Category: Film

Comments on film, directors, Hollywood, biopics, music in film, and so on.

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Hollywoodized Fantasies

And we really can’t expect Hollywood to give us the stark reality that we see in psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric outpatient clinics.

Dr. Glen Gabbard, psychoanalyst and author.

Why not?

And does it matter?

“A Beautiful Mind” is a wonderful film, if you like inspiring stories. It’s the story of John Nash, a brilliant mathematician who suffered from schizophrenia. In the movie, John Nash attends Princeton University, develops some brilliant theories about economics while skipping most of his classes, begins teaching at MIT, and marries a beautiful student, Alicia. Then his life begins to break up. He begins having delusions– he sees people who don’t exist. He becomes paranoid and irrational. Alicia supports him through all of his struggles, however, and, eventually– after twenty years– he pulls himself together. He is nominated for a Nobel Prize (for work he did as a student) and makes a speech in Stockholm thanking his loyal wife for standing so firmly behind him.

Wonderful story, isn’t it? On a Christian website, the movie is given almost acclamation, “thumbs up” for it’s “inspiring” story. Is it inspiring? Do you watch this movie and think, wow, it’s wonderful to know that his wife was so loyal and supportive– I know I could be like that? The fact that it is a true story makes it oh so compelling! And so uplifting! That’s the kind of film some Christians feel that Hollywood should produce.

“A Beautiful Mind” is mostly lies and blather!

Oh, it is a “true” story. Other than the fact that John Nash married and abandoned a wife (and a child) to poverty before he met Alicia. And other than the fact that Nash didn’t “see” people (he heard voices). And other than the fact that Alicia actually did divorce him. And other than the fact that he went to Europe and joined an anti-American organization for a time. And other than the fact that he was arrested for soliciting sex in a men’s room in San Francisco (and that’s why he was fired from “Wheeler” — in real life, the Rand Corporation.)

Yeah, other than a few small details…

Some people I know say, “I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s true or not– it’s a wonderful story. Why can’t I just enjoy the movie without having to know the truth?”

Then you’re going to tell me to keep my chin up– if I only look on the bright side of things, life will get better.

The trouble is, in a few years, the movie will replace the real facts of the life of John Nash, just as “Schindler’s List” has begun to replace the real facts in the life of Oskar Schindler.

The funny thing is, in both cases, the real stories are far more compelling, far more interesting, and more “inspiring” in a true sense than the ridiculous Hollywood versions.

It’s worth a thought or two about Spielberg’s revisionist “Schindler’s List”. The original book was labelled “fiction” by it’s publisher until after the movie was released. It is now labelled “non-fiction”. So, who’s going to sue over the difference? There is no Association for Honesty and Truth to finance a legal challenge to this arbitrary conversion from fiction to projection.

And after all, what’s wrong with Schindler’s list?

Spielberg’s villain, Amon Goeth, likes to shoot at Jewish workers with a rifle, from his balcony. You see that he is a monster. But …

To pathologize Göth as Sadist, to demonize him and make him a monster is precisely to miss the most disturbing knowledge we now have of the average Nazi perpetrator: that he was, in an overwhelming majority of the cases, not a sadist, a “deviant” or an “aberration,” but rather a dutiful, law respecting civil servant carrying out his orders.  Robert S. Leventhal

And that’s the truth.

Added 2024-02-05

I saw this wonderful example of exactly what Leventhal is talking about:

Who is the greatest movie villain of all time?
Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth in Schindler’s List has to be way up there.
There’s a scene where he’s sitting in a room with a rifle, killing people in the street for fun because he can yet is totally nondescript in his dealings with Schindler. His portrayal still makes my blood run cold when I watch the film. He is ruthless and unfeeling throughout the film until he meets his fate at the end: but even then he remains fanatical and without remorse.
What’s worse is there were plenty of fanatic Nazis like him. Scary thought.
I’ve watched attempts at copying devils like Slobodan Milosovich and Ratko Mladic from the Balkans Wars; and others like Mengele and Auschwitz commandants and savage guards. None come close. What Fiennes was able to accomplish is both exemplary and more than just a little unnerving. But credit to Fiennes for showing modern audiences what Holocaust survivors, families and murdered victims faced in that war.
There was no behind the lines with men like him roaming free.

From “Movie and Entertainment Sphere”, one of those obnoxious Facebook inserts from who the hell knows where.

