American comedian and writer Mel Brooks was once asked what he thought of critics. “They’re very noisy at night,” he replied at once: “You can’t sleep in the country because of them.” When the interviewer tried to explain that he was asking about critics, not crickets, Brooks went on: “Oh, critics! What good are they? They can’t make music with their hind legs.”
I confess to being a huge Mel Brooks fan, partly on a personal level (he loves Broadway, hates Hitler, and had the good taste to be married to Anne Bancroft), and on an artistic level too. He co-created one of my all-time favorite television series, "Get Smart!" as well as two of my favorite movies, "The Producers" and "The Twelve Chairs." So, perhaps it's not surprising that I pretty much feel the way he does about critics; he just used a lot more wit that I would have in making the same basic point, especially as it applies to my feelings about film and film criticism.--as quoted by Peter Hay, "The Last Word," which you can find here
I've never formed an opinion about a movie based on what critics have said about it. I won't go so far as to say that critical opinion has absolutely no role in determining whether or not I'll see a movie. But, over the years, there are any number of critic's darlings that I've avoided for any number of reasons--disliking one or more of the people connected with it, disliking or being disinterested in the subject matter, and other reasons that don't immediately pop into my head, but that I suspect are out there anyway. On the other side of the equation, there are a few critical bombs out there that I've managed to find at least some redeeming value in--more, perhaps, than the critics did. It could just be me: whether it's politics, the arts, or anything else, I don't like having someone tell me what to like and not like.
To my way of thinking, the single worst instance--up until very recently, which I'll get to in a paragraph or two--was the time Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, on one of their various television programs over the years, trashed the movie "Return to Oz," a failed film that attempted to combine elements of two sequel novels by L. Frank Baum to his classic book, "The Wizard of Oz." Part of the failure lay in the attempt to combine elements of two different books,which gave the movie the feel of a badly-made turducken. Part of it (and this was central to the trashing Siskel and Ebert gave it) was the fact that the film was positioned as a sequel not to the original book, but to the classic MGM musical version of that book, some 40 years after the golden age of MGM and its personnel were no longer available.
Siskel and Ebert's criticisms along both of these lines were perfectly justified. And, had they stopped there, I'd have no quarrel with their evaluation of the film. But they didn't stop there. After they completed their review of "Return to Oz," and came back from a commercial break, they devoted an entire segment to an extended lecture (supplemented with film clips) explaining why, in their not-so-humble opinion, no one should be allowed (yes, allowed) to make a film that might, to any degree whatsoever, infringe on their fond memories of a classic film such as the MGM adaptation of "Wizard." Ever. Under any circumstances. In their view, and to borrow a line from another film, "The Ten Commandments": so let it be written, so let it be done.
Is it really the proper role of critics to make statements like this?
Criticism is a singular profession in that sense. Part consumer guide, part arbiter of cultural and aesthetic standards, it can be difficult for individuals in it to balance those competing demands and, in the process, make their own contribution to the promotion and development of the arts. Personally, I lament the Internet-age loss of individuals (like Siskel and Ebert) whose experience, training, and skill enabled them to do it well, in favor of cheaper, younger stringers more interested in writing about their personal experiences than in addressing the concerns of a broader audience.
But I have to say this bluntly, at the risk of putting too fine a point on it in the process: it should NEVER be the role of anyone--critic, artist, writer, producer, publisher, filmmaker or anyone else--to be able to say that such-and-such a subject or source should never be addressed, in the arts or anywhere else. It simply isn't right. Not morally. Not legally. And, frankly, not artistically. No one's smart enough or talented enough to unilaterally decree what should or should not be created.
Which, in a very roundabout way (I have to admit), brings me to the subject of the recent media dust-up over comments made by Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese over their lack of respect for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you wish to read something that summarizes the facts behind this dust-up, feel free to click here, read, and then come back (or, at least, I hope you will 😓😓).
Neither Coppola nor Scorsese are attempting to say, at least directly, that superhero films should not be made. On the other hand, when Scorsese says that they aren't "cinema," and Coppola responds with "I see your 'not cinema,' and raise it to 'despicable,'" it's hard for me not to see this, as I did with the Siskel and Ebert effort at prior restraint against future Oz films, as a form of velvet fascism, a blanket condemnation in advance of the value of all movies made within a given genre, and made by individuals whose contempt for that genre is so transparent it could easily be sponsored by Windex.
Is that in fact their intention? I tend to want to doubt it, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my own admiration for the films made by both men. At the same time, it's worth noting that both men came to their cultural prominence by way of gangster pictures, a genre that suffers from its own creative limitations--every one of them can be boiled down to "crime doesn't pay"--in much the same way that superhero films can be boiled down to the idea that average individuals randomly develop above-average abilities and face challenges as a result. This is, in fact, a game that can be played with almost any genre.
At the same time, it also doesn't preclude the possibility that films within a given genre can sometimes break the rules of that genre, adding to its potential while at the same time giving us the types of experiences that Coppola and Scorsese insist are the essence of true "cinema." Actually, I would argue that the MCU films did exactly that, with several of their characters, and most notably Robert Downey, Jr.'s performance as Tony Stark/Iron Man, as his character grows from a state of obnoxious narcissism to complete self-sacrifice. I could make similar statements about the story arcs of the other characters, or even the extent to which the films overall call into question what it means to be a hero, and what the value of sacrifice can be. It's all there. You just have to have patience and an open mind in order to experience it.
