2006-06-03 - 4:52 p.m.
Readers of this diary know that compared to most people, I see a heck of a lot of movies. But that doesn�t mean that I consider them significant or earth-changing. While to me they may be important, just in the way that to an opera-loving friend of mine opera is illuminating about human life and immensely meaningful, this really is an �elite� response to a particular art form (applicable in the cases when it actually is an art form, but with American movies, that is less and less the case). And by �elite� I don�t mean anything like �better,� or �superior,� but just �a small, limited group of people.� But for everybody else, movies are just an infrequent Saturday night�s diversion, forgotten just as soon as they guide their car out of the multiplex�s parking lot into city traffic.
Really not all that many people even go out to see movies, any more. My brother, who used to be in that industry, says that screened films really are just a commercial for the DVD, and certainly Disney, at least, seems to bear this out, for they will continue to produce DVDs as sequels to theatrical hits (Bambi, The Lion King, etc.) that never even bother to show on the big screen. If people cared about movies (instead of movies on television), they would go out to see them more.
Billionaire Richard Bramson, who made himself such a success with Virgin Records, Virgin Megastores, Virgin Airlines, etc., and who briefly made a foray into the film industry but then got out of it, flat out states in his autobiography that as a financial investment, music far outshines film, for it is Bramson�s contention that with music you know just by listening to a demo track whether you have a hit or not, whereas no one knows whether a movie will draw a big box office, and that even goes for the big heavies such as Disney Studios and anything by Steven Spielberg. Also, according to Bramson, hit music continues to sell forever--he is still making money of off Tubular Bells that was one of Virgin�s original offerings�whereas that does not happen with movies (except, I will submit, with Disney animations such as Little Mermaid, although we will have to see if the next generation of little girls will be as enamored of it as this generation). There is irony in that statement about Tubular Bells, though, in that it was used as the soundtrack for the movie, The Exorcist, so there is an example of a movie being a commercial for the music! I wonder how many movie producers realize that the business they are really in is advertising?
Another friend of mine, who has film degrees from UCLA and USC, studied the economics of video games and concluded that they were much more profitable than movies, and thus decided to get into that industry, instead. Which, though, is a chilling thought�that to think that a whole generation of kids is being more influenced by Grand Theft Auto than�Hustle and Flow (i.e., �It�s Hard Out Here For A Pimp�)�humm, maybe it�s a toss-up. I�m just being funny and showing my age (and for all I know, Hustle and Flow could be a great movie), whereas I do have the impression that video games are mind rot, some quick research on which games really are the big-sellers shows a different story and honestly, if I had the time and patience (which I do not), I would probably love some of those games, too.
Here, in order, are the top twenty game sellers by franchise (which means that there are various versions and sequels)�the numbers following refer to the number of games sold:
Mario (i.e., Super Mario Brothers): 257.3 million
Pokemon: 143 million
Final Fantasy: 63 million
Grand Theft Auto: 50.1 million
The Legend of Zelda: 47 million
Tetris: 44.1 million
Donkey Kong: 44 million
Grand Turismo: 43.7 million
Crash Bandicoot: 39.2 million
Sonic the Hedgehog: 33.3 million
James Bond [really?]: 30 million
Madden NFL: 30 million
Resident Evil: 30 million
Tomb Raider: 28 million
Tony Hawk�s Pro-Skater: 27.9 million
Street Fighter: 27 million
Mega Man: 24 million
Tekken: 22.7 million
Mortal Kombat: 20 million
Kirby: 20.9 million
FIFA: 20 million
Metal Gear: 19.4 million
Halo: 14.2 million
Harry Potter: 13.2 million
Super Smash Brothers: 11.6 million
Metroid: 11.3 million
Looking over that list, there is very little on there of which I would disapprove, if any. Looking at individual games, games that I could see myself liking would be (in order of numbers sold):
The Sims: 16 million
Myst: 11 million
Rollercoaster Tycoon: 4 million
Age of Empires: 3 million
Civilization III: 2.5 million
Microsoft Flight Simulator: 2.3 million
Tomb Raider II: 2.24 million
Baldur�s Gate: 2 million
Age of Empires III: 1.5 million
Battlefield 1942: 1.5 million
And various other �Sims�, �Civilization�, �Age of�, and �Tomb Raider� games.
