PARIS, NO MERCI, ( Not France )

The Stranger

A new Documentary was screened recently at the Toronto Film Festival: PARIS, NOT FRANCE. A film about Paris Hilton. What can possibly be next? A documentary about Kathy Lee Gifford? Or Oprah Winfrey’s non-lesbian girlfriend?

There will be interest in the film. But from who? That’s the question. And what could anyone hope to learn or care to learn about a celebrity whose main ambition in life is to be famous? That she’s self-centered? Who could that possibly be news to? That she’s dumb, except on behalf of her own relentless self-promotion? Who could that be news to, as well?

In the review of the film was a comment that Ms. Hilton was at the premiere, and that “as is her habit, she had nothing to say.” That’s not a habit, that’s a fact of who she is: its not that she’s being savvy or coy - its that she truly has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to say. All she craves is our attention and once she has it - there is no there, there.

I remember being struck by a response in a newspaper article she gave shortly after she got out of jail last year when she was asked if jail-time had changed her in any way in terms of any new insights about herself or life in general, and she replied: “Yes, I would like my voice to be deeper when I get upset.” No there, there, at all. No way, no how. Here, to me, is what is truly scary: there are people who admire and want to be (like) Paris Hilton. Pubescent girls. Not only, but I’m afraid - primarily. What does this say about the values of these young persons? About the households they are being raised in? About their parents?

A new film opens also this week: THE WOMEN. Women in the entertainment industry, with the exception of one of them - Diane Lane,* have become BORING. When they talk about themselves these days all they want us to know is how powerful and self-sufficient they are. How STRONG and MACHO. How strong the relationships with the other women in their lives are.

I find myself wondering if, because of how strong these ties are to the women in their lives if they ever talk to one another about how focused they are on their own looks and how desperate they are to be seen as sex objects? These days when I see these women on TV, over the age of let’s say thirty two, and the ceiling is dropping fast, being interviewed, the first thing my attention goes to are the faces, and how much work they’ve had done on them. Many of them look like guppies with swollen lips: i.e. Calista Flockheart, to name just one.

Meg Ryan stars in THE WOMEN. Here’s an actress that began fooling around with her face when she was in her late twenties. Has messed around with it continually since. So much so that the review I saw of the film declares that she “now has the face of Goldie Hawn.” YIKES!! Dat ain’t no complement!

Recently I’ve seen interviews of Carol Burnett and Mary Tyler Moore. Who’ve both had wonderful careers in the entertainment industry. But, my God - look at their faces!! The work they have both had done on those faces! For who …. for what? And mostly - WHY?? Don’t either of them have any idea at all that their successes never had a thing to do with them being sex objects, or their looks. And everything to do with something God given - their talent. Or maybe they’ve both simply had way too much time on their hands. Its like they’ve no concept at all of the phrase …. “aging gracefully.”

Diane English directs THE WOMEN. She made her name on Murphy Brown. So its no surprise to learn the film, or rather, her version of the story of the film is a love story between two women. What else is new? Men? Nah, there isn’t a man mentioned as even being in the film, except for some cheating bastard of a husband who is married to Meg Ryan’s character in the story.

Why are women today having so much plastic surgery done on themselves? It certainly can’t have anything to do with men. Because, to hear women talk these days, men are almost always left out of the equation. Women want to be thought of as so self sufficient they no longer need men. Men are no longer essential to women is what these women would have us believe. So then, who is all the plastic work being done for? Other women?? I mean, last time I checked there were just two sexes in the world.

I can’t remember the last time I read about or heard a woman connected with the entertainment industry talking about the man in her life as being great, or charming or even OK. Or that the reason she cares about her looks having anything at all to do with men. With these women, its as though there are no men at all on the planet.

How refreshing it would be to have Meg Ryan say the reason she’s had so much work done on her face (and who knows what else ) has had everything to do with the fact that she desperately needs to be thought of as beautiful and desirable and sexy by the opposite sex, more than anything else in her life. And that she’s been desperately seeking this since her late twenties, at least.

