Godard on Hollywood.... (insightful)

[seekaee]

I read that Spielberg get's 25% of the gross for all his movies,including HBO, Videos, Toys ,ect.

Pretty nice I say.

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[Matt Pacini]

I'd like to point out the fact that Oskar Shindler HIMSELF profited from people's misery, etc.

Sure, he saved a lot of jews from certain death, and that's to be applauded.
But he also made tons of cash from the slave labor of those Jewish workers.
In fact, I thought that was what was interesting about the film, that the hero was not typically Spielbergian "Pure Hero", that he had a dark side.
He was both exploiting those people, and saving them.
The real question someone needs to ask, is if he would have saved these people, had there been no profit motive in it.
I personally doubt it.

So in effect, he did exactly what you are Goddard are accusing Spielberg of doing, only on a much grander scale, and yet Spielberg is the bad guy, and Shindler is the hero.

Spielberg gives outrageous amounts of money to charity, and since nobody has the slightest idea if he slid some cash to Mrs. Shindler, this entire premise that he did something wrong, is ridiculous.

I don't HAVE to defend Spielberg, since there is no reason or evidence whatsoever to think he's guilty of what was implied, it is incumbent upon YOU to prove your position.
It's not incumbent upon ME to come up with proof of defense of Spielberg.
Goddard is just jealous, like I said, because his films play at dollar theaters and film schools, neither of which he makes any money from, probably.
Sour grapes.
This isn't the first time I've heard him attack Spielberg.
The last time, he was talking about how Spielberg hasn't made a single quality film.
Uh huh. I guess a couple billion people are wrong then.

Matt Pacini



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[ulrichsd]

I read on slant magazine, http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/ar...iseoflove.html (actually a review of one of Godard's films), that Shindler's wife did sue Spielberg, at the age of 94 years.

As for Godard, Matt is right, its not the first time he has attacked Spielberg or Hollywood or America. I personally view Godard's remarks more to serve his own publicity and less to right any "wrongs" that occur in hollywood. And he has done a pretty good job, because people are still talking about what he said. I mean really, what better way to promote yourself than to attack the one of the biggest name film director of all time.

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[Matt Pacini]

I went to that link and read the review of Goddards latest film, which sounds like a real stinker from the review.

Here are some tasty exceprts that I think prove my point.
(Also, I question the lawsuit story, because Mrs. Schindler has lived in South America for over 50 years. I find it unbelievable that she would be laying in a German hospital. This smells to me, that someone made it up, thinking since she's German, she's in Germany.)

Here it is:

At the risk of angering the cinephile elite, Jean-Luc Godard's In Praise of Love is an alternately simpleminded and impenetrable piece of contemptuous filmmaking; it's so rancid that many will undoubtedly smell roses out of polite respect for the French master...

Note to film scholars: It's okay not to like a Godard film.
I am not one of Steven Spielberg's biggest fans nor do I appreciate excessive displays of patriotism (see Michael Bay), but Godard's pig-fucking of America is so laughably feebleminded I'm moved to join the Betsy Ross bandwagon that has taken America by storm post-9/11...

...Godard's Love (yes, the title is ironic) will sting, seeing that the free world is presently in pro-America mode.
Personally, I don't care. Osama or no Osama, let's call a spade a spade: Love is Godard's stodgily arrogant jerk-off session to himself, a painfully pretentious diatribe on history and love.

After Love's screening at this year's Cannes Film Festival, someone asked Godard what he thought of Spielberg. Godard, puffing on a cigar (as if the image of the man as Satan-personified couldn't get any more lucid), replied: "I don't know him personally. I don't think his films are very good." Yes, it was a brash statement but it was one that echoed what many feel about Hollywood's most commercial director. Then, a more unwarranted attack of Spielberg's Schindler's List: "It is strange, he had no idea about the Holocaust so he went and looked elsewhere for inspiration. When we don't have an idea about something, we look first of all within ourselves." This presumptuous statement, mind you, came on the heels of a recent lawsuit that pitted Spielberg against the late Oskar Schindler's wife, Emile. At 94, the woman lay dying in a German hospital, having lived a life under the shadow of her great husband. Spielberg and List's screenwriter, Thomas Keneally, were accused of making millions while Emile received mere pennies for her husband's cinematic glorification."

(Matt Pacini):
Spielberg knows nothing about the Holocost?
Excuse me, a Frenchman saying a Jew who's father fought in WWII knows nothing of the Holocost?
Talk about arrogance AND ignorance.
What a loser.
I think he is highly overrated also. If film scholoars were not insisting to their students, that he was such a Genius, he wouldn't have the reputation that he has, certainly in this country.
What a loser....

Matt Pacini

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[mattias]

> considering their socialist system

what socialist system?

