In The Company Of Glenn

Drag

The conventional wisdom holds that the squeaky wheel always gets the grease, but let's call a spade a spade—it's the whiniest, most strident shriekers who really get the job done. As in today's Variety report on how smoking in the movies will now affect ratings. Because, really, we need to keep our teenagers as far away from Good Night, and Good Luck as humanly possible.

As a former smoker myself, I can only say that there may be some good that can come from this: Forbidden "smoking" pics could make old black and white movies hip again.

Quiz

History is:

A) A butcher's block
B) A nightmare from which I am trying to awake
C) A ride!!!

Answers below.

It's not the gender, stupid—it's the stupid

My bud Sharon Waxman, whose job as a movie biz correspondent at the Times does not, I should point out right away, necessarily entail making aesthetic judgements, has a rather extraordinary piece in today's paper headlined "Hollywood's Shortage of Female Power." It begins with an anecdote related by producer Cathy Schulman, who, as devotees of my bud Dave Kehr's blog will recall, recently said one of the dumbest things any sentient being has ever said ever, by way of rationalizing/justifying/whattheferckevershewasdoing her in-the-works remake of Hitchcock's The Birds. (In case you don't feel like clicking over to Dave's place right this minute, this is what she says: "We think we have a very contemporary take...In the original, the birds just showed up, and it was kind of like, why are the birds here? This time, there’s a reason why they’re here and [people] have had something to do with it. There’s an environmental slant to what could create nature fighting back.”)

Schulman, who recounts getting a call from a studio exec asking her to pretty much concoct a "women's picture" out of thin air, doesn't bring the idiocy to this particular piece, but soon enough, more famous female moviemakers are taking up her slack...

I fought Jude Law

Commenter NeilFC, weighing in on my Cannes musings, makes a confession that touches my heart: "Can't wait for the new Wong Kar-Wai BUT it stars one of my least favourite actors (Jude Law, in case you were wondering.) I find it kinda depressing when an actor that i just can't stand is in a movie by a director i really dig. And Law has been in movies by Spielberg, Scorsese and Cronenberg!"

Who thinks Norman Bates is a hero?

I was going to let this pass, but some commenters brought it up, and then some other good bloggers did, and I looked into it, and oy...here's a description by one David Kahane, on the National Review Online site, of some minutes in Hitchcock's Psycho...

..five long minutes, in which Sam the Explainer, in the form of the psychiatrist played by Simon Oakland, tells us all about Norman’s schizophrenia — how his split personality was finally overcome by Mother until there was nothing left of poor Norman at all.

Norman, you see, was really a victim. Which makes him a hero.

No, David Kahane. (BTW, "David Kahane" is apparently a "nom de cyber for a writer in Hollywood." Which I actually find comforting for some reason.) Anybody with a brain knows two things. That Psycho is a film without a traditional hero. And that Norman Bates, however sympathetically he is portrayed in parts of the film, is absolutely not its hero. Apparently you, David Kahane, are the only person on the face of this planet who is actually not aware of this. Let me help you.

"300" droppings

"Why the liberal furor over 300 [sic]?" Victor Davis Hanson, an "historian" much revered in certain circles, asks in the first line of an impossibly prolix post , entitled "300 Fumes," on National Review Online's The Corner. I expect he wants his readers to imagine him stroking his chin and sucking on a pipe as he prepares to answer this burning question. In the meantime the rest of the world has learned that as of Monday the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie has kicked 300 out of the top box office spot, and moved on. Will the film have the same cultural impact as did former B.O. champs The Passion of the Christ or Wild Hogs did? Only time will tell. And right now, nobody really much cares. But Mr. Hanson does. So, since he cares so much, and since we're so kind and compassionate, let's pay him some mind for a bit.

Wanking In L.A.

So will Hollywood mega-producer Brian Grazer now give Andres Martinez a job? I ask because Grazer seems to have unwittingly cost Martinez one. Martinez resigned last week as the editorial-page director of the Los Angeles Times over a non-controversy that became a controversy over Martinez's assigning Grazer to guest-edit an opinion section at the paper. Seems that Martinez is dating Grazer's publicist, or one of his sub-publicists—it's very hard to keep track—which, you know, seems kinda conflict-of-interesty. But nothing an editor's note couldn't take care of. Some at the paper disagreed with that conclusion, ears were bent, the section was killed, Grazer felt "humiliated" (boo-frickin'-hoo), and Martinez resigned.

Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner

It looks as if the brouhaha over the in-extremely-questionable-taste marketing campaign for Captivity is taking one of those potentially sinister turns that have some factions screaming censorship and others tsking-tsking "About time" and "Serves them right." As a free-speech absolutist who's often appalled by free-market marketing excesses and abuses, such controversies tend to turn my brain into a pained pretzel.

That said, I almost feel sorry for Roland Joffe. The Killing Fields aside—and that was almost 25 years ago, for heaven's sake—I've never seen any indication that the guy could direct traffic. And for all that, his name has almost always been associated with "distinguished" productions. Okay—sometimes blatantly risible "distinguished" productions, such as the Demi-Moore-starring Scarlet Letter. And no, I don't know what's up with his listing on IMDB as an uncredited director of Super Mario Brothers either. Still. That his career is so far down the crapper that his current big claim to fame is an association with a quasi-scandal that recalls the halcyon days of the Rated-V-For-Violence Mark of the Devil should arouse at least a twinge of sympathy from all but the most heart-hardened cinephile.

Or not. Mwaa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!.....

Dowdy

I'm so stunned by Maureen Dowd's, um, remarkable op-ed column in today's New York Times (only available online via Times Select), wherein she discusses Hollywood's fundraising surge for presidential candidate Barack Obama (for whom Dowd has developed a profound hostility, the reasons for which are so obvious that they need not be stated, but would get their stater into a bit of trouble), that I just have to share. In between taunting Obama with his old handle "Barry" and calling him "Obambi" (no, I'm not kidding), she assesses the current buzz in Hollywood with wordplay based around—you'll never guess—the titles of current Oscar contenders! To wit:

Who can pay attention to the Oscar battle between "The Queen" and "Dreamgirls" when you've got a political battle between a Queen and a Dreamboy?

Ooo, good one.

[Hillary is] not exactly Little Miss Sunshine, either...

Oh no she's not!

The babble here is not about "Babel"; it's about the battle of the billionaires.

All that acuity, and alliteration, too! Stop it, Maureen, or I might have to rush to the emergency room and have my sides restitched!

I wonder if I could ever come up with anything as good. Lemme give it a shot.

I'd love to see Maureen Dowd, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman in a remake of "The Departed."

All right! Nailed it!

(cross-posted at Rushes)