So last night I was at a bar with some filmmakers, and as is the will of a cluster of filmmakers the "Top Five" list came out, and I went first and offered DR. STRANGELOVE, SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI, STALAG 17, and MANHATTAN. Then came some from other people, and this list included REAL GENIUS, RETURN OF THE JEDI, THE GOONIES, and many others that were hard to hear because my ears were bleeding.
Then a filmmaker I admire named Jason Santo, who was willing to defend the honor of THE ABYSS and 2010 with a broken beer bottle, observed that his favorite directors are people like Spielberg and Zemeckis, and mine are people like Kurosawa and Truffaut, yet he is making penetrating dramas about the human condition and I just streeted a killer rabbit movie called PETER ROTTENTAIL. So faced with this brutal self-awareness I blindly groped for my beer, which I might have anyway.
But here's what I think. I once read the screenplay for THE PLAYER by Michael Tolkin, and in his introduction he mentioned (and I am paraphrasing here) that a lot of people go to L.A. loving Bergman and then end up making b-movies, thus inadvertently infusing them with self-loathing and cynicism; and that the trick was to love Bergman and love b-movies both and be able to apply the sensibilities of one to the other. That's where I hope I am; but it's the public that votes, so here's hoping.
Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.
1 comment:
Funny you should mention that about Hollywood - there was a Law & Order reunion (one of the few two parters) that dealt with the whole Hollywood dreame cum Hollywood whore issue. Luckily your story doesn't end with a murder and a murder one conviction.
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