Category: Film

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

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The Grinch Sells Out

You might have heard that Jim Carrey is starring in a new version of the Dr. Seuss “classic”, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, directed by Ron Howard (Apollo 13).

Apparently the new version is an “adult” version, meaning that it will be considered too scary for little children. This is kind of a strange idea. Dr. Seuss books are so absolutely, definitively, repetitively pre-school. How can you take that kind of raw material and turn it into something so scary you wouldn’t want your five-year-old to see it?

But what is really scary is the fact that the Grinch was about how a heartless, bloodless, cruel old pimpish wreck decided to steal everything from the charming if rather monotonous inhabitants of “Whoville”.

We are “Whoville”. Hollywood is the Grinch. It is amazing to me how utterly shameless Hollywood is when it comes to cashing in on the true spirit of Christmas. Every consumer tie-in imaginable is rolling out at once. Every effort is made to manipulate and deceive your children for a few shekels more.

The true spirit of Christmas? Canadian Tire with its “Give like Santa, save like Scrooge” campaign? Coca Cola with it’s pseudo-humanitarian pop tunes?

Shameless shameless shameless.

But like those anonymous and not too inspiring citizens of Whoville, we buy it.

And by the way, I never bought the part about the inhabitants of Whoville all trotting out to the tree at the end, singing away joyfully even though all of their treats and presents were stolen. It is the one farcical element of the original “Grinch” that just doesn’t wash and never did.

But using Boris Karloff’s voice for the Grinch was a stroke of genius.

Jim Carrey– you are no Boris Karloff.

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Left Behind

In Toronto, right at this moment, a large film crew is working on a $17 million production called Left Behind, about the end of time: the apocalypse. It is based on a book written by Tim LeHaye and Jerry Jenkins, who believe their story is based on fact. The producers are Peter and Paul Lalonde. The “facts” are found in the Revelation of St. John, the last book of the bible.

This is a very strange story. The faithful few will be “raptured”– taken by God to be in His presence– while– pardon the expression– all hell breaks loose on earth, as the Anti-Christ tries to do what the United Nations could never do in a million years: make the U.S. pay up on its delinquent dues.

The LeHaye-Jenkins books do very well, in terms of sales. They sell millions of copies. I have no way of knowing how many of their readers take this stuff seriously. Judging from the interviews on television and radio, lots and lots of people do take them seriously.

Anecdotally, I recall more than a few conversations with people who are convinced we are in the “end-times”. The signs are all around us. Rampant immorality. Confusing technological developments. Uncertainty and confusion. Murder and mayhem. Bill Clinton. No one thinks this is the normal state of circumstances. Everyone thinks that something really special is going on. They would be disappointed, you almost think, if the crime rate went down or peace broke out. They would be very disappointed to find out that “it was ever thus”.

But let’s go on to something more interesting. It fascinates me that people like LeHaye and Jenkins use movies, with all the technology and special effects money can buy from Hollywood, to get their message out to the world. You see, a lot of people think that these technologies are part of what got us into the supposedly sorry state of affairs we are in now.

On the other hand, some people would argue that technology is neutral. It is neither good nor bad. People use it for their own purposes, whatever they may be.

That’s a pretty shallow view of technology. Philosophers like Karl Popper have convincingly shown that technology (the application of science) is rooted in the way we look at the world. Good philosophies produce good science. Bad philosophies produce bad science and eventually die off. Popper means science in a broad sense– I think he would include culture in the equation: good philosophies are very productive culturally. We think of the lousy art produced by the state-sanctioned artists of the Soviet Union. We think of all the great artists who fled Nazi Germany. We think of the flowering of the visual arts during the renaissance. We think of Elizabethan England.

Popper doesn’t think philosophies are ever true, in a transcendental, universal sense of the term. They are merely models– or paradigms– of the way we see the world. As long as they work, they are useful. Then we discard them.

If this is true, then all the humanistic amoral licentiousness of our times must be rooted in good philosophy, because it has been extremely productive. It has been more productive than any other philosophy in the history of the world. It has provided us with enormous wealth, dazzling electronic toys, and breathtaking medical breakthroughs. In terms of culture, perhaps the jury is still out. Perhaps not. I would argue that Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Ingmar Bergman, Francois Truffaut, Alice Munro, and Michael Ondaatje have produced a pretty good body of work.

But, some Christians would object, just because we can produce all these baubles doesn’t mean that our society is morally good. But Christians have essentially agreed with Popper for centuries, except that they word it differently: they believe God rewards virtue, in this world. The more “Christian” our culture and society is, the more productive it should be.

And if Popper and the Christians are right, then the best and the most successful writers, artists, musicians, and film-makers in the world, would all be Christians.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that you could show that Christians produce the best culture in the world. In fact, you could make a pretty good case for the argument that right now they produce the worst. Have you ever watched the Christian Broadcasting Network? Artists lip-synch maudlin lyrics to mindless pap. They never show anything that could remotely be called “cutting edge”.

That’s why I expect that “Left Behind” will be a crummy film.  It will be poorly written, poorly acted, and filmed like a sitcom: camera 1, camera 2, camera 3.

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Digital Vs. Analog

I have read with great interest some of the discussion about the differences between digital video and 35 mm film.

