November 5, 2019

"Today... there are some in the business with absolute indifference to the very question of art and an attitude toward the history of cinema that is both dismissive and proprietary — a lethal combination."

"The situation, sadly, is that we now have two separate fields: There’s worldwide audiovisual entertainment, and there’s cinema. They still overlap from time to time, but that’s becoming increasingly rare. And I fear that the financial dominance of one is being used to marginalize and even belittle the existence of the other. For anyone who dreams of making movies or who is just starting out, the situation at this moment is brutal and inhospitable to art. And the act of simply writing those words fills me with terrible sadness."

Writes Martin Scorsese in "Martin Scorsese: I Said Marvel Movies Aren’t Cinema. Let Me Explain/Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected. In superhero movies, nothing is at risk, a director says" (NYT).

The top-rated comment over there (by a lot) is:
You don’t have to be an Academy Award winner like Scorsese to understand what’s going on in America these days and it isn’t confined to cinema, either. Intellectual curiosity has been replaced by ostentatious consumption, quality by quantity and political activism by slogans that fit on baseball caps. The barbarians are not at the gates, they’ve overrun us.
That might sound like another knee-jerk blaming of Trump, but that's reversing cause and effect. In the reasoning of that comment, Trump is someone who understood American culture deeply enough to speak to us. Other politicians can stand back, deplore Trump's style, and continue in the old-school form, but reaching people in great numbers is even more important in electoral politics than in the movie business. Scorsese says these movies are not cinema, and Trump antagonists say he is not presidential. You see what happens.

107 comments:

Darrell said...

We don't want "presidential" if it means slipping down the Socialist sinkhole. We shout "Borders. Walls. America Above All."

Amen.

daskol said...

I think it's unfair to blame American cultural decline for the trend Scorcese deplores in cinema. The fact is the dumbest, loudest and noisiest spectacle films make most of their money abroad. The odd "adult drama" or historical film that does well typically does well in the US and UK. There's so many things you can hang on American cultural decline, but this is not one of them. At least, not as much as the barbarianism of the rest of the world.

tim maguire said...

Whenever I hear someone talk about another’s lack of intellectual curiosity, I think of Sarah Palin and the “incurious” epithet. It was an empty insult, a smear meant to sound intellectual. It’s a tell that the person making the statement is an ignorant arrogant jackass.

daskol said...

If you look at where the worst movies, per Scorcese, make the most of their money, it's China. This is a thinly veiled anti-Asian view, like many of those articles about the horror of visiting tourist sites overstuffed with tourists. The commenters at the NYT are too suffused with self-loathing to realize what Marty loathes.

The Vault Dweller said...

Hasn't the dichotomy between art and entertainment always existed? Art being the end of the spectrum that is supposed to explore new ideas and human experiences, where as entertainment is meant to make people feel good. I always thought it was similar to the dichotomy between science and engineering. Science is meant to explore and discover new ideas and frontiers of thought whereas engineering is meant to make practical applications of those ideas that directly help humanity.

J. Farmer said...

The function of people like Martin (and Ann) is to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. This country is sinking and you people are primarily concerned with what music the band is playing.

Laslo Spatula said...

Trump would probably have been successful in Old Hollywood.

But would he be a Meyer or a Selznick?

I am Laslo.

tim in vermont said...

"This country is sinking and you people are primarily concerned with what music the band is playing.”

And you are primarily concerned with the deportment of the captain.

Darrell said...

Gangster movies are high art.
I’m funny how, I mean funny like I’m a clown? I amuse you?

gilbar said...

why doesn't he just say:
Superhero movies are Cartoons
???

Quaestor said...

Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected...

Well, sometimes. But demanding the unexpected is far too restrictive of drama. The whole of classical tragedy is structured around the inevitable, the antithesis of the unexpected.

That said I agree with Scorsese's assessment of superheroes, particularly Superman.

John henry said...

Sounds like phart to me.

Noisy, smelly, pretentious.

I like Scorsese's movies and have never felt inclined to see a marvel movie.

But Scorsese is just being a pompous gasbag

John Henry

Lincolntf said...

Pretty sure "Yes We Can!" fits on a baseball cap.

Kevin said...

