Week Of September 18, 2006 - Mon / Wed / Fri

September 18, 2006

"I'm still on the fence at you bitching about Scriptland - on one hand it reinforces what I detest about the new school of spoilerisation of young net nerds with small cocks and big hard drives... but it also smacks of a slightly holier than thou attitude that I'm not sure you totally deserve. You're whole career is based on talking about and talking about and talking about upcoming movies... you're part of the machine and you must take some responsibility for this new age. You can't have it both ways. You're no where near the worst offender by any means but you're no angel either."
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- -- Hot Blog commenter, Jeffrey Boam's Doctor

So only virgins need apply, JBD?

You have the advantage of your anonymity and your freedom not to have an opinion or to have one when you like. And who is holier than whom when any of us decide who has the right to have an opinion? (Believe me, I can give you a quick list of those who do not… but that is a private discussion for a reason.)

The line for me is real simple... work vs work product. I do not review scripts or truthfully unfinished films. I do not break embargos. I do not run what others "know" because they got access to some tidbit mid-production.

My career is based on a lot of things. I write about business. I write about festivals. I write about movies. I write about media. I write about culture. I write about the future. I write about the past.

But with few exceptions, I do not write about gossip. And I do not lust for or cling to the information I do have (the majority of which will never be printed because it is work product and not news or anything other than gossip) to thrust myself forward. I do base many of my editorial decisions on the good of the child/industry/film/players/etc. Being amused by havoc is the game of people who have nothing to lose and not concern about what others have to lose.

My career is built on your interest in reading me, an industry of people who like or don't like my opinions, and my very hard work. Any idiot can review a screenplay before seeing the outcome of that work or review a movie from a test screening or claim to know what cannot be known. The line between the professional and the amateur is editorial discretion, not word count or, in my eyes, the perceived power of the outlet involved. I am often incorrect in my conclusions, but I am more than comfortable with my track record.

All things are not equal, Doc. I am almost as sad about Patrick Goldstein, who is capable of much better, but is now fighting his own complacency and the phantom of the web, running a dot-dot-dot Larry King column about all the people he got to see in elevators in Toronto as I am about the stupid script review idea. Sad. Angry first. But sad. I want Patrick on that wall. I need Patrick on that wall. But Patrick has become a sitting duck floating in Guantanamo Bay.

Have I written silly pieces about celebrity in my work? Yes. But I have learned not to do it anymore. I have grown out of it. And the LA Times is regressing into it.

I will slip into it again, no doubt. I will find myself writing publicly about being called out by some pathetic self-promoting moron or another (perhaps being accused of being a pathetic self-promoting moron myself) and regret it long before morning. But I am a man, not an institution. And the power of resisting is the primary value of the institution.

With due respect to some very good gossips in the world, if I start (or return to) writing about what Kate Winslet said to me in the margins of our conversation or about what jeans Patrick Wilson was wearing or how Todd Field was feeling about being handled one day in Toronto, not as flavor but as content, I have fallen into being something that I hope never to be. You want to sit at the table with Yerxa and Berger and me? Get an invite. You want to know something about how a movie like Little Children happens and fights its way into release? That's my job. I am there to synthesize and to try to help readers understand the journey without it all being about Kate's eyes and boobs and scent and breathtaking charm, which is so much more self-evident. That is what the great papers are supposed to do too, no?

I believe in the major papers having an important place at the table. But they are, mostly, throwing their power away, chasing guys like me. And here is the freaking' newsflash... I am a guy like them working in an alternative medium that I have come to love and have worked very hard for a decade to learn the voice of. But it would be easier for me to do Patrick's job - and produce triple the amount of work every week - than for him to do mine, because I understand what he does and he has no idea what I do. From that intoxicating LAT throne, he has become too arrogant to know. Now that he realizes that the only real power he has is the thrown itself, he doesn't really want to know.

Stu Van Airsdale (The Reeler) is 24 and can be a 24-year-old jerk at times. But he knows what the medium is and he loves movies and he will develop into one of the best ever if he keeps at it. And as much of a kid as he is... and as inexperienced in "real" journalism as he is... he knows the rules instinctively. He is not a guy who needs to break rules to get attention. They will try to co-opt him, but he will fight for what he knows to be the best work. And I hope he has a decade or two or more of fight in him.

The internet is a medium, just as theater and film and TV are media. They are all tools, not ends in and of themselves.

I have, indeed, broken a lot of ground in this new medium, especially with studios. And when I stop doing this, I suspect I will be one of the forgotten trailblazers. In doing that, I have always fought, with studios and in print, for what I consider the great opportunity of this medium. And I have always fought against the childish excesses that the open range of it allowed. Sometimes, I have been righteous and sometimes foolish. But I have always been earnest and tried to do good.

"Holier than thou" does come into play. But that is what this job requires. You won't see any endless qualifiers surviving around these parts. The stronger my opinion, the more obnoxious to those who disagree… and the more righteous to those who do agree. That's the nature of the beast.

Unlike some, I do not fear power. I do not need to rebel to prove my manhood or my worth.

Holier than thou? I consider that piece on Kaufman's script a lot like someone sneaking into his house and pissing on the rug. After all, Charlie has all this money and he can afford to have it cleaned and someone thought people would love the story of how they pissed on his rug.

When some mook on the web does it, it irritates. But it is, in the end, just piss. When the Los Angeles Times does it, it not only increased the offense - as the LA Times has more than enough access to everything there is in this entertainment universe and can find less infantile ways of getting attention if they would just get the chip off their damned collective shoulder - but it basically blows the lock off the door so everyone can walk in and try to prove they are equal by taking a piss.

So how is that about me, JDB?

This is not some new position I am taking to get attention. I have always considered reviewing screenplays before release to be damaging to films and immoral.

I would say that it is the LAT being holier than all… so smug in its power that it feels it can do anything it wants and still be given all the benefits of its history, no matter how fast it is sliding into the mosh pit of the tabloid media.

And me, I'm still here fighting. Dispirited as all get out. Angry. Sad. Embarrassed for the medium. Sometimes embarrassed by my own failings and failings of my site. Anyone who doesn't understand that things change as each day becomes history is a fool. But anyone who doesn't see past today, is a greater fool indeed.

The most interesting evidence of all of this was this weekend in coverage of the LA Times fight over cutbacks and possible sale of the paper. The paper is profitable. But the numbers are sliding. Both are true. So why can't anyone seem to acknowledge both in a real way and look to a future that will be very different. (The same was true of last year's Death of Theatrical Distribution.) The world is getting smaller and grayer… and as such, much, much scarier.

Every time I try to confront the changing world, I find myself wanting to step back into being another fat (spiritually), overpaid, manipulative, lazy "highly regarded member of the media." It is so much easier than fighting these silly media fights with guerilla tactics that offer rare satisfaction. But I have to look in the mirror each day. And amazingly, so does everyone else. And I am always amazed… not by how shitty everyone is, but by how good they hope to be.

Holy? Not me. But smart. And passionate. And pretty thick skinned. I do not suffer fools gladly, even when the fool is me. And fuck the LA Times' script review column and fuck anyone who wants to forget how hard Roger Ebert has worked for the last 40 years and fuck people who want to turn the art form I love into gossipy crap and fuck the fear that drives so much of this business and fuck the system that so desperately yearns to breath fresh air, but finds itself suffocated by its own excesses.

Fuck us all. Every one.

Amen.

E Me.

---

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