THE FCC WON'T LET ME BE

(c) Chicago Tribune

This morning the Supreme Court made up its mind about whether the FCC (Fuck-Censoring Cadre) should continue doing what it does, namely making sure no CHILDREN hear any foul language or see any tits on network and basic cable television BECAUSE THE CHILDREN MIGHT CHILDREN CHILDREN ON THE CHILDREN. And, considering that it was a unanimous decision, the Court certainly did make up its mind. Their verdict? Keep up the good work, boys. Justice Kennedy's decision wasn't as much an affirmation of the FCC's mandate as it was punting; from the look of things it was like “yeah, sure, the FCC's doing God's work CHILDRENING CHILDREN FROM CHILDREN CHILDREN, keep it up, now get out of here so we can make a stupid decision about Obama's healthcare plan.”

Now, look, it's not like Scalia and Thomas (and Roberts and Alito) were going to wake up one morning and be like “You know what? Let's not be right-wing shitheads.” Übermenschen like that wake up every morning and say “Hell of a day to be alive! Let's be right-wing shitheads all goddamn day and then wake up tomorrow and be right-wing shitheads some more.” And heaven forbid the alleged liberals on the Court remind people that the First Amendment exists. So it's not like the FCC was going to be dissolved or anything. The game is the game. But what is is one thing, what should be is another, and what the FCC should be is a memory. It's a violation of the constitutional prohibition against restricting free speech. It should not exist, and only does because WHAT IF CHILDREN HEAR SWEARCURSES AND SEE SATAN TITS????????

The stupidest thing is, the same people who engage in all that frantic pearl-clutching about protecting the (hypothetical) kids and the necessity of maintaining a governmental regulatory body to that end scream like, well, kids whenever anyone talks about regulating shit that has an actual effect on actual people. We cannot abide billionaires paying income tax at the same rate as their employees, but the thought of some imaginary angelic rosy-cheeked middle-American white kid hearing the word “fuck” for the first time at the age of 10 while watching CSI: Dubuque after finishing his Bible study, that we need a governmental agency for. This is more than just left-right “the other side has cooties” silliness. Billionaires, and the corporations many of them head, have enormous effects on every human being on Earth. They have massive amounts of the thing—money—that makes the world go 'round. It makes a certain degree of sense to keep an eye on the fuckers and make sure they're not pulling any funnies, which is not to say that we need to throw the Evil White Guys In Suits up against the wall or anything, but asking billionaires to actually pay income tax and not just whimsically destroy communities with massive layoffs just cuz what the fuck is not outrageous. If you live in the real world, you should play by the same rules as everyone else.

So why am I advocating shitcanning the entire FCC? Because those hypothetical kids everyone's always fucking moaning about don't exist. When I was a little kid, I heard people cursing all the time (even though I had “dick” and “butt” confused until I was about 5; this may explain my lifelong fondness for Bette Davis and Oscar Wilde). I knew the rules, though: don't ever curse around your grandparents OR ELSE, only curse around my dad if I was in the mood for an anguished lecture, and only curse around my mom if I was actually being funny. Obviously, specifics may vary kid to kid, but every kid knows you don't curse in certain situations OR ELSE. Just ask that kid in Hope And Glory, in re: “fuck”: “That word is special.” They know the word, that doesn't mean they use it all the time. As far as sexual content messing kids up, that's a giant pile of shit. Absent the hormones that produce sexual desire, movies and TV shows with naked people and/or sex scenes are boring. Were Sofia Vergara to have a nude scene with her tetas out on Modern Family, little kids would not give a fuck. If anything they'd be happy about the day off they got from school the next day when a national holiday was declared. But I digress.

Given how dumb it is to censor some kinds of TV and not others, the existence of the FCC as currently constituted doesn't really make a ton of sense. Its regulatory priorities are based on outmoded and/or imaginary ideas of what offends people and plays into the fallacy that prohibition is the only alternative to chaos. Not only is that not the case, but prohibition creates allure, completely aside from the fact that it doesn't work. When booze was illegal, everyone was like oooh and sneaking around to speakeasies. Weed being illegal won't bring back my memories of anything that happened between 1995 and whenever the hell I stopped blazing, if I even did . . . anyway, you get the point, and it's highly doubtful that weed would occupy the pop cultural niche it did if you could go to the bodega and buy a pack of joints. Not having nudity on TV doesn't mean there's no sexual content. Sex is all over the goddamn place on TV, to the point where letting a matter-of-fact nipple or dick slip through would barely even be noticed, and if it did it'd take the feverish mystery out of all the innuendo. And not letting the hallowed Seven Words be broadcast over the airwaves doesn't mean people don't curse on TV, they just use stupid curse substitutes that call more attention toward the fact that the character is cursing than it would if they just said fuck and shit. Yeah. The FCC is making things worse.

The good news about the Supreme Court punting rather than setting some “thus it ever shall be” shit in stone is that at some point, maybe after Barack gets to appoint a couple justices in his second term, another Court might be like “Ya know what? This is silly. Go get real jobs, guys.” Because it is silly. Either eliminating—or, more realistically, redefining the purpose of—the FCC is not going to lead to hardcore pornography being broadcast at dinnertime. In all likelihood, cursing and titties hour wouldn't start til at least 10pm even in the absence of some bluenose regulatory body saying so. Networks will realize that the notoriety (FCC or no FCC, Christian groups will shit a brick if someone says “shit a brick” in prime time) of being naughty is not a solid long-term investment. Because when you don't treat people like children, they act like adults.

THE WORST MOVIE THEATER EVER?

A typical seat at the Pavilion Theater in Park Slope

I've lived in Park Slope since I was 5 (Cobble Hill was my first home). For many years, there was no movie theater in the neighborhood, which meant going to the movies meant hopping the subway. In 1996, the long-dormant former movie theater on the corner of Prospect Park West and 14th Street re-opened as The Pavilion. For a time, life was good. Initially there was one huge main theater, complete with a balcony, on which big studio blockbusters screened, and two smaller theaters that would screen artier fare, for the presumed sophisticates in the neighborhood. I saw Independence Day and the first Mission: Impossible movie on the balcony, with my feet up, which thoroughly improved both movies. There was also a second-floor cafe.

In fairly short order, though, this model was abandoned. Some hasty, slipshod renovation did away with the balcony, and added more screens. Time went on, the second-floor cafe never actually opened (or, at least, was never seen to be open by anyone who can remember, serving as a melancholy signifier of what the Pavilion almost was but would never be) and eventually, things devolved to where film critic Matt Singer was moved to write this piece over at Criticwire. So let me turn it over to Mr. Singer at this point. Read and be forewarned.

A VOCABULARY LESSON FOR CRITICS

The other day, there was a piece on Flavorwire on the most “epidemically overrated” novels in history; I won't link to it, since the whole idea is that they're engaging in provocation for page views, but you can Google that phrase and find the thing easily enough if you really need to read something dumb. As a thing unto itself the list is the intellectual equivalent of a fart—seriously, anyone who reads James Joyce for the plot is a fucking asshat—but as an excuse for a state of criticism jeremiad it'll do just fine.

Here's the thing: the word “overrated” is an absolutely fucking useless term if the subject being discussed is something that can't be objectively quantified. In sports, being over- or underrated is an actual thing. There are objective metrics by which you can determine whether a sports guy is as good as people say he is. Variables like how big a city the dude plays in, high-profile successes or failures, or being white can skew perceptions from what the actual data indicates. In the arts, though, there's no on-base percentage, yards after the catch, or plus-minus, making objective evaluation trickier. One thing that helps, though, is the phrase “it's not all about you.” Or, in other words, whether or not you like something isn't the same thing as it being good. Thus, the fucktards who wrote that Flavorwire thing are really saying “we don't like The Catcher in the Rye, Wuthering Heights, Finnegan's Wake, Moby Dick, et cetera.” (Also, they kind of tip their trollface by having Twilight be the last thing on the list; no reputable critic puts Twilight in the same league as Bronte, Joyce, Melville, and Salinger, thus undercutting the “overrated” conceit.)

