February 6, 2003

Hollywood’s All The Rage

It was my initial intention to write about William Goldman’s subscriber-only Weekly Variety piece on Martin Scorsese’s Oscar campaign today.  But, as I reflected on that piece, I started thinking about the many other examples of the hottest trend in Hollywood.  The Bottomless Cup O’ Rage.

Hollywood has always attracted rage freaks and that hasn’t changed.  The bigger the bully, the more likely he or she will be compared to the myopically envisioned moguls of the past.  One of the few treats of this Oscar season is watching the muted, yet distinct battle between the reigning bully boys of the moment, Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein, who are, amazingly, both credited producers on The Hours. 

This year’s Oscar campaign – and I use that phrase in the warring sense and not the “We bought some ads” sense – has been the most brutal that I have ever experienced.  Last year’s plaintive wails about the attacks on A Beautiful Mind are child’s play in comparison.  It’s like Israel vs. Palestinians (to use a horribly uncomfortable analogy), high-tech helicopters versus rocks and bottles. 

2002/2003 has become a seminal year for Oscar and its place in the industry.  For years, people have talked about the obscenity of the campaign process.  But this year, with the absence of a serious alternative to the Miramax onslaught, Hollywood has finally taken the red pill and we are able to see the awards matrix for what it has become.  As long as we had the juicy red meat of Miramax battling with DreamWorks, we could comfort ourselves that bemused distance was okay.  Maybe we could have gone back to our pods and had our memories erased.  But this year, Martin Scorsese is as unavoidable as Agent Smith, guys like Roger Friedman are willing to play Cypher for a free meal or two, some of us play at being Morpheus, the Oracle is dead and we’re still looking for our Neo.

The result is that some people are getting unplugged and are not willing to sit back and take it like usual.  William Goldman has crafted a very public, singularly brutal attack on the efforts to get Scorsese “his” Oscar.  He smacks Scorsese, his supporters and Miramax, which gets gifted with his most careful piece of writing: “Miramax, the greatest movie company of the era (and the most brutal -- and maybe they have to go together) is so all-out for Scorsese it's heart-stopping. They do a brilliant job and I honor that -- but I will never forgive them for hyping the Oscar to Roberto Benigni, the scummiest award in the Academy's history. And I suspect Scorsese will win, too.”

Meanwhile, at Ask Manohla!, the L.A. Times’ new column from newly hired critic Manohla Dargis, Oscarwatch’s Sasha Stone attacks Dargis by e-mail, writing, “You have some balls calling Gangs of New York the second worst film of Scorsese's career.”  I can’t quite remember Sasha’s exact words – words that actually marked the beginning of a relationship I think of as a friendship – but I think I had “some balls” for calling the release print of Gangs Scorsese’s “worst film since Boxcar Bertha.”  At least I actually have “some balls.” (I’m too busy typing right now to do a count.)

Manohla’s column has raised the hackles of many, as Manohla does not suffer fools gladly - at least in print – and most people seem to qualify as fools… at least in print.  But the irony of the establishment of a column that brings out mostly negative passion in people is that it is a much better drawing card than “happy” columns.  My guess is that Ask Manohla! will become the first true internet must-read that the L.A. Times has ever had and that it will rival anything else in the Calendar section for page views in short order.  But not because of Manohla’s strength of character and smarts, but because it is a conflictual column.  (Perhaps I have underestimated the new LA Times editors.)

Of course, the conversation about Manohla takes us to Jeffrey Wells’ “Nutter” column, which uses that pejorative to distinguish film critics who have a distinguishable voice from everyone else out there.  But that is Wells’ modus operandi.  Draw us in with the negative and then add some positive sprinkles to make us all feel better about venting our rage with him. 

Of course, the most prominent nutter in the bunch is Anthony Lane, who goes unmentioned in the piece.  Why?  Because he is so far over the edge that he is now admired by those who put prose over insight.  He is the ultimate rage freak, glorying in the heat of his negative reviews while rarely deigning to actually consider the positive.  It’s just not as witty.  I would be unsurprised to find out that the L.A. Times editors who hired Manohla Dargis – who, as I always emphasize, I consider a rather brilliant, high-minded writer – were influenced by the almost cult-ish aura of Lane, a man so not of us that he must be above us.  (Self-loathing is still the ultimate form of Hollywood rage.)

Wells’ survey is too simplistic to be helpful.  Armond White, Manhola, Jon Rosenbaum, Mike Wilmington (who also goes unmentioned), Stanley Kauffmann, the web’s James Berardenelli, Amy Taubin, the Film Comment crew and sometimes Todd McCarthy are the small group of critics working that particularly (and peculiarly) layered room and are still readily accessible to the American eye.  This is not to say that no one else is serious about film criticism.  Most of my favorites are not in this group.  But this crew is going to take you someplace that you never saw coming, 9 out of 10 times.

So what’s wrong with that?

Nothing, except that it pisses people off because they feel talked down to or out of touch or abused by not feeling hip enough.  Wah, wah, wah!!!  The anti-intellectualism practiced by our so-called cultural leaders in the media is pathetic. 

Media has become so disaffected by it all that they can’t even tell the difference between “The Intellectuals” and “The Contrarian Class,” now led by Elvis Mitchell and supported by Owen Gliberman, the multi-color haired Luke Y. Thompson and others.  (Peter Travers contradicts himself, performing various acts of fellatio in order to get quoted, then whining about the terrible state of the movie business.  Only in a DePalma film can you wake up from that nightmare.)

Of course, then there is the much-unreported reality that many major markets don’t even have film critics that are located in their cities.  Michael Sragow moved his family to Baltimore for the Sun gig, but there is city after city out there with imported film criticism.  Even here in Los Angeles, the mighty L.A. Times can’t seem to cover the film crit beat with three full-timers, importing reviews from other Tribune papers on a regular basis.  (Roger Ebert still manages to cover all but a very few Chicago releases by himself for the Chicago Sun-Times.  Famous though he is, he is still the hardest charging workhorse in the game.)

And here is the ironic part.  Ready?  All this whining from people who claim to want originality in cinema is playing right into the worst ideals of Hollywood’s current state of the industry. 

All this rage gets displaced in attacks on the ivory tower and films that are challenging, whether they fail or succeed artistically, and the studio system chugs along like a supercrusier through a pudding slick in the idle of the Pacific. Don’t like a studio film?  Kill it!  Don’t just dismiss it, as the long-retired editors of The New York Times had the brass balls to do in years past, and which Joe “Movie Yoda” Morgenstern does because of limited space in the Wall Street Journal.  (It kills me to say this, but limited column space does have its virtues.) 

If you don’t like the new Star Wars film, don’t just pan it.  Put the film aside and attack the filmmaker personally.  Don’t like the new Soderbergh?  Don’t push yourself to figure out what he was up to… just assume its another stupid studio movie at heart and piss all over the guy who made three of your favorite films of the last five years!  Come up with stupid theories about what “went wrong!” 

But what happened to supporting – yes, having a rooting interest in – more serious minded films?  There is a whole post-Kael group of critics who revere the 70s era critics, yet spit all over any of the iconoclasm that Kael and others exhibited.  Kael was hardly “right” all the time.  But she was smart and passionate and fought for her beloveds.  As painful as it is to say it in light of his consistent abuse of the English language, Harry Knowles embodies that spirit more than most film critics these days, even with all his biases and secrets. 

Editors are so obsessed with the pitch of “he/she liked this and she/he hated that” that they forget that their readers connect with “does he/she love film and do they add something new to the discussion when I read them?”  Do you think that Peter Travers’ pull quotes are selling copies of Rolling Stone?  Have you watched Roeper & Ebert because they gave “thumbs up” to something this week?  Or are you anxiously awaiting the next issue of The New Yorker so you can see Anthony Lane savage Kangaroo Jack?  

Of course, the flip side of all this rage is that civilians get caught up in the whiplash of changing rage trends and can’t understand, on an emotional level, what’s going on. 

It’s almost as though The Academy actually had foresight for a change and decided to get ahead of the curve.  The Academy can’t say it, but you have to believe that the move of the Oscar date next year is not only a response to ABC’s interest in a sweeps month event, but a tacit understanding that we are being awarded to death out here. 

It’s not only that The Golden Globes has come closer to Oscar status in recent years, primarily thanks to a fat contract from NBC, but Oscar has also come closer to the Golden Globes.  It’s a lot like children who are allowed to eat all the sugar-based foods they want and then hearing the parent, trying to explain why the kids weigh 350 pounds each, crying, “But I just gave them what they wanted!!!” 

It is time for The Academy to stop being so worried about controlling the media and to start holding its ground as the leader in the business of giving out awards that it is.   Honestly, if I’m the Academy, I’m dumping Joan and Melissa right off that red carpet.  Let them rag on the talent from a distance.  But the Academy is too busy obsessing on who is walking on the red carpet two days before the event to focus on keeping people from pissing on the red carpet during the show. 

It’s okay not to have a sense of humor.  You are the Academy Awards!  Be The Academy Awards.  People really do want the steak more than the sizzle.  The Golden Globes have forgotten that too.  Did you notice this year that the spontaneity of it all is slowly disappearing?  It’s becoming The Oscars with tables instead of theater seats.  And The Oscars have become as overblown as The Super Bowl. 

Those maniacs had a concert performance AFTER the Super Bowl this year!!!  What were they thinking?!?! 

The Oscars are just like any other entertainment show.  People want a good story, well told.  You don’t need a pre-game show and a post-game show.  You don’t need celebrity announcers.  Just get on with the show already!  We want you to show us the right way. 

William Goldman is expressing, in my view, two things.  First, he speaks for a lot of Academy members who think that Gangs of New York is a failed effort.  (And, ironically, he speaks quite specifically about one element of the film, the fight between Bill and Amsterdam at the end of the film, that was one of the major changes in the film between October 2001 and the film’s release and that would have satisfied Goldman’s concerns in the earlier version.)  Secondly, he seems to be expressing the rage that so many are feeling, but don’t know how to give voice to, about the current evolution of the Academy Awards into just another piece of fucking marketing. 

