March 14, 2003

Ever write a column when your head feels like it is going to explode?  I better simplify the effort…

10 Things I Know

1. Advertisers and television networks that don’t want Martin Sheen to develop a higher political profile are not censoring free speech.  Why?  Because when he is being paid by an advertiser or a network, he is not being paid to express his personal convictions.  Visa wants him to be funny.  NBC’s The West Wing is already about as political as a network can handle. And they were right… a press tour is intended to promote the show, not stop the war. Freedom of speech is a right in this country.  Freedom to be paid enormous amounts of money as an actor and being able to do whatever you want is not.

2. If you are writing for the internet, you have the opportunity to wrote longer and in greater depth than in most other mediums.  But if you bury the lead, you will lose your readers within a paragraph and a half and they will surf on. 

3. Agent Cody Banks will bank about $25 million.  The Hunted will find about $11.7 million.  Willard will crawl to about $5.6 million and turn out to be leggier than expected, as people realize that the freak show is available for viewing. 

4. The Catwoman script better have truly great lines for Halle Berry.  If it does, it could be the smartest, sexiest comic movie ever, even if you include Tomb Raider.  You get the feeling that Halle will enjoy using the whip.  In a perfect world, they’d make an indie version at the same time starring Catherine Keener, who was born to the (indie version of the) role.  I won’t read the screenplay, but I’d love to see a female villain as well.

5. The new Bruce Almighty trailer is better, but still not a home run.  It does have a wonderfully subtle CG sight gag.  But it still doesn’t have the conceptual clarity of a Liar, Liar or Dumb & Dumber.

6. On Wednesday night at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville NY, Harvey Weinstein told Janet Maslin and the assembled crowd that he gets bad press because he is hated by “The Hollywood Eight.”  Who the hell are the Hollywood Eight and why are they out to get Harvey Weinstein?  Weinstein also claimed ignorance regarding the Oscar marketing efforts.  (P.S. Almost every single publicist in Los Angeles believes that Weinstein himself, not the rest of Miramax marketing, was behind the disastrous Robert Wise ads.  They’ve probably been brainwashed by The Hollywood Eight.)

7. I don’t really know, but I also really don’t believe that Hollywood will turn out for an Oscar ceremony within the first two or three days of an Iraqi war.  Gil Cates & Co has to move forward as though things are just fine and I don’t object to the bravado.  But there would only be one appropriate response from the rest of the world if we had an Oscar ceremony going on while American boys were starting an assault on the other side of the world… bomb the proceedings. 

8. Of course, I don’t literally want anyone bombed. But playing baseball, for instance, in spite of a war is one thing.  The Oscars are a ceremony of hype and money and self-aggrandizement.  I love the Oscars.  I really do.  Even though the machinery has been getting me down lately, I do love the whole thing.  But it a self-love machine and in this case would be a lot like pulling out the man pipe at grandma’s funeral and yanking away… just plain psychotically gross.

9. I have more respect for Liz Smith now than I did before this year’s Oscar race.  This is extremely rare.  Smith is a gossip and there doesn’t seem to be much pretence about it.  But she has been completely frank about her initial response to Gangs of New York and just yesterday, to the Robert Wise controversy.  She will still find a seat on the Miramax bandwagon as things proceed.  But that’s fine.  I really don’t feel a need to back Miramax.  I just ask for a snippet of honesty now and again. 

10. The whole issue of Polanski and Geimer and The Pianist is almost too brutal to discuss with people.  I am actually not offended by people who are wildly aggressive about not questioning anything about rape victims, ever!  I believe that false reporting is rare, though it does happen.  And there are few crimes that seem to be punish victims more profoundly.  But shouldn’t people be allowed to consider issues of rape like we would consider any other legal issues?  I believe in discourse.  But this issue just gets too personal too quickly. 

READER OF THE DAY:  ANOTHER NIC writes:  “Is it just me.... or is anyone else noticing that in the Best Actress race SO MANY critics and columnists are listing DIANE LANE as the SHOULD WIN actress and NICOLE KIDMAN and RENEE ZELLWEGER as the WILL WIN actresses. What if all these people who say DIANE LANE should win vote for the "Unfaithful" star? I mean the New York Times critics think she should win, so do some of the LA Times, so does Janet Maslin, and so does Roeper! A lot of people think she could still do it you know, but SHOULD and COULD are different words.

Umm.. just a thought, but I don't think DIANE LANE is out of the running by a long shot. Did you hear the WILD reception she when her name was called out at the SAG Awards. This is one popular actress in the industry and it wouldn't surprise me to see DIANE LANE holding Oscar on March 23rd. Your thoughts?”

