Posted on 01/13/2004 2:37:26 PM PST by quidnunc
You usually hear the tune on Oscar night, but not often the lyric, which is more to the point:
Hooray For Hollywood
Where you’re terrific if you’re even good.
When someone’s really terrific, it’s a different story. In a town where everyone from Johnny Depp to Janeane Garofalo is an “artist”, Hollywood doesn’t always know how to deal with the real thing. In 1996, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, mulling over their Career Achievement Award, decided to reject Elia Kazan and honour instead Roger Corman, the director of Swamp Women, Attack Of The Crab Monsters and Teenage Caveman. Swamp Women and Attack Of The Crab Monsters are good, and Teenage Caveman is not only good, it’s also an eloquent plea for world disarmament, at least according to its youthful star Robert Vaughan. But On The Waterfront is terrific. This should not be a difficult call.
But apparently it is. Kazan can make a claim to be the father of modern American acting, the man who brought Stanislavskian techniques to Broadway and then to the silver screen. Insofar as the young lions of our present-tense culture aspire to emulate any of the old guys, it’s not David Niven or even Jimmy Cagney who resonate, but Marlon Brando, James Dean, Rod Steiger — on all of whom Kazan was the greatest single influence. He was a great theatre director, and later a fine novelist, and, when he walked on stage in 1999 to receive a belated Lifetime Achievement Oscar, he might reasonably have expected the orchestra to be vamping Leonard Bernstein’s theme to On The Waterfront for a good ten minutes while Hollywood roared its appreciation. Instead, outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, elderly hack screenwriters led protests and, inside, the likes of Sean Penn sat on their hands. For both Hollywood’s ancient D-list Communists and its A-list anti-anti-Communists, there’s only one thing about Kazan that matters: he “named names”.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Sean Penn is appearing in "Mystic River", a film by Clint Eastwood. Whaddys gonna do, cover your eyes everytime Sean Penn comes on screen in order to be politically correct?
Personally, I missed the moment when Mr. "Hey Bud! Let's Party!" and Mr. Bashing Paparazzi With a Rock became the next James Dean.
I think that one sentence perfectly illustrates the difference between your attitude and that of others here.
Yeah, but as Steyn points out, Kazan was on the right side of history. There's a lot of talent our there. I don't have to admire or consume all of it. I might watch some of those commies if I know not a cent of my money is going to them.
Your loss. She was fantastic in her earlier films (early '30s)...before she became a monster.
I wasn't crazy about the Nazis...but I loved the way they marched. Leni Reifstall's "Triumph of the Will" was superb.
I saw "Entarte Kunst". Nazi taste in art was execrable. What they banned was magnificent.
On and on like that. To judge art by political standards is to miss the much of the world's beauty and diversity.
Your choice.
What's worse is that there are STILL Communists (Marxists actually) in Hollywood and they're doing far more damage than their predecessors of the 30s-50s. Along with their tenured colleagues at the universities they're presiding over the death of American culture. Yes, the anti-Communists of yesteryear were right, but where is the anti-Marxist movement today? It's certainly keeping itself well hidden.
How stand ye, then, on the likes of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, e.g.?
This is a test, though no grades will be issued. But, yes, I am interested in your response.
Steyn gives us Farewells of 2003 -- including brief memorials to Bob Hope and Idi Amin. Kate Hepburn and Leni Riefenstahl. Garner Ted Armstrong and Bobby Hatfield. Nina Simone and Charles Bronson. Strom Thurmond and Warren Zevon. The crew of Columbia and Donald O'Connor. Etc., etc., etc.
Scroll down the link...and enjoy.
More broadly, I liked Griffith's films. I like "Dixie". I like the look of the Confederate flag. I like a lot of music coming out of the South. I like plantation architecture...and so on.
I'm not crazy about southern cooking.
All of which has nothing whatever to do with Southern politics or religion.
The actor's off screen behavior overshadows his on screen charactor. And it doesn't have to be bad behavior. I recently watched a rendition of Joan of Arc. In a story about a Catholic (Christian) saint, God was played by a Jewish actor. Jews don't believe in Christ, let alone saints. So his performance was overshadowed by him being Jewish. He was therefor, unbelievable in the role he played. Is he a good actor? Yes. Was he a good actor in this role? No, because his off screen persona conflicted with his on screen role. The same is true of many of these actors, if they played the role of socialists or communists, they would be believable, but they don't. They try to play Americans who love their country, but their off screen persona conflicts with that.
If an actor can not convince the people watching him that he is who he is playing, then he is not a good actor.
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