And, as a consequence, and as distasteful as ad hominem arguments are to me generally, it's hard not feel that, when Coppola and Scorsese are deriding the MCU films (even though, I should note, they have not seen all of them), they are reflecting their own experiences coming of age in the 1970s as auteurs in a more director-centric film universe. Admittedly, the MCU Universe is a more producer-centered group of films than the ones created by the easy riders and the raging bulls back then. But, even the more recent MCU films were made by directors who demanded and got more creative latitude than may have initially the case. That was certainly true with the last Thor movie, as well as the last two Avenger films.
And yet, I sense that even that might not be what bothers the MCU critics. I suspect that what troubles them most is what makes people in Hollywood either very happy or very sad in any case: money.
And, when it comes to the MCU, there is one hell of a lot of it. As you can see here, the 23 films that make up the MCU cost somewhere in the vicinity of $4.5 billion. Even nowadays, that's a lot of proverbial lettuce. But here's even more: at the box office, worldwide, these films have, grossed more than $22 billion. And that doesn't even begin to count revenue from cable, Interned and DVD distribution, as well as licensing revenue from toys, games, and other products and services that utilize the MCU intellectual property in some way, shape or form.
The reality is that, as long as superhero movies prove to be capable of producing profit margins like that, they're going to get made. And, if they are as well-made as the Marvel movies have been to date, people are going to see them.
So, ultimately, I don't know what argument the Coppolas and Scorseses of the film world, and their supporters in the critical establishment, are going to come up with to get film producers and distributors to make more of the kind of movies they want to see. And that's clearly a shame, because what the MCU is doing is putting into the hands of those producers and distributors enough money to make and distribute dozens, probably hundreds, of those films.
And what makes this especially important is that I know for a fact that there are people who want to make, distribute, and (most critically) see those movies. I know. I'm one of them. I've worked as an actor on a number of feature and episodic projects, including a few that actually managed to achieve some level of distribution. I would have loved, and so would my colleagues, to have had help from some of that Marvel money. But I'm speaking not just from the vantage point of a professional. I'm also speaking as a member of the audience.
To me, as much as art is about anything, it is about the full range of the human experience. Putting it another way, it is about variety--which is probably why there's a show-biz publication with that word as its name. It's summed up for me by the late, great Lord Laurence Olivier performing Greek tragedy and Restoration comedy in the same day--in the same show, for that matter. And if the 1970s still lingers in my mind as a great movie decade, I am sure it is because of the variety of those films. Sci-fi spectacle in the afternoon, art-house brilliance in the evening.
But not anymore. Now it's tentpoles, tentpoles, and still more tentpoles. And, as a consequence, it's more and more soulless multiplexes, and fewer small art-house and other single-screen theaters. The 1-percenting of our national economic system is mirrored in our culture. In the 1970s, it was acceptable to simply make profits. Today, and for several decades before that, nothing less than obscene profits will do. It is not simply the film industry that Coppola and Scorsese are fighting; it is quite literally the culture of our company and, to some extent, that of the world.
And I'm on their side. Even though I think their views on Marvel movies are grossly unfair and, fundamentally not even honest, I'm on their side. But when they decide to pick a fight with the people who attend these movies, including me, they are aiming all of their rhetorical ammunition at the wrong target. This is ultimately about the larger balance of economic power in this country. And, when it comes to films, that can only lead to one thing: tentpoles, tentpoles, and still more tentpoles.
Short of a national election that produces an Elizabeth Warren-Bernie Sanders type of government, one committed over the long term to redressing our current economic balance, what are we who care about a truly diverse culture to do?
Frankly, I don't have any silver-bullet answers. I don't think anyone does. But I do have a suggestion.
The late British art historian Lord Kenneth Clark, in his television series "Civilization," once stood in the grandiose Hall of Mirrors in Louis XIV's Versailles Palace and expressed his doubt that rooms as large as that would did not give birth to ideas equally as large. I've always been fascinated by that observation, and I think it has some application to the dilemma I've been discussing.
As multiplexes and the Internet have come to be the dominant vehicles for film distribution, single-screen theaters, including many renowned art-house theaters, have disappeared by the hundreds, perhaps by the thousands. Even if Hollywood suddenly woke up one morning and said "Let's take all of those superhero profits and put them into art-house flicks," how would that new-age New Wave reach the public? Not in multiplexes; their screens and auditoriums are simply too big for presenting these films on the intimate scale that they and the audiences for them deserve. It could, of course, be done by way of the Internet. But then, the screens would be disproportionately small compared to the themes and the emotions in the films themselves. And, instead of true audiences, you have millions of audiences of one, not really thinking, feeling, laughing, crying, or truly talking to one another as part of a shared experience.
The solution, then, is to find ways to get these audiences of one back together in front of a shared, truly movie-sized screen. And, in the process, save a lot of disappearing historic structures, and perhaps even rebuilding a few (full disclosure, in case you haven't read my previous blog posts: I am and have been an ardent theater preservationist, and a member of the League of Historic American Theatres (www.lhat.org)).
Is that possible?
Well, here's one hopeful sign that it might. This has the potential to serve as not only a whole new way of financing and distributing art-house movies, but preserving art-houses themselves.
It might make Coppola and Scorsese happy.
It would certainly make me very happy.
It would probably make a lot of critics very happy.
I'm not sure what it would do for Mel Brooks, but one might hope that it would make him happy.
Hopefully, it would give the best possible answer to the question I posed in the title.
Whose art is it, anyway?
Everyone's.
After all, if even Godzilla can make his way into the Criterion Collection, who is anyone of us to say what art can or cannot be?
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