Gee, maybe I�ll change my tune and get into video games!
But video games is not what this diary entry was supposed to be about. The subject was movies and how I feel that they really aren�t influential at all, and this particularly goes to the documentaries or propaganda ones (which have even fewer viewers than the regular films).
I remember after seeing Michael Moore�s Fahrenheit 9/11, people in the audience thought that for sure, now, Bush couldn�t possibly win the presidency again. But he did, and now Moore is being sued for millions of dollars by an Iraqi war vet over how he was misrepresented in that film. For his efforts, Moore failed to topple Bush, and might, instead, lose his ass.
And now it seems that Al Gore is behind a similar Fahrenheit 9/11 attempt for his own political agenda, in his case, the propaganda film, An Inconvenient Truth, about �Global Warming�. I should write �Truth� in that title in quotes, because I think global warming is a lie, just as I believe �Peak Oil� is a lie (and I believe that the Brazilian discovery of enough oil, which they got offshore from a geological region that predates the existence of the dinosaurs, to make them into a net exporter of the commodity proves me right). I would worry a lot more about the political effect of this film than I do, though, because of my belief that movies really have no effect.
It is my belief that Gore is laying the groundwork to be the Democratic presidential candidate again. Who knows, maybe we�ll have a contentious primary battle between Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, ending with one of them being placed on the ticket as candidate for president, and the other as candidate for vice-president, a la Kerry and Edwards. And maybe Jeb Bush will be the Republican candidate? Wouldn�t that be ironic, it would be �Bush vs Clinton,� or �Bush vs Gore� all over again�different Bushes (George, George W, or Jeb), different Clintons (Bill or Hillary), but the same old Gore.
I wonder if the voters understand that George Bush (elder) and Bill Clinton, two former presidential candidate �enemies� of each other, are really best friends? So how much difference between the two of them is there, really? I remember Clinton ran against Bush with the slogan �It�s the economy, stupid�, and then when he became president, imposed the exact same economic package that Bush had proposed. Absolutely zero difference, there.
Ironically, I never really voted for ANY of them for President, at least, not directly.
When Clinton first ran, I really wasn�t all that impressed by him, but I did like Gore. I really believed in environmental issues back than and Gore�s book, Earth In The Balance really influenced me, influenced me so much that I voted for that ticket because of him being on it�that was a vote for Gore, as Vice-president, not Clinton as President. And the next go-round, I repeated myself, for the same reasons.
However, when Gore was running as president himself, I had stopped liking him and voted for Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate (and thus, by voting for whom I really wanted, I threw my vote away). So during the whole Florida election brouhaha, I wasn�t all that passionately involved in the outcome.
Another bizarre, but probably very telling �Washington friendship� is the one between Ruth Ginsberg and Anton Scalia of the Supreme Court. They are on opposite poles, and yet are so close in their friendship that they even celebrate holidays together (and Ginsberg is, I presume, Jewish, whereas I know Scalia is Catholic). So in a way, the fact that one (Ginsberg) seems like the only remaining saving light on the Court and the other (Scalia) is evil incarnate, I think the truth is that none of it means anything or makes any difference at all, and that they are bound more by their office than by their beliefs, which is similar to the former presidents.
I also liked a lot �swing vote� Justice Sandra Day O�Connor and considered her to be akin to Ruth Ginsberg, and yet, SHE was the one who was so upset over the Florida court�s election decision that would have made Gore the President. She was filmed at a party shouting, �We have to DO something about this,� and we all know what they did do about it, rendered a decision that placed Bush into the presidency.