For a really effective corrective, see “The Zone of Interest”.  It’s brilliant and does exactly what Leventhal asks movies to do.  It reveals, brilliantly, just how the worst evils in the world can be committed by people who outwardly appear to be “normal”, functioning, average people.  Like us, if we allow it.  Like Trump supporters who blindly parrot their leader’s idiotic blather and joyfully march in his grievance parade.

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CTV Mutilates Another Film

For about 5,000 little reasons, I have always disliked CTV. It has always seemed to me to be the most “American” of the big three Canadian Networks, and the most commercial. By “American” I mean that it seems populated by editors and programmers who never forget for even one second that the bottom line is profitability.

Even the investigative journalism on CTV smacks of ABC’s “20/20”, one of the worst journalistic television programs in existence. What’s it called? W5? Sensationalistic and specious.

The CBC, of course, is a prize. Non-commercial radio and semi-non-commercial television. The truth is, in the last few years, CBC television is starting to show too many commercials. But it is still the last hope in Canada for television that is not controlled by corporations and the imperatives of advertising.

Tonight I watched a movie called “Something About Mary” on CTV. “Something About Mary” is a vulgar but sometimes hysterically funny movie about a guy who decides to look up the girl of his dreams 12 years after an incredibly disastrous first and only date with her.

I’ve seen the movie before. It’s not really very good, but a couple of scenes are actually pretty funny and sometimes I just want to veg out and go along for the ride.

There was no ride. First of all, there were more commercial interruptions than scenes in the movie, and the commercials went on and on and on. I guess I’m not as used to them as I used to be– we do a lot of video in this house– but it is also a fact that tv networks, desperate for new revenue as the internet begins to suck away their advertising dollars, are showing more commercials than ever before.

Did you know that “The Dick Van Dyke Show” presented 28 minutes of actual program for the half-hour slot. Two minutes of advertising! Today, your so-called 1/2 hour comedy presents about 22 minutes, if you’re lucky.

Anyway, we have seen “Something About Mary” and were familiar enough with it to notice that, in addition to interrupting the movie about every six minutes to show another batch of ads, CTV had edited or removed scenes and language that, one supposes, it deemed to be offensive to viewers.

And it went one amazing step further. The one scene that “saved” the movie from mediocrity in my view was the ending, where the entire cast exuberantly sings “Build Me Up Buttercup”. All right– it’s kind of hokey, but it’s a pleasant, good-natured hokey and keeps the film in perspective: it’s just fun.

I guess the CTV thought this sort of fun was dangerous or unprofitable– it was deleted. The film ended on CTV with Stiller kissing Diaz in their final embrace, after she turns down the hunky football quarterback. Then– the credits roll.

The obvious reason was so CTV could squeeze in some more commercials. The judgment of where the cuts should occur was obviously left up to a stock boy or janitor.

The decision to cut a portion of the film out is so unspeakably barbaric, stupid, and offensive, that I am almost speechless.

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Artificial Stupidity: Software That Weeps

I have never liked Stephen Spielberg even when he thinks he’s being oh so serious and profound, as in “The Color Purple” and “Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan”.  I think he is a brilliant technical director, but he always feels that he has to slug you in the face with the emotional crux of his drama so you don’t miss it.   Spielberg, as is less well known, is also a shameless plagiarist.  He steals from other films, ones that are usually not well known (see the tank scene in “Saving Private Ryan” compared to Bernard Wicki’s “The Bridge”).

And he often employs the worst film music composer in history in John Williams.

I don’t think I have ever heard a piece by John Williams that I found moving in the slightest respect.  Yes, he is universally acclaimed.  He wins Oscars.   I don’t care.  On my side: he did “Star Wars”.  If you really think he’s that great— he did “Star Wars”.

I have always liked Stanley Kubrick who, in my opinion, created the greatest movie ever made in “Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”.

So it was with stunned disbelief that I learned that Spielberg was the designated heir of Kubrick’s last film project, “AI”, about a boy created with artificial intelligence who wants to become a real boy. Pinocchio with silicon.

I am baffled by some of the early reviews of the film. The New York Times and Salon both made it sound like this was a really interesting film that might have failed on one or two points but, ultimately, represented an advance on Spielberg’s career. Well, Salon was a bit ambivalent and thought Spielberg was a true genius– when he stuck to entertainments like “Jaws” and “ET”.

