Rich

As in, "That is..."

{...}SPIELBERG: I think we all have been given our marching orders ... Maybe I shouldn't get into this. [Pause] I just feel that filmmakers are much more proactive since the second Bush administration. I think that everybody is trying to declare their independence and state their case for the things that we believe in. No one is really representing us, so we're now representing our own feelings, and we're trying to strike back.

So Bush has been good for film?
SPIELBERG: I wouldn't just say Bush. The whole neo-conservative movement.

CLOONEY: Because it's polarizing. I'm not going to sit up and say, "This is how you should think." But let's at least acknowledge that there should be an open debate, and not be told that it's unpatriotic to ask questions. Steven, you're taking it from all sides right now.

SPIELBERG: [Laughs] I feel wildly popular.

Did you expect the political reaction to "Munich" to be this heated?
SPIELBERG: I knew we were going to receive a volley from the right. I was surprised that we received a much smaller, but no less painful, volley from the left. It made me feel a little more aware of the dogma, and the Luddite position people take any time the Middle East is up for discussion.

So many fundamentalists in my own community, the Jewish community, have grown very angry at me for allowing the Palestinians simply to have dialogue and for allowing Tony Kushner to be the author of that dialogue. "Munich" never once attacks Israel, and barely criticizes Israel's policy of counterviolence against violence. It simply asks a plethora of questions. It's the most questioning story I've ever had the honor to tell. For that, we were accused of the sin of moral equivocation. Which, of course, we didn't intend—and we're not guilty of.{...}

See, here's the thing. I like Spielberg. I like Spielberg's movies. I think, on the whole, he's a decent man. And he made Schindler's List which is a movie I can only watch on rare occasions because it moves me to explore the wells of sympathy that I know I possess yet rarely like to plumb because it's painful to do so. He's a man who, most would think, is on the right side of the moral equation. He knows right from wrong. He knows how to tell an entertaining story, and no one can deny that he's been very successful at telling tales, but...

...when I read that these words, "I just feel that filmmakers are much more proactive since the second Bush administration. I think that everybody is trying to declare their independence and state their case for the things that we believe in. No one is really representing us, so we're now representing our own feelings, and we're trying to strike back." came from his mouth, I don't exactly feel sympathetic, ya dig? Poor widdle Stevie Spielberg is feeling disenfranchised. He's not feeling "represented." So he's, "striking back."

Fight the powers that be!

/channelling Public Enemy

Forgive me while I bend over and laugh myself silly.

It's absurd. Ludicrous. And any other number of adjectives that describe how just plain dumb it is that Spielberg thinks he's disenfranchised. That he's not being represented, that he has to fight to get his ideas out there to beat back the awful phenomenon that is neo-conservatism, even if it appears he's using The Guardian's lax, imprecise, and boogeyman-ish definition of that particular school of international relations theory. He would have us believe he's just one more Ordinary Joe fighting the powers that be.

Well, Stevie, really. Sell your crazy elsewhere, we're all stocked up here.

This man could get a hangnail. If he wanted to, he could publicize the fact that he had a hangnail, and everyone in the world would pay attention. CNN would run stories on Spielberg's hangnail, and would bring on doctors to discuss what would happen should said hangnail become infected. The pundity-doctors would then go on to discuss whether neosporin should be used to clear up his infected hangnail, or if he should just expose it to air and let nature take its course. I could go on, but I think you get the picture, eh, my devoted Cake Eater Readers.

Spielberg has clout. He has it in Hollywood. He has it everywhere in the world. He has it because, ahem, he's earned it. He's worked hard to make his mark, and he's done precisely that. And yet, for some strange reason, he wants us to believe that's not the case. That's he just one more disaffected, early-21st Century Dude who has no say in the way things are run.

No, Stevie. I dont have a say in the way things are run. You, Stevie, are the establishment. There's a bit of a difference. Learn it, please. You're making a fool of yourself.

Posted by Kathy at January 29, 2006 11:13 PM | TrackBack