That might sound like another knee-jerk blaming of Trump, but that's reversing cause and effect.

Oh no, the cause is always Fox News.

It’s as deep as these Ivy League thinkers can get.

Fernandinande said...

Intellectual curiosity has been replaced by ostentatious consumption, quality by quantity and political activism by slogans that fit on baseball caps.

That is a standard and ageless "I'm better than most people" statement, but I wonder if the emitter of those words was intellectually curious enough to know that baseball caps didn't exist until around 1900, and that acronyms were almost non-existent until the 1940s, and that the slogan he refers to is actually more complicated and effective than the slogan of his probable hero.

rhhardin said...

#MeToo is ruining movie tit scenes as well.

Temujin said...

I think Scorsese is spot on and the #1 rated commenter is an illustration of those who don't get it. I guarantee that person is one who stands in line to see the latest Marvel movie-like production. Then Tweets about it. Takes a selfie of zirself while there. Leaves the theater and goes to a bar that specializes in 'craft' beer only to find that avocado, turmeric, and hydroponic kale may make a beer more righteous, but it tastes like crap. Still, he takes some shots for Instagram of zir and zir's friends drinking avocado/turmeric/kale beer. Then goes to his tastefully decorated 30 square foot Brooklyn apt to detail the fun on Facebook.

No- it's not Maga hats that are doing this to the cinema. It's 'Yes We Can' hats that did this. And are still doing it, much to their own chagrin.

Kevin said...

Risk. Skin in the game. Positive attitude towards history. Unwilling to bend to China for a buck. Not part of the system that doles out superherodom based on your gender, race, and twitter feed.

Sounds more like red state people to me.

The ultimate bubble is immediately assigning the “high class” position to the blue people in the cities.

clint said...

And yet, the barriers between the aspiring movie-maker and their public have never been lower and the range of cinematic experiences available to the public have never been greater.

Some people will arrive in Heaven and their first words will be: "Who let those people in?"

stevew said...

Life, work, culture, art, and love were so much harder and yet better when I was young. Or at least that is how Scorcese sounds to me.

Then again, I tend to avoid the movies that show up in theaters. I've never seen a Transformers movie, nor any of the Marvel offerings. I do watch the lesser promoted offerings that either make their first appearance on Netflix/Amazon Prime, or get there very soon after release. Not sure if Scorcese would call them 'cinema' but they are not full of big explosions and such. Instead they tell a story in dramatic fashion with situations and choices that are difficult to navigate for the main characters.

As for national politics, I'm not buying the argument that the situation is much worse now, or dumbed-down in some way. Simplistic campaign slogans like MAGA are the bread and butter of Presidential politics. Go look at wikipedia for a catalog of these slogans dating back to 1840 "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too".

By most objective measures, no people have lived so well as we in the West do now. Perhaps if there is a cultural decline it is the result of life being so easy for so many. First World Problem, as it were.

David Begley said...

I just read the entire piece and I agree with Marty. I haven’t seen any of those Marvel movies and have no desire to.

The most interesting comment to me was that today’s movie industry is about eliminating risk. “Frankenstein, Part II” is very commercial but it was written (by me!) on three levels. Commercial, artistic and homage and citations to other works of art. In fact, I use the exact words of Blackstone and St. Ignatius Loyola.

rhhardin said...

Line of Duty is a nice series, difficult to watch one episode at a time owing to a cliff-hanger episode-end format.

One trick in modern series is a man and a woman destined for each other that never quite get together.

To get more material, old tweets or the equivalent constantly turn up. Prodigal son is ejected from home for the episode.

The challenge is always to make it interesting rather than soap opera.

No classical form to it. It's a series form.

But it's still interesting vs soap. There's an art to it. BBC has some stinkers as well as some beauties.

tcrosse said...

"Cinema" has largely moved over to television. Roll over Scorsese and give Polansky the news.

rhhardin said...

I want a SNAFU baseball cap. Same coloring as MAGA hats.

Fandor said...

TRUMP would be GOLDWYN, his name emblazoned on the most famous studio (MGM), but an independent producer working within the system, producing BLOCKBUSTERS!
He'd live by Sam's adage, "Give me a smart idiot over a stupid genius any day."

