I
The journalist-turned-screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has, either
in spite or because of his standing as something of a self-important clod, made
several significant contributions to the lexicon of show business. I was
reminded recently of his late ‘80s citation of his former agent, the
diminuitive and feisty Michael Ovitz. Ovitz, according to Eszterhas, responded
to Eszterhas’ announcement that he was leaving Ovitz and his agency CAA by
telling Eszterhas that he, Ovitz, had “foot soldiers who go up and down Wilshire
Boulevard each day” who would “blow [Eszterhas’] brains out.” Such colorful
language. Hollywood, like so many other fields of endeavor, is full of
emotionally disturbed people who often fancy themselves tough guys.
What brought the denied-by-Ovitz Ovitz pronouncement to mind
was a piece that appeared on New York magazine’s Vulture website nearly two
weeks ago, by one Brian McGreevy, entitled “Don’t Call Lena Dunham ‘Brave.’” I
need not go into the larger substance of the piece here; I’m not a television
critic and I’ve already (I think) expressed my opinions on the use of the word
“brave” as applied to performers, artists, what have you. What struck me was
what came after McGreevy’s largely sensible exhortation that Lena Dunham’s
public persona does not necessarily line up with Lena Dunham’s function as a
creator or artist. “Lena Dunham is not weak,” McGreevy warns the reader. “Lena
Dunham will cut your throat in your sleep.”
“She will do no such thing,” I laughed. I laughed even more
because prior to his fulminations in this vein (and there are a lot of them),
McGreevy included a clause reading “as a producer.” What has McGreevy produced?
According to his bio below the piece, he has executive-produced a Netflix
series based on a book he has written.
I know that David Foster Wallace once made mild fun of Susan
Faludi for referring to a porn movie set as an “ecology,” but reading
McGreevy’s piece I myself found myself contemplating a cultural ecology in
which an individual with precisely one producing credit to his name feels
sufficiently confident to swing an inflated rhetorical dick around like he’s
Mace Neufeld or something (I’ve actually met Mace Neufeld and I doubt he’d
stoop to anything so vulgar, or unnecessary). A cultural ecology in which the
Internet arm of a major publication will pay probably-not-that-good money for
the inflated rhetorical dick swinging. And most of all, a cultural ecology in
which consumers are expected to be pleased to be told that Lena Dunham will cut their throats in their sleep.
“[A]ll art is a product of shameless opportunism that
deserves to be applauded,” McGreevy continues. “[Dunham] is a woman who has
risen through a masculine power hierarchy to become one of the most important
culture-makers of the 21st century without compromising her artistic identity,
and is fucking a rock star, this is more or less as baller as it gets.”
The unfortunate adolescent quality of McGreevy’s language
aside, we are, once again, quite a long way from the ethos of our old friend
Andrei Tarkovsky, who once wrote: “Ultimately artists work at their profession
not for the sake of telling someone about something but as an assertion of
their will to serve people. I am staggered by artists who assume that they
freely create themselves, that it is actually possible to do so; for it is the
lot of the artist to accept that he is created by his time and the people
amongst whom he lives. As Pasternak put it:
“Keep awake, keep awake, artist,
Do not give in to sleep…
You are eternity’s hostage
And prisoner of time.
“And I’m convinced that if an artist succeeds in doing
something, he does so nly because that is what people need—even if they are not
aware of it at the time. And so it’s always the audience who win, who gain
something, while the artist loses, and has to pay out.”
II
Call me crazy, but I see a pretty straight line connecting a
skepticism toward the “difficult” in art and “We Saw Your Boobs,” a production
number I’ll admit to having missed during its initial broadcast, and still
haven’t caught up with. Hostile, ugly, sexist: these are the words that The New
Yorker’s Amy Davidson uses to describe Oscar host Seth MacFarlane’s schtick as
host of the ceremonies. I have to admit my reaction to some of the outrage (not Davidson’s, I hasten to add), in part, is to
say, in my imagination, and now here, to a certain breed of multi-disciplinary
pop-culture enthusiast, well, you picked your poison, now you can choke on it.
It’s all well and good to make “fun,” “irreverence,” “FUBU” or any number of
related qualities the rocks upon which you build the church of your aesthetic,
or your worldview. But you might want to remember the precise parameters of the
choices you made on the occasion that they bite you on the ass. Not to mix
metaphors or anything.