For years women in the entertainment business bitched about men having all the power ….
Men having all the best parts in films .… the best careers …. that men relegated women to careers as mere sex objects. I wondered to myself what might happen when women got their shot, got into some positions of power - what might they do? The answer: absolutely nothing new.

The few women in power simply use their position to make chick flicks. Actresses like Sandra Bullock, and Bette Midler when they attained power surrounded themselves with women in their careers, left men completely out of the picture - and have paid the price:
they made movies no one cared to see.

They completely overlooked the fact that the reason they both became stars in the first place had everything to do with MEN writing and directing and photographing them, and creating stories that made the public fall in love with them. When women got their chance, all they’ve done is to do to men what they accused men of doing to them.

I’m bored to death with the women in the entertainment industry. All your talk about strength and power and self-sufficiency: GET OVER IT!! Maybe one day, one of you will begin to suspect something you have completely overlooked today: the greatest movies ever made were celebrations of the complementary energies - the polarity between men and women, not women and women.

WOMEN ( of the entertainment industry) - PLEASE …. PLEASE….

GET REAL!!! You don’t ever catch Paris Hilton talking or behaving that way. And who is more real than Ms. Hilton? Come on - she even has a sex tape of herself to prove it. And now there’s a documentary on her, as well. So there!

Anyhow, why sugar coat it? What I really want to say is this: the MOST BEAUTIFUL, SEXY AND POWERFUL WOMEN are NOT those being photographed or filmed on camera.
And for sure, they are NOT actresses, models or the so-called singers. They’re nowhere near the entertainment industry.

The most beautiful, sexy and powerful women are those in grocery stores, behind cash registers; the CHECKERS. Those in restaurants and coffee shops, the WAITRESSES, who take our orders and serve us, the public. LADY BUS DRIVERS , SECRETARIES and RECEPTIONISTS - the women we interact with on a daily basis all across America. Who serve and perform the most vital and essential jobs and services in the workplace that make our country the greatest in the world. I’m not being flippant. I mean it. They are pound for pound, and inch for inch some of the most gorgeous physical specimens I have ever seen on the planet. Also the most intelligent, charming, and sexy. Period!

And they don’t need smoke and mirrors and plastic work to present themselves to us. Because, by and large they simply cannot be bothered to be that desperate or even overly concerned about what they look like. They’re too busy being the real women of America. And, in my opinion, the real role models. For my money, they should be the ones getting all the press coverage, having documentaries made about them, not the Paris Hiltons of the world.

These are the women who enjoy men. Enjoy sharing the planet with them. Beauties too relevant and truthful to spout off feminist jargon about how powerful they are, how independent and self-sufficient they are, and that they don’t need men blah, blah, blah. If you don’t believe me, you haven’t been paying attention to the real world. You’ve been taken in by the media and the artificial world, that has never been the real world which is the entertainment industry.

The biggest decision a Paris Hilton has each day is trying to decide which shade of lipstick, or panties to wear. The women I’m referring are too busy making our country run and run smoothly to have any time at all for the superficial concerns and values of the Paris Hiltons, or Madonnas, of the media and entertainment worlds.

We’ve lost sight of who the real stars in our culture are. They’re not the privileged hotel heiress wannabes, or fifty year old crotch grabbers, unimaginably self-centered and living solely on behalf of the most superficial concerns, values, and goals imaginable. No, the women I’m referring to, the REAL WOMEN OF AMERICA possess a generosity of spirit that begins where the self-love of a Paris, Madonna, or Janet Jackson stops!

I’m referring to all the women in our society today NOT in the entertainment industry - who are being overlooked, simply because they have way too much class, character, self-respect, and genuine love in their hearts and spirits to make spectacles of themselves. Think I’m kidding? Try to find a sex tape on-line or for sale in a video store of one of them. To these ladies, making love isn’t something you do to get noticed. Or something you use in a documentary about yourself to promote yourself.

