With Veronica Mars ending its
run, I'm left mulling over why the depiction of the Indie Rock Guy rang
false. Some of it can be chalked up to the acting. Chris Lowell as Piz
never made an indelible impression and had nowhere near the chemistry
with the title character as Logan, played by Jason Dohring.
But the bigger problem was that Piz was made into the Indie Rock Guy by
people who are definitely not Indie Rock Guys. First, he didn't look
the part. Jack Black and Todd Louiso in High Fidelity looked like they had
been hired for the film straight from actual hole-in-the-wall record
stores. A patron at the library where I work looked like he came fresh
from Indie Rock central casting: scrawny, clothes just hanging on his
lanky frame, slightly greasy hair falling into his eyes, big black
glasses. Piz just looked like a generic college student.
More importantly, he didn't sound like an Indie Rock Guy. One recent
episode had Piz spouting minutia about a fictitious band, but he never
sounded convincing about the real thing. He was giddy about lining up a
summer internship with Pitchfork Media's New York headquarters, but
Pitchfork is based in Chicago. He sneared at someone's enthusiasm for
Matchbox 20 and expressed self-contempt for quoting John Mayer lyrics
to his girlfriend, but he should have been quoting, for example, Bright
Eyes or the Magnetic Fields, instead. It's as if the writers only know
who Indie Rock Guy Guy should hate without any real knowledge of who he
should love. In other words, it came across as a persona to slap onto a
generic character to make him less generic.
On the other hand, Douglas Coupland's indie rock bona fides are so much
a part of him that he used Smiths
and New Order song
titles as titles for his own works.
