Day: November 2, 2007

As expected, The Envelope‘s Tom O’Neil suffered slings and arrows yesterday for his Sweeney Todd-will-sweep- the-Oscars prediction. New York Post critic/blogger Lou Lumineck had a good chortle, and some Hollywood Stock Exchange reader who can’t spell to save his life called O’Neil “the new Poland.” (Funny, except there’s no established legend of the “O’Neil Curse.”)

O’Neil wrote today that I suggested he was half-crazy by comparing his “voice”-hearing abilities to Howard Beale‘s (i.e., the “mad prophet of the airwaves” from Network). I didn’t mean that at all. Beale would shudder and collapse after his speeches, but he wasn’t crazy. Beale was imbued with what the Hindus call “prana” — the state of knowing and being that is spaceless, timeless and imbued with “oh, such loveliness.” Beale was merely a conduit for that which flows and surges through every living particle in the universe, lifted up as he was by cosmic energy within and without…as we all could and should be. The difference was that Beale, unlike 99.9% of humanity, was on to it.

This doesn’t mean O’Neil is right about Sweeney Todd. It just means that cosmic forces have “told” him what they’ve told him in the middle of the night. I don’t think that the cosmic forces, however, have fully considered the impact of arterial blood flowing like water out of a fire hydrant upon your typical Academy member.

It’s interesting to note the psychological maneuverings going on between the WGA and the producers as the situation moves closer and closer to a writers strike, which will probably kick in as of Monday. But when I saw that “tick tick tick” headline on Movie City News this morning I said to myself, “WGA and PGA members are obviously living through a drama that is part Eugene Debs and part Eugene O’Neil, but how many readers of MCN or Variety or HE or The Envelope are really on pins and needles about this thing?”

Roman Polanski, Catherine Denueve during the making of Repulsion

The most affecting tick-tick-tick of my life so far has been the one that Roman Polanski put on the soundtrack in that scene in Repulsion when Catherine Deneuve is lying in bed and dreading the arrival of a rapist. Now, that‘s a tick-tick-tick!

I’m with the writers as far as it goes (emotionally, I mean, which doesn’t add up to much) and I’m not saying industry “beat” journalists like Nikki Finke and Dave McNary shouldn’t cover every last aspect of this. I’m just not discerning the earth-shaking significance of a WGA work stoppage. It’s an “important” story that I’m more than ready to nap through. The only arousing aspect is that it portrays the base mentality of the producers as one of greed, obstinacy and a primal need to the “lions’ of the jungle.