Also published on the Internet around two weeks ago, on the
website Buzzfeed, was something I guess is referred to as a listicle, entitled
“What’s The Deal With Jazz?” in which the author, Amy Rose Spiegel, expressed
her immense disdain for the musical form in digital rebus style. She takes
immaculate care to only lampoon the white, and rather hackish (per conventional
wisdom), practitioners of the form, until the very end, in which she allows
“But really, the worst part of despising jazz is when people say ‘No, no, you
just haven’t heard the good stuff! Blah blah blah Miles Davis Charles Mingus
blah blah blerg.’ Actually, I have. I have, and I hate it.”
Now all this is arguably ignorant, arguably hateful,
arguably racist. It excited a fair amount of disapprobation in my circle on
Twitter, where it became clear that some of the people complaining about it
were friendly with the piece’s “editor,” to whom I myself expressed some
displeasure, and she in turn expressed displeasure that I was making it
“personal.” Call me crazy, again, but I can’t see too much of a way not to
respond “personally” to such a piece. Plenty of people in the “conversation”
allowed that, well, Buzzfeed DOES do great things, but that this wasn’t one of
them, and that it was regrettable. I see it completely the opposite way. I see “What’s
The Deal With Jazz?” as absolutely emblematic of Buzzfeed and all it stands
for, just as I see the charming piece called “Django Unattained: How Al
Sharpton Ruined A Cool Collector’s Item” as absolutely emblematic of the site
Film School Rejects. I know I’m possibly coming off like Susan Sontag yammering
about how a million Mozarts could not cancel out the fact that the white race
is the cancer of civilization. I’m aware of the good that is out there. But
let’s face it: Robert Fure, Amy Rose Spiegel, and tens of thousands of others
are eager to bulldoze it, and the Jeff Jarvises of the world are happy to let
them do it, if only because it will prove their theories about the Internet to
be correct.
In 1998 a couple of writer friends, who I’ll call K and
L, made me the gift of a personal
introduction to a man I’ll call D, whose work as a journalist and an artist I
had long admired. Our first dinner was at a steakhouse on Tenth Avenue, after
which we went to see P.J. Harvey at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Great show, you
shoulda been there. Anyway, during the course of the dinner conversation, K was
talking about how he had recently seen the movie Belly, a kind of hip-hop
gangster movie starring DMX and Nas and directed by Hype Williams. K described
his discomfort with the movie and some of its depictions, but was having
trouble articulating that discomfort. D, a person of exceptional perspicacity
and directness, and someone who had been something of a professional mentor to
K in the past, cut to the chase.
“Did you find it morally objectionable?”
K thought this over for a bit. It was clear that he did not
want to seem prim. It was also clear that trying to bullshit D wouldn’t do.
“Yes,’ he said. “Yes, I found it morally objectionable.”
D smiled and cut into his steak and said, “Well then you
should say: ‘I found it morally objectionable.’”
You mention Koppelman and Levien all the time, why identity cloak them now?
On behalf of the third person, who’s not one for all this Internet nonsense.
Belly is total eye candy. Can’t say much for the writing or acting, but visually, it is incredible, as good as anything Noe’s ever done, and probably what Korine should have been aiming for with Spring Breakers.
“Cut your throat in your sleep” evokes Jodie Arias. As for Lena Dunham, she’s a hack with a pehnomenally effective pubicist. Nothing more.
Buzzfeed is racist.
On the other end of the “morally objectionable” spectrum, Glenn Greenwald is crowing about the “humiliation” of Zero Dark Thirty and offering his thoughts on just why film critics are so politically vacuous (an unexamined and incorrect assumption upon which his whole house of cards rests, much like the assertion that ZD30 celebrates bin Laden’s killing, which he considers so obvious he doesn’t even address it and focuses on torture instead, but I digress).
I’m trying to keep an open mind about Dunham, but the self-satisfied hype surrounding her makes this so hard, especially the have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too feminist stuff, whereby questioning the show’s social perspective is met with missing-the-point celebrations of her gender. The fundamental issue in society is not race or gender, it’s power. That it is often distributed along racial or sexual lines is a feature of the central problem, not the end of said problem, and squeezing in token faces here and there is a cosmetic repair to a dysfunctional system. Social media should be knocking down this door, not readjusting the doorjambs.
Does anyone else find it curious how neatly 21st century identity politics dovetails with unquestioning upper-class complacency? No wonder conservatives were eager to fight culture wars in the 90s and even today. It may make them look out of touch, but it also tends to drag bourgeois liberals further away from the rhetorical populism and egalitarianism which prove their firmest platform. I think one of the best lessons of OWS (and the first Obama campaign before it) is the strength of a solidarity message, which we’re seemingly in the process of unlearning.
