The Hot Button by David Poland

Weekend, 27-28 February 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

10. NOT MOVIES: Sometimes I just can't stop myself from commenting on the real world, so here goes. I do not believe in the death penalty. My reason has to do with the flaws in human judgment in general and, more specifically, the natural de-evolution of almost any serious course of action when it becomes systematized. Simply, I question the state's right to kill outside self-defense and I doubt the fairness of the court system in handing out the ultimate sentence. That said, I would like to make an exception for John William King, the man who was found guilty of dragging James Byrd to his death. I have not felt such a sense of desperation for us as a species as when I listened to exactly what this man did to a fellow man. I comfort myself in the understanding that serial killers and others are just plain nuts. But this was the kind of personal eyes-wide-open inhumanity that, if actually comprehended in the darkest part of our souls, would probably give one an aneurysm. As a showbiz aside, Doug "The Greaseman" Tracht was fired for joking that Lauryn Hill's Grammy wins gave him insight as to why people would drag other people behind trucks. I am a free-speech absolutist, but I hope that this guy got his ass kicked before he was official fired. And I am relieved that John William King has been sentenced to death. Now back to your regularly scheduled Hot Button.
9. GOOD GENES: William Stiller dies this week at the age of 102. Who is William Stiller? Jerry Stiller's father, of course. What does this have to do with this column? Well, all I can say is fasten your seat belts. We may well have another 6.8 decades of Ben Stiller to look forward to. If you have any doubt, Stiller was survived by his wife, his brother, his sister and four children. I'll have what he's having. (Well, not this week.) If you wish to pay your respects, please send a donation to: Boy's and Girl's Brotherhood Republic, 888 East 6th Street, New York, NY 10002.
8. CAN'T KEEP A BAD MOVIE UP: Britain's first ever comics festival, Comics '99, has put its hand across the ocean to honor an American movie at the April 3 event. The film? Batman & Robin. The honor? It's being crowned The Worst Ever Comic-Based Movie. Starting at 11:00 p.m., Comic Book Turkeys' All-Night Film Show will begin with B&R, Spawn, Prince Valiant, The Fat Slags and others, running until the next morning's comic book brunch or until everyone has committed Hari Kari. And it will cost you only seven pounds! Not enough agony? Well, add on David Bishop's "stop-start dissection of the Sly Stallone adaptation" of Judge Dredd and you, too, will want to drink warm beer until you puke!
7. LIGHT PRESERVERS: For you NEA-bashers out there, here's one that any real film lover couldn't argue with. The National Endowment of the Arts has put $500,000 toward the preservation and restoration of films that have been left "orphaned" in film archives in a dozen states. These are, obviously, not films that have great commercial value or the free market would have scooped them up by now. But they are a part of our nation's heritage and should be preserved and cared for as we would preserve cave drawings, the first tools of man or any other bit of foundational history. Now, they could burn all copies of Mannequin and get no argument from me, but the NEA hasn't gotten to that national treasure quite yet.
6. MAXI-BAD: Miramax is joining the family TV business. ABC looks like it will order "Clerks: The TV Series." Let the whoring begin! Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are back in business and this could be a show that in tandem with the singularly overrated "Sports Night" (the show with dialogue so pretentious and thick that Harold Pinter watched it and cried, "What is their problem?!"), could bring the network to a critically acclaimed complete stop. An HBO series could be worthy, but this?!?! Argh! Clerks in prime time. Just think about it. Kind of like "Basic Instinct: The Saturday Morning Animated Series" or "Friends" without the tight clothes. No one could take it! And, uh, by the way, where the hell is Dogma?
5. GO WEST, YOUNG MEG: ShoWest is the next major event that will be taking over this column. Should be fun. I haven't bothered to recite the list of awards being bestowed on huge box office drawing names because that's not the good part. I will get into that late next week before I leave for Vegas. But I did want to throw the Actress of the Year, Meg Ryan, at you. I know that a lot of you hate her for some reason. Despite some letters, I am not in love with her, but I do think she's had a terrific year. And by ShoWest criteria, a 1998 domestic theatrical box office gross of more than $180 million, she's all that and a box of Red Vines.
4. IS THAT ACID ON YOUR BALLOT OR ARE YOU JUST GLAD TO BE LEAVING FRANCE?: Word has hit that David Cronenberg, one of the few truly independent commercial (is that an oxymoron?) directors working today, will be president of this year's jury at Cannes. You can't really top Martin Scorsese, last year's jury chief. But there is something mad and wonderful about Cronenberg's vision having that kind of influence on the industry of film. Films that you may well have heard of that appeared in competition last year are Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Festen (The Celebration), Henry Fool, My Name is Joe, The General, Velvet Goldmine and a little movie called Life is Beautiful, which really used Cannes to test the waters to see if the Jewish Holocaust and comedy would float in the same boat. The film won a Grand Jury Prize and was launched toward Miramax's Oscar® drive. Festen took a jury prize, Peter Mullan won Best Male Performance for his turn in Ken Loach's My Name is Joe and John Boorman won Best Director for The General. On the other hand, Palm D'Or winner, Eternity and a Day (Mia Eoniotita Ke Mia Mera), still, as far as I can tell, doesn't even have a U.S. distributor despite the award and showings at Toronto and Montreal. (Put that in the category -- "How Disney could have made it even worse for Rushmore.") With the man with a predilection for twisted metal and body parts at the helm, who knows what could emerge from this year's festival? Cool.
