Photo © IFC Films
'Paint' movie
Owen Wilson in 'Paint'
Bob Ross was a populist in the elitist “art world.” Not for him abstraction, much less the conceptual art that demands a safecracker to decode. He preferred landscapes to soup cans and painted live on public television for many years, inspiring generations of weekenders to pick up the brush. His artwork conveyed no message except the joy he—and millions—found in rendering and recognizing “naturalistic” scenes from nature.
Writer-director Brit McAdams’ Paint is a fictional story inspired by the Ross persona. Owen Wilson comfortably inhabits the role of the film’s Ross stand-in, Carl Nagle, easygoing host of a show on Burlington, Vermont’s public channel where he paints a scene each day from memory. He looks like Ross with his fuzzy “Afro” and boho beard, a pipe always at hand, wearing floral or Native American patterned shirts. By the time Paint begins, he has already become an anachronism. Enter Ambrosia (Ciara Renée), the young new artist hired to follow Carl’s show. Unlike Carl, she can execute two paintings each day (diminished audience attention spans demand more action) in a bolder, more expressionistic style. She paints UFO landings while Carl keeps rendering Vermont’s landmark, “Mighty Mount Mansfield,” in endless variations on the same familiar theme.
Paint is a comedy and humor ripples gently throughout, yet the situational humor is leavened by pathos. Carl had fallen long ago into a creative rut. He’s been a serial monogamist with a small cadre of ex-girlfriends working at the Burlington station where he was the (soft) rock star. But the advent of Ambrosia has upset the power structure. Her show rapidly attracts a younger audience while his is steadily claimed by mortality. Her face replaces his on the tote bags the station gives away at fund drive. Carl has the uncomfortable realization that he is being brushed aside by youth.
The screenplay and Wilson’s performance is a subtle spoof of a certain variety of “sensitive male” that emerged out of the ‘60s counterculture. Carl softly promises to bring his viewers to “a special place” with his winsome smile, assertively unaggressive manner and vague association with environmentalism. Mellowness drips from him like a cracked honeycomb. The self-help bestseller I’m OK, You’re OK must have been his scripture.
Paint is also a friendly send-up of public television with budgets cut, facilities strapped, rows of phone operators waiting for pledge calls and efforts to draw new audiences in a bewildering new media world.
Paint is screening at Marcus Hillside Cinema, Marcus Majestic Cinema, Marcus Menomonee Falls Cinema, Marcus Ridge Cinema, Marcus Saukville Cinema, Marcus Showtime Cinema and Marcus South Shore Cinema.