Other Joel: You don’t need to keep an open mind about Dunham. Nobody does. Nobody needs to think about her at all, ever, or really about any single other celebrity, whether or not that celebrity puts their persona out there for love, mockery, or whatever. Just watch her TV show. It’s very funny, the characterizations are sensitively drawn, and at its best it evokes the kind of microcosmic social satire that Nicole Holofcener has been doing well for the past fifteen years. And I did not think much of Tiny Furniture. Needing to have an opinion about a celebrity is a very strange personal dilemma for the social-media age. It might be the publicists’ fault. It’s certainly, in part, that celebrity’s fault. But no one says we need to take the bait.
Other other Joel: just to clarify, I agree that who she is as a person is irrelevant. By “keeping an open mind about Dunham” I mean her work as an artist, namely Tiny Furniture or Girls. I have a huge backlog of movies and especially TV shows right now, and both are on there; until I get to them, I’m trying not to form too strong an opinion, harsh or otherwise on her – that’s all. The opinions/impressions I do share (like the above) should be seen as indicative of the buzz/hype not her as an artist, since I don’t know enough about the latter category yet.
Haven’t read the Buzzfeed jazz-hate piece (nor do I understand why I would bother, as I already like jazz and doubt the article would convince me to stop liking it, nor could I convince its author the other way), but it reminds me of my habit of googling the term ‘X + overrated’ (X can be anything from cilantro to Paul McCartney). Invariably someone has ranted on a blog somewhere that X is overrated. Shakespeare is overrated, Mozart is overrated, Kubrick is overrated, wine is overrated, sex is overrated.
Contrarianism is hardly a bad thing although there’s a sort of laziness to the way it’s often expressed in these sorts of articles, a tendency that is perhaps encouraged by the rapid-turnaround, low-barrier-to-entry nature of Internet discourse generally.
I’m coming dangerously close to saying that free exchange of ideas is bad, and telling crazy kids to get off my lawn. Perhaps the thing to do is just to ignore this stuff. It’s like the conversations that happen a million times a day in every high school all over the world, except written down. It often has less to do with the topic under discussion than with a person’s desire to see herself as somehow standing out from the crowd, voicing an unpopular opinion, and ‘telling it like it is.’ Which seems to be a pretty common impulse in the human animal.
Incidentally, I loved Tiny Furniture and have immense respect for Lena Dunham. She not only made a feature in her early twenties, but she actually made a good one. That is more or less precisely what I dreamed of doing after film school, but lacked the guts or wherewithal to accomplish. I’m congenitally incapable of disdaining it in others, even if she came from privilege or had a nice house to use for a location.
Gordon, personally I see no reason to hold the circumstances of production against praise of the work. Art is the result, not the process. I do, admittedly, find it curious when circumstances of production are NOT held against praise of production itself. Which is another way of saying, to the question of is Tiny Furniture is great or good or merely ok (or terrible, for that matter), how Dunham achieved financing or promoted herself is immaterial. But if we’re asked to admire and praise her for getting it made and reaching an audience and people who could help her reach a wider audience, the MOST important question we can ask is, was her path imitable?
Not necessarily in every single detail, nor for every single person (I think a reasonable parameter would be a young person with at least some financial obligations and a steady paycheck, although even that’s asking a lot these days). But at least for the general population in statistically average or below-average circumstances. Was Film X made with luck, financing, and connections that are at least accessible to that person? If the answer is no, I’m not sure what/why we are praising. It’s a question of choices: if one makes recourse to privilege to make a better film, well a better film is a better film and that’s fine in and of itself, but I do think that filmmaker and their partisans lose bragging rights as far as ingenuity goes.
And, importantly, this is not an academic question because with the threshold of technology, financing, and distribution lower than ever, we desperately need examples of how new tools can be utilized in a new, widely-duplicated way. I do not think Dunham’s rise is seen as encouraging in this way; the usual response does not seem to be ‘I could do that.’ Which, as far as that particular question goes, is a problem.
“She not only made a feature in her early twenties, but she actually made a good one.”
Well imagine that!
I gather you’ve never heard of Xavier Dolon.
Non sequitur. Also that person’s name is Dolan, not Dolon.
>I gather you’ve never heard of Xavier Dolon.
I confess I have not. Did Xavier Dolon also make a good feature in his early twenties? If so, he has my respect too, at least for that.
He’s only 23, and has already written, directed, and edited three well-received films.
His most recent, Laurence Anyways, is a masterpiece, and probably the best thing I saw last year alongside Holy Motors.
Should see a U.S. release this year.
Yes, because more than one person has made a good feature in their 20s, we should no longer be impressed when it happens. Sheesh.
I liked TINY FURNITURE and I love GIRLS. It really does help to ignore the negative commentary that dogs Dunham’s every move, or at least treat it as so much white noise (especially since 90% of it seems to boil down to “who cares about young privileged white girls and their problems, and why can’t Dunham keep her clothes on?”). I don’t know if she’d cut anyone’s throat in their sleep, but she knows what she’s doing, as you can tell from her post-episode commentaries every week.
Posted by: jbryant |
Thanks for the tip lazarus! Look forward to catching his work.
>who cares about young privileged white girls and their problems
Do people actually make this argument with a straight face?
Who cares about millionaire newspaper tycoons?
Who cares about ancient Greek warriors embroiled in a war in Turkey?
Who cares about pedophilic professors in love?
Who cares about disgruntled Danish princes?
Who cares about French aristocrats on a hunting holiday with an aviator houseguest?
It’s hardly even worth responding to.
Gordon & j, I think the issue is not so much the milieu as conflation of milieu w/ the ‘this is HOW WE LIVE’ buzz. Which is probably true for a lot of media figures and their kids, but gets grating after a while.
“But really, the worst part of despising jazz is when people say ‘No, no, you just haven’t heard the good stuff! Blah blah blah Miles Davis Charles Mingus blah blah blerg.’ Actually, I have. I have, and I hate it.”
Haha. How true. Glad someone put the tedious Jazz snobs in their place. Davis may have been a musical genius, but 98% of us find him tedious. Give me Louis Armstrong or Benny Goodman.
@ rocean:
Jazz snobs don’t like those two? Well, they might not list Goodman at the top, but I’m pretty sure they all respect him and his music.
I don’t want to take Spiegel’s piece too seriously given its shallow and uninformed nature. (Jazz songs never go anywhere? Scat singing isn’t “for real”?) But criticism that takes the form of “X is overrated” always amuses me because typically it really boils down to “I don’t like it”. Well, for the most part I don’t care for hip hop, but I’m not about to proclaim the whole genre overrated, not least because when pressed on the details I’d be wholly unable to make an informed and coherent case.
Which brings me back to Spiegel. In the end, all she’s really saying is that she doesn’t like it. Her “reasons” for not liking it are, shall we say, less than descriptively accurate. Again, I don’t want to take her too seriously, but I find this sort of thing borderline obnoxious. And now that I think about it, maybe that’s its sole purpose.
Who the hell is Amy Rose Spiegel and why should I care? Her Twitter feed makes LexG’s look instructive.
@Oliver_C:
It did occur to me that it isn’t a real person, just a moniker under which to spout uninformed contrarianisms (among other things).
98% of those people who found Miles tedious sure weren’t stepping up when Cecil Taylor made his famous crack about Miles playing pretty good for a millionaire. To paraphrase Mao, struggle resolutely against imbeciles online. You’re way ahead of us, Glenn, go get ’em. And thanks.
“Lena Dunham will cut your throat in your sleep.”
Lena Dunham can drink my milkshake.
“Who the hell is Amy Rose Spiegel and why should I care?”
Lena Dunham has her on speed-dial. And as you should well know we’re all required to care about Lena Dunham’s every thought, word and deed.
IT’S THE LAW!!!!!
When the media tries to shove someone down our throats, we’re not obligated to buy into it. A lot of the chatter and buzz about Lena Dunham, whether positive or negative, is annoying. But it has no bearing on my enjoyment of her work. TV shows need publicity and buzz to survive, so their makers have to play the game to some extent. Media writers tend to overhype the things they love, because most of the stuff they have to write about is crap. Therefore, GIRLS, MAD MEN, BREAKING BAD, LOUIE, etc., will get more fawning coverage than the average show, despite ratings that might get a major network series cancelled after two episodes. The hype can be a bit much, but it doesn’t affect my enjoyment of these shows any more than scathing reviews would (or do). But some folks can’t just accept that you like what you like without accusing you of buying into the hype, as if hype alone could make you enjoy something.
I don’t care about Lena Dunham, I bailed out of the first episode of Girls because it struck me as both overly precious and kinda boring, but that doesn’t mean that David Ehrenstein isn’t a huge asshole.
A lot of modern jazz is just savory-but-for-special-tastes. Not for everyone, and that article could have been written about clams or sports cars or dress shoes. But 15-minute solos comprised of 90% “out” are pretty wearying. Personally, I rarely get too far into “My Favorite Things” before I start planning dinner. As Mose Allison asked, “does it move, or does it meander?”
