Oh Those Grapes are Indeed Sour
Pity poor Annie Proulx, author of the short story that led to the acclaimed film "Brokeback Mountain". She wanted the honey pot of gold known as Oscar for her story but instead of the Pooh wanna-be having the pot stuck on her nose, the Heffalumps stole the pot and gave it to the film Crash. At least that is how one must interpret her diatribe in "The Guardian".
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1727309,00.html
The critical portion of Ms Proulx's piece follows:
"We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline."
I wonder if she saw "Crash". I did. I thought it was excellent. I say the same thing about all five of the Best Picture nominees of this year. That she felt the need to name-call the winner in order to attempt to make a point illustrates the invalidity of her argument. Neither of these films were "trash", but were the roles reversed and writer Paul Haggis to have been the loser and to have written a diatribe where he referred to Proulx's piece as "Poke in the Back Mountain", cries of "You can't say that, that's homophobia" would have rung out from Proulx and her crowd. Further, if Ms Proulx is angered by the "conservative" side of Hollywood, where is her anger at the decision to re-write and re-cast characters that she wrote as Hispanic as Caucasians? Doesn't that bit of Hollywood conservativism bother her, or was that acceptable because it involved getting her work onto the big screen. Can you say "hypocrite" rather than "sour grapes"?
Award contests where members of an academy like the Oscars do not really choose a "Best" Picture. They hold an election campaign and choose what should more properly be called a "Most Popular" Picture. "Best" Picture awards should be chosen by panels of professional film critics.
As for Ms Proulx's sour grapes, let us hope that in the future, the woozles do not join the heffalumps in attempting to frustrate her efforts to stamp her signature on the fermenting culture.
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1727309,00.html
The critical portion of Ms Proulx's piece follows:
"We should have known conservative heffalump academy voters would have rather different ideas of what was stirring contemporary culture. Roughly 6,000 film industry voters, most in the Los Angeles area, many living cloistered lives behind wrought-iron gates or in deluxe rest-homes, out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city, decide which films are good. And rumour has it that Lions Gate inundated the academy voters with DVD copies of Trash - excuse me - Crash a few weeks before the ballot deadline."
I wonder if she saw "Crash". I did. I thought it was excellent. I say the same thing about all five of the Best Picture nominees of this year. That she felt the need to name-call the winner in order to attempt to make a point illustrates the invalidity of her argument. Neither of these films were "trash", but were the roles reversed and writer Paul Haggis to have been the loser and to have written a diatribe where he referred to Proulx's piece as "Poke in the Back Mountain", cries of "You can't say that, that's homophobia" would have rung out from Proulx and her crowd. Further, if Ms Proulx is angered by the "conservative" side of Hollywood, where is her anger at the decision to re-write and re-cast characters that she wrote as Hispanic as Caucasians? Doesn't that bit of Hollywood conservativism bother her, or was that acceptable because it involved getting her work onto the big screen. Can you say "hypocrite" rather than "sour grapes"?
Award contests where members of an academy like the Oscars do not really choose a "Best" Picture. They hold an election campaign and choose what should more properly be called a "Most Popular" Picture. "Best" Picture awards should be chosen by panels of professional film critics.
As for Ms Proulx's sour grapes, let us hope that in the future, the woozles do not join the heffalumps in attempting to frustrate her efforts to stamp her signature on the fermenting culture.
posted by me at 6:11 AM