Anyway, I found “AI” a big disappointment. The last hour– which seemed interminable– is Spielberg at his worst, wringing mawkish, overwrought tears from the virtual viewer with “heartrending” scenes of loss and grief.

But the real problem with this movie is the same problem countless sci-fi films have faced in the past: how to make a robot interesting. If a robot is nothing more than the sum of it’s programming and hardware, then how can it display the big emotions Hollywood regards as essential to the blockbuster film? How can software weep?

This is Spock, remember. Spock, in the original Star Trek, was supposed to something of a logic machine. He represented Reason, the ability of man to analyze and judge without the corrupting influence of emotions. But Star Trek couldn’t bear to leave Spock alone. When the captain was imperiled, the emotionless Spock would take absurd chances with the lives of the entire crew in order to save the one man he… loved?

It’s like claiming that the girl who seduced you in high school was the only virgin in your class.

If the original Star Trek had had any guts, Spock would have said, “tough luck” and instructed Scotty to plot a course to a sector of space not inhabited by gigantic amoeba’s or deadly Klingons. “It would not be rational to endanger the lives of 500 crew members in order to embark upon the marginal prospect of saving the captain’s life when I have calculated the odds against his survival to be 58,347 to 1. Furthermore, the odds of finding a replacement captain of equal or superior merit among current members of the crew are approximately 2 to 1…”

So we’re back to a robot, in AI, a little boy who replaces a seriously ill little boy in the lives of a young couple. When the real boy gets better and returns home, the mother drops the robot off in a woods somewhere and then drives off. Heart-wringing tear-jerking scene number one, and it’s milked for all it’s worth in classic Spielberg style.

We, the viewer, are supposed to feel something that the flesh-and-blood mother in the film–who cared so much about a child that she adopted an artificial one–does not.  But this is bizarre– the primary signal here, of what we should feel about this abandoned child– would normally come from the parents or siblings or friends of the child.  If they feel nothing, why should we?  Why would the mother demand a replacement for her seriously ill boy if she was going to care so little for it that she would drop it off in the woods?

The twist here is that the mother is right to feel nothing for the little robot.  He is a robot!   The deceit foisted on the viewer is that anyone would think she would feel anything for the robot in the first place.

The robot boy sets out to find the good fairy– I’m not kidding– who will turn him into a real boy. He has some adventures during which Spielberg, as is his habit, shamelessly pillages the archives for great shots, including the famous Statue of Liberty shot from “Planet of the Apes” (the first one), and various scenes from “Blade Runner”, “Mad Max”, and, well, you name it. Originality has never been Spielberg’s strong suit.

The truth is that no robot will ever have a genuine aspiration to be anything. What you are talking to, my friends, is a piece of machinery. And it is logically impossible for a machine to behave in any way other than the way it is programmed to respond, no matter how complex or advanced the programming is.

The only way around this conundrum is to imagine the possibility of incorporating organic elements into the robotic brain, something I’m sure Spielberg believes is possible. But then it’s not a robot. It’s an organism, and it may well be heartwarming to some of us, in the same way that “My Friend Flicka” and “Lassie Come Home” are heartwarming. [2011-04]

So when a robot says it wants to be human, what you really have is a human telling a machine to say it wants to be me. Is there any concept in Science Fiction so wrought with Narcissism?  So shallow and pointless?

The problem with that idea is that you would have to believe that humans would someday create sophisticated, powerful machinery that would behave in unpredictable– and uncontrollable– ways. You would also have to believe that humans would feel emotional attachments to these devices the way they attach to pets and social workers in real life.

Anyway, it’s hard to care about what happens to the boy when the premise of the film is fundamentally absurd, and Spielberg is entirely concerned with dazzling visual effects and contrived set pieces. The film opens, for example, with one of the lamest q & a sessions ever imagined, between a brilliant scientist (William Hurt) and a group of docile graduate students who lob softballs at Hurt (and the audience) in order to convey information that isn’t required by the audience anyway.

It is impossible to imagine Kubrick working with this kind of slop and incoherence. “AI” is 100% Spielberg.

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The “High-Quality” TV Show

The networks argue that there have been fewer and fewer local programs and that viewers much prefer to watch what the networks have to offer anyway. The networks, also noting the continued loss of their audience to cable TV, say they need to accrue more control to be able to afford the high-quality shows the viewing public expects of them. NY Times, April 23, 2001

I love that last line: “The high-quality shows”… like the Bette Midler Show? Two Guys and Girl? The Geena Davis Show? Donny and Marie? “Veronica’s Closet”? Mr. Ed? “Family Law”? “Survivor”? “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire”? Reminds me of Eli Lilly’s claims that women and physicians simply demanded that they repackage Prozac as pastel-coloured “Sarafem”, as a treatment for a mythical disorder called PMDD (PreMenstrual Dyphoric Dysfunction).