At this same time, I have been converting some of my old films to digital video for preservation and convenience. I am really dazzled by all the progress made by digital video over the past few years, but as I watch some of those cheesy “Super 8” era movies, I find myself more and more in love with the “look” of film.

In the same way, I still like vinyl for music. I am convinced that under ideal circumstances (a top notch turntable, for one thing) vinyl records DO sound better than MP3’s or even CD’s. Many people describe it as “warmth”, but we do know that digital recording IS inherently reductionistic. Every byte of sound is a precise mathematical expression, at a time when our data storage capacity is still relatively limited (even if a 75 GIG drive sounds impressive to you). Analog recordings “mimic” sound and video. They record a kind of mirror image of what they see and hear, rather than “process” it. But when a digital camera or recorder scans images or sounds, it translates it into a string of data bits that refer to parallel data structures that try to reconstruct the image or sound on your computer. We know that in order to fit this data onto a computer disk, the data has to be limited and restrained, because there is an immense amount of data in a picture or a sound.

Film and tape have limits too. These limits are defined by the maximum (or minimum, depending on how you look at it) granularity of the medium. Film has developed to the point where it’s granularity is quite good. It takes a big computer file to match the true resolution of a 35mm picture.

The key point is that if there is a really, really strange color out there, a computer may not be able to match it to its internal references. But a computer is clever. It won’t crash just because it can’t find an exact color match. It will simply adopt the nearest approximation.

Logically, digital media will likely eventually catch up to the best films or vinyl records, as they continue to expand storage capacity and accuracy of the scanners (the CCD or the microphone), but it may be many years before digital video really compares favorably to film for the subtlety of colours and shades, or vinyl for the subtlety of overtones and reverberations.

Interesting aside: didn’t Marilyn Monroe consider her mole (which apparently “moved” around on her face) a distinctive beauty mark? It may be the flaws that give something beautiful “character” and richness that people really want to experience.

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Survivor: Fake TV

Well, Survivor II is in full swing now. In case you missed it, a group of individuals are placed in a primitive, uncivilized location and forced to fend for themselves for three months or so while relying strictly on their wits, skills, and courage– and the generosity of the camera crew– to survive. Once a week, they have a “tribal council” meeting and vote one member out of the club. The last remaining member wins $1 million.

The movie is called “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” based on a novel by Horace McCoy (1935) and filmed by Sydney Pollack in 1969 (starring Gig Young, Bruce Dern, Bonnie Bedelia, Michael Sarrazin and Jane Fonda).

What? How can that be?

The movie is about a dance marathon. During The Great Depression, various organizations, including radio stations, would host these crazy dance marathons to attract an audience, and, I suppose, to distract people from their problems. Couples or individuals would sign up and dance and dance and dance, non-stop, until only one couple was left on the floor. That couple won some money. The prize was never really very big, but it was the depression. People were desperate.

Gig Young, in one of the great roles of American cinema, plays the MC of this particular dance. His performance is dazzling. He is a mixture of Dick Clark, Billy Graham, and Satan, cajoling the dancers onwards, promising them extravagant rewards and fame, ruthlessly weeding out the half-hearted, the weak, and the indifferent. When a beautiful young girl offers to have sex with him on the understanding that he will help her win, he smiles slightly, takes the sex, but delivers nothing. The girl mistakenly believed some kind of obligation would exist, when she knew full well that she had no power to compel it.

Some medical care is provided for the dancers, but they are generally brutalized, ruthlessly weeded out, and cruelly disposed of when they give up.

When it becomes clear that not enough dancers are falling fast enough, they hold “sprints”. The dancers race around in a big circle, and the last couple is eliminated. During one of these sprints, a sailor (Red Buttons) has a heart attack and dies. His girl continues dragging him along and over the finish line ahead of one other couple. As medical personnel attend to him, Gig Young orders the band to play to distract the crowd– the party goes on. And now a word from our sponsor.

The similarities between “They Shoot Horses Don’t They” and “Survivor” are uncanny. Except that Jeff Probst is to Gig Young what Dean Jones was to Laurence Olivier. But the message is the same. Survivor is about our system, our society, and what makes you a winner or loser in the general scheme of things by which most of us live. As such, it is a remarkably amoral scheme. There are no rewards for virtue, honesty, or integrity.

The scheme of Survivor is sold to us as a contest in which the most talented and strongest are the likely winners. But it soon became clear that the most talented and strongest were the first to be voted off the island, and the most devious and manipulative dominated the proceedings. It is a tribute to the endless resourcefulness of our culture that this state of affairs was readily absorbed and adapted. Richard Hatch, the cleverest and most cunning of the contestants, quickly became a celebrity.

It is interesting that, while selling us the program as a test of survivor skills (even the name…), the producers didn’t have the guts to stay with the original concept for very long. First of all, emergency medical help was always readily available. Secondly, food had to be flown into the island on a regular basis in order to keep the contestant’s alive. Thirdly, scenes were regularly staged or re-enacted to improve on camera angles.

But most importantly, contestants were routinely manipulated in order to provide more conflict– and better television.  Left to their own devices, they were quite likely to have cooperated, something that could only be allowed in the worst nightmares of the sponsors.

