The Hot Button by David Poland

Wednesday, 20 January 1999

RANTING & RAVING

A big part of writing a column everyday that is so opinion-driven is often lost in the sauce: Responsibility. Frankly, I feel like I have gone on about this issue, beating it to death, but that abuse has probably been just for my friends. See, this is a very real concern. As this business moves faster and faster, as movies come and go at a rate that is not only astounding, but absurd on the face of it. (Eight weeks is now a substantial run, folks!), entertainment "journalism" is speeding up with the releases. We're out here defining what is "in" and we're ready to push it "out" before we've unclenched our teeth from pronouncing the "n" in "in." As a result, the temptation to write in shorthand grows more and more intense.
This sucks! This is great! An Oscar winner! A box office loser! And so much of it goes by the wayside. If I hadn't fallen into the Tony Kaye story, I would be out here throwing around quick impressions created by Entertainment Weekly like everyone else. But neither "lunatic" nor "brave artist fighting for his baby" are accurate characterizations of what happened between he and New Line on American History X, but who has time to really look at it? Even people I respect in this business don't really understand what happened there. And this was one of the most reported stories last year. How much else have we just lost for the sake of getting to the next story?
Someone told me last night that "Dateline NBC" would be running a story on the 200 women who were raped and murdered on the Mexican border last year. Two hundred women! And I never heard a word about this. And I live in L.A. What a nightmare! So what do I expect from a bunch of people writing about movies?
I expect professionalism. I expect an effort to be objective. Entertainment Weekly may have been the best and the worst thing to ever happen to those of us who are in this part of the game. The best because they created an outlet to tell the stories of how this whole business works. The worst because the glibness of writing has been given an unfairly generous patina of respectability that leaves us, as writers and magazine editors around the country, trying to match the tone without having the resources to match the quality of journalism. Not that EW doesn't fall on their face on a fairly regular basis. (Don't get me started there. It feels like exposing a magician's tricks.) But the point is, glib is entertaining and good to read in the bathroom, but it's about as enriching as a McDonald's hamburger. And there was a time when, if you called yourself a journalist, you at least wanted to be more than that, not just a super-sized version of the tabloids.
I'm trying to narrow my focus here down to one issue that can really have some effect. And it is this: Make judgments based on facts, not on speculation about motivation. If you hate a movie, hate it, but don't tell me that the filmmaker didn't care. That's not fair. Failure can be judged. You can tell me why you think it failed, but don't tell me what the people involved were thinking as they made it.
The one exception? The studios. I do think that it's fair to make motivational judgments about studios. Why? Because I think they have generally shown a uniform propensity to focus almost exclusively on the bottom line. Why Universal wanted to make Psycho and why Gus Van Sant wanted to make Psycho are clearly completely different issues. Yet, Van Sant gets painted with the same wide brush as the studio, and I guess that's kind of the price you pay when you take a ride on the big train, but shouldn't those of us who take on the responsibility of investigating these things on your behalf look a little deeper than you? If I do my analysis out of Entertainment Weekly or Premiere or the trades or Ain't-It-Cool-News, aren't I smacking you right in the face? It's not that these places are always wrong or even usually wrong, but shouldn't there be more than that? And if there isn't, why would you want the same thing over and over.
I have a feeling I'm preaching to the choir here now, but...
The other thing with the studios is that they are ensconced in a way of doing business that is hard to change. I joked, kind of, about being left off the list that Universal is running with ads for Out of Sight of critics who have put the film on their Top 10 list. Well, ego aside, what is Universal saying there? Primarily, that I'm not a big enough dog for them to get a bump of. OK, fair enough. (I'm being modest for the moment. Print it out. It's rare.) But shouldn't Universal and the rest be building me up instead of the quote whores? Isn't it in their interest to have a writer who has integrity, who might rip half their movies every year but who will honor and fight for the movies that are of value in his eyes move up the ladder. With all the money, time and effort the studios invest in the quote whores, wouldn't they be well-advised to dip into the newest medium and invest in real ways by adding value to the people who actually care? Who readers can disagree with but respect? (So much for modesty.)
