Director Report Card: Michael Lehmann (2007) - Part Two

9. Flakes

When talking about “Because I Said So,” I mentioned that it was one of two new Michael Lehmann movies to come out in 2007... Kind of. While “Because I Said So” was a major studio production that had a wide release in February of that year, Lehmann's next film was “Flakes.” “Flakes” was a low budget, independently produced project. The movie had an extremely limited theatrical release in December of 2007. How limited exactly? It played in one theater, for a span of nine days, ultimately grossing all of 778 dollars. Judging by several images I can find online, “Flakes” was later released on DVD as a Blockbuster Video exclusive. Eventually, a more easily acquired disc would arrive but the fact of the matter remains: “Flakes” was barely released. I didn't even know the movie was readily available at all until years after first reading about it. What exactly is this motion picture about and why was it essentially discarded?  

The film follows Neal, who dreams of making rock music but spends most of his time working at Flakes. That's a cereal bar in downtown New Orleans, which specializes in the rarest and most collectible types of sugary breakfast grains. While Flakes has a small customer base of die-hard cereal nerds, Neal's girlfriend – an artist who calls herself Pussy Katz – feels like he's stagnating. She keeps pushing him to take a week off from work and focus on making an album. When a son of a rich lawyer opens a more commercial cereal bar with a nearly identical name directly across the street, Pussy marches over there and gets a job. Neal's attempts to bankrupt the rival business backfires and soon the original Flakes is run out of business. Directionless and now unemployed, Neal is forced to confront his dying ambition and fracturing relationship.

As someone who is fascinated by weirdo subcultures and strange fandoms, I think setting a movie inside the world of hardcore cereal people is an interesting idea. Some folks might not even be aware that such a group exist but it's true: There's a cereal collector community out there. They trade packs of unopened product from decades back, rating specimens on freshness and preservation. They scrutinize box designs over the years and detail every minor alteration made. They endlessly debate their favorite flavors and mascots. Passionate fan followings like this are certainly rich grounds for storytelling. Cereal bars were a concept also just starting to pick up steam in 2007, giving “Flakes” a degree of novelty.

However, “Flakes” is not really about cereal fandom. Characters discuss forgotten brands, talk about the history of the industry, and debate obscure facts. Freakies is a minor plot point, for one example of that. Yet “Flakes” isn't truly concerned with breakfast food. Instead, this is a movie about a different subcultures that was a topic of conversation in the mid-2000s: Hipsters. Neal doesn't show his superiority over others by claiming to be into some band before they got popular. Instead, he lords his cereal knowledge over other people. Yet he still considers himself cooler and more sophisticated than other people around him. Despite, in truth, being an emotionally arrested man-child in an extended state of adolescence. If the mumblecore films that came to dominate indie film culture in the years directly before and after “Flakes” came out were cinema made for and by hipsters, this film feels like a deliberate attempt to replicate the cultural movement those filmmakers belonged to on-screen. Hipstersploitation, if you will.

I don't think riding the coattails of the Duplass Brothers and Joe Swanberg was the goal of “Flakes.” Mumblecore wouldn't formulate as a genre until after this movie came out. Aside from being about insufferable twenty-somethings, “Flakes” has nothing in common with those movies. The film's screenwriters, Chris Poche and Karey Kirkpatrick, have worked almost entirely in animation otherwise. Michael Lehmann was obviously a seasoned pro, by this point. In a lot of ways, “Flakes” feels like the sitcom version of hipster life. Yet it still touches upon maybe the biggest aspect of that style: The appearance of being genuine, of having real street cred. Neal hates the knock-off Flakes because it's corporate. It's not indie. It's a capitalistic repackaging of a ramshackle, sincere idea. When Pussy gets a job at the rival Flakes store, he sees it as selling out. He spends a lot of time talking about this. It reminded me of how the doofy metalheads in “Airheads” hated anything compromising the “realness” of the rock music they loved. 

Yet, as much as Neal talks about his integrity, he doesn't actually do much. Pussy criticizes him for wasting all his time at Flakes, at a pedestrian job, instead of pursuing his supposed dream of making real art. In a weird way, I can't help but wonder if this idea didn't speak to Lehmann in a personal way. Here's a guy who started out making off-beat movies like “Heathers” and “Meet the Applegates.” Who then ended up directing forgettable, crass studio products like “40 Days and 40 Nights” and “Because I Said So.” Was making a tiny indie film like this an attempt by the director to recapture the edgy weirdness of his acclaimed early work? Did Lehmann see himself in someone who wants to make real art but is instead wrapped up in the daily grind of working? Is directing TV and mediocre romantic-comedies the equivalent of working in a cereal bar? Ultimately, Neal comes to the conclusion (rather out of the blue) that it's his calling in life to remix low culture into something new. Is that how Lehmann saw himself, the goal he found himself pushing towards?

It's a tempting idea but one that falls apart quickly enough. Because Neal isn't a frustrated artist forced to participate in a monotonous system. Instead, he loves Flakes. He talks about being a musician and seems to like the idea of starting an indie rock band. Yet it seems sitting around and bickering all day with other cereal bros is his actual passion. While this is actually a pretty accurate depiction of real hipsterdom, “Flakes” doesn't delve into Neal's psychology very much. Instead, he's characterized simply as a man-child that needs to grow up. When it seems like the film is leaning into making Neal an irredeemable asshole – when he tries to sabotage the other cereal bar, by passing out bogus flyers or getting a job there – that is when it's most interesting. When the script ultimately decides that Neal earns redemption by doing some minor (and mostly off-screen) maturing, it feels like a cop-out. If this had been a movie about the malignant narcissism and petty bitterness of hipsters and all gatekeepers, it might've been something. Instead, “Flakes” decides this dick becomes less of a dick when he starts seriously pursuing an actual life goal. (I can't imagine starting a band would make a guy like Neal less insufferable.)

