Media clippings
Lamer, Jeremy
It never fails. The man who survives the nutty primary system and wins the Democratic nomination is hailed for a while as a media genius—and his staff is full of geniuses, too. It happened to...
...The reporters liked traveling with the Democrats better—and served them worse...
...Penn and Duvall, excellent actors, mumble their lines as if embarrassed...
...Dukakis, in his own way, gives something of that same feeling—and that may count more than anything his aides and pollsters tell the press...
...Tremendous bitterness resulted from this defeat...
...Three years ago, at the end of a long strike, the case had almost reached arbitration with the NLRB, but the television writers—who far outnumber the movie writers—were threatening to go back to work...
...Cf., the campaign stories from the camp of Jimmy Carter...
...Perhaps you remember "Zeferelli's Romeo and Juliet...
...When you travel around the world, you will still meet people from different traditions, but their immediate cultural background via tv and movies will overlap with that of the Americans around us back home...
...q FALL • 1988 • 491 (Katherine McGlynnars4PAcT VISUALS) 492 • DISSENT...
...The key issue this time was worldwide tv residuals, an issue which affects the majority of tv writers rather than the minority of screenwriters...
...The Screen and TV Writers' Strike The recent 23-week screen and tv writers' strike was poorly reported in the media...
...Do these movies bear a relation to the world around us...
...The killings really are senseless, and mostly are not pretended to be anything else...
...They like the thrill of horror and death, plus the fun of mocking the fatuity they see...
...I think most viewers under thirty would answer that thought with a snicker, and they're right—except for the fact that the movies themselves are part of that world...
...Then, too, far more of the youthful audience comes to laugh at movies like Colors than to start a shoot-out...
...As a rule nothing is watched all the way through...
...Democrats are more prone to "strategy" stories than Republicans—both Nixon and Reagan were good at lying low and giving out little while campaigning...
...But there's no political meat in such news: all that results is that the candidate is made to appear as a schemer...
...By election day, the presidency will be decided on how pleased the electorate is with the status quo of the country—and on what they take to be the characters of the candidates...
...Since the early seventies, the royalties accruing to tv sales of movies have been paid out by a formula based on gross distribution...
...reporters resent screenwriters who they think are living on the gravy train...
...But it also signifies the obliteration of local culture by a more synthetic American product...
...The studios were deducting "costs," and dividing only net, which meant that writers received just one-fifth of the royalties they figured they had coming...
...Viewers miss their shows...
...Already accessories are being offered to open up "windows" on the tv screen, so we can watch two channels at the same time...
...What won for Reagan was his appearance of confidence, his genuine liking for himself...
...There's that much less "there" there, less all the time...
...Management has given the "author" credit to the directors, along with more power and prestige, diminishing the writer's chance of seeing his work done well—and probably making most movies worse...
...The younger generation does not take the American movie product nearly as seriously as critics do...
...The addictive power is such that she dares not have a cable tv in her house...
...the feeling is one of absorbing many things at once...
...The Glories of Cable A more real-seeming experience can be had sitting with a remote control in one's hand and fifty cable channels available on the screen...
...The studios, meanwhile, figured they were entitled to keep pressing for rollbacks...
...In the past three years the union reconstructed itself, and when the current contract ran out, went into a strike with relative unity...
...With cassette sales, it was a different story...
...Now, wherever you are in the world, Africa, Europe, or South America, you can turn on your tv set and see dubbed "Dallas," dubbed "Dynasty," or lesser American serials...
...Really it comes from a long tradition of American pictures in which the camera relishes shooting and death far beyond the needs of the ostensible story...
...Obviously some screenwriters make large fees...
...The final result was debatable, saving face for both sides, granting minimal increases, "opening doors" for future negotiations: possibly not worth the money and jobs lost during the strike—at least that is the conclusion among many screenwriters...
...I think it appealed to the youthful sense of going all the way...
...This guaranteed that 1.2 percent of tv sales would go to the writer or writers of a picture...
...I especially recall a chase scene in which cars race shooting at one another down back alleys, ploughing through mountains of debris which the people have cast from their houses...
...Up to now, it has been all too 490 • DISSENT Culture Notes easy for studios to sit on them, and not risk embarrassment by letting another studio do them...
...The worst part of the picture is that nothing else in it registers as a believable alternative to the nihilistic concept of honor lived out by the L.A...
...The young impetuous cop, Sean Penn, is supposed to be redeemed by the death of the older, more restrained one, Robert Duvall, but their scenes are so poor it's hard to tell whether the movie-makers put much faith in this cliched redemption—in which case, why have it...
...But the average writer waits a long time between paydays and averages less money than a newspaper reviewer...
...Both boys and cops call one another "Homes," making a dismal point about interchangeability, and establishing this as the first picture in which all characters have the same name...
...In the Reagan years, the studios, like other bosses, scored a series of victories over the screen craft unions, which have some sympathies with one another but do not act in concert...
...The best thing in the picture is Haskell Wexler's cinematography, which shows us an East Los Angeles there is never any need for nonresidents to see...
...Scola, and a few others like him, can still release their pictures and continue what is arguably the greatest national film tradition...
...But on the road, at hotels, she sits fascinated, unable to break away from the reality that many of her pupils experience every night...
...This is what creates the pot of royalties the broadcasters and studios are reluctant to share...
...The worst result is that the candidate's staff believes this stuff, and goes through the campaign giving Pat Caddell-like interviews about polls and strategy...
...shooting gangs...
...But when I was in Rome a year ago, all of the major movie houses were playing slick American violence flicks, like Rambo...
...A famous Italian director, Ettore Scola, told me there are no chances for younger Italian directors and writers to create film careers...
...It happened to McGovern, Carter, and Mondale—and now it's happening to Michael Dukakis...
...A New York high school principal tells me she can't drop the remote control wand once she picks it up...
...The world of news, entertainment, past, present, media images, etc., lies at the flick of a thumb, with no need anymore to watch a single commercial...
...The screenwriters did gain an improved formula for taking back their original screenplays if unproduced after five years...
...Of more relevance to the non-writer is the fact of billions of dollars now pouring in from worldwide syndication of American tv shows...
...Reporters love these stories because they seem like inside stuff compared to the sameness of campaigning...
...It will now be very slightly less difficult...
...I'm not even sure tv ads count much anymore—because viewers are hip to them...
...Cable tv is the poor man's equivalent of a computer modem, bringing an immense range of fabricated reality to his passive control...
...A Movie of Violence Colors is a picture which falls into the above category...
...With one day to go, the divided leadership of the writers' union dropped the arbitration—losing billions in future cassette royalties—in return for a contribution to its failing health fund...
...He is subject to delays, misrepresentations, and firings that have nothing to do with what he writes...
...The result has been a long and bitter stalemate...
...Why then did Colors gross millions...
Vol. 35 • September 1988 • No. 4
