Category: Film

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

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DivX

If you thought the world’s fat-cat corporate copyright holders had a problem with Napster and MP3’s, you can bet they are about to go into cardiac arrest.

A few years ago, some companies tried to foist a new video standard on a largely unsuspecting, but not entirely stupid, public. It was called DivX. The basic idea was this. Here were all these huge, fat, rich Hollywood companies and here were all these movies that they owned and here were all these consumers– that’s what we are, after all, “consumers”– buying copies of these videos and watching them over and over again after only paying for them once.

Now, if you’re not a lawyer, you probably don’t often think about that situation and think things like, gee, how can we get them to pay for it every time they see it? And why shouldn’t we? Again, you have to be a lawyer…

So these people got together and decided that when the next generation of high quality digital video came out, they would rectify that situation by providing disks to people that would only play once or twice. And then, pffftt! Unless you paid again.

Just what the consumer was demanding at that time, as I recall. Yes, yes, we want to give Viacom and Warner Brothers and Disney Corporation and Bruce Willis and Robin Williams even more of our money!

Anyway, the system was called DivX. And, of course, the hacker community looked upon DivX and just hated it. They hated it for both good and bad reasons. They hated it because like everyone in the world they hate to pay more than they need to to get what they want. But they also hated it for a good reason. The good reason is that these big Hollywood companies and actors already get way more money than they deserve for foisting their disgraceful products upon us. They already annoy us to death with product tie-ins, commercials, outrageous prices for food at the movie theatre, and deceptive advertising.

So the hackers set to work.

It’s not very clear to me (or anybody, apparently) where DivX 😉 (the “;)”, a winking emoticon, is part of the name) came from. It is rumoured to be a hacked Microsoft product. In any case, what DivX 😉 is is a “codec”, a computer process whereby video is compressed into small files so it can be downloaded and copied from computer to computer. It is a very good one, though not necessarily the best, nor the most readily available. But it is good enough to make it reasonable for people to copy movies off of DVD players and distribute them– illegally, of course– through the internet.

The lists of movies available tell you something about the kind of personality involved. You’ll find “The Matrix” and “The Cell” and “Terminator” and “Star Wars” on many sites. You won’t find many copies of “The Sound of Music”… yet.

The only missing piece right now is the equivalent of Napster to really take the whole thing mainstream. But it’s coming. Oh yes, you can bet it is coming.

One browse of the newsgroups devoted to topics like DivX;) and desktop video should be enough to convince anyone that a tidal wave of perverse ingenuity is at work out there and it is bent on completely destroying the entire system of copyright and distribution now in effect.

Is that a bad thing? I don’t know. The problem, as always, is how will artists get paid. On the other hand, the artists don’t get paid now. The lawyers and investors and accountants and manipulators and cheaters and liars get paid. They get paid enormous sums.

I do know a few things though.

In my opinion, all of this underground activity will not destroy either the music or film industries. Most people will continue to buy CD’s and DVD’s. Knowledgeable hackers and aficionados will use the technologies to access every form of recorded entertainment known to man, but most people still want to pop a video into the console and sit back and munch on popcorn and not give a thought to copyright law and fairness and justice for all.

The entertainment monoliths will have to be nimble and quick. They will have to keep coming up with improvements and enhancements that keep them a year or two ahead of the hackers. They will have to begin to offer CD’s and DVD’s at reasonable prices.

The only thing I’m sure they won’t do is take the high road or offer anything of value to anybody unless they really, really have to.

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Movie Theatres are Pinball Machines

I just went to see a movie at “Silver City”, one of those new mega-theatre complexes that are supposed to make movie-going a thrilling experience.

It cost $11 to see a movie at Silver City. It cost about $8.50 to see a movie at most other theatres in town, except the Frederick which is, if I remember correctly, about $4. The trouble is both “The Cell”, which I didn’t want to see but decided I should see, and “Almost Famous”, which I did want to see, are only playing at Silver City.