But the most important element of phoniness in the whole thing is the rather bizarre ritual of voting someone off the island at the end of every episode, as if this process is analogous to some indispensable element of human society. Think of the possible alternative ways of determining a winner. A simple vote by all the contestants at the end of three months. A vote by the audience. A skills contest. Or they could even have split up the million among anyone who could survive one year without any outside help.

What might have happened is that the group would have pulled together, built a society that works for them, and learned the value of cooperation and sharing. But hey, even Sesame Street has advertising nowadays.

On the other hand, they might have broken down into competing factions, started bickering, and ended up killing each other.

What is clear in “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They” is that the entire contest is rigged. The participants are urged to believe that, “in this great country of ours”, the rules are fair, the rewards are just, and anyone can win. The belief in this system is what propels people to join the marathons, and what provides the owners of the marathons with their wealth. The climax of the story is when the contestants find out that the cost of all of their “expenses” (food, water, bedding) are deducted from their winnings. Not only are they exploited and cheated– they are obliged to finance the very means by which they are exploited and cheated!

In the same way the Capital Gains Deduction takes money out of the revenue stream and hands it over to the rich, so that middle-class taxpayers– who can’t afford personal accountants, and can’t make the huge investments that are eligible for capital gains exemptions– are essentially funding the very system by which they are cheated.

The weekly tribal council idea is propaganda for the right wing. There are only so many goodies to go around, and the best way to distribute things is to have a system that rewards the greediest and most ruthless among us, and punishes the nice. It’s George Bush Jr.’s tax cut in the flesh.

But I’ll bet the producers of Survivor didn’t consciously think that they were providing the right wing with free advertising. I’ll bet they just thought that a bunch of people cooperating and helping each other would be pretty boring to most viewers. And as much as I despise them, they got the viewers, and the headlines, and the talk shows, and the book deals.

They are the real survivors.

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Two Great Movie Ideas: You’re Welcome, Hollywood!

All right, these ideas are copyrighted– okay? So you can’t steal them. They are going to make me a lot of money.

There are two absolutely magnificent, wonderful movies out there just waiting to be made.

First of all, a movie biography of Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan grew up in Minnesota and wanted to be a rock’n’roll singer like Elvis. He didn’t see the fact that he sounded like a chorus of drowning weasels as an obstacle. He hitch-hiked to New York, found out that folk music was what was happening, man, and began playing at open mic shows at several local folk clubs, sounding more like Woody Guthrie than Elvis Presley. In fact, people used to say he sounded more like Woody Guthrie than Woody Guthrie did. (You can check this out by downloading some Guthrie tunes through Napster– the resemblance to early Dylan is uncanny.)

He wrote some of the greatest folk songs of the century. He was noticed by New York Times folk critic Robert Shelton. Bingo– Columbia (now Sony) signed him to a recording contract. For a while he was known as “Hammond’s Folly”, after John Hammond, the A&R man who signed him. But Joan Baez took him along on tour. Peter, Paul, and Mary covered his best songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All right”. He became big. Very big. Even the Beatles were listening to Bob Dylan. (But Elvis wasn’t– he was in the army, and then he was making crummy “B” movies in Hollywood.) He became the “spokesman of generation”. He didn’t want to be the spokesman of a generation. He shifted to rock’n’roll in 1965, with a bunch of Canadians known as “The Hawks” (later known simply as “the Band”) backing him. He wrote more great songs. Then, in 1967, he was almost killed in a motorcycle accident. In the meantime, the Beatles and Rolling Stones released several massively over-produced behemoths of albums, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Her Satanic Majesties Request. Everyone eagerly awaited Dylan’s response. Would he top them?

Dylan shocked the music world by releasing a very folky, very laid-back album called “John Wesley Harding”, featuring drums, bass, guitar, and harmonica. He retreated into a simpler, more introspective style.

It’s a great story. It covers the most fascinating period of American history this century: the 1960’s. It’s got everything. Everything except… the rights to Dylan’s songs.

Bob Dylan– unlike most musical artists today– actually owns the rights to his songs. If someone were to make a movie of Bob Dylan’s life, he would have to get Bob Dylan’s permission, or make a movie about the greatest song-writer of our century without using any of his songs.

Bob– if you’re listening– I have a great idea for you. Call Martin Scorsese and tell him that he can make a movie about you and you will give him the rights to use any of your songs in the movie. Tell him that you won’t even look at the movie or the script or anything until after it’s all done. Tell him he can do whatever he thinks is best with the story.

Come on, Bob. You gave “The Times They Are A’Changin'” to the Bank of Montreal. It’s the least you could do for your fans. You owe it to them.

The results would be a great movie. It would not always be flattering to Bob Dylan, who sometimes acted like a jerk, and who was known to stand aloof from his friends. But the most flattering thing about it would be that Bob Dylan was big enough and brave enough to do the right thing and let someone else make this movie and to let the director have all the control over the material, the way Bob has full control over his own recordings.

Are you listening, Bob? I ask a measly 1% of the gross in exchange for permission to use this idea, and the right to meet Uma Thurman, if she could be given a bit part, perhaps as Nico.

