I Just Read About That…

[WATCHED: August 26, 2010] Everything’s Gone Green

I’m including this film because it was written by Douglas Coupland (and he’s one of those writers that I read a lot).

Everything’s Gone Green is a story of suburban life in Vancouver.  As the film opens the main character gets dumped by his girlfriend and loses his job.  And he hasn’t won the lottery (this sequence with his family is hilarious).  However, calling the BC Win line (is this what you do when you win the lottery?) gets him a job at the BC lottery.  [This entire job and company absolutely fascinated me.  It was an excellent location for a film].

From there the movie settled into Douglas Coupland territory: scenes from Vancouver, working in a cubicle, scenes from Vancouver, unattainable love, scenes from Vancouver, the Asian community of BC, and more scenes from Vancouver.

We had recently watched the TV series of JPod (based on his book).  Steph Song from JPod is in this film (and it’s nice to see her with a different type of character).  But what’s surprising (or maybe it’s not?) is how much of this film he recycled into JPod (or actually, they seem to be written concurrently, so I’m not sure which came first).

The duplications are notable and slightly distracting, but do not overwhelm the movie.  The two big similarities are that the main character’s brother owns a vast apartment complex that no one is using (It plays out better in the movie than in the TV show, I think [although I missed Kam Fong!]) and (minor spoiler, although it should be assumed from the trailer) that his parents sell pot.

I greatly approved that everything about his parents grow op is handled very differently than in JPod: from the cultivation to their sin’s reaction are very different.  So even if the concept is the same the story is not the same at all.

As with a lot of Coupland’s work, the story isn’t hilarious, but it is dryly funny.  It also had some emotional resonance (the scene with the whale, in particular).  I’ve no idea what the title is supposed to mean (pot, I assume, but it’s not a very good indicator, in my opinion).  The footage of Vancouver is, of course, gorgeous and the acting is quite good too.  Mind you, after watching JPod, I wanted to see Alan Thicke as his dad, but that’s what you get for watching things out of order.

If you’re a fan of Coupland, you’ll probably enjoy this.  But don’t be fooled into thinking (as the promotional material says) that this is a hilarious slacker/stoner comedy.  It’s not.  It’s an anti-corporate, anti-greed, jobs-are-soul-sucking, slice of life comedy.  Just what you expect from Douglas Coupland.

The soundtrack is exclusively (I believe) Canadian bands.  I recognized Sloan during the movie (their song has a place of prominence and it works well).  Some other bands that I know are Jason Collett, Black Mountain and the FemBots.  I’d like to give the disc a spin, to see if it is thematically consistent.  Maybe I’ll get the chance one of these days.