IIRC Coppola pretty much invented the monitor booth. He had an Airstream called the Silver Fish, which was his mobile control room with video assist monitors, before any other film director had that capability.
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One of my all time faves… I think that might be one of the only films I’ve seen by him, though, so I should check out some more of his stuff… But god, what a perfect little film it is…
And the soundtrack is perfection…
And yes, Silence is a great film (though I’m not a “film” guy if you get me)… Well shot, well acted, a thoughtful meditation on faith in adversary.
Always! If you can do it practically, it should be done practically… that’s probably from years of watching low-budget indie films, though, where that was their only real choice most times.
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i mean most of those - and i don’t see the sopranos in there, but it’s more of the same - are aspirational
you don’t make movie after movie, show after show, about charismatic white men who are violent and powerful stars without knowing what you’re doing.
they all cater - imo - to the bro desire for power. any “but it’s a critique” fig leaf is just, to my mind, silly. they’re written by people ( all, or mostly white men ) who are smart enough to know better
they aren’t cases of being misunderstood. they’re cases of media finding their intended target audience. $$$
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He put in $120 million of his own money to get this made. Whatever it turns out to be, it’s a passion project. I like a bit of passion in a project.
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I don’t know, I think you can certainly make a story about an anti-hero without intended them to be “the good guy”… part of what makes Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul so good is the story telling, not that you’re meant to want to emulate Walter or Jimmy… I think the ending of BCS leaves you with that message, in fact. Jimmy ends up in prison, and does so because he flipped the script and refused to use his talents to get himself out of prison (or to get himself a better sentence). Even the ending of Breaking Bad, with Jesse driving away after having been abused by the nazis thanks entirely to Walt’s choices is a pretty big indictment of Walt, same with the death of Hank. I also think that (after watching the show a second time a while back) you can see that, while other characters in the show evolve, Walt and most of the others involved in the drug trade either end up in the same place that they started or the devolve into worse people (Walt, especially). The only growth he showed was at the end when he met with Skylar and admitted to her that it was never about helping his family, but all about him and what he wanted to do.
I think it’s pretty unambiguous what Gilligan was trying to accomplish with those shows. That kind of story is just a legitimate as one where someone improves over the course of the story. It many ways, it’s kind of an indictment of capitalism, as it certainly equates the drug trade with capitalism… they are literally one and the same. And look what it did to Walt’s character, which he let it do…
My sort of objection to that kind of framing, though, is that the media is a big, sprawling network of people, not some few at the top pulling the strings. It’s certainly true that the ultimate goal of profit (this is capitalism after all), but people (more often than not, white men, but still) find spaces to tell good, thoughtful, and interesting stories. It’s a web, not pyramid. If Gilligan had some privilege due to who he is (a white dude), that doesn’t completely undercut that fact that he managed to make a thoughtful story about some bad guys… It’s entirely true that if the show had not done well, he would not have been able to finish it, but I think when it came out, the canceling logic of streaming had not fully set in. He found an audience with a good story, and I think that’s still sometimes possible…
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Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a fabulous movie!!
Once you realise it’s just a Hammer Horror movie with a budget…
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i appreciate your thoughtful response.
at this point, i assume these things get pitched as: we’ll bring in the people who can only see the top layer – the glorification of white men being abusive and violent – and we’ll bring in the people who can see the underlying critique. so that’s where the show / creators get to have their cake and eat it too.
yeah, i didn’t mean it as “big media” – i meant it as the product. the men behind these shows ( tv, movies, comic books, video games, etc. ) are good at what they do. so they, as individuals, can guess – to a large extent – who’s going to consume the show, and what people will take from it.
like there is no way on this earth that “fight club” ( the movie ) was meant to be a thought provoking critique of violence. it was meant to look cool and edgy, and to engage white frat bros. and it doesn’t even mean it wasn’t a good movie – it’s just so tiring to me on a personal level how often these stories have been told and how much traction they get.
there are better stories, imo. better points of view. and ones that don’t encourage the worst aspects of toxic white masculinity in the process
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Could be? Obviously, they want the widest possible audience… but given the narrative arc, I think that Gilligan was pushing for a particular understanding of that narrative arc…
Sure, but that’s tied together yeah? I guess I have an inherent critic of that kind of mode of thinking about the media, that’s it’s top-down product making, and that artistry is often neglected it not outright rejected… That was very much the view of folks like the Frankfurt school, who looked down on all mass culture, without any real differentiation (with the except of Walter Benjamin). But I think that the concept of a web rather than a top-down pyramid makes more sense to me, at least in how the mass media has actually functioned in history. It’s true that there are attempts by power brokers to control the masses, but that has not always worked out the way that they expected. If jazz (famously Adorno sneered at jazz) was a musical form meant to soothe the working classes and turn them from class struggle, bebop turned that on its head and fueled the Black freedom struggle. You can say the same of other folk musical forms that the industry attempted to commodify… it’s never really fully worked. People find their own uses for culture…
But there you get into the intent of two different authors… Palahnuik and Fincher… And what about the death fo the author, too? Like, if both intended a critique of violence, is it entirely their fault if it’s not taken in that manner?
Oh, certainly. I think it’s frustrating that the mass media does tend to still center white, hetero men over the rest of us. We certainly need more diversity in storytelling. There is getting to be some diversity behind the scenes in media… is it enough? I don’t think so, but it’s there. I think, despite all it’s many failings, social media has helped in that regard? It’s been interesting to see someone like Abigail Thorn, for example, go from being a youtuber and stage actor to now showing up all over the place (Star Wars, apparently in House of the Dragon), as well as her and Jessie Gender having their own works getting a higher profile thanks to Nebula…
I don’t disagree. I just don’t think we should dismiss the attempt at a critique out of hand. And while certainly some views read into these shows a message that confirmed their own views about themselves and the world, plenty of others read it in different ways, including as a critique of toxic white masculinity.
TLDR: I’m all for greater diversity in mass media, for more diverse kinds of stories, for less centering of whiteness… but some of these aren’t to be dismissed out of hand, I think?
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