DUELING CHs writes:  “The Bookworm wrote in your column: "Hollywood is willing to forgive – even to celebrate - any actor or director no matter what their crime is – drug busts, wife-beating, murder/manslaughter, rape, incest - provided they are 1) good at their profession and 2) their politics skew to the left." What utter nonsense. Bookworm, have you even heard of Victor Salva? A convicted pedophile (he had sex with one of his underage boy-actors!) who did his time in prison for the deed. Finished in Hollywood? 'course not. He makes his first movie out of prison for... Disney (Powder). Then he makes a horror about some young people abused by an ugly old creature (Jeepers Creepers). I'm not passing any judgment on Salva himself - looks like he paid his debt to _some_ extent by doing time in prison. But do not throw such bullshit theories about forgiveness only for "good movie" makers. Hollywood forgives the ones who make money - that includes forgiving the ones who happen to make good movies... and not-so-good movies. Perhaps they simply know better to separate the art from the personal life of the artist?”

NOT J PIERPONT writes:  “The release of the Polanski transcripts this past week can in no way be perceived as coincidental to the final days of the Oscar campaign.  The muddied prism through which the media has reported on the proceedings have left any reader, listener or viewer with a sense of weary outrage.  Though there are plenty of insinuations to paint all factions as guilty, what all of this seems to come down to is ethics versus criminality.

It does nothing to help Roman Polanski's situation that child molestation is considered far more heinous now than it was in the 70's. Our generation has taken on the plight of abused children and their abusers as one of the most consistently examined aberrations of the decade.  Local news now reports on abducted and abused children regularly.  The education and awareness of this issue is certainly at an all time high.  So we now have a national database of child abusers, and countless priests have been defrocked.

Given this environment, I'm surprised that there was little outrage when The Pianist won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Did the judges at Cannes even debate the question of the artist as indicted criminal when determining the winner of their award?

But does an artist cease to be an artist because he is a criminal?  The US has laws that prevent criminals from profiting from books related to their imprisonment.  The films that Polanski has made since he fled the US don't fit into that category.  Does an artist as criminal deserve the right to be an artist?  That becomes a question of ethics.  For anyone believing that the criminal has no voice, they and their works go unseen.  Others will buy tickets to his/her movies and judge them on their merits.

So, if a single person views and appreciates the work of a criminal artist, he/she is an artist.  Nothing, not even the law can determine what is or is not art.  But an artist, and by association his/her art can be tainted by their criminality.

Now.  The artist/criminal creates an acclaimed work that catches the attention of the global community, and ultimately becomes a film nominated for the Academy Award.  These awards are as much a part of the American cultural psyche - and not much different - than the Miss America Pageant.  This puts Roman Polanski's The Pianist in a particularly unenviable predicament.

Given this uncomfortable position, the competition is left with an equally uncomfortable proposition.  Should the artist/criminal be left to the judgment of Oscar voters, or does the competition unethically raise the stakes of the game by instigating the release of material evidence damning to the artist/criminal?

The competition decides to be unethical.  Surprise.

The artist/criminal has created a work of significance unrelated to his crime, and the competitors have unethically used his past history as a tool to sway Oscar voters to their films.  Suddenly criminality and ethics don't seem very far apart. And that is why the media can't wrestle this monster to the ground in 500 or even 2000 words.

The night before last, Chinatown was on AMC.  Regardless of its creator's criminal status, indelible images doubled the size of the monitor screen.  A camera floated over the silk sheets and above the heads of Faye Dunaway and a septum compromised Jack Nicholson.  Images of water, and the lack thereof, created tension and suspicion.  It was and it is art.   

But this year the competition has created entertainment.  Which is a wonderful thing.  But it may or may not be art.  And when criminality, Hollywood, ethics and money are at stake, its hard not to be almost criminal when you're afraid that your entertainment may be upset by art.”

And NASTY COOL writes:  “I know this is old news, but I really wanted to take exception to something  "The Bookworm" said in the middle of the Polanski debate.  It infuriates me that after all these years, people still don't know the truth of Woody's  situation, and continue to spread these bullshit allegations of incest, or pseudo-incest.  Let me be clear:  Soon-Yi was NEVER Woody's stepdaughter.  That's why her last name is PREVIN.  She was adopted by Mia Farrow and then-husband Andre Previn, years before she became involved with Allen.  Woody did not know her as a little girl.  They never lived in the same house.  If I'm not mistaken, they only met on a few occasions before getting together.  It's one thing for tabloids to distort the truth, but it's another thing when supposedly informed people are regurgitating that fiction nearly ten years later on this forum.  You may find what Woody did to Farrow reprehensible, but he did not start sleeping with someone who viewed him as a

father-figure.  To get back at the man that dumped her, Farrow charged Woody with molesting their own children, something that THREE separate child psychologists could find no evidence of.  So let's give the man a break, and focus on Polanski, or why Woody hasn't made a good film since Sweet & Lowdown.”

E ME:  I’m sure my headache is better now… care to cause me another one?