This is far from the only way “Flakes” ending cops out. Neal and Pussy are obviously ridiculous characters. He's a cereal hipster and she's an impossibly quirky bohemian artist. It's very difficult to be invested in whether or not these two will get together at the end. Especially since Neal is obviously an asshole and no self-respecting woman like that would ever put up with his bullshit. She repeatedly antagonizes him before they officially break up, all in some misguided attempt to help him mature. So when he makes all the changes she asked for to his life over the course of a montage, and they reunite in a farcical manner, it feels both unlikely and dishonest. The movie gets weirdly serious before springing back towards wacky again, all in preparation for a bullshit happy ending that feels overly neat.

Maybe Pussy Katz devotes so much time to fixing a maladjusted boy-man because she's a textbook Manic Pixie Dream Girl. You can tell that's what she is because she's played by Zooey Deschanel. This was just around the time when the blue-eyed and black-banged Deschanel's reputation for playing exactly this character type had started to crystallize. The self-reflective “500 Days of Summer” was a few years out and the self-parody of “New Girl” was even further off. As much as Miss Pussy Katz is a standard MPDG, Deschanel is one of the best things about “Flakes.” She's gorgeous, funny, charming, bubbly. The film actually spends less time on defining the character's overbearing quirkiness than you'd expect, allowing Deschanal to bounce off Aaron Stanford as Neal more. It reminds you why we all fell for her around this time. She really was pretty adorable when doing this kind of thing. 

And what of Stanford? The stubbly, bug-eyed actor is an oddball choice for a leading man, that off-beat physicality being emphasized by the long, greasy hair he wears here. That makes him pretty believable as a self-centered cereal nerd with vaguely defined dreams, petty motivations, and a girlfriend way out of his league. When trading goofy dialogue with Deschanal, Stanford is even likable. In a better film, more willing to follow this character down the clearly self-destructive path he's on, he probably would've given a much stronger performance. When paired with a script that wimps out, Stanford can't make Neal anything more than a caricature of a particular type of person. A realistic one, sure, but not a fully formed one with much in the way of depth.

Even if the script fails them in some ways, Stanford and Deschanel give decent performances. They are surrounded by likable actors and characters. Christopher Lloyd plays Willie, the extremely burnt-out old hippie that owns the cereal bar. This is the kind of colorful supporting role Lloyd excels at, of course. His rants about the origins of cereal, and the riots and civil wars that followed, are a highlight of the film. Frank Wood is similarly entertaining as Bruce, the hyper-knowledgeable and conceited dork who likes to challenge everyone on cereal facts. This is a personality type which will be very familiar to anyone who frequents comic book shops. Wood exactly inhabits that style of sweaty obnoxiousness. John McConnell also shows up for a small role as a boisterous, colorful lawyer in the last act. 

And yet, for all its flaws, I can't help but find “Flakes” kind of compelling. It's definitely the Michael Lehmann movie that feels the most like his work since the early nineties. The dialogue is profane. The characters have weird conversations, trading hyper-specific language and insults back-and-forth. There's effective bursts of surrealism, like when a rare donut-sized Cheerio becomes a minor plot point. The sets of the cereal shops have some real home-made personality to them, reminding me a little of the exaggerated sets of “Heathers” and “Meet the Applegates.” The cinematography looks pretty cheap and the movie is lit like a TV show. Yet even that is somewhat endearing, reflecting a certain D.I.Y. sensibility that works for me. Even if “Flakes” still feels like a script that was watered down by studio notes, it's definitely the most Lehmann-y Lehmann project he made in a long time. 

Whatever hopes and dreams were wrapped up in “Flakes,” they would ultimately go unfulfilled. The film obviously hasn't been seen by very many people. It has the fewest amount of views of all of Lehmann's feature work on Letterboxd, with only 1443 users claiming to have watched it. It's obvious that very little effort was expended in marketing the film. It's sole poster is of a nondescript shot of Deschanal sitting at a table, that tells you nothing about the film's story. The DVD art features images of Zooey and Aaron Stanford that aren't even from this movie, against a blinding green background. What critics that did see the film trashed it. I wouldn't exactly call “Flakes” a hidden gem either, as it's pretty mediocre in a lot of ways. Yet it does have a handful of things about it that are mildly interesting. I would rather Michael Lehmann made more movies like this than things like “Because I Said So.” [Grade: C+]

Regardless of the film's actual quality, it seems “Flakes'” total non-reception was the last straw for Michael Lehmann's career as a feature film director. He has since devoted himself entirely to directing television. He's actually proven quite prolific in that field, directing 92 episodes of various series since 2007. That includes lengthy runs on shows like “True Blood,” “Bored to Death,” and “Californication.” His most recent credit is also the closest thing to a movie he's made recently: He directed all three and a half hours of the Netflix mini-series, “The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window,” a parody of Lifetime domestic thrillers that got pretty mediocre notices. But I still might give it a look.

Obviously, just looking at Michael Lehmann's career as a feature film director, you can't help but be disappointed. This guy knocked it out of the park with a great movie on his first go. He then made a couple of other things that weren't as strong but were at least weird and interesting. After that, he directed a string of movies that weren't very good or memorable. All along, it's been hard to blame him – or at least blame him totally – for a lot of these projects turning out badly. In that regard, perhaps he's simply been a very unlucky filmmaker, constantly being hassled by meddling execs and pushy stars. I don't know the whole story but the guy does seem pretty self-effacing about it. He's certainly found his niche in recent years, so good for him. And we'll always have “Heathers.” A lot of directors haven't even made one undeniable classic, so that makes Michael Lehmann cool in my book.