Bill Maher interview in TIME.

Here's an interview with Bill Maher from TIME (thanks to Jeffrey Wells for originally posting the link on his HOLLYWOOD ELSEWHERE blog):

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1594262,00.html?iid=feed-arts_ad

Unfortunately, the GO AWAY culture Maher mentions at the end of the interview never will go away.  In the year 2007, sensitivity and the desire for "decorum" are used as tools to shut up and shut down people with contrary opinions.

In short, people in the arts/media bring their daily work habits to bear on their avocations (i.e. poetry/literature communities).  This means that the culture of neutral language and bloodless termination can now be found 24/7.

P.S.  Rent the flawed but watchable DIXIE CHICKS: SHUT UP AND SING documentary to see an interesting example of the above when a Lipton Tea exec tries to neutral-language the company's way out of a sponsorship with the Chicks after Natalie Maines' "ashamed the President is from Texas" comment in London circa 2003.

Keith Olbermann-burnishing the myth.

Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's born-again truth teller, is profiled in the current ROLLING STONE.  Here's the link: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/13559914/the_most_honest_man_in_news

My wife and I watch the show.  But I have a long memory and I can remember two things: 1. Keith stomped away from the NBC cable empire years ago grumbling about being forced to keep covering Monica Lewinsky.  Now, COUNTDOWN routinely includes celeb/tabloid coverage and, on some nights, the Anna Nicole story will make Number One--whether it's relevant or not.  2.  Phil Donahue was 86ed by NBC by the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 (CNBC was, I believe, the network he was on) for fear that he would say something antiwar and/or have antiwar guests, thereby "undermining" the war effort to topple Saddam and find the WMD we were then led to believe existed in Iraq.

Let's face it: Keith Olbermann is entertaining and sometimes incisive.  But he's not  Phil Donahue or the Smothers Brothers at CBS circa 1968-69 or Bill Maher post 9/11 on POLITICALLY INCORRECT--people who dared to be unpopular and speak truth when it was unfashionable.

Olbermann's a newsertainer who's being allowed by NBCUniversal to criticize the Bush Administration and the war because it's now safe to do so.

Keep that in mind when you read the ROLLING STONE article.

Let's keep it decorous-ACADEMY AWARDS 2007

There was a recent chat with Laura Ziskin (a major producer, who produced this year's Oscars) and Ellen DeGeneres.  Ellen was opting for spontaneous Oscar moments and Laura emphasized the importance of a controlled environment.

Guess who had the last word.

The 2007 Academy Awards was a viewing experience that, to me, must represent what eating a bowl of cornstarch is like.  Yes, with Ellen as host, there was to be no rude moments like Chris Rock joking about Jude Law's lack of U.S. stardom and audiences preferring junk to art.  And no spontaneous outbursts a la Michael Moore allowed as well.  And no naked streaking as occurred over thirty years ago.

Instead, Ellen did the "golly gee I'm here with all these Big Stars" schtick--which was rarely funny. One exception was the "Spielberg taking digital photo of Eastwood" routine.  And the rare moments of respite from tedium came from people like Jerry Seinfeld, Steve Carell, Greg Kinnear--and the directorial troika of Spielberg, Coppola and George Lucas.  Maybe it's time to return to having multiple hosts--the COMIC RELIEF trio of Billy, Robin and Whoopi, though, on the recent HBO telethon, they showed advanced age and complacency replacing former irreverence, would be preferable to Ellen's leave-no-tables-overturned approach of fake niceness.

The best documentary feature went to the worthy, well-meaning but mostly boring and static AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.  The best song went to Melissa Etheridge's PSA announcement jingle which played over the tedious film's end credits.

I liked THE DEPARTED, and by 2006 standards, it is a very good film of its era, but giving it Best Picture at the expense of Eastwood's superior LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA was a mistake.  At the same time, I was happy to see Scorsese get his Lifetime Achievement award in the guise of Best Director.

As of this writing, I haven't seen THE LIVES OF OTHERS (the foreign-language feature winner) yet, but I hope it received the award for merit rather than worthiness.

And I wish that Peter O'Toole and Forest Whitaker could have tied (in the same way that Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn tied in 1969).  Both performances were equally worthy of honors.  It was poignant to see the look of surprise/disappointment on O'Toole's face.  Unless someone comes up with a middle-of-the-road valedictory project (sort of like the Rob Reiner film about dying of cancer that a bald Jack Nicholson is now making with co-star Morgan Freeman), it looks like O'Toole's final chance to win Best Actor has occurred. 

And then there was the contortionist dance troupe, which I guess Laura Ziskin chose for showing the West L.A./Brentwood/Beverly Hills arts donors how much "good taste" she has.

I'm reminded of Jack Lemmon's remark at the beginning of the 1985 Academy ceremony.  Lemmon told the audience about shortening the ceremony: "Brevity is the soul of wit.  And tonight, we're going to have a very soulful evening."

Substitute the words "safety" and "safe" for "brevity" and "soulful" and you have the 2007 fiasco in a nutshell.

 

Jury Duty in 2007.

This past week, I spent three days in Van Nuys waiting to be chosen for a criminal trial jury.  Yesterday, the prosecutor thanked and excused me.

And, more than in my previous times of being called for jury service, I noticed a marked increase in "Hell no, I won't serve!" behavior from my fellow jury candidates.

Two of my favorite would-be jurors who were excused: 1. The television producer who griped about how this would impact his business and that--if chosen--he wouldn't be able to stop thinking about his work. and 2. The twentysomething woman who, sitting two seats away from me in the audience, played a videogame on her Verizon Chocolate cell phone.  The baliff finally came and ordered her to turn the phone off or lose it.  The woman later used her Chocolate in the elevator to complain to a friend about how nothing's going on and, by inference, how bored she was.  It was SUCH an injustice to be told to pay attention.....

Will there be a third act for Barry Levinson's film career?

I finally watched Barry Levinson's MAN OF THE YEAR (you know the concept: Robin Williams as a TV political comic who runs for President on a third-party ticket and wins) and found it a puree of elements from GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, WAG THE DOG, DISCLOSURE, TOYS--plus the TV-is-evil bull that marred the third act of AVALON.

Some disclosure needs to be repeated here: I was Joe Pesci's stand-in on Levinson's JIMMY HOLLYWOOD--a needlessly unpleasant experience for people working on it, myself included.

Regardless I think that Levinson (as both auteur and studio hired gun) has directed and/or written films that are overdue for an American Cinematheque retrospective: AND JUSTICE FOR ALL (written with former wife Valerie Curtin), DINER, TIN MEN, THE NATURAL, RAIN MAN, AVALON, BUGSY, GOOD MORNING VIETNAM, WAG THE DOG, BANDITS (deserving of more love than it has received) and LIBERTY HEIGHTS.

But it might be time to say that Barry needs to confine his writing/directing efforts only to further entries in his Baltimore autobiographical series.

MAN OF THE YEAR squanders its outsider-becomes-President premise by devolving into a Laura Linney-being-chased-by-evil-Silicon Valley-technocrats storyline fumbling its provocative computer-voting-can-be-fixed hook.

And, as with JIMMY HOLLYWOOD (which foresaw the manufactured amateur entertainment of "reality" television seven years before Mark Burnett's SURVIVOR--actor/vigilante Jimmy Alto is just a few degrees away from DOG THE BOUNTY HUNTER), Levinson again shows his discomfort with having outsiders as protagonists.  Robin Williams gets off a few good one-liners and interesting observations about both major parties being corrupted by big money and big lobbyists--and that (gasp!) third parties might be a viable alternative to the current flawed system.  But the film scurries away from this position by the end, settling for the "outsiders are only good for nudging the two-and it should only be two-parties towards common sense" dodge.

Levinson will be directing another Hollywood comedy--Robert DeNiro playing a takeoff of producer Art Linson (THE UNTOUCHABLES) in WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? within the next month. 

Barry Levinson--at his best--is a talented filmmaker.  It would be nice to see the last decade or so of his career be as productive and prolific in the artistic sense as peers Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood.

It would be a shame to see him crank out more slack, self-indulgent fare in the vein of MAN OF THE YEAR.

 

NEW YORKER article about poetry.

Here's a link to an interesting article by Dana Goodyear about POETRY magazine, the late Ruth Lilly's $200 million gift (which begat The Poetry Foundation) and the differences of opinion over what the Foundation's presence will do for poetry:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/070219fa_fact_goodyear

My favorite moments in the article come from the "keep things as they are" wing of poetry.  The ever-elitist Carol Muske Dukes, one of Los Angeles' most prominent, had this to say re a recent "reach out to a wider audience" essay by John Barr, president of the Foundation: "This is the consumerization of poetry.  It's being co-opted.  The foundation is talking about trying to reach as many people as possible without really changing their consciousness.  It just wants them to buy."

This drivel from an "esteemed" poet who once, on a panel at the LOS ANGELES TIMES Book Fair , talked dismissively about the poetry that came from a writing class she taught in a women's prison.  Sounds like a bad teacher to me.

And there's also this wonderful spit of rhetorical venom from Christian Witman, editor of POETRY magazine since 2003, on Sylvia Plath:  "Her overall influence has been terrible, promoting a kind of narcissistic despair that persists in many poems, novels and movies today."

Can poetry accomodate both a glass of Chablis and a bottle of Coke Zero?  NO, says the upper tier of the verse world.

And there you have it--this is why poetry is kept in an airless container on a high shelf--out of  fear "the stupid masses" may start writing "bad" verse, which will  cause the extinction of "good" poets.

Tony Snow: Another Unreasonable Man.

Here's a rather insidious quote from the ex Fox News pundit referring to Saturday's Republican smackdown of the mild "nonbinding" resolution to protest the continuing quagmire-to-hang-onto-Iraqi-oil (from an article in AOL news):

Snow said the president understands the importance of debate about the war on Capitol Hill and understands lawmakers' anxiety about the war.

"What I would say to members of Congress is: Calm down and take a look at what's going on, and ask yourself a simple question: If you support the troops, would you deny them the reinforcements they think are necessary to complete the mission?'"

One hopes Snow's a candidate for Olbermann's "Worst Person in the World" troika tonight.

AN UNREASONABLE MAN: the new Ralph Nader documentary.

Curious if anyone's seen this lately in theaters or on pay-per-view?

It covers Nader's career from his auto safety reforms to the Presidential campaigns--particularly 2000.  And, since it's balanced and lays out a case for the 2000 run not being THE cause of Gore's loss (something the Democratic Party has used as a propaganda tool ever since), some people are likely to be infuriated all over again.

Worth seeing nonetheless as a study in whether or not one can afford to be idealistic and unchanging in a consensus, compromising society--and if that idealism may do more harm than good (as well as bringing up the question of whether Nader's overall legacy will be overshadowed by his Presidential runs).