Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

24 January 2004

The Horse Race

You can get a head start on the New York Times Magazine by reading A.O. Scott's short piece on independent film online. He mentions Peter Biskind's new book Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance and the Rise of Independent Film, and if it's half as riveting as his Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, it'll be a page-turner. Bulls was trashy and chaotic, but for some reason it's fascinating to know the kinds of stunts that people pulled to get movies like Easy Rider made, and the book truly feels like a head-shaking snapshot of a unique time in American movies, a period that's probably over-discussed but still chock full of stories.

The irony of the independent movement is how fine a point its biggest proponents need to stand on; a tip in any direction and they become part of the problem. My favorite quote about this is from my indie hero, Jim Jarmusch, in an interview with the Guardian some time back. Here's his comment about Miramax's virtual failure to release Dead Man in the U.S.:

I felt that Miramax did not keep their word to me. I'm not bitter, and I did not expect Dead Man to be a commercial success. But I wanted it handled in a classy way. And it was handled, as one critic put it, with tongs by Miramax. I don't want to go into the whole thing, but Harvey Weinstein and I had problems with each other about him keeping his word to me. Because he bought a finished film; and then wanted me to change it. This was insulting to me and, ultimately, I felt punished — because I didn't do what he wanted, he didn't distribute the film in a classy way. But that's all business: I don't hate Harvey Weinstein. I just approach the world with a different code than he does.

(The bold is mine.) Different codes, indeed. The saddest thing about the success of the pseudo-independent filmmakers is that their codes don't seem to be all that different from those of the big studio guys. Here's to filmmakers like Jarmusch who stand their ground.

Scott's piece in the New York Times Magazine ends with this:

Worst of all, the public — often led, I'm sorry to say, by movie critics — finds itself seduced into judging the success and failure of films according to the criteria of industry bean-counters rather than according to artistic merit. What was the first-weekend gross? What was the per-screen average? How did it perform against expectations? Like the political discourse, the cultural conversation is increasingly dominated by horse-race reporting, which, entertaining though it can be, ultimately threatens the only force able to preserve the always precarious artistic quality of movies, music and all our other down-and-dirty and exalted pleasures: an independent audience.

For similar reasons, as election politics are revving up I'm imploring as many people as possible to get their news somewhere besides TV. Did you see The Daily Show with Jon Stewart this week? On Wednesday they had a very funny (and depressing) montage of clips from what must have been a dozen major TV news programs talking about the horse race. Not issues, not substance, but who's going to whoop whose ass, who's out, who doesn't have a chance, and how far so-and-so has slid because he didn't "look" presidential. Discuss!

Why does the efficient market sometimes seem as slow as molasses? People will get tired of this — these movies, these talking heads — I'm sure of it.

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