What are you having for dinner, dear? A zesty risotto perchance?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDtE1PhaC34
I find the hype around Dunham annoying, but if we’re going to talk “privilege,” let’s not forget that Rossellini, Visconti, and Louis Malle were all rich kids, Bunuel got money from his mommy to make UN CHIEN ANDALOU, and Kubrick hustled his uncle for the dough to make FEAR AND DESIRE. IIRC, Tarantino also came from a tonier background than he let on, his years as a video clerk notwithstanding. But they’re all great filmmakers. Lots of rich kids go into film and still don’t have the chops to make it. I haven’t seen TINY FURNITURE or GIRLS, so I’ve no opinion yet of Dunham as an artist, but there does seem to be an element of sexism in the focus on her background.
DeafEars: I’m gonna put your excellent comment in my back pocket and use it the next time this issue comes up somewhere. Which should be any second now.
When Lena Dunham rises to anywhere ear the level of Rossellini, Visconti, Malle, Bunuel or Kubrick be sure to drop me a line. At present shebarely rises to the level of Edward L. Cahn.
As for “sexism” there are considerable number of vagina owning-and-operating autuers that hold in exceptionally high esteeme, among them Dorothy Arzner, Agnes Varda, Shirley Clarke, Vera Chytilova, and Juleen Compton.
Thanks JB and DE, you completely missed the point, comparing a young artist who’s just starting out with a number of gents with decades of output to evaluate. Plus who said you didn’t hold female auteurs in high esteem? We’re just talking about the focus on Dunham’s background.
Although come to think of it, Dunham is ahead of a number of the guys I just mentioned. Like I said, I haven’t seen any of her stuff, but I’m willing to wager it’s better than FEAR AND DESIRE, which Kubrick made when he was around Dunham’s age and plays like Ed Wood’s version of THE THIN RED LINE.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Kubrick was the greatest filmmaker who ever lived and 2001 is the best movie ever made. I doubt Dunham will accomplish as much, but then again I don’t think anybody will accomplish as much.
Considering the esteem with which Dave Kehr, for instance, holds Edward L. Cahn, Dunham might gladly take such a comparison.
“But 15-minute solos comprised of 90% “out” are pretty wearying. Personally, I rarely get too far into “My Favorite Things” before I start planning dinner”
I doubt you’ll be rushing out to buy this CD then:
http://tinyurl.com/ascf56f
My Favorite Things: 57:19
Totally agreed, DeafEars, as far as quality of filmmaking goes. It has no relevance: just as ANOTHER example, perhaps the most extreme one, you have Sofia Coppola whose father is, of course, one of the most celebrated filmmakers of all time. I don’t think she had much trouble getting her film projects of the ground (hell, even her old man has probably had more trouble over the years – especially given that his ideas tend to be more ambitious/grandiose). Yet she’s probably my favorite filmmaker of her generation, and there’s some tight competition there.
However I think the reason Dunham ignites this reaction is twofold: 1) she’s been praised as “the voice of her generation” not just in terms of what she says but on the understanding that she represents a DIY aesthetic (despite the fact that the majority of other Y’s could not DI the same way) and 2) her film, to my understanding, is very much about her milieu in the way Rossellini’s, Visconti’s, et al. were not (Kubrick might have gotten the money from his uncle but he used it to finance an existential war film in the woods), so she’s not just using this background but making it the subject of her movie – and getting praised for it.
And yes, sexism probably plays a part as well; the aforementioned Coppola has seen a lot of flack not extended to her often equally well-groomed male counterparts albeit not so much from moi.
Sometimes meandering can be moving in and of itself though; take Rivette or Tarr (I wouldn’t necessarily include Tarkovsky as there’s more of an intensity to it, so I’m not just saying “slow” but a special relaxed quality some filmmakers have).
The above was directed at Noam, if that wasn’t clear btw. And I mean “moving” in the sense of “emotionally engaging” not literally.
“Fear and Desire” was made for 25 cents and a package of gum. That’s all Kubrick had to work with at the time – a sub-Ed-Wood budget. But it’s obvious from the very start of the film he was aiming higher. I’m sure the main reason Kubrick wanted to keep the film from view during the better part of his career was its threadbare “production values.” But on seeng it today those who know and love Kubrick’s work can easily recognze that it was made by someone of consequence.
By contrast Lena Dunham as had tons of money to trotout her solopsistic tropes.
