I’ve been meaning to watch Twixt for a long time but I didn’t really know what form it would be best consumed in. Francis Ford Coppola planned to take the movie on the road as Kevin Smith did Red State with an added twist (hence the title, I suppose): many alternate takes and scenes were shot during production and the movie would be assembled “live”, remixed (hence the title, I suppose), in front of different audiences to produce a different film every time. How this could be reproduced in a home format is anyone’s guess (although I’m sure it’s possible). So, I don’t know if the version I saw is the best version.
A “bargain basement Stephen King” writer (played by Val Kilmer, looking even more like he could play Jim Morrison at death’s door, especially as he swigs liquor) enters a small town to sell his book (the town is so small that there is no bookstore: he sets up in the hardware store). The tone is strange, tongue-in-cheek-ish, thanks to a Twilight Zone-like narration by none other than Tom Waits. Kilmer meets Elle Fanning, seemingly his only fan in town, but for some reason she won’t (or can’t) come back with him to the place he’s staying at to get a book signed. By the way Fanning is shot (hauntingly but beautifully) it’s pretty clear what’s going on. Then he runs into Edgar Allan Poe…
Twixt is full of beautifully shot images (and one extraordinary moment I’ve never seen before – fangs pushing braces off a person’s teeth as they grow) but the remix concept shows. Perhaps, as I wrote of the similarly conceived Tracey Fragments (Tracey: Refragmented), if there’s so much other footage maybe one day a more coherent movie will emerge of it. I watched it in a double bill with Hick and it falls into the same category for me – forgettable movies lifted higher than they deserve by a couple of my favourite young actresses.
