#bambi vs. godzilla: on the nature purpose and practice of the movie business

[spectaculardistractions]

Murder has, of course, always been a staple theme of the dramatist. Its mythologic exploration is cathartic, e.g., The Scottish Play, The Iliad, Crime and Punishment, and, in fact, Paths of Glory, The Ox-Bow Incident, A Place in the Sun. These are not advertisements for, but warnings against, violence. As such they are cleansing. They artistically exhibit, they reveal and acknowledge, the human capacity for evil. By so doing they strip from the viewer the burden of repression.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[censusaficionado]

Bambi vs. Godzilla

recommended I enjoy books that go behind the scenes of Hollywood and explain show business and David Mamet’s Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. does that beautifully. Writer, director Mamet, as you’d expect, provides trenchant on a variety of movie making topics including auditions, producers, corruption, writing for women.  Like William Goldman’s…

[smkelly84]

Bambi vs. Godzilla

Recommended I enjoy books that go behind the scenes of Hollywood and explain show business and David Mamet’s Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business. does that beautifully. Writer, director Mamet, as you’d expect, provides trenchant on a variety of movie making topics including auditions, producers, corruption, writing for women.  Like William Goldman’s…

[spectaculardistractions]

Karen Horney wrote of a neurotic who could never complete anything. She was impeded now by this, now by that mischance and was eternally blighted and blocked, just on the edge of the creation of a great work. Ever saddened but still valiant, she pressed on, content in her own untested but undoubted abilities.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

Napoléon frowned on councils of war, as he vowed never "to take counsel of his fears."

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

"Soft on defense" is a war cry directed not against the country's enemies but at those who are soft on defense; the right understands (consciously or unconsciously) that a conveniently frightened populace wants security and that not defense but defense spending absolutely (if momentarily) supplies it. This addiction is conveniently both self-ratifying and self-perpetuating, for if the country is not at risk after spending, the spending, now proved effective, must, logically, be continued. And if the country is still at risk after increased spending, the only cure must be further expenditure.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

Big and bad films, summer films, blockbusters have similarly become the laugh track to our national experiment. As with the Defense Department, we are reassured by their presence rather than their content or operations. As examples of waste they appeal to our need - not for entertainment but for security.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

America is a self-created society. That a self-created group could rule itself, absent religious or hereditary oversight, subject only to the dictates of reason, is all very well. The body politic, however, constantly strives to re-create for itself that same irrational, repressive (that is, effective) governing authority otherwise vested in tradition, popes, and kings. Such authority may be called patriotism and, as such, may helpfully identify convenient enemies foreign and domestic; or we may create a civil version of religion and call it "family values," liberalism, Americanism, or the American way. We may, also, uniquely in history, name this ad hoc authority "entertainment."

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

Is there such a thing as a good critic? Yes. I think my work has benefited over the years from one or two such. Were such supporters of my work? Yes. But, in the main, I don't like critics, and I like even less my personal inability to come to peace with the phenomenon. I might cite my benefits derived from certain critics and name them - but would it be possible to name them without the wish that they might read, and I might, thus, not only propitiate them but have wished to do so as well? It is a philosophic can of worms, indeed, it is. And what of the "democratization of criticism," e.g., online critics? Well, this approaches pure gossip, and, as such, it is of necessity messier and more truthful than its licensed brother. In the end, we all have to take our knocks.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

What of trash? Is it not the critic's job to cleanse it from the public view? No. The critic's job in America is to sell newspapers. Newspapers are sold by gossip, and most critics write gossip - they invite the reader to find fault, licensing a vicarious superciliousness. This practice increases not only readership but also, more importantly, advertising revenues, as the more films come and go, the more films have to pour out an initial rollout ad campaign. One is as unlikely to find a champion of the public taste in the arts section as to find a champion of actual defense in the Defense Department. The officials of that department exist to defend their department, as do the officials of the arts section. Such are effectively not critics but censors, hired to defend the status quo.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

