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Censorship: good or bad?
It depends on whom you ask. Or, when you ask them.
This week, Toronto distributor Jeff Sackman (ThinkFilm) has been castigating the American film ratings board for giving Atom Egoyan's latest film, Where the Truth Lies the dreaded NC-17 rating, because of an explicit three-way sex scene. The Amercians "are just not as evolved as we are," he said. Lovely.
He's also had trouble with another film, The Aristocrats, possibly the most foul-mouthed film ever made. It was banned by the AMC theatre chain (3,500 screens). As Sackman said in the Hollywood Reporter, "The real problem is somebody is deciding on a personal basis what's appropriate and what isn't."
Remember that quote.
Set aside for a moment the fact that it should be pretty obvious to anyone, especially anyone in the industry, that explicit three-way sex and two hours of non-stop swearing about children having sex with dogs (among other things) is going to get an NC-17.
Set aside also the fact that, while Where the Truth Lies is said to be Egoyan's most commercial yet, he is still essentially an art-house auteur, and thus not likely to play in Peoria anyway.
Instead of fussing about those trivial details, think back to a couple of weeks ago, when he was insisting that Canadian distirubtors do a little banning of their own.
The film he wants banned is Karla.
I have no intention of seeing Karla. I think it's a more than a little vile that someone has made a film about a woman who has already gotten more than enough publicity (so much that I actually stopped my newspaper subscription in July because I was sickened by the ever-smirking Christie Blatchford's endless fawning descriptions of Karla's blond tresses and trim figure). If I was a film distributor, I wouldn't be picking it up. If it gets picked up, and any of my friends go to see it, I'll probably chide them.
But to ban it? Unfortunately wrong. If the various provincial ratings authorites in Canada say it's okay, then some weasely distributor has every right to pick it up if he wants. I hope that people will stay away in droves, and that the distributors and producers will lose money by the truckload and not make this type of film again.
The worst part, of course, is the fact that Sackman has not seen the film. This makes him as bad as the animal rights activists who protested a film they hadn't seen at last year's Toronto International Film Festival (thus giving the film more publicity than it ever would have gotten on its own).
Banning is a bad idea. Banning by the ignorant is just plain stupid and wrong.
updated 25 august 2005. permalink
Then comes marriage.
There's nothing the media loves more than a celebrity marriage, except maybe a celebrity divorce. The tabs love movie stars private lives when they're single too, but they love them more when they look like they're getting serious. Why?
Because they look like they're getting serious.
For every person who loves dishing trash talk, there are ten more who won't admit to it publicly. Fluffy gossip is a guilty secret.
So stars who get married - who get serious - are elevated a few degrees: we can pretend that they are no longer flighty things whose eyes flit from pretty thing to shiny thing and whose attention span is shorter than that of the average gadfly. No, an actor who is married, who has made a solid commitment to a down-to-earth and somewhat old-fashioned institution is less a cheesey matinee idol, and more a weighty artiste. More worthy of our attention. Less guilt-inducing.
There are other ways to buy this kind of respect - charity causes are always popular - but marriage is the easiest and most fun, and you get presents.
I will confess that when Jude Law first popped onto the radar with Gattaca lo these many years ago, the fact that he was "happily" married, a father no less, made him seem (to me) more like a "serious" actor - a serious person - than the average Hollywood flibbertigibet. Thus, I didn't need to be guilty of admiring him - he's not just another hot young thing (who looked awesome in swim trunks in The Talented Mr. Ripley), he was a serious upstanding citizen worthy of my respect.
Well, that's all shot to hell.
It's pretty hard to have any respect for someone who cheats on the girl he cheated on his wife with.
People were thrilled to see Brad and Jen get married for the same reasons - because the sobriety of death-do-us-part vows elevated them above the cheese of their surroundings. What better way to justify wasting time with the television than to imagine that the overpaid people you are watching are worthy of respect! There is so much invested in the need to believe in the worthiness of these stars that their breakup has been painted as an anguished debate about important issues that many people face - children or career? - rather than happening for the more typically Hollywood (and obvious) reason: Angelina Jolie is hot.
But you can't blame people for coming up with complicated reasons for justifying their vices. If they didn't, they'd have to give up tv.
updated 28 july 2005. permalink
Like a service charge, except you get no service.
I know I'm not the first person to rail against Ticketmaster.
I've been spoiled, I guess. I usually rely on the people-giving-me-comps technique for going out. As Symon once said, "Paying to see shows is for people who live north of Bloor." But next week I'm going to a benefit, and getting comped for a benefit is wrong.
Coincidentally enough, my coworker was buying tickets today too. That concert ticket that was priced at $22 when she bought it? $39 in charges on her credit card. That's $17 in "service" charges, or 77% of the cost of the actual ticket. Part of that was a "convenience" charge of $9.50 for buying the ticket over the internet - a process which is completely automated, in which the only effort expended is the customer's.
A quick google of the phrase "Ticketmaster must be stopped" yeilds a lot of horror stories - people whose tickets arrived with the wrong dates, people who were sold tickets to events that happened in the past, all to be greeted with the same response: No refunds, no exchanges.
