June 10, 2003

Ain't It Conscious News, Part 1

It is probably the third most significant posting in Ain't It Cool History…

The first was the first… Ain't It Cool is born. The second was probably the Batman & Robin stuff that prompted the otherwise brilliant and, as usual, quick to speak Chris Pula into launching the misleading notion into the market that bad pre-release web buzz could kill a movie. (I do have a new theory on that, for this era, but that will wait for another day.)

Yesterday's bodice-ripping tear by Drew McWeeney aka Moriarty was the first official signpost that AICN has moved from the Mel Gibson role to the Danny Glover role. Drew, at least, is now too old for this shit.

They say that if you aren't a liberal when you are young, you have no heart and if you aren't a conservative when you are old, you have no brain. A broad characterization. But there are two towers of logic behind the comment. Awareness and success. As young people, we really do think we know. The idea that experience is really going to change our perspective seems impossible. Yet it is an absolute. Success is more dangerous than a stranger playing with Blade's sword. It often leads to a different kind of isolation. But on the more positive side, it helps to eliminate the arguments that come from being a "have not." In the case of the film business, that sense of so many - even writers at major outlets - of having one's nose pressed against the window, watching the candy pass by, creates a sense of entitlement that can be grotesque. While getting a taste of that candy is often seen as manipulation by the "haves" - and it usually is - it tends to add perspective that is otherwise unlikely.

Drew, in the eyes of most people I know, has always been the stronger perspective guy at Ain't It Cool. Harry Knowles deserves all the credit in the world for doing the heavy lifting. He made it happen. But Drew always has seemed a little closer to reality. Drew has also always seemed a little closer to a fit of rage that would cause a stroke.

At times, I have been The Enemy at AICN. The first time Drew and I had a really long conversation - at ShoWest 1999, I think - he went nuts. My position on AICN had always been the same. If they wanted to be treated like journalists, they needed to declare and play by some rules. If they wanted to be renegades, studios should not be treating them in the same way - or better - than the media that plays by the rules, year after year, story after story. AICN was - and continues to - get it both ways because studios will pretend to hate them and will still do everything they can to manipulate them. In turn, Harry will pretend that prints are not being flown to Austin and tapes are not being sent and he is not being courted.

The result is that Ain't it Cool is the Geek National Board of Review. No one knows what's really going on… there is a lot of perceived wealth spread… studios are split on the value of "placements" there… and everyone keeps worrying about them because they are "first" and when they are not actually first, they aggregate content so that they remain the top dog of sites that want to be first.

Internally at AICN, there have always been conflicts and differences of style. Write about "an AICN position" and you may well get a letter from the voting minority that does not want to be lumped in with the published position. But everyone else has remained the great back-up band to Harry's Lewis and Drew's Martin.

Yesterday, the break-up of Martin & Lewis may have begin in earnest.

Of course, this will draw a letter from Harry or Drew or both about how they disagree all the time and it is just one issue and it means nothing. And maybe that will be true. But this one is different. This one goes to the foundational ideas of Ain't It Cool News, which have been reasserted today by Harry… but let's deal with that a little later today.

I have taken the liberty of reprinting Drew's story from yesterday, headlined, "About That HULK Workprint You All Claim To Be 'Reviewing'..." since getting into AICN has been difficult in the last two days and because I expect it to disappear completely soon enough. You can read it here.

The irony is almost too much to bear.

Yet, I applaud the idea of the piece. Drew is still scrambling like a hamster on a wheel to rationalize everything he and Harry have been doing for the last seven years. But there can be little doubt… this is a gateway post. When you start splitting hairs this closely, you can't be too far from a real breakthrough.

My rule is simple: Artists (and even studio hacks and even hack artists) deserve to be able to do their work in private. When they are ready for the work to be seen, they will show it.

Before you write to call me a hypocrite, I must admit that there have been a few times when I have breached that rule in this column. My Spider-Man review was based on a mostly complete version of the film. But truth be told, had Columbia had any relationship with me at all at the time, it probably would not have happened. And who was the first person to write me and prod me to publish the review when I worried about the implications in print? Drew McWeeney. The other major case was my aggressive promotion of the Oct 2001 cut of Gangs of New York. In that case, passion drove me and still does. It would be a tragedy for the "real" version of Gangs never to be seen. Martin Scorsese can talk about the release version being "his version" all he wants, but as someone who has a fairly intimate knowledge of his work, there is no question about which version best represents Scorsese's voice. But to that sin, I confess.

But my ultimate point is, as fun as it might be to play in other people's work and to plead for Warner's to make this Superman script or to tout someone for a role, we are not meant to be going through other people's desk drawers. When some temp e-mails out unapproved photos to a website before they turn up in some magazine that has a deal, it is theft, whether the commercial exchange is faulty or not. When test screenings are reviewed by people who are given a status of equality because they are unknown, anonymous names, a crime is being committed against the work, whether the work is good or bad. And script reviewing is like reviewing a meal based on a bulimic's vomit. (Calm down, screenwriters.) You only get parts of what the ultimate work will be by reading a screenplay. It is the nature of making films. Reading a screenplay after you have seen the film is a way of heightening the experience. Before, you are looking at a blueprint which engages you imagination, thus separating you from whatever imagination the director and his/her company bring to the written words.

Back to Drew…

Ain't It Cool News was built, 100%, on "that percentage of Internet users who simply can't exhibit a modicum of self-control, who feel the need to (know everything about) films at the absolute first second they possibly can." I have replaced the word "pirate" with "know everything about" because that really is the point.

Drew makes a rather lame reference to the financial ramifications of the piracy. ("If the film's box-office is damaged because of this workprint leak, then it's going to mean that next time a studio is considering a giant-budget investment on a film that appeals directly to the geek audience, the same audience that seems to be genetically unable to resist breaking the law in order to see something thirty seconds early, then maybe they won't take that chance.") Of course, Universal is not aiming The Hulk directly to a geek audience or they would not have hired Ang Lee and they would never have a chance of making all their money back. And the chance of piracy costing them more than a handful of box office dollars at this point is nonexistent… which is not to say that it may not cost them big in the future. The only way for the studios to turn this into a problem is if Marc Schmuger comes out and says that the box office was hurt by the "piracy," which ironically is one of those cases where it came from an internal source at ILM or Universal… the internal policing of these films is the real challenge right now.

Universal and other studios are not test screening these big movies anymore because of Ain't It Cool News and the loss of control that AICN wrought by running test screening reviews… not illegal workprint reviews. As a result, there is no test screening review to run. But water seeks it level. And other leaks happen as a result. Ain't It Cool fans meet the challenge set for them.

Drew writes, "We live in an age where people love to pretend that issues of copyright law are "grey" and "indistinct." People play coy about whether or not they're really pirating material when they trade films over the Internet. People justify their decision to bootleg movies in a million different ways, and I've heard every excuse you can come up with. And still I say... shame on you."

Oy. I've been saying "Shame on you" to AICN for a long time now. And now, Drew wants to put the genie back in the bottle. All that has changed is the tools. Reviewing a screenplay, which is the private property of the writer and the production entity that purchased it, is theft. Period. Going into a test screening with the intent to publish a review is a breach of your word. Period. I have heard every excuse you can come up with. And still I say… shame on you.

Drew writes: "There's a huge difference between someone seeing a test screening of something that's being show to gauge audience reaction (a process that many people blame AICN for corrupting or even ruining) and watching stolen material that is simply not ready to be seen, and not meant to be viewed by the general public."

Uh, no. Because test screenings are not usually of finished, locked product. The best test screenings are for filmmakers who read the room and go back into the cutting room. The most critical test screenings are for comedies, where filmmakers can see how the jokes play and make critical adjustments. Ain't It Cool helped to destroy that option.

Drew signs off with: "I look forward to reading how you can tapdance around the basic issue here, which is that you are thieves, and you're damaging the industry I love with your actions."

I couldn't have written about Ain't It Cool News' history more concisely.

I have to run off and see a screening… but in a few hours, I will finish today's column with a look at Harry's response to Drew's piece, perhaps the fourth most important post in AICN history. You can get a head start by reading that here.

Ain't It Conscious News, Part 2

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