Junto Boys

THE WRITERS STRIKE AND POLITICS

The comparisons between the royalties that book authors collect and what screenwriters collect is misleading. A book is a finished piece of media after some editing. A script needs backing and production to be finished. Screenwriters want to share in the continual rewards of a hit while being merely paid employees for a failure. Where would they learn such an idea? From the studios that make every easy villain a corporation.

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I’ve been reading a really interesting biography of Howard Hawks, the great Hollywood Director. He hated High Noon. It wasn’t the politics of it, but the approach. Hawks couldn’t stand seeing Gary Cooper cry his way around town asking for help. That’s why he made Rio Bravo. In his movie the Sheriff turns down help from the “well meaning amateurs”

Hawks was apolitical, not the kind of guy who really cared all that much. Yet he was outraged at seeing the hippies protest the Vietnam War. He spent four years living in France in the 1950s so you couldn't call him some dumb fat American who was ignorant to the world, but he couldn’t understand how someone could root against America. Different times.

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I saw American Gangster on Sunday. I was taken by what I read another blogger say about the film. The Denzel Washington villian character is much more sympathetic than the real life character and that's the nature of good movie making, complex villains. It's also the central problem with the current crop of anti-war films. The American side never is shown to have redeeming qualities.

This Redacted sounds like the worst of all, a rehash of DePalma's overrated Casualties of War, about another rape case. I heard him on NPR say that the war turned these normal men into animals. Well if we can judge behavior by results then the war has civilized these men. Far fewer rapes happen among our servicemen than do among the general population.

I wonder if DePalma thinks filmmaking turned Roman Polanski into an animal?

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The media is doing everything they can to tighten the race between Hilary and Obama. The driver’s license question in the debate is being played like Dukakis in that tank. The media is really setting Obama up for a big fall. It’s like he’s the only one who doesn’t know how vicious the Clintons will become if Hilary is in real danger. All that stuff about his Muslim education we heard earlier in the year will resurface if she’s in trouble. She probably has more dirt than that waiting somewhere. The media knows that Obama isn’t an experienced enough campaigner to thwart the totality of the Clinton arsenal. But they pretend to keep the horse race going.

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Pat Robertson came out for Guiliani. He says a lot of ill-considered things, but I never understood why so many people are afraid of him and religious conservatives in general. Religious conservatives have owned either the White House or Congress for all but two years between 1980 and 2007 and what social liberties have we lost in that time? Certain voters are so afraid that Republicans will end freedoms like abortion that they have swallowed worse losses of freedom like higher taxes, inept government schools, the growth of government, the bankruptcy of Social Security, and disengagement of world affairs to preserve it. Robertson’s endorsement makes him more practical than his many critics.

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John McCain was good on the Daily Show the other night. He gets away with being for the war what with his maverick persona. Ramesh Ponnaru is carrying the McCain flag at National Review, but I’m not buying. He’s the first guy to compromise principles in order to pass bad legislation or to grab headlines in the New York Times. Just imagine him as President.

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The new health club opened near my house. It’s the nicest one I’ve ever belonged to. Upstairs they have 40 cardio machines and downstairs is full of resistance machines and free weights. I use to be that guy what hated exercise. I found it boring and it took too long to see or feel any results. Had I not suffered the back injury ten years ago, I’d still be that guy. Adversity so often leads to opportunities.

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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. And a prayer for our boys and girls overseas.