So first you pay $11.00. You might pay a cashier or go to something called an “Express Ticket”, something that looks and operates like an ATM except that you can actually buy your tickets there, and which should be called the Cashier Unemployment and Increased Profits Machine.

There is a sign at the cashier: No Outside Food Permitted Beyond This Point. One look at the prices for food beyond this point and you will know the reason why. French Fries and a humungous Coke are $7.40. The same package is one half of that price at the Fairway Mall. Popcorn and coke, for two, will run you about $15.00. So if you take two kids to see a movie and you buy some popcorn and a soft drink, you are looking at about $50 or more.

The food, of course, is garbage. You would think that at those prices, you might get something exceptional. Not a chance. And the soft drink is only sold in three gallon tubs. I exaggerate only slightly. The coke that came with the large fries I ordered from New York French Fries must have been at least three liters.

Why are the soft drinks so big? Why can’t you buy a decent sized soft drink at a mega-plex? The reasons are simple: 1) the profit margin on soft drinks is very large, so volume is not an issue– the objective is to get you buy a drink, any drink, of any size. 2) you can’t buy a drink from anyone else or bring your own– they have you over a barrel. 3) they have to do something to convince that you are getting good value for the 3 or 4 dollars you are paying for basically carbonated water– so they make it huge.

You can barely hold the soft drink in one hand. And it doesn’t taste as good as pop from a bottle or can. I suspect it is diluted, but I don’t know for sure.  Yes I do: it’s not diluted.  It is supposed to taste like that.  So maybe it just naturally tastes like crap.

The atmosphere at Silver City is like the inside of a pinball machine. Indeed, they have loads of video games and lights and plastic props and signs. If you have any illusions about going out for an artistic experience when you go to a movie at Silver City, forget it. You feel like you have entered a gigantic, noisy arcade.

I waited to pick up my daughter from a movie in front of Silver City once. I saw lots and lots of parents picking up their kids. They drop them off and then pick them up. Do they know which film their kids are going to see? Do they know that Hollywood test-markets “R” rated films to twelve-year-olds because they know that theatre chains are very lackadaisical about enforcing age restrictions (and because video chains hardly enforce them at all).

Of course, in America, an “R” rating is there to prevent your child from seeing a mother breast-feed her baby. However, decapitation, disembowelment, and other scenes of gratuitous violence are readily available to adolescents. What kind of sick society allows it’s children to view every imaginable violent act under the sun, but not breasts?

The screens are pretty good and the Dolby Sound is quite impressive. All the better to whack you over the head with, my dear. When they make these previews, do they think you will obey and come see the movie if they blast you with 140 decibels of sound effects and 4,000 very, very short clips of helicopters, guns, and bikinis?

Alfred Hitchcock used to scare movie-goers by carefully constructing suspenseful situations and then building the suspense to greater and greater intensity with a series of well-timed cuts and close-ups. It’s much easier for the modern film-maker: just show the viewer a dark, shapeless form, let it get closer, and then whack the viewer over the head with about 145 decibels of sound. Make sure the sounds include all kinds of scary noises that, of course, don’t actually have any identifiable cause in the movie itself.

“The Blair Witch Project” used some old-fashioned techniques to really scare you: the creepy sound of rocks being piled onto each other. The sense of being lost and disoriented in an inhospitable bush.

Just in case you want to do anything about this… you need to get politically involved. You see, the movie production chains have a stranglehold over the theatres in Canada. They are allowed to control which theatres are allowed to show which movies. This encourages Hollywood to make shitty movies because they can always shove them down the throats of the movie-going public by forcing theatres to show them whether local movie-goers want to see them or not

The system stinks. The movie studios argue that, hey, if you don’t like Silver City, you can just go down to the Frederick if you want to. No, I can’t. Not if I want to see “Almost Famous” or “The Cell” or “The Exorcist”. All of these movies have an exclusive engagement at Silver City. Movies are not material commodities like toilet paper: you can get the same brand at Walmart or Zellers or Zehrs.

And as for those great independent and foreign films… forget it. They will never be shown at Silver City because Silver City only shows films make by the big Hollywood studios.

Worse than that– the movie distributors force movie theatres to show mediocre films as part of a package including the mega-hits. If they want to show “Titanic”, they’re going to have to give a few weeks to “Rocky XIV”.

There oughta be a law… very simple. Movie theatres should be independent of movie-makers. And films should be rented to theatres on an individual basis. That is called free enterprise. That’s called competition.

I would bet you a million dollars that places like Silver City would disappear quickly if it were actually forced to compete with other theatres that don’t cheat you with their food prices or treat you like a pinball.

[I’d probably be wrong. A lot of people prefer the loud, brassy, noisy, clutter of special effects extravaganzas, and kids probably really do like the cheesy décor. 2004-07]

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The Exorcist

“The Exorcist”, one of the most chilling, horrifying films ever made, has been re-released by Warner Brothers 27 years after it’s initial release stirred controversy and fascination.

There a few things you should know about “The Exorcist”, though you may not want to.

Now, when I say “you may not want to”, you probably think I’m going to tell you that demons are real and demon possession is a growing problem in our society so you better stay away from Ouija boards and stop listening to Marilyn Manson or AC/DC, backwards and forwards.

Actually, the truth is that people love these stories. They love them because something in us wants to believe that there are demons out there. The public is endlessly fascinated by villains, serial killers, poltergeists, ritual Satanic abusers, and so on. If you try to convince someone that there really isn’t as much evil out there as they think there is, they are frequently disappointed or alarmed.

Actually, the truth is that there really is a lot of evil out there. But, as Bob Dylan once observed, “the evil I see wears a cloak of decency”. Sure, there are rapists and pimps and pushers and thugs. But there are also executives and politicians and kings. Who is responsible for most of the misery in the world? How many people have died in this century, unnecessarily, as the result of war and starvation? What makes us think that because a man wears a suit and works in a gleaming office tower and drives in a limousine– what makes us think this man or woman is not “evil”, when they sometimes make decisions or policies that result in human catastrophes?

It isn’t even close.

But something in us prefers to see evil embodied in specific persons, whom we can ritually exorcise (pardon the expression) from our lives. Why? Because, at the most fundamental level, these stories allow us to believe that evil is not us.

Anyway, back to The Exorcist:

1. William Peter Blatty, the author of the book, The Exorcist, was brought up in a Catholic household and once considered joining the priesthood.

2. The novel was allegedly based on a “true story”, and the movie, of course, was based on the novel. Several priests served as “consultants” to William Friedkin, director of the movie. Now, when it comes to Hollywood, we all know what a “true story” is and the worthlessness of “consultants”. This particular “true story” concerns a 14-year-old boy who was possessed by a demon which was exorcised by several Roman Catholic priests. These events took place in 1949 in Mount Rainier, Maryland– so we are told–and were reported in various newspapers including the Washington Post. According to some researchers, the boy in question, the real boy, upon whom the Exorcist is based, had some serious emotional problems long before the possession episode. William F. Bodern, a Jesuit, was the officiating priest at the exorcism.

The boy is alive and well and has been located. He refuses to talk about the incident.

3. The boy’s grandmother was, in modern parlance, a religious fanatic, fascinated with all things cultic and spiritual, and she passed on this fascination to the boy. So those of you looking for a more naturalistic, psychosomatic explanation don’t have to look too far. Add to this the fact that Blatty’s own mother was very “spiritual” and you might begin to get the picture. Blatty also attended a Jesuit High School. He served time in the U.S. Air Force. His parents moved around a lot while he was growing up.

4. People attach great weight to the “true story” business. In fact, William Peter Blatty has not kept a secret of the fact that he made up most of the details in the novel and the movie. On the other hand, at times he does sound as if he sees himself as a journalist, rather than a writer of fiction. This doesn’t keep most people from believing that some demon-possessed child somewhere did the things shown in the movie.