Thanks for mentioning Sofia Coppola (who I forget to include on my ist). Yes we all know who her father is, but it’s obvious from “Lost in Translation” that she’s very much her own artist – and an extremely rigrous one. Unlike Dunham.
The season’s tenth and concluding episode (the series is currently filming its second season) is, on its own, one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year. It had me watching with rapt intensity—thanks to images that capture restrained performances and subtle gestures with a patient yet tremulous control of time… The emotion was so free and the parsing of complex stagings so discerning that I guessed it could only be the work of a very experienced hand. I was surprised and pleased to discover, in the end credits, that Dunham had in fact directed the episode. –Richard Brody, The New Yorker
As for Lena Dunham, she’s a hack with a pehnomenally effective pubicist. Nothing more. – David Ehrenstein, SCR
I have yet to see Girls, but Brody makes a far more convincing argument. Looking forward to finding out why so many people I respect think it’s so great.
TINY FURNITURE cost about $65,000, if imdb has accurate info. FEAR AND DESIRE cost an estimated $33,000 in early-1950s dollars. I’m not sure what this proves, but there it is.
What’s borderline hilarious about all the attention Dunham gets, pro and con, is that TINY FURNITURE grossed less than $400,000 at the box office and a similar amount On Demand. I don’t know how many DVDs/Blu-Rays have been sold, but I’m guessing it’s not an earth-shattering figure. GIRLS rarely draws even a million viewers per week. Dunham is a blip on the average American’s cultural radar, but haters are driven to distraction by the media attention she receives, which is undeniably out of proportion to her popularity. But again, to me that’s just so much white noise. Like most people (I hope), I only care what I think about her. I like her show, find it thoughtful, amusing and ambitious, and admire the artful production values (it’s often beautifully shot and quite well directed–Richard Shepard in particular has done a couple of strong episodes this season).
Dunham may have a “phenomenal publicist,” but I don’t see how anyone can call her a “hack,” at least not by any definition of the word I’m familiar with.
…but haters are driven to distraction by the media attention she receives, which is undeniably out of proportion to her popularity.
Personally, I’m not concerned much with popularity. The question, if there even is one, is whether or not the media attention is out of proportion to the quality of her work.
Tiny furniture’s a nice show, though by itself wouldn’t be worth a lot of hoopla. Don’t see why it even cost $65,000, though. Technically, anyone with a Mac and an inexpensive digital camera (and actor friends) could do it. That’s where, for me, the conversation about privilege gets interesting. Dunham is not particularly privileged in that she had access to the necessary tools to produce a video work. Her privilege comes from a background and education that gave her the confidence to go for it.
“The question, if there even is one, is whether or not the media attention is out of proportion to the quality of her work.”
Since there’s no right answer to that question, it’s probably meaningless. And I imagine that most of those who have tired of seeing the attention Dunham receives no longer really follow it, and their opinion of the quality of her work probably rests on seeing and disliking an episode or two of GIRLS (unless they’re “hate-watching” of course). Which is fine; I don’t expect someone to keep consuming something they don’t like. It might be reasonable, however, to expect them to shut up about it at some point. If someone stopped watching GIRLS after Season 1, episode 2, I don’t really need to hear them rehashing their displeasure at this late date, especially since they’re unable to offer anything about how the show might have changed/improved/worsened.
I agree that the privilege issue has more to do with Dunham being raised in an environment in which the arts were a viable profession. I think many young people with artistic ambitions dismiss it as an option without ever really trying, though this may have changed somewhat with the advent of less expensive new technologies.
>TINY FURNITURE cost about $65,000, if imdb has accurate info.
FWIW, I saw Dunham speak after a screening of Tiny Furniture at the Nuart and she said the budget was about $20k. I don’t know if adjustments ought to be made for borrowed equipment, talent working for free, yada yada. Also don’t know about additional expenditures by the distributor for sound mixing/marketing/etc.
>Technically, anyone with a Mac and an inexpensive digital camera (and actor friends) could do it.
Yes although I happen to think it’s a very well-shot film. I have not seen many shoestring-budget features that were so elegantly and assuredly composed. Sure beats the hell out of The Brothers McMullen on that score, anyway. (Granted, different era, different technology, yada yada.)
“I’m trying to keep an open mind about Dunham, but the self-satisfied hype surrounding her makes this so hard …”
Exactly. The hype is obscuring any discussion of the quality of her work. Websites like Salon and Slate have virtually become house organs for “Girls” and Dunham.
