[WARNING: HE regulars who routinely complain about political-minded or inside-the-Hollywood-beltway posts should just ignore this. It’s just an angry reply to an ex-friend that I wrote last weekend. Don’t worry about it.]
A journalist I’ve known for a long, long time recently repeated an accusation that he’s hit me with before — that my blunt prose and occasional stridency isn’t a social fit these days, and that I’m not sufficiently emphasizing my passion for films and generally not being enough of a love machine in my jottings, and that my failure to do this since woke terrorism began to manifest in mid ’18 has been self-destructive.
My troubles are my own, he basically meant. He was also subliminally hinting that if there ever was a time to drop to my knees and start aggressively smooching ass, it’s right now.
Something snapped when I read his email, and so I sent him a sternly-worded reply. After being in this racket for 30 years (a little over 40 years if you go back to my NYC freelance days), he was basically saying “you need to recreate yourself…you need to eat a little humble pie and audition for your tormentors as a way of saying ‘hey, guys, I’m not that bad because I love movies!’ I thought about my reply this morning, and decided to share it with the world:
“I have written the best HE column I can, each and every day, for 17 years now (i.e., HE launched in August 2004). I was part of the serious film journo crowd starting in the early ’90s, and I stayed there for nearly 30 years — on all the screening and festival lists, occasionally quoted or written about, good to excellent ad income, liked by many, tolerated by others and, except in the minds of a few cancerous and malevolent personalities, certainly respected.
“And then (hello?) Trump was elected and THE CULTURE WENT INTO CONVULSIONS, the hinterland uglies came out of their gopher holes, the hate currents intensified, wokester advocates began to spread terror in liberal circles, and the crime of being an older white male (even a liberal, thoughtful one) suddenly became a ‘thing’ to avoid or identify as, and before you knew it older white dudes were presumed to be suspiciously toxic on all fronts (especially if your views on CRT and the 1619 Project were similar to Andrew Sullivan’s), and when questioned the only thing a white dude could do was drop to his knees and plead for forgiveness and insist (as was the case in my corner) that he’s a moderate left-centrist and that he despises the nutbag right.
“And somewhere in the midst of this process (i.e., starting around mid ’18 and certainly by ’19 and ’20) persons like yourself and the sickening fiends you schmooze and smile with decided it was time to murder my life and livelihood because…I don’t know, because people can be vile when given half a chance? Because Hollywood’s progressive, diverse, anti-racist, #MeToo agendas had to be furthered and mandated top to bottom, and that meant cancelling certain belligerents (i.e., people who thought Moonlight was good but not great, or who despised the Soderbergh Oscarcast or who loathe most of the Marvel/D.C. films or thought that Parasite fell apart after they let the maid in during that evening rainstorm, or who find ‘presentism’ in historical films to be a bizarre form of fantasy-projection or who regard the normalizing of morbid obesity to be grotesque).
“To hear you describe my output, I could be some kind of psychotic, self-destructive rage junkie who needs sedation and religious counselling.
“Who are you, man? You know we’re still in the middle of Roger Corman‘s The Terror, and you’re saying with an apparently straight face ‘what terror? It’s you, Jeff, not them…you have to put on your sweet face and charm them with your devotion and worship,’ etc.
“I am a healthy, disciplined, hard-working and well-behaved human being, [name]. Within the usual fluctuating perimeters and leaving aside recreational drug use in my 20s and 30s, I have behaved like a moral and ethical human being all my life. My parents had their flaws, but were fundamentally good, middle-class, tax-paying, lawn-moving home owners. I have never sexually assaulted or molested anyone, or taken a swing at anyone, or broken any laws or given aid and comfort to any of American’s enemies or failed to wear Covid masks or to get double-vaxxed or done anything that could be construed as anti-social or criminal or a threat to the common good. I have basically done nothing ‘wrong’ except to be opinionated in ways in which the Comintern doesn’t approve, but yet you’ve just described me as a self-destructive sociopath.
“Nor have I ever tried to arrange for a fellow journalist’s career to be wounded or destroyed…imagine!
“I come from a middle-class upbringing in New Jersey and Connecticut. I know the American film industry and its history like the back of my hand. I’m dedicated, I pay my bills, I keep our car in working order, I work hard…I have an up-and-down marriage, two sons, two cats, a granddaughter on the way and a life of serious accomplishment behind me (I began in this business around ’77), and the industry wants me dead?
“I really don’t get your ‘who us?’ attitude…your angle in pretending not to he aware of what kind of ruthless political bullying and malignant malice is afoot here. Fewer screening invites, perhaps fewer ads than last year…I’m being assassinated in slow motion, and after writing with the same voice since I began with EW in ’91, then People, then the L.A. Times Syndicate (‘94 to ‘99) and then my online column adventure beginning in October ’98 (23 years ago), and all the while being cool with everyone including the highest level of actors, directors, screenwriters and producers for 30-odd years or 40-plus years if you reach back to my NYC freelance days, and suddenly I need to adjust my attitude and kiss the rings and butt-cheeks of people who EASILY fall under the definition of gangsters, monsters and sociopaths…you’re telling me I’m the problem? I have to fix it?
“Hollywood culture has succumbed to fear and intimidation and terror…to reflexive purges of this and that filmmaker for alleged past sins (obviously with ample justification in some instances), and the bottom line is that anyone who doesn’t slavishly repeat the party line must be cut off at the knees.
“You know what’s going on — you know that H’wood’s social justice warrior mentality is the absolute moral equivalent of the patriotic ’50s blacklist. You know this, and you pretend I need a course in ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’? How to win the hearts of Stalinist hive-mind bullies and woke totalitarians?
“People in the industry made it clear that you, [name], would face the same kind of wrath that I’ve been suffering if you didn’t walk away and stop posting comments on HE and basically pretend that I don’t exist? You were told in essence to shape up or face the consequences, and I’m the guy who needs to adjust my attitude?
“I find punitive wokesterism absolutely appalling (most fair-minded people of character feel the same way), and your allusions, [name], to my being some sort of racist and/or sexist or homophobe or what-have-you (right now I could drop the names of certain name-brand persons who, if contacted privately, would either chuckle at or brush aside or take issue with these allusions but let’s not go there) completely disgusting.
“If you think historians are going to look upon the terrified behaviors of political fence-straddlers like yourself with anything other than rank contempt in 20 or 30 years, you’d best think again.
“I’m the same opinionated writer I always have been. I have been in this racket for 44 years, but I don’t look for ways to be goading or abrasive — I look for ways to be lively, yes, but mainly to be persuasive and provocative. I lay it on the line, and you want me to become…what, some kind of Pollyannic, glad-handing, joy-spreading Love Machine as far as my views of films and social trends are concerned? As if I’m 22 years old and looking to break into the business, and your advice is ‘be as gracious and alpha-vibey as possible, son…demonstrate how much you love movies and the movie industry will love you right back!’
“How dare you, man?
“Several months ago Variety threw its own respectable stringer critic under the bus and apologized to Carey Mulligan (who wrote me a personal hand-written ‘thank you’ note 12 and 1/2 years ago for raving about An Education at Sundance)…they temporarily abandoned any pretense of journalistic backbone and respectability and stuck a knife in the ribs of one of their best freelance film critics over what any fair-minded editor would call an unfortunately worded but critically permissible opinion in a single paragraph (and an opinion that Variety editors themselves had no problem with until Mulligan raised her objection), and I’m the guy with the problem?
“[Name], you and yours make me want to throw up…right here and now, right on my own living room carpet.”