It reminds me of the first half of this century in New York City. The city had dozens of newspapers and, while certain critics reached the highest levels of influence, no single critic really could close a show. In the New York of the '70s and on, with just a few local papers, one review from the New York Times was the bellwether for every show's life or death. And the same has become true for indie films that try to establish a New York base before fanning out. The New York Times can kill any movie at the Angelica, N.Y.'s premiere art house, in its first weekend. That responsibility lies not just with the newspapers or the journalists, but with the studios, the publicists and even you, the moviegoers, who let what people like me (sound of me slicing my own throat) tell you what to do.
So, what should people like me do? (Band-Aid time.) We should give you enough objective and occasionally subjective information to make up your own minds. We should love the business that we report on. Not that we should cover up problems, but rather we shouldn't salivate over them. When a movie goes south, someone is losing millions of dollars. Careers, some of which are worth saving, are obliterated. (Marco Brambilla, for example, who did a really nice job on Demolition Man before getting crushed by Excess Baggage, has essentially left the Hollywood game, moving back East and getting back into commercials.) When a filmmaker takes a misstep in our opinions, beat them up for that, sure, but keep in mind that they are human. And that if you see at least some talent, that is worth preserving. Because how many great films do you see? Ever? If someone can make one, there is hope. Sure, if they blow four after that, you have to worry that maybe it was a fluke or a great DP or something.
Which brings up my last point for the moment. (Consider this whole rant a work in progress. Your input would be valuable to me in figuring this all out.) How many of we, "journalists" could do even what someone like Harold Ramis does? Two mediocre comedies for every great one. Answer: About none. How many "journalists," could crank out a studio-level screenplay? Answer: About a dozen. How many "journalists" aren't frustrated by sitting on the sideline, licking the boots of the superstars, begging every day for access and getting snubbed nine out of 10 times? Answer: Count them on one hand. We, and I include myself, have a responsibility to be better than our lowest common denominator -- getting published. We have to strive for more. Because you, the readers and moviegoers, deserve that. And it's not just generosity. We deserve to be able to look in the mirror each day. We deserve to respect what we do and to respect our colleagues who walk the same road. I'm sick of that slight embarrassment of being "just" a film journalist. I want more for all of us. And my bet is that you do too.
Done for now. Thanks for reading.
READER OF THE DAY: From J.B.: "I'd like to present my take on The Thin Red Line. I don't denigrate your admiration for the movie, but I don't feel the same way. Yes, the movie was self-indulgent, but that's not my objection either, a lot of art is self-indulgent. I think, in part, it was the fact that all these grunts spoke like philosophy professors and English majors. As a result, there was very little real interaction in this movie between the men who were going up a hill together to die. Instead, there were soliloquies, or orders. Even the scene in the house between Welsh and Witt, they spoke to each other like they were writing letters to each other, rather than communicating in any human, natural, interactive way. If Malick's intent was to make them ethereal instead of human, I think he succeeded.
"So beyond the criticism, (the soldiers) all looked alike (the machinery of war, they'll all look the same) and sounded alike (there was one instance of a Brooklyn accent at the beginning of the movie, the rest all had Southern-Midwestern accents), it finally got to me that they all talked alike. They didn't trade quips. There was no gallows' humor. Two different people spoke Greek (Greek? Are you kidding me?) in the movie. There were three different references to people being 'sons' to others. There was a completely superfluous Dear John scene (which, while 'human' didn't jibe with the dehumanizing theme of the movie). And finally, there was the painfully overwrought 'happy natives before the war; angry restless natives during the war' schtick -- don't misunderstand, the people of Guadalcanal had every right in the world to hate the warring parties, but that 'corruption of Eden' motif was so incredibly overdone by Malick, it took away the movie's power for me. In all, to me, the movie played like spliced footage of the History channel and the Discovery Channel, mixed with the dialogue from a roundtable discussion of Sartre and the best of R. Lee Ermey without the humor."

E ME: Tell me how you feel. Seriously.