im not sure where the complexity came from. healthy movies about adolescence were once serious, they were once dramas overarchingly. nicholson is not special, he's just honest. that's sometimes bad but in this case because it's serious it's good. sometimes bad sometimes good. sometimes deep feeling sometimes trivial. theres a shot where hes on a boat, going back to the place he grew up, its like the third or fourth of the ones where he's on the ferry the first time, this one is at the stern, hes in a corner to the left and staring out at the water on the puget sound, back to the camera, and in that one moment of about three seconds i felt consciousness actively explored, the ideal of intellectual art being actively exhibited, strangely, almost unexpectedly. because the movie that came before that shot was good but uneventful, even the scenes afterwards were uneventful. its something about the totality of experience up to that point in the movie and then the reality of returning home. its almost like what about bob, thats what it reminds me of. interestingly, the editing is pretty unique. its intuitively precise, fast-paced, and unorganized, methodically returning at a consistent level to the same attention span needed from the beginning. sex in this movie is, or romance, really, a means to an end. 1 million dollars. today thats about 2. wonder how the set budget went down. like what cost a million... not nicholson right? he was unknown. so then what? theres no action theres no obvious expensive thing. i guess the traffic jam scene? hmm.