Remember how you could write into Roger Ebert with a film-related question? I think I did twice. One time it was a Cassavetes question, and he wrote back to say he did not know the answer, but suggested I ask Ray Carney, which I did, and which led to an interesting brief correspondence between Carney and myself. I forget the exact question -- I think it had to do with the odd number of films John Marley and Lynn Carlin appear together in, but the answer or the fine details escape me. I got some inscribed Ray Carney memorabilia out of it (!). I think I sent him a Love Streams item he did not have (I *added* to his hoard).
So thanks, Roger, for that!
The second time I wrote Roger Ebert, I think, was to ask if he ever considered writing a book about times he got it wrong. He did seem now and again to be able to acknowledge fallability. And lord knows all of us can get something wrong now and then! I wasn't meaning it as a criticism, but he didn't respond to that one. Maybe my question came too close to the "Brown Bunny/ colonscopy period" ("we've had quite enough of that, thanks!").
I didn't actually care about that, to be honest, though I thought he handled it all with panache and intelligence, kinda. No, he got that one free; instead, my case in point was a Diane Keaton feature film called The Good Mother. Boy he got that wrong!
And what's interesting is to see -- sympathetically -- just how BADLY he gets it wrong, and how. He's judging the film against the standards of a women's weepie or something, against Hollywood formulae, when it needed to be judged against the standards of Ingmar Bergman or Shakespeare or AT LEAST FUCKING FASSBINDER FOR FUCKSAKE, you know? (I did not write that part to Ebert! I was much more polite). But told as a contemporary child custody case.
It's really a film about cultural values in conflict, and... I'm not even really sure how to sum it up. It's a film about the dangers of not sticking up for ones values, an everyday tragedy. Just another story about how fear eats the soul.
It's an astonishing film, and a great adaptation of the novel (which I read and also admired). A film that has been widely underestimated. It is only a little bit less grim than Dancer in the Dark, but it is not answerable to the formulae that Ebert expected it to follow!
I may have accused Ebert of damaging its reputation a little in fact. But like, that's a whole book to be written: the HOW DARE YOU "fan" mail. Weirdos. He must have drawn a few, and maybe I made it into his "weirdo" file. Hell, even I have a weirdo. There's a country song for ya: "Everybody's friend is somebody's weirdo, and Everbody's Weirdo is somebody's friend."
Anyhow, I didn't bug him after that, though I would have welcomed his response with fondness; I meant no ill will. I hope that was clear!
But the film is also the greatest thing Leonard Nimoy ever did. Not the most popular, but it's a terrific piece of cinema.
It's a side of Liam Neeson you don't see much of these days, either (maybe his best work, too? It is a film his fans would find very interesting).
Proud to have seen it first run. Then I read the novel. Have seen it a couple times since, may watch it in Ms. Keaton's respect tonight. If I'd ever interacted with her, I'd have asked about this movie.
She had guts, took gutsy, interesting roles. My respects!
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