Category / Uncategorized

by Edward Champion

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

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, recently left a comment. Mr. Douglas writes that telling the truth about Hollywood and the junket system is “the reason why blogs like [sic] shouldn’t be considered viable outlets to do these interviews.” Is that so?

In a moment, I’ll address the question of whether Mr. Douglas is a writer with enough credibility to make such a claim. But for now, there is a more pertinent question: What makes Mr. Douglas’s idiot tinkerings at ComingSoon.net any different from a blog? It appears that Mr. Douglas doesn’t write for newspapers. In fact, he writes exclusively online. Could it be that Mr. Douglas is merely a piss-poor journalist? Could it be that Mr. Douglas’s isn’t that good of a writer? Could it be that he is a small insect creeping his way up the dunghill of film journalism? A mere mite to be smashed with a robust and responsible Doc Marten?

In an effort to determine precisely why and how Mr. Douglas is a lazy and inept journalist, I’m initiating a weekly series that will examine Mr. Douglas’s work (if his scrabbling can be called that) as it appears on his site, ComingSoon.net. This is the first installment.

MR. DOUGLAS’S OFFENSES AGAINST JOURNALISM AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE — THE WEEK OF JUNE 1, 2008

On June 5th, Mr. Douglas interviewed Jon Favreau. Instead of using this time to investigate Iron Man 2 at length or ask Favreau about some of the interesting connections between his earlier and more “real” films (Swingers and Made) and these newer fantasy blockbusters, Mr. Douglas preferred to state the obvious to Mr. Favreau, asking him the vapid question, “So now you are back to being in front of the camera and goofing off?” Clearly, it is Mr. Douglas who is the one goofing off here with this slipshod inquiry. But, of course, since Mr. Douglas (and the other junketeers who were present for this interview) is a consummate ass-kisser, this early question was merely a setup to stroke Mr. Favreau’s ego with this scintillating observation concerning all potential superhero epics now in the planning stages: “I guess you will have to direct all of them.” Again, we see that Mr. Douglas and his unsearing peers prefer constant assuaging over journalism.

Also on that day, Mr. Douglas wrote this amazingly idiotic piece of hackery in relation to Anand Tucker. Marvel at this atrocious sentence!

It must have been a bittersweet departure, because it would have been a fantastic film under Tucker’s guidance and he was a big fan of the books, but leaving the film allowed the director to successfully dodge the bullet and the backlash when the movie bombed horribly, something that many felt greatly accelerated the decline and death of New Line in its previous guise.

Mix your metaphors much, Mr. Douglas? Split your infinitives much, Mr. Douglas? Separate your clauses at all, Mr. Douglas? Are you even aware of Strunk & White, Mr. Douglas? Does anybody edit your pieces, Mr. Douglas? Unable to deploy a figurative metaphor (“the bullet”) for his object, Mr. Douglas feels a strange need to introduce a literal one (“the backlash”). And who are the “many” who felt that The Golden Compass was responsible for New Line’s decline? Is this like the tribunal scene at the end of M? Mr. Douglas suggests by this cavalier item that he is an insider. But he is a dilettante. A proper journalist would offer a link or a specific authority for others to follow.

Let us also ponder the modifier “exclusive” — a word that Mr. Douglas seems peculiarly fixated upon. An exclusive interview suggests that Mr. Douglas is nabbing these interviews on his own, that he is obtaining bits of information that nobody else has. Mr. Douglas is not in the habit of confessing when he’s at a press conference or a sharing a roundtable interview with other journalists. So perhaps he has deluded himself into thinking that he’s getting an “exclusive.” Or this is what he tells the people who pay his checks. Either way, he is a liar. And further examinations into the “exclusive” nature of Mr. Douglas’s material are forthcoming.

But for now, I note that Mr. Douglas reported that he had “an exclusive” item involving Werner Herzog’s upcoming movie, Bad Lieutenant, with Herzog claiming that his film was not a remake of the Abel Ferrara film. But if Douglas had such an “exclusive,” why then did the same news (with a strikingly similar quote) crop up on Defamer one day before Douglas’s report? Could it be that Defamer’s S.T. VanAirsdale (who also blogs at The Reeler) was at the same junket/press conference? (VanAirsadle, to his credit, had the humility and the decency to avoid the word “exclusive,” pointing to “some minor miracle/apparent PR botch” that permitted this interview to happen.)

On June 3, the hopeless Mr. Douglas posted his conversation with documentary filmmaker Nina Davenport, where one can see Mr. Douglas’s considerable deficiencies as an interlocutor. Davenport was commissioned to film an Iraqi film student. The resulting film became an altogether different documentary named Operation Filmmaker. Sounds like an intriguing exposé into cultural transition, yes? Well, not for Mr. Douglas. He was not so tickled at putting forth remotely challenging questions on, say, how much Davenport and her camera might have been inadvertently responsible for the film student’s erratic behavior. In fact, since Mr. Douglas is apparently incapable of using his noggin (or unwilling to) for his questions, we get three questions from Mr. Douglas that rely upon the “It must have been hard”/”Was it difficult?” interviewing cliche.

Let us consider this hackeneyed phrase. In what world do you utter such a conversational banality and not get your ass kicked? You don’t ask a dentist if it’s “difficult” for him to fill in a cavity. You don’t tell a barista that “it must have been hard” to make that latte for the last customer. Why are amental hacks like Mr. Douglas so content to treat their interview subjects like children? (Answer: Because today’s junketeers aren’t interested in adult conversations. They remain inveterate assuagers.)

Douglas really thinks his readers are idiots. Why else would he write, in relation to a junket with Kung Fu Panda co-director John Stevenson, “A lot of what he had to say will certainly be of interest to anyone hoping to one day break into the animation or computer effects field.” Even discounting the fact that Douglas (or one of his fellow roundtable junketeers) foolishly compares the Head of Story position with ADing, is Douglas arrogant enough to believe that aspiring animation students will be going to ComingSoon.net to get technical information? Compare Mr. Douglas’s condescending flummery with Steve Fritz’s more comprehensive and informed interview of both Kung Fu Panda directors, where Fritz not only gets answers on how fight moves were animated and carried out, but even obtains a concise paragraph on key frame animation.

It will, of course, take some time to examine the spineless atavist known as Edward Douglas. I should observe that Mr. Douglas’s affronts to journalism are, as I have intimated with the comparisons above, by no means endemic to film journalism as a whole. I have my problems with David Poland, but at least Poland is attempting some basic ratiocination. One cannot say this of Mr. Douglas, whose execrable word spewing makes Poland look like F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is not just the ineluctable conclusion that Mr. Douglas writes with all the dependability and precocity of a malfunctioning dot matrix printer that should trouble us. He actually gets paid for this.

It is now my goal to inform those who pay Mr. Douglas for his services that they are getting a terrible deal. It is he who is the one not deserving of any credibility. It is he who is the one who should be confined to a go-nowhere office job without the benefit of air conditioning. Future dispatches will follow.

by Edward Champion

Technical Difficulties

My desktop decided to crap out on me and I am currently in the process of resuscitating it. The problem’s either the power supply or the motherboard (and it looks likely to be the former). But between this and deadlines, I’ve become a frantic monkey. Bear with me.

[UPDATE: After a barebones cardboard boot, I’ve traced the problem. The mobo appears to be pretty much dead, in that the power is inconsistent, shutting on and off. I’m RMAing this bastard and grabbing a new one. I hope to be back in action tonight.]

[UPDATE 2: After many trips to Datavision and J&R, I’m desktopless for the time being, and going to give up for now so that I can beat these deadlines.]

