I think I've found a real gem in the film review blogosphere with David Lowery and his review blog Reversing The Gaze. I recommend it to anybody looking for a balance of intellectual criticism and a solid gut response from somebody who clearly loves film.
Stroking aside, his review on Paul Shraeder's latest, Dominion (the unofficial prequel to The Exorcist) got me dusting off a theory I've chewed on for some time. Actually, the theory first popped up from my subconcious into actual words a year or two ago when I watched A Decade Under the Influence, a great documentary on that brief lived Golden Age in Hollywood often called "The 70's."
The theory goes something like this (crack knuckles). Actually, it's a more sophisticated version of the theory Sickboy presents in Trainspotting to describe the decline of quality performance seen recently in Sean Connery and Lou Reed. Mine is less fatalistic. I see a pattern forming in the great filmmaking voices of the 70's who are now opening their mailboxes to find a copy of the AARP. The pattern is not that they're getting old and are therefore "losing their touch." I think Orson Welles F for Fake and the mere existence of John Cassavetes contradict that theory. So what is happening to the potency and vitality of these pioneers in filmmaking?
This is where I'm supposed to say, "Hollywood." But for film lovers the word "Hollywood" starts to take on the same fanatical sound that the word "They" takes on when used by conspiracy theorists. So I'll be more specific. The more superfluous an artist's financial needs get, the more their heart loses touch with the world they saw with such clarity in the days before those needs.
I'm not saying that making a lot of money ruins a fimmakers voice. Not at all. It's those things that were once extravagant that become needs when the artist allows them to. For instance, in the afore mentioned documentary, Coppolla says that he wanted to make more films like The Conversation, but has never been approached to make them. How many films could have been made with the money poured into his winery? Do what you want with your money, Mr. Coppolla, but don't lament that you didn't have the chance to make the films you wanted to make. Ever seen Thomas Vinterberg's The Celebration?
So to pull this together: when a filmmakers needs become superfluous, that filmmaker has no choice but to climb in bed with the Megaplex of Superfluity, Hollywood. What does this have to do with Paul Schraeder and Dominion? Maybe everything, maybe nothing. However, if he were sitting across from me looking befuddled instead of nodding "Amen," I would say, "Paul. Keep your life simple and the work will stay vital."
Incidentally, my last apartment was the same drafty old box that Paul Schraeder once occupied when he lived here in Grand Rapids. That wasn't why I moved in there.
