Speaking of 'Redacted'...

The Venice Film Festival's press screening of Brian DePalma's Iraq-based Redacted—which didn't thrill my colleague Mark Salisbury, as the post directly below attests—isn't even 48 hours old, and the movie is drawing the wrath of pro-war blog personalities who, unlike Mark, haven't laid their eyes on a single frame. Roger L. Simon, the novelist/screenwriter turned blogger and, erm, new media mogul, reflects on DePalma, "someone I used to know," and notes that he "may have resurrected his career" with Redacted. I don't know how Simon defines "resurrected," but I see DePalma's completed four features in the past ten years, whereas Mr. Simon's last screen credit was in 1998. No matter. Simon's just working up to the froth eruption, which spumes thusly:

DePalma, quintessentially a man of my generation, equates Iraq with Vietnam not just because he may think they are the same (ridiculous as that is) but because Vietnam made him the man he is today. In other words, he was able to live a fantastic Hollywood life (even with the normal vicissitudes),including the fancy houses, cars, women, etc., by being a "groovy" man of his generation - militantly opposed to Vietnam War and for all traditional PC things. Why change? Indeed, why not drill down further into the old well when things aren't as they once were. Why think about the specifics of the current situation or about history? They would only disrupt personal progress.

Um, okay. Huh? Is it me, because I just finished rereading Under the Volcano, or is that prose on a bender? (In any case, I won't have what it's having.) Is Simon really saying that one could have made a fortune in '70s Hollywood merely by being anti-Vietnam? Shit, I completely missed out! (I was only a kid then, but still.) I thought that maybe making films that made money might have helped DePalma out a bit. (His first actual hit, Carrie, was released in 1976, by which time one's stance on the Vietnam War was kind of moot.) Also, is there any other filmmaker of DePalma's peers less likely to be referred to as "groovy," not to mention less likely to ever use the word "groovy" himself, as DePalma? And "traditional PC things"? Has Roger never seen Body Double?

Finding wisdom in this incoherent rant is the reliably bad-faith Glenn Reynolds, who is moved to adopt his putatively snide mode while linking to Simon: "How about a movie where Hollywood filmmakers take money from America's enemies to undermine morale? It wouldn't be any more dishonest than Brian DePalma's latest."

You know what's genuinely dishonest, you smirky, supercilious little [impolite potty-mouth word redacted to preserve internet civility]? Talking smack about movies you haven't seen and likely never will see. Redacted may well be tripe, for all I know. But right now, I don't.

Comments

[Charles Giacometti]

Way to shred Instarube. He really is a punk.

[Jack Terri/Jeremy O' Connell]

This is seemingly the most voracious anti-De Palma smear campaign yet.

And from people who haven't seen the film: it's a disgrace.