Sincere apologies to Larry Karaszewski, but I don’t have many fond memories of Robert Altman‘s Short Cuts (’93). I saw it 29 years ago, once, and all I remember is the faintly dreary vibes and the cast behaving in the usual eccentric, Altman-esque ways and the visual drabness and the Julianne Moore-Matthew Modine argument scene with the pubic hair and that soul-baring scene with Jack Lemmon “acting” in his usual actor-ish fashion.

I “respect” Short Cuts, of course, but there’s a reason why I haven’t re-watched it in all this time. The reason is the miserable downishness of Raymond Carver‘s short stories. If I was suddenly stuck in a Carver story or wearing the shoes of a Carver character, I would become a heroin addict.

Respectful disagreement with the late Michael Wilmington: “Short Cuts is a Los Angeles jazz rhapsody that represents Robert Altman at an all-time personal peak—and it came at just the right time in his career. For anyone who believed that what American movies needed most, after the often-moribund cinematic eighties, was more of the old Altman independent spirit and maverick brilliance — and more of a sense of what the country really is, rather than what it should be — the director’s sudden cinematic reemergence with 1992’s The Player and 1993’s Short Cuts was an occasion for bravos.”

Remember that scene in Manchester by the Sea when Casey Affleck is arguing with Lucas Hedges and finally says “I’m gonna knock your fucking block off” and director-writer Kenneth Lonergan, playing a passerby, sarcastically says “great parenting” to Affleck and the yelling ratches up another couple of notches?

Let’s imagine another scene in which a pair of Philadelphia brothers, aged 10 and 14, voluntarily surrender to the cops over having killed a 73-year-old guy (James Lambert) who was beaten to death on 6.24.22.

Imagine that you’re aware of the whole story behind this tragedy, and you come upon the parents of these kids outside the police precinct. What would be the appropriate dialogue? Would you say “great parenting” or would you say “the poor guy was beaten to death around 3 am, for Chrissake…what kind of parents let their kids run wild at 3 am?? And what kind of parents raise kids who would even want to beat a guy to death??”

A 10 year-old kid who helps beat an old guy to death is going to turn out wrong…that’s obvious. But imagine how it feels if you’re the father or the mother of these little shits.

Friendo: “This story is a complete disaster and one the media will barely cover, for obvious reasons.”

HE: “What do you mean ‘a complete disaster’? It was a matter of neighborhood culture and whatnot, but mainly derelict parenting…poisonous, appalling, derelict parenting.”

“[Many of today’s] screenwriters have gone to college for four or five years, and where they’ve been told incessantly [that] the world is inherently racist and sexist…everyone is awful, everyone hates each other and it’s just this big heirarchy of everyone getting oppressed by everyone else, and so that’s going to be reflected in what they write and what they try to rationalize in their stories, and that’s why [we’re getting what we’re getting].”

In the view of Will Jordan‘s “Critical Drinker” (or, if you will, just plain Jordan) a good portion of the woke poisoning of iconic characters has happened under the influence of the Disney death star.

“They took over the Stars Wars brand, they took over Marvel…and in the case of Star Wars you would see characters like Han Solo, Luke Skywalker…these classic heroes from 20, 30 years ago” — actually 40 to 45 years ago — “that were awesome, and suddenly they’re gettin’ brought back and [they’ve become] deadbeat dads or grumpy old men livin’ on an island, and they want to die and have lost all hope…it’s a terrible thing to do to these characters…it’s one thing to kill them off, and another to destroy their legacy and the very essence of who they were.”