CMJ
May 22nd, 2002, 09:47:04 AM
Ya gotta love the guy...:) This was the portion of his column I figured you guys would like....
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HYPOCRISY: EPISODE 2: I think it SUCKS that supposed journalists are going after Attack of the Clones for overestimating their weekend when they suck the studios’ collective ass week after week - printing inaccurate estimates and never challenging them unless a rival studio tells them to, acting as marketing tools (in the most profane use of that word) - and then going after this one movie. Where was the headline story about Spider-Man turning out to be $3 million high in its estimate the weekend before? Where is the cynicism about Sunday estimates in the Sunday stories that everyone rushes to be the first to release each weekend? I guess Lucas and Fox should be flattered that this film is being held above all others for this kind of obsessive treatment, even if it is negative. But there is nothing more galling to me than the hypocrisy of near-flacks getting tough on one or two pictures a year and then claiming to be serious journalists.
In an industry that is in the business of selling product, the studios are right – morally and fiscally obligated to their shareholders – to shove us journalists around. It is our job as journalists to see past the smoke. If you are a movie writer who is basically rewriting press releases, fine. Keep doing that. If you are a movie writer that question things, fine. Keep doing that. But if you are on either side and you occasionally flip back or forth, you are worse than the studios… you are betraying your readers.
ARGH!!!!: I have been a fan of Patrick Goldstein’s column, The Big Picture, in the L.A. Times for the last year or two. Sometimes it can be a bit soft, sometimes I disagree, but I feel good that Patrick and the L.A. Times are making an effort to dig deeper than traditional features allow. But this week, Patrick kind of embarrasses himself.
His column, entitled, Seclusion Has Left George Lucas Out of Touch is problematic for a lot of reasons. The first is that it is a pure editorial and Patrick’s column has not been written that way on a long time. It needs a big stamp on it saying, “This is Patrick Goldstein’s opinion, period.” If Patrick wrote it as a story about how the industry or the e-journalists see George, that would be a whole different matter. But Patrick does nothing in this piece other than spew his own feelings. The problem with that is, other than it isn’t marked as such, is that he states many of his opinions as facts, when they are, in fact, his opinion.
Goldstein writes, “…Episode II Attack of the Clones, which like its immediate predecessor, Episode I The Phantom Menace, is a bitter disappointment for anyone with an abiding affection for Lucas' original trilogy of futurist fantasies.”
Uh, no. I don’t care whether Patrick hates the films or even if I hate the films, The Phantom Menace sold over 100 million tickets worldwide. Is that the mark of quality? No, no, a million times no. BUT, it tells anyone who wants to hear the truth that there is a large base of people who LOVE The Phantom Menace. When A.O. Scott wrote that people went to see Menace and now, Clones “out of habit and compulsion, like weary Brezhnev-era Muscovites,” and reporters repeat it as though it was a fact, they are not indicting George Lucas’ disconnection from the public… they are indicting themselves. They are the ones who are out of touch.
Does “the public” have bad taste? Absolutely!!! (Of course, they also hook into quality at times, which really pisses of film critics.) But anyone who pays attention to the box office can tell you, they do make choices. They are not a mindless horde. Can heavy television advertising return 80 percent of its cost ninety percent of the time in the first weekend? Yes. Getting two million people to pay to see crap after you have spent $30 million advertising it is not a problem. And I have made it clear that I am not a fan of the industry shift towards massive opening weekends as the standard. But what seems to enrage people like Tony Scott and Patrick and Jeff Wells (who wrote virtually the same column the Patrick printed today months before he even saw Clones… hell, he wrote the same thing before he saw Phantom Menace) is that audiences do go to see Lucas’ movies over and over and over again. They get hard-ons when Phantom Menace products don’t sell as well as expected at Toys-R-Us and cheer for failure because Lucas isn’t making the film they wanted him to make.
Lucas hasn’t made the film I wanted him to make either! When I criticize the film, it is my job to point that out. But it is not my job to psychoanalyze George Lucas and to indulge in a feeding frenzy. Does anyone remember reading this kind of bile when we were all (and I use that word mockingly, because it is another overstatement) disappointed with The Patriot? No. Is Tim Burton being called upon to hang it up because of Planet of the Apes? No. When Ken Turan went off on a personal attack against Jim Cameron during the Titanic run, who got hurt? Turan.
