A Manifesto: Indulgent film-crit talk, part 1 of 14

Roger Ebert recently posted a list of guidelines for being a critic. These are his rules to live by.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2008/10/eberts_little_rule_book.html




It's an entertaining read, but Ebert is only scratching the surface. Some points, such as that critics shouldn't ask stars for autographs, have really no effect on one's reviewing capability, and are just about appearances. I don't care about that. Critics are free to act like sycophants in their own time; it's none of my business. Let the work speak for itself.

A lot of his list seems obvious, but I like that Ebert points out how hyperbolic critics like to get. We should be careful when handing out words like "masterpiece."

I'll add some more. These are some of the words that I try to live by.

- Don't brag about how brave you are for watching a movie few people in your age bracket would generally go to. It's your job to keep up with movies, and most people envy your job. If you write about how when you went to see Pooh's Heffalump Movie by yourself, the parents all shielded their kids because they figured you were a pedophile, that's good. Just don't look for sympathy. Sometimes a day at a movie theatre is just like anyone else's office job.

- Also, don't publicly complain about work conditions. Nobody feels sorry for Ebert and Roeper if there isn't an early screening of The Amityville Horror they can attend. I live in Halifax where I have to see most movies with paying customers after they're released. That is not the sound of me complaining. (eg. Ebert and Roeper)

- Never review a movie you haven't watched in its entirety. This is basic.

- Don't bash movies you haven't seen, even off-handedly. Any idiot can do that. The point of your job is that you're not supposed to be an idiot. (eg. Jeffrey Wells saying Pride and Glory was by far the best movie opening in its week when he clearly hadn't seen Saw V and High School Musical 3. Now, neither of those movies are that good, but I only know because I saw them. They're both better than Pride and Glory.)

- Have an open mind. Don't walk into Gigli planning to hate it. The more your prejudices rule you, the more you're irrelevant.

- Accept that "critical consensus" is swayed by hype. A critic should never use the phrase "that's supposed to be good" as a recommendation for a movie he/she hasn't seen.

- Understand that movies are artworks. I know that they're there to sell tickets, but it's not your job to look at them that way.

- Do not distinguish between highbrow and lowbrow art, you pretentious New Yorker wannabe. You should be able to recognize that there's more artistic merit in Resident Evil: Extinction than in Blindness.

- On a related note, important subject matter should not be mistaken for important movies.

- Stop worrying that a movie "doesn't know who it's made for." This is a marketer's concern, not yours.

- Nobody likes a hater. I make a conscious effort not to single out individual people for the reason a movie isn't working.

- Know why you're doing this job. Figure out what makes you different than the 500 other film writers out there. Have something to contribute.

- Know your subject. In the words of Armond White, "I'm not interested in the opinions of people who don't know what they're talking about."

- Know what the hell you're talking about.

- Have style. Memorizing these rules isn't going to teach you how to write.

However, I will give you the following three points:


-Don't write more than you think. This problem is huge amongst critics.

- Quit referring to stars you're not close friends with by their first names. This tends to sound dumb even when non-critics do it in conversation. "Oh, I loved that Dane and Jessica film, but thought Brad's new movie would have been better if they cast Angelina instead of Frances as his co-worker."

- Writing in cliche is a symptom of thinking in cliche. Avoid pseudo-intelligent phrases like "the fact that" when a "because" will suffice, and avoid backwards sentences like "explosions and nudity do not a good movie make."

- Be consistent. Don't pretend to suddenly hate Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull after the online community turns against it. Have some morals.

- Be honest. If your review of A Beautiful Mind ends with, "This movie taught me that schizophrenics are people too, and from now on I will always think about their plight," no one will take you seriously. (eg. A review of A Beautiful Mind that I once read. Author forgotten.)

- Be patient. Don't declare something "THE BEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR" if it's still June.

- In fact, stop thinking of everything in terms of years. You just end up promoting the system that gets movies made so they can win Oscars.

- Realize that movies aren't invalidated simply because they're not tailored to your demographic. Case in point, IMDb voters who hate movies about sports and black people.

- Don't aspire to predict what people will think, or to reaffirm popular consensus. This forum has been given to you, not Joe the Plumber. Critics are being fired all across America because newspaper editors can just as easily hire the sports section guy to tell people what they think. I don't ask my dentist for opinions on sculpture. But every idiot thinks they're versed in movies.

- Remember why you liked movies in the first place.

Your favourite movie hates you!

The amount that I find myself at a frat house party is less and less these days. But Scarface posters haven't left my vision completely. On one level, it's really cool that people who use their mantles to build shrines for emptied beer bottles have such passion for one of Brian De Palma's seminal works of 80s cinema. Yet the love isn't without irony.

How Scarface is so misunderstood by so many of its biggest fans is one of life's mysteries.

Maybe people just see what they want. They love that Tony Montana rises to the top by not taking no fucking shit. So what if he's a pathetic figure by the end, who's gunned down in his own house after dunking his face in a mountain of llello? Until then he made crime a profitable business.



"This movie's the most closely impactful for out generation. Our generation was really put here with nothing."
- Diddy, on the impact of Scarface in the Def Jam documentary Origins of a Hip-Hop Classic.

It's frankly so impossible to miss the message of Scarface, an over-the-top satire of Reagan era excess, that you just have to toss it up to people choosing to look around it. I love this movie. I have a Montana action figure standing on top of my TV. I admit that its drugs and violence fueled melodrama is completely badass. Those who dislike Scarface don't accept it as a modernized Shakespeare tragedy. It's as quotable as Hamlet. What's scary is how many corrupt entrepreneurs this movie has created. There's not a minute of the film where Montana isn't an asshole.

So why the adulation?

I blame Oliver Stone.

There's nothing inherently evil about Stone's script. But the guy has some weird voodoo curse on him that seems to affect his movies like nobody else's. Stone's films are doomed to be most loved by people who (sometimes deliberately) take the completely wrong message from them. I'm not trying to sound smarter than anyone; if there's one thing Stone is not, it's subtle. Critics weren't uncomfortable with Alexander on grounds that it wasn't gay enough.

I was recently informed of an attorney who just had a gold bracelet made with the name Gordon Gekko inscribed in it. Gekko is the bigwig stockmarket villain played by Michael Douglas in Wall Street. He's a man who has sold his soul before the movie has even started. His motto is "Greed is Good." He's the Dark Side ruler whose temptations must be resisted by the film's hero. So why does this person think Wall Street shares his philosophy? The movie is opposed to his way of life.

Isn't separating the attitudes of characters from the attitudes of the story something people learn about in tenth grade English?

Angus Wallen and Kara Winn were 27 when they killed Brandon Murphy in a murder similar to that of Mallory's mom in Natural Born Killers. Like the 8 other alleged NBK-inspired killers (including Columbine duo Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold), Wallen and Winn must have missed that the movie considers their actions part of the downfall of civilization. This isn't a hidden message either; it's about 115 of Natural Born Killers 120 minutes. And it's as subtle as a sledgehammer. They're paying respect to a movie that despises them.

When you look at it, the movies that become common youth obsessions (to the point where when you see its poster you know the beer bottle shrine isn't far away) deal in antisocial themes. If it's not Scarface on that wall, it's A Clockwork Orange or something by Tarantino. It would be funny if college age kids chose to idolize different Oliver Stone films. They could post pictures to Facebook of doing bong hits in front of their Nixon posters. "I'm going to university, so I can be a fucked up President too!"

The idea of art sometimes opposing its fans always reminds me a little of when Schwarzenegger ordered the execution of The Crips' co-founder Stanley Tookie Williams. Just think about how fucked up that is. As a notorious leader of the South Central LA street gang, it's highly likely that Tookie was a fan of Predator, The Terminator and Commando. And then one day, this guy whose movies Tookie felt a connection with decides he should be dead.

Imagine the world's biggest Woody Allen fan. He grew up watching Annie Hall, landed the woman of his dreams by studying Manhattan, and he tends to quote Love and Death in casual conversation. Then one day Allen decides he doesn't like something about this guy, and has the power to kill him. That must be the ultimate betrayal!

"Arnie partying with Tookie / Smokin and drinkin till they lose their cookies / Crips are cousins / Bloods are brothers / Family killing one another" - Fishbone, "Party With Saddam"

Sometimes a movie will deliberately turn its back on a significant part of its audience. I'm talking about critic hatred here.

It manifests in last year's Lady in the Water and in this year's Ratatouille. I don't for a second doubt that M. Night Shyamalan making a critic an antagonist in Lady in the Water is a big factor in that movie's critical thrashing. (Another factor is that critics universally decided it was time to be fed up with Shyamalan--something that's happened to Oliver Stone more than once.)

I didn't react negatively to Bob Balaban's portrait of a know-it-all movie critic in Lady in the Water for several reasons: 1) I'm able to see the humour in this job. 2) I don't identify much with most other critics, and have no aspiration to speak for the "critical communty." 3) There really are plenty of critics like the one Balaban plays, and they deserve to be called on it. Shyamalan has a thin skin, but there you go.

Ratatouille is a little stranger. Pixar movies pre-Cars have only ever gotten glowing reviews. In this case, it's a food critic named Anton Ego, but the general swipes would still apply. Writer Brad Bird includes a bit of voiceover dialogue where the critic admits that it's easier to destroy than to create, or such bullshit. And that his work will never be as important as the stuff he's tearing down. I wish filmmakers would acknowledge that they're critics too. Art is a commentary on life. And criticism is a commentary on art. Only the medium is different.

Still, I can't really take offense at Ratatouille. The movie's pretty great, and the other characters don't escape such exaggerations either. But you should see this food critic's mansion. Jesus! How much do these jobs pay in France, and why don't I live there?