What say you, Laslo?

David Begley said...

Larry Kasdan said in Austin that any story can be told in a Western.

peacelovewoodstock said...

Intellectual curiosity is alive and well, however there seems to be much less of it on the left, with their "woke" groupthink enforcement of progressive dogma.

Ostentatious consumption is about as old as civilization, isn't it?

Just about everything I can think of is of higher quality than ten, or twenty, or fifty, or 100 years ago. True that we have greater quantities, but with improved quality, that is hardly a bad thing.

Finally, we are seeing more political activism than any time I can recall, except perhaps ~ 1968.

So I'd have to say I pretty much disagree with the premise coming and going.

tim in vermont said...

I didn’t know there was supposed to be an easy path for a person to become an artist.

BudBrown said...

Well, maybe so. But Taxi Driver needs a rewrite. Foster's in town to get the
baddies done her sister wrong and Deniro goes along for the ride and doesn't need
to change his half-wit male schtik. The unexpected is when one of the baddies gets taken out by a high velocity hi heel.

Automatic_Wing said...

You don’t have to be an Academy Award winner like Scorsese to understand what’s going on in America these days and it isn’t confined to cinema, either. Intellectual curiosity has been replaced by ostentatious consumption, quality by quantity and political activism by slogans that fit on baseball caps. The barbarians are not at the gates, they’ve overrun us.

OK, Boomer. Lol.

John henry said...

Blogger Laslo Spatula said...

Trump would probably have been successful in Old Hollywood.

But would he be a Meyer or a Selznick?


Or a Joseph P Kennedy. (St Jack's father)

Extremely successful producer and studio (Pathe) owner

John Henry

tim in vermont said...

The first Guardians of the Galaxy was art, was that Marvel? Then the spark went away for the sequels, who saw that coming?

But mostly Hollywood stuff is crap recently. No risk, no reward, except of course the piles of money. I don’t go to the movies to go to church of wokeness. It’s like when the Catholic Church used to dictate what movies could be shown in Montreal, and which needed to be restricted to certain times or banned. You know what? Maybe that wasn’t a bad system.

David Begley said...

I’ve had several comments that the dialogue is spot on and formal. But people talked that way in 1795. Heck, average people read the Federalist Papers in newspapers then.

Jamie said...

Eh... High art vs low art. High art hasn't had a significant audience, money-wise, in decades at least (and I think it could be argued that it's a century or more - that all those ordinary folks in the '50s who listened to symphonies and went to art museums were NOT going to hear 4'33" or to see "Piss Christ"; they went to experience the work of dead masters). Actually, if there was ever an audience for high art beyond patronage, at least part of which was driven by the status of having an artist on staff rather than by how compelling the patron found the art, I can't think when it was.

So ISTM Scorsese is pining for a time that never was.

traditionalguy said...

Making America the Greatest Show On Earth requires a showman. If you want a creator of new art, then you go out and hire artists as an act spotlighted in the third ring, the one next to ladies riding the elephants and the Lion Tamers in the cage, with the trapeze guys flying overhead as the clown car arrives.In other words a Trump Rally.

That's entertainment by the President. And it beats the best and the brightest running world wars and looting the earth after killing CIA targets called enemies.

You could say it's making peace and prosperity fun again, or a repurposing of the Military Industrial Complex to support life.

tim in vermont said...

"any story can be told in a Western.”

The beauty of a western is that the characters are free to act on their own outside of the overweening controls imposed by civilization, so they are more true to themselves. I kind of realized this when reading a Hemingway story about a guy who starts a fight in a bar on a little Caribbean island and the constable who was there finishes his drink and heads out to the dock and drives away in his boat and the guy who started the fight is left to deal with the consequences. He never would have started anything if the cop wasn’t there to protect him from himself. That’s the beauty of westerns.

narciso said...

You mean like you didnt build that. Did scorsese have issue with that.

jnseward said...

Great movies are being made but they are being streamed on TV, instead of movie theaters. Even the great Scorcese is going that route. Who wants to go to a movie theater?

Seeing Red said...

Iron Man came out is 2008. Who was President then? There was a version of The Hulk that came out in 2003.

Scorcese sniffs about the low brows.

Their cinema is very expensive crap. They hate the low brow viewers and don’t let us forget it. They have to ALWAYS take their digs in their dialog.

We usually don’t vote for school marms and professor-types because we don’t want to be lectured to.

The Woke KILLED the Star Wars franchise. They can’t do anything right anymore.

Plus Shakespeare, et al are off limits now.


Wait...is artsy or Cinema the new euphemism for LGBTXQ? Is he bitching those movies don’t do well because of that?

There is good stuff now that the Big 3 aren’t in charge from a certain POV.

Kevin said...

This country is sinking and you people are primarily concerned with what music the band is playing.

You just keep reminding people it’s called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, when they call it the “Iran Deal”.

That’s clearly where the country is going off the tracks.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

"If you want to send a message use Western Union."

Scorsese is just plain wrong on the substance. It is far easier to create "films" today than at any other time since the actual advent of film technology. Professional level cameras are available to practically anyone, money can be raised over the internet, distribution channels are numerous and hungry for content.

Bob Boyd said...

OK boomer

MadisonMan said...

What does Scorsese think of Mary Beth's film about her dying Mother?

(Thank you althouse for the juxtaposition)

Unknown said...


Scorcese "market-researched, audience-tested, vetted, modified, revetted and remodified until they’re ready for consumption"

We have Beyond Cinema to go with our Beyond Meat.

Anonymous said...

daskol: I think it's unfair to blame American cultural decline for the trend Scorcese deplores in cinema. The fact is the dumbest, loudest and noisiest spectacle films make most of their money abroad. The odd "adult drama" or historical film that does well typically does well in the US and UK. There's so many things you can hang on American cultural decline, but this is not one of them. At least, not as much as the barbarianism of the rest of the world.

It's hard to sell anything but cartoons in an environment where there is no body of shared cultural referents that goes any deeper than comic books. That's more and more true of the domestic market, too - the alleged superior American cinema of yesteryear was selling into the "problematic" American demographic structure of yesteryear, the very existence of which all good progs condemn today. (The audience for international "high-brow" cinema is the same as it's always been - nobody is going to keep un-subsidized studios afloat making those sub-titled movies people like me want to see.)

You can never get a prog to understand or admit that many of the things they deplore (or, at least, make a big show of deploring) are the consequences of the things they promoted. Somehow, the coarseness and stupidity of popular culture, the dumbing-down of the schools, etc., etc., etc. are simply the fault of philistine Republican-voting greed-bags who keep cutting funding. (This has all culminated in the current daily spectacle of public figures with no claim whatever to even a shell of refinement and culture excoriating that other guy's vulgarity. Molière, thou shouldst be living at this hour.)

tim in vermont said...

"rhhardin said...
I want a SNAFU baseball cap. Same coloring as MAGA hats.”

Genius.

Seeing Red said...

Hollywood refuses to make miniseries like “Lonesome Dove.”

That was epic.

I still watch it and for you - NON-BOOMERS who haven’t seen it, probably the best made-for -TV miniseries ever.

It’s also mostly full of white people so fair warning.

So I have a question, if we’re supposed to assign victimhood to every POC, how come Hollywood seems to want to practice “I have a Dream”:where the lead’s color isn’t supposed to matter?

Back in the 80s, it seemed was miniseries King. “ShoGun,” “The Thorn Birds,” etc. I think “A Woman of Substance,” too, but that was a chick movie.

samanthasmom said...

Baseball caps are better than campaign buttons. They keep your head warm or cool and shade your eyes from the sun. We've just become more practical with how we wear our slogans.

Churchy LaFemme: said...

First of all, if you want to, you can shoot a movie on your iphone for $0, and premier it on youtube also for $0. There are basically no barriers to movie-making anymore. Pony up credit-card sized sums, and you can get something that looks slick. If your actors won't work for free or nearly so, then they surely aren't artists.

Second, we have always had "comic book" movies and many of them are beloved. "The Adventures of Robin Hood", anyone?

Marcus Bressler said...

Based on great reviews, I went to see "The Lighthouse" last night. Apart from fantastic cinematography, it was a hot mess.

THEOLDMAN

Want to see "Motherless Brooklyn" also but now apprehensive.

David Begley said...

There is nothing woke in “Frankenstein, Part II.” The Second Amendment comes to the rescue. But that line will probably be cut for the Chinese version.

Captain Robert Walton is a closeted gay but it is a minor plot point and completely organic.

J said...

Artists are egotists and want their chosen to worship their genius.Producers are capitalists and want the masses to find utility in what they make.Which pamper the few and which enriches the people.Do the math.Go read Von Neumann's "The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior".Then tell me which is really better for Society.

Sprezzatura said...

Why does Althouse pretend Americans prefer/red DJT?

His election = tyranny of minority. (Not even mentioning Russian meddling and Comey deep state HRC bombshell announcement that coincided with last days polling slide.)

Logic is tricky.

rehajm said...

If you look at where the worst movies, per Scorsese, make the most of their money, it's China. This is a thinly veiled anti-Asian view...

It could be anti-Asian but I suspect it's more anti-crap. Culture, character and plot in a Scorsese movie don't translate well to a Chinese audience and nobody wants to invest nine figures in an epic they might not recoup. Blame the accountants...

Scorsese's comments made me wonder- the Marvel type movies have always played alongside the more heady artistic stuff, haven't they? Total Recall and Home Alone played along side Goodfellas...

rehajm said...

First of all, if you want to, you can shoot a movie on your iPhone for $0, and premier it on youtube also for $0. There are basically no barriers to movie-making anymore.

I recommend High Flying Bird.

Mr. O. Possum said...

What would Scorsese say about the hundreds, even thousands, of cowboy movies Hollywood made from the dawn of cinema to the 1960s?

By 1938, so many of these cheap-o flicks had come and gone that when John Ford sought funding for "Stagecoach," studios told him the genre was dead. That's why John Wayne starred in that movie. For the past decade he had been making wretched westerns (about 60 in all). He came cheap.

And just how many organized crime movies has Hollywood made? We remember the Bogart classics and know Scorsese's work (same actors in the same stereotyped roles just like in the westerns), but there are probably hundreds of crime movies that time has long forgotten.

Wince said...

Cinema is an art form that brings you the unexpected. In [woke] movies, nothing is at risk, a director says.

Conservatives have said this for an even longer time.

traditionalguy said...

Great History can be made into great movies, like Saving Private Ryan. This weekend the wife and I have tickets for the new Midway. That history easily carries a great movie if its done right. We are thinking of renaming i, "The Day Wade McCluskey Saved America's Ass."

roesch/voltaire said...

Being President is not an art form, although some presidents are more artful in their style and approach. I agree movies have declined into special effects of car chases and shooting, but every now and then a film like Give Me Liberty comes along and shows what an art form looks like. Now do films like this or foreign festivals draw huge audiences or young people, from my experience not so much as seen in the decline of the art film theaters like the one in Tucson.

Static Ping said...

There are two main problems with movies these days:

1. Many movies, especially the blockbusters, are not made specifically for an American audience anymore. The overseas market is very important financially, which leads to making more generic films that can attract moviegoers from different countries and cultures. This is especially a problem with China, which censors everything, leading to Hollywood catering to the tastes of Communist bureaucrats. (This is not a new thing. Hollywood cozied up with Nazi Germany, too.)

2. Furthermore, Hollywood has become infested with "woke" values. A lot of movies seem to be made to show how "righteous" the movie makers are. This is a problem because it immediately alienates a good chunk of the audience, audiences in general do not like being preached to in a heavy handed way no matter what the message, and "breaking barriers" seems to have become a substitute for "make a good movie."

It does amuse me that the progressive barbarians inside the gate seem to think everyone else is the barbarians.

Gahrie said...

Scorsese says these movies are not cinema, and Trump antagonists say he is not presidential. You see what happens.

And both are examples of "elites" showing their scorn for the Deplorables.

Kay said...

I’m not a fan of the Marvel movies either, but I have seen some good writing, good dialouge in them. A lot of hard work does go into these things. My main gripe is that I wish they weren’t the only thing on the menu.

William said...

Has anyone here ever seen Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus? The BBC version is unintentionally hilarious. Lavinia gets raped by two bad guys. That's not the worst of it. Afterwards they cut out her tongue and cut off her hands so she will be unable to identify them. That's not the worst of it. She's discovered by her uncle shortly after the rape and mutilation. He goes on and on about how sad it is ponder how her lily hands will never more tremble like aspen leaves upon the lute. He then describes what a sad blow it will be for her father to see her in such a shamed and damaged state. Lavinia regards him with mute and savage horror as he recites fine words about how piteous she looks and how hard her father will take it.....Shakespeare's poetry is all very well and good in its place, but when you've just had your hands cut off and tongue ripped out, you're just not in the mood. Carol Burnett or Kate McKinnon was meant to play this scene.....The scene just doesn't play for modern audiences, but in Shakepeare's day, Titus was a very popular play. Every audience gets the spectacle they want.

Gahrie said...

Marty is just pissed he didn't get Ironman.

narciso said...

We want movies about good and evil, nearly 50 years after meanstreets youre focusing on american mafia hitmen, how unoriginal.

Drago said...

Laslo: "Trump would probably have been successful in Old Hollywood.

But would he be a Meyer or a Selznick?"

Undoubtedly Selznick.

rightguy said...

I attend 0.8 movies per year in the theater and I havn't seen one show with guys in tights.

NC-Dad said...

The tut-tut game of O tempora, O mores goes back to at least Cicero.

Forty years ago Fran Lebowitz wrote: "If movies (or film as you are probably now referring to them) were of such a high and serious nature, can you possibly entertain even the slightest notion that they would show them in a place that sold Orange Crush and Jujubes?

Like any other medium, some films are great, most are pap.

Jerry said...

Went to see 'The Current War' on Saturday. It was quite good - but the previews were for other 'artistic' movies that

Had blacks hated on by whites - the KKK in 1996. (Well, that was so long ago that it might as well be the 1920s, right? So they were EVERYWHERE, instead of the deservedly ridiculed few that there were...)

Had blacks attacked by cops - for daring to drive while black, I guess...

Had blacks attacked by cops again - for ... well, I have to admit after the second one I was tuned out.

Had blacks - yeah, didn't even bother to figure out what was going on.

Friend I was with turned to me and said "They're really hoping for a race war, aren't they?"

I'd like to think not, but the premise thread that ran through all of the previews was that there's no way anyone not white would ever get a fair shake. And these were all 'highly acclaimed' at art festivals.

The second movie we saw was "Terminator - Dark Fate". Not a bad movie at all - really like the idea of a (spoiler) Terminator changing diapers and owning a curtain company after it fulfilled its mission... but I'm afraid 'Big Spectacle Movie' is getting just a bit boring when the characters aren't all that likeable.

YMMV, results no guaranteed, user experience may vary, you know the drill...

John henry said...

As someone said making movies is really easy. I have two studios in my basement. One is of a shop with machines and people working in back of me. The other is a fancy studio desk with bi TV screen to show pictures and video.

The whole lashup, including the studios, camera, LED lights, "studio" tripos, mike, teleprompter, green screen with stand and all probably cost me less than $600. Adobe Elements to meld everything together including titles and free music cost me another $75 or so.

I do 2 videos a month for a client and they pay me more, on an hourly basis, than I pay my lawyer.

I make no pretense to it being art. OTOH, a lot of people tell me that they are interesting and, most importantly, helpful.

One month, when my mike crapped out and I was on deadline, I even did the videos using my Android phone and they came out fine.

I am a graduate of the YouTube school of fine arts and filmmaking. Lots of good videos to help me figure out how to do it when I was getting started a few years back.

John Henry

narciso said...

Of course scorseses protege is helmimg a big budget production, that would be considered defamatory in its inplications it was about another group.

joshbraid said...

"Intellectual curiosity has been replaced by ostentatious consumption, quality by quantity and political activism by slogans that fit on baseball caps. The barbarians are not at the gates, they’ve overrun us."

I agree--is this not how we "got" President Trump? Living in Falls Church, VA, recently was an education seeing political activism by slogans fitting on yard signs, ostentatious consumption, etc. . I personally think that the barbarians are the ones rejecting civilization and that they are usually, not always, the "woke" ones.

John henry said...

Does Uncle Benny comes home cout as high art?