3. NOT MOVIES, THE SEQUEL: In light of so many of the people who were defending Bill Clinton to death just two weeks ago now hedging as they see some credibility in Juanita Broderick's account of her alleged rape at the hands of the man now holding the highest office in the most powerful nation on Earth, I will recount a story from The Hollywood Reporter. But I will refrain from specifics as not to taunt anyone who can have me killed, physically or professionally. To make a long story short, Clinton's defense fund has raised $4.5 million in the last year, much of it from Hollywood. But with Broderick's story hitting now, free from legal danger from Clinton (the statute of limitations is long past), free of congressional Republican fingerprints and free of any chance to use this to restart impeachment proceedings, this third accusation of a non-consensual sexual advance, has people asking themselves, "Did he do this?" And that's the problem in and of itself, isn't it? The argument that "it was just sex" and that one had to be somehow hung-up on sex to feel that what Clinton did wrong was fun for a while. But do you want the leader of the free world about whom you and most others can easily assume is guilty of "date rape" is a real possibility? Even if it is a lie? Is that where we are as a nation? Have we set the bar that low? If you still want to donate to the defense fund, please visit www.clintontrust.com.
2. A DILLY OF A DEAL: Barry Diller -- who has been rumored to be lurking in the dark waiting for Universal deity Edgar Bronfman Jr. to drop his price on either October Films or PolyGram art mini Gramercy so can get back into the film business, having already scooped up command of Universal's TV division (now know as Diller Vision in-house) -- is negotiating to buy cable nets Bravo, American Movie Classics, Independent Film Channel and Romance Classics. Connect the dots. Diller buys the only available brand names (those would be all the ones without a "T" in their acronym) and then buys at least one art house studio to fill the programming hours. That would give him five major cable nets to program as he continues to have his fingers in multiple feature production pies and as he sits as close to the apex of one of the four majors (WB/Time Warner, Paramount/Viacom, Disney/Cap Cities/ABC and Universal/UPN/USA Networks) as his feelings for the future of cable and commercial pay big dividends. In other words, if he is trying to walk like Ted and talk like Ted, he must be trying to be Ted's doppelganger. Unfortunately for Diller, Susan Sarandon is not available for marriage or the package would be complete.
1. BYE AGAIN: Gene Siskel's death last Saturday brought out some genuine emotion from a lot of people who didn't expect to find it in themselves for this man. I don't put Roger Ebert in that category, as I think he knew how much he loved Gene before Gene died. The show now seems set through the end of the year, but after nine months of co-hosts, my guess is that Roger will step away and create another small empire for himself. This is a man who likes to work and work hard and he could make himself the David Frost of the movie set while writing for the Sun-Times and major magazines at will for the next decade of his career, probably very happily. One last time, in the tone of his beloved Bulls intro guy: "And now, from the East Side of Michigan Avenue, at 6' whatever, the point critic for your World Champion Chicago Critics, from Ebert's right, The Man with a Pan, Two Thumbs Up for Geeeeeeeeeeeeene Siskel!"
READERS OF THE DAY: I've done some tough writing today and so has Ryan: "Please!? 'Character assassination?' Joel Schumacher? His films assassinate his characters more than a entire whack (sic) of Premiere writers could. Each is a love letter to the main male star (including Corey Haim in The Lost Boys and Brad Renfro in The Client). List off his filmography and then think about the portrayal of the male lead. Here's two to start you off: Matthew McConaughey -- sweaty, sleeveless white trash. Val Kilmer -- Tupperware® crotch and a-- shots. And this man thinks he knows Batman stories?"
Krillian is a bit more mellow: "You know, I find it funny that now that the nation has had a few months to brood upon and pick apart Saving Private Ryan, people are lining up for the backlash. SPR is still the best movie of 1998 in my opinion, and the defining tribute to it was my best friend's dad, a WWII drill sergeant, who came out of it saying, 'I just relived half my life.' He didn't like The Thin Red Line as much because he said, 'You didn't have time to think in war.' SPR didn't really give you a chance to think about it until it was over. That's how war is. It's about staying alert and staying alive. Ponder all you want once you're safe. TTRL invited you to meditate through the whole movie, being at peace with nature and in tune to the harmonic human cycle as we -- Whoops! A battle scene! -- hold hands and contemplate the meaning of it all. I gotta admit, seeing the trailer for either movie gives me warm fuzzies. I saw the preview for TTRL after I'd seen the movie, and I felt more during that preview than I did the actual three-hour movie."
And Caroline also hates The Thin Red Line: "I couldn't disagree more with Jules. So, The Thin Red Line told a spiritual story? I didn't know, I was sleeping through the whole thing. Talk about boring! At least, I cared for the characters in Saving Private Ryan, and when I came out of the movie theater I was shaken, sad and disturbed because of the war scenes, and also the rest -- that tear-jerking crap, for that matter. I needed coffee after The Thin Red Line just so I could drive back home. You can put great actors into a movie, but you need a story and dialogue that are interesting to movie-goers."

E ME: Well, I still feel The Thin Red Line was the best film made in 1998. And I still feel that Kundun was the best of '97, so obviously I am not an across-the-board populist. I probably should be keeping the Clinton page off these pages, but I try to write from the heart and that's where my heart was today. But please feel free to blast me or agree with me by e-mail. Also, what already released movie (not one of his own) do you think David Cronenberg would most like to give a Palm D'Or? And what do you really think of "Clerks: The Series" as an idea?

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