Between the coasts, most people have never heard of Lena Dunham or her TV show. They would be baffled by the daily media hype. People may be chattering about “Girls” at Manhattan dinner parties, but elsewhere, most people are watching police procedurals, reality shows and sports. That’s the truth about this “Golden Age of TV” we’re supposedly living through.
“Technically, anyone with a Mac and an inexpensive digital camera (and actor friends) could do it.”
Well, this makes it clear that, at the very least, mw hasn’t made a movie. For starters, the DP of Tiny Furniture was not just some random friend of Dunham’s. And her crew didn’t work for free, because why should they? And enlisting all your “actor friends” is one reason the market is glutted with bland mumblers. (I happen to think Lena Dunham is a few light years away from being a “good actress,” but whatever, she’s so relatable!!)
Anyway, can we stop it please with the “Just get some pals together and a couple weeks later you’ll have a movie!” BS? It’s not healthy.
The reason Tiny Furniture’s budget figures keep going up is because the initial estimates from the filmmakers and their publicist were bogus. It never cost $20K. $65K (or $80K, the figure I’d initially heard) isn’t a huge amount either, but Dunham was able to raise it in a matter of days from hep friends of her parents. Obviously she works hard and she’s moderately talented. Privilege and well-tapped connections played a big role too. It takes money to be a film prodigy.
The hype? It’s gotten nauseating.
Well, I won’t go get into my experience, and lack thereof, but when my daughter was in high school she made a little movie(http://mwebphoto.com/videos/SkinDeep/SkinDeep.mov) with an inexpensive video camera, a Mac, and a budget of $0 that has some similarities to Tiny Furniture. They share an actress and were shot in the same milieu. Granted, Tiny Furniture’s production values are better, but one can achieve decent production values on the cheap and as long as they, and the actors, are not laughably horrible, it’s the story that makes or breaks the production. Money really shouldn’t be stopping anyone at the Tiny Furniture level of storytelling.
Typepad apparently didn’t handle parenthesis with links. Here’s trying again without them:
http://mwebphoto.com/videos/SkinDeep/SkinDeep.mov
george: The hype does indeed obscure discussion of her work, but in fairness, a lot of people seem to prefer discussing the hype rather than the work. Probably because you don’t have to be very familiar with the work to weigh in on the hype. So, you know, blame on both sides.
RD: Yeah, the hype is nauseating, but it’s astonishingly easy to ignore. Sure, you might catch a stray headline here and there, but no one is obligated to read about something that doesn’t interest them. I saw the first episode of GLEE when it first aired and didn’t really get the hype, but I never felt compelled to read every web article about it and comment on how “overrated” is was.
Tuned out for 24 hours and returned to find this great discussion. I think what bothers me and others about the Tiny Furniture buzz (and say what you want about its box office, it landed her on Criterion, HBO, and the front cover of major magazines in short order) is not what it costs per se but that the praise surrounding it seems so focused on the particular world Dunham captures, and the extrapolation that this world is wildly important and central to young American experience instead of a niche outlier. This, far more than the budget or education/confidence is how Dunham’s reputation rests on an atypical advantage.
As for the confidence point – which is a great one – that’s one reason the milieu-praise nexus is so crucial, it sends a message to other young filmmakers not of ‘hey, you can do this too!” but “leave this to the cool kids with connections.” Which again may not at all be Dunham’s fault (or responsibility) but the media definitely deserves to be called out for it.
As for the discussion on media hype, recently I overheard a mother and daughter passing by a newsstand. ‘Mommy, who’s that?’ the little girl asked, pointing at the Dunham Entertainment Weekly cover. ‘Is she famous?’ The mom peered at the cover without recognition and shrugged. ‘She must be, she’s on a magazine cover.’
“…the praise surrounding it seems so focused on the particular world Dunham captures, and the extrapolation that this world is wildly important and central to young American experience instead of a niche outlier.”
True. I can only assume that much of the press, in New York at least, identifies with her experience, or recognizes it as being real, and overestimates how universal it is. I think it’s entirely possible that Dunham never thought she was doing anything other than capturing her “niche,” and is surprised that others are seeing more in it. At any rate, I don’t see how what she’s doing is drastically different (in aim, if not quality) from any other writer/director who draws on personal experience or focuses on a specific milieu. Auteurists generally have no problem with that, at least when the filmmaker is starting out. Did reviews of MEAN STREETS criticize Scorsese for not venturing far enough from his own stoop? If we think of GIRLS as a female I VITELLONI, does that help? I realize that “write what you know” only gets a pass if it’s done with insight, but I guess that’s the rub – she shows me a setting I don’t know first-hand, and makes it interesting to me. I don’t need much more from a half-hour TV show.