It is a comfort to ascribe to the process of film criticism, if not justice, then at least a certain symmetry. "Well," we beleaguered say, "they shat on my beautiful work this time, but, sigh, last time they praised certain aspects of the film I thought I might have done better"; or, truth be told, "they trashed my film, but at least the swine also trashed the film of a hated competitor." One reads mindless, hurried, self-serving dissections of the films of others, if not with glee, then with a certain praise-worthy equanimity; such holding of one's own feet to the fire, however, prompts a recourse to the philosophic. "Who are these brigands?" one wonders. "And who died and left them boss?" This, in the sufficiently irate, leads to fantasies not of outright crime but of un revers de satire. One imagines the critic (in general perceived as, if not actually possessing, a second-rate intellect) in debate with the more mentally nimble filmmaker. One fantasizes about the critic himself taking to art and hazarding his good name "on his own bottom," et cetera. One may, in an extended violent reverie, wake to shame and find one's thought driven ever eastward, toward the stoicism of the Mediterranean and, in absolute extremis, toward the quest for satori of Nepal. For critics are a plague.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

The young will not stop copulating like rabbits, and no amount of what is, finally, voyeurism and child abuse on the part of the school administration will turn them from the course of lust. Neither will the members of AMPAS cease voting for their self-interest, which is, and must be, the nature of all awards ceremonies. The movies are a cutthroat business, the business is entertainment, and we should be glad of the entertainment value of a bunch of pirates proclaiming their mutual goodwill and probity. Perhaps even extending to ourselves the same licensed smirk of the randy Antioch elders and receiving the same necessary rejoinder: "Okay. You first."

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

To speak of the movie business, which is my assigned beat: wherever there is community secrecy and the possibility of invidious gain, there must be collusion. The human mind cannot tolerate the spectre of waste presented by the possibility of chicanery without detection. The very vehemence with which the Academy presents its good-willed and patient plea informs as to the impossibility of its implementation. For, in each, the fault is not with the participants but with their stars.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

But there will always be collusion. Collusion is, indeed, the true and necessary state of communal endeavor. Just as it seems that money is to be made in the stock market only by what the deluded know by the sobriquet "insider trading," so, according to the solons of Antioch, healthy sex can be ensured among the young only by a watchfulness as that of our friends the Medes and the Persians. For will not the young collude and conspire against law, reason, custom, and tradition in order to hide the salami? And will not the depraved fame- and fortune-starved members of the Academy serve ceviche in an other-than-disinterested manner? In short, yes.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

The Academy, much like the stoics of an earlier day, suggests the conflicted consider his motives and, if still in doubt, review who is footing the bill for the entertainment. Is it the host himself or a studio or production company? Are guests invited in the hope that they have gained an appreciation of the artist and his difficulties "faced and overcome" during filming? "'Yes' answers indicate treacherous ethical waters." These clarifying documents, in common with The Rights of Man, et cetera, exist to force one's attention to abuses to which the perpetrator or victim has become desensitized. The first step toward a recompleted humanity, then, must necessarily be shock at the gulf between our practice and right reason; e.g., "All sexual contact and conduct between any two (or more!) people must be consensual."

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla

[spectaculardistractions]

And from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences 2003 pamphlet on Academy Standards: There are many within the Academy today... who use the phrase "Academy campaign" without irony or embarrassment. It is not at all necessary, though, that such a concept or such a thing exist. The simplest most direct path to protecting the Academy Awards Process from debasement real or suspected would be to arrive at a point at which electioneering disappeared entirely. I envision, thus, a perfect world in which both the randy young at Antioch and the careerist film producer find a playing field as level as that which God intended. In this world the lion shall lie down with that lamb, and only with that lamb that has spelled out its consent, vide Antioch: If the level of sexual intimacy increases... (i.e., if two people move from kissing while fully clothed... to undressing for direct physical contact, which is another level), the people involved need to express their clear verbal consent before moving to that new level. But how, in what is clearly the heat of the moment, will they remember to turn aside and consider, so as to fulfill both the letter and the spirit of the law? Our other document may help. The Academy does not presume to tell its members when they may and may not invite friends to their homes... at the same time, the Oscar-season "parties" that in fact are heavy-handed lobbying occasions have become... distasteful.... Self-tests for whether a dinner party really is a dinner or a party, as distinct from a tactical maneuver in an Oscar campaign, include the following... Which list is an aide for (and a caution to) those ethically conflicted about the true nature of their canapés.

David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla