We were all achingly paranoid for about a week after that.