It's something a lady does because her heart and soul: her SPIRIT- is made of it: LOVE. And if some guy is lucky enough to be on the receiving end of that kind of a blessing being extended to him - he begins to discover why he’s alive, what he’s here for. And, if he’s smart his every action for the rest of his life is his way of serving up to that blessing, of showing that he’s worthy to receive it. And any guy who’s lucky enough to know what the hell I’m talking about here, knows that his heart pumps not blood but GRATITUDE - for HER.

I’m sorry, Paris. But where you are concerned, and this is just one person’s opinion: THANKS BUT NO THANKS - AND I DO NOT MEAN FRANCE!! I mean you, Ms. Hilton.


* Diane Lane’s a fox - what can I say.

THE FUTURE OF THE INDEPENDENT FILM

by Yervand Von Kochar

There is a dark cloud hovering over an independent film these days. There are fears that as a production mode and as an artistic expression the independent film is dying.

One of the reasons of the downfall is the fact that seeing the potential of an independently produced film, the studios launched their own independent wings that eventually crippled the spirit of an independent film. The filmmakers who were not expecting studio profits all of a sudden became involved with the studios and eventually succumbed to the dynamic of its machine; some out of greed some out of necessity.

Another popular cause was the sheer amount of the independent film that had a double effect. It saturated the market, lowered the overall quality and hurt the independent brand on one hand and pushed independents toward becoming more and more commercial in order to get their movies sold and seen.

The technological revolution made the filmmaking process accessible to the masses and anyone who could follow their dog on a skateboard with a video camera felt that they had to conquer Hollywood next. A cinematographer friend of mine calls this brand of camera owners ‘Seven/Eleven’ filmmakers.

The process of democratization of cinema was similar to that of the popularization of sculpting when the costly and exclusive art of sculpting became the property of the craftsmen and they overwhelmed the market with cheesy imitations of Michelangelo’s “David”.
Now anyone could make a statue but still few could become sculptors.

The same happened after Gutenberg’s invention, when publishing gradually became a popular enterprise, on the bright side giving someone like Ben Franklin a shot at expressing his transformational ideas to the people of Philadelphia and on the flip side giving Howard Zinn a chance to corrupt his students and completely undo Matt Damon’s already fragile mind.
Let’s pray hard that they don’t democratize medical equipment next, or at least do it very, very slowly.

The democratization brought upon another cause of the downfall; the so-called ‘edge’. Nothing has ever been more destructive to cinema than the concept of it being “edgy’. Edge became the marketing advantage, the way to stand out from a flood of similar attempts at a movie.

By ‘edgy’ most understood being gross, disrespectful, dumb, idiotic, addicted, pro-Democrat party, anti-establishment, loose, pro-Che Guevara, moronic, violent, Marxist, anti-middle class, promiscuous, depressed, suicidal, dogmatically open-minded, cocky, spoiled, perverted and indiscriminately liberal.

This edge was so far from the center of not even the American life but a relatively sane human life in general that it made people equate an independent film with a bad acid trip. In a way, this generation’s experiments with the moving images were like the previous one’s experiments with hallucinogenic substances. They did it, had fun, some sex, then got over it and, as a result, managed to dent the culture with an impassable lameness.
The independent film is summarized perfectly by Cartman from the ‘South Park’ when he warns his friends not to watch independent movies since they are always about gay cowboys eating pudding. This was prophetic because this was done years before ‘The Brokeback Mountain’ emerged as an alternative Western movie.

In any event, these are just some of the causes of the sad state of the independent film today. It is hard to pinpoint which one of these is the overriding cause or if there is even one. It may be just a natural cycle, after all. Studios had their worse days and kept coming back. It’s life! Sometimes even, “It’s a Wonderful Life”!

Yet, there is something that makes me think that the problem cannot be explained solely within the framework of a movie industry. That something is the similarity of the downfall of the movies and the downfall of many other and different factors that constitute our society and culture.

