If you can’t afford to feed your children healthily and regularly and expose them to good values and so on, then — hello? — don’t have them. Kids are a huge responsibility. They’re not just something to do to make you feel less lonely or more fulfilled. It’s not about you; it’s about them. I know — only Republicans talk this way, right? But people shouldn’t have children with an expectation that society will help feed them and provide medical care. Parents who can’t man up and do the right thing shouldn’t be parents.

“Chalk up this year’s nominations as a victory for the bullying power of the United States Senate and an undeserved loss for Zero Dark Thirty and director Kathryn Bigelow in particular,” L.A. Times critic Kenneth Turan wrote this morning. “If ZD30 has any message about what led to Bin Laden’s location, it’s that, rather than torture, it was the slow, meticulous, painstaking gathering of information over nearly a decade…that did the trick.”

Zero Dark Thirty‘s Kathryn Bigelow explained it all again to David Letterman. “Accurate in a way a movie can be accurate,” etc. Here’s the whole 11-minute segment.

It’s been almost 19 years since the Cannes Film festival debut of Pulp Fiction, and film geeks (and makers of movies about film geeks) still reference the “Royale with cheese” scene between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. That’s bad. That put me off. But dealing with venal high-school thugs is at least reflective of the way it is in some schools today (i.e., ones attended by dregs-of-the-gene-pool types), and that’s something. I see at least one and sometimes two Slamdance movies every Sundance, so maybe.

I’ve nothing unusual to say about the hostile, dismissive tone in Quentin Tarantino‘s responses to Channel Four’s Krishnan Guru-Murthy in London yesterday. On one level I admire QT’s eat-my-ass attitude. But I’m still sick of excessive style-violence — the lurid carnage that guys like Tarantino use to elicit smirks in the name of heh-heh irony — which I believe is boring and tedious because it’s merely extreme, like someone yelling as loudly as they can or a dog that won’t stop barking.

In his ongoing quest to re-vitalize grindhouse cinema for the aughts, Tarantino has made himself into a self-regarding “exploitation filmmaker” (i.e., ironically, not really, winking) who has made Django Unchained because slavery gives him license to wail on Southern racist swine with absolute moral authority. I believe in justice and payback, but there’s a difference between that and feasting on revenge like some lowlife glutton devouring chili fries. And I’m just sick of it.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Let me ask you about violence. You said, you know, everyone knows you make violent movies, you like violent movies. Why do you like making violent movies?

Quentin Tarantino: Uhm… I don’t know. It’s like asking Judd Apatow, “Why do you like making comedies?”

KGM: You just get a kick out of it? Or you just enjoy it? Or…

QT: It’s… It’s… It’s a… I think… I think it’s good cinema. I consider it good cinema. You know, it’s… You sit there in a movie theatre when these cathartic, violent scenes happen… I’m talking about the cathartic violence scenes. Then there’s the cathartic violence of Django paying back blood for blood.

KGM: Is that why you think people like watching violent movies – people who are not violent people or twisted people in any way, but why it’s OK to go into a movie and enjoy the violence?

QT: Yeah, well, it’s a movie. It’s a fantasy. It’s a fantasy – it’s not real life. It’s a fantasy. You go and you watch. You know, you watch a kung-fu movie and one guy takes on 100 people in a restaurant. That’s fun!

KGM: But why are you so sure that there’s no link between enjoying movie violence and enjoying real violence?

QT: I don’t…I’m going to tell you why I’m so sure? Don’t ask me a question like that – I’m not biting. I refuse your question.

KGM: Why?

QT: Because I refuse your question. I’m not your slave and you’re not my master. You can’t make me dance to your tune. I’m not a monkey.

KGM: I can’t make you answer anything. I’m asking you interesting questions.

QT: And I’m saying… and I’m saying I refuse.

KGM: OK. I was just asking you why. That’s fine. But you see, Jamie Foxx has said: “We can’t turn our back and say that violence in films, that anything that we do…”

QT: Then you should talk to Jamie Foxx about that. And I think he’s actually here, so you can!

KGM: I’d love to, but, I mean, you know… It’s interesting that you have a different view, and I’m just trying to explore that.

QT: And I don’t want to! ‘Cause I’m here to sell my movie. This is a commercial for the movie – make no mistake.

KGM: So you don’t want to talk about anything serious?

QT: I don’t want to talk about what you want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about the implications of violence. I haven’t wanted… because… The reason I don’t want to talk about it: because I’ve said everything I have to say about it.
If anyone cares what I have to say about it, they can Google me and they can look for 20 years what I have to say. But I haven’t changed my opinion one iota.

KGM: No, but you haven’t fleshed it out.

QT: It’s not my job to flesh it out.

KGM: No, it’s my job to try and ask you to.

QT: And I’m shutting your butt down!

After the BFCA Critics Choice Awards I had a light bite in Brentwood with Graemm McGavin, and then we cruised over to UCLA’s Wadsworth Theatre for a Silver Linings Playbook post-screening q & a in front of a packed SAG house. 80% of the cast showed up: Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Shea Whigham, Paul Herman and Dash Mihok + plus director-writer David O. Russell.

You’ve read the stories about Thursday’s BFCA Critic Choice Awards, about Argo winning Best Picture and the Oscar-snubbed Ben Affleck taking the Best Director prize, about Silver Linings Playbook winning four awards — Best Ensemble, Best Comedy, Best Actor in a Comedy (Bradley Cooper) and Best Actress in a Comedy (Jennifer Lawrence), about Lincoln‘s Daniel Day Lewis winning Best Actor, and so on.

At Thursday’s BFCA Critics Choice Awards, which began at 5 pm Pacific: Zero Dark Thirty director Kathryn Bigelow, producer-screenwriter Mark Boal.

I was there at table #70 with my camera and “friendo” Graemm McGavin, snapping photos when I could, glad-handing with the celebrities, talking to Kris Tapley and Joey Berlin, sampling the food, sipping the water. It was cold in that hangar, baby…okay, not “cold” but it could have been warmer.

Beasts of the Southern Wild star Quvenzhane Wallis, winner of the BFCA’s Best Young Actor/Actress Award.

Best Actor winner Daniel Day Lewis (Lincoln).

(l. to r.) Harvey Weinstein, The Master‘s Amy Adams, Silver Linings Playbook‘s David O. Russell.

So the Santa Barbara Film Festival is honoring Ben Affleck with a Modern Master award on 1.25…cool. Except he’s now a bit of a Nowhere Man now without a Best Director Oscar nomination….right? Argo has been Best Picture nominated, fine, so you have to adapt, I suppose. Django Unchained costar Leonardo DiCaprio is receiving the SBIFF’s American Riviera award on February 1st. Except he wasn’t nominated this morning either so what’s the shot? The “Leo is Leo” shot, I guess. Leo is Leo and he’s taking the stage, etc. Hey, Leo…what about you and Tarantino not speaking on the Django set?

No film had managed to snag four acting nominations for 31 years before Silver Linings Playbook did it this morning. The last film to do this was Reds (’81), and before than Network (’76). The haters are back at it, claiming that only SLP Best Actress nominee Jennifer Lawrence has it nailed down. Maybe, but I suspect that Best Supporting Actor nominee Robert De Niro will also take it.

This may sound cynical or disparaging, but I honestly believe that Quentin Tarantino, who knows how to write flamboyant shitkicker dialogue better than anyone, could take this news story and make a feature from it. He could cast some gone-to-seed exploitation actress from the ’80s as Jeanette Morris, and Michael Parks as Michael Anderson. He’s a master at dragging scenes out interminably. He could easily make this story into a 95-minute film. And doing this would get him out of the historical revenge rut he’s in. I’m perfectly serious. It would be good.

A couple of hours ago Awards Daily‘s Sasha Stone and I discussed this morning’s Oscar nomination shockers. I’ve actually loaded two files — here’s Part 1 and Part 2. The Bigelow and Affleck snubs and how no Oscar pundits saw this coming, the Jacki Weaver surprise, why Michael Haneke got in as Best Director, Kris Tapley‘s misplaced faith in The Intouchables, etc.

I’m not sorry that we blabbed on for an hour and two minutes. We had a lot to cover. Update: Sorry for making a loading mistake earlier. The mp3s have finally been loaded correctly. I’m an idiot.

Nominated Treasury Secretary Jack Lew took some heat yesterday for his loopy, illegible signature. Let me explain something. Nobody’s signature makes any sense. Signatures are stylistic logos. If you’re over the age of 15 or so people will think less of you if your signature is halfway readable. I worked on mine when I was in the eighth grade. I experimented and practiced until I got it right, you bet.

Jack Lew’s signature.

My signature.

Stephen Rodrick‘s “Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie” (NY Times, 1.10.13), a chronicle of Paul Schrader‘s agonizing ordeal with Lohan and The Canyons, is the best making-of-a-disaster piece I’ve read in years. It’s so tightly written that it hums.

After a rough cut of The Canyons is screened for friends at the Brill building, “Schrader’s friends were noncommittal, but Schrader was ecstatic,” the article reads. “We adjourned to a nearby bar. He was certain the film would get into the Sundance Film Festival. Maybe they’d recoup their investment tenfold.

“‘We thought this was going to be My Dinner With Andre, but it’s a real film. We [expletive] did it.”

“But this was The Canyons so the ending couldn’t be that smooth. I flew back to Los Angeles and watched the film a few days later with Ellis and Pope. Ellis was the least impressed.

“‘The film is so languorous. It’s an hour 30, and it seems like it’s three hours long. I saw this as a pranky noirish thriller, but Schrader turned it into, well, a Schrader film.’

“Pope and Ellis agreed that the opening scene wasn’t working. Pope called Schrader about reshooting it, and he was angrily dismissed.

“‘We could shoot it again for $15,000 in a day,’ Pope said. Then he corrected himself. ‘Well, with Lindsay, we’d have to budget two days, but it’s doable. But he won’t do it.’

“He was right. Schrader wouldn’t hear of it. And for good reason. It took two months and the quasi intervention of Lohan’s father to get Lohan to finish two hours of looping for the outdoor scenes. In the interim, Lohan punched a psychic, was accused of hitting a pedestrian in New York, was under investigation by the I.R.S. and watched her parents melt down on a very special episode of Dr. Phil.

“Meanwhile, Ellis, Pope and Schrader battled over the film’s final cut. Pope screened a rough cut of The Canyons for Steven Soderbergh. Intrigued, Soderbergh offered to do an edit of the movie if he was given the footage for 72 hours.

“Schrader said no.

“I met him one last time in Toronto, where he was working on the film’s soundtrack with the Canadian musician Brendan Canning. He had just learned that the film had not been accepted by Sundance — the film is scheduled to be put up for sale by William Morris Endeavor later this month — and was in a fouler-than-usual mood.

“‘The idea of 72 hours is a joke,’ Schrader said. ‘It would take him 72 hours to look at all the footage. And you know what Soderbergh would do if another director offered to cut his film?'”