Burn This

continued

As for Moonstruck, I'd have thought of it no matter what year it came out. Darrell Glasgow, as a character named Pale, looks and moves so distractingly like Moonstruck's Nicholas Cage, I've got to believe he hasn't seen the movie, or else he'd rein it in just to avoid being sued for plagiarism. But more to the point--maybe to complement those careering women in lofts--1987's men were widening their emotional spectrum. Moonstruck's Cage played a Brooklyn working stiff, falling fearlessly, scorchingly, annihilatingly in love with someone he knows he shouldn't. Wilson uses exactly this device for Pale--but ups the ante by throwing Pale in among artists, and the role bristles with questions about who artists are and what function they serve. Pale, a working-class guy from, in this case, Jersey, rides his emotional torrents of grief and desire like a cowboy strapped to a bucking bronco. The other three characters, all artists, are shocked: they're used to scrutinizing their inner lives with irony and formal detachment.