And that something is the lack of seriousness!
The approach to life is not serious, it is not real. Everything is a game, a reality show. The life passes us by; yet, we act as if it is a video game, or a contestant game, or just a fun game, sometimes not even that fun but still a game.
Something somewhere made it all seem illusionary and not serious. Being dumb and superficial became a standard. Life was turned into a televised game; the climate was turned into a game of a global warming, statesmanship turned into a race and gender contest.

The overall approach became that of a gambler not of an owner, a consumer and not of a citizen. Our fantasies became our realities, ideal superheroes became our heroes, and the heroes fighting for us became our villains. We devalued and grounded fantasy by allowing it to substitute reality instead of abstracting it.
All the complex ingredients that constituted a real human being were substituted by a single organic formula that promised health but deprived us from meaning. We have traded the mystery of who we are for being ‘edgy’, and dismissed the directedionality of our evolution for a cheap contest.

The lack of seriousness in life is the lack of now, of being here at this time, in this place and owning our time and our space NOW! We broke the chain of time and timed out.
If we are to claim our life as it is given to us in this time and in this space, we have to become serious about ourselves, of what we say, of how we act and what we see.

In this permeating foolishness, a truly strong and successful independent film is an exception, because true independent film is not a noncommercial film but an artistic film that touches people.

Art is what touches people; it is something that the public finds because it craves it. They are not going to find an independently done non serious movie, because the studios will serve it to them much better and in a much better package.
People want someone who talks to them seriously, not about serious things necessarily, but seriously, earnestly, HONESTLY!
The word ‘Serious’ stems from Old French words ‘earnest, honest’.
So, the serious communication is above all earnest and honest communication. Or, honest communication will express itself through seriousness.

This is what is missing from our life and from its expression through moving images!
An independent movie that is earnest and honest will connect with audiences and it will make people buy tickets and wait for more.
For many years the independent film and the culture in general has been under the spell of relativism and libertine philosophy. The simple direct emotional communication through screen became considered as primitive and lacking a nuance. The plots became complicated and the characters became weak. Movies lost their masculinity and femininity and became metrosexual. It is easy to complicate, after all.

Independent (and in general) movies became dishonest and politically partisan. The independent film particularly dedicated itself to promotion of libertine and Marxist causes exclusively.
The independent film completely ignored the entire part of the human psyche, namely, its traditionalism and conservatism.
Conservatism not even in a political sense but as an innate condition of a human nature.

Traditional truths that passed the test of time, the truths that manifested the ability to renew with times were frontally attacked with alternative methods which failed to produce a result in real life but found a refuge in the movies. This became a cause of major disconnect between the truths and functions of life and the way those truths were ignored on the screen. In an attempt to be original, the independent film became untrue to reality, yet, zealously dedicated to ideology. It tried to shape reality which in itself is a Marxist approach to art, in which, art becomes an instrument of revolution.

The future success of independent film is in restoring the balance between reality and its understanding through an honest examination of life. As such it is inevitably going to turn conservative after a prolonged liberal reign. The return to the eternal values that have been conserved because of their worthiness and reality will return on the screen and it will be an unstoppable process.

Although, it will have a political effect to some degree, the real change is going to happen on a much deeper level. The process will be that of restoring the equilibrium and that will include conservation of all the worthy art of the liberal age as well.
Yet, the liberal power play with reality proved to be a complete failure. It was partly a reaction to an overly conservationist approach to cinematic and cultural values and in its early stage it had a moral force behind it. As everything progressive, though, it eventually became corrupt and hijacked by movements and ideologies that degraded the art form and violated its fundamental laws.

Reality is a combination of things seen and unseen and as such it is a much deeper concept than it is comprehended by those who try to alter it through artificial means.
The less the reality was understood, the more it was altered and distorted.
The end of this corrosion is near and the flower that is going to spring from under the pebble of the collapsing machine will have a conservative scent.
It is a truth that will not be kindly accepted by many, but it is a process that is beyond anyone’s control. Those filmmakers who stand on the threshold of this process will be violently opposed by the old guard, some will be broken, some will triumph but the power of reality will undo the artificial resistance and the equilibrium will be restored.