Two interesting interpretations of the movie: a) a allegory of dominant, controlling males attempting to restore innocence to a adolescent female whose emerging sexuality threatens them, b) an allegory of teenage rebellion, plain and simple. Neither interpretation is really interesting. They don’t survive the dynamics of the story itself.

5. In the movie, the words “help me” appear on Regan’s body, in broken letters, as if punched there from within. You might draw the logical conclusion that it is the spirit of Regan, inside the body, begging to be relieved of the presence of demons. I thought it was the dumbest thing in the movie. What is the supposed explanation for this? Obviously, Regan before possession was not capable of stenciling words onto the surface of her stomach through sheer will-power.  Was a little Regan inside her stomach doing it?

Oh, come on– it was downright hokey.

6. The British Board of Censors banned the film for 15 years after it’s release. I’m told the ban was lifted in 1999, which is strange, since the film was released in 1973. What was it doing between 1973 and 1984? Perhaps what they banned was the video release. [Do you live in a free, democratic society? Then why does the government tell you which films you are allowed to watch?]*

7. It won Oscars for best sound and adapted screenplay. Blatty initially wanted to use well-known actors, including Paul Newman, in the film, but later decided to use relative unknowns, including Jason Miller, Ellen Burstyn, and Max Von Sydow. This was a very, very smart decision: the film is much more forceful and convincing.

8. Aside from the special effects and the horror elements, the film is actually a good drama. In some ways, the story of Father Karras’ mother was more horrifying than the demon possession.

How does nonsense spread? Very easily. William Peter Blatty supplied the initial myth– that the movie bore some kind of substantive relationship to real events in Mount Rainier in 1949. This, as it turns out, is utterly false, other than the fact that a boy appeared to suffer from convulsions and some Roman Catholic priests performed what they called an “exorcism”. The boy’s convulsions eventually subsided, and at least one of the priests involved in the exorcism acknowledges that nothing really weird happened. But most news stories simply quote Blatty, and cite other books that were dependent on the same sources, and perpetuate the myth. Why? Because people love the story. They are fascinated by it. It’s a heck of a lot more exciting than mental illness.

You have to know this: Blatty was a lightweight Hollywood comedy writer before he turned out “The Exorcist”. Since then, he’s taken pains to try to establish his credentials as a “deep”, serious author. If you’ve only seen “The Exorcist” you might buy it, because, like I said, the drama is exceptional.

But what you are really seeing is William Friedkin’s wonderful direction and the superb acting of Ellen Burstyn, Jason Miller, Max VonSydow, and Linda Blair.

There are four full-time exorcists in the Archdiocese of New York, appointed by Cardinal O’Connor. The Pope himself has attempted three exorcisms (and failed). In an average year, according to Time Magazine, they investigate 350 cases and conduct 10-15 exorcisms. They only perform exorcisms after all possible “natural” causes of the phenomenon have been ruled out. Mind you, this judgment of what is “natural” and what might not be is being made by someone who believes that people occasionally can be occupied by sentient evil beings.

Added 2011-03

The “director’s cut” of the movie proved that Directors should not always get final cut. Actually, I’m sure Friedkin knew that the scenes “restored” to the “director’s cut” deserved to be cut.  The scene of Regan spider-walking down the stairs upside down is downright ridiculous.

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Not a Single Jew

“… the men who ran the studios had decided upon such a stringent policy of ethnic cleansing that throughout the whole of the Second World War, the words ‘Jewish’ and ‘Jew’ appeared in not a single film set in the States (with the exception, it pleases me to say, of the Epstein Boys’ Mr. Skeffington).” Leslie Epstein, Harpers, September 2000

That’s an amazing fact. Not a single film, except one. Of all the films that presented stories of inspiration and information, motivation, rationalization, and propaganda, not a single one, really, ever mentioned the Jews by name. Germany was our enemy because they started it, because they tried to rule the world, because they were the aggressors, and because they were not democratic. We had to stop them.

