October 28, 2002

I still don’t expect that I’ll be seeing Jackass: The Movie, ever…

Okay.  I admit it.  I might take a peak one of these days if the thing turns up in front of me.  But on The Friday Of Misunderstanding, I apparently wasn’t clear enough about why.  It has nothing to do with the snobbery of wanting a free screening from Paramount.  It was purely a comment on the fact that I have seen Jackass on TV and have no interest in seeing it there again or anywhere else.  If Paramount had done a screening and asked me to attend, I probably would have gone out of curiosity, though one wise man suggested that the only way to see Jackass: The Movie was in a crowd of wannabe jackasses in a theater at an evening screening.  I actually thought about going this weekend… but it wasn’t at a nearby theater that I liked and I just didn’t care that much.  And would there have been any value to you if I were to comment on a film that I went in hating?  After all, even supporters of the film all seem to agree that the feature film is simply an expanded version of the show… the show that I just don’t get.  If it makes you feel any better, I wouldn’t be interested in seeing Sports Night: The Motion Picture either. 

But that didn’t keep millions of people from running out to see the film in theaters this weekend.  Some have suggested that this signals the end of the human species as we know it on this planet.  I am a bit more sanguine.  I’m sure that there is some reason why people like auto racing, light beer, piercing, Harmony Korine movies and those little stickers on cars of a kittle kid peeing on stuff… none of which I understand or appreciate in the least.  But some people think I’m crazy for loving Eyes Wide Shut.  This goes back to the Love/Hate Moonlight Mile/Igby Goes Down thing.  Sometime, the answer actually is different strokes for different folks.  When Fox decides to make Freddy Got Fingered Again to capitalize on this great moment in movie history, that’s when I will go to Rexall looking for straight razors.

Also misunderstood by some was my choice to write about The Truth Abut Charlie and Thandie Newton in more graphically sexual terms than usual for this column.  I felt quite bad about this when I received a few letters berating me for this offense.  And then I re-read the column.  And I respectfully disagree.  The whole point was that the film had to be driven by a raw sexual energy and that Demme actually went down that road a few times.  In my mind not far enough.  But, apparently, too far for some of you.  I have a great deal of respect for Thandie Newton as a good and intelligent person.  But her physical assets are a key part of what draws filmmakers to her.  Or perhaps her crotch in Tom Cruise’s face or her inevitable nudity in any R-rated film she is in or even her nude-behind-glass scene in Charlie didn’t make that clear.  It is the combination of the carnal and her clear intelligence and gentility that makes her a thinking man’s sex symbol.  I apologize if I offended, but I would write the same column again. 

All that said, I don’t think that an estimated $2.3 million start calls for an “I told you so” moment.  The movie business has become – perhaps has always been – a bizarre place to try to draw an intellectual continuum.  Is Jackass fifteen times better than Charlie?  Is Ghost Ship five times better than Charlie?  Could this be quantified if we wanted to quantify it? 

Sadly, it comes down to the sales pitch and the pre-existing marketable values involved.  Charlie had no real opener, in terms of the actors, an old movie that is beloved by some, but not a Top 100 level classic and a no clear story to sell – is it a romance, a travelogue, a mystery or remake?  Ghost Ship, of quality or not, was more sophisticated than its sales campaign… but that worked for Ghost Ship.  It opened a bit behind last year’s Thirteen Ghosts, but that film also had bigger names that were a draw for the teen crowd that showed up… and it wasn’t up against Jackass: The Movie.  And re: J:TM… the audience for the film is significant and committed.  It was a remarkable show of loyalty.  And Paramount barely had to sell the thing.  And now, next weekend will be sold by the success of this weekend… expect a lot more walk-outs. 

PETE IN THE SEAT:  Riddle me this, Batman.  Why did Peter Guber allow himself to be seated on the Winona Ryder jury if there is any chance that he will vote to convict?  With due respect to his personal honor, sitting on this jury strips Guber of the most valuable Hollywood asset… secrecy.  Unless the jury is hung, we all will know which way Guber voted.  And whatever the facts in the case, it does not behoove Guber to be party to convicting Winona Ryder. 

People are buzzing about Guber being on the jury, but either the prosecution or the defense could have gotten rid of him easily.  And one point, prosecutor Ann Rundle asked the potential jurors, “Quite a few of you are in the entertainment industry. Do you think at any point in the future you might hope to work with Ms. Ryder?”  They all shook their heads, “no.”  That may not be a good sign for Ms. Ryder’s career, but there is no way for Guber to know the future and the future hiring of his company, Mandalay.  Regardless, Ryder has friends and some of those will certainly work with Mandalay, if they are not already under Mandalay’s employ. 

Guber can save Ryder by hanging the jury.  Guber can free Ryder by joining eleven others.  But for Guber to be one of twelve to convict?  It could happen.  But the odds are now officially one million to one.

PETE IN THE SEAT II:  It’s a good thing that Peter Guber is getting familiar with the ride to court.  Sir Sean Connery has appending lawsuit against Guber and Mandalay Pictures regarding the abandoned project, End Game.  Between all the rhetoric, this seems to be Connery claiming that he had a verbal contract for a $17.25 million pay-or-play deal for the film that never got financed.  Why, that’s enough money to actually send this dispute to a court!  (You can read more about the suit here.)