What people want? Or what insiders demand? What friends and cronies can arrange?

“What About Raymond” is produced by a company owned by David Letterman. “Veronica’s Closet” is owned by the makers of “Friends”. Disney, which owns ABC, also owns Touchstone Television, which produced “Once and Again”. All of these shows might well have been cancelled had it not been for the connections to the right people. What about all the children’s shows with tie-ins to toy manufacturers and fast-food outlets and record companies? What about idiotic “reality” shows that are simply extremely cheap to produce?

It’s one thing to be a greedy corporation. It’s one thing to be greedy and dishonest. But when corporations try to tell us that we really want the tackiest, most exploitive, and stupid products– nay, that we demand these idiocies… It reminds me of when I complained to the post office about the crap they stick in my mail box every day. They actually tried, with a straight face, to tell me that most people actually want the information in those fliers.

My response is always this: if you really believe that, would you agree to abide by the results of a poll of what people really want?

The question is, should people have a choice about the crap that gets stuffed into their mailboxes, or on their tv screen, or their computer desktops?

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Satirical Misappropriation: Gone With the Wind

Randall said she did not know about any of that. “It was just my simple understanding that I thought you were allowed to write parodies in America,” she said, “I have read parodies, and I wanted to write one.” NY Times, April 26, 2001

Alice Randall, a black country and western song-writer, has written a novel called “The Wind Done Gone” which sounds like it might be a wonderful parody of “Gone With the Wind”. But the soul-less Scarlet police who guard the “legacy” (ha ha ha) of Margaret Mitchell’s ridiculous novel have taken Randall to court to prevent her novel from being published by Houghton-Mifflin (preview copies now fetch $250 each on eBay). They have argued that the novel is an infringement of copyright because she uses characters and settings from the original Mitchell novel.

Well, duh.

Exactly how would you do a parody without referencing the subject of the parody?

A Federal District Court in Atlanta decided that Randall would just have to do her parody without the subject. It ruled that Houghton-Mifflin could not publish and sell her book. The ruling is being appealed.

And it should be. It’s a dumb ruling.

Update – May 25, 2001: A higher court has just ruled that publication of the book can proceed, because the lower court’s ruling makes too great an infringement on the right of free speech, because it is “prior restraint”.

Interesting note: Microsoft, Dow Jones & Company, and AOL Time Warner have filed briefs in support of Ms. Randall. I’m not sure why, but it’s curious.

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Jesus Christ Superstar (Film)

Looks, let’s get this straight about Jesus Christ Superstar. It is not what most people think it is. I don’t think it is even what Norman Jewison, the director, thinks it is. Least of all is it what Andrew Llloyd Webber thinks it is, though he wrote the music– nothing he did elsewhere in his career substantiated the promising intrigues of this modest little opera and film.

In short, some interpretations I’ve heard, which I think are wrong:

1. the movie is very “spiritual” and has led a lot of people to Christ. Look, it may be true that the movie has led some people to Jesus, but it’s not a very spiritual film at all. It’s very much about politics and power and organized religion as a social force. But God makes no appearance in this movie– he is conspicuously absent. The cheesy image of the sheep at the end (I’ll bet Jewison wishes he could take that one back.) is misleading. Jesus dies on the cross and, in this version of events, he stays there, leaving his followers and antagonists to wonder just who he really was.

Did you know there is even a web site devoted to very pious paintings of Ted Neely as Jesus? These are paintings of an actor playing Jesus, as if he really were Christ. Strange.

There are dozens and dozens of productions of this very expensive show– many of them by churches or religious groups. Even stranger. I mean, it’s agreeable– and certainly an improvement on the usual drivel many churches’ mistake for art, but it’s still somewhat surprising.

2. the movie is about a bad man, Judas, and how he grew jealous of Jesus’ popularity and betrayed him, only to be disappointed when he becomes a “superstar”. Oh please! Judas hangs himself because he realizes that he has caused the horrible death of an innocent man because he misunderstood the motivations of the Scribes and Pharisees. He thought Jesus was getting carried away with his mission and posed a threat to the foolish, innocents who surrounded him. When he realizes that the Pharisees and Scribes mean to kill Jesus, he understands that a) he has been just as foolish as Jesus, b) he has become the tool by which manifest evil will be committed, c) he is going to remembered as the man who betrayed the holiest man on earth.

