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Under discussion:

The Panic in Needle Park  (1971)

I think the phrase I used was “petit-point-on-Kleenex,” and a lot of it seemed to have that situation. But no, I think people know more about film now than they knew then. And I think critics really have a more accurate sense of how pictures are put together, and why certain things work the way they do. People know a little more about the business. There were so many great pictures in the ’70s; I think, gradually, people were looking at them in a serious way.

From Aaron Hillis’ IFC.com interview with Joan Didion, pegged to the current run of The Panic in Needle Park at Film Forum in Manhattan.

Didion was responding to a question from Hillis inregards to her circa 1973 essay “In Hollywood,” in which she also declared that there are only three “non-Industry people in New York whose version of Hollywood corresponds at any point with the reality of the place” –– all daughters of former moguls –– and includes “reviewers being courted by Industry people” amongst those “who do not understand the mise of the local scene” and are thus likely to try to flirt at a Hollywood dinner party.

In the IFC interview, Didion also praises The Reader, talks about the future of the Tuesday Weld-starring adaptation of Play it as it Lays, and refuses to lament the loss of old, seedy New York.

Under discussion:

Paul Blart: Mall Cop  (2009)

In the world of writing — not unlike that of sports or other businesses — those who can, do, and those that can’t, become film reviewers who take perverse pleasure in tearing down the efforts of those willing to put their names, talent, and oftentimes, hard-earned money, on the line to create movies crafted to elicit any number of emotions out of the viewing public. How easy it is to never step into that arena and take potshots at those who do.

From a Huffington Post piece by Douglas MacKinnon, titled Paul Blart: Mall Cop. More Real Than Reviewers

There are a number of really amazing things about this story:

1. That MacKinnon, who calls out Nathan Lee and Brian Lowry by name, would suggest that it’s an “easy” career path to writing film criticism for Variety or the New York Times;

2. That MacKinnon more than once slams “non-stop negative media narrative about the economy,” and implies that journalists should ease up on reporting all the bad news, and focus on the bright side. You know, like they should have focused on all the good news coming out of Iraq, instead of, like, Abu Ghraib.

3. That MacKinnon is so intent on diverting our attention away from the state of the world that he posits patronizing Mall Cop as not only a recommended “couple of hours of needed escape from the pervasive doom and gloom spread by most of the media” but also a stick in the eye of “elitist reviewers writing for a minute collection of fellow elitists.” There’s a vast media conspiracy that wants you to think! But Kevin James just wants you to laugh!

4. That in showing such distaste not just for film criticism, not just for journalism, but for the wider practice of thinking, MacKinnon manages to make virtually everythng published on Breitbart’s new bastion for conservative film chat Big Hollywood seem positively intellectual and urbane. Nice work, Huff Post!

Under discussion:

Back to School  (1986)

Heathers  (1988)

Horse Feathers  (1932)

The Paper Chase  (1973)

Soul Man  (1986)

National Lampoon's Animal House  (1978)

Good Will Hunting  (1997)

Wonder Boys  (2000)

Old School  (2000)

Wet Hot American Summer  (2001)

The Rules of Attraction  (2002)

The Human Stain  (2003)

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle  (2004)

Tropic Thunder  (2008)

Elegy  (2008)

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men  (2009)

Tenure  (2009)

There is a good reason Hollywood continually makes Animal House wannabes and avoids producing films that actually focus on academia. Kids prefer their college movies to be about the fun stuff. And so a movie like Old School grossed $75 million while another Luke Wilson comedy called Tenure currently lacks a distributor. The latter film may also be hilarious, as a satire of the tenure process, but if it doesn’t concentrate more on beer bongs and naked co-eds, it won’t attract as big an audience. And according to some scholars, it may not even resonate with them, because it couldn’t possibly be what the process is really like. Film blogger and associate professor Chuck Tryon was quoted about the film last year as saying, “my ongoing pursuit of tenure typically involves me sitting in front of my laptop until 1 a.m., I don’t know how interesting that would be to watch.”

And evident by the scathing reviews from Sundance of John Krasinski’s Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, it appears another film about academia has failed to make a strong case for the subject matter. Too bad for the late David Foster Wallace, whose stories were adapted for the film, that Gus Van Sant wasn’t at the helm. A decade ago, in an interview with Van Sant, Wallace pretty much gushed that Good Will Hunting is the most accurate film about academia ever made. Do we agree with him? Let’s just say there’s not a whole lot of competition for such an honor. But in our attempt to recognize the ten best films about academia, Good Will Hunting doesn’t quite make the top spot.

9. (tie) Elegy (2005) and The Human Stain (2003)

Neither of these films is especially great, but it would be criminal for us not to recognize the work of Philip Roth, an author who depicts the academic world perfectly in his novels, particularly The Dying Animal (which is the basis for Elegy) and The Human Stain. The adaptations of these two books fail to capture much of what’s on the page, but each film has its own merit. Elegy, which primarily deals with an affair between a professor (Ben Kingsley) and a student (Penelope Cruz), is worth seeing for the more interesting relationship between that professor and his Pulitzer Prize-winning friend (Dennis Hopper). Rarely is fraternity between two members of the academic intelligentsia portrayed so enjoyably. As for The Human Stain, which also involves a professor (Anthony Hopkins) and his affair with a younger woman (Nicole Kidman), the film deals primarily with the issue of political correctness within academia. The topic is addressed nowhere near as well as it is in Roth’s novel, but it is at least a starting point for discussion, and it’s also worth seeing for an example in how not to cast a movie.

