Entries associated with the tag "Dogma":

In a March 24 LA Times article (linked through GreenCine Daily), Patrick Goldstein speculates on one of the great questions of our time: What ever happened to John Hughes?

"Hollywood is full of older masters who've been mentors to younger acolytes," Goldstein (over)generously concedes. "But Hughes, 58, is the only one who's disappeared without a trace; he quit directing in 1991, moved back to Chicago in 1995 and has basically stayed out of sight ever since."

Something I've wondered off and on about myself—assuming Hughes hasn't simply mutated into Judd Apatow Incorporated while none of us was looking. But Apatow himself apparently feels the loss, which presumably explains why he'd exhume an old Hughes story idea as plotline for Drillbit Taylor (starring Owen Wilson, pretty in pink as always), the Judd factory's current teen-market outing.

"John Hughes wrote some of the great outsider characters of all time," Apatow insists. "It's pretty ridiculous to hear people talk about the movies we've been doing, with outrageous humor and sweetness all combined, as if they were an original idea. I mean, it was all there first in John Hughes's films. Whether it's Freaks and Geeks or Superbad, the whole idea of having outsiders as the lead characters, that all started with Hughes."

Taking the notion another step toward absurdity, Dogma's Kevin Smith hyperbolically argues that Goldstein's hermit of the North Shore is actually "our generation's J.D. Salinger."

"He touched a generation and then the dude checked out," Smith mourns his departed hero. "If it weren't for him, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Basically my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words." 

Which is probably why Dogma schmoes Jay and Silent Bob considered a slackers' tour of Shermer, Illinois, mythical burb cum high school of Breakfast Club/Ferris Bueller fame—also, not coincidentally, pseudonym of choice for Hughes's hometown, Shermerville being what suburban Northbrook originally was called. It's rumored Hughes still hides out there—though maybe it's churlish of me to bring it up, since he's taken so many pains to cover his professional tracks. Better no mentors at all than this kind of Hollywood schmoozing and dealing—a realization too late, for Hughes anyway, if not for the aspiring auteurs in his commercial wake.

But at least we'll always have Planes, Trains & Automobiles—so what kind of wonderful is that?

There comes a time in a free society when citizens must take a stand. And this is one of those times. Cuban has a constitutional right to make this piece of garbage. And we have a right to criticize him and anyone who supports the project. —Bill O'Reilly on Fox News (11/14) rallying the troops against Redacted

The sidewalk outside Century shopping mall at Clark and Diversey, home to Landmark's Century Centre theaters, seems way too narrow to accommodate angry swarms of Bill O'Reilly supporters, carpooling in from Naperville and Buffalo Grove and points beyond the Fox (the river, not the TV network), who promise to descend this afternoon and evening (though maybe not—snark, snark) to protest the Chicago release of Brian De Palma's new Mark Cuban-produced anti-Iraq war film Redacted. Not to mention less angry swarms of "counterprotesters"—of which I may be one, I'm not sure yet—who, whether by accident or design, will brave the O'Reillyites' taunts and jeers to buy tickets on opening night (with reduced rates for seniors, hot damn!). But hey, we're all seasoned pros, right?—picket-line crashers from the get-go (well, maybe not quite), from Godard's Hail Mary through Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will to Kevin Smith's Dogma and beyond ...

Speaking of which: I once worked for a nonprofit group that decided to screen D.W. Griffith's notorious silent epic The Birth of a Nation to fill some downtime on the schedule. Everyone knew the classic objections—the sinister racial biases, the Ku Klux Klan hagiography, etc—but, so the rationalization went, it's still a cinematic treasure and part of our national heritage, whatever problems there are attitude-wise. So arguably we'd be performing a service: watch Nathan Bedford Forrest types ride down former bondsmen, get educated—like Johnny Guitar or whatever. Plus since everybody'd already seen it, probably no one would come—so how far down the collective-guilt ladder are we obliged to go?

But then the harassment started: first organized phone blitzes—"it's a racist film, it's racist!"—then promises of picket lines to come. Well, why shouldn't they harass us, they're all just royally pissed! Except now the idea dawned that we might actually—a shameful thought, depending on your tolerance for cynical marketing ploys—sell a few extra tickets, raise a couple of shekels. So from zero-degrees visibility to instant notoriety ... and nobody'd even bothered to raise a finger. At which point I probably should have torched the popcorn, since that's usually what I did, and—poof!—there'd go all our talk about marginal profitability in a carbonaceous haze.

Ah, capitalism ... but of course I'd be happy to give the O'Reillys another popcorn opportunity. Catering, anyone?