Saturday, February 10, 2007

Ironic Good bad taste, you're dead to me

I was watching Predator the other night for a Q Branch script I'm working on, and I realized how much I love Bill Duke's bugfuck nuts performance. I could say it's a favorite. But nowadays, if I were to make a list and put that performance on it, it would seem like a hipster thing to do, like I wasn't being serious about it, or that I was acknowledging my childhood too much, or whatever. But Duke going bugfuck nuts is surely one of the great pleasures of movie going. Alas, in a culture where people will contrarily defend Alien Vs. Predator, a film with absolutely no redeeming qualities whatsoever, and with films of my childhood either already canonized or rebelled against, and a population unswayed by contrary opinions on established "classics" (does anyone but the lamest get all persnickety if I said I didn't like The Sound of Music, or Grease, or Gone With the Wind - which even with the later, I will acknowledge isn't a bad film, just not a great one), the shit's worn out. You've got to dig hard to piss people off when talking about an established classic, while still knowing what you're talking about (it's easy to diss Citizen Kane if you're an idiot). I found one that's gotten me into some heated TOP GUN IS GAY type arguments, but it's a fools errand now. Now that people have so little good taste, which is - alas, same as it ever was - but with the dumbing down of our culture fewer adults go to the Gandhi's like they used to. Witness Babel's BO.