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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

David Edelstein and Nell Minow

the breakfast table
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from: David Edelstein

Good, Clean Bullet Wounds

Posted Wednesday, July 29, 1998, at 6:56 PM ET

Yeah, Nell, you're right. Heads of indie film companies knew, like Faust, with whom they were dealing--and in some cases they wanted to sell their souls. You'd be surprised how many people don't think they've made it until they have their own plane. (Well, maybe you wouldn't be surprised--I believe you're famous for putting many of those people into well-deserved receivership.) But I'm not as sanguine as you about the "unquenchability" of the creative spirit. I've seen too many good, challenging artists ground up by the "business" of show-business. (And yes, I believe that Slamdance has spawned a less mainstream alternative--Slumdance.) On the other hand, I applaud some aspects of your paean to commerce, which can be as much a part of producing a great movie as contriving a felicitous mise-en-scene. Don't caricature my position, however: Blockbuster has no obligation to educate its consumers' palates, but I feel they do have an obligation to make works available that would allow their consumers, should they have the urge, to educate themselves.

I agree that sex can be as "abusive" as violence to a child, but look at your language! Does the depiction of sex necessarily mean molestation or "depraved sexual acts"? How about normal ones, for older kids who have already begun to think through the implications? You write of longing for a "good, clean bullet wound." But in life, bullet wounds are neither good, nor clean, and maybe that's the message we should be spelling out for kids. I once interviewed a director who had to stage his first fist-fight. He did some research and discovered that most fights last one punch--one person's nose breaks and the other person's hand breaks. There's lots of blood. Now let's say I want to film that scene in such a way as to make the violence truly sickening, with the sound of cartilage breaking and blood gushing everywhere. I'd probably get an "R" or worse, whereas the Popeye-the-Sailor approach, in which scores of bad guys are bloodlessly pummeled, gets a "PG" or even a "G." Once again, what is the message?

Back to the news: The UAW is going back to work at GM; the strike is officially over. At two Flint, Mich. plants, the union has voted overwhelmingly to ratify the agreement. Apparently the company is going to pour 180 million into the facility in return for a 15 percent increase in productivity. I'm not sure what that means. Employees will work to faster music? Shave five minutes off every coffee break? Move Johnny-on-the-spots closer to the lines?

Jerome Robbins has died. Among many other things, Robbins staged Fiddler on the Roof, which was the first Broadway show I ever saw. For years I went around singing "Sunrise, Sunset." Then, after a dose of the Sex Pistols and the Buzzcocks, I decided that if I ever heard anyone sing "Sunrise, Sunset" again I'd rip out their vocal cords. Now I'm singing "Sunrise, Sunset" to my baby daughter. Ol' man river, she just keeps rollin'....

Previous generations enjoyed bear-baiting and pig-sticking; me, I enjoy reading Maureen Dowd. No matter how ghastly my day, I find consolation in the fact that whoever Ms. Dowd is writing about is having one that's even more ghastly. I'm a Dowd groupie, a Dowdie. I mean, I'd be scared to meet her because she'd cleave my head in twain, but three days a week I turn to her even before the Crossword. Dowd was the first national reporter (as far as I know) to evoke an episode of Clinton rage, and her likening of Bill and Hillary to Tom and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby--remaining upright and aloof as friends, nominees, lovers, and supporters are brought down by the fire the First Couple draws--seemed more primary than anything in Primary Colors. If I'd been Susan Thomases, I'd have slit my wrists right there, allowing the Sunday Times to sop up the blood. She gave it to Woody Allen after The Maz continued the long Times tradition of endorsing every sausage the man grinds out, no matter how acrid.

So it was a shock to read her today--as I turned to her column, the thirst for blood rising--in an elegiac mode, ruminating on the deaths of John Gibson and Jacob Chestnut, who died while defending the Capitol. It's a moving piece, an ode to her father (a policeman and later, a Senate aide) from a child who was too ashamed to acknowledge his profession during the '60s, when policemen and soldiers were automatically labeled Fascists. She has kind things to say about Clinton's elegy, but I like best the paragraph that reads:

We understand now that it was the politicians who sent out the Chicago cops and the Ohio National Guard. It was the politicians, Johnson, McNamara and Kissinger who sent all those young men to die after they knew Vietnam was unwinnable. We may be more cynical. But we're no longer demonizing the wrong people.

I hope Maureen Dowd redoubles her wrath and takes on the lawmakers who have, directly or indirectly, eliminated outpatient programs for the de-institutionalized mentally ill--programs that might have kept "Rusty" Weston home in Montana instead of stalking the halls of the Capitol. I hope she also never eases up on Kissinger, an unrepentant and unindicted war criminal. And Nell, never ease up on those severance-engorged CEOs.

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031323334353637383940
from: David Edelstein

Good, Clean Bullet Wounds

Posted Wednesday, July 29, 1998, at 6:56 PM ET
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David Edelstein is Slate's film critic. Nell Minow's reviews of movies and videos appear on her Movie Mom Web page. Her book The Movie Mom's Guide to Family Movies is forthcoming.
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