Fish, Barrel, Gun

Alicublog makes fun of James Lileks:

alicublog: AS LONG AS I'M IN A FRIVOLOUS MOOD, WHY DON'T I WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT LILEKS?

Am I the only person who loved the first "Pirates of the Caribbean," yet fears the sequel will feel like six hours of rubber hoses to the kidney? Hollywood ruins everything, it seems...

The first Pirates, as we all know, was not made by Hollywood, but by ordinary citizens like you 'n' me who banged open the doors of Universal Studios with an airline beverage cart.

I could keep this up all day, and maybe I will.

Definitely one for the Orwell File. The "Hollywood Is Bad!" ideological filter is so strong that Lileks's ossified brain cannot contemplate the idea that "Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl" was a product of... HOLLYWOOD!

Comments

[Jake]

Uh... "Hollywood ruins everything" doesn't require that all movies be bad, just that any series eventually suck. Like The Matrix. Or like Aliens.

[No. That would be "Hollywood ruins some things," or "Hollywood eventually makes a lousy sequel." Not "Hollywood ruins everything."]

[anne]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9805E6DA153DF93AA35754C0A9659C8B63

July 9, 2003

Mascara As Black As a Jolly Roger
By ELVIS MITCHELL

The action comedy ''Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl'' raises one of the most overlooked and important cinematic questions of our time: Can a movie maintain the dramatic integrity of a theme park ride?

In this case the answer is -- sure. The director Gore Verbinski's penchant for logistics -- combined with the producer Jerry Bruckheimer's desire to spend like a drunken pirate when it comes to putting everything on screen -- melts into an often frenetic, colorful and entertaining comic adventure that often seems to be using ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'' as a template. The dazzling, high-flying silliness is quite an achievement. The movie is better than it deserves to be, given its origins: a ride at Disneyland and Disney World.

Mr. Verbinski's staging is as vertiginous as an amusement park ride and places the wiry and beauteous tomboy Keira Knightley at the center. Her physical assurance suggests what Nicole Kidman might be like if she didn't spend so much time coughing tragically into handkerchiefs in an equally tragic pursuit of important roles.

Ms. Knightley is Elizabeth Swann, owner of a medallion that gets the plot going a scant hour into ''Pirates.'' This trinket is first seen in a prologue sequence, in which little Elizabeth steals it from an equally young Will Turner. She has also stolen (sigh) his heart, as Will (Orlando Bloom) grows up to be a stalwart blacksmith -- and more than able swordsman -- who nurtures a secret crush on her. Ms. Knightley is strident and confident in her movement, an ability that makes her all the sexier and alluring, which is fortunate, given that her acting skills aren't quite as devastating as her looks.

The movie belongs to Johnny Depp as Capt. Jack Sparrow the pirate, a rapscallion who's as woozy as someone who has endured much too much time on a roller coaster. Mr. Depp doesn't get the opportunity to display his gift for comedy often, and his mellow, dizzied underplaying here is a balm, an antidote to the raucous battles and swashbuckling.

Gargling his consonants before spitting them out, Mr. Depp's pirate suggests a man who has spent either a great deal of time with Keith Richards after a tour of the Rebel Yell factory....

[tech98]

"...ordinary citizens like you 'n' me who banged open the doors of Universal Studios with an airline beverage cart."

WTF? Is he comparing himself to the passengers on Flight 93? And Universal Studios are hijacker-terrorists in this role-play for the mentally ill?
What next - "Let's Roll"?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

I find it hard to believe that I'm defending Lileks, but isn't he just saying that having creating something wonderful in the first movie, Hollywood is -- characteristically, in his view -- ruining it with the sequel?

[anon]

I think almost anyone who read that would have understood what it meant. It is equivalent to saying of a friend who was just dumped "He manages to alienate everyone!" Obviously, in order to have someone dump him, he needed to have someone fall for him first. To me, this seems to be a grammatical misunderstanding on the part of Brad DeLong and alicublog. Everyone else understood perfectly.

[Slocum]

"To me, this seems to be a grammatical misunderstanding on the part of Brad DeLong and alicublog. Everyone else understood perfectly."

Yep. But the chance to take a shot at Lileks was too tempting to pass up. I think the misunderstanding was more opportunistic than inadvertant.

Even so I still think Lileks is all wet (and should know better)--the problem with sequels has little to do with the failings of Hollywood. Sequels are usually worse for a couple of reasons. The most important is that in the first film we're introduced to the fictional universe, we see where the characters came from, how they meet, what kinds of relationships they will have, and so on. These are some of the most important sources of pleasure and they're mostly unavailable to the producers of sequels.

And then there's just the regression to the mean. Sequals tend to be made of good films, not bad ones--so sequals usually have a hard act to follow.

[Brad DeLong]

Of course Lileks is all wet. Making really good movies is very, very hard. It's not that Hollywood is malevolent and "ruins everything": it's that Hollywood is trying to do things that are extraordinarily difficult to do. We won't be watching Lileks direct on the big screen anytime soon.

[Walt]

Really, we ruin everything. The first Pirates told a complete story with nothing left to add. But since we're sheep that'll automatically go see the sequel, even though sequels are always bad, the studios have no choice but to make the sequel.

anon: Of course Liliks deserves to be mocked for his stupid comment. Your hypothetical friend would also deserve to be mocked, unless they were speaking out of grief.

[Jay B.]

tech98,

"...ordinary citizens like you 'n' me who banged open the doors of Universal Studios with an airline beverage cart."

WTF? Is he comparing himself to the passengers on Flight 93? And Universal Studios are hijacker-terrorists in this role-play for the mentally ill? What next - "Let's Roll"?

Calm down. First, alicublog (roy) is, in his exaggeration, making fun of Jimbo's cluelessness about which forces actually created the movie to begin with -- it wasn't a scruffy indie production which just happened to ram its way through the Universal gates, it was a Jerry Bruckheimer Production via Disney based on a THEME PARK RIDE. Its origins couldn't be more "Hollywood" if it tried.

Second, in your outrage over the reference, you do realize that the hijacking and subsequent crash was ALSO made into a movie, right?

Third, you don't really get the joke do you?

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/opinion/11tues4.html?ex=1310270400&en=572116feffe3cf58&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

July 11, 2006

Hawking Sparrow

The summer blockbuster is back — the veritable moneymaking blockbuster, that is — and Hollywood is elated. Last weekend, Disney's new "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," starring Johnny Depp as the louche Jack Sparrow, broke the opening weekend revenue record held by "Spider-Man" since 2002. Never mind the lukewarm reviews. The very point of a good summer blockbuster is to elude the critics and connect directly with audiences. What makes "Pirates of the Caribbean" unusual, even for a blockbuster, is that it seems to have connected, so far, with audiences of every kind. That has Hollywood crowing....

Making movies is an art. Marketing them is a mystery. The success of the first "Pirates of the Caribbean" in 2003 took many people by surprise. The success of its sequel should surprise no one, even though it doesn't come up to the standard of its predecessor. To girls of a certain age, and their mothers, the words "Johnny Depp" sound like an incantation, eye shadow or not. To all the rest of us, there's an ironic detachment in Depp's Jack Sparrow, a wink to the wise moviegoer, that somehow fills theaters and, at the same time, sends up the whole of Hollywood's efforts to understand its audience.

If nothing else, Hollywood's celebration is a reminder that it does not know how to make blockbusters whenever it wants. The likelihood is that it never will.

[nattybumpo]

The first Pirates movie was very average and exactly what I expected from the Hollywood studio system, I would never compare it even casually to either Alien or the Matrix.

I am shocked that most of the responses seem to agree with Brad that the first Pirates movie was actually good. Tsk..Tsk..