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Some of the best things I've read about Ingmar Bergman's place in cinema, written since his death (UPDATED 8/01/07):
E-mails to Roger Ebert from filmmakers and writers including David Mamet, Paul Schrader, Sally Potter, Haskell Wexler, Paul Theroux, Richard Linklater, Gregory Nava, Studs Terkel, David Bordwell, David Gordon Green, Paul Cox... Gregory Nava: This was not the escapist fare of Hollywood, or the pat spirituality of Biblical epic films where God spoke in hallowed tones from a burning bush. With Bergman, God was a spider that lived in the upstairs closet! A shocking and necessary jolt to my Catholic sensibilities. Yes, these films changed me forever -- they cemented my dream to become a filmmaker because if film could do this -- then surely it was the greatest art form of our time. I will never forget the first time I saw the horses standing in the surf against a setting sun, and death with his black cape raised approaching the world-weary knight. "I hope I never get so old I get religious." -- Ingmar Bergman
Peter Rainer, Los Angeles Times: He worked out of his deepest passions and, for many of us, this made the experience of watching his films seem almost surgically invasive. He pulled us into his secret torments. Looking at "The Seventh Seal" or "Persona" or "Cries and Whispers," it's easy to imagine that Bergman, who died Monday, was the most private of film artists, and yet, no matter how far removed the circumstances of his life may have been from ours, he made his anguish our own.
Another way to put this is that Bergman -- despite the high-toned metaphysics that overlays many, though not all, of his greatest films -- was a showman first and a Deep Thinker second. His philosophical odysseys might have been epoxied to matters of Life and Death, of God and Man, but this most sophisticated of filmmakers had an inherently childlike core. He wanted to startle us as he himself had been startled. He wanted us to feel his terrors in our bones. A case could be made that Bergman was, in the most voluminous sense, the greatest of all horror movie directors. "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up!" -- Bergman actor Max von Sydow, in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters"
 View image Woody Allen's "Love and Death": A Bergman (and Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy...) parody from someone who loved Bergman. Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com: What he saw as God’s refusal to intervene in the suffering on earth was the subject of his 1961-63 Silence of God Trilogy, “Through a Glass Darkly,” “Winter Light” (a pitiless film in which a clergyman torments himself about the possibility of nuclear annihilation) and “The Silence.” In his masterpiece “Persona,” (1967), an actress (Liv Ullmann) sees a television image of a monk burning himself in Vietnam, and she stops speaking. Sent to a country retreat with a nurse (Bibi Andersson), she works a speechless alchemy on her, leading to a striking image when their two faces seem to blend.
So great was the tension in that film that Bergman made it appear to catch in the projector and burn. Then, from a black screen, the film slowly rebuilt itself, beginning with crude images from the first days of the cinema. These images were suggested by a child’s cinematograph which his brother received as a present; so envious was Ingmar that he traded his brother for it, giving up his precious horde of 100 tin soldiers.
Michael Atkinson, Zero for Conduct: Another thunder lizard falls – over a half-century after what has come to be known as "the art film" emerged onto postwar American screens, the Greatest Generation (semi-irony siren, please) takes another hit with the passing of an 89-year-old Ingmar Bergman, at once a dinosaur, a one-man New Wave, a mammoth formal influence, a pioneering pop existentialist, a despot in his own nation of cinematic currency, an unexploitable navel-focused artiste who did not bow to the world’s entertainment will but instead made it bow to him, an unestimable provider of cultural fuel to the rise of college-educated counter culture between 1959 and 1980, and, let’s face it, an astonishingly adventurous sensibility that embraced virtually every stripe of expression available to him, from melodrama to the world’s most overt symbolism to gritty realism to epic pageant, farce and avant-garde psycho-obscurism.
 "De Düva: The Dove" -- a staple pre-feature short in art houses, late into the 1970s. Still, he hasn’t been missed much – today, of the Art Film era uber-auteurs, Fellini, Antonioni, Godard, Truffaut, Kurosawa and Bunuel remain potent currency in one form or another (new work, old scripts, reissues, docs, tributes, etc.), but Bergman seems to have faded dramatically from view. Clearly now, the respect he received was always on the verge of dissolving into contempt; going back as far as the 1968 short ""De Düva," things "Bergmanesque" – bald-faced psychological symbology, brooding seriousness, spiritual crisis, Scanda-angst – have been remarkable grist for farce. (Saturday Night Live, Second City TV and Johnny Carson all had their sport back in the day, and there’s no counting the Bergman citations in the history of The Simpsons.) For people who never cared to know from imported cinema, Bergman represented the self-aggrandizing absurdity of Euro-film, even more so, remarkably, than Fellini – perhaps because Federico’s excesses exuded a carnivalesque pandering toward the eternal low-brow. Bergman always aimed high and deep, philosophical and God-searching and proto-Freudian, and his doggedly literal questions were more vital to him and his devoted audience than Yankee ideas of showmanhip. His only competition for Bullgoose Depressive was Antonioni, but Antonioni had the advantage of modern Mediterraneanism, cool-hip visuals and urbane desolation. Bergman had only the dayless winters, the Svealand plains and a seemingly neverending supply of Protestant guilt. Today, we are aswarm with Antonioni imitators, but no one seems to want to be the new Bergman.
[Editor's note: This was written the day before the news of Antonioni's death.]
[...]
But nowhere, not even in the gradually reevaluated "The Serpent’s Egg," is there a lazy, unambitious or unoriginal directorial moment. It doesn’t happen every day that we lose one of an entire art form’s aboriginal movers. When will he reenter the pantheon?
Dan Callahan, The House Next Door: After a while, life and work and a few laughs turn us all into Mary Wilke (Diane Keaton) in Woody Allen’s "Manhattan": “I mean, the silence, God’s silence…OK, OK…I mean, I loved it at Radcliffe, but alright, you outgrow it!” Surely Allen means us to reject the self-loathing, brittle Wilke, who churns out novelizations of popular movies instead of trying to create serious art. But her comments nail the Bergman/Antonioni pretensions and the mindset that would most appreciate them. She also sees Bergman’s “fashionable pessimism” as “adolescent.” This hits even closer to the bone. Wilke has a point. Several points, actually. She is also evil. Her pop mindset rules today, and we have to do everything we can to topple it. Paying attention to the virtues of Bergman and Antonioni is definitely a step in the right direction....
[...]
If being unforgiving is adolescent, then Bergman was adolescent until the end. But his images of bliss linger as much as his vicious dialogue (and the nastiness was always mitigated by the lilting music of the Swedish language).
More as I find them. If you have some favorites, please leave 'em in Comments...
“Until the film is edited, I have no idea myself what it will be about. And perhaps not even then. Perhaps the film will only be a mood, or a statement about a style of life. Perhaps it has no plot at all, in the way you use the word. I depart from the script constantly. I may film scenes I had no intention of filming; thing suggest themselves on location, and we improvise. I try not to think about it too much. Then, in the cutting room, I take the film and start to put it together, and only then do I begin to get an idea of what it is about." -- Michelangelo Antonioni to Roger Ebert in 1969
I can think of no better tribute to the late Michelangelo Antonioni than this 1999 letter to Ebert: A friend recently sent me your column in the Nov. 8, 1998 Denver Post about the movie "Blow-Up." As I actually played the blow-up in that fine movie, I thought you might enjoy knowing the behind-the-scenes story of how the film was made (or not made, in fact). Your column proclaims it to be a great film, and I am not trying to discret that opinion. But it is nonetheless an unfinished work, and it raises the fascinating question of how much of the "art" of a final film is intentional -- or accidental.
My name is Ronan O'Casey, and I played Venessa Redgrave's gray-haired lover in the film. The screenplay, by Antonioni ("just call me Michelangelo"), Tonio Guerra, and Edward Bond, told the story of a planned murder. But the scenes depicting the planning of the murder and its aftermath -- scenes with Vanessa, Sarah Miles and Jeremy Glover, Vanessa's new young lover who plots with her to murder me -- were never shot because the film went seriously over budget.
The intended story was as follows...
The intended story was as follows: the young lover, armed with a pistol, was to precede Vanessa and me to Maryon Park in London, conceal himself in the bushes and await our arrival. I pick up Vanessa in a nice new dark green Jaguar and we drive through London -- giving Antonioni a chance to film that swinging, trendy, sixties city of the Beatles, Mary Quant, the Rolling Stonres, and Carnaby Street. We stop and I buy Vanessa a man's watch, which she wears throughout the rest of the film. We then saunter hand and[sic] hand into the park, stopping now and then to kiss (lucky me). In the center of the park, Vanessa gives me a passionate embrace and prolonged kiss, and glances at the spot where her new lover is hiding. He shoots me (unlucky me), and the two leave the park intending to drive away. Their plans goes awry when he notices Hemmings with his camera and fears that Hemmings has photos of her. As it turns out, he has.
None of this was ever shot. There were other scenes, such as those between Sarah Miles and Glover, that also went unrealized (unreelized?). (Sarah tried to get her name off the film because she ended up with so little screen time.) Some of the scenes that were shot pertaining to the murder plot ended up in the film, but are completely puzzling to the audience. For example, in the film there is a scene with Vanessa and Hemmings at a cafe. A young man approaches her, notices that she is with Hemmings, and runs away. That's Glover. This makes for an odd, mysterious moment because the audience is completely ignorant of his identity. [...]
Years later I bumped in to Carlo Ponti in Cinecitta, and he told me wryly that when all of the 200-some prints were returned, every one was a few feet shorter than it ought to have been. In every print, Jane Birkin's pussy had been neatly trimmed by the projectionist. So all the males who were being turned on by that quick glimpse of alleged nudity were seeing it only in their imaginations.
I was thrilled to be offered a part in this film, opposite Vanessa and directed by Antonioni, even if I ended up as a kiss and a corpse. But this letter is not meant to be a vintage whine by a dissatisfied actor -- rather, a reflection on how difficult it is to be precise about the meaning of art and the intentions of the artist. Truth is multifaceted, particularly at 24 frames a second. Antonioni was a great director and you are probably right about the greatness of "Blow Up" -- I certainly hope nobody ever finishes it.
Best,
Ronan O'Casey
Los Angeles, CA 90046
Read complete letter (with more stories!) at RogerEbert.com
 View image One of the images everyone will be using today. Found this e-mail in my inbox from Anna Hakansson of the Swedish Film Institute about an hour ago: Ingmar Bergman passed away today at his home on Fårö. He was 89.
Astrid Söderbergh Widding, CEO of Ingmar Bergman Foundation:
Ingmar Bergman's passing away represents a loss of unfathomable magnitude. His artistic accomplishments were ground-breaking, unique - but also of a scope that covered film and theatre as well as literature. He was the internationally most renowned Swede, and just a few months ago his artistic achievement was incorporated into the UNESCO Memory of the World Register. We remember him as a very bold person, always present, often biting in his comments. But he was often one step ahead of his contemporaries. Even when he grew old surprises from Fårö were not unexpected. I believe it will take some time before we fully understand that he is no longer with us, but also the importance of his art to other people. The steady stream of letters arriving here at the Ingmar Bergman Foundation since its inception testifies to that.
Also read Face to Face’s consideration of Bergman’s work as a filmmaker, here.
Face to Face also offers the possibility to express condolences by e-mailing info@ingmarbergman.se.
 View image Brad Dourif as a doc with a dark turn of mind. Since I've been feelin' poorly, I have spent the odd evening and weekend with a book (including some fine ones: Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men," Paul Bowles' "The Sheltering Sky" [now one of my all-time favorite novels], Graham Greene's "The Heart of the Matter," among them) and -- alas, most belatedly -- have been catching up with the first season of David Milch's "Deadwood." How to describe my feelings? "Blown away" would be one accurate, but inadequate, way to describe my response thus far. Unfortunately for me, I was so spellbound by my introduction to the program that I exhausted Season One in but a few days, and now must wait for the goddamn, c-----cking US Post to bring me f---ing Seasons Two and Three. (All due respect, and no offense intended.)
For the moment, I'm pleased to share with you -- gratis free -- some words of wisdom from creator Milch (on the DVD extras) and Doc Cochran. Somehow, I think they're all interconnected:
"Reason is about seventeenth on the list of the attributes that define us as a species." -- David Milch
"They say in certain rooms today, you can't think your way to right write action, you only act your way to right write thinking." -- David Milch
"I find that most moral codes are kind of elevated expressions of economic necessities." -- David Milch
"I see as much misery outta them movin' to justify theirselves as in them that set out to do harm." -- Doc Cochran (Brad Dourif)
(P.S. And I would never have known, from "An Inconvenient Truth," that Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim was a f---ing movie director!!!)
"The Coen brothers may have chosen wisely, however, in choosing 'No Country for Old Men' to film. It's filmable. I don't know if audiences could endure 'Blood Meridian' if it were filmed faithfully. As for 'Suttree,' imagine 'Huckleberry Finn' crossed with 'Under the Volcano.'" -- Roger Ebert
Cormac McCarthy is the new Jane Austen. His "No Country for Old Men," which read to me like a Coen brothers' piece just waiting to be shot, has indeed been made into a film by Joel and Ethan Coen, and it blew away the critics at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. The twisting tones -- dark humor, elegiac wistfulness, manic violence -- suggest an ideal match of literary and cinematic sensibilities.
"Blood Meridian" is set to be directed by Ridley Scott. I share Roger's apprehension about what a "faithful" adaptation would be like, but Scott -- the man who prettified the West so cloyingly in "Thelma and Louise" -- seems like the wrong man for the job, whether the goal is to make an authentic movie version or even a glossy, ersatz one. (I think Scott shot his wad after "The Duellists," "Alien" and "Blade Runner," and should have returned to his strong suit, directing perfume commercials.)
And Variety has reported that McCarthy's most recent novel, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winner "The Road," is to be adapted by Joe Penhall ("Enduring Love") and directed by John Hillcoat ("The Proposition," which some critics compared to McCarthy).
The eminent literary critic Harold Bloom admits he couldn't get through"Blood Meridian" on his first two tries because "the sheer carnage of it, though it is intensely stylized, is nevertheless overwhelming." I have had a similar experience with the book, which (especially next to "The Road") struck me as overwritten and laboriously "poetic." I confess that, in my two attempts so far, I haven't (or "havent") been able to ford past the first hundred-and-something pages of "Blood Meridian," because I've found the logorrheic style and the relentless agony and grotesquerie described on every page numbing. (That and the fact that the book seems to be composed almost exclusively of nouns and adjectives. It's about a journey, but feels utterly static -- which may indeed be The Point.) Having succeeded in getting through it on his third try (and successive ones), Bloom now regards it as one of the best American novels. I rode on and rode on, but I never arrived there.
But I want to talk about "The Road" -- which I read first, and which is written in a spare, cryptic style that's roughly 180 degrees from the florid "Blood Meridian." (Of course, the very fact that I read "The Road" first may contribute to this impression.) Like most great works of art, it's ambiguous, and can be read in any number of ways, all of which may make partial sense. Its setting is clearly "post-apocalyptic," but I've seen reviews and articles that say it takes place after a nuclear holocaust, in "nuclear winter," yet that is by no means clear-cut. If McCarthy had wanted to spell it out, he could have done it in just a few words. But he didn't. He keeps the story locked in on the (nameless) man and the boy, with rare and telling exceptions.
[Obviously, you should read no further until you've read "The Road" -- which I urge you to do at once.]
"The Road" is a story and a metaphor -- about the course of a life, and especially about storytelling. There are indications that nuclear weapons have been detonated (a flash in the sky, clocks stopping at 1:17, fires devouring the land, animal and vegetable life nearly extinguished). But there doesn't seem to be any radioactive fallout. Most bacteria seem to have died (corpses and apples on the ground don't rot, they just dry out), but gut bacteria still help digest food, and the man is careful to avoid cans of food that are swollen or otherwise tainted. If it were merely (merely?) a worldwide nuclear disaster, and the temperature and atmosphere could still support human life, plants would still grow and seeds would germinate, even under dust-gray skies. So what is it? The aftermath of a meteor, like the one that extinguished the dinosaurs and so much other life on earth? Or is the earth itself somehow dying from the inside, extinguished at the core?
But that's all beside the point. I bring it up just to illustrate the book's haunting ambiguity. There's a paragraph on page 74 that nearly made me jump out of my chair, because it shifts (for the first and only time in the book) from the third-person to the first-person. This follows an episode in which the boy thinks he sees another little boy and the man loses track of him for just a brief time. Both of them see a dog. Then comes this: The dog that he remembers followed us for two days. I tried to coax it to come but it would not. I made a noose of wire to catch it. There were three cartridges in the pistol. None to spare. She walked away down the road. The boy looked after her and then he looked at me and then he looked at the dog and began to cry and to beg for the dog's life and I promised I would not hurt the dog. A trellis of a dog with the hide stretched over it. The next day it was gone. This is the dog he remembers. He doesnt remember any little boys. This paragraph is almost like that moment in Chantal Akerman's "Jeanne Dielman," when a tiny gesture out of the ordinary hits you like an earthquake. (Side note: People routinely say that McCarthy does not use apostrophes or other punctuation. Wrong. He uses apostrophes and commas sparingly ("dog's" but not "doesnt"), and uses periods and question marks like everybody else. Not many colons, though, and no semi-colons.)
So, the paragraph above makes you ask: Who the hell wrote that? Which, in turn, makes you wonder who wrote the story you're reading. Is it an omniscient third-person narrator? Or is the man writing the book in the third person, the way he says he tells stories to the boy? Is this, perhaps, an editorial afterthought, a note scribbled in the margin by the man (or someone else) at some point? (The man says he avoids telling the boy about the old world, because to invoke it was also to invoke its loss. Besides, "How does the never to be differ from the never was?" He even tells the boy to be glad of nightmares, because they meant he was still struggling to survive: "He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death." This book is the anti-"Life Is Beautiful.")
Another key paragraph -- significantly, one about storytelling -- occurs in darkness when they seem to have reached the end of the road, the lifeless ocean. In the blackness, the only the part of the road in front of the man is visible. This, from p. 220, may be the very heart of the book: He got up and walked out to the road. The black shape of it running from dark to dark. Then a distant low rumble. Not thunder. You could feel it under your feet. A sound without cognate and without description. Something imponderably shifting out there in the dark. The earth itself contracting with the cold. It did not come again. What time of year? What age the child? He walked out into the road and stood. The silence. The salitter drying from the earth. The mudstained shapes of flooded cities burned to the waterline. At a crossroads a ground set with dolmen stones where the spoken bones of oracles lay moldering. No sound but the wind. What will you say? A living man spoke these lines? He sharpened a quill with his small pen knife to scribe these things in sloe or lampblack ? At some reckonable and entabled moment? He is coming to steal my eyes. To seal my mouth with dirt. I've never read a more chilling and mysterious paragraph. It seems to conjure the very origins of myth and storytelling. Can it be that a "living man" once carved those petroglyphs? And is the story we're reading the last myth of the past? Or the first myth of the future? Set down by a nameless figure in an age of darkness between one world and another?
What to make, then, of the fact that the story continues after the death of the man? Who's ambiguously "happy" ending is this? The man's? The boy's? The hand of some other editor? The boy appears to find a surrogate father (after three days -- no explicit Christian allegory, please), and is taken into the bosom of a complete family (father, mother, sister, brother) at last. Or is that just an deathly illusion, the unreliable vision of an expiring consciousness? And what about that stunning final paragraph? Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery. Near his birthplace, the man was visited by a memory like this (on p. 25): "He stood on a stone bridge where the waters slurried into a pool and turned slowly in gray foam. Where once he'd watched trout swaying in the current, tracking their perfect shadows on the stones beneath."
I loved this book so deeply I feel like I want to write a book about it. Every page, not just these three key passages. Somehow that final paragraph seems comforting to me -- if not exactly optimistic. (I originally read as that "Once there were" as referring to a time far in the future, long after the narrative.) Life on earth has been wiped out, things made wrong that could not be made right again. And yet, in the maps and mazes on the backs of trout, who lived where "all things were older than man," was an indelible (living) record of the world in its becoming. And the world, with or without man, is always in its becoming.
(That last thought reminds me of another book I want to read: "The World Without Us," a work of speculative nonfiction -- how's that for a genre? -- about what might happen if humans were suddenly wiped off the planet and everything else went about its business.)
Got some thoughts on "The Road" -- or Cormac McCarthy in general? Please comment.
 Pop quiz! I've spent the summer going to cardiologists and gastroenterologists, how about you?
I like a hemochromatosis screening in June
How about you?
I dig a cardiac catheterization balloon
How about you?
I love an MRI
And a CAT scan, too
I love endoscopies
Holter monitor EKGs
How about you?
Oh, it's been fun, fun, fun till the doctor takes the Ambien away! Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with a good rhyme for "ventricular tachycardia" that scanned. "Gastric carcinoid" is also tough. But I've really had all those things -- and a colonoscopy and seborrheic dermatitis and daily zombifying doses of Coreg and more -- just since May! Unfortunately, this has put me far, far behind in my movie blog coverage.
For example, did you know that the terrific critic Michael Atkinson, late of the Village Voice, has joined the blogosphere? Welcome, Michael! You'll find him at Zero for Conduct.
And, weeks ago, TLRHB, the splendid blogger formerly known as That Little Round-Headed Boy, transformed himself into The Shamus over at bad for the glass: a culture blog. The Shamus writes about noir and "Chinatown," of course (BTW, I own the domain name badforglass.com -- and egbertsouse.com and sitonapotatopanotis.com, too, for that matter), movies, records and record covers, television, cartoons, and all forms of pop culture. I'd love to link to a favorite post or two but... I can't. As The Shamus explains: If you like a post, copy it today. It may not be here tomorrow. The Shamus doesn't play by the blog rules. The template will change. Often. No archiving. One other thing: I don't roll on Shabbas. And Walter, will you put down the god-damned gun? I've been meaning to link to this post by the invaluable girish ( The Cinema in Your Head) since the end of May, but where does the time go? Who knows, maybe one day I'll even get around to writing about it myself.
Our beloved David Bordwell has a wonderful piece about the tactile pleasures of studying films frame-by-frame -- not on DVD, but on archival equipment that encourages the practice of Watching movies very, very slowly. A snippet: Viewing on an individual viewer has both costs and benefits. Sometimes details you’d notice on the big screen are hard to spot on a flatbed. But with your nose fairly close to the film, you can make discoveries you might miss in projection. (Ideally, you would see the film you’re studying on both the big screen and the small one.) In addition, of course, you can stop, go back, and replay stretches. Above all, you get to touch the film. This is a wonderful experience, handling 35mm film. Hold it up to the light and you see the pictures. You can’t do that with videotape or DVD. And because it's summer quarter, our Man For All Seasons, the fantastic Dennis Cozzalio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, has posted another pop quiz: Mr. Shoop's Surfin' Summer School Midterm. Questions this time around include:
2) A good movie from a bad director
6) Best movie about baseball
7) Favorite Barbara Stanwyck performance
8) "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" or "Dazed and Confused"?
13) "Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom" -- yes or no?
20) Name a performance that everyone needs to be reminded of, for whatever reason
Oh, and so much more. PLUS two extra credit questions suggested by recent posts at Scanners!
Also, for a taste of the best of past quiz responses, be sure to sample Professor Corey's Honor Society, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
And do not neglect to read Dennis's defense/appreciation of Martin Scorsese's misunderstood magnum opus, "New York, New York." As I posted in the comments section: "New York, New York" (after the "Happy Endings" sequence was restored) is a masterpiece. I think it would make a nice (loooong) double-bill with "La Dolce Vita" because both movies are about performance -- creating scenes, playing to the crowd, adopting roles, in public and in private. Those brutal hyper-emotional Scorsese confrontations against mockingly artificial backdrops -- genius. And your selection at this time is a fine tribute to the recently departed Laszlo Kovacs, whose fluid "NY, NY" camerawork is positively musical.
* * * *
I'm mad about polyps
Can't get my fill
Needles in fingertips
They give me a thrill
Holding breath for the ultra-sound
Pooping in Sensurround™
May not be new
But I like it, how about you?
László Kovács (May 14, 1933 – July 22, 2007)
Kovács emigrated to the United States with his lifelong friend Vilmos Zsigmond, who became another great Hungarian-American cinematographer.
For me, perhaps the most indelible image in Kovács' work is the last shot of "Five Easy Pieces" (Bob Rafelson, 1970), a long stationary take of a gray, rainy stretch of Pacific Northwest highway, stuck in the muddy pavement outside an isolated gas station. The only camera movement is a slight pan. All the loneliness, frustration and alienation of the whole movie culminates (in a diminuendo, if that's possible) in this damp, atmospheric image.
Other notable Kovács films include:
"Psych-Out" (Richard Rush, 1968)
"Targets" (Peter Bogdanovich, 1968)
"Easy Rider" (Dennis Hopper, 1969)
"That Cold Day in the Park" (Robert Altman, 1969)
"Getting Straight" (Rush, 1970)
"Alex in Wonderland" (Paul Mazursky, 1970)
"The Last Movie" (Hopper, 1971)
"What's Up, Doc?" (Bogdanovich, 1972)
"The King of Marvin Gardens" (Bob Rafelson, 1972)
"Paper Moon" (Bogdanovich, 1973)
"Shampoo" (Hal Ashby, 1975)
"Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (Steven Spielberg, 1977 -- additional photography)
"New York, New York" (Martin Scorsese, 1977)
"The Last Waltz" (Scorsese, 1978 -- additional photography)
"Ghostbusters" (Ivan Reitman, 1984)
"Mask" (Bogdanovich, 1985)
"Say Anything..." (Cameron Crowe, 1989)
"Radio Flyer" (Richard Donner, 1992)
"My Best Friend's Wedding" (P.J. Hogan, 1997)
HEADLINE; "Lohan defends herself after arrest AP, LOS ANGELES (July 24, 2007) -- Lindsay Lohan says she's innocent.
The 21-year-old actress was arrested and released on bail for investigation of misdemeanor driving under the influence and with a suspended license, and felony cocaine possession, early Tuesday in Santa Monica, less than two weeks after completing her second trip to rehab.
"I am innocent ... did not do drugs they're not mine. I was almost hit by my assistant Tarin's mom I appreciate everyone giving me my privacy," Lohan wrote in an e-mail to "Access Hollywood" host Billy Bush, the show reported on its Web site Tuesday night.
Police found cocaine in one of Lohan's pockets during a pre-booking search, Sgt. Shane Talbot said. Police initially said Lohan was also being booked for investigation of transporting a narcotic but later said she was not.
Police received a 911 call from the mother of Lohan's former personal assistant saying that Lohan was chasing her in an SUV, said Lt. Alex Padilla. The assistant had quit hours before, he said.
Authorities found Lohan and the woman in a "heated debate" in the parking lot of Santa Monica's Civic Auditorium at about 1:30 a.m.
Lohan's arrest comes as she still faces DUI allegations connected to a Memorial Day weekend hit-and-run crash in Beverly Hills. The actress completed more than six weeks in rehab less than two weeks ago, and had checked into a recovery clinic in January.
She had worn an alcohol-monitoring ankle bracelet since her July 13 release from rehab and was tested daily to support her sobriety, her attorney, Blair Berk, said. She said Lohan had relapsed and was receiving medical care at an undisclosed location. Lohan's publicist, Leslie Sloane Zelnik, had no comment. This story moved me to write a song, to the tune of "Unforgettable":
Uninsurable, that's what you are
Always crashing in your fancy car
Tabloid photos, so embarrassing
Flash your breasts when you're out Paris-ing
Media whore is a role you adore, but you're
Unemployable for picture work
Unprofessional, and quite a jerk
Keep the cast and crew awaiting you
And you wonder why they're hating you
Fear next year, you're carbon-dating your career
Unreliable, and more each day
Less than "adequite" in every way
Stanwyck wore an anklet to seduce
Not to monitor her booze abuse
You're a boor, a poor excuse for loose, too
Uninsurable, in Calvin Klein
Unendurable, no sign of spine
Famous for your notoriety
Not ability, insobriety
Pie-eyed claims of future piety, pooh!
Uninsurable, such a cliché
Scourge of SAG, Double-, and Triple-A
Liquored-up but not Anonymous
"Lindsay" has become synonymous
With pathetic DUI arrests, eeww...
See also: Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Denials Go Better Without Coke
The death of Sherman Torgan, owner and proprietor of the New Beverly Cinema, reminded me of an evening in 1993 when my friend Julia Sweeney and I met up with Quentin Tarantino, Tim Roth, Laurence Tierney, Chris Penn, and Michael Madsen (I think that was the whole crew) at Insomnia (Beverly and Poinsettia, near El Coyote) and did "The Walk" down Beverly Blvd. to the theater, where those guys were going to do a Q&A with the audience after a showing of "Reservoir Dogs." We were a block down the street before I consciously realized we were re-enacting the opening credits of the movie -- in streetclothes. I wondered if anybody on the street had a flash of recognition as they drove by, one of those little "Did I just see that?" moments that happens so often in a moving vehicle, and especially in Los Angeles.
I just had another one of those experiences this evening. Hadn't eaten all day and suddenly I knew I just had to have a club sandwich: crispy bacon, turkey, ham, lettuce, tomato, Swiss cheese -- maybe a slice of red onion -- on rye or wheat toast. It became my holy grail, the focal point of my existence. I went to a nearby sports bar-type restaurant near the University of Washington, a place I remembered from college, where I knew I could get just such a sandwich, quickly and painlessly. I was sitting in the bar and just before the waiter appeared, a song started playing and -- again, before I was even aware of it -- I was lifted out of the book I was reading and transported somewhere else.
 View imageLast scene of the last episode of "The Sopranos": Best movie of 2007, so far. It was Journey: "Don't Stop Believin'." And I got goosebumps. How the hell did that happen? Two months ago I wouldn't even have recognized the song. I still don't remember it existing before the last scene of "The Sopranos." But now, it was invested with a power that transformed my awareness completely. I felt a tension, an excitement, a wistfulness that had nothing to do with the song as it had previously existed and everything to do with the context in which I'll now hear it forever. I sat, a little bit dazed, and soaked up the atmosphere, pretending it was a diner in Jersey. When the guy arrived to take my order, I got a club. And onion rings.
Got any stories of moments when you suddenly felt you were in a particular movie? If so, I'd love to hear 'em....
 The New Beverly Cinema. Where else would "The Tenant" receive top billing over "Rosemary's Baby"? (Photo by Dennis Cozzalio) Sherman Torgan, 63, the owner and operator of my old neighborhood repertory movie house, the New Beverly Cinema, died of a heart attack while bike riding in Santa Monica. The New Beverly, on Beverly Blvd. between Formosa and Detroit, was the source of many happy movie memories for me, especially during the late 1980s and early 1990s when I lived nearby, at Oakwood and Sierra Bonita.
According to the New Beverly's own site, the place was a vaudeville theater and then the original location of Slapsie Maxie's nightclub, where Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis made their West Coast debut. For nine years it was an adult movie theater (The Eros), until Torgan took it over and turned it into a movie-lover's rep house in 1978.
Torgan's son Michael posted a message on the theater's site today that reads, in part: Due to the sudden and completely unexpected passing of my dear beloved father Sherman, the New Beverly's programming will be cancelled until further notice.
Sherman was my father and my best friend, and his passing has left me and my family completely devastated. He was the main force behind the New Beverly from May 5, 1978 until the present. I simply do not known when I will be able to fill his shoes. My pain and sorrow are truly too much to bear right now. He was still so young and full of life, and was doing what he loved so much, riding his bike on the Santa Monica bike path, when he died. My mom and I are in utter shock. For background and updates, please visit Dennis Cozzalio's Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.
 View image Rob Schneider in " yellowface", playing Mickey Rooney in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" in "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry." "Flamers" was the title of a screenplay by Barry Fanaro ("The Golden Girls," "Kingpin," "Men in Black II") that had been re-written by Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor ("Citizen Ruth," "Election," "About Schmidt," "Sideways"). Once Adam Sandler decided to star in the movie, this script was serially re-written some more by Sandler, his friends, and various others. The result opened this weekend as "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry," directed by Dennis Dugan ("Happy Gilmore," "Big Daddy," "The Benchwarmers").
The film has not been well-received by critics (14% at Rottentomatoes.com at this writing). Manohla Dargis, in the New York Times, wrote: Fear of a gay planet fuels plenty of American movies; it’s as de rigueur in comedy as in macho action. But what’s mildly different about “Chuck & Larry” is how sincerely it tries to have its rainbow cake and eat it too. In structural terms, the movie resembles a game of Mother May I, in that for every tiny step it takes forward in the name of enlightenment (gay people can be as boring as heterosexuals), it takes three giant steps back, often by piling on more jokes about gay sex (some involving a priceless Ving Rhames). Into this mix add the stunningly unfunny Rob Schneider, who pops up brandishing buckteeth, glasses and an odious accent in apparent homage to Mickey Rooney’s painful, misguided turn as the Japanese neighbor in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”
“I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry” has been deemed safe for conscientious viewing by a representative of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, a media watchdog group. Given the movie’s contempt for women, who mainly just smile, sigh and wiggle their backdoors at the camera, it’s too bad that some lesbian (and Asian) Glaad members didn’t toss in their two cents about the movie. If Mr. Sandler dares speak in favor of gay love in “Chuck & Larry” — at least when it’s legally sanctioned, tucked behind closed doors and not remotely feminine — it’s only because homosexuality represents one type of love among men. Here, boys can be boys, together in bed and not, but heaven forbid that any of them look or behave like women. But there's a little more to this one than the usual Sandler vehicle. New York Magazine explains some of the backstory in "A Peek at the Movie ‘Chuck & Larry’ Could Have Been": And in the dramatic conclusion of Payne and Taylor's script, Chuck and Larry kiss on the courthouse steps — "not just a timid exchange," the stage notes add, "but the long, passionate melting together of soul-mates. Tongues and everything. Hot. Wow." Needless to say, this scene never made it into the final version. I believe that ending was already perfomed by Will Ferrell and Sacha Baron Cohen in "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby."
Thanks for all the terrific, thoughtful suggestions for my hypothetical Atheist Film Festival (below) -- "Freddie Got Fingered" (either "proof" of the absence of god, or a devastating comment on the divine sense of humor), "Contact," "Wise Blood," all of Buñuel, "Grizzly Man," "Crimes and Misdemeanors"... Don't stop now!
 View image [Reverse zoom.] Whimpering: "I'm so sorry. Forgive me." I think a slam-bang opening for such a festival would be one of my favorite underrated films of the 1980s, Anthony Perkins' 1986 "Psycho III," which begins with a black screen and a hair-raising scream of anguish: "There is no god!!!" What's more, we soon learn that it is the cry of a devastated novice, and that (even better) she's played by Diana Scarwid! (That's Christina Crawford to you "Mommie Dearest" fans -- and something tells me Perkins was one, too.)
 View image [Reverse zoom, cont.] Stronger: "Give me a sign. Help me." Before we know it (in the third shot -- or the fourth, if you include the blackness between the Universal logo and the statue of the Virgin), we've smudged the line between "Psycho" (1960) and "Vertigo" (1958), looking up into a California mission belltower. A few vertiginous shots and a maniacal sniveling nun (and a few nice ones) later, and the movie is off to a rip-roaring psycho-vertiginous start.
The nuns approach Maureen (the hysterical novitiate) and attempt to coax her down from the archway where she is poised to throw herself, Kim Novak-like, from the tower. "There is no god!" Maureen cries again -- not in rage but in despair, as if she's just discovered a shattering, horribly disappointing truth.
The crazy nun raves: "You wretched girl! How dare you!"
The eldest nun tries to snap her out of it: "Please Maureen, you mustn't. You have an obligation to Him!"
"I have nothing," Maureen says dejectedly. "I am nothing!"
And then all hell breaks loose.
That's just the first four minutes, before the titles. And it's not giving too much away to say that Maureen becomes Norman Bates' very first girlfriend. They're a match made in... wherever.
"Psycho III" is a joy, a sequel that understands the original from the inside out. It's a celebration, a satire, a revisitation, and a deeply felt, detail-perfect homage to Hitchcock's bleak masterpiece. (I'd say "Psycho" is not so much an atheistic work as a nihilistic one. The specificity of the opening sequence perversely indicates the randomness of the particular story the movie chooses to tell. And Simon Oakland's psychobabble wrap-up at the end mocks not only psychology but any and all belief systems.)
 View image Nun: "You have an obligation to Him!"
Novice: "I have nothing. I am nothing!" I've always thought of "Psycho" as a family black-comedy -- a horror sitcom. And, from the perspective of 1986, Perkins reminds us of how funny "Psycho" (and Norman) is. "Psycho III" strikes the perfect balance between horror, tragedy, and camp.
The screenplay is by Charles Edward Pogue, who is also credited with co-writing David Cronenberg's horror / comedy / romantic version of "The Fly" ("Be afraid -- be very afraid") the same year -- and the clever, underrated remake of "D.O.A." in 1988. And the rest of the crew is top-of-the-line, including such Clint Eastwood vets as D.P. Bruce Surtees ("Dirty Harry," "Night Moves," "Risky Business," "Pale Rider") and the late production designer Henry Bumstead ("Topaz," "Mystic River," "Flags of Our Fathers," "Letters From Iwo Jima"). The score is by Carter Burwell ("Miller's Crossing," "Barton Fink") and the producer is Hilton A. Green -- second unit / assistant director on "Psycho" and "Marnie."
If you want to discover Maureen's fate -- and see just how wittily and poignantly "Psycho III" pays attention to the details of its source -- check after the jump.
Meanwhile: Any more candidates for the Atheist Film Festival? (I've tried to refine what I mean by an "atheist film" -- as opposed to an anti-god or anti-Christian film -- in a comment here.)
 View image All these years, cupid has waited at the bottom of that stairway, with an arrow pointed at... Maureen.
 View image Is this man a "torture pornographer"? Strike that. Is he a "failure"? Letters from Filmmakers Part II: This one was published today at MSN Movies, a response from Eli Roth to an article by Don Kaye about the phenomenon popularly known as "torture porn": Don,
I saw your article on "Torture Porn," and while I disagree with you about your criticism of my film, I would like you to back up how "Hostel II" is a failure, a claim you repeatedly make. While the film did not do what the first film did at the box office, (which was a total shock to everyone - myself included) "Hostel II" cost only $10 million dollars to make, and is currently at $30 million dollars worldwide box office, with many territories left to open. How many other films this summer have earned triple their production budget in their theatrical run? Are those films failures as well?
Critically, your comments were that I had MTV style editing and a lack of character development. What, exactly, are you talking about? "Hostel II" has barely any flashy cuts or MTV-style editing, and the first 45 minutes of the movie is all character development with almost zero on screen violence. Heather Matarazzo's torture scene doesn't happen until nearly 50 minutes into the movie.
 View image One of the milder posters for "Hostel Part II" -- this one from Italy. It sounds to me like you are jumping onto some kind of 'anti-violence' crusade without actually watching the film, when if you looked closely, you'd see that my film actually has a very strong anti-violence moral core. Writers I respect such as Stephen King, Elvis Mitchell, and writer/Attorney Julie Hilden, a former clerk for supreme court Justice Breyer, praised the film specifically for its anti-violence message and skilled filmmaking (http://writ.news.findlaw.com/hilden/20070716.html) and in Europe the major critics hailed the film for its political messages against corporations that profit from the death of Americans.
My films are not for everyone, and many critics dismissed the film because of the violent scenes, which is the very thing horror fans are paying for when they see a film like "Hostel II." But to lump my film in with other films that may be ripping off a trend for "MTV editing" and "lack of character development" shows more of a reflection of your lack of understanding as a critic and a desire to be seen as a 'moral person' than an actual critique of my film.
[...]
It also happens that [Ryan Rotten is] yet another one of these internet 'critics' I've seen kicking around the horror scene for years who have told me numerous times how they really want to write and direct, and probably are not writing the most objective reviews. Did you bother to talk to anyone actually involved in the movie before you pronounced it a 'failure?' and saying it 'tanked' Because failure in my book is someone who lives in the safety of their laptop taking shots at those who actually achieved what they have been unable to do.
Many people had their knives out for me long before my film opened, simply because of who I am and the nature of my films. They will tell you "Hostel II" is a failure no matter what, despite the fact we are into profits before we come out on DVD, which is a rare feat for almost any film released theatrically. I made the film I wanted the way I wanted, with risky subject matter and a superb cast who are not (yet) major box office stars, got it released in theaters all over the world, and turned a profit before our theatrical run was finished. If that's not success, then we should all be so lucky to have 'failures' like "Hostel Part II" in our careers.
Sincerely,
Eli Roth For clarification: Box Office Mojo reports that "Hostel Part II" grossed $17.6 million at the domestic box office, and nearly $30 million worldwide. The film took in 46.6 percent of its domestic total in its first weekend ($8.2 million -- 2,350 screens; $3,490 per-screen average), dropping 63 percent in its second weekend, 70 percent in its third, and 84 percent in its fourth.
As I wrote back in March (echoed by this New York Times piece from yesterday): It's not uncommon for a movie's grosses to plummet by 50 or 60 percent in the second weekend. Is that because of negative reviews? No. Is it because people who have seen the movie don't like it, and tell their friends? Not necessarily. In many instances, this is by design. It's because the hype has been so effective, and the movie available on so many screens, that most of the people who would be interested in seeing that particular movie already bought their tickets on the first weekend. One reason for staggering showtimes across multiple mall-tiplex screens is so that, if one showing in theater 3 sells out, ticket-buyers aren't turned away; they just have to wait around another 20 minutes for the next show in theater 12.
In fact, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, "300" dropped 56.3 percent in its second weekend (even though it bulked up with an additional 167 screens, the box-office equivalent of steroids); "Ghost Rider" was off 55.8 percent in weekend number two; and "Norbit" was down 50.9 percent. Put another way: "Hostel," the top-grossing hit of January, 2006, did 41.3 percent of its total domestic gross in its first three days. It lasted only 39 more days in theaters. But, for the "distribution gurus," a flash-in-the-pan is a good thing. A modern major movie release has a planned obsolescence (of about six to eight weeks) built in to its distribution and marketing strategy from the start. The idea is the same as fast food. It's all about turnover: Push last weekend's movies out to make room for next weekend's Number One Box-Office Champ! From the NYT story, " Summer Cinema's One-Week Wonders" (07/18/07): After its superstrong $182 million opening week in May, “Spider-Man 3” plunged at the box office by 61 percent the next week. “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” sank like a stone in its second week, dropping 66 percent. And when the box office gross for “Transformers” fell by only 47 percent after a week in theaters, Hollywood marveled at the movie’s strength.
The movie business has been heading this way for years, but this summer is proving the apotheosis of the one-week blockbuster. The blur of big-budget films may have left moviegoers with whiplash, given how quickly each film announces itself in television ads and then disappears from marquees, yet few in Hollywood are complaining. Far from it, since the steep drop-offs are largely fueled by a run of blockbusters from every major studio, and Hollywood has a chance of breaking 2004’s summer box office record.
[...]
The blockbuster onslaught has been driven partly by a shift in the way studios and theater chains divide up box office receipts. Until several years ago, most of the grosses went to the studios initially, but theaters benefited more the longer a film played. As a result, megaplex owners had a financial disincentive to play a new movie on too many screens.
Now studios and theater chains typically agree on a flat percentage split, no matter how long a movie plays. So “Pirates,” “Spider-Man 3” and “Shrek the Third,” for example, each opened on more than 10,000 screens in May.
“We don’t care anymore whether we generate revenue in the first week, the third or the fifth,” said Mike Campbell, chief executive of Regal Cinemas, the nation’s biggest theater chain.
With cinemas freed to put each week’s new blockbuster on enough screens to offer show times every 20 minutes, the pressure on studios to deliver huge opening weeks has reached new proportions....
 Baywatch: A down-to-earth, nice guy. A letter published in the Northwest Herald, Crystal Lake, Illinois: To the Editor:
The Northwest Herald’s movie critic, Jeffrey Westhoff, seems to be woefully out of touch with pop culture.
The “Transformers” movie’s $155 million seven-day haul is the biggest non-sequel opening in box office history. Numbers like that usually mean positive word of mouth on the film is huge, and people are going back.
A friend of mine, Steven Spielberg – he’s pretty smart about film – said Westhoff’s review was idiotic. Westhoff’s a critic who actually reviewed his dislike for the director, rather then reviewing the movie, like his job description prescribes. Westhoff talks about the director being an “egomaniacal hack.” ["Michael Bay turns 'Transformers' into pile of scrap metal."] Well I don’t believe I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting Westhoff, though it sounds like he knows me. If Westhoff actually did know me, he would find me to be a pretty down-to-earth, nice guy.
I implore the editor to give Westhoff a little relaxation and sunshine, clear his head, let him rediscover that movie-going is supposed to be a fun experience.
Maybe even help him get rid of his hatred.
Michael Bay
Director of “Transformers”
Los Angeles, Ca.
 View image The first of Johnny. (Notice the indistinct image of Tom making his entrance in the background.) (and it ain't nuttin' about et'ics).
Every single time I shave I think of Johnny Caspar. I can't help it. And it's not just because I love the obnoxious little character. And the actor who plays him, Jon Polito. Or that I think "Miller's Crossing" may be the greatest motion picture of the last 20 years. Or that it's among my lieblingsfilme.
It's because this one thing Johnny Caspar says near the end of the picture makes sense. I've tried it, and I don't notice any difference, but it seems like it oughta work. It's also the last thing -- a relatively trivial piece of practical advice -- that he utters in the movie, making his exit rather poignant, even for such a repulsive character.
Here's the way Joel and Ethan Coen describe it in their script (though it's not exactly this way in the movie): ... the car pulls into frame to stop at the curb [in front of the Barton Arms apartments] with the camera framed on the driver's window. The driver has a small bandage on his left cheek. We hear Caspar's voice as we hear him getting out the back:
CASPAR
Ya put the razor in cold water, not hot--'cause
metal does what in cold?
DRIVER
I dunno, Johnny.
We hear the back door slam and Caspar appears in the front passenger window.
CASPAR
. . . 'Ats what I'm tellin' ya. It contracts.
'At way you get a first class shave.
DRIVER
Okay, Johnny.
As Caspar walks off, the driver slouches back, pulls his fedora over his eyes and folds his arms across his chest. Now, art has taught me a great deal about how to live life (or how one should, anyway). But it's also passed along innumerable little (and not so little) bits of pragmatic knowledge. What are some of these kinds of things you've learned from the movies? Some people might say that "Psycho" taught 'em how not to take a shower, but that's not what I mean. I mean advice about the real world. Give us the character (and/or actor), the title, and the tip you picked up...
 View image "Nobody wants to jump in the mud puddle with her." (Enlarge to see the Creature's mysterious adam's apple.) Elizabeth Edwards says this in a Salon interview: Ignoring the fact that she exists doesn't make her go away. If it did, you wouldn't hear me utter her name. So I think maybe the better thing to do is simply confront people like her. Are you going to stop them? Under no circumstances will you stop them. But maybe you empower other people to stand up, and maybe that has an effect. When I travel, so many older people thank me for what I did. Because the vile kind of way [she] thinks and talks, that was not ever part of the public discourse until recently. [...]
And later on, I talked to somebody, not an advisor -- I really don't have anybody advising me -- and not someone in the campaign. She'd been in a previous campaign, and she said, "Oh, I wouldn't have done that. I think that you put yourself at risk, subject to criticism unnecessarily." I understand the advice -- if you were advising somebody you might say that -- but that exact attitude is what protects somebody like [her]. Nobody wants to jump in the mud puddle with her. Gosh, I wonder what Edwards could be talking about...?
Forget Christopher Hitchens on Iraq. The author of the "controversial" "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" (9 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, now at number 2 -- but only among people who buy and read books) has misplaced his delusional faith in the Rumsfeld / Cheney / Bush version of Mess 'o Potamia for too long. When he writes or speaks about the invasion and occupation of Iraq, he is as unintelligible as someone speaking in tongues. Which, essentially, he is.
But when it comes to god, Hitchens is not similarly faith-based. To decide not to profess faith in a personal god in America these days -- when even militant Islamists acknowledge Muslims, Christians and Jews as "people of the book," fellow believers in Abrahamic religion -- is one of the few remaining Politically Correct taboos. Theistic concepts of god are everywhere: on our money, in our Pledge of Allegience, in White House pronouncements from our Televangelist-in-Chief... There are no self-identified atheists ("non-theists") in Congress [correction: one, as of 2007: Rep. Pete Stark], and some state laws prohibit nonbelievers from running for public office -- the "no religious test" provision of the constitution notwithstanding.
So, it's rather surprising for a change to find a small breath of fresh air emanating from Hitchens, who is better known for his stale, flammable whiskey-drenched halitosis. Some of his anti-religious arguments are as irrational as his Rumsfeldian ones (and the religious beliefs he savages), but at least his atheistic provocations lack the overwhelming sense of self-justification that overburdens his ex post facto rationalizations about Iraq.
Responding to a Washington Post piece by Michael Gerson (What Athiests Can't Answer"), Hitchens poses a challenge: Here is my challenge. Let Gerson name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever. And here is my second challenge. Can any reader of this column think of a wicked statement made, or an evil action performed, precisely because of religious faith? The second question is easy to answer, is it not? The first -- I have been asking it for some time -- awaits a convincing reply. By what right, then, do the faithful assume this irritating mantle of righteousness? They have as much to apologize for as to explain.
Essentially conceding that philosophy and secularism do not condemn their adherents to lives of unbridled selfishness, and that (say) the Jewish people did not get all the way to Mount Sinai under the impression that murder and theft and perjury were okay, and also that we could not have evolved unless human solidarity was in some way innate, Gerson ends weakly by posing what is a rather moving problem.
"In a world without God," he writes, "this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution but designed for disappointment." Again, he substitutes the wish for the thought. We very probably are, as he admits, not the designed objects of the Big Bang or of the process of natural selection. But this sober conclusion, objective as it is, is surely preferable to the delusion that we have been created diseased, by a capricious despot, and then abruptly commanded to be whole and well, on pain of terror and torture. That sick joke is one that we can cease to find impressive, that belongs in the infancy of our species, and gives a false picture of reality that we would do well to outgrow. Which got me thinking: I can think of many, many religious movies (from silents like "Ben-Hur," through the biblical epics of the 1950s, the Christian parables of Ingmar Bergman, up to "The Passion of the Christ" and "Dogma"). But can you think of some movies that are explicitly atheistic, that argue against belief not just in religious dogma but in theism itself? Even "Monty Python's Life of Brian," though a satire of religious history and religious thinking, specifically confirms (in a tongue-in-cheek way) the New Testament version of the birth of Jesus in the opening scene, when the three wise men withdraw their gift-balms from Brian's manger and re-gift them to a child in glowing swaddling clothes nearby....
If you were programming an Atheist Film Festival, what titles would you include? I'm drawing a blank at this moment.
P.S. Back to that first paragraph: If you want to see a shining example of Hitchens' intellectual dishonesty and Rumsfeldian rhetoric, check out the hilariously evasive questions he lobs to himself (who else?) in the preposterous "So, Mr. Hitchens, Weren't You Wrong About Iraq?" (Can you guess his answer?) If you throw yourself the right softballs, you can easily knock 'em outta the park! My favorite: "Should it not have been known by Western intelligence that Iraq had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction?" Oddly, Hitchens doesn't even answer it. Of course, the significant question would be more like: "Was it not known by Western Intelligence and the news media that the Bush administration was exaggerating the extent of its knowledge about Iraq's stockpiles of WMD?" Simple answer: Yes. It was known. And it was even reported (by a few stalwart souls, like Knight-Ridder). But it didn't make the evening news or the front pages, so few paid attention...
 View image Forget it, Jim. It's Whatpassesfor- logicandreasonintheworld-town. "Something is happening here but you don't know what it is, do you Mr. Jones?"
-- Robert Zimmerman, 1965
I do not believe that the greatest evil is done by people who necessarily think of themselves as evil. Because evil doesn't often recognize itself. In "Chinatown," Noah Cross says: "Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of anything." Implicit in this statement is his refusal to accept responsibility for what he has done. As he says, "I don't blame myself." There's great truth in Cross's words, and also in a corollary I'll propose, which goes like this: "Most people refuse to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they can rationalize anything." (See this post for more on that score.)
I think the most inherently "evil" person I've ever known, the one who did the most careless damage to people around him, was not a mere malevolent creep but someone who was pathologically clueless and could not conceive of anything or anyone beyond himself. He was a parasite, sucking the life blood out of those closest to him. His hosts -- er, "friends" -- eventually came to see that he considered them (if he considered them at all) insignificant -- unintended consequences of himself -- while people who knew him only casually (which was the best, and perhaps only, way to "know" him) thought he was just a really nice guy. He needed symbiotic relationships to feed his sense of self, and any harm to others as a result of his appetite was nothing more than acceptable collateral damage. If he was aware of it at all.
I see these patterns not only in everyday life, but in the behavior of governments, bureaucracies, businesses, public officials, and tyrants of all stripes. And I think it all comes down to that common quality of cluelessness -- either obliviousness to the consequences of one's words and actions or reckless disregard for them. Woody Allen (who, by the way, made a great movie about cluelessness, "Another Woman") divided the world into the "horrible and the miserable." For the sake of this essay, I would like to propose that we divide rampant worldwide insanity into Two Kinds of Cluelessness: 1) Literalism: Those who are certain they know something, but don't know that they don't understand it; and 2) Über-Solipsism Narcissism: Those who are certain they understand something, but but don't know -- and don't care -- that they don't, because everything is only about them anyway.
I will always remember reading "Catch-22" at the tender age of 15, because I was already aware of this kind of insanity in people around me (family, friends, schoolmates, teachers, President Nixon and Vice President Agnew, the Watergate crew, and even -- in my craziest moments -- myself), but I'd never seen anybody else recognize it -- and play with it -- so hilariously. It was a huge catharsis for me, an acknowledgment of my pent-up frustrations, and I laughed until I cried and cried until I started laughing again.
Let me give you a pair of examples from the "Cinema Interruptus" I did with "Chinatown" in April at the Conference on World Affairs in Boulder, CO. First, let me say it was a fantastic experience for me, and that the participants in the audience were inquisitive and incisive and generally brilliant, as always.
And then there were these other two...
EXAMPLE #1. Literalism: Those who are certain they know something, but don't know they don't understand it. There's this guy who always comes to the Interruptus, always sits in the same spot in the auditorium, and whose purpose for participating is to show off his book learnin'. The audience can't stand him, and they often tell him to shut up, but sometimes he does have interesting and enlightening bits of information to provide. He just doesn't seem to know the difference between the relevant ones and the irrelevant ones.
So, remember, we show the movie all the way through on Monday, then spend eight hours over the next four days (4 to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Friday) going over the movie, shot by shot. This time, late in the week, he chose to read an excerpt from Robert Towne's screenplay. I didn't know where he was heading with this, so I let him go ahead. He read this passage (and if you haven't seen "Chinatown," you should stop here), as J.J. Gittes looks through the window of a house to which he has followed Mrs. Mulwray: Evelyn is pacing back and forth in and out of his line of vision. After a moment someone rises INTO SHOT -- obviously from lying on a bed. The figure is just a few feet from Evelyn. Her tear-stained face comes INTO VIEW. It is unmistakably the girl Gittes had last seen with Hollis Mulwray. Mulwray's girlfriend. I asked him what point he was trying to raise, and he said it was this: The screenplay clearly states that the girl was Hollis Mulwray's girlfriend.
Well, yes, because at that moment in the screenplay (and in the film), that's what Jake thinks. It's from his POV. The whole movie is about his flawed vision.
But the screenplay SAYS it's Mulwray's girlfriend.
Yes, but you already know that he, and we, will soon find out that is not true, because that's the whole last part of the movie and we've already seen the whole movie.
But since the screenplay says it's Mulwray's girlfriend, maybe this is some other girl.
Well, OK, you just go ahead and believe that if you like, even though you know that the movie then makes absolutely no sense....
Later it occurred to me that maybe this guy was a fundamentalist who also insists that every word in the bible is the absolute truth. And I guess you could say that, if you read every word in the bible in isolation, without connections to any of the other words. What we have here, I suppose, is a failure to connect the dots.
EXAMPLE #2. Über-Solipsism Narcissism: Those who are certain they understand something, but but don't know -- and don't care -- that they don't, because everything is only about them anyway.
After the whole thing was over, I was wrung out (that ending isn't easy to take, no matter how many times you see it, and we'd just invested about ten and a half hours in it). I was saying thanks and goodbye to people and, when the auditorium was nearly empty, a straggler approached me with a question:
I just came in at the very end and I wondered who killed whom and why.
Why would I tell you that if you haven't been here all week and you've never seen the movie?
Well, I wanted to come but I didn't have time. There were other panels I wanted to go to.
Well, there were other panels I wanted to go to, too. But we just put in eight hours discussing this movie and now you expect me to give you a one-paragraph synopsis? Why would I want to do that?
(I look up and notice that Sergio, the sound technician, is making the "crazy" sign. But the young woman doesn't seem crazy, except when she talks.)
I like to know what happened so I can talk about the movie with people.
How can you talk about the movie if you haven't seen it?
Oh, I do that all the time. I had a great conversation with some people about "Fight Club" a couple years ago and I still haven't seen that.
(Starting to get flustered.) No you didn't. You didn't have a "good conversation" about "Fight Club" because you had no idea what the conversation was about. You hadn't seen the movie.
Well, I have a whole pile of books at home that I haven't read and I like to talk about them.
Yeah, we all have piles of books we haven't read, but that doesn't mean we can talk about them.
Just tell me what the movie was about. Please.
(I succumb. "Chinatown" is well-known to have a rather complex story. I use all the characters' names and try to make it sound as inane and incomprehensible as possible and say it as if it was all one sentence.)
There. Does that help you?
But why did he kill him, and did he really kill him or did he have someone else do it for him?
(Yeah, and what about Ida Sessions?)
Look, do you know how insulting this is to me an and all the other people who've been here all week?
(I start to walk away.)
I don't mean to insult you. I told you I wanted to come, but I had ot |