Okay– my second great movie idea: a remake of the 3 Stooges. This time, they are computer programmers working for Microsoft. While they’re not coding new applets for Office 2003 1/2, they are off creating mayhem at the Department of Justice Hearings, or directing U.S. negotiations at the WTO.

I’m serious. People are ready for unsophisticated, trashy, vaudeville-type humour. The baby-boomers will love it. Young people always find obscure retro-acts hip and amusing. Anyone who has ever used Microsoft Windows will immediately appreciate the humour of Curly trying to figure out how “plug’n’play” works, or writing little Java applets for the Microsoft Web Page or finding ways to make Word Perfect crash.

Well that’s it. Are you listening, Hollywood Moguls? Call me and make me rich.

Who should star in a Bob Dylan Movie:

Sean Penn as Bob Dylan
Robert Deniro as Albert Grossman
Anne Hathaway as Joan Baez (yes, Anne can sing).
Ronnie Hawkins as the ghost of Elvis
Tom Waits as Woody Guthrie
Uma Thurman as Nico
Al Pacino as Leonard Cohen
Winona Ryder as Sarah Lowndes

10 years after I wrote this, Bob Dylan did exactly what I suggested– except, he gave it to Todd Haynes instead of Martin Scorcese. The result was the exquisite “I’m Not There”.   You’re welcome, Bob.  Call me sometime and we’ll work out a gratuity.  [2011-03]

Correction: Todd Haynes was the director, not P. T. Anderson as stated earlier. [2014-09-16]

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Reversing Progress

Progress that isn’t

Innovations that took the world by storm while leading us backwards

Have you ever looked closely at photographs from the 1950’s? Then look closely at photographs from the 1960’s. Colour! Right! Great, eh? Except for one thing: resolution. Try this—try scanning in your pictures on a computer. Set the resolution to 600X600. Chances are, your black and white pictures from the 1950’s look great, especially if they were taken with a typical Kodak Brownie. Chances are your pictures from the 1960’s look like shit, especially if they were taken with a Kodak “Instamatic” or one of those awful, disgusting, contemptible, “pocket” cameras.

Do your photos all have that nice, flat, “satin” finish? Right. That’s what you want, right? Because it looks so nice. Right. Well, scan those in, and you’ll see why I always order my pictures printed on “glossy” paper. Do you want to know when and why they invented “satin” finish? That’s right—in the 1960’s and 70’s. That’s right—when they invented those crappy little camera’s with the lousy little negatives and plastic (not glass) lenses. The satin finish makes those pictures look better than they really are because, with a satin finish, you can’t notice the lack of detail.

Now look closely at a Polaroid photo, if you have one. Well, you probably don’t have very many. Why not? First of all, they weren’t much of an improvement over the Instamatic. The resolution is a little better, but the colour reproduction is not as good. But, as everyone knows, Polaroid pictures were very expensive, compared to other colour pictures. And anyway, I never could figure out why anyone would want a picture instantly, while you could still see the thing you were taking a picture of. I suspect that the biggest use of Polaroid cameras was for pictures you might be embarrassed to send to the local photo shop for processing.

Then we really did have progress. In the 1980’s, everyone went 35mm. Good photographers had used 35mm for years, but in the 1980’s, the general public suddenly developed an appetite for better pictures and these complicated but excellent cameras became quite popular. One of the reasons they became quite popular was because they suddenly became automatic or semi-automatic. You still generally had to focus the camera yourself, but shutter speed and aperture could be set automatically. Good. That’s progress. Look at the pictures from the 1980’s. Aren’t they great? Well, they would be, except that we still use that ugly satin finish. Why? The pictures were now good enough to look good, once again, on glossy paper. So why do most processors still use the satin finish?

Probably because many people still use the stupid little “Instamatics” and pocket cameras, and a lot of people buy disposable cameras, and the processing companies will be damned if they have to buy two kinds of paper.

So now it’s 1999. And what do we have? The electronic camera! Hurray! Progress again! But wait a minute. Look at those prints! They’re awful! What happened? Well, how about that. For a mere $1200 you can now buy a camera with a resolution of 640 by 480: the same quality as a Kodak “Instamatic”. Yeehaw! And you even get to give up your telephoto, wide-angle, and zoom lenses for a good old-fashioned fixed-mount single-lens camera! [Note: a decent 35mm photograph has a resolution of 1200×1200.]

I can’t believe that people are going out and spending over $1,000 for electronic cameras with a single fixed lens such poor resolution. Why? I figure these cameras should sell for about $125. Even better, someone should market an adapter that lets you shoot electronic photos on your existing 35mm equipment, so you can keep using your valuable lenses, flashes, filters, and other accessories.

The one part of electronic cameras that makes great sense is the cost of processing. Zilch. Zero. Nothing. You just download it onto your computer.

Do you realize that anything that cost nothing will eventually be worth nothing? Electronic photos will never be valued as highly by people as printed photographs are. But that does mean that your old printed photographs will be valued very highly, in the future. So don’t throw them out. They will be loved, as artifacts of an age of strange progress.

