Manohla Dargis’ NYT rave of Zodiac is shockingly similar to my pan. The difference is that she loves many of the exact same things that I find disconnected and indulgent.
And I think this pretty much defines Zodiac. The emperor is the emperor, but the clothes… up for grabs…
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Forgive me in advance, but: does there ever come a point (the above sounds fairly close) where you just say, maybe it’s just not my cup of tea? I know I’ve said this from time to time about movies that others love that I don’t.
No need for forgiveness. But your notion is avoidant and odd to me. Perhaps you should be on The Shrug Blog.
The concept of this film, like Children of Men, is very much my “cup of tea.” That’s why I think it’s worthy of discussion and serious consideration, whether I like the film or not.
And the entry says exactly the opposite of what you suggest, it seems to me.
Well, there comes a time in every person’s life where I think they have to realize that they simply do not react the same way that others do to particular pieces of art. I don’t care for, say, Toni Morrison but plenty do; does that mean that I go about pondering how others have been ‘tricked’ by Morrison or do I just move on and respect the difference of taste? Because that’s where criticism ends: there will always be things that ‘work’ for some people and ‘don’t work’ for other people and any amount of writing after a point isn’t criticism any more, it’s justification.
The fact that you recognize that the exact same features that you dislike are the features that others like means to me that you’re communicating with Dargis et al. but it also sounds like there’s an insuperable void splitting your tastes from hers.
Obviously you think a ‘shrug’ is an inappropriate response to a film. But I would suggest that sometimes, depending on the critic and the work, it’s the only honest response.
Come on David, this is just a little snide. Using the emperor analogy is saying those who like it are suckers. That’s different than mere opinions.
Yeah David, please be more careful with your word choices next time and take off your shirt.
Agree with the above. The emperor analogy is tiresomely arrogant. Are you saying that everyone else is lying when they write positive responses to Fincher’s film simply by virtue of the fact that you, David Poland, didn’t respond positively to it? Wow.
The big buzz at the premiere last night was that Paramount should have released it in December. That it would have resulted in the best picture nom that the all but forgotten Dreamgirls didn’t get it. Who knows? I certainly enjoyed it more than Paramount’s Babel, but that’s a whole other story.
Wait, the LA Times had KEVIN CRUST review this??? What, was Turan too busy penning love letters to Clint Eastwood and Gwyneth Paltrow?
I was TOTALLY looking forward to Turan’s inevitable pan, replete with his Turnator5000 self-plagiarizing sentences where he uses “so” like a Valley Girl, while telling us what “material like this NEEDS.” How “with actors like Jake Gyllenhaal, Robert Downey Jr., and Mark Ruffalo, Fincher has found a very strong cast, indeed,” but the movie “takes us down some dark alleys WE’D rather not see.”
Come on, KT, don’t let us down. Do a Sunday rant on this to undercut the other, less stuffy critic’s relatively positive review. Just like you did with “Pearl Harbor” and “Kill Bill.”
I know you guys are all junketeers and go to tons of press screenings, yet you’re usually fairly mum on Turan; Does he really inspire that much fear in the LA film press, or is his fussing so predictable to be irrelevant?
Or is Turan just a really nice, funny guy who just happens to have cosmically awful (or just picky) taste in film?
His appearance as a John Holmes scholar of sorts in that Wadd documentary seemed especially out of character from a guy who comes off as a total schoolmarm in print.
Turan is an enigma, I tell ya.
With every critic there comes a point where you can predict what they’re going to think of any given film. The problem is when that predictability/consistency is joined by a lack of fresh insight.
I just saw it. Still mulling it over, and I’d probably need a second viewing to determine how I feel. So I’m not saying anything one way or the other.
But, Dave, I think the movie that you needed it to be was something more like Munich — though set in a similar period with a similar paranoia, it featured a much more traditional arc. Close focus on a main character with a developed background that motivates his actions. Climactic ending where he makes a clear choice and expresses himself. Etc.
I didn’t like Munich. Because of those things. It was phoney.
Here, the movie was, quite simply, acknowledging that the serial killer film is a genre now just like the western or the war film. And it’s disobeying every cinematic rule usually employed — and it does it by telling the story that most influenced the genre (mad geniuses with diabolical plans and letters and so on). Only here, there’s no hero. No smoky rooms with backlight. No genius. Just mundane, banal everyday.
And I don’t think it was about style. Not at all. Boogie Nights, for a ’70s reference, was all style. Wes Anderson is all style. I don’t see that here. Detail yes. Stylization that exists for no other reason than to call attention to itself like a character in its own right…no.
Anyhow.
DP, you can discuss the film all you want – it’s when you discuss the people who like the film that you tread into arrogant territory. You’re implying that you’re the only one who can see that the emperor has no clothes, and two days ago, you went far enough to say that Zodiac is the kind of movie that “we’re-smarter-than-you-are kind of people are into.”
This is coming after the Dreamgirls period, where you said over and over again that the people who disliked the film “had an agenda”…
…and the “Children of Men” period, where you said that the media love for the film was manufactured as part of a trend (couldn’t have been because people actually liked the movie when you didn’t, could it?) and said that your readers couldn’t defend the movie properly, even though they’d spent a whole topic doing so…
…and the Borat period, where people who disliked the film were humorless scolds…
…and shall I even get into Superman, Brokeback Mountain, et al?
The problem isn’t your film criticism – hell, I sometimes agree with you! It’s that you too often personally criticize people who don’t feel the same way, and a lot of those are your readers. Not everyone has an agenda, a holier-than-thou attitude, or a critical defect. What you have to realize is that, sometimes, people just feel a different way about a movie!
I completely agree with these well expressed complaints about DP. The man has a gift for winding up fellow online bloggers and the general readership. But experience tells me that he is impervious to such feedback, unrepentant, and will simply refrain it in ways that present himself as misunderstood. This is who he is. We read his columns and blogs knowing the fact. Why? Because there is plenty else to like about him, he often has interesting and entertaining things to say, and his provocative style brings about stimulating discussion. I loved COM. DP’s criticisms of the film and denigration of those who disagreed with them annoyed the hell out of me. However, that feeling was easily countered by the satisfaction gained from the wealth of eloquent and thoughtful championing of COM that DP’s style provoked.
Well Welly, that is the point here in the blog, isn’t it? Discourse.
What I don’t understand is why suggesting that Zodiac might be the naked emperor – that certainly was’t aimed at Manohla – is so different than suggesting that it is genius filmmaking.
And Leer, no matter how many times you say it, I never said everyone who disliked Dreamgirls (or any other movie) had an agenda. But the media is not “everyone” and there are waves of groupthink that occur. Sometimes, I am in that wave. But to suggest it never happens is to live in delusion. What happened to Dreamgirls was stronger than the reaction to the work. I would suggest that what is happening in some quarters on Zodiac is more than just the film itself. And the same is, I think, true of Norbit. It will be trure this summer, whether the wave embraces SpiderMan3 and hates Shrek3 or hates Potter and loves Fantastic 4 or whatever. Not every review will be reflected in that light. But at some point, some movie will get a massive pass and some movie with get slaughtered as sport. Happens every single summer, every awards season, and often in between.
What I am still trying to find, from those of you who can get past the issue being David Poland, is what we are experiencing in terms of the passion for these films that are in what now seems to be its own genre. “It’s just not for me” is fine for someone who doesn’t have an interest is discourse or who really doesn’t respect anyone else or when discussing something liek Norbit… but it’s a cop out for me. I am trying to get under the intellectual and emotional argument. And in continuing to discuss it, I shouldn’t have to explain, I am offering enormous respect… even if I am on the other side of the road.
Well here’s what I’m wondering: with this movie, DP, you keep referring back to the idea that the features that some like/love about it are the same features that you dislike about it. Where’s the discourse in that? If I don’t like pecan pies because there are pecans in it, and people who like them because there are pecans in it…what do you do then?
Obviously, films are different from pies, but it sounds like your remarks are at a critical impasse unless you want to broaden the discussion to be about more than just this one film – to be about this species of groupthink that you keep talking about.
I saw this film on February 7th, which as far as I know was the first press screening here in NYC. I think there were only a couple of press screenings in LA before that. I walked out of the screening thinking I had seen something that looked a lot like a masterpiece, and posted a couple of message board/blog comments about how much I liked it. So my question is: was I one of the people who started the groupthink, did the groupthink take me in the theater, or did I maybe honestly like this film?
David, maybe you’re just wrong?
I keep writing stuff and then deleting it because it makes me sound much more harsh than I intend.
So I’m not going to say anything, except this:
Stop talking about emperors and clothes. It’s confusing!
Oh and this: Dave, if people love Zodiac, and hate Children of Men (or vice versa) how do you make of that in this crazy world?
(also, I agree with everything Jeff has said in this entry. Crazy.)
Oh and this: Dave, if people love Zodiac, and hate Children of Men (or vice versa) how do you make of that in this crazy world?
(also, I agree with everything Jeff has said in this entry. Crazy.)