Wednesday, 13 October 1999

RANTING & RAVING

"Blame Part Three" was scheduled to run today, but something else came up that demanded my attention. So look for the blame to come your way next Wednesday.

Last Friday, The Hollywood Reporter ran a story, under the banner of "THR E-Mail," promo'ed on the magazine's cover with this sentence: "Fox's Fight Club violence disturbs industry audiences during screenings on both coasts." In my weekend column and on the KABC-790 AM radio show that I co-host with George Pennacchio, I took strong exception to both the content of the story and the intent that seemed to be behind it. I followed that up on Monday with a response to a reader letter that suggested that the Reporter story was somehow planted by Fox and wrote that Hollywood Reporter editor Anita Busch had been late to the premiere screening and thus, had seen only part of the film. Tuesday, I heard from Anita, who objected to the characterizations I had made of her actions and motivations in regard to the Friday piece, which she had co-written with an east coast correspondent. Specifically, she was concerned about factual issues regarding when she showed up for the Fight Club premiere screening and whether she had seen the entire movie herself before that piece ran, as indicated in my Monday column and on KABC. She tells me that she had seen the film before the premiere and that she even saw the whole thing that evening, catching it from the top at the overflow theater (the Bruin). I will happily bow to her word on that. As I said on Monday, it is a petty issue. She also felt that I misrepresented the type of story that it was and the amount of work that was put into developing it, another case of me assuming a negative motive. In our conversation, she also suggested that perhaps I had been spun by Fox.

Well, the issue of what news is versus what gossip is and how they now intersect in the entertainment news business is a regular feature of this column. And here we are again. I wrote the weekend column around midnight on Thursday based exclusively on the portion of the Reporter story shown on the Reporter's Website. I had not spoken to anyone at Fox about it because everyone from Fox was at home, presumably asleep. I will concede this to her. I did not know that the article was under the column headline of THR E-mail because there is no such distinction on the Website. However, as with all things in this column, the proof is in the work itself. So even in reflection, the distinction that Editor Anita ran this attack on Fight Club in a column rather than as a simple news story carries little weight with me. Not because The Reporter doesn't have the right to editorialize, but because the article itself, in whatever context, reads like a news story. I have taken the liberty of reprinting it in its entirety here:

Cover Headline: Fox's Fight Club violence disturbs industry audiences during screenings on both coasts

Inside Headline: Both coasts bash violent Fight Club

Copy: Both coasts are buzzing about Fox's Fight Club following screenings of the big-budget film, but it wasn't the kind of word-of-mouth any studio would want. People flowed out of the Los Angeles premiere in Westwood on Wednesday night agitated and angry over the violence depicted in the pugilistic film starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. Scene after scene shows men being pummeled to bloody messes. They then turn on society, taking revenge through terrorist activities. "It's loathsome to use the medium this way," lamented one producer concerning David Fincher's dark drama. "It's absolutely indefensible," said a top agent. "It was deplorable on every level." Many claimed that the film was "socially irresponsible" and couldn't have come at a worse time for Hollywood, which was under attack by Washington since the Columbine shootings. Thursday's New York viewers were equally disturbed. Michael Musto of the Village Voice emerged form the screening pursing his lips and shaking his head, saying, "I didn't like it at all." One woman leaving the theater cried, "It's the most horrible movie I've ever seen! Why aren't the pickets here? Where is Cardinal (John) O'Connor when we need him?"

Anita objected to my radio observation that only a few people's opinions were turned into a misleading news story. She says that she, co-writer Thom Geier and others tried to find someone with a positive opinion of the film and failed to find a single alternative opinion. Hard to believe, but I don't have a list of who they called. What I do know is that Michael Musto's opinions are about as mainstream as he is, which is to say, not remotely. And if you want to suggest some sort of homophobia in that comment, note that it wasn't this writer who reported him "pursing his lips." As for the other three individuals, their shock is beyond comprehension. As I wrote, you can hate this movie or be offended by this movie, but after seeing the film three times, I have not heard a single person use language anything close to "loathsome" or "deplorable" or any invocation of Catholicism's need to protect us from this movie.