> the jealousy such a system creates for anyone doing better than you are.

you really think godard is jealous because spielberg did better than him? come on...

i do agree it was unfair to attack spielberg in that way though. and it sure is typically french to do it, but it's because of the way you're supposed to discuss and debate things there. my girlfriend is french, and people always tell us to stop fighting when we're simply discussing where to have dinner. ;-)

/matt

[el don]

as a french guy, i strongly agree with you mattias...
As far as Godard is concerned, you have to know that his first attack was based on the unforgivable "showers" scene. Claude Lanzman, director of "Shoah", said the same thing, like a lot of people. This debate already came too far for me, i don't really want to get involved in this post, but you have to know that Godard says a lot of things just to provoke and be heard, but sometimes he's right. I liked some of Spielberg's movies, but SL is too far from History to be appreciate.


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[Matt Pacini]

First of all, yes I DO think Goddard is attacking Spielberg just because Spielberg makes like 4,000% more money than he does.

And attacking him because he is so sucessful, is not just typically French, but we all have heard how many of the French think we Americans are polluting their culture, etc., because apparantly, the French like our movies more than their own. (They paased a law putting a limit on how many American films can be imported there... held protests when they opened a DisneyWorld there...)

But anyway, how accurate Schindlers List was historically, was never what this post was about, because it was never what Goddard's criticism of Spielberg was about.

I'm certainly not defending Spielberg's Historical accuracy.
In fact, I consider him right behind Oliver Stone in slanting the truth to fit his own left leaning politics.
Like for instance, failing to include that "minor" plot point in the true story of Amistad:
The fact that the main character later on became a slave trader himself.
This is the truth, and someone asked Spielberg about it, and he gave some B.S. excuse like "I didn't think it was relevant to the story."
Right!
Like as irrelevant as it would be if Schindler would have opened fire with a machine gun and killed all his jewish workers before skipping off to Argentina.

Matt Pacini

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[MovieStuff]

Hi, all.

Years ago, I saved a young boy from drowning. I'm a terrible swimmer and it scared the hell out me to jump in to deep water. If that guy goes on to write a story about it after I die and that ultimately gets made into a movie, do I think for a minute that anyone owes my wife a dime? Of course not. She had nothing to do with the event. More to the point, after all those years had passed, she had plenty of opportunity to write her OWN book about the event, if it was so important to her. If she had and they used her book, then that would be something to complain about. If they use the work of someone else, then why should she benefit simply because she adopted my last name at marriage?

This whole conversation about Spielberg makes me really uncomfortable. As I noted before, all we have is a "what if" scenario to debate a possible outcome of which, even if true, has no revelance since the movie was not called "Widow Shindler's List" as it was the tale told by the survivors of the tragedy, not by Widow Shindler. In short, if Widow Shindler, regardless of her financial status, had written the book that the movie was based on, then pehaps she might have a legitimate beef with Spielberg. Such is clearly not the case. The movie was based on the handed down writings of one of the survivors.

In the end, I suppose that we might as well take this whole sordid thing to the ultimate conclusion that, because Spielberg is one of the richest men in the world, he could have used that wealth to finance research into a time machine that would allow him to go back in time and kill Hitler, thereby saving far more Jews than Shindler did. Never mind that he has no obligation to do so with his money. Never mind, even, that time travel is impossible. In the context of this whole pointless debate, Spielberg is guilty of being a bad person because he didn't even TRY.

Spielberg made a movie about an event in someone's life. The fact that it was called "Shindler's List" is academic. It could have easily been simply called "The List".

By the way, if we're going to speculate, I wonder how much money survivors from Shindler's efforts have contributed to his widow over the years? Considering the number of people saved that "owe her", I have to wonder how in the world she could possibly be destitute. Either this thankless bunch has given her nothing or she burns through the money like wildfire. But you see the problem here? This question, like that concerning Spielberg, is based on a "what if" scenario.

I welcome a good debate but we simply have no facts to debate. Let's move on.

Roger

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Roger Evans
MovieStuff http://www.afterimagephoto.tv/moviestuff.html


[This message has been edited by MovieStuff (edited January 20, 2002).]

[mattias]

> I welcome a good debate but we simply have no facts to debate.

in france, and most of europe, you don't need any. the debate itself has a value. this is what i was trying to say in my last post, and in that context, the fact that we are indeed debating means godard succeeded, right?

/matt

[seekaee]

As I recall, Frederic Raphael said Stanley Kubrick supposedly addressed some of the same issues about spielbeg and Schlinder?s list when they were working on Eyes Wide Shut.To the affect of" Schlinder?s list wasn't about the Holocaust, It was about Survivors of the Holocaust." I believe the actual quote is in the Raphael book.

Interestingly, Kubrick was very close to making his own film about the Holocaust based on the book Wartime Lies by Louis Begley. It?s a shame He never got to make it.



[This message has been edited by seekaee (edited January 20, 2002).]