[UPDATE 3: Just about back in business on the desktop. Turns out that it was a power supply/heating issue, remedied by a Zalman CNPS9500 LED fan (which I highly recommend over the shitty Cooler Master fans). Hope to respond to email I received in the last few days quite soon. As to the Mac acolytes who offered snarky comments, in the time it took for me to rectify my hardware problem, you’d likely be waiting for a reservation at the so-called Genius Bar. No thanks. I’m the kind of guy who likes to know what’s under the hood.]

by Edward Champion

Satire

So a bunch of “activists” get together and create a hysterical video. These people claim that in 2012, a foreboding date that conveniently matches up with the Mayan calendar, the Internet as we know it will end. No more net neutrality. ISPs moving in for the big avaricious kill. Without citing a single shred of evidence to support their claim, the video that these “activists” post results in hysteria. It has, at the time of this posting, been Digged 7,170 times, and a strong majority of Diggers have swallowed this castor oil without stopping to question the specifics. Among the group: Tania Derveauax, who promised Belgian voters 40,000 blowjobs when running for political office, who promised to take the virginity of anyone who supported net neutrality, and who pledged online that she would kill herself in 90 days. What’s more, these “activists” created another video in May in which they used the same music cue and much of the same language justifying Ms. Derveaux’s suicide blog.

This latest stunt is fine satire and it’s certainly a masterful prank. And if the point made here involves demonstrating just how gullible people are when accepting such codswallop, then this group has certainly served its purpose. Nevertheless, I find myself a bit troubled by this video. Troubled by the manner in which so many people have easily accepted this. Troubled by the unseen joy that this group has had in witnessing these reactions. Troubled by a group who wishes to abdicate their sincerity and who believes, quite rightly as it turns out, that people are willing to believe nearly everything. One can certainly make the claim that this group is recused from guilt because they were only putting out prevarications that any reasonable person would resist, but these people knew what they were doing. And this video has now been circulated so widely that I’ve even received a few emails from people who seem to believe that it’s real. And while I respect the right of this group to declare nearly everything on a freedom of speech principle, I’ve always felt that if you’re going to execute a gag along these lines, there needs to be a few subtle clues in the details that alert others to the blatant fabrications.

These hangups are mine. I choose to believe, perhaps with solid dollops of naivete, that most people are good. That, in the grand scheme of humanity, the assholes and the solipsists are outweighed by those who are kind, amicable, and wish to help others out. NEE may very well be the living embodiment of the boy crying wolf, and the organization, if we can call it that, certainly has every right to challenge its audience. But I ponder the long-term view. Is life something in which you’re expected to mock every heartfelt gesture or concern? What is the value in being an inveterate cynic? I suspect these are the questions that nearly every satirist asks. But does not effective satire involve getting others to think about a subject? Lenny Bruce’s infamous “nigger” routine is, to my mind, a tremendous achievement. Bruce managed to get his audience to re-examine a loaded issue. The satire bristled against its audience, but it did get them to see another perspective running a bit counter to their own. The perspective practiced in this video doesn’t involve this level of thoughtfulness. It suggests a false expertise and a sense of self-importance (“If you don’t believe us, call your ISP”) on the part of the satirists. George Saunders got into trouble for suggesting a similar line of thought in relation to Borat. And while I disagreed with him, I can see his point. Even if people can ferret out on their own that this video is an outright lie, I find that the best satire is that which respects the audience’s intelligence.

And yet I find myself still justifying the right to shout “Fire” in a crowded theater. And I am willing, on some level, to defend this video and website for the way in which it pushed its audience. Those currently duped will indeed understand this at some point. So perhaps on this basis, NEE is no different from a satirist who chooses a more pellucid distinction. But should there comes a time in Ms. Derveauax’s life when she is suffering some genuine physical calamity, I wonder if others might consider it a gag. I wonder why there can’t be a balance between an elaborate joke and a true sense of being. When one lives exclusively in a satirical bubble, how can that real person or the real voice flourish?

by Edward Champion

Coffee House Moving Sale

If you aren’t aware of some of the fine titles (and lovely book design) of Coffee House Press, I should point out that Coffee House is now having a moving sale. If you order titles through the website from now until June 30, you’ll get them off at 50%. So if you somehow missed Sam Savage’s Firmin or four titles from the late legend Gilbert Sorrentino, now you have a chance to pick these titles up for a good price.