Gross Behaviour - by Leonard Klady

A Spoonful of Sugar

A long time ago in a galaxy not that far away known as the Cannes Film Festival I was having dinner with Paul Zimmerman. At the time he was the film critic at Newsweek and I'm sure he was treating because we were dining in the very pricey dining room of the Carlton Hotel. At some point during the entrée I got a flash of a man approaching the table with deliberate speed. I remember a shock of hair and something in his body language that indicated anger or hostility. It was one of those instances when one's first sense seemed to suggest a comfortable distance and a split second later he was right in our face.

"You hated my film," he boomed for all to hear.

It was clear that the man with fire in his eyes was directing his venom toward Paul. I had no idea who he was or the film that had been pilloried in the pages of Newsweek. But Paul clearly knew the man and one could see him immediately trying to bring down the temperature and decibel level that had been raised in the otherwise tranquil environment.

"But Henry, everyone hated your film," Paul responded.

Only later would Paul fill me in that Henry was Henry Jaglom and the film was his feature debut A Safe Place. The film starring Tuesday Weld and featuring Jack Nicholson and Orson Welles debuted at the New York Film Festival and was famously ridiculed for being arty and pretentious.

"That's true," replied Jaglom and pausing for emphasis added "but you dismissed it with humor."

Now, unfortunately, the rest of the conversation was rather banal. Jaglom mostly ranted and seethed about Paul's "irresponsible" action. How, he, was striving to do something serious and meaningful and though he may have fallen short of realizing such an ambitious project, ought to have been given positive marks for doing something unconventional. Paul attempted to calm him down by explaining his process and every critic's need to maintain a sane outlook in light of dozens and dozens of bad movies. Sometimes, one had to inject levity into one's writing to keep things interesting for oneself and the reader.

All the while, I'm looking upon this as some absurdist drama because I have no idea who this wild man is or what movie is being discussed (I believe I eventually saw the film five years later). When Jaglom finally departed and Paul explained the nuts and bolts, my verdict was that both men were a little nutty. It had been at least four years since the A Safe Place debacle and Jaglom had yet to make a second film. In my opinion, Paul should have employed some of the wit he'd demonstrated in his review and encouraged Jaglom to move on, learn from his mistakes and make another film.

What triggered this memory was a film review that employed humorous and unconventional methods to cast a negative light on a recent movie. Last week the Los Angeles Times' Manohla Dargis employed rhyme to slime the screen adaptation of Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat. To wit:

No one in Hollywood likes humor that's clean,
so the jokes in this film are lowdown and mean.

When the Cat sees a mom who's hotter than Hades,
his hat swells up to the size of a Mercedes.

It struck me that one of the most difficult aspects about reviewing movies was reining in one's anger and what better way of dealing with pent up hostility than telling a joke. That's at least a broad strokes explanation.

I'm not going to overplay the sympathy card. Writing about movies and getting paid for it is an extremely privileged position. Still when asked during a panel on film criticism whether I had to pay to go to the movies, I immediately responded: "Yes, emotionally."

Even by minimum standards, the majority of what one sees - especially those films in commercial release - is mediocre. While writing about work that one finds exceptional or exceptionally horrifying generally flows because of one's strong response, chronicling work that is competent and undistinguished or lackluster and uninspired requires perseverance and even tricks. And when something comes along that's laudatory or repellent, it's easy to fall into the trap of employing superlatives. Euphoria and rage are fleeting emotions but may stick around just long enough to keep a tight deadline.

"You would be fired and out the door, if you wrote as badly as the movies you see," says Dargis. I've heard other critics squirm as they told war stories about reading their own reviews and discovering that they had made a not very interesting film sound worth seeing. In the process of trying to rationalize a film, they have given it logic and allure that was otherwise absent from the screen.

But the number one enemy remains blinding fury. Even otherwise tempered personalities run smack into some picture that winds up being that one straw too many and a torrent of bile and malevolence streams out and onto the page.

"Humor, you cannot afford to lose your sense of humor," insists the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern. "Though it wasn't for a review, I'll give you an example. I truly did not care for Gandhi; I found it stiff and self-congratulatory. When it won the best picture Oscar I was at the (Los Angeles) Herald-Examiner and I wrote that the film was embraced by Hollywood because it possessed the three things everybody wanted here: 'to be moral, tan and thin.' I like to think that what I said was clever but it also made my point."

Dargis' review of The Cat in the Hat operates on a more successful plain than the subject itself. Nonetheless, there should be no mistaking the fact that, even in couplets, she is dissing the movie. Humor and irony are powerful tools when making a point even if, to paraphrase George S. Kaufman, irony is what closes Saturday night. Lenny Bruce said irony was "humor plus time" and that may explain why in the rush to judgment made on most movies humor winds up on the cutting room floor.

When I cited the Dargis review to friends, one mentioned a review by Elvis Mitchell of Scary Movie 3 written in hip-hop language and another said he'd recently heard Gene Shallit deliver a haiku to laud a film but couldn't remember what it was. In my search for those and other creative (and hopefully levity tinged) movie commentary I not only discovered a paucity of both elements but no Mitchell review of Scary Movie 3. He had conventionally critiqued Scary Movie 2 in the pages of the New York Times while Stephen Holden was dismissive of the third encounter. As for Shallit's poetic turn, I suspect it was pure PUNishment.

Finally, I had to look at my own sorry record as a sober judge of celluloid and conclude that my nature listed toward arid analysis at the expense of a zinger. I believe it was Akim Tamiroff who once said "everyone remembers a funny line. They are like gold and just as rare." The quote works well itself but let me assure you that it's part of a longer story that ends with the punchline "you owe me $50."

In my own defense, I did resort to a phonetic and colloquial worded review of Open Range that read in part:

One real good part is that they talk real natural and I kinda lak the gooey stuff even eff 'n you aint sposed to. That Robert Duvall really knows how ta chew things up and Costner spits a lot, so the picture's kinda othentic and ya don't see much of that. So I'm a guessn that's good, too.

And One More Thing …

I'm not certain when the no-screener policy officially became the screener mess but to anyone residing outside the tight little community of Hollywood and whine, the situation regarding promotional, for your consideration, videocassettes and DVDs must seem incredibly surreal.

The sort of good news for members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is that the first wave of encoded VHS copies of movies has begun just in time to be enjoyed during the Thanksgiving holiday. However, if you've elected home (rather than office) delivery, be aware that messengers require all packages be signed for and they might arrive at any time. Grocery and holiday shopping should be done after sundown, business meeting should be held on home turf and be sure to get your vehicle into the garage before 8 a.m.

The Academy itself appears to be making up for years of staying out of the policing of screeners. Its policy had been to encourage members to see movies on the big screen as they were meant to be seen. This week a letter from executive director Bruce Davis acknowledged the shipment of the first official screeners as well as a package from Lions Gate sent independently. Davis states that his office has received requests from members on the official mailings (actually deliveries) and to that end has set up a web destination where they can check on what's been sent with attached studio contact numbers "where problems can be reported."

Postings will be listed two days after initial mailing just in case there are "tardy or wayward deliveries." Davis refers to the new procedures as a "grand experiment" and only time will tell whether his words require adjectival alteration.

This Just In

Carrie Rickey of The Philadelphia Inquirer also took poetic exception to The Cat in the Hat and concluded:

The stars did not shine,
The sun was not sunny,
The movies a snooze -
Do not waste your money!

However, she maintains her approach was neither about humor nor anger. "It was a way to convey the texture of the movie," she says. "For me the approach was inevitable. You want to tip the reader in a way that's friendly and informative.