3. the movie is about the different paths by which people come to find God. As I said, there is no God in this film. There are some stories about dark clouds blocking the sun during the crucifixion scenes, and about Norman Jewison running around modern day Israel pointing at archeological digs and shouting, “God is here”, but Jewison didn’t understand the opera, and tried to put a bit of a new age spin on things. Didn’t wash.

Significant Changes From Rice’s Original Script:

Original Caiaphas: “What you have done will be the saving of Israel,”
Movie Caiaphas: “What you have done will be the saving of everyone,”

Original Jesus to Pilate: “There may be a kingdom for me somewhere if I only knew!”
Movie Jesus to Pilate: “There may be a kingdom for me somewhere, if you only knew.”

Original Jesus, as he is mobbed by the poor and the lepers: “Heal yourselves!”
Movie Jesus: this angry, frustrated outburst is omitted.

Original: nothing
Movie: awful, schmaltzy song led by Peter and Mary on how they miss the guy: “Could We Start Again”. I believe the song was written for the original and then wisely omitted. The movie, needing an extra few minutes of scenery, resuscitated it, to ill effect.  The action, Jesus and Peter and Mary strolling in the hills, is cringy.

What does it mean? That Jewison tried to put a “correct” spin on the movie? Rice’s lyrics clearly imply that Jesus is deluded, and has begun to question his own mission. His irritated outburst at the mob of lepers and poor betrays a deep frustration with the demands put on him by an endlessly needy and desperate populace, and raises doubts about Jesus’ confidence in his ability to meet those demands. Then Jewison tries to make it sound like Jesus is one up on Pilate. And he tries to make it sound like Caiaphas is paying Judas an ironic compliment, when Rice meant to suggest that the betrayal is significant only to Israel.

What is the movie about? It’s about an extraordinary, complex man whose gifts and ideas generated intense responses in the people around him. The story constantly shifts focus from one constituency to another, from his disciples who hardly grasp what he means and hope to be famous some day, to Herod who finds him a curiosity, a joke, to Pilate who discerns the worth of the man, but sees him as a danger to himself, to Mary Magdalene doesn’t know how to love him, to the priests who see him undermining their legalistic authority. The utter clarity of the schematic should be apparent to everyone: all of the parties are self-interested, except for Jesus. Jesus is a shock to “Israel in 4 BC” as he would be today. He was the very definition of the word “provocative”. And you don’t have to believe that he was the literal son of God to understand this.

Without developing a theological treatise here, you could do worse than encapsulate the nature of his message thusly: blessed are the weak. This particular phrase has become a modern cliché, but it’s fundamental subversiveness should never be underestimated. All around us, we proclaim “blessed” are the strong, the successful, the rich, the able, the triumphant, the popular, the creative, and so on. To understand the subversiveness of Christ’s message, try to picture Pat Robertson standing in front of his earnest Republican cohorts, or Madeline Albright in front of the U.N., or Eminem at the Grammys, or Colin Powell in Jerusalem: blessed are the losers. Aint gonna happen.

On the other hand, picture former President Carter hammering a shingle on a house for Habitat for Humanity. Every president of the U.S. claims to be a God-fearing Christian, but Carter is the only one I know of who actually might be one.

The tragedy of the movie is that when Christ resists the temptation to play to the self-interests of those around him, they do him in. And so it will always be. I doubt if the reaction to Christ today would be any different. Those Christians who rave about how they can’t wait for his return have one serious problem: they won’t know him. If Christ returned today, he would not say, “blessed are the cheerleaders…”

And that’s what is being done to the original rock opera itself.

The movie was reasonably faithful to the opera (which was recorded before the show was produced anywhere) at least partly because it had to be: it was an opera. The terms were relatively fixed.

But do a quick search on the internet and you’ll find that it is being appropriated by people who don’t seem to understand or care what it means.

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Bugs in Lingerie

Have you ever seen Bugs Bunny in black lingerie? He sidles up to some Arab sheik and bats his false eye-lashes and giggles….

I’ll bet you’ve never seen it.

I’ll bet you’ve never seen the horse’s ass that turns into the face of Adolf Hitler in an old Popeye cartoon either. Actually, I’m not sure if it was Popeye. I seem to remember that it was Donald Duck’s three nephews who were trying to hoist the horse into their bedroom. It spun around as Donald Duck or Popeye or whoever it was turned to look and with a swish of it’s tail, there it was, Adolf Hitler’s face.

Now, you probably don’t think it is very important that you or your children ever see Bugs Bunny wearing sexy black lingerie. You probably even think that it is a rather perverse idea, after all. What on earth is Warner Brothers doing showing that stuff to our vulnerable impressionable children? You may have seen the great documentary, Crumb”, in which the celebrated underground artist admitted to an unhealthy sexual infatuation with Bugs Bunny.

But that is not the point at all. You can take Bugs Bunny in his black lingerie or leave him, but the problem is that you did not have a choice. Some flunky at some big corporation simply decided that, from now on, you were not going to see Hitler as a horse’s ass or Bugs Bunny as Mae West or Al Jolson. They decided that it would not be appropriate or suitable or honorable or profitable for Warner Brothers to continue to issue the cartoons as they were created by those renegade Disney animators who couldn’t stand Uncle Walt’s control-freak mentality.

These cartoons, incidentally, were not necessarily originally intended for mass audiences in the uncontrolled environment of the family living room. They were shown in theatres, before the main features. They were shown in glorious Technicolor projection, forty feet high and sixty feet wide (or 16:9 or whatever…).

Did those early audiences storm out of the theatre when Bugs showed up in black garters and panties, trying to seduce an Arab sheik? Did people of Arabian descent start picketing the Warner Brothers’ studios in protest against the crude stereotypes?

Yes, it must be admitted, that it is not only the humor and sexual content that have been edited out of these cartoons. The original animators were not, as it were, sensitive, by modern standards, to racial stereo-types. Native peoples, blacks, Italians, women– we might squirm today at the broadness of their humor.

A few years ago, Disney produced an updated version of “Huckleberry Finn”. In the modern version, the word “nigger” was completely expunged from the text. Disney didn’t want to offend anybody– except for the broadly caricatured racists.

This is ridiculous. Does it really need to be explained to anyone? Mark Twain recreated the language of his day. He brilliantly imagined the dialogue between Huck and the runaway, slave, Jim, as it would quite likely have sounded, including the word “nigger”. What is the point of removing it from modern versions of the story? To deny that we ever used that word? To pretend that white Americans in the 19th century referred to African-Americans as “blacks”, “coloured”, or “negroes”?

The point is to re-imagine history in a way that is flattering to ourselves, that panders to our sense of personal worth, that sells.

It is important that we know that, in the 19th century, most white mid-westerners referred to blacks as “niggers”. It is important to know that people used to smoke in offices. It is important to know that women used to breast feed babies. It is important to know that children of all ages and genders often slept in the same bed. It is important to know that there was no indoor plumbing. It is important to know that people trapped together in a life-boat occasionally had to urinate.

It is important to know that Bugs Bunny’s creators thought it would be funny if he wore black garters and panties. If you don’t want to watch– fine. Don’t.

But please allow some of us the freedom to have our history without blinders.

Update (2001-05-03]

AOL/Time Warner is holding a Bugs retrospective on The Cartoon Network next month, but don’t look for those rare original Bugs cartoons I was talking about. Warner Brothers, concerned, apparently, about the commercial value of the Bugs “property” won’t let those cartoons be shown. In other words, this retrospective will be anti-historical. It will deny history. It will pretend it never happened. Without a doubt, these are the same minds that would decide to do “Huckleberry Finn” without once using the word “nigger”, as if white mid-westerners in the 1880’s didn’t use the word.

What next? Will they digitally remove the smoking from offices in 1950’s movies? How about the the rape in “Water Hole #3”, the James Coburn flick that suggests the woman enjoyed it? And should we really allow Nazis to appear in “The Sound of Music”?

If you can find an original copy of The Wabbit Who Came to Supper (1942).  Wait a minute– where?

That Wascally Wabbit

More information about cross-dressing Bugs.

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Baptized Banality

The Banner, a magazine of the Christian Reformed Church, reports that a Christian screenwriter and a Christian actor have put together a company called “Act One” which is designed to provide Christians with training in screenwriting for Hollywood Movies. Barbara Nicolosi and David Schall are the two entrepreneurs– or missionaries– depending on your point of view.