John Henry

MadisonMan said...

His election = tyranny of minority.
Yes, if only the Country was governed based on the votes in California.

John henry said...

Seeing red,

Absolutely agree with you about Lonesome Dove.

The sequel with Val Kilmer was almost as good.

The Lonesome Dove series not so much.

John Henry

HoodlumDoodlum said...

The best part is that the barbarians, if that's what they are, were all raised and wholly created by those in Professor Althouse's generation. I mean the 20-40 year olds making pop culture purchases today were raised by the people who were young in the 1960s, right?

It's not even an "I learned it from watching you!" situation, it's literally that the values and tastes of the people driving our current culture were formed, intentionally, by the children of the 60s.

The non-conformist and open-minded idealists who tore into, and tore down, the cultural edifices loved by those squares in the suits and thoroughly repudiated hung up ol' Mr. Normal's inherited culture.

Those same groups, now, decry the shallow and infantile state of our cultural products and its paucity of artistically valuable pop culture products. A generation that teaches relativism (from elementary through graduate school) and denies that any of our historic culture has any value (being, naturally, mostly the product of dead white men and/or a product of the times those dead white men had power) complains about the inevitable result of their victory. Sad!

Seeing Red said...

Part of the civilization I choose to live in is getting your immunizations, picking up the feces and garbage, and keeping the electricity and water flowing and not living in tents.

Modern civilization.

Seeing Red said...

Oh, yeah, and not freeing the criminals and keeping my gun to protect me if they decide to empty the prisons.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

Would Raging Bull have gotten made without Rocky?

narciso said...

Then theres the epstein matter, which when you tie it with wexner has a white collar mob feel to it

First Tenor said...

The Catcher Was a Spy with Paul Rudd was a very good recent historical film without all the bombast. Each has its place. Perhaps if Marty made more different types of films, rather than mafia movies, we could take him ore seriously.

Dave Begley said...

John Henry:

I'm guessing it will be $20-50 million to make my movie right, but that's way less than the $187m spent on Terminator.

I think I need 3 big stars. My vote is for Emily Blunt, Hugh Jackman and Javier Badem. Of those three, Emily Blunt is essential. But I didn't write the movie with those three in mind.

You might make good movies, but who sees them? I want millions to see my movie. It is culturally significant. It will make marriage cool again.

Rick.T. said...

Too early to know if he is right. Recall that Shakespeare was low brow in his day and actors were socially just barely a notch above whores and highwaymen.

Robert Cook said...

"Trump would probably have been successful in Old Hollywood.

"But would he be a Meyer or a Selznick?"



Harry Cohn.

narciso said...

I have my own novella under works, much like departed but set in the middle east;

rcocean said...

Yes, they have get it a dig in at Trump - always. I don't have time for Scorcese's comment, its not like he was producing Shakespeare, Scorsese makes Gangster films! Or movies like the trashy film about "Bill The Butcher" which was a cartoon without animation. The Super-hero movies aren't "crowding out" other films. Make a GOOD serious movie about real people and you'll get a spot on TV, or Netflix, or wherever.

The problem is most of these new "serious" films aren't very good, or they're pushing the same ol' crap we've seen a million times. So and so has a terminal disease. A young man learns about life in a coming of age story. A stuffy old woman and a sassy black man learn from each. So-and-so is the first black/gay/women to do this-or-that. Blah, blah, blah.

narciso said...

I liked the aviator, which was about the real life counterpart to howard hughes as ifante terrible.

Yancey Ward said...

rhhardin wrote:

"Line of Duty is a nice series, difficult to watch one episode at a time owing to a cliff-hanger episode-end format."

Yes! I recommended this series here a few months ago. Available on Prime Video's Acorn subservice.

J. Farmer said...

@Skylark:

And you are primarily concerned with the deportment of the captain.

Concerned, yes. Primarily, no.

@Kevin:

You just keep reminding people it’s called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, when they call it the “Iran Deal”.

That’s clearly where the country is going off the tracks.


Quite a non-sequitur there, Kevin. But if you actually believe that's one of the major issues facing the nation, then we are worse off than even I feared.

cubanbob said...

Scorsese has been in the business for decades. Ya think he would have realized by now that it's a business.

tim in vermont said...

Liam Neeson would make a great Frankenstein, but Jackman would bring physical grace to the role.

tim in vermont said...

"His election = tyranny of minority. “

Yes, because if it mattered how Republicans voted in California, Republicans wouldn’t have spent any time there running up the count, or running up the score in Texas and Oklahoma, for example.

People just don’t vote where the outcome is not in doubt. And you know how Hillary could have prevented Comey from ruining her election? She could have not used a private server and not set up the State Department like a lemonade stand for influence peddling! That would sure have kept Comey out of it.

narciso said...

Well he played kind of tortured soul in darkman, about van helsimg the less said the better.

Howard said...

What a stinking elitist Marty is. Why is it our betters always think they know what is right and wrong, yet they go on and protest against lynching and gay bashing, which are known sins punishable by death but shunning is good enough at least. What an assbat, I hope NetFlix goes down in flames over this.

PM said...

Had the same reaction tyo the Harry Potter fixation. Saw one movie and said to myself where's the tension? They just do some magic and, boom, it's fixed. It's all costumes and sets.

Howard said...

Blogger J. Farmer said... The function of people like Martin (and Ann) is to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. This country is sinking and you people are primarily concerned with what music the band is playing.

You need to find a better group of friends and acquaintances. Maybe it's your deplorable love that fuels self haterd and angerous flustration with the rules of our bullshit universe... Most folks on earth wants to be American and live American dream.

J. Farmer said...

@Howard:

You need to find a better group of friends and acquaintances.

Nobody here is either a friend or an acquaintance of mine.

Maybe it's your deplorable love that fuels self haterd and angerous flustration with the rules of our bullshit universe... Most folks on earth wants to be American and live American dream.

Honestly have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but by all means continue fiddling. And I will continue playing the role of America's obituarist.

MBunge said...

In what way is "The Aviator" cinema but "Iron Man" is not?

In what way is the remake of "Cape Fear" cinema but "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is not?

In what way is "Shutter Island" cinema but "Ant-Man" is not?

In what way is "Gangs of New York" cinema but "Avengers: Endgame" is not?

In what way is "The Color of Money" cinema but "Guardians of the Galaxy" is not?

Mike

Howard said...

Of course you don't understand it J. The "end is nigh" attitude is a bonafide mental illness.

narciso said...

certainly one is drama, the other is entertainment, I mentioned the aviator, because it broke out of the pattern, of course hughes would later intersect with the underworld in vegas.

J. Farmer said...

@Howard:

Of course you don't understand it J. The "end is nigh" attitude is a bonafide mental illness.

So is it your opinion that regression cannot happen? That the arc of history bends towards justice? If so, perhaps you can identify some of the long-term trends that lead you to be optimistic about the future.

Maillard Reactionary said...

So J. Farmer, since buwaya (presumably) has moved to Spain, you've appointed yourself our national obituarist?

Good luck in your new position. You seem very cheerful for someone cursed with the ability to see the future with clarity. Are you well stocked up with gold, ammunition, guns, water, and cans of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee ravioli for when the fit hits the shan?

Where's your bolthole? I want to make sure that I don't go there.

Oh and don't forget the playing cards. You'll have plenty of time to play solitaire with your friends and admirers.

J. Farmer said...

@Phidippus:

Yes, I am awful, terrible, no good yada yada yada. What part of my pessimism do you take issue with? What do you think the country will look like when European-Americans are less than half the population? If you think we have issues with "diversity" and multiculturalism and identity politics now, what do you think will become of these problems as the country becomes ever more "diverse?"

Robert Cook said...

"So is it your opinion that regression cannot happen? That the arc of history bends towards justice?"

The arc of history bends toward the demise/collapse of empires and societies...over and over.

Static Ping said...

William, I saw a performance of Titus Andronicus last year. It was quite excellent. Shakespeare is very flexible when it comes to performances given there are few stage directions, so if you are creative enough you can make any scene work.

narciso said...

Ive seen the film adaptation of coriolianus of course it had a modern balkam type setting

narciso said...

I think ive seen parts of gangs and all hiz oevre except king of comedy, mean streets and raging bull. But they are dark muddled fare we want to see light.