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August 4 , 2004
When the MPAA announced an MPAA-wide ban on awards screeners (New Line and DreamWorks also signed on) last September 30, it was late in the awards season game and, in many ways, quite unfair to awards season planners who had built their efforts in no small part around sending out screeners to Academy members and other awards-giving voters.
That said, the response from the industry was far more problematic than the ban itself. The surface argument that the ban - which had no effect on true indies whatsoever except, perhaps, to give them a competitive edge - was damaging to the independent movement was a thin argument and the primary interest of most complainers was self-interest, whether in promoting their movies or in simply wanting access to dozens of free quality movies over the holiday season.
In simple reality, as far as independent-minded films went, only the six dependents - Focus Features, Fox Searchlight, Miramax, Sony Classics, Paramount Classics, United Artists - had to deal with overcoming the limitations of the ban.
But the discussion quickly became black & white. The studios and Jack Valenti were the big, bad bullies and the artists who worked in "independent film," whether off credit cards or being financed by dependents to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, were the innocent victims of tyranny.
One of the leaders of the fight, producer Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, was particularly enraptured about taking the fight to the MPAA. The gloating that took place after as U.S. District Judge effectively killed the ban was endless. But almost a year later, Levy-Hinte has gone back to the well and has a lot to say about the MPAA and piracy and his perspective on it all. Filmmaker Magazine published his treatise, putting it on the web at first as a partial story. And earlier this week they decided to publish the entire piece on the web.
After reading all ten pages, I can only come to one conclusion: Jeffrey Levy-Hinte wants to destroy the film business.
At first an analogy of his writing to the work of Michael Moore springs to the lips. But as one reads on the truth spinning game dissolves and, courageously, Levy-Hinte lays himself bare. Not only is he ignorant of the big picture of the business of the film industry, but he revels in his ignorance. Unlike Moore, who will bend any way necessary to make his "George Bush sucks" point, Levy-Hinte is a Movie Luddite, anxious to blow up the entire system so that it might be reborn in his own image. He is like a teenage boy who resents his parent's wealth and does everything he can to make his point known as he throws garbage at them from behind the wheel of his brand new convertible.
Thing is, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte is not a child and he is not a fool and he is not insane. But he is so misguided and so anxious to mislead others that he is dangerous… truly dangerous.
This argument requires an explaination and details. It is very late at night and I am not able to give that effort the attention it deserves at this moment. So, I'll shelve it for now and the column will be updated sometime this morning with a long, detailed argument about why Mr. Levy-Hinte misses the mark by such a wide berth.
READER OF THE DAY: DADDUMS writes: "Just found out that the upcoming film Alien vs. Predator is rated PG-13.
What's the point in that? Is Fox THAT desperate for the 12 year old boy market? All 4 Alien and both Predator movies were R with very good reasons. An R-rating certainly didn't hurt The Matrix movies and they barely needed them. I didn't think the movie was gonna be all that good anyway with P.S. Anderson anyway.
I suppose now that we can all look forward to an R-rated "director's cut" DVD."E ME: You know how.