At least Jeff Wells is psychotic about people’s weights and ages and wrinkles every single week in his column. For Wells, it matters that Warren Beatty is still thin and that John Travolta went on a diet. That is part of who Jeff is and it is part of the foundation of his work. Not for Patrick Goldstein.
Of course, there was a moment, when it was announced that Jonathan Hales was co-writing with Lucas, that the naysayers offered hope. Lucas was bringing in someone to mitigate his self-indulgence. But then the movie arrived and the dialogue was the weakest thing in it and Hales was rarely mentioned again. (His name does not appear in Goldstein’s piece.)
I have said from early on… George Lucas is playing us all… he has manipulated the media into doing story after story about how he heard the criticism… and then, he made the movie he wanted to make. And if you hate it, fine. And if you love it, fine. That’s your prerogative, just as it is Lucas’ to make the movie he wants to make.
From what platform of egomania is Patrick Goldstein, a smart and modest adult male, getting inspired to write, “Lucas should never have directed the movies himself.” The L.A. Times is not a TalkBack board at Ain’t It Cool News or a cocktail party. There is not a studio in town, including the highest-minded art house distributors, who would not have killed to get the Star Wars pre-trilogy, as is, even under the limited deal that Lucas has with Fox. Who knows what the films would be without Lucas at the helm? And what makes anyone think that Lucas would let some young, hip filmmaker rethink Star Wars? (Again, think Hales.)
Movies are not democracies. And we all rail against the current studio system of excessive development and testing and talk about the integrity of the artist… until George Lucas makes a movie that some of us don’t like and then we pile on and talk about how self-indulgent the is.
We are shooting spitballs from the sidelines and it really angers us that we don’t own bazookas. But where is all this passion when it comes to movies that really deserve attention?
Patrick, you should have written a very short column this week. “An Editorial: I hate Attack of the Clones and I wish George Lucas would make movies that were more adult minded.”
And what pisses me off most of all is that I find myself wasting my time defending a movie that really doesn’t mean much to me. It doesn’t deserve the degree of attack it is suffering, but that has become an annual habit. Star Wars had half the paid-for hype of Spider-Man, but we spend all day trying to come up with new ways of beating the -DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR- out of this movie and the filmmaker. That sucks. And we all need a long, hard look in the mirror when we start acting like schoolyard bullies picking on easy targets and then running for cover when it comes to the truly serious issues.
***********************
HYPOCRISY: EPISODE 2: I think it SUCKS that supposed journalists are going after Attack of the Clones for overestimating their weekend when they suck the studios’ collective ass week after week - printing inaccurate estimates and never challenging them unless a rival studio tells them to, acting as marketing tools (in the most profane use of that word) - and then going after this one movie. Where was the headline story about Spider-Man turning out to be $3 million high in its estimate the weekend before? Where is the cynicism about Sunday estimates in the Sunday stories that everyone rushes to be the first to release each weekend? I guess Lucas and Fox should be flattered that this film is being held above all others for this kind of obsessive treatment, even if it is negative. But there is nothing more galling to me than the hypocrisy of near-flacks getting tough on one or two pictures a year and then claiming to be serious journalists.
In an industry that is in the business of selling product, the studios are right – morally and fiscally obligated to their shareholders – to shove us journalists around. It is our job as journalists to see past the smoke. If you are a movie writer who is basically rewriting press releases, fine. Keep doing that. If you are a movie writer that question things, fine. Keep doing that. But if you are on either side and you occasionally flip back or forth, you are worse than the studios… you are betraying your readers.
ARGH!!!!: I have been a fan of Patrick Goldstein’s column, The Big Picture, in the L.A. Times for the last year or two. Sometimes it can be a bit soft, sometimes I disagree, but I feel good that Patrick and the L.A. Times are making an effort to dig deeper than traditional features allow. But this week, Patrick kind of embarrasses himself.
His column, entitled, Seclusion Has Left George Lucas Out of Touch is problematic for a lot of reasons. The first is that it is a pure editorial and Patrick’s column has not been written that way on a long time. It needs a big stamp on it saying, “This is Patrick Goldstein’s opinion, period.” If Patrick wrote it as a story about how the industry or the e-journalists see George, that would be a whole different matter. But Patrick does nothing in this piece other than spew his own feelings. The problem with that is, other than it isn’t marked as such, is that he states many of his opinions as facts, when they are, in fact, his opinion.
Goldstein writes, “…Episode II Attack of the Clones, which like its immediate predecessor, Episode I The Phantom Menace, is a bitter disappointment for anyone with an abiding affection for Lucas' original trilogy of futurist fantasies.”
Uh, no. I don’t care whether Patrick hates the films or even if I hate the films, The Phantom Menace sold over 100 million tickets worldwide. Is that the mark of quality? No, no, a million times no. BUT, it tells anyone who wants to hear the truth that there is a large base of people who LOVE The Phantom Menace. When A.O. Scott wrote that people went to see Menace and now, Clones “out of habit and compulsion, like weary Brezhnev-era Muscovites,” and reporters repeat it as though it was a fact, they are not indicting George Lucas’ disconnection from the public… they are indicting themselves. They are the ones who are out of touch.
Does “the public” have bad taste? Absolutely!!! (Of course, they also hook into quality at times, which really pisses of film critics.) But anyone who pays attention to the box office can tell you, they do make choices. They are not a mindless horde. Can heavy television advertising return 80 percent of its cost ninety percent of the time in the first weekend? Yes. Getting two million people to pay to see crap after you have spent $30 million advertising it is not a problem. And I have made it clear that I am not a fan of the industry shift towards massive opening weekends as the standard. But what seems to enrage people like Tony Scott and Patrick and Jeff Wells (who wrote virtually the same column the Patrick printed today months before he even saw Clones… hell, he wrote the same thing before he saw Phantom Menace) is that audiences do go to see Lucas’ movies over and over and over again. They get hard-ons when Phantom Menace products don’t sell as well as expected at Toys-R-Us and cheer for failure because Lucas isn’t making the film they wanted him to make.
Lucas hasn’t made the film I wanted him to make either! When I criticize the film, it is my job to point that out. But it is not my job to psychoanalyze George Lucas and to indulge in a feeding frenzy. Does anyone remember reading this kind of bile when we were all (and I use that word mockingly, because it is another overstatement) disappointed with The Patriot? No. Is Tim Burton being called upon to hang it up because of Planet of the Apes? No. When Ken Turan went off on a personal attack against Jim Cameron during the Titanic run, who got hurt? Turan.
At least Jeff Wells is psychotic about people’s weights and ages and wrinkles every single week in his column. For Wells, it matters that Warren Beatty is still thin and that John Travolta went on a diet. That is part of who Jeff is and it is part of the foundation of his work. Not for Patrick Goldstein.
Of course, there was a moment, when it was announced that Jonathan Hales was co-writing with Lucas, that the naysayers offered hope. Lucas was bringing in someone to mitigate his self-indulgence. But then the movie arrived and the dialogue was the weakest thing in it and Hales was rarely mentioned again. (His name does not appear in Goldstein’s piece.)
I have said from early on… George Lucas is playing us all… he has manipulated the media into doing story after story about how he heard the criticism… and then, he made the movie he wanted to make. And if you hate it, fine. And if you love it, fine. That’s your prerogative, just as it is Lucas’ to make the movie he wants to make.
From what platform of egomania is Patrick Goldstein, a smart and modest adult male, getting inspired to write, “Lucas should never have directed the movies himself.” The L.A. Times is not a TalkBack board at Ain’t It Cool News or a cocktail party. There is not a studio in town, including the highest-minded art house distributors, who would not have killed to get the Star Wars pre-trilogy, as is, even under the limited deal that Lucas has with Fox. Who knows what the films would be without Lucas at the helm? And what makes anyone think that Lucas would let some young, hip filmmaker rethink Star Wars? (Again, think Hales.)
Movies are not democracies. And we all rail against the current studio system of excessive development and testing and talk about the integrity of the artist… until George Lucas makes a movie that some of us don’t like and then we pile on and talk about how self-indulgent the is.
We are shooting spitballs from the sidelines and it really angers us that we don’t own bazookas. But where is all this passion when it comes to movies that really deserve attention?
Patrick, you should have written a very short column this week. “An Editorial: I hate Attack of the Clones and I wish George Lucas would make movies that were more adult minded.”
And what pisses me off most of all is that I find myself wasting my time defending a movie that really doesn’t mean much to me. It doesn’t deserve the degree of attack it is suffering, but that has become an annual habit. Star Wars had half the paid-for hype of Spider-Man, but we spend all day trying to come up with new ways of beating the -DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR- out of this movie and the filmmaker. That sucks. And we all need a long, hard look in the mirror when we start acting like schoolyard bullies picking on easy targets and then running for cover when it comes to the truly serious issues.