Some of the teachers in this program have writing credits for shows like “Batman Forever”. I’m not kidding.

It only cost $1800 U.S. for one month, including room and board. That’s pretty steep, in my view. A red light goes off in my head. Aren’t there a lot of scams in Hollywood? So many people want so badly to become celebrated Hollywood writers, directors, actors…. there’s a lot of snakes out there quite eager to take advantage of them. This couldn’t be one of those scams, could it? Do Mr. Schell and Ms. Nicolosi give their students a realistic assessment of their chances of actually selling a script to a Hollywood producer?

And what are their chances? About a million to one?

The truth is, if you don’t know somebody in a key position at a studio in Hollywood, your chance of selling a script is almost nil.

Schell says, “I know Christians on the sets of several sit-coms and soap operas who make a positive difference in what is shown on the screen by creatively intervening in productions whose messages or stories are heading into areas that run counter to a Christian worldview.”

That’s the key right there. That tells you a lot about where Schell and Nicolosi are headed.

When, I asked myself, does a sitcom or soap opera begin to head into areas that are counter to a Christian worldview?

1) at the moment they insert advertising?

2) at the moment they promote their actors as “celebrities” who deserve our admiration and emulation because they are famous for being famous?

3) at the moment they engage in escapist fantasies that allow viewers to avoid confronting real life issues?

4) at the moment they pass off inane and repetitious formulaic plot devices stolen from “Mr. Ed” and “Gilligan’s Island” as “original” work?

5) at the moment they add a laugh track, to convince the audience that these tired mindless jokes are actually funny?

6) at the moment they eliminate every brand name, political party, identifiable religion, pop song, television show, social issue, and financial concerns from every episode of every show, in order to appeal to the lowest common denominator?

7) at the moment they select only actors who are physically beautiful or colorfully ethnic or comically fat?

Who knows?

Well, I suppose we do know. We know that what they mean is that when the script editors of a soap opera want to have two of the characters commit adultery with each other, the Christian on the set will pipe up with, “Whoa Nelly!” and put a stop to it immediately.

The main problem with Christians and the arts is that most Christians see art has having a function beyond the revelation of things seen and unseen. This function is propaganda. The trouble with most Christians who see themselves as more sophisticated than that is that they see art as having another potential function: to entertain and make money.

What we need are more Christians who, like Bruce Cockburn, see art as the revelation of things really seen and unseen– a very biblical standard that most great atheist artists and almost no Christian artists adhere to religiously.

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Idiotic Previews

Sometimes, for discernible reasons, the corporate marketing hacks who try to control our lifestyles, do something really really annoying. And then again, sometimes they do it for no discernible reason.

Case in point. I just rented the VHS tape of the movie “Walkabout” by Nicholas Roeg. I popped it into the machine, pressed the “play” button, and watched. What I saw was a preview for the movie… “Walkabout”, by Nicholas Roeg.

I thought, whoa! That’s cool. A preview of the movie I just rented.

Now, wait a minute. Do people go to a video store, pick a movie at random, take it home, watch the preview, and then decide if they are going to watch the movie?

Not very likely, you’ll agree. No, like most people, I picked a movie I wanted to watch and then took it home to watch. So why is there a preview for the same movie on the tape?

Now, previews are designed to peak your interest. They show you the most interesting or provocative scenes from the movie, in the hope that you will want to see the whole thing… a few weeks later at a movie theatre.

But when you are about to watch the movie, do you want the preview to show you what is going to happen to the people in the film? Do you want to know that the car you see them driving in at the beginning, is going to end up burning in the dessert? Do you want to know that the girl is going to go skinny-dipping? Do you want to know that she and her little brother will run into somebody out in the dessert?

Yes, you do, when the movie gets to it.

It’s like the loudmouth leaving the movie theatre as you are going in, muttering, “can you believe it? The butler really did do it!”

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Left Way Behind

I just read that the movie “Left Behind” will now be released on video before it is released to theatres. The announcement makes it sound like this is some ingenious new marketing strategy.

Could be. Could also be that market research showed that the movie is a total dog and a disaster and couldn’t possibly survive a humiliating week of empty theatres across the nation.

Could be that the makers of the movie realized that a large contingent of Christians will buy the movie to support the cause, generating the cash they desperately need to somehow recover the impressive cost of making this ambitious but doomed concept a reality.

If you do see it, let me know if it’s any good.