Useless Film Snob Book Report - The Wrecking Crew

The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (Thomas Frank, 2007)

Frank's last book, What's the Matter with Kansas? was one of the most fascinating and interesting political books that I've read. That examination of how the Republican party had convinced many people to vote against their economic interests in favor of fanning the fires of the culture wars was well researched and smartly done. The Wrecking Crew comes off as an extension of the ideas present in that previous book. Since conservatives concocted a majority with their inflammation of cultural issues, it would make since to analyze what they've done since gaining power.

Frank paints a fairly bleak picture, how the conservative movement's cynicism, general dislike of government in general, and their slavish devotion to the idea that the free market will fix everything, was a fairly calculated effort to break government. Conservatives have created a federal government so corrupt and inept that it's created a permanent cynicism in the citizenry that government can do nothing right. To Frank, this was a precise plan meant to disable liberalism's ideas of government as an ally of the people as well as a way to have the market(s) become the central governing factor of this nature. Frank gives a history and analysis of the conservative movement's rise to power, starting with the Reagan's presidency and continuing to the work of George W. Bush's administration. Some of the more egregious acts are but not limited to: naming department secretaries who are often enemies of that department, hiring incompetent and under qualified cronies to important positions, politicizing jobs that were never before, and more broadly, creating a government so inept and deficit-ridden that it ties the hands of its Democratic inheritors. For a liberal, it adds up to a series of events that are crass, cynical, shocking, and yet, not that all surprising to someone who's been paying attention to Republican rule for the last 25 years.

Frank's work is well-researched and in-depth, but it all comes off as a bit too wonkish at times. There is a little too much inside baseball, as dry explanations of Saipan and the Jack Abramoff scandal show. There's also a little bit less interesting stories as What's the Matter with Kansas? The one here that sticks out the most is how the conservative movement has supported some horrendous groups and governments over the years in their defense of "freedom" and free markets. The apartheid government in South Africa, Jonas Savimbi and his brutal, wreckless civil war in Angola, and Central American death squads all received support from Conservative organizations in the past. And yet through despicable actions like these, conservatives have mostly succeeded in creating a government beholden to the free market and corporate interests. Frank is bleak in assessing the future, saying that it will take a immense change in Washington.

Useless Film Snob Book Report - Pictures at a Revolution

It's been quite a while since I posted a book review. That hasn't meant I haven't read anything since then; it's just since that I mostly write about film and music, it would be most useful to post on books with similar subjects.

Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood (Mark Harris)
Harris's book is definitely an enjoyable read, well written and well researched. Harris goes in-depth into all aspects of the five films nominated for Best Picture in 1967: Bonnie & Clyde, Doctor Doolittle, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. The book goes into vigorous details with numerous interviews of the pre-production, production, and results of each film. A lot of the book seems to gravitate towards Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate, as examples of the new style of filmmaking that would be called the New Hollywood, hold Harris's thesis. He wants to say that these films, by being so different, refreshing, and above all successful, helped usher in a new era in filmmaking away from the colossal roadshow pictures, evidenced here by Doctor Doolittle. The problem is that the book never re-enforces Harris's thesis that strongly. Yes, 1967 may have been the start of the New Hollywood but there's never anything concrete in book that really create a difference between the pictures. All the films are run through the same way and Harris never really goes into much theoretical analysis outside of the how Bonnie & Clyde and The Graduate were handling the issues of violence and sexuality. I'm not saying that he's wrong about his subtitle but the way the book is structured as more of a history than an analysis. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the book; it's still an entertaining read, full of great details of how each film was made. The debacle of Doctor Doolittle could be its own book on the the last creaking throes of the old studio system. The only time this generational shift is really addressed in regards to these films is the Academy Award ceremony itself, as the two middlebrow films, In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner fare just as well as the "newer" films. It's the only time that shows that Hollywood wasn't quite ready for the New Hollywood.

Useless Film Snob Book Report - Rebels on the Backlot

Rebels On the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System - Sharon Waxman, 2005

In an effort to diversify this site and make it a little better, we're starting a new feature called Useless Film Snob Book Reports, where I'll try to give my opinions on what I've been reading as inarticulately as possible. First up is New York Times Hollywood reporter (not a great first description) Sharon Waxman's account of how Spike Jonze, Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino, David O. Russell, David Fincher, and Steven Soderbergh invaded the studio system and against all odds, somehow managed to make credible, artistic movies in the vacuous, money-grubbing world that are the major studios. At least that's what Waxman wants you to believe. Actually, it's a little more nuanced than that. Let's be honest here; these filmmakers aren't exactly breaking the mold that much. While these films they made may be good, some great, some had major stars in them, made a sizable profit, or were prestige pictures made for awards. There is some truth that these weren't exactly "safe" pictures but the glaring failure of Waxman's book is she is trying to equate these directors and their work in the studio system to what was going on in the late 60's and 70's. What the current directors lack is the cultural significance and widespread appeal that people like Coppola, Friedkin, Altman, Scorsese, and others had in the 70's. So problem number one is Waxman overreaches here a bit. Pulp Fiction may have been a zeitgeist film, but the others covered in the book didn't become cultural benchmarks.

Another problem Waxman has is that she clearly read Peter Biskind's two fantastic books, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls about the 70's period and his Sundance/Miramax book, Down and Dirty Pictures, and cribs heavily from them, especially the latter. She lifts entire sections dealing with Tarantino from Biskind's book and plops right into her story. While Biskind's book had its fair share of gossip and innuendo, everything is told in such a fair and entertaining matter. Waxman seems to have a pre-occupation with showing every director's personality flaws that she practically forgets about the films themselves, which is especially the case with Anderson and Tarantino. This makes Waxman seem more like the shallow Hollywood reporter more concerned with gossip and celebrities' personal lives than a true author really getting into the art of filmmaking, which Biskind does a lot better.

All this leads to the more glaring weakness of the book, the number of factual errors in the book, which are astounding seeing this was published through a major company. All the examples have been discussed other places but two of the ones I can't get out of my mind is that she states that Rushmore was Wes Anderson's first film and that Julia Stiles played Michael Douglas's daughter in Traffic. It seems Waxman and her editor(s) haven't actually seen the films of the directors she's writing about, which would explain the lack of any credible analysis of the work besides Fight Club is violent and Magnolia is long. A book with glaring errors like this makes it hard for me to take it as a serious work by an author who knows what she's talking about. I bought this book because I happen to like the films that these directors made and wanted to know more about the process of how they got made. But Waxman does such a slipshod job of making her argument in the book that I came away thoroughly disappointed.