Other products that took the world by storm but were inferior to the products they replaced

  • VHS (replaced the vastly superior Betamax).
  • Microsoft Windows (annihilated OS/2, Geos, the Macintosh, Amiga, and numerous other superior operating systems).
  • the CD: a lot of people won’t believe this but a well-made turntable attached to a good amplifier produces better sound than the best CD player does. This is because sound has to be filtered and reduced in order to fit on a CD. Imagine if the same amount of innovation and design that was invested in the CD had been invested in turntables. So why did CD’s win? Because transportation is one of the largest costs of distribution. You can transport about five times as many CD’s as LP’s in the same space. But, as the music industry quickly discovered, you can charge the public more for the CD! The CD case is also one of the worst designs ever foisted on an unsuspecting but gullible public—it’s flimsy and awkward and stupid.)
  • the computer mouse (the truth – and every good keyboardist knows this— is that the keyboard is way, way faster for doing anything on a computer than a mouse is. The difference is, a mouse makes it possible for any moron to use a computer. The mouse has a legitimate use for graphics, but that’s about it. That’s commercial progress, but not a technological improvement).
  • the ball point pen (replaced the elegant fountain pen, and the utilitarian pencil, with this sloppy, blobby, leaky contraption). And how come you never see ads for pens anymore? Kind of strange, isn’t it? Remember all those Bic ball-point pen ads, showing how indestructible they were? We still see ads for disposable razors and diapers and toilet tissue—why not for pens?
  • rear-wheel drive (don’t forget that front-wheel drive was invented not in the 1980’s but in the 1950’s. It lost out to American-made rear-wheel drive behemoths for almost 30 years, until the Japanese proved it’s superiority, a thirty-year detour of unimaginable mass idiocy).
  • television (vs. high resolution tv. do you realize that you’re looking at a color picture that was designed in the 1950’s and first mass-produced in the 1960’s? Yes, your television picture is obsolete, but nobody wants to invest in the hardware required to improve it. The U.S. government has finally shoved the industry, kicking and screaming, into the next century, with requirements of HDTV broadcasts within the next five years. By that time, of course, the technology will be outdated again.)
  • Sound in Movies: If you ever in your life summon the self-discipline and determination to do something unusual and exotic, go to the video store and pick up three or four of the better silent films and sit down one night and watch them. Until you do, you probably have no idea of what was lost when films gained sound. Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin were unparalleled geniuses whose work almost disappeared entirely when sound was introduced and the movie-going public flocked to see and hear the novelty. Try Chaplin’s “City Lights” or Buster Keaton’s “The General” and remember, there were not computer-generated special-effects in those days and Chaplin and Keaton did their own stunts. And what did we gain in sound? Movies shot entirely in rooms in studios. It took years for the camera to regain it’s mobility and for Hollywood to master sound editing and effects. For all that, name a single movie produced in the last twenty years that is as good as “City Lights”, if you can.
  • Winmodems- the “mopeds” of the computer world. Real modems do a good deal of the work of converting packets of internet data into digital 1’s and 0’s so your computer can understand them. Winmodems shove all of this work onto your computer’s main CPU. Think about that. If Windows 98 is so fast on your computer that you would just love to slow it down a little so you can save $50 on a modem—please go for it.
  • And while you’re at it, you might want to look at this beautiful typewriter with a LCD display I’m trying to sell….

So why are Winmodems so popular? Did you ask for one? Did you tell the computer dealer—”hey, I think it would be a great idea if my next modem slowed my computer down a little”? No, you didn’t. But the profit margin on Winmodems—which actually consist of nothing except a pipeline from the phone line to your CPU—is much higher than on real modems.

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Numbers Sanctify

One of the biggest problems with movies these days is the fact that so few of them are truly subversive, in any sense of the word. That’s right. Films today are not subversive enough.

We live in a screwy society. Rich criminals get to drive their limousines to the golf course. Poor criminals spend decades in filthy, violent prisons. The Third World sends the First World more cash in debt repayments than we send them in foreign aid. Schools are allowed to shove advertising down the throats of our students. Everyone sues each other over the slightest problem. What we need is something that undermines this state of affairs. We need more subversion, not less.

Oh, many directors like to see themselves as subversive, or at least, “shocking”. But these days, “shocking” refers almost exclusively to special-effects enhanced gore and splatter, or frontal nudity. “Natural Born Killers” comes to mind. For all the pompous strutting about by Oliver Stone, proclaiming, with every jiggly camera angle, with his incoherent script, and abrupt uneven edits, that this film “rocks”, “Natural Born Killers” is an utterly conventional film. The police generally behave like the criminals because our society believes that that’s the only way to deal with criminals, and the media try to exploit both sides. Everyone is trying to get something, and the preferred strategy is confrontation and violence. Instead of challenging the viewer’s assumptions about reality, “Natural Born Killers” merely affirms our most paranoid assumptions. It is an utterly boring film. It is a conformist film. Most people would walk out of the theatre without a single new thought in their heads.

Critics frequently toss around adjectives like “bold” and “shocking” when some new film reaches for new heights of explicit violence or sex. What is bold or shocking about that? It has been almost 30 years since “Bonnie and Clyde”, with its celebrated slow-motion machine-gunning of Beatty and Dunaway in that elegiac last scene. Since then, it’s been largely more and more of the same, to the point where explicitness can no longer be said to be subversive at all. Even drug movies, like “Trainspotting”, really don’t tread any ground that hasn’t already been stampeded through by “Midnight Cowboy”, “H”, “Drugstore Cowboy”, “Sid and Nancy”, or even “Days of Wine and Roses”. Been there, done that. What else can you show me?