God Speed!

CRY, BABY - CRY!!!

The Stranger

When did the TV screen become the place where CRYING became the only game in town?

I remember the first time I ever saw someone cry on TV. A man was being interviewed. His daughter had been murdered. As he attempted to talk about the experience, I remember the huge, overwhelming sense of the emotions that began to surface in this man. There was about the man, a great dignity that in this moment was being threatened. And there he was onscreen, fighting as though his very life depended upon it, for composure, to not be overwhelmed by the size and weight of these emotions. His suffering was palpable, as was the tremendous sense of love and of loss in this noble soul.

And I remember thinking “My God - this kind of intimacy is something I’ve never imagined would appear on TV.” I was moved. Extremely. I felt for the man. Felt his loss. Felt the bravery he exhibited in this interview. It made an indelible impression on me. I remember feeling that I was indeed in the presence of real emotions. And how they are handled in real life. As opposed to reel life. I’ve never forgotten that experience. Also noticed how the camera kept a discreet distance from the man. Allowed him some measure of privacy. Respecting the intimacy of the moment. Unlike today.

In 2008, everybody on TV cries. And they cry. AND THEY CRY. If they win, they cry. If they lose, they cry. If they’re told they’re good, they cry. If they’re told they’re lousy, and they’re gonna get booted off, they sob. If they’re told they’re not gonna get booted off, they sob. And the camera is right in there, tight as can be, because CRYING is the big money shot. Everyone today who is a host, or an interviewer - are all Barbara Walters clones or wannabes going for the jugular …. the money shot: The shot in which the person on-camera - CRIES!

And never before has crying and the shedding of tears become so meaningless. All that it is, is business as usual on TV. Everyone on the idiot box playing the same game. And like just about everything else that TV really excels at - its cheapened emotions. Cheapened the individuals who partake in these endless displays. Who show no reluctance whatsoever to spilling their guts in front of the world this way, simply because they are coached and directed by the producers of the shows they are on to give these displays. Their compliance and willingness to do whatever is asked of them has everything to do with why they’ve been selected to be on these shows in the first place.


But what its done to the viewer, TO YOU AND I - is to desensitized us to anything but the most vulgar and crass. Which is really all that TV is about these days - expanding the boundaries of the crude, the vulgar, and the crass. There’s a show on TV, GOSSIP GIRL, that touts itself on signboards around town with quotes like “Completely Inappropriate,” and others similar to that, that are meant to entice the viewer. Perverse advertising that assumes the viewer won’t be able to resist something that’s especially in bad taste, vulgar, or offensive.

TV’s THE medium that creates its own stars after its own image. The stars of American Culture, World culture. How else could a no-talent fifty year old woman be touring the globe these days whose sole message her entire career has been the promotion of her vagina? What’s the name of her current offering… The Sweet , Sticky something Tour.…. or whatever the hell its called? You might say TV didn’t create her. Oh, but it did. Nothing to do with talent. Everything to do with crassness, vulgarity and crudeness: MTV.

God, am I glad the Olympics ended when they did. If I had to be exposed to one more close-up of Michael Phelps’ mother trying to figure out how to manage and/or contort her face on behalf of one more closeup reaction shot to her son’s winning his next gold medal…..I was never sure if the big Olympic story was Michael Phelps going for eight gold medals, or his mother seeing if she could look dazed and confused and ecstatic over and over, and over and over.

The Olympics: TV’s latest success story of how to trivialize anything into just another Soap Opera. The anti-christ is alive and flourishing these days, folks. Its right in our living rooms. And by the way, and this isn’t solely a reference to the Olympics, but to the cutting edge of our culture’s crudeness, vulgarity and crassness - the rest of the world’s catching up to us - have you noticed? I’m not just referring to Usain Bolt, either. Its because its easier to run downhill. They’re catching up to us, alright. Fast!! I know what you’re thinking:

Its enough to make you cry.