I figured I’d re-watch Don’t Look Up, only this time with subtitles. Maybe it would kick up, I thought. I lasted about 35 or 40 minutes. Here’s how I explained it on Facebook this morning:
Hollywood’s Bataan Death March
Exactly 14 years ago one of the greatest years for aspirational, middle-class, non-budget-busting, CG-averse, review-driven movies came to an end — 2007. Call it the last glorious year for this kind of film, for only 10 weeks later — on 3.14.08, to be be exact — Variety‘s Anne Thompson wrote about the imminent demise of this sort of fare.
Whatever vitality or opportunity that kind of theatrical film had going in ’07 (typified by Syriana, Munich, The Social Network, Babel, Proof of Life, Michael Clayton, Brokeback Mountain, American Gangster, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, No Country for Old Men, Superbad, There Will Be Blood, Zodiac), it would soon be squeezed and then gradually squelched by the Marvel / D.C. machine, and then by fucking Millennials, most of whom have never given a damn about middle-range theatrical dramas, and then by the gradual migration of such films and subject matter to cable and streaming, and then just to streaming.
And then came the first wave of wokester instructional dramas in ’17 or thereabouts. And then the final death blow — the pandemic that began almost two years ago (or around March 1, 2020).
It used to be that the movie year was composed of ten months of crap with a smattering of review-driven, award-seeking films opening between mid-October and mid December. Some of those would-be Oscar contenders would do good theatrical business or at least break even with profits to come from cable licensing and home video. But that’s finished now also. West Side Story died, King Richard died, etc. Only Spider-Man: No Way Home hit the jackpot.
The industry that I grew up with and measured my life against and thrived by until roughly four or five years ago…the movie industry of the late ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, aughts and the first half of the teens…that industry is more or less gone now. It was withering on the vine when the pandemic came along, and now it’s 90% dead, dead, fucking dead. Ditto the joy of life as I used to know it, in a sense…the joy of living by, for and through movies. I’m not saying that life is over, but the euphoric days will never return. Not in force, they won’t. Not like 2007.
There’s enough excitement and intrigue and discovery in new films to keep my pulse beating, so to speak, and there will always be the top-tier film festivals, of course, plus the HD streaming options today are miraculous. But the vibrancy of the movie-worshipping life I lived for so many decades…that wellspring of fresh nourishing water that I drank from so joyfully in theatres and at Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Telluride….I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the flush times for devotional cineastes like myself are pretty much…well, seriously diminished. Certainly in a theatrical sense. The game isn’t completely over and done with, of course, but it’s certainly on life support.
The pandemic didn’t kill everything, but it damn sure took the joy out of living.
“All This Bullshit”
“The Matrix: Regurgitations is a fucking ridiculous disaster of a film…that reads like a piece of clumsy fan fiction, written by a sweaty, overweight teenager from 2004…it accomplishes absolutely nothing….never should have been made.”
Final Days Before ‘22
I was diagnosed with Omicron eight days ago and had more or less shed the effects of the virus by last Friday (12.24). The CDC says if I’m triple vaxxed and masked I’m good for roaming around and shopping, etc. I’m now triple bullet-proofed (three stabs + naturally enhanced post-Covid defenses + German genes) — less likely than ever to succumb.
Recalling Tobe Hooper
Four years and four months ago, Tobe Hooper died at age 74. There’s no question that Hooper did himself proud with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (’74), a low-budget slasher thriller that I’ve never liked but have always “respected”. The following Wikipage sentence says it all: “It is credited with originating several elements common in the slasher genre, including the use of power tools as murder weapons and the characterization of the killer as a large, hulking, faceless figure.”
Hooper made a life out of his alleged facility with horror. He career-ed it to the max. But after The Texas Chainsaw Massacre he never struck the motherlode again, not really.
You can’t give Hooper serious credit for Poltergeist, which was mostly directed by Steven Spielberg. And no, I’m not a fan of Lifeforce. If you want to be cruel about it you could call him a feverish, moderately talented fellow who got lucky only once, and that was it. Hooper was tenacious and industrious and always kept going, and of course he dined out on the original Saw for decades. No harm in that.
L.M. Kit Carson, the renowned screenwriter, producer and journalist whom I proudly called a friend and ally from ’86 until his passing in 2014, was friendly with Hooper. They shared a Texas heritage and worked together on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre 2 (’86), a misbegotten piece-of-shit sequel that Cannon Films produced and which I, a conflicted Cannon employee at the time, wrote the press notes for.
Carson introduced me to Hooper as a gifted writer who really understood the satirical tone of Carson’s brilliant Saw 2 script. If only Hooper had absorbed it as fully and translated it to the screen with a similar panache.
Here are six things I know or believe about Hooper, based on personal experience.
(1) As editor of The Film Journal, I began hearing in the early summer of ’82 that Hooper hadn’t really directed Poltergeist. Then I ran a freelancer’s interview with Poltergeist producer Kathy Kennedy in which she more or less confirmed that Spielberg had to step in and take charge because of Hooper’s overly deliberative approach to directing. Many articles have since reported or contended that this was the case.
(2) Carson’s screenplay for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 was a total peach — a dry, darkly comedic kill-the-yuppies thing. It was heralded and excerpted in an issue of Film Comment; it might have been Harlan Jacobson who wrote “it’s okay to like it”. Alas, Hooper totally fucked it up. The sly social satire stuff was totally out the window. I was there for the very first in-house screening. The movie was shit.
“American Gangster” Holds Up
Last night, feeling jazzed about rediscovering Taylor Hackford‘s Proof of Life and realizing it’s a lot better than I’d recalled, I rewatched another violent, crime-related Russell Crowe film from the aughts — Ridley Scott‘s American Gangster (’07).
It remains a sturdy, absorbing, culturally fascinating, Sidney Lumet-like depiction of the rise and fall of heroin importer Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) and the scrappy, scrupulously honest detective, Richie Roberts (Crowe), who eventually busted and prosecuted Lucas in ’75 and ’76.
AG opened 14 years ago, and plays just as grippingly as ever — no diminishment, constantly engaging, stepped in the lore of Harlem and North Jersey. And my God, Denzel (52 during filming, now 67) looks so young! Younger, in fact, than he did in Spike Lee‘s Inside Man (’06). And what a murderer’s row of African American (or African British) players — Chiwetel Ejiofor, RZA, Cuba Gooding Jr., Joe Morton, Idris Elba, Common, the late Clarence Williams III, Ruby Dee, Roger Guenveur Smith, Malcolm Goodwin.
I was struck again by how satisfyingly well made this film is, as good in its own New York City way (the clutter and crap of the streets, high on those uptown fumes) as Lumet’s Prince of the City (’81).
One reason it plays so well, I was telling myself last night, is that big-studio movies, free from the influence of the superhero plague that was just around the corner in ’06, were generally a lot better in the aughts than they are now. 2007, remember, was one of the great all-time years.
Incidentally: I’ve never watched the 176-minute “Unrated Extended Edition” of American Gangster. Has anyone?
Another Reason
…for the coming Democratic Party apocalypse is the anti–meritocracy education thing (i.e., deliberately lowering standards to make things more accessible for students of color). Instructing students about the history of American racism is a vital and necessary thing, but telling parents of smart or otherwise gifted students that merit and scholastic aptitude have no value or place in today’s system because we need to give less advantaged kids more of a chance…this + “parents need to butt out of this as their concerns are imaginary plus professional educators know best”…that is a FUCKING DEATH BOMB.
An excerpt from a 12.28 Matt Taibbi article titled “The Democrats Education Lunacies Will Bring Back Trump”:
Join This Boycott
…and in so doing proclaim your hyper–sensitivity and woke assholery for the benefit of all your social media pallies. I’ve half a mind to drive to Westwood to pay to see Paul Thomas Anderson’s modest and meandering period dramedy again, as a way of saying “many of us hear you, MANAA homies…we get what you’re saying, but PTA was being honest to the period, you see, and his refusal to follow the presentism crowd is an honorable thing.”
Dear God, No, Please…
What, the ghost of George Floyd descends upon rural Pennsylvania?…the return of defund the police?…intrepid Kate gets to the bottom of a conspiracy among ugly racist cops? Terrific.
“Proof of Life” Surprise
Last night and for the first time in 21 years, I re-watched Taylor Hackford and Tony Gilroy‘s Proof of Life. My vague recollection was that it had missed the mark, having lost money and gotten mixed reviews. I was wrong.
A believable, propulsive, well-textured kidnap, ransom & rescue drama set in South America (and largely based on a Vanity Fair article by William Prochnau called “Adventures in the Ransom Trade“), Proof of Life is good stuff — sturdy, smartly written and genuinely thrilling from time to time.
I found it very charismatically performed by Russell Crowe (relatively trim and quite handsome back then) and David Caruso. Alas, Meg Ryan is the opposite of that — as the anguished but argumentative wife of a kidnap victim (David Morse), almost everything she says and does is twitchy and annoying — she never seems to get hold of herself and get past her suspicions and resentments. Much better is Pamela Reed, as Crowe’s sister who flies down to assist.
I think the reception to Proof of Life got lost in the fog of the Crowe-Ryan affair. Hackford said this in so many words, that the film lost money because in the public mind the affair had overwhelmed the make-believe. Crowe was quoted as calling Hackford “an idiot” for saying this, but Hackford was right.
All I know is that after watching Proof of Life without the Crowe-Ryan mucky-muck, it came off better than expected — a strong, complex, grown-up thriller that ends with a great battle sequence.
Warmth of Setting Parisian Sun
Hollywood Elsewhere was a thriving business and a happy workplace for roughly 13 or 14 years. After launching in August ’04 ad income …well, it was touch-and-go for a while but found its footing sometime in early ’06. And then it grew and grew…offering stability, adventure, intrigue, annual European travel and a thriving lifestyle.
The worm began to turn with the horrific election of Donald Trump in November ’16. From that point on and certainly by the end of ’17 and into early ’18, you could feel the first tremors of wokesterism, triggered by perceptions of obstinate patriarchal whiteness as represented by the various bad guys of the moment (the Trumpster mob, Harvey, Woody, Roman and all the other alleged ogres who were being called out, many deservedly so).
Before I knew it the furies were swirling all over the place…anything that smelled even vaguely of older-white-guy attitudes or viewpoints became a form of evil. HE’s ad income began to drop in ’17 and ’18. It’s been a hellish four years.
I was reviewing all this after stumbling upon a post about a private evening tour of the Louvre’s Egyptian exhibit. It happened on 5.13.17, or four and two-thirds years ago. Life is never a bowl of cherries, but things felt relatively happy and settled at this point. The calm before the storm. Here’s how it went…
HE’s own Svetlana Cvetko and David Scott Smith invited me to join them early Saturday evening at the Louvre. A connected friend of Svet’s escorted us inside to a restricted–access tour of the Egyptian exhibit. I had never before wandered through this world-renowned museum as an invitation-only cool cat. No crowds or lines to cope with. The Egyptian statues, sarcophagi, relics and artifacts were nothing to sneeze at either. The highlight was the 4000 year-old chapel of the tomb (or “mastaba”) of Akhethotep, a bigwig in the Old Kingdom who was close to the king. (Egyptian rulers weren’t called pharaohs until the New Kingdom.)
Svetlana Cvetko, David Scott Smith at Louvre cafe — Saturday, 5.13.17, 7:50 pm.