The Fake Life - Love movies? We do too!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Impeach Now!

So Bruce Willis is posting on the AICN Talkbacks about his upcoming movie, Die Hard 4, following Sylvester Stallone’s possibly successful stint of Q&A’s to publicize Rocky Balboa. Good for him, but what interests me here, rather than the relative value of, or deceptions involved in, ‘reaching out to the fans’, is his rubbishing of his older movies.

Die Hard 2 (and I’m afraid getting an exact quote would involve trawling AICN, which you are welcome to do for yourselves) comes in for criticism for being too jokey and too self-referential without the right sense of claustrophobia.

I first came across this phenomena, strangely enough, with Stallone who, while publicizing Daylight, rubbished Judge Dredd, saying that the serious approach taken was a big mistake, albeit one pushed through by the director. But I remembered him being so proud of the movie when it came out – did that mean he was lying? A rather inauspicious way for me to learn how the world works, but whatever gets you there, right?

I was tickled by the parallels with the hoops a lot of the current US administration (and chums) are having to jump through to avoid being fired or, possibly, impeached. Paul Wolfowitz is the man currently doing the jumping (last week it was Alberto Gonzalez. Next week who knows? You have to keep on your toes with this lot) to defend his blatant nepotism regarding a girlfriend.

The moves are absolute enthusiasm and ‘heckuvajob’ positivity, followed by aggressive stonewalling, followed by the passively phrased ‘mistakes were made’ rhetoric which admits to everything, but dodges actual personal blame. Each stage is only brought about by the continued partisan hectoring of journalists/politicians/bloggers who have an axe to grind and the actual facts on their side. I don’t think we’ve yet got to the point where anyone has had to take on the position of the ‘taking it like a man’ admission of wrong-doing, but we can hope.

I don’t think it’s all that useful to start saying politics has been reduced to showbusiness as, despite what the right-wing punditry will say after every school shooting, showbusiness doesn’t lead to thousands of people dying.

However, I will call for showbusiness to be more like politics. It may be only the movies, but the famous statistic that I can’t quite remember about more votes being cast for Pop Idol than for the presidential elections suggests that this stuff is really important to people, whether we like it or not.

Because I’m sure Stallone knew that Judge Dredd was cobblers while he was making it, just as I’m sure Bruce Willis knew Die Hard 2 was a bit duff even while he was singing its praises on the publicity round. The question is: what does he know about Die Hard 4 that we do not?

We are being lied to, and questions must be asked. Pressure must be brought to bear so that the people responsible for the summer season are put up against a public committee on Labour Day and forced to say ‘mistakes were made’. The people demand it.

I know these films are mostly harmless, but they’re also mostly awful and they are a large part of our movie culture. Until we have the power to change it (or the power crisis turns the projectors off) it’s the only one we’ve got so we might as well try and enjoy it anyway we can. Fuck knows, it’s impossible to enjoy the movies themselves.