James Wolcott on Hollywood, the Oscars, and "Middle America"

This is for those of you who watched the Oscars (unfortunately, I didn't), and who are so sick and tired of this right-wing notion about how Hollywood movies are so out of step with "mainstream American values". I've seen James Wolcott's work in print and on screen; nice to see that he hasn't lost his bite in the pixellatted genre. This is his latest entry from his blog.

Hix Nix Crix Pix

Posted by James Wolcott

Atrios excerpts a Socratic symposium conducted at the low end of the bell curve over at CNN on the perennial topic of whether or not Hollywood is in step or sync with heartland America. It's a question given added relevance this year since the best picture nominees (Brokeback Mountain, Munich, etc.) are middling box-office performers at best, packing none of the warmth, wisdom, and sheer humanity of Cinderella Man which, come to think of it, was itself a disappointing underperformer. It had all those traditional family values crushed into one big, loving, suitably married hug, and still audiences didn't go, the ungrateful bastards.

Anyway, the 'Hollywood doesn't reflect mainstream America' argument is one of the oldest and phoniest in the playbook, with Michael Medved making the same case that Catholic organizers did in the 30's to push for a decency code. The truth is that Hollywood has almost never reflected heartland values, from its birth it's reflected urban energy, cosmopolitan taste, social conscience, and pagan fascination, and when it's conformed to conventional pieties, as during the dreariest stretches of the postwar period, when disillusionment and subversion had to sneak in through the shadows of film noir as the topline product stayed shiny, bright, and chipmunk cheerful. Do you really think the racy, wisecracking, night-owl-edition, socially conscious crime dramas and comedies of Warner Brothers in the thirties reflected heartland values? Or those Lubitsch comedies with their flirty innuendos and musky intrigues so redolent of Paris and Budapest? Or the Astaire-Rogers "white telephone" musicals, with their French farce plots and Manhattan-skyline sparkle? MGM manufactured an enduring neo-Victorian mimicry of smalltown America in the Andy Hardy movies and others, but that didn't so much reflect heartland values as reflect the immigrant vision of what the white-picket-fence country they imagined lay east of the Hollywood hills.

Think of the movies now considered classic (or semi-classic) from the great grunge stretch of the late Sixties and Seventies, movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces, Blazing Saddles, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, on and on--do these movies speak to the pieties and platitudes that William Bennett holds dear? Even back then during all the noise and excitement I remember sweet old ladies wondering why they didn't make nice movies like The Sound of Music anymore, and they're still asking that same question today. It may be the same old ladies, having gone through two generations of floral muu-muus. Get over it, grandma! They're not going to make movies like Sound of Music anymore, they barely made them back then.

The heartland issue is such a crock, especially when it's taken up by pseudo-populist pundits who cling to both coasts and wouldn't move to the middle of the country unless the name of that middle was Chicago. Fuck the heartland. It doesn't exist. It's a metaphor for all the simple good things Americans would believe in if they flattered themselves by believing in simple good things. (Go reread Sherwood Anderson or Sinclair Lewis if you want to savor the loneliness and cultureless vacuity of so much of the bedrock America we insist on coloring with Norman Rockwell nostalgia.) It's true that more Americans than usual are unaquainted and uninterested in the Oscar pics this year, but how many Americans saw McCabe and Mrs. Miller when it came out? Or Mean Streets? Not that long ago, the Oscars noms were panned because for being an index of popularity, not quality; now quality prevails in the judging, tastes have improved even at the Golden Globes, and the kvetching chorus is complaining that the finalists chosen aren't commercial enough, and don't reflect the interests and values of average Americans. There's no such thing as an average American anymore (if there ever was), unless by "average American" you mean (as news producers and pundits seem to do) white, middle-aged, heterosexual Christian small-towners and suburbanites who won't even be watching the Academy Awards because it'll be past their bedtime and they have elk to milk the next morning.


P.S.: A good thing for their blood pressure, too, because according to this veteran entertainment observer, the upcoming Oscar show promises to be a "fornication festival," a three-hour Satyricon. The Tom Ford pheromone effect must be pandemic!



03.03.06 11:14AM

Take that, Michael Medved!!!


Anthony

(P.S.: Memo to Tom Donoughue of the Catholic League: Middle Americans like anal sex, to....lonmg before Hollywood (or Silicone Valley) ever did. )

[YogaDame]

I just think it's funny that the correspondent went to Kansas instead of Wyoming, where the story was originally set.

More interesting commentary can be found at Pharyngula.

Well, as you probably know, Brokback did not win for best picture (Ang Lee DID win best director). The fact the the ballots favored "Crash" is causing all sorts of speculation on why they voted the way they did.

Instead of doing that, I would rather reflect on the stirring speech that George Clooney made last night when he accepted his award for "Syriana:"

"We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood every once in a while," Clooney acknowledged referring to an earlier joke by Oscar host Jon Stewart.

"We were the ones who talked about AIDS when it was being whispered. We talked about civil rights when it wasn't really popular," he said.

"I'm proud to be part of this Academy. I'm proud to be part of this community. I'm proud to be out of touch," Clooney added.

That was the most affecting 90 seconds anyone has said in a long time.

Thanks, George.

Don

[Jack59]

I don't know about the rest of you, except maybe Nina and Ernest who I figure feel the same way, but one movie I really want to see is Good Night and Good Luck. I don't get out to the cinema that often so I missed it when it was here but I intend to see it on DVD asap.

I'm disappointed that it didn't win best picture because I think that now especially it is a story that people need to see. Frankly I'd like to see it become required viewing in every high school and college in the country. Never let anyone say "it can't happen here", because it already has and what is worse - it's happening again!

WHile on the subject:

http://www.dailymotion.com/susiebright/video/68018

Just sayin...'

(thanx Susie Bright)

polybi

Well, as you probably know, Brokback did not win for best picture (Ang Lee DID win best director). The fact the the ballots favored "Crash" is causing all sorts of speculation on why they voted the way they did.

Gee, I don't know, maybe because at least some of them thought "Crash" was just a better movie than "Brokeback Mountain"? In the end, I think Richard Walter, the head of the screenwriting department at UCLA's film school, summed it up neatly when he said (quoted and paraphrased from E! News via Yahoo

"Sometimes people pretend to like movies more than they actually do,"..."But this film wasn't really THAT good. What it tried to do was great, sensational. But what it actually accomplished wasn't so great. You can't really buy the love story."..."It's just a crapshoot. You go to Vegas and you put your money on number 17. There is NO lesson to be learned from all this. It doesn't mean a thing."

Or, in other words, to quote the immortal words of William Goldman, "Nobody knows anything."

Anyway, I still haven't changed my opinions about the latter, but I do plan to watch "Crash" Real Soon Now (tm), especially since it's got my homegirl Sandra Bullock in it (she's from Northern Virginia originally, and she's a fellow East Carolina Pirate - in fact, she and I were at ECU at the same time though we never met, at least not that I can recall; ECU even back in the early '80's was a big school and we were in different academic departments, plus which I was a year ahead of her).

-Joe-

Actually, I thought the Academy voted unusually thoughtfully this year, which was in keeping with the uncharacteristically serious field of contenders. There were no sweeps for over-hyped popcorn spectacles and the most important awards were divided rather even-handedly among a number of good choices. I

From a personal point of view, I'm always a bit pleased to see a best screenplay choice also garner the best picture award. Directors have been objects of worship in the industry since the rise of auteurism in the days of the Nouvelle Vague, but unless the director also writes the script, I'm not sorry to see credit for a good story go to the individual who wrote it.

As a writer-director myself (in an admittedly modest sub-genre), I can attest to the importance of good material, and the difficulty of creating it, in making a truly memorable film. Directing is fun and you get to play with the train set and hang out with the stars, but it's basically and administrative gig. Everything starts with an idea somebody sat down alone in a room and put to paper.

I think William Goldman would agree with me that, while nobody may know anything about what makes a picture succeed or fail, not many good movies have ever been made from inferior scripts.

Ernest

Oscar Sunday is pretty much a national holiday, unofficial like Superbowl Sunday.

That's because, despite many folks attack on Hollywood (including me, albeit from the left), we all know we'd miss it terribly if it were gone. That's why I'm grateful for George Clooney's defense not only of Hollywood, but of liberalism in general. Clooney's little gem appeared natural, not forced like many Dem politicians.

The program itself had an unusually weird vibe - it was a lot funnier to the TV audience than to the stars in the auditorium. I knew Stewart was going to launch a Cheney joke, but it was still hilarious the way he worked Bjork into it. Stewart started off slow, tripping on his words the way the very pregnant Jennifer Garner almost did - which I attribute to first-time jitters, but he grew more comfortable as he got nearer to the edited skits that were done in the style of "The Daily Show". The problem was, the audience didn't like being the target of some of his material, so there was lots of silence.

There was the business of Best Song Winner, 3-6-Mafia. "It's Hard Out There to Be A Pimp" The title is hilarious - the wording immediately reminded me of "Shver Tzu Zein a Yid" - translated into...Ebonics. (transliterated from Yiddish , that's "Hard to be a Jew" - a classic Jewish expression). But, I can see the Amsterdam News, Les Payne and Stanley Crouch cranking up their megaphones, denouncing Hollywood for showering Oscars on African-Americans who play to the bad guy stereotype. And then, there was the wonderful singer who ended the song with the word "Pimp", stretching it out like
"Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimp", as if he were the hero of a classic opera. Wait till Jensen & Dines get a load of that!

Note to Joe: it is rare that the Best Director award is not given to the director of Best Picture. I believe this happened the last time in 1999 when "Shakespeare in Love" stole Pest Picture from Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan" due to the massive PR campaign launched by Miramax's Tony Soprano lookalike, Harvey Weinstein. What happened this year was that the Screen Actor's Guild's "Best Ensemble" acting award went to "Crash", and tha's been a fairly reliable indicator of who wins Best Picture, because the actors are the largest single voting bloc. "Brokeback Mountain" had a much smaller cast.

Note to Ang Lee: put lots of extras in your cast. Put in a gay bar scene or three with lots and lots of out-of-work actors. More actors = more votes. Have Madonna's daughter, Lourdes, wander onto the set to calibrate her gaydar by pointing out the actual gay men there.

And come to think of it, Sheldon, have little Apple Paltrow point out the terminally hip.

One day, I must watch TV.

Don