This was rambling and smelled of bitterness. I especially didn’t like his suggestion that he “could have been” Jef Raskin because their viewpoints were “essentially the same” or whatever. Really?
Yeh yep indeed. I didn’t make that connection, but for me what came to mind was Dustin Hoffman’s failed artist character in the Meyerowitz Stories. Not identical but he too laments “not playing the game”. The scene at the beginning where he simultaneously disdains his more successful colleague while also relishing being mentioned by him is just great.
And while I’m on the topic of Baumbach movies, there’s a scene in the Squid and the whale where the kid gets in trouble for performing a Pink Floyd song at a high school talent show and claiming it as his own. When he’s rightly brought to task for it, he says something like “I could have written it, it’s a simple song” to which he is told “but you didn’t” (paraphrasing, it’s been a while). There’s an echo of that here too.
This was rambling and smelled of bitterness. I especially didn’t like his suggestion that he “could have been” Jef Raskin because their viewpoints were “essentially the same” or whatever. Really?