And, oh yes, they killed some Jews.

There were claims after the war, of course, that the West didn’t really know that the holocaust was happening until they rolled into the camps with their tanks and found the ovens. Now we know that Western governments, at least, knew what was going on. We know that because we know that the United States refused to bomb the train tracks leading to Auschwitz because, they said, they were beyond their bomber range. But then they went and bombed a factory nearby instead.

Under the Communists, Poland tried to turn the Auschwitz Memorial into propaganda by emphasizing that communists were killed there. Then Poland shook itself free of its Communist shackles. The Roman Catholic Church is trying very hard to restore it’s own power and authority in Poland. And now it has appropriated, or tried to appropriate, Auschwitz. The memorial emphasizes the deaths of Christian Poles who resisted Hitler.

The story of World War II is entirely different without the Jews. With the Jews, our children can be taught that the West was noble and righteous and heroically fought to stop the greatest act of inhumanity of the millennium. Without the Jews, World War II was just about power, like all the wars before it. England, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal– they had all tried to build empires. The difference was that Germany was strong enough to try to absorb England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy into its own empire of empires.

The Americans look relatively innocent. They merely slaughtered the Indians and took Texas away from Mexico.

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Monkey Business

I’ve never quite understood the Ontario Film Review Board.

First of all, the name is deceitful. This is the Ontario Censor Board, in all but name. The politicians realized that the general public doesn’t approve of censorship so instead of addressing the real issue they made a meaningless cosmetic change: Ontario Film Review Board.

Our society doesn’t know what do to with free expression anymore. In principle, we all agree with it. In practice, we’d all love to censor anything we don’t like.

A director named Ron Mann has made a documentary film about the history of our society’s attitudes towards marijuana. The Ontario Film Review Board saw the film and, to put it mildly, had a fit. THIS FILM CANNOT BE SHOWN IN ONTARIO.

Why not? Does it show mutilation? Full frontal nudity? Urination? Masturbation? Surgery? What? What was so offensive that all of the people of Ontario MUST be protected from it?

Monkeys smoking pot.

That’s right.

You see, about 30 years ago, the U.S. government conducted some research into marijuana and it’s effects on various living beings. In one of their experiments, they strapped a bunch of chimpanzees into chairs and made them smoke some pot. They filmed this, those clever scientists! About 30 seconds of this footage is used in Grass.

There are also scenes of adults smoking marijuana in Grass. That did not arouse the ire of the Ontario Censor— Film Review Board. That is because no animals were abused in the process of making those scenes. Hmmm.

You will have noticed that the footage in question was made by the U.S. government, not by the film-makers. So the censor board is saying, well, you can’t show films of criminal activities…. er… just because they were made by someone else, even if it was the government??

Does this mean that archival war footage cannot be made into movies anymore? Just think: there is lots of film of soldiers getting killed in battle. Since we don’t want soldiers to be killed in battle, no one should see those films. Or would you argue that killing people during war time is perfectly legal? But then, it was perfectly legal for the U.S. government to torture monkeys too.

This is not the only film by Ron Mann that has aroused, shall we say, the concern of the Censor Board. About twenty years ago, he made a film in which a poet heaped lavish praise upon the form and appearance of a female breast. That too was considered pernicious and dangerous for public consumption even though an actual breast was never shown.

I think the Ontario Film Censorship Review Board is a little confused here. I think they are going by their bad instincts. When they see a scene that disturbs them, they try to find some reason to ban it. They will tell you it breaks a certain rule or violates a certain community standard. The truth is, they don’t have any logic or rationale for what they do. The truth is that, in the age of the internet, they have become entirely irrelevant anyway. In a few years, people will download movies from anywhere they want to, without the slightest interference from censor boards or politicians. We’re not very well prepared for that coming world. We’re shocked at monkeys smoking pot.

What would they do with a scene of alligators eating their own young? Or of a cheetah taking down a young Reebok? Or a bull fight?

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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]