QUOTED:  Over the weekend, there were protest rallies against the seemingly inevitable American attack on Iraq.  The anti-Bush rhetoric was thick.  But Susan Sarandon made a point that I think is worth repeating here.  She said, “Let us hate war in all its forms, whether the weapon used is a missile or an airplane.”   

I fear – and believe – that the Democrats’ obsession with demeaning the sitting president with the rhetoric of sore losers is going to help get George Bush re-elected, whether he deserves it or not.  And Sarandon took partisan positions as well.  But this comment… being against war, whatever your politics…. taking a stand based on morality, not preconceptions… that hits home with me.  And while I am not Regular Joe America, I think that the courage of that kind of conviction hits home with most Americans.

SPEAKING OF WHICH:  I finally got a chance to see We Were Soldiers on Friday.  Ironically, in the reflection of the Jackass thing, I saw the film alone in a Paramount screening room.  I don’t really want to write about the film in depth until I have a chance to speak to the filmmaker, Randall Wallace.  After all, an eight-month-late review doesn’t mean too much to anyone.  (If you really want one, I am pretty close in thinking to David Edelstein’s Slate review, which is here.)

Anyway, the point here is that I was really taken with the apolitical nature of the film, in the face of a war that is a source of shame for the vast majority of Americans.  This was in direct conflict with another Paramount release this year, The Four Feathers, whose main characters were viciously condescending to other nations, yet still expected us to revel in their heroism in killing them. 

What do you do when you’re branded and you know you’re a man?

Some has suggested that Wallace, Gibson and their collaborators created a very political movie by making a movie that recreated a part of the Vietnam War while expressing little, if anything about the politics involved.  The question has been asked, “What if a film tried to deal with the intimate lives of Nazis, just doing their jobs?”  I say, “Truth will out.” 

It’s like the old thing about being high and thinking about an atom in your thumb and how that atom might be a whole universe in which some guy is stoned and thinking about an atom in his thumb and so one and so on.   The chessboard of life works on many different planes all at once.  We Were Soldiers focuses on the chessboard of survival on a battlefield with very little thought or awareness of the military chess game that put these men onto that battlefield or the political chess game that decided to move forward with a military option.

However, writing about The Grey Zone, the L.A. Times’ Manohla Dargis wrote: “The desire to personalize the Holocaust is reasonable but it is a hazardous point of departure for a story as difficult and immense as that of the Nazi extermination camps, in part because personalizing that story is to risk trading understanding for empathy, even where none is warranted.”

So, do filmmakers, in the world of Dargis and others, have a right to focus on the chess game by which they are compelled?

Sometime soon, I hope to pose that question to Randall Wallace.  But today, I pose it to you.  I can’t imagine a more relevant moment for the discussion. 

READER OF THE DAY:  SUB writes:  “Earlier this year, after the Academy wasted time giving yet two more honorary Oscars to people who had won in their own rights, I sent the Academy a letter with names of people without Oscars who deserved honorary consideration. With Richard Harris' death, two of those people have already died before they could be honored (the other was John Frankenheimer). There needs to be a full-blown lobbying effort to stop the Academy from giving winners like Poitier, Redford, Kazan, Beatty, Eastwood and Loren more trophies when names like these have none. All are 60 or older. I started with the oldest and worked back to the youngest.

Eddie Albert, Hume Cronyn, Jules Dassin, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Eli Wallach, Richard Widmark, Glenn Ford, Van Johnson, June Allyson, Howard Keel, Betty Hutton, Maureen O'Hara, Cyd Charisse, Jackie Cooper, Charles Durning, Blake Edwards, Arthur Penn, Glynis Johns, Ann Miller, Robert Altman, Lauren Bacall, Doris Day, Sidney Lumet,
Tony Curtis, Julie Harris, Angela Lansbury, Jerry Lewis, Peter Falk, Jeanne Moreau, Christopher Plummer, Ennio Morricone, Joan Plowright, Jean Simmons, Max von Sydow, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Harris, James Earl Jones, Gena Rowlands, Leslie Caron, Piper Laurie, Peter O'Toole, Debbie Reynolds, Burt Reynolds, Albert Finney, Morgan Freeman”

DOCTOR DENNIS writes:  “You seemed a touch snobby (and whiny about not getting to see it free) while writing about Jackass and the lack of a press screening.  Based on your tone, I doubt you would enjoy Jackass.  I doubt the guys that made are going to be sulking because they don't have your business.  Why would they?  They're going to make twenty mil this weekend. 

After reading Lou's review, I understand why Paramount held off.  Jackass isn't just stupid people doing stupid stunts -- the comedy and the personalities are the draws to the over-20 crowd.  Knoxville might not be a great actor, but he's an amazingly charismatic ring leader, and the other guys are shock comic geniuses without the pretension of Tom Green and others.  But you never knew it, and I guess you never will.

No big loss for either side.”

E ME:  Agreed.  So what do you think about the We Were Soldiers issue?