8. Soul Man (1986)

If we are to include The Human Stain, it’s just as well we acknowledge this earlier comedy, which also involves ironic situations regarding race and academia. Hardly a brilliant movie, Soul Man is at least as humorous in its examination of racism as the Harold and Kumar movies. Yet it is far less esteemed. And the whole black face thing can no longer be looked down upon now that Robert Downey Jr. has that Oscar nomination for Tropic Thunder. The movie is a worthy lampoon of the politics of affirmative action and their affect on college admissions (as well as an obvious and general look at racism within the student population), but it’s especially entertaining for James Earl Jones as a professor who refuses to favor the masquerading protagonist (C. Thomas Howell) just because he’s black.

7. Back to School (1986)

While Soul Man deals with the benefit of being a minority when it comes to getting into college, this film from the same year deals with the benefit of being rich. The idea that anyone with enough money can get into the school of his or her choice is depicted comically in a two-scene setup. In the first scene, a university dean (Ned Beatty) asks millionaire entrepreneur Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield) how he could possibly admit him as a student when he has no high school degree, no transcripts and no SAT scores. The movie then cuts to the punch-line scene, in which the dean and Mellon are celebrating the groundbreaking of a new business school for the university, named after Mellon, of course. Another favorite jab at academia is with the famous cameo by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who is hired by Mellon to write a paper about his own work. The paper earns a failing grade.

6. Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

You’re probably wondering how a comedy set at a summer camp could possibly be about academia. Well, it’s not specifically about academia, but it does feature a subplot involving a science professor (David Hyde Pierce) that does poke fun of the concept of tenure. This was pointed out by Elaine Showalter, an English professor at Princeton and author of the book Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, so you have to accept that it fits the list. Sure, she’s the mother of WHAS star and screenwriter Michael Showalter, but that shouldn’t take away from her observation.

5. The Paper Chase (1973)

This film features a plot that could very well lend itself to the other kind of college film, but it focuses its attention on the classroom and the relationship between student and professor rather than the dorm room and social affairs. Of course, the student protagonist (Timothy Bottoms) is getting some action, but it is with the daughter (Lindsay Wagner) of the professorial antagonist (John Houseman, who won an Oscar for the performance), and so even the sex stuff is part of the politics of academia. The best scene is at the end, when Bottoms’ character gives the finger to higher education by not even bothering to look at his final grades. If only the audience was also left unaware of his marks, as the original novel leaves that revelation out.

4. Good Will Hunting (1997)

David Foster Wallace may have considered this film to be the best film about academia when he discussed it with Gus Van Sant in 1998, but since that time there have been two more poignant films to deal with the subject. Plus, it never was the best film on academia to begin with. So, as much as he’s right to celebrate the film and in particular the portrayal of Stellan Skarsgard’s character and the issue of professors wanting their students to be brilliant, but not too brilliant, there are three more titles to go.

3. Wonder Boys (2000)

Based on Michael Chabon’s novel of the same name, Curstin Hanson’s film cinematically captures the atmosphere of academia as well as Philip Roth does on the page (perhaps Hanson should adapt Roth?). However, one issue with this atmosphere may be that the relationships and characters, though written and portrayed wonderfully, are rather common for such a story. Also, why not change things a bit and have the main character be a film teacher rather than a creative writing teacher, which an overused profession in these kinds of movies. The switch would be more appropriate for the medium, too. Aside from these minor criticisms, though, we can barely take a red pen to this film. It’s terrific.

2. The Rules of Attraction (2002)

Probably the most cynical look at higher education ever filmed, Roger Avary’s highly underrated adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ novel shows us just enough of the classroom and professors (i.e. canceled classes and a single professor who accepts sexual bribes) to let us understand that the joke is in how little of that side of academia is actually necessary to a film like this. In that way it kind of does for college what Heathers does for high school. Neither film is a teen sex comedy in the fashion of most high school and college movies. And neither is a satire of education institutions in the way most of the other films on this list are. Rather, they’re mockeries of the whole education system, but only in that they each consider their respective system to be already a mockery of itself.

1. Horse Feathers (1932)

Nobody mocks and satirizes better than the Marx Brothers, and in this film they bring their anarchic shenanigans and brilliant puns to the world of academia. At its core is the basic college sports story, but it’s also one of the first films (if not the first film) to deal with the concept of buying students/players. In addition to lampooning that practice, Horse Feathers makes fun of intellectual gatherings and talk, the influence of trustees and nearly every other aspect of scholarship and higher education you can think of, all in the opening scene. After more than 75 years, it’s still the funniest college movie and the greatest film about academia there is.