24 July 2000

THE UGLY: Peter Bart of Variety twisted the old William Goldman chestnut "Nobody knows anything" into "Everyone knows everything," citing it as a problem of this Internet era. But I think that Bart, who has become a true Web phobic, missed the point. Everyone knowing everything isn't a problem. And the issue is not, as Bart comments at the end of his piece, that "what they plan to do with (knowing everything) is anyone's guess." Knowing is a tennis racket, not a grand slam win. To continue an analogy, Hollywood has always been a country club. A restricted one. Not restricted to any ethnic group--well, that's another column--but restricted from moviegoing civilians. Now the door is wide open. But the civilians can come in and look at the club from the inside all they like. Only members can make reservations for the dining room, the tennis courts or a tee time. If a studio exec is insecure enough to read a script review by someone who they don't know and therefore cannot respect and will then react to the notes as though their $200,000 a year Director of Development offered them up, something is wrong. Not with the Web head who wrote about the script, but with the exec who lives in quicksand.

This is the unmitigated irony of the studios being paranoid about test screening reviews on the Web while the sites that run the reviews claim that they are against the testing process. It's the same pathetic obsession. A group of 200 in the valley versus one guy who was in that valley screening who has an e-mail account is just more of the same. The same worthless self-propagating mess. Chicken and egg time. If the civilians are in charge of the pros, what does it really matter in what format the info arrives?

One reason the "golden era" of film is considered golden is that people just made movies. Churned them out. From what I can tell, studio executives actually made decisions themselves and then brought them to the filmmakers. What a concept! Market research didn't look to fill every filmic orifice with answers about how the fourth lead played with women 18-34.

The problem with the Bart analogy to the Goldman quote is that it misunderstands the Goldman quote (perhaps purposefully). Goldman didn't say that nobody had any information. Goldman said that no one could extrapolate the info they had with any real certainty. Internet script reviews and test screening reviews don't change what Goldman said, they prove Goldman's point. In a world where more and more people have published opinions, commitment to instinct and truly educated guesses is more challenging and more valuable than ever.

BAD AD WATCH: Nothing against Chicken Run, but has there been a creepier quote all year than Gene Shalit's "The most fun I've had this year," in regard to A MOVIE? And specifically, Chicken Run, a children's movie?

READER OF THE DAY: M.F. wrote in about our Me, Myself & Irene review: "To the Ungrateful little children, I thought I would let you know that I did not appreciate you guys calling police work 'a joke of a profession.' You don't go out there and put your life on the line for people you don't even know. Look @ your job, you consider it important, you shouldn't. Life would go on w/out "Internet critics." You know, you may not like Peace Officers, and that's fine you don't have to, but you shouldn't speak poorly of a profession that you are too cowardly to do yourself.

A simple thank you would have been nice, or even just not saying anything at all. You don't even have right to criticize us until you've walked a mile in our shoes and lived life from call to call.

My advice to you is to either keep your mouth shut, or put on a vest, strap your gun and try to keep the peace. Either way I don't care. All I know is a lot of good men lose their lives for pukes like you every day, and all you can call their sacrifice is a joke. Well you can explain that to your maker when all wrongs are eventually made right."

E ME: Ouch. Should critics walk a mile in the shoes of those they write about?