Ugh.
I thought I could cut costs by walking down to my nearest Ticketmaster outlet and buying the ticket there. But no! My $60 ticket would cost me $79! A long walk in the sun for nothing. Another, longer walk with less shade took me to the venue itself, where I finally got ticketed up for $62.50.
What's really insidious, is that in addition to the $19 Ticketmaster wanted from me, they charge event promoters a percentage to use their service. If I had bought my ticket for $79 at Ticketmaster, the promoter wouldn't even have gotten the full $60; they'd have made only $55. Why the double-dipping? Why the greed?
Because they can get away with it.
Unfortunately, Ticketmaster has a near monopoly on concert tickets. Unless you're going to see an independent act that sells tickets at record stores, or live/work within walking distance of the concert venue itself, Ticketmaster is the only option.
With business practices like theirs, even scalpers are beginning to look like the more ethical alternative.
updated 21 july 2005. permalink
Sponsorship.
It's been over a year and the scandal rolls on.
For those outside of Canada, it was discovered in February 2004 that up to $100 million of the $250 million (40%) spent on the sponsorship programmme between 1996 and 2001 had been spent not on valid expenses, but rather was used to line the pockets of a handful of ad agencies in QuŽbec with ties to the ruling Liberal Party. More here.
The whole story is horrifying: waste, corruption, arrogance, you name it, it's all there.
But there's another problem.
While the media drones on about taxpayer dollars bein frivolously frittered away, they're ignoring the other real victim here: the arts.
Every dollar that was spent on autographed golfballs was supposed to go back to communities in the form of financial support for cultural events. Now that the fund has been cancelled, that money - which many groups relied heavily upon - is gone. At the same time that tobacco sponsorships were outlawed.*
Before you start shreiking that these beggars ought to survive on their own without handouts anyway, remember the study that was done a few years ago on where the money goes when the government funds, for example, small theatre: back to the public. It pays the theatre's property tax. It pays wages (23% or more of which are paid in income tax) which are spent on rent (a portion of which is property tax) and goods and services (which are taxed at 7% - 15%). It provides for the sale of tickets (on which there is 7% GST), and keeps ticket prices low enough that it encourages those ticket buyers to go out for dinner (where they'll pay tax, as well as providing the income for other tax payers). It drives tourism (which draws in foreign dollars). It's a neat little circle of self-sufficiency and I wish I could find the study that was done a few years ago that conclusively proved that funding the arts is a money-maker for the goevernment. I'll google more later.
So now all of that is down the tubes.
I've worked in the arts for years. I know firsthand that, for the average legitimate arts group, there is no mythical trough from which the money flows freely, where they may feed at will. There are mountains of paperwork to fight with, and mountains of conditions to be met. Most funding is only available to non-profits, which ensures that arts groups can't make or accumulate amounts of money large enough to become self-sustaining without the help of grants and sponsorship programmes. Most of them make their annual reports readily available, so you can see exactly how little money they have to work with, and where it is spent. There is complete transparency.
Why should a non-profit arts cooperative suffer because greedy ad execs were embezzling?
Cancelling the sponsorship programme is punishing the wrong people. The sponsorship programme should be restored.
updated 17 march 2005. permalink
Stop the Zeitgeist!
Surely this nugget from Cynthia Littleton (writing for Reuters from LA) is one of the most awkward and ugly of all time:
The zeitgeist-capturing writing on Desperate Housewives was nicely demonstrated by...
Ugh.
But never mind the bad writing. The claim that Housewives is new is specious no matter how you phrase it. The formula has been around for decades. And so:
A History Of The Four Chick Show
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title: | The Facts Of Life |
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chicks: | the Tough One, the Fat One, the Black One, the Blonde |
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zeitgeist captured: | Coming of age. This show pioneered the four-chick format, in addition to launching the careers of George Clooney and Molly Ringwald. |
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title: | The Golden Girls |
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chicks: | the Tough One, the Dim One, the Wacky One, and the Slut |
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zeitgeist captured: | Aging. We thought this would be the first in a slough of old-people shows now that Boomers have reached their golden years, but it appears that Boomers have not yet accepted just how old they are. |
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title: | Designing Women |
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chicks: | the All-Business One, the Dim One, the Wacky One, and the Slut |
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zeitgeist captured: | Working. Designing Women also payed tribute to Facts Of Life's tokenism by having an actual black person on the show in a minor role. |
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title: | Sex And The City |
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chicks: | the Wacky One, the All-Business One, the Traditional One, and the Slut. |
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zeitgeist captured: | Singleness. Liberated women are entering the workforce and testing the waters of free love. Apparently, it's set in the 1970s. |
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title: | Desperate Housewives |
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chicks: | the Formerly All-Business One, the Thrown-Over One, the Pretending-To-Be-Happy One, and the Slut. |
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zeitgeist captured: | Boredom. These chicks are all defined by what they used to be, rather than what they are. A celebration of vindictiveness. How charming! |
updated 12 january 2005. permalink
* I'm not suggesting that the tobacco firms be allowed to resume their advertising, just pointing out that it's a huge double-whammy for arts groups.
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