Meanwhile, you have other elements of Awards Rage coming out… Meryl Streep publicly acknowledging her contempt for the process that she has long shown privately to Oscar marketers…. Robin Williams coming right out and saying that losing a three-man race to a tie between Nicholson and Daniel Day Lewis was like being told to “fuck off” and BFCA members thinking it was really funny…. The WGA’s bizarre choice to celebrate the “screenplay” of a documentary ahead of a fifth original fictional screenplay… the near-concession by many of an Oscar to Scorsese even though most of those conceding the award do not think he deserves it for this film… the HFPA’s snub of Catherine Zeta Jones for a performance that 99 percent of the planet acknowledges was vastly superior to Renee Zellweger’s…. the three Adapted screenplays that have tap-danced into the Original category with the tacit support of the WGA… the widely held assumption that the Academy is inherently racist and was only interested in image by giving Oscars to Halle Berry and Denzel Washington last year, snubbing Antwone Fisher this year because they have done their bit for Black people…

But in the end, where is the love?  We know that Chicago producer Marty Richards really loves his film and the fact that it exists.  We know that Rob Marshall loves being in a position to direct Sweeney Todd, a film that strikes me as the musical a choreographer with limited cinematic skills is likely to destroy if Sondheim ever goes mad enough to allow Miramax to have the rights.  We know that everyone loves Bill Condon because he is a smart guy who has stayed, mostly, above the fray.  We know that Harvey love Renee.  And we know that Marty loves the idea of winning the Oscar, though I would suggest, as Goldman does, that he is better off in the company of Chaplin, Hawks, Hitchcock, Kubrick and Welles than he is carrying around tainted gold. 

There’s a lot more anger that I haven’t even gotten to yet… another day…

READER OF THE DAY:  A HANSEN BROTHER writes:  “What do I think about Scorsese and the Directing Oscar?  First, Scorsese clearly deserves the "based on past performance and being passed over so many times" Oscar.  I don't think that's even debatable.  Does he deserve it, outright, for Gangs?  It's hard to say, but I'll say this: while Gangs was flawed, it was more intriguing than 99% of the movies out there, and it showed a director in full command of his craft.

If there was ever a year when it made sense that Best Picture and Best Director might not be from the same movie, this year is it.  Gangs of New York may not be the best movie this year, but since some of that can be attributed to Miramax's cuts and since it contains, in my opinion, the best "directing" (both in technical terms and in the direction of the actors), I think Scorsese is deserving.

But you know, I always hated that Pacino got the Oscar for Scent of a Woman, because I felt that winning it for a lousy film like that tarnished it.  If people are going to look at a win for Scorsese as a "career" Oscar instead of a legit win for THIS film, well, if I were him, I'd rather wait and win it when people felt it was deserved.”

GOING BRAZILIAN writes:  “Here's what I think: Goldman is beyond passé... The guy is a good screenwriter, but he really stopped evolving at the sixties. A few years ago, reviewing the nominated pictures for the 1994 Oscar at Premiere magazine, he wrote that "Pulp Fiction" was a flawed script because of the "Bonnie Situation" episode - when a "specialist" is called to erase the evidences of a killing, and all he does is have the floor washed with water and soap. I mean, Goldman couldn't catch the irony of this!!! Fortunately, it seems that his nasty article against Scorsese is backfiring, since the reaction against it on the web and the press is already huge. Marty rules!!”

2003 BC writes:  “Just wanted to weigh in with a few comments to the Scorsese/Oscar dilemma. This one is a tough nut to crack.  William Goldman makes a very good point in his Variety article that there are a number of great directors that have deserved but never won a Best Direction Oscar (i.e., Hitchcock).  His point, it seems to me, is that Scorsese as a director does not need to be validated by the Academy; his body of work stands on its own.  Clearly, if Marty were to win for Gangs, it would be akin to a "Lifetime Achievement Award" and not for the mess that is Gangs.  Can't disagree here, and anyone who argues that Gangs was a better-directed film than Chicago or the Two Towers is crazy. 

(DAVID NOTE: I must be crazy… Gangs is much better directed than Chicago, but not – in its released form - as well as Two Towers or Solaris or Adaptation or About A Boy or others.  Back to the ROTD…)

But, let's look at the big picture.  Despite his flaws, and despite the fact that he hasn't made a really good movie since Goodfellas (though I dug Kundun), we want Marty to continue to make pictures for us.  Maybe he'll get back to his old form, whether its with the Aviator or something else on the horizon.  The point it, sure Hollywood (i.e., Harvey W.) loves money, but what they love even more is to stroke their egos, and nothing strokes an ego harder than that bald, gold statuette.  How else can you explain the enormous sums of money being spent on Oscar campaigns when it is a virtual certainty that it does not substantially increase box office revenues?  At the end of the day, we should all be rooting for Marty to win because it means he'll be given more opportunities to make picture.  Who cares why he won it.  The Oscars are a joke, and have been for a long time (Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan?  Puh-lease.).  Marty's box office track record may not be good, but a gold statuette in his hand would diminish that reality and allow him to keep doing what he loves.”

E ME:  Rage on, dudes!