Well, I never even pretended to understand the constitutional legal issues involved (only because I didn�t read through all the arguments and opinions), but after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, I felt I understood that what had happened was that among all the insider wheeling-dealing that must be going on in Washington (the kind of stuff that makes public enemies like Bush elder and Clinton, Ginsberg and Scalia, actual bosom buddies in private), our government really is a one-party oligarchy with insider knowledge that is not fully released to the people and they simply make happen what they believe is best and the (ignorant) voter really has very little to do with it other than being emotionally manipulated into one direction or another. And thus if a Justice who writes opinions that I admire was so adamant that the President HAD to be Bush, then maybe there was a good reason for it and the events on 9/11 seemed to demonstrate that wisdom.
After the attacks on 9/11, I felt very secure that our President�s father seemed to have so much relevant experience. Reagan had used his vice-president, George Bush, to go to the Middle East during all those crises and dealings, and Bush had also been head of the CIA. And now we were in a situation in which we were being attacked by fanatics from the Middle East, and the only truly effective way to stop them was via CIA-type actions. So suddenly the placing of George W. Bush into the Presidency seemed quite fortuitous (if he were willing to seek advice from his more experienced father).
Actually, even now, we are seeing radiations from the Reagan era, namely, with Iran. I had not known until recently that the current President of Iran, who has been making so many threats against the United States (and Israel), was instrumental in the Iranian hostage crisis, in which Iranian terrorists (the now-President of Iran among them) held captive American embassy workers for over a year. This was a direct act of war against the sovereignty of our nation and a complete violation of accepted international practice (you do not mess with another country�s embassies, because to do so would close down all avenues of negotiation).
As Iran has never suffered retribution for this act of war against the U.S., now that they are threatening again, it is fascinating (and, actually, comforting) to see the same players over here in our government. After all, it was during the Reagan administration that the hostage crisis, that began during the weak Carter administration, was finally brought to a close. The Republican track seemed to have had better success in dealing with the Middle East than the Democratic track. (And don�t forget that during the Clinton administration, the CIA had Osama bin Laden in hand and Clinton had them let him go.)
Before Osama bin Laden was so hated, there was another Middle Eastern fanatic who was hated, and he is STILL pulling strings today, and that is the Ayatollah Khomeini, and it is from him that whole concept of �now that the Soviet Union has collapsed as a world power, it is time for there to be an anti-American pan-Islamic theocracy to fill the power gap� originated, and that is still his tune. This is why Cheney has likened the �war on terror� with the �cold war��it is Khomeini, himself, who has made this identification. Iran has been, and still is, very bad news. Oh, and here�s another thing. While the current President of Iran, who threatens to blow Israel off the face of the map, was the more radical of the two candidates, the losing, more moderate candidate, also threatened to blow Israel off the face of the map. So when the two opposing political parties in a country are in agreement over blowing Israel off the face of the map, it seems reasonable that the rest of the world should sit up and take notice.
While I have been fundamentally against pre-emptive strikes (such as what Bush did with Iraq), when I think of Iran�s threats against Israel, a small country that COULD be completely wiped out with the very FIRST nuclear strike from Iran, pre-emptive strikes suddenly make sense.
The other day I wrote to a friend about a Middle Eastern guy who was dangerously going off on a girl in a Whole Foods parking lot, screaming at her, gunning the engine in his dark black SUV, and speeding around the parking lot, trying to run her over and endangering everybody else who was there. His behavior was so manic, so extreme, and so lacking in consideration of our culture�s mores, that somebody called the police on him. I wrote to my friend that if the guy had acted like this at the L.A. Airport, he would have been shot dead, no questions asked, and not one witness would have been against that. Frankly, if I had seen this man shot dead by the police in the Whole Foods parking lot, I would have had no objection.
Is this racist, or is this unfair? No. People have to behave with prudence, whether it is a Middle Eastern man in Los Angeles or the President of Iran in the world arena. If you make dangerous threats, you probably ought to be taken out.