>RD: Yeah, the hype is nauseating, but it’s astonishingly easy to ignore.
Exactly. It’s really not that hard to just look at the work for what it is.
Just want to stick up for David Ehrenstein, who seems to get a lot of flak here. If he’s an ‘asshole’ then I’m all for assholism. Just how did ‘Tiny Furniture’ get hustled into the Criterion Collection so quickly? I’m still waiting for ‘Providence’.
“I can only assume that much of the press, in New York at least, identifies with her experience, or recognizes it as being real, and overestimates how universal it is.”
That’s true of many of the critically acclaimed TV shows over the last decade, including “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad,” and “The Wire.” Great shows all, but critics overestimate their impact on the country at large.
In the real world between New York and L.A., these shows are not “profoundly affecting the culture” (in ways movies can’t anymore, of course). They are not the subject of constant water cooler conversation. But if you go by what the media says, everyone is watching and talking about them, and everyone is obsessed with Lena Dunham.
This sort of thing has happened before. you went by the New York-based media of 50 years ago, you would assume everyone was lining up for Godard, Fellini and Bergman movies. In reality, most people were going to movies starring Elvis, John Wayne and Doris Day. Most people didn’t have an art house in their town.
You could say that today’s acclaimed TV shows are the equivalent of the art films of the 1960s – at least in terms of how the media perceive their impact.
Dunham on why Criterion approached her about releasing TINY FURNITURE: http://www.indiewire.com/article/lena-dunham-tiny-furniture-criterion
“Just want to stick up for David Ehrenstein, who seems to get a lot of flak here. If he’s an ‘asshole’ then I’m all for assholism.”
Agreed. Let’s leave the high school name-calling to the likes of Ain’t It Cool News. We can debate movies without descending to that level.
Thanks Mark S. and George.
I too am waiting for Criterion to put out “Providence.” I’d be happy to write the liner notes (I wrote the notes for Criterion’s edition of Paul Bartel’s “Eating Raoul”)
George, this is true but I think the films in the 60s WERE culturally important because of the influence they had on another group altogether: American filmmakers, who changed the face of the movies Middle America WAS going to see. The same may be true of TV today.
>Just how did ‘Tiny Furniture’ get hustled into the Criterion Collection so quickly?
Well, it’s a better film than ‘Armageddon,’ though I begrudgingly grant that Bay’s influence on visual style (lamentable though it is IMO) is significant enough to warrant historical attention.
In any case, I do not hold it against Dunham for seeking every scrap of exposure, praise, money, and success that she can get. She’s a young woman on the make with a career to think about. If anyone is at fault for her over-praise, it is those who overpraise her. All *she* has done worth mentioning is to make a good movie and a good television series. I’m grateful for both.
Joel: I agree with what you said. Middle America did see “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate,” even if it didn’t see the movies that influenced them. In the late ’60s, Americans were getting the New Wave experience second hand, from Penn, Nichols and a few other American directors.
Of course, this is sort of a continuous feedback loop, because the French New Wave directors were inspired by the Hollywood filmmakers of the ’30s and ’40s. And Kurosawa borrowed from John Ford, Dashiell Hammett and others.
A few of those Euro art films did get wide exposure in the states. “La Dolce Vita” was a national hit (albeit in a dubbed version in most locales), and “Blow-Up” played even small towns (thanks to the hype over its nudity, and the clout of major studio distribution).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v71HKkH55ec
Has everyone seen this? Hilarious.
Yes, let’s not insult the author of such high-minded posts as:
Fuck You Too!
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | December 20, 2012 at 08:39 PM
and:
You’re clearly as juvenile as the auteur whose ass you so eagerly kiss.
Posted by: David Ehrenstein | December 20, 2012 at 05:15 PM
I’m curious. Has it actually been established that people outside of New York and LA don’t watch much less talk about quality tv shows such as Breaking Bad, Madmen, and (presumptively) Girls?
Cause the anecdotal evidence available to me suggests that more people out there in the sticks have premium cable channels and that they watch many more hours of tv than trendy New Yorker types. Breaking Bad, for sure, is very popular among my lumpen friends, and not just because they smoke meth. I’d wager lots of girls watch Girls as well.
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/top10s.html
Top rated network broadcast shows, week of Feb. 11. This is what the majority of Americans are watching.
Among the cable shows, “Walking Dead,” the NBA and “Pawn Stars” are on top.
george, yes – that to me is the essence of cinema, that feedback loop. Something I fear is slipping today in some ways, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation.