Month / June 2008

by Edward Champion

Roundup

  • Bryan Appleyard uses the occasion of Tim Russert’s passing to note the distinctions between American and British journalism. While it’s certainly true that many American television personalities are polite, the class that Appleyard describes frequently borders on sycophantism. If we can’t have someone like Dick Cavett return to the airwaves, I’d frankly rather see Jeremy Paxman in Charlie Rose’s slot. At least we have Bill Moyers. For now. But where are the Russerts in training on American television? Keith Olbermann channels Murrow. Jon Stewart plays to the crowd. Where are those who are interested in simply asking the best questions?
  • Laura Miller has returned to the NYTBR after a mysterious two year absence. (She also had a piece appear in May.) The time has come to conjure conspiracies. Did Miller and Tanenhaus clash? And has Miller’s reappearance occurred because Dwight Garner is essentially running the ship now? Your theories and crazed conjectures are welcome in the comments.
  • Seth Greenland contemplates the current state of author promotion. Also at the L.A. Times: discussion of Denis Johnson’s Playboy serial.
  • Enter the Octopus: just discovered it and it’s a crazed depository worth your time.
  • There will be no jokes within this roundup. It is not that matters have turned particularly serious, or that I have turned permanently or temporarily humorless. There will indeed be jocularity in the future. But I have a feeling that part of my current predicament, roundup-wise, has to do with a little experiment I’m conducting. I have been gradually watching the Woody Allen films that I have not seen, attempting to become a completist. This is not because I am a hard-core fan. I am simply attempting to determine where Woody Allen stopped being interesting as a filmmaker, or whether I have been judging his films based on the groupthink assumption that his latter films all suck. Certainly I’ve avoided about ten of the films that he’s made in the past two decades. I was burned badly by Curse of the Jade Scorpion when I paid to see it in the theater. And I stopped seeing his movies on opening weekend. I’ve seen pretty much everything up through Crimes and Misdemeanors and, after this, there are cavities. Which I’ve been trying to fill in. So far, I have seen portions of Alice and Another Woman, films I had not seen before. They are okay. But I cannot find myself particularly inspired to finish watching either of these films. Neither of them contain that visceral spark that is there, more or less, through Crimes and Misdemeanors, resurfacing for the brilliant Husbands and Wives, the cheery Everybody Says I Love You, and the underrated Deconstructing Harry. But back to Alice and Another Woman: While there is a certain technical polish to both films (I particularly like Alice‘s glossy photography and bourgeoisie production details), there is simply nothing in these films that particularly moves me. The magical premise of Alice is cute but it feels desperate. And uncomfortably close to Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Another Woman is another attempt at Interiors, which is brilliant, but it relies very heavily (so far, at least) on Gena Rowlands’s acting at the expense of entirely plausible psychology. Perhaps it is Mia Farrow that bugs me. She reminds me of one of my mother’s old friends, who was selfish, unkind, and very unconcerned with other people. Probably why my mother and she got along. I feel this way about the Brenda Vaccaro character from Supergirl, who also reminds me of one of my mother’s friends. These friends even resemble Mia Farrow and Brenda Vaccaro. Is it possible then that I am letting these close physical resemblances and characterizations get in the way of appreciating these films? And why does it take a particular period in Woody Allen’s career to get me thinking about this? Because these films are unfunny, do they have a way of making other people unfunny? Are these films on some modest level diminishing my instincts? Or is it simply just a little late? Well, what the hell, I’ll hit “Publish” for this post very soon. You may not realize this but there is a brief moment in which I contemplate hitting “Publish” for a blog post, only to arrive at some other passing fancy, which creates additional information, which creates additional comments, etcetera.
  • Incidentally, the Woody Allen and “Publish” sections of the last bullet item avoid an altogether different question of empathy that I won’t share before the public.
by Edward Champion

Edward Douglas, Hopeless Hack and Amental Film “Journalist” — Part Two

Last week, Reluctant Habits initiated a weekly series on New York hack “journalist” Edward Douglas, a creative typist employed by ComingSoon.net and an intellectual coprophiliac quite happy to scarf down the moist cloacal deposits offered by film publicists. Unfortunately, in the last seven days, Mr. Douglas’s work has not improved much. We see traces of anti-intellectualism and a failure to comprehend basic nouns, along with other unpardonable sins.

MR. DOUGLAS’S OFFENSES AGAINST JOURNALISM AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE — THE WEEK OF JUNE 8, 2008

Edward Douglas offers this stunningly idiotic sentence:

Director M. Night Shyamalan often gets a bad rap, not because of his movies, whether you like all, some or none of them, but because people claim him to be an arrogant egomaniac.

Not only do we get another typical instance of Mr. Douglas mangling his clauses, but we get the redundancy “arrogant egomaniac.” Is Mr. Douglas then suggesting then that Mr. Shyamalan is a humble egomaniac? Or is he simply clueless with nouns? One thing’s for sure. Mr. Douglas has no problem wrapping his well-oiled orifice in Mr. Shyamalan’s presence. While boasting about his “10-minute lightning round interview” (such insight!), Mr. Douglas writes, “You have to admit that he doesn’t make movies haphazardly though, always spending a good amount of time thinking about every aspect of the story and characters and how they might be perceived by the public at large.”

There are many filmmakers, of course, who spend a good deal of time thinking about movies. Consider the time that Michael Cimino expended to think about every detail in Heaven’s Gate, right down to the period underwear. And we all know how that film is currently regarded. But it does not logically follow that, because a filmmaker has used up time and energy, he has put out a quality film.

Mr. Douglas’s paralogia can also be witnessed in such dunce questions as “With all the paranoia in the air, can this movie still be seen as escapism?” (presumably, Mr. Douglas has a limited definition of the escapist blockbuster) and “This is a very short movie compared to your other movies, but it’s only 90 minutes and I was curious about that.” In clinging to such boilerplate, Mr. Douglas remains as graceful as a two-year-old who requires a life preserver in a wading pool.

Mr. Douglas also suggests that Scientific American “grilled” Mr. Shyamalan in asking about science. I must presume that Mr. Douglas is referring to the innocuous question, “Do you see part of this movie being a statement about science and technology being all you need in the world?” If this question did indeed come from Scientific American, it does not grill in the slightest. It is a question founded on legitimate inquiry. Perhaps by “grilled,” Mr. Douglas is referring to a vaguely intellectual area he will never inhabit. But rather than asking more specific questions about The Happening‘s relationship with science (Scientific American‘s George Musser had the decency and the smarts to ask him aboutthe great Guy Maddin. But don’t let Mr. Maddin’s importance fool you into thinking that Mr. Douglas offered anything approximating interesting inquiry. Early in the conversation, Mr. Maddin offers an intriguing answer about Michael Burns okaying a rough outline for My Winnipeg. And rather than asking Mr. Maddin about just how loose he can get with Burns and the level of rejection he receives as a maverick filmmaker, Mr. Douglas asks instead, “Did you still do any kind of research at all?” (Incidentally, Mr. Burns was recently fired, which leaves one to wonder about Maddin’s remaining allies at the Documentary Channel and the freedom he still has a filmmaker. But, of course, Mr. Douglas is too gutless a questioner to follow up.) He doesn’t even ask about the relationship between writing with wholesale invention and relying upon preexisting fact, which would seem an important component to a film dealing with urban legends in some form.

When one interviews someone like Guy Maddin, the interview practically writes itself. But there are too many times in which Mr. Douglas cannot parse the conversational trajectory in front of him. Mr. Douglas’s interview is a fine example for anyone wondering how not to conduct an interview.

by Edward Champion

The Brooklyn Book Festival: Hopelessly Manhattanized?

I don’t wish to sound ungrateful for the gratis plastic cup of wine that I enjoyed on Friday night, but the Brooklyn Book Festival launch party was more than a tad pedantic. The crowd of elitist insiders, bored organizers, and exhausted publicists — all hoping that cheese and crackers would serve as a surrogate dinner, all speedily adopting that predictable industry pretense of snubs and meaningless status, all more than a little uncomfortable with Brooklyn President Marty Markowitz’s call for a moment of silence for the late Tim Russert — gathered together in a manner that was more evocative of Manhattan rather than Brooklyn. Circular buttons of various Brooklyn neighborhoods were available with elliptical offerings of nuts on various tables. But my old neighborhood, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, wasn’t represented among this mostly Caucasian representative provincialism. I suspect that this jittery atmosphere, combined with a recent bout of deadline-induced cabin fever, caused me to be excessively ebullient. And thus I apologize to my blogging peers and friends if I affrighted or unnerved them in the process.

Nevertheless, the truth of the matter was that one could not be one’s natural literary self at this shindig. And nobody had the heart or the decency to suggest congregating elsewhere. We were obliged to stay for some reason, believing that the name Brooklyn would magically translate into streetcred.

But who were the big authors announced? Jonathan Franzen — a man who openly joked that he had only spent three nights of his life in Brooklyn, remarking that they were not happy. Joan Didion — who has almost certainly done more for Manhattan than Brooklyn. Dorothy Allison — who will certainly be more accepted in Brooklyn than in Manhattan, assuming that the Brooklyn Book Festival has not become as hopelessly Manhattanized as I fear.