America and our way of life truly is being threatened, even from within. With my newly-opened eyes, I was so shocked to read in my California Voter Booklet the platforms of the six or seven political parties operating here (one of them, the �Natural Law Party,� which is really the �Hari Krishna Party�, didn�t bother to write out a platform), that the �Peace and Freedom Party� actually wrote these words: We believe that working people should own and run the economy for everyone�s benefit. WHAT?! Why don�t they just go ahead and call a spade a spade, this is the �Communist Party,� except I guess that by now they realize that their voters are too ignorant to truly understand what that just said, but would be fooled by their nice-sounding name of �Peace and Freedom�. But what they want is the exact opposite of peace or freedom�they propose violence, theft, and control of the individual property owner by those who own and have built nothing.
Think about it for a minute�if they believe that the �workers� should �own and run the economy,� who do they mean owns and runs it now? The business owners, right? And what is the difference between a worker and a business owner? Quite simple�the business owner used his innovation, energy, and ability to create, and willingness to take risks and sacrifice, to build himself a business (HIS property), and the workers are the people he hires to work in the business and to earn an income from it WITHOUT having had to go to the trouble, bother, effort, and danger of creating it. So what this �Peace and Freedom� party wants to do is to steal from the rightful owners the businesses and simply give them to the workers to run. You don�t steal without force of arms, so that is violence, not peace. How free is a people who know that if they just build a business, it will be stolen from them later? Would they be building any more businesses, then? I highly doubt it. They will leave, like the entrepreneurs left Cuba after all their property was stolen from them by Castro and other �workers�. So do we want the United States to become another Cuba? Is Cuba the bastion of peace and freedom? Was the Soviet Union?
We�re have on our California ballot an utterly insane proposition, Proposition 82, that comes straight out of this �worker� agenda. They want to write into the state Constitution a new �right�, the �right to voluntary preschool for all four-year old children,� to be paid for by an additional tax imposed on people earning $400,000 a year or more.
It doesn�t matter to me that I am not making anywhere near $400,000 a year, I am fundamentally opposed to this kind of discriminatory and confiscatory tax scheme in which the poor people can get what they want by using the electoral process to take away from the rich people. I would be against the proposal even if the taxes were imposed fairly, but this is yet another example of out-and-out redistribution of wealth and it is theft, pure and simple.
And I am quite certain that what rich people would be forced to pay for here is something that they, themselves, absolutely would not want, so it doesn�t even benefit them at all. They send their kids to private school at great expense, so why would they want to be forced to pay for two or more years of public schooling for other people�s kids right out of their income tax (the tax rate would 1.7% of all income over $400,000, so the smallest impact of this is an additional tax burden of $6,800 a year)? Part of the legislative �argument� behind this proposition is that police say that putting four-year-olds into pre-school would reduce crime by keeping kids off the streets and out of trouble. What? Four year olds? Well, four year olds aren�t out on the streets causing crime in Beverly Hills, and I highly doubt they are in South Central L.A., either. If that isn�t a crock of shit argument, I don�t know what is.
The honest truth is that working mothers would just love to have rich people providing a free, state-run day care one or two years early for their children�that�s what it really is. Of course, California can�t even educate the children they�ve already got in schools, not to mention there isn�t enough classroom space in Los Angeles to take care of the student population they already have. And anyway, whatever happened to childhood? Oh yeah, that�s right, the state took children and their independence and freedom away from their parents LONG ago. Now they just want to expand that control a few extra years. Why don�t they just grab the babies out of the hospital as soon as they are born and send them to indoctrination camps immediately? Surely that�s what they�re working toward. Welcome to the Brave New World, ghetto-style.
Gosh, all this and I haven�t even gotten to Al Gore and his chicken little movie (maybe the Iraqi war vet�s lawsuit against Michael Moore will give Gore pause), but this entry is too long already and I have a concert to go to.
To be continued, but you know me by now, it may not be�depends upon what else is going on!
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