There are a few, of course. Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil”. Todd Solondz’ “Happiness”. Maybe “Bulworth”. But “Brazil”, as imaginative and original as it is, still ends up telling us something we already know: mindless bureaucracies suppress individual freedoms. “Happiness” is more interested in personal emotional fulfillment than society. “Bulworth” suggests that the fundamental institutions of our society need merely be reformed.

You might be surprised to learn that one of the most subversive films ever made in the United States is almost 50 years old. It is Charlie Chaplin’s “Monseiur Verdoux”.

“Monseiur Verdoux” is based on the life of the infamous Henri Desire Landru, the French serial killer. Landru seduced over 400 women and murdered 10 of them. He was executed by guillotine in 1922.

Orson Welles thought it would be interesting to make a film of his life and suggested the idea to Chaplin. Chaplin fictionalized the story somewhat, to suit his own purposes (he wanted explicit links to the depression and World War II). But the most sensational aspect of the case remains intact: a supposedly rational, ordinary man makes a business out of marrying wealthy spinsters and widows so he can murder them and keep their money. The real Landru disposed of the bodies, sometimes, in an outdoor stove. So does Chaplin’s Verdoux. Neighbors in both accounts noticed the smoke for days but thought that nothing was amiss.

In Chaplin’s version, Monsieur Henri Verdoux is a former petty clerk at a bank with a charming wife (Chaplin, in one of his rare misjudgments, put her in a wheel chair—are we supposed to feel more warmly towards him now?) and young child. He lived a honorable, petty little life in the South of France until the faceless administrators at the bank decided to restructure and he was tossed out of his job. Until this point in his life, he resembled T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock, who “measured out” his life “in coffee spoons”.

Facing dire poverty, Verdoux picks himself up and goes into a different business. He travels around France seeking and seducing wealthy married women. After a time, he murders them and takes their property. He invests most of the money into land and the stock market, and supports himself and his family on a modest scale. He clearly sees this activity as nothing more than an extension of business to its’ logical conclusion, the way, as Chaplin described it, Clemenceau saw war as an extension of diplomacy. His family thinks he is a traveling salesman.

At one point, Verdoux, experimenting with a new poison, picks up a waif from the street. The script called for a prostitute, but the studio opposed that idea (this was the post-Fatty Arbuckle era of the Hayes Office and Hollywood’s voluntary repression of vice in the movies), so Chaplin had to make due with subtle suggestion. As he prepares a meal for the girl, with a poisoned glass of wine, Verdoux questions her about her life, expecting to find her hopelessly pessimistic. Instead, she is happy. She thinks life is wonderful. And she is optimistic. She is convinced that life is going to get better for her. Verdoux changes his mind, gives her a few francs, and sends her on her way.

It wouldn’t be Chaplin without the physical comedy. His attempts to murder one wife (played by the inimitable Martha Raye before she became a parody of herself and started doing Bounty ads on tv) are constantly interrupted. He takes her out into a lake (she can’t swim) and is about to toss her overboard when a group of yodelers appears. He mixes her some poison, but the maid thinks it’s peroxide and uses it on her hair. Finally, he smothers or strangles her (off camera) and cheerfully takes her money, sells her house, and moves on to his next conquest. It is his urbane self-possession here that viewers find most offensive. He is no madman, no self-loathing sexual pervert. Merely a businessman conducting his “business” with the same ruthlessness with which his superiors at the bank liquidated him.

There is a charming scene of Verdoux checking with a flower girl about some bouquets he’s been sending to a prospective victim. He phones the woman from the shop and rhapsodically proclaims his complete and passionate devotion to her. The flower girl, over-hearing, becomes breathless and can hardly tell him his change.

But Verdoux’s luck eventually changes. The stock market crashes and he is wiped out. His wife and child die—we aren’t told exactly why, but can presume he couldn’t afford medical care or adequate food or housing anymore.

Years later, we see an embittered Verdoux on the street. His face is a mask of dark sorrow and cynicism. A beautiful woman in a limousine recognizes him and calls his name. It is the prostitute. She is now married to a rich and successful munitions manufacturer. Grateful for his earlier kindness to her, she takes him out for lunch at an exclusive restaurant. Unfortunately, he is also recognized by another guest, the brother of one of his victims. The police are called and Verdoux is arrested.

At his trial, Verdoux is described by the prosecutor as a monster, a savage beast of relentless fury and remorseless cunning. Verdoux thanks the prosecutor for his compliments but claims he is not worthy of them. He catalogues the atrocities of recent and imminent wars and notes that Generals are awarded medals and described as heroes for murdering millions. In comparison, he is a mere “amateur”. He says, “numbers sanctify”. He smiles at the judge and jury and tells them, with horrifying prescience, that they will all be joining him very soon. For my money, it’s one of the great moments in film.

“Monsieur Verdoux” was pulled from the theatres after two weeks of savage criticism from the church, the public, and the media. Chaplin himself was driven out of the country and had his visa revoked a few years later (he had never become an American citizen) and lived the rest of his life in exile in Switzerland. Ironically, one of the issues raised was his support of the Soviet Union. This support was given during speeches he made in support of the war effort at a time when the Soviet Union was an official ally of the United States in the war with Germany! This was of a piece with the outrages that prompted Joseph Welch’s famous, “at long last, have you no shame?”

Why did Chaplin make such an offensive film? Why would anyone want to dramatize the life of a blue beard and scoundrel?

Chaplin saw, in Verdoux, the personification of the ruthless practices of big business corporations in the U.S. and Europe. Things haven’t changed much. Read through any Time Magazine or any newspaper and you will see that rich, successful businessmen like Bill Gates and Donald Trump—no matter how ruthless or greedy they are—are routinely worshipped and admired. Furthermore, it is very clear that when the rich swindle stockholders or investors out of millions of dollars, they never serve a day in jail—in fact, they never even give up their limousines and four-star hotels, even if they owe millions–whereas the poor are locked up and brutalized without a second thought.

Chaplin, having grown up in poverty himself, was acutely aware of these injustices. “Monseiur Verdoux” is simply a dramatization of the same ethics that drove Bill Gates to a fortune of billions applied on a more personal, immediate level, without the layers of lawyers and bureaucrats and advertising agencies that cushion today’s executives from the consequences of their policies.

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With bimbo cheerleaders like Time Magazine and the Wall Street Journal waving their pom-poms from the sidelines, we have all come to accept that it is appropriate and right for businesses to operate in a cut-throat fashion, in order to ensure that the stock markets rise and profits increase and men like Bill Gates become fabulously wealthy—wealthy beyond the means of any sane man to ever possibly indulge. What happens to all those workers who are down-sized? How many families are disrupted? How many divorces? How many suicides? What about the damage to the environment? Why are governments using tax dollars to clean up the toxic wastes generated by profitable private corporations? Why are people being cut off from welfare while the government awards billions in tax subsidies to the wealthy shareholders of corporations like Boeing, or major league baseball teams?

Numbers sanctify. It is probably the most subversive film ever made in America.

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Star Whores

Some guy in New York, who was interviewed on TV recently, paid $2000.00 to see the new Star Wars movie, the Phantom Menace, three days before its general release.

Some people act as if this is some kind of gesture of true fanaticism. Now, I can imagine someone being “fanatic” about Leonard Cohen, or “Rocky Horror Picture Show” or Isabelle Adjani. But Star Wars?

Some critics are saying that “The Phantom Menace” isn’t nearly as good as the original “Star Wars”. As if the original “Star Wars” was any good.

George Lucas honed his cinematic chops on Hollywood “B” pictures of the 1950’s. These were second-rate adventure stories about gangsters and hoodlums and men in masks and space ships that were regarded with condescension by serious movie critics because they were unbelievable, unimaginative, and repetitive. It was a bit of a shtick for some critics in the early 1980’s to regard some of these movies as “found” classics, as if they were really quite good in some strange way, though we hadn’t noticed it the first time.

This was just some kind of reconstructionist oneupsmanship that critics indulge in periodically to prove that they really are more thoughtful or clever than other critics. The truth is, as it always was, that most Hollywood “B” pictures really were as dumb as they looked.

And so is “Star Wars”, and all of its sequels or prequels or whathaveyou. The only difference between “Star Wars” and the Hollywood western is that Lucas was able to lavish expensive special effects on “Star Wars”. The story is still dumb. The script is mind-bogglingly inane. There are no interesting characters. There is no interesting story.

Some movie fans think that’s just great. That’s what movies are for. Escapist entertainment. I might concede the point except that “Star Wars” isn’t even all that entertaining. It’s not as much fun as, say, “Robocop”, nor as playful as “PeeWee’s Great Adventure”, nor as witty as “The Princess Bride”. It’s just tedious and boring.

Finally, aren’t we all a little tired of having all the merchandise shoved down our throat? “The Phantom Menace” is nothing more than pure business, and tries to make a virtue out of overweening greed and ruthless acquisitiveness. The toys, the lunch pails, the action figures— it’s a little sickening, especially since it is all aimed at youngsters.

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The Columbine Matrix

The Matrix, a violent sci-fi adventure film, has drawn comment by social critics who see it as uncannily representative of the type of amoral entertainment that drives kids to acts of violence like the Columbine High School shootings.

And there is a scene in the Matrix that anyone familiar with the Littleton, Colorado shootings would find disturbing: at one point, the heroes strap weapons and ammunition onto their bodies, dress in black trench coats, and then enter a building where they shoot the hell out of a bunch of bad guys. You hear the shell casings rattle to the floor, the rat-tat-tat of automatic and semi-automatic weapons fire—even a few shotguns, in the hands of the bad guys (who, in this film, are the police). In The Matrix, the shooters are heroes. They were dark glasses so they look cool as they kill. They are fighting evil. You conquer evil by outgunning them, or stylishly beating their faces to a pulp with karate blows.

There is nothing new here: Hollywood has glorified this type of adolescent fantasy for years. Hollywood is getting better at it though: the amount of computing and artistic effort put into these scenes is astounding. The sound effects batter the listener with Dolbyized wall-rattling chunky, acerbic smacks. The walls explode with spattering bullets and ricochets.

A fair number of commentators have tried to draw a link between movies like this and incidents like Padukah and Littleton. They believe that children are influenced by these movies. They watch the carnage and enjoy it. It thrills them. They want to be like the actors in the movie: cool and powerful. They derive a invigorating sense of gratification from seeing the bad guys get blown away.

There is always a conversation with the meanest, baddest, most ruthless of the bad guys, before he is dispatched. It doesn’t matter that such conversations have never taken place anywhere in history: they are a staple of the action-adventure film. Usually, the hero revels for a moment in his triumph, and we glimpse suffering, finally, on the face of the man who inflicted so much suffering on others. We feel the necessity of grudging submission, acknowledgement that we (identified with the hero) are the good guys. Just before we blow their brains out.

But there is another weird convention to these action adventure films: the hero has to suffer too. In almost all of them, the hero himself undergoes a few serious, painful trials, before undertaking his climatic mission. Why? I’ve heard this element rationalized as some kind of test of worthiness that ties into our primitive instincts for sacrificial leaders. Thus when the killer acts just as brutal and ruthless as the enemy, in the end, he appears to be justified, because he has suffered.

To put it in more prosaic terms, the audience can’t enjoy the bloodletting later if they don’t feel that the hero is entitled.   The same way they won’t enjoy the murders at the beginning of most trashy thrillers unless the victims are shown to be having sex first.  They deserve to die.

I always find these sequences a little squirmy, because they are so close to pure adolescent fantasy, and adolescent fantasy is utterly self-centred and masochistic. Adolescents don’t feel comfortable with their place in the world; they’re always being accused of not suffering enough, or of making bad decisions. So being dominated and victimized plays nicely into their sense of being very worthy individuals who are unjustly persecuted. All the better if a lovely woman, preferably about 18, feels so moved by your suffering that she pleads with you to save yourself. Adolescence. Fantasy. Myth.

Did Dylan Klybold and Eric Harris shoot their class-mates because, though they were otherwise of sound mind and body, they saw films like “The Matrix” (specifically, “Natural Born Killers”), and decided that killing people was so cool they just had to try it themselves? That’s hard to believe. These films do very well at the box office. You would think there would a veritable rash of killings after every showing. The truth is, we don’t have any evidence at all that these films influence anybody to kill. How unlikely is it, after all, that killers would not have seen the most popular films, played the most popular video games, or listened to well-known metal rockers?

As tempting as it is to ascribe a single cause to the Littleton disaster, the truth is probably more complex than that. Klebold and Harris were disaffected youths, marginalized by the nasty jock culture of Columbine High School. They were intelligent and imaginative, too intelligent to not harbor some bitterness about the putdowns they received constantly from the jocks and preppies . They were probably somewhat psychotic. Perhaps Harris, by himself, would merely have committed suicide. The two of them together formed a deadly combination of audaciousness, bitterness, and collective energy. Their uncensored fantasies of revenge and domination came to life in their conversations and acquired an energy of their own.

So how would you prevent future massacres from happening? Again, people are tempted by simple solutions: censor movies or the internet, ban violent games, restrict access to guns. The most idiotic come first: ban trench coats, which is what all high schools in the Denver area and many more nation-wide have done. Ban trench coats? What about gym bags, back packs, suitcases? What about pockets and purses and bulky ski jackets? I’m afraid I don’t have much faith in knee-jerk solutions.

No surprisingly, conservative Republicans, who constantly insist that only a free-market–without the slightest government intervention–can gratify the needs of the human soul, suddenly reverse themselves when it comes to culture and demand stricter censorship and tougher punishments for thought crimes. I don’t understand why the magic of the marketplace is so wonderful when it comes to wages and product liability, but so odious when it comes to movies and rock music. This position is frankly hypocritical. If conservatives really believe in the principles they describe so passionately as they apply to the economy is absurd to think that those same principles shouldn’t also apply to culture. If they don’t like movies like “The Matrix”, tough—the magical marketplace has decided that this is the way to go. Learn to live with it.

Liberals are at least more consistent on the general principles. They advocate a clear role for government in the economy, ensuring minimum wages and protection of the environment, for example, and they urge a role upon the government in preventing and reducing teen violence. The government should make it far, far more difficult for people to obtain guns, especially by changing the exemptions that allow people to buy powerful weapons at gun shows without even a background check or waiting period. And schools should develop programs that attack the roots of alienation and disaffection, and encourage values of tolerance and diversity, so that students like Klebold and Harris are never again as marginalized as they were at Columbine.

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The Forbidden Lion King

In 1995 the Virginia-based American Life League urged a recall of “The Lion King,” arguing that in one scene rising clouds of dust spelled the word “sex.” – New York Times, January 7, 1999

Whoa! Baby! Quick, children, cover your eyes!

American Life League? Who are these people? Where are the little holes in the ground that they hide in whenever someone talks seriously about art and life and bodily functions? American Life League? Let me guess: they want a return to “traditional” values, emphasizing nation, God, and family, and hard work.

Just to feel better about myself, I think I will take a piece of cardboard and write the word “sex” on it and show it to my children tonight, just to see what happens.

Look out!