You know how you hear something in the media or conversation and it strikes you as odd and then your mind keeps thinking of it? Several months ago I heard Christopher Guest giving DVD recommendations on NPR. A pretty good selection starting with Laurel and Hardy and then moving into Dr. Strangelove and some more modern things like Fargo and the Ricky Gervais’ show Extras. Then the interviewer asks Guest about his first ever line in a movie. I found the archive online (June 1, 2007):
INTERVIEWER: Do you remember the first line you ever said on camera?
GUEST: (sigh) I did a part in a film which may be the worst film ever made. This was a film that turned out to be a film called Death Wish and there were a series of films made after that vigilante movies basically where a guy goes around -- Charles Bronson and kills people. It was horrible. I was a policeman and I said something but I don‘t remember. I think that was my first film.
INTERVIEWER: I imagine you could rent that. It’s gotta be out on DVD.
GUEST: Yes one could rent it. I wouldn’t but one could.
It was funny that Guest said it could be the worst movie ever made. Was he serious? Death Wish may not be Henry V, but it cannot possibly be in the top 1000 stinkers. Unlike the sequels, Death Wish is a pretty solid movie that accomplishes its goals. It does exactly what a lauded film like Erin Brockovich does, it taps into the fears of the audience and gives them a singular human hero fighting alone to save us. It’s catharsis. It just has the unfortunate device of using actual criminals as criminals instead of the typical corporate villain that Guest expects like sugar on his corn flakes.
I’m in a small minority of people who think that the 1950s blacklist has been overstated. If the government had passed laws that ordered Hollywood to blacklist people that would be an issue of freedom, but the blacklist was a result businessmen not wanting to associate with tainted property. They didn’t want their films to be boycotted. It’s the same thing businesses do today to keep Jesse Jackson from launching campaigns against them. What ever the blacklist cost leftists in the 1950s they have milked it to the point where they so control the industry that right wing movies are scarce. They certainly don’t make movies like Death Wish anymore.
Look at Clint Eastwood who seems to have spent the last half of his career apologizing for the first half. He does so subtlety, trying not to alienate his longtime audience while reaching out to the earlier critics with film scripts that question most of the values he espoused previously. He’s probably not all that political of a person, but he’s savvy enough to know how to keep a career in Hollywood. I’m sure that Christopher Guest wouldn’t say that Dirty Harry is one of the worst movies ever made as long as Eastwood is getting accolades for Mystic River. But the day is coming.
It’s a shame that popular film eschews the values of half of America and thus eschews half of the story ideas it could tell. So often we hear about actors complaining that scripts are hackneyed and that there are no good parts anymore. Of course that is going to happen when every villain is a profiteer or clergyman.
What is the Jane Austen revival but a way to tell conservative stories without endorsing current rightwing ideology? You must put those values safely in the past or you risk offending someone’s lifestyle choice.
Guest could have said that he disagreed with the politics of Death Wish instead of giving the impression that it was poorly made. He could probably give you a good speech about artistic freedom and open-mindedness if Mapplethorpe had a piss display ready. But that sentiment doesn’t apply to films where victims are fed up with ineffective government and do something about it. Guest hates Death Wish not because it’s horrible but because it's effective.
It’s Hollywood’s right to blacklist unfashionable ideas. They can decide whether catering to only half of their potential audience is good for business. But please spare me all the moral indignation over the 1950s. They are the absolute worst when it comes to free expression. They do not seek artists but parrots.
3 comments:
Another brilliant piece.
Wrong re blacklist. There would have been no Hollywood blacklist without the US govt's snooping committees. The moguls didn't want to fire anybody, they were intimidated into it by Sen MCcarthy, HUAC, various other committees.
A leading govt inquisitor was J. Parnell Thomas of HUAC who ended up in the same prison with 2 of the blacklisted screenwriters who found him cleaning out the chicken coop. "Same old chickenshit," they laughed.
The whole Hollywood blacklist thing was also more than a little antisemitic. Read the transcripts.
s/Clancy axe to grind ex blacklistee
HUAC headline grabbing certainly made Hollywood moguls take notice, but they could have handled it in many other ways. No law made them blacklist anyone.
Who was fired? They were contract employees that didn't get another contract. We don't want your script, we have no work for you, etc.
Senator McCarthy had nothing to do with what happened in Hollywood. McCarthy only targeted communists in government.
It's hard to put over the anti-Semitic charge when most of the moguls doing the blacklist were Jewish.
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