March 24, 2003
SCHLOCK AND AWE
I didn't watch the Oscars last night. I was too busy trying to replace a Jeep Grand Cherokee that clearly had intentions of automotive suicide for the better part of a year. I know I'll show my age with this war-related remark, but if it could have poured a can of gasoline over it's hood and immolated itself monk-style at the intersection of Dale Mabry Highway and Kennedy Boulevard, I'm sure it would have done so. Or maybe I'm just projecting what I would have done. Whatever.
Anyway, I was committing to the expenditure of thousands of dollars over the next 60 months for no money down at 2.9 percent instead of watching the Academy Awards. Based on what I read about the show, I could have ponied up a few million more at loanshark rates with the lives of my family and friends pledged as collateral and it would have been a bargain to have missed the public display of self-aggrandizement.
From what I read, the fulcrum of the show's weirdness came when Michael Moore, who won for his documentary, "Bowling for Columbine." denounced President Bush as a "fictitious president" who is "sending us to war for fictitious reasons."
Interesting comments coming from a man who conveniently rearranged parts of his heralded recession-era film "Roger and Me" to suit the angle of his movie and then had the giant, jumbo, elephantine coconut balls to first deny the charges and then maintain it still met the criteria of a factual documentary.
How big were the lies? Film Comment's Harlan Jacobson pointed out the number of 1986 GM layoffs in Flint was about 5,000, not the 30,000 implied in the film, which transpired over a greater range of time. The commercial projects, intended to revive Flint, all opened and failed before the 1986 layoffs, but Moore suggests they resulted from the GM cuts.
If anyone knows about fictitious, it's Michael Moore.
The New York Times, of all publications, wrote a subtle but scathing article that pricked the ribs of the self-appointed moral barometers in Hollywood. (You have to register at the site before you can read the article.)
Here's a great passage:
In good times movie stars are an agreeable reflection of our own yearning for youth, wealth and beauty. In a crisis they can become projections of everything we like least about ourselves — privileged, pampered, self-absorbed. It didn't matter what the politics were; it was the presumption.
Ouch.
Call it irony or coincidence, but on this day in Memphis in 1958, Elvis Presley arrived with his parents at the draft board on South Main Street to be inducted into the army. He became U.S. Army Private 53310761, and his income dropped from $400,000 a year to $78 a month.
He gave up everything in order to serve his country. Stardom. A revolutionary music career. Millions in potential earnings. Connection with a mother that he clearly needed in order to keep his appetites in line. He was paraded for the press, which watched him as he got his head shaved and as he stood in his underwear to be measured and weighed and more or less paraded like a village loon.
But he did it. And he did it with his mouth shut. He finished his tour of duty, collected his adolescent fiancee and then went home to Memphis.
I shudder to think of the infantile shrieks that would emerge from Michael Moore's prickly pear head if he ever received an induction notice. Then again, maybe it would be just another excuse to exploit public misery - like layoffs, high-school shooting sprees and war - for his own personal edification.