More to the point, Busch and Geier fail at the most basic level of journalism. They didn't answer all the questions. And I'm sorry, but even as a daily know-it-all that everyone knows is spouting off, I hold myself to that standard. Why is the movie loathsome, indefensible and in need of an exorcist? The authors go on to say that "many claimed the film was `socially irresponsible' and couldn't come at a worse time for Hollywood,' but those are two very different issues thrown together in a way that doesn't allow for dissent. Why is the film socially irresponsible? Because people are going to get into fist fights because of this example? Or do these people really think the movie will encourage people to gather in groups to do anti-societal mischief? Or is it just because they are afraid of conflict with the only company town more hypocritical than ours, Washington? (More on that below.)

Who are these people? Are these people who supported the example President Clinton gave the youth of America by cheating on his wife repeatedly, lying under oath and getting away with it because we were too happy with the economy to demand any more than a "Sorry" and a smirk? Did these people object to the physical abuse of a father against his son in American Beauty? How'd they feel about kindergarteners joking about "shagging?" What were their great moral accomplishments? Did they vote for Kennedy?

But I digress ...

The story that ran doesn't spell out a reason for the attacks in any depth at all and just leaves the reader, in my opinion, with the sense that Fight Club is the most violent movie you'd ever see. It's not even close. But even if you are repulsed by the fisticuffs in the film, anyone who is making any effort to see past their nose understands that this film is more than the sum of its parts.

Ms. Busch makes the argument that since the piece ran in the "THR E-Mail" that it should not have been categorized as news. But the only other item there was a story about Spike Lee signing with a new agency. News. And Monday's "THR E-Mail" covered the potential deal to make Terminator 3, a fact-specific story about staff leaving Talk Magazine, a guy getting a show runner job, a company closing shop and one gossipy bit about the controversial Stigmata poster turning up opposite a church ... gossipy, but factual news.

The story got even more complicated on Tuesday when Ms. Busch ran an editorial in the "On The Beat" column with this header: "Hollywood will take it on the chin for Fox's morally reprehensible Fight Club says editor Anita M. Busch."

Now, I obviously disagree with her. Strongly. However, I absolutely support her right to offer an opinion. And, ironically, the first opinion in this matter that is fully explained, thought out and worthy of publication. You can read it here, but be warned that there may be minor spoilers. You should also know that Anita offered Fox the opportunity to run an opposing editorial on the same page as hers, but they passed when she insisted that only business-side people could write the response. I won't bother guessing why she set these boundaries, but she and Fox both agree that she did. I assume, on Fox's side, that they would rather just open the movie than start a war of words, dragging their execs into the fray.

But I'm not nearly as shy.

Here's where I smack around Anita Busch's opinion column, welcome though it may be, just for good measure. She describes the film as "David Fincher's big-budget tirade about bare-knuckled fighters who form a national network of sociopathic terrorists. With all due respect, that synopsis of the film reads like the work of a $40-a-script reader who has been on the job too long. Essentially, this is the second act of this film, completely disregarding the "tirade" about our conformist lives. And it disregards the third act, in which the issue of how dangerous it is to lose control of the violent act that may have freed your mind is front and center. This is like people complaining that the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut wasn't sexy enough, which was completely off Kubrick's point, except at least in that case Kubrick hid the message deeply in the dreamscape. If Fight Club preaches anything, it is that the ends of the spectrum are wrong and that we must find ourselves and head to the middle again, as men and as a society.

But then Anita gets to her more salient argument, which is that Washington will use Fight Club to make Hollywood a whipping boy once again. But I have to tell you, I think that boat has sailed. Ironically, Anita mentions Eyes Wide Shut and the NC-17 rating, another boat that has sailed. When is the last time you heard any real noise about Hollywood violence and legislation? It's been months. Same with we critics taking up the cudgel against the MPAA over the NC-17. So long as these fights remain tied down to any single movie, they will never last because the movies don't stay in theaters that long. The fad lasts as long as the film and sometimes not even that long. And look how much the Columbine/Matrix connection hurt that film's release into the home entertainment arena. It was the biggest selling DVD title in history and started out as the biggest rental title of the year. Every movie should suffer from such controversy.

Busch suddenly becomes completely rational (okay ... cheap shot!) near the end of her editorial when she writes: When Washington immediately pointed its finger at Hollywood after Columbine, it grasped at straws. Entertainment does influence society, but so do images from real life, the evening news and magazines. To blame one source is myopic."

Bravo! And take this from me: Fight Club is nowhere near as violent, for instance, as HBO's "Juror No. 5," recounting of the O.J. Simpson civil trial.

But then Busch turns an odd corner: "In our ridiculously politically correct society, many in Hollywood would be reluctant to greenlight a story about a 10-year-old girl who smokes cigarettes and cons her way across the country. Paper Moon would be shot down as socially irresponsible. Yet, Fight Club lives?"

WHAT?!?!?! First, I'm not sure what world Busch thinks she is speaking of with movies like Varsity Blues and Cruel Intentions and yes, the very unprotested 17-year-old bosoms and child abuse of American Beauty (and again, no, I don't object to them myself). But far more shocking is a major player in the coverage of this industry screaming for self-censorship. Is it right that Paper Moon would be shot down? If you love film, how can you say that there has ever been a movie that should not have been made for any reason other than quality? And however much you hate Fight Club, you have to accept that there are people -- smart savvy people -- who love the movie and respect the message of taking personal responsibility. Should Romance have been made? Shoah, the great but very painful documentary about the Jewish holocaust? The Matrix? The upcoming Bringing Out The Dead? Pulp Fiction? The Killer? What about the very important and very violent Boys Don't Cry?

Busch closes by saying, "Those responsible for bringing Fight Club to the screen -- agents, financiers, studio executives -- should hang their head for setting the entire industry back." Well, first the obvious. No one knows what will come of this film. There may be no peep from Washington. Or an entire generation may find real strength in the film. Or some kid will die in Des Moines fighting in a basement. It could happen. Hell, someone could watch Bulworth and think it would be a great idea to make a martyr of Warren Beatty. The odds are just a little bit worse.

But the idea that art should be self-censored because it is challenging is exactly what they said about The Great Train Robbery in 1903 when Edwin Porter horrified municipalities as viewers thought the man on screen was really shooting at them. It's what they said about "The Hollywood Ten" in the '50s, accused of potentially slipping Communist dogma into their work. It's what they said about so many Kubrick films from the anti-war Paths of Glory to the mocking Dr. Strangelove to the X-rated A Clockwork Orange to the painfully violent Full Metal Jacket. It's what they said about M*A*S*H when Altman slipped one by them.

They always say it when a film really rocks them to their roots.

To be honest, I think Anita Busch is a young, vibrant woman. I think of her as an intelligent, capable thinker. But the most reprehensible thing in the world of the movies that I can think of -- more reprehensible than the lies, the misogyny, the drugs, the power plays, the cruelty of those on top and the unstoppable ambition of those below ... more than all of that -- is the censoring of ideas. For that, my friends, is the death of art and, though not immediate, the death of our entire industry.

Right now, Fight Club has surpassed The Matrix, Eyes Wide Shut, American Beauty, Boys Don't Cry and Election as my favorite film released to date in 1999. Why? Because of the message and the execution. Just as the nudity faded upon further viewings of Eyes Wide Shut, the more I've seen Fight Club, the less violent it becomes. Not because I become attuned to violence, but because it becomes so clear that this is not a movie about violence. This is a movie about making a real connection. Funny how when Cher slapped Nic Cage and said, "Snap out of it!" we all applauded, and yet, when men pummel each other to the same end, we wince and run. And if Fight Club stopped with a fist fight as a way to wake up and left you hanging, I might agree that it was gratuitous. But it gets to where it was always going. It tells you in no uncertain terms that you are responsible, not fight club, not Tyler, not Jack ... you. David Ansen didn't get it, based on his review, though he still appreciated the artistry. Anita Busch didn't get it. Heck, Michael Musto didn't get it.

But when you wag that finger, Anita, be careful what you are asking for. Hollywood playing it even safer? That would be morally repulsive indeed.

READER OF THE DAY: This came in, coincidentally, from John on Tuesday: "I was interning at a political news TV operation in Washington, DC, when Columbine happened. We repeatedly ran clips from The Matrix with Keanu shooting up everything with his trench coat. But one thing that bothered me, and I told the producer: "We always cut that footage before they walk on the walls or stop the bullets in mid air ... why?" He had no answer. On a later date, more of the film was shown and, surprise, the violence argument seemed pretty silly."

E ME: What do you think?