![]() There are some unmistakeably beautiful shots in Thailand that were caught simply because a) it's a naturally beautiful place and b) Lurie et al were simply there at the right time. Somehow the lack og glossiness and travelogue style reveal more about the locations. The locations seem very real and just part of the immediate environment. Maine and Thailand were chosen by Dafoe and Hopper respectively, and were not ideal spots for good fishing. Exotic Jamaica was a last minute substitute for Arkansas! The production money couldn't get transferred in time by the investors and Jamaica was chosen simply because Waits was on vacation there at the time. Lurie wasn't interested in beautiful locations and wanted to simply go where where the best fishing was. The show was filmed on video and so lacks the glossiness of typical TV travel shows. ) Hopper and Dafoe come across as warm, intelligent, interesting and funny people (Hopper reveals himself as a sugar junkie!) and share real rapport and love with Lurie.Īs a travel show, it's untypical. ![]() (He had wanted to have his friend Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers as his guest but the Japanese investors didn't consider him famous enough at the time, pushing Dillon onto him despite the fact they weren't that close. Lurie claims Dillon was wary of coming off stupid but Dillon later accused him of making him look stupid - 'God did that' was Lurie's reply. (Apparently he got irate later on off-camera, and didn't speak to Lurie for two years.) Dillon is extremely guarded and monosyllabic. Waits is charming and oddball funny, but he loses patience with the whole project and gets grumpy and finally angry with Lurie. It's quite possible he and his friends really do speak a lot like his movie characters. It made me reconsider his filmmaking style. Jarmusch comes across as a pleasant, interesting guy and more of a listener than a speaker. But they do reveal themselves as human beings. Lurie and his guests don't have the compelling conversations that you might expect. The guest stars either played up to the cameras (Hopper) or tried their best to protect their famous personas (Dillon). (Any hopes of the show being any kind of educational show were doomed because Lurie had to teach guests like Hopper and Waits the basic skills of fishing!) It's a funny show because of Lurie's good humour, the personalities of his guests, and the amusing, unexpected things that happen, eg Dillon refusing to talk to Lurie, or Waits getting irritable with him. The show isn't a parody of a fishing show, but it comes close, and only because of the way life just kind of took over events (practicalities that had to be considered and concessions made), and because Lurie and his crew were kind of making it all up as they went along. Some highlights weren't caught in time or filmed at all. Also, the show is filmed on video in a very lo-fi style, and some of the highlights of the trip were unusable due to bad sound. Hilariously, Lurie and his guests rarely catch any fish (due to the fact the spots they filmed in were weak for fishing). As a fishing show, it is completely untypical (angering some who take TV fishing shows seriously). (By the last show, Lurie admits that he had learned to stop aiming for perfection and to just let it be.) It really shouldn't work. ![]() The beauty of FISHING WITH JOHN is in it's simplicity and the way it confounds expectations to transcend whatever notions Lurie had for what the show would be.
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