Here's an audiovisual aid (pay special attention at about 1:45):



Now, I know your mind is blown because you just thought about Ugly Kid Joe for the first time in 20 years, but stick with me here. That song is, to give it the benefit of the doubt, at least partly tongue-in-cheek, though it's sending up a real thing, namely the way people, in order to seem cool, will cop an attitude about absolutely fucking anything. Which isn't cool. If your coolness requires shitting on something else, you ain't swinging from the championship tee, dude. (Ed. Note: golf metaphors are an underrated way to describe the state of being uncool.)

But “overrated” isn't the only word misused to the point of meaninglessness by people who don't write criticism properly. Here are some others:


Uncinematic: The most apt usage I can recall of this was a review panning Susan Stroman's direction in the movie of The Producers from the play from the movie, because the compositions kinda sucked and just seemed like a camera plunked down on sticks while a play took place in front of it. But even then, calling that “uncinematic” rather than just not the best use of cinema as a medium isn't quite right, because the only way something can really be uncinematic is to not be cinema.

Literary: A word nekulturny douchebags use to describe Wes Anderson movies because Wes Anderson has the fucking temerity to read books. Yeah, heaven forfend Salinger, John Irving and Roald Dahl have any influence on the guy. (Also, if you have any pretense to knowing about movies and you're thinking of snarking on Wes Anderson, save yourself the trouble and skip ahead to the part where you go fuck yourself.)

Dry: Unless you're talking about a martini, think long and hard about how you use this one (and if you drink martinis, think long and hard about just drinking straight gin). Even if you're using it right, there's probably a better way to phrase things.

Fanboy: Already covered this one.

Sexy: This one drives me up the wall, because you'd swear the way this gets thrown around no film critic has ever actually gotten laid in their lives. Any actress with a hemline above her knee and a neckline below her neck is SEXY. Just, no. Look at the scene in The Last Days Of Disco when Chloe Sevigny's trying to shtup Robert Sean Leonard and says “I think Uncle Scrooge is sexy.” It was fucking funny, right? You know why? Because she was using words wrong. Uncle Scrooge is not sexy, as sexiness would not be a thing if everyone was sexy. (Ed. Note: Uncle Scrooge is not the only entity in the universe who isn't sexy, either. THERE ARE MANY OTHERS.) Sexiness is also not achieved automatically by a shot of some titties. Take Chloe. Chloe's a whole movie about how Julianne Moore secretly and then not-so-secretly wants to fuck Amanda Seyfried. Sounds hot, right? Well, with the exception of about five seconds when the two of them are totally naked and totally Doing It (which couldn't help but be), Chloe's about as sexy as a glass-topped coffee table. And yet all the reviews were like, “sexy” this,” “erotic” that. Come on, y'all.

X-meets-x: For an example, from Owen Gleiberman's review of Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom in Entertainment Weekly: “[Anderson's] rarefied, Salinger-meets-The Graduate-meets-music-video-meets-postmodern-TV-ads whimsicality.” This is an impressive pile-up of words, but it doesn't really mean anything. Salinger and The Graduate, sure, you can argue an intertextual relationship with Anderson's picture, even if they're kind of low-hanging fruit in terms of references. But holy shit “music video” and “postmodern TV ads” are vague descriptors, not to mention redundant, as they're both short-form audiovisual media made by most of the same directors. (He's also using “postmodern” wrong, but that's art geek hair-splitting.) X-meets-x is so rarely an illuminating tool and so frequently a “heyyyyyy, loogitme being all hip and shit” crutch that it really ought to just be sidelined.


Anyway, that's enough of that. Basically, all I'm trying to say is words mean things and they don't mean things that they don't mean. It's not all about you. And tits are awesome and everything, but you still need to make a good movie. You're welcome.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO ASK WHETHER SOMEONE EVER WAS A GOOD DIRECTOR, YOU NEED TO KNOW WHAT A DIRECTOR DOES

The thing about troll pieces is that their intent is to attract attention by pissing people off. You rage, you lose, as the saying goes. So I'm not going to get angry about this piece about Tim Burton. The rhetorical question posed in the title is a valid one, but it's one that has a very simple answer: “Was Tim Burton ever a good director?” “Yes. Yes he was.” He's one of the most unique visual stylists in the history of the medium, and one whose authorial imprint—in Burton's case, a blend between production and costume design, camerawork, music, and the frequently large, presentational performances he elicits from leading actors, frequently Michael Keaton or Johnny Depp—is unmistakeable. One can spot a Tim Burton movie a mile away. He's tilled the field as no one else quite has.

Most importantly, and this cannot be clarified enough, the term “auteur” as applies to cinema is not the same thing as being an “author” in the sense of being one who writes words on paper. Cinema consists of a wide array of elements, from costume/set/makeup/visual effects design to cinematography to editing to writing on down the line to the people who make sure lunch is ready. The producer is the one who hires all those people and arranges to pay for it (and don't sell that short as a skill; producing is one of the most under-appreciated roles in the entire medium and it's something one can be very good or very bad at). The director is the one whose job is to make sure all that insane amount of shit actually results in a movie. Directors can (and do, if they're doing it right) have a say in all the above-mentioned elements, including selecting their producer (or, if they can multitask, doing it themselves).

This is why it's possible for a director who does not write scripts, like Tim Burton, to be the auteur of the pictures he directs. He may not write the script. He may not even be the first director to work on the picture. But once he comes aboard it becomes, even for fleeting moments in something like the unfortunate Planet of the Apes movie he made, a Tim Burton film. Good or bad, and recently it's mostly been bad, this is invariably the case, even if lately it's more like “Ah, late-period Alice in Wonderland/Dark Shadows Tim Burton . . .” you still know it's him.

The argument that Tim Burton never was any good because he didn't write his own scripts will a) get you a machete in the balls from anyone who's ever seen Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, the two Batman pictures, Ed Wood, and from what I gather from the fervor of the people who've seen it, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, and b) betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of what it is a director actually does. Again, it could be that the author knows this full well and is pretending otherwise to piss people off. Though, if that's the case, it would be advisable to not make oneself look that fucking stupid in public. If indeed the author's entire argument does rest on the belief that to be an auteur one has to write one's own scripts, then I refer him to the work of Fritz Lang, John Ford, Roberto Rossellini, and Alfred Hitchcock; if black & white movies hurt his eyes, then Ridley Scott or David Fincher will suffice. But, seriously. Learn more.

SOMETIMES A REALLY UN-GREAT NOTION

This might happen. Is it too late to start blogging about knitting or Maldives presidential politics?

"MR. DANNY BOWES IS A BRAINLESS MORON...."

Now, as many of you may know and those who don't should, I write a weekly column for my old pal Dan Hudak's site Hudak On Hollywood. Hudak likes me to be the wild, ranty me you all know and love, as opposed to the less foul-mouthed Tor.com me (and soon-to-be Next Projection me, as of a couple days from now; this is in addition to, not in replacement of, my other rapidly-growing list of credits.)

What I'd like to do, besides plugging all the sites I write for, is direct your attention to this very funny bit of hate mail, in response to my piece about The Help this past summer. If nothing else, my mom should find the bit about washing my mouth out with soap hilarious. No . . . fucking hilarious. There we go.

REHEARSING IS FOR PROFESSIONALS: A MESSAGE TO THE PUER AETERNUS BRETT RATNER

Well, well, well. Brett Ratner, you think rehearsing is for fags, do you? Say, Brett, you know what

1) casually and caddishly tossing off references to actresses you've banged,

2) parlaying a gift for schmoozing powerful people into a directing career,

3) using that directing career to repeat the same minor successes so often they become stale and retroactively damage the memory of the couple half decent pictures you were fortunate enough to make,

4) and then publicly declaring your completely lack of interest in the creative process with a homophobic cherry on top

is for?


Shitheads.

Get your head out of your ass and never forget that being born on third does not mean you hit a triple. And fucking grow up. You're forty-two fucking years old. Be an adult and start giving a shit about your work and how your words are perceived, instead of shooting your mouth off and then giving a ball-less apology.