As what used to be called The Entertainment Media melts down into one big, incestuous, pageview-mad morass, occasionally something happens that reminds us of why The Good Old Days — when the people who gossiped about startlets and their cocaine habits were not the same people assigned to even half-seriously analyze trends in cinema — were So Much Better. Today the movie nerd contingent on Twitter is piling on The Pool Movies That Ruined a Generation’s Greatest Directors, a Gawker listicle in which author NatashaVC cites where and when a number of “90s directors” (such as Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and, um, Jonathan Demme) sold out by making movies obviously intended to pay for their luxurious lifestyles, embodied by new swimming pools. Even if we’re to take this post as being tongue-in-cheek, the author’s lack of long-term perspective and number of casual errors are fairly stunning. A refutation of points follows after the jump.
1. “Remember the 90’s? The decade when America ran out of cocaine and was forced to go to the movies instead?”
I don’t think Quentin Tarantino, whose claim that he’ll never subject audiences or himself to “the movie I made to pay for my pool” ostensibly inspired NatashaVC’s post, ever ran out of cocaine.
2. “Movies like Usual Suspects, Pulp Fiction, Memento, L.A. Confidential, aw hell, even Fight Club were a great mix of pulp and substance.”
Memento started appearing at film festivals in the fall of 2000 and was released in theaters in mid-2001. Its inclusion in a piece about films of the previous decade is thus dubious; its also a little weird that NatashaVC cites both it and Suspects without going into the further careers of either Christopher Nolan or Bryan Singer, both of whom have done almost nothing since their breakout hits but make movies that could pay for many, many swimming pools, many times over.
3. “If you remember all that then you certainly remember the sense of betrayal you felt when you heard something, like, say Robert Rodriguez was directing Spy Kids 2?”
Those movies may not be hip, but the Spy Kids franchise is a really bad example to use when talking about filmmakers betraying their roots, being that they’re total auteur projects that Rodriguez basically made in his garage.
4. “Fincher was a decorative filmmaker with a pretty morbid vision.”
I just can’t for the life of me figure out what “decorative filmmaker” means.
5. The entire Jonathan Demme/The Truth About Charlie section.
Jonathan Demme simply does not belong on this list: as Filmbrain points out, his career began decades before, with Roger Corman-produced shlock. But also — The Truth About Charlie as a big cash-in? A French New Wave-influenced remake of Stanley Donen’s Charade? Seriously? And to the assertion that “Demme has not made anything not-awful since!” … Rachel Getting Married’s worth may be up for debate, but the three documentaries he’s made in the last five years (The Agronomist, Jimmy Carter Man From Plains, and Neil Young: Heart of Gold) are all far from awful, and his Manchurian Candidate remake was undeniably one of Demme’s biggest hits, grossing about 12 times what Charlie made and earning mostly positive reviews.
6. Citing Rex Reed as an authority, without apparent irony.
Curtis Hanson shouldn’t really be grouped on generational terms with Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh, either, but I won’t argue that his Lucky You *wasn’t* an “undredeemableIe flop.” Still, NatashaVC goes too far with five little words: “Rex Reed put it best.”
7. “When Soderbergh made Ocean’s 11 in 2001 you could fill an Olympic sized pool with the art house tears.”
To quote Filmbrain once again: “What is (s)he talking about? A collective cry from art house types worldwide would barely fill a hipster’s baby pool.” Also: the first film in the trilogy carries an 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, making it far more critically beloved than one of the films NatashaVC cites as a Soderbergh “hit,” Che.
8. “Soderbergh’s real paycheck flick was The Good German . An updated noir vehicle for George Clooney that mucked the line between homage and mockery.”
I’ll ignore the horribly fragmented sentences and respond in blogspeak: LOL.
9. “Way to go, Ang! Just when we were starting to believe that you were as good as your as all those Oscars said you were, you go and make The Hulk.”
I’m tempted to let [sic] speak for itself, but I’ll bite: doesn’t the fact that Ang Lee squandered his big payday on a movie that satisfied his personal vision at the expense of kowtowing to mass tastes render him ineligible for the “Back The Cash Truck Up Here, Boys” Club?
Less than an hour after publishing the Pool Movies post, NatashaVC was back with this post, typical Gawker fare in which the news of a Lindsay Lohan movie premiering on cable opened the door for copious coke jokes. Maybe, then, she’s already learned the only lesson we can offer from the movie nerd blogosphere: stick to writing what you know.
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SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth