19-20 August 2000

The idea that ANYONE would have anything to say about what I, as an adult, get to watch on my TV or in my theaters, in this country. where the First Amendment protects us in a way that speech is not protected in other capitalist nations, much less the politically closed nations, is beyond horrifying. It is no less than anti-American. And the Democrats are spouting this line? I would type the words I'm thinking, except we have a policy of self-censorship here at TNT-owned Web sites. We are family friendly. Which makes my point again. Choice. Choosing a time and place. Actual restraint. And that restraint means that a family hour on TV is okay by me, but as soon as you put "Friends," a comedy about nothing but sex, into the 8pm hour, you have no family hour. Is "Friends" as adult as "NYPD Blue" or "Homicide?" Of course not. But it ain't "Sabrina the Teenage Witch" either. Is Britney Spears any less dangerous to my 9-year-old than Kid Rock or Public Enemy? I'd say, more dangerous. At least the harder-edged guys have something to say. (Kid Rock a lot less than P.E.)

But the responsibility is the parents'. Just as the parent had the right to choose at conception. Just as the parent had the right to choose a child's education path. Just as the parent had the right to choose to buy the damned TV and cable box.

Did somebody say that parenting was supposed to be easy? Did somebody say that a "good" set of TV programming could rear a child as well as a parent that makes the extra effort? Does anyone really believe that it is media and not, ironically, parents and other family members, that do the damage that leads to some of the horrible behavior that we've seen from kids in this country lately? Children aren't molested by TVs. Guns don't arrive in the mail with the latest rap CDs from Columbia House. The brutality of the real world cannot be kept from children by giving them the "right" programming.

(And by the way. Why didn't I hear anything much about gun control or even registration this week, my Democratic friends?)

It's not a competition between parents and the media for the hearts and souls of children. It's reading a book to your child at bedtime instead of letting Beavis & Butthead (or even 50-year-old Popeye cartoons) rock him to sleep. It's teaching your children love and respect that will allow them to understand that Fight Club is an anti-violence movie that uses the violence of this age and the past to make its point, not to promote violence. It's letting your children know that you love them more than Ricky Martin does.

I just can't believe that a bunch of liberals may be the ones to set off the next culture wars. The horror. The horror.

That's it. That's all the news. Those are all the numbers. I'll be writing about Almost Famous and why Miramax is desperately trawling for any movie that can possibly get them some Oscar® nods and Wesley Snipes smacking Shaft around like his little--oops, better not use that word, even though TNT will allow me. I could offend the next President!--next week. For now, I want to sit and wonder how I can convince my pretty liberal self to consider voting for another pale imitation of what pols think people want.

READER OF THE DAY: This from The Big A: "Interesting rant on the competition--or brotherhood, whatever--but I sometimes wonder if your primary bias is not about critics who don't offer up anything 'of value' for you to take away (the latter is, by the by, a fairly opaque generalization) but rather toward those critics who do more than connect subject to verb while commenting on our weekly movie dose. Read Lane's last paragraph re: Steal This Movie! in this week's New Yorker. Succinct, to the point, and if you can't take anything away from it, well, then you're not paying attention. And while I wouldn't want to be one of Lane's targets (and by the way, the next time you list the MGM roster, how about a mention for Willis, Thornton, and Blanchette in Outlaws), his sense of humor is one of the reasons I read him in the first place. Hey, I bet you don't like Armond White either."

DAVID RESPONDS: I just went out and bought this week's The New Yorker so I could read Mr. Lane's comments. Oddly enough, we are pretty much in sync about Steal This Movie!. However, even in that last paragraph, Lane has a couple sentences that are to the point ("Steal this Movie! has a great tale to tell, yet, whatever its accuracy, it somehow doesn't taste Abbie Hoffman, or his will to embarrass; it feels alkaline, easy to live with, and hardly ever funny.") and many more that are a show of his ownership of a transcript of the Chicago Seven trial rather than comments that really tell me anything about the movie. I now know that Anthony Lane feels that Robert Greenwald, and presumably screenwriter Bruce Graham, could have made better selections of Abbie Hoffman jokes from the court transcripts. Of course, this falsely gives the impression that they didn't put in Hoffman jokes on very similar lines throughout the court sequence. They just chose the wrong ones I guess. Likewise, what is Lane saying about Janeane Garofalo's performance? Is it good or bad or just another one of Greenwald's faults? And really, what's the point of hiring Jeanne Tripplehorn to play a blonde when she is such a brunette?

It is the vanity of what those of us who get paid to criticize do that can be our greatest enemy. I go back to Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous. "You're not their friend!" It's not about us. It's about the work. I don't mind great writing or even florid writing. What I mind is when certain critics seem to cross the line between writing about the movie and trying to win the award as edgiest writer. The movie is always more important than us, even when the movie sucks. That's why we are bothering to write about it and why you bother to read it, right? Meanwhile, Lane tells us, using the lame device of adding an "I suspect" to every opinion that he wants to put in someone else's mouth, that John Waters hates his audience and that Greenwald's purpose in structuring his movie the way he did was safety and even that the fictional Cecil B. DeMented doesn't really want to spread word of his genius. It is that assumptive, smug, I-know-you-better-than-you attitude, which overwhelms the reality that Lane is just a smart guy with an opinion, that seems to get my goat.

E ME: Where are you drawing the line these days? On artistic restraint? On critical restraint?