7 February 2000

THE BAD (cont.): A better film, Agnes Browne, suffers from a similar problem. I loved Anjelica Huston's directing debut, Bastard Out of Carolina. I loved it so much that I actually took our own Ted Turner to task for dumping the film, which ended up premiering on Showtime. Wonderful visual work as a director, in tandem with D.P. Tony Richmond and brilliant acting throughout. A powerful, painful, beautiful movie. So what went wrong with Agnes Browne? Well, for one thing, it is no easy thing to direct when you are acting. Huston proves that here. And worse, she is miscast as Agnes Browne, the center of the film. I never for a second believed the near-six-footer as the down-on-her-luck mother of seven. Susan Traylor, who worked for Huston on Bastard, could have been perfect. So could a number of other actresses. But not Huston. Likewise, some of the things she did so well in Bastard, she simply missed in this film. I would have to attribute that to split focus. The story of a woman overcoming tough odds to keep her family happy and healthy is a nice one. But the film just doesn't work because you never really feel like Agnes Browne could lose. Sure, that's true of a lot of films ultimately. But the good ones get you nervous even when you know that a happy ending is inevitable.

THE UGLY: I can't tell you what is ugly. I'm sworn to secrecy until the film is ready for release. All I can tell you is that it is a film on my weekend list of upcoming films and that I have little doubt that it will qualify throughout the entire year for my Worst Ten of 2000 list. It's that bad. Maybe worse. Just thinking about it gives me the creeps. (And no, I will not tell you if you send an e-mail promising to keep it between you and me. You'll just have to wait until it is time to dissolve the film in a vat of verbal acid like everyone else.)

HAPPY TRAILERS TO YOU: It's real simple. Any trailer in which people's body motions are speeded up or slowed down has lost me. Just like that. I like Bruce Willis. I like Bruce Willis when he tries to be funny. So why does the trailer for The Whole Nine Yards play like they are trying to hide something? Why was I waiting for Michael Clarke Duncan or Natasha Henstridge or someone to say, "Keeeel Moose"? Why do I feel that, indeed, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Movie will have more subtle performances? I hope I'm wrong. I will see the film. I hope I'm wrong. I will see the film.

BAD AD WATCH: There are always lots of potential bad ads out there. But I must admit that my jaw dropped when I opened the New York Times Arts and Leisure section and saw a two page ad loaded with eight quotes from seven people whom I have never ever seen quoted in my life and one, Maria Salas, who is a quote queen. The movie is Snow Day and the newbies are Richard Reid of Northwest News, Catt Sandler of KBWB-TV, Gui de Mulder of Canal/Spain, Emmanuel Itier of MCM-TV, Iubba Seyyid of Screen TV, Bridget Baiss of Entertainment Tonight Online and J.B. Atkins of KTLA-TV. YOW!!! I know that I haven't seen the movie and I have no opinion of it, but that ad alone scares me to within an inch of my moviegoing life. But the New York Times had not coughed up its last little scare. The ad for Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, which you may remember as a popular conversation point for last year's Sundance Film Festival, has a quote from the programmer who booked the movie, Rebecca Yeldham. Nothing against Ms. Yeldham, but the Sundance program blurbs are not exactly critical coverage. And I seem to remember that someone who didn't work for the festival liked the movie. Scary.

READER OF THE DAY: Hot Button regular had a partial letter run in Sunday's L.A. Times Calendar section. When I first read the letter, which he forwarded in full, I thought it was worth printing. Since Calendar only printed a small portion, here is the whole thing now. From David Clayton: "The attack on the auteur theory has been going on now since the early 1960's, when Richard Roud's polemical and highly misleading article "The French Line" was published by the English film magazine Sight and Sound. It is thus depressing to see Stephen Farber recycling the same canards that have been directed at auteurism since that time in a Commentary piece that appeared in the Sunday Calendar ("Their Reputation Precedes Them, Alas," 1/30.)

The theory did not come into existence to create a cult of personality for directors but as a heuristically valuable way of making sense out of the complex panorama of movie history, as Andrew Sarris made clear back in 1968. That auteurism, like any other aesthetic theory, has had to undergo subsequent revision by later practitioners goes without saying. But I think it would be hard to find a serious auteurist critic even in the past--not to mention today--willing to subscribe to what Farber justifiably characterizes as "pure insanity," namely "the notion that every creation of an anointed director deserves veneration." Moreover, the criterion for deciding whether a director deserves being called an auteur is not some ineffable conception of the artist as an "anointed" genius but stylistic continuity, as Sarris has always emphasized--and that continuity has to be detectable on the screen, not just in the mind of the critic.

According to Farber, "What we're getting today is brand-name criticism," and points an accusing finger at the auteur theory. But I think he is wrongly using auteurism as a whipping boy for a quite different phenomenon: the verbal inflation that has become pervasive in movie reviewing in recent years. Every Friday, when I flip through Calendar I see movie ads sporting words like "masterpiece," most often lavished upon junk that will disappear from view in a few months. And the motive force behind this degrading of criticism to hype is not auteurism but the market forces that govern the industry. Many reviewers for the popular media like television and weekly magazines go armed with glowing superlatives in search of what promises to be the next big hit, not the next film by an auteur. Conversely, when they smell the dank odor of box office failure in the air, they flee as from the scene of a crime.

Two of the most artistically significant movies that came out last year were Eyes Wide Shut and Bringing Out the Dead, but how many reviewers raised a voice in protest when they went down to commercial defeat, in spite of the prestigious status of their respective directors, the late Stanley Kubrick and Martin Scorsese? And not only is it wrong-headed to lay the blame for this lamentable state of affairs on auteurism, but what consistent auteurist can look on with satisfaction when any director who suddenly comes up with a hit is immediately elevated to the status of auteur?

Ironically, one of the "bad" examples Farber adduces to illustrate the horrors of auteurism, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia, worked for me in exactly the opposite way. When I tried watching Boogie Nights on video, I gave up after forty-five minutes, finding the movie insufferably slow and seemingly pointless. But that experience in no way prejudiced my viewing of Magnolia which I thought one of the most interesting pictures I've seen this year--and not just for Tom Cruise's demonically inspired performance. So now I'm going back to give Boogie Nights a second chance, since for me auteurism implies the need to constantly reexamine my own judgements, not the ritual adoration of a select number of great directors."

And this, from Sam the Butcher: "This is the first year that I am a member of SAG and, hence, will be voting for the SAG awards. Now, that I am in this position, I am going through the paper and seeing which of the nominated films are letting me in for free that I haven't already seen. At this point, it seems that most of them are still only letting in the "nom com" members, and a couple aren't even admitting them in anymore! I always thought that when I got into the position of voting for any type of industry award, I would not let anything affect my voting. But guess what? I am finding myself being quite the spoilsport. So, listen up Sony, Universal and New Line! If I'm writing this, figure that there are quite a few thousand SAG members who are probably just as turned off as I am. You want our publicity? Then play the game all the way!"

E-ME: So, do movie voters have rights? And does the auteur theory work anymore when any monkey can direct?