James Wolcott on Indie Films - Ouch!

I have a love/hate relationship with Vanity Fair, the iconic cultural-society-literary-celebrity publication now in its famed second incarnation, having been revived 25 years ago and helmed by some guy then Tina Brown and now Graydon Carter (my two cents: don't change the hair).

I have been a subscriber for lo these 25 years. Love it because receiving my Vanity Fair each month is a happy-mail-box ritual and I love, in this order, the Proust Questionnaire, the letters to the editor (in which I was once anonymously soft quoted as complaining about the number of ads that appear before the table of contents unless some other chick said the same thing in the same way which is possible but let me dream) Dominic Dunne, Christopher Hitchens and James Wolcott. Hate because the copious, upscale ad content clashes mightily with my values and makes it A NIGHTMARE to find the table of freaking contents.

But yes, I do like reading about the lives of various Princess Von Furstenburg-Hapsburg-McFabulous's because it's a guilty pleasure of mine even though at the end of aforementioned guilty-pleasure bio-article, I am usually in touch with my inner angry Communist self. These people are so vain and so shallow! And so rich! LOOK at that spread of their palace-compound-castle! But ohhhhh to have a peek into such a rarefied world...

In the latest issue, the one with Marilyn Monroe on the cover, James Wolcott, erudite cultural critic, tells us of his new discovery - television. It's a really great article, actually - slightly behind the curve for Wolcott, says I - but well worth a read.

But tucked into the middle of this great article, Wolcott gets ensnared in two things: generalized, "the good old days" snobbery when it comes to indie films and witty, elliptical turns of phrase that make grasping his point an annoying exercise in parsing, well - witty, elliptical turns of phrase. To wit:

Most of these loosely-hung-together slow-metabolism vignettes remain nestled on the naturalistic surface, with mumblecore films caterpillaring into unmade beds.

Despite their supposed deviance from Hollywood formula, indie films are sometimes no better and often worse in their time-released didacticism and midafternoon droop, the characters so depleted by anomie, shrunken-head defeatism, dead-end prospects, deadbeat friends, bed-head hair, and a wardrobe of carefully selected from the dirty-clothes hamper that they can barely drag themselves to the diner to watch the new waitress tie her apron.

and

There's an overdetermined depressiveness to so many indies - noble in intent, conscientious in execution, they tell you tonally from the opening shot or the first scratchy musical note that there'll be no Shawshank Redemption at the end of this bus ride....[whereas] Television spares us the faint twitchings of twig life.

Now mind you: I have seen indie films that Wolcott is describing here, I really have. But Wolcott seems to (and it's hard to say since his writing here is quite definitely a mumblecore article caterpillaring into an unmade bed) be indicting all indie film except those of Paul Mazursky. To which I say - dude? Jim? You're making yourself sound really, really old here. There have been indie films caterpillaring into all sorts of disheveled messes as long as there have been indie films. Wake up and smell the JUNO.

We all know the power of words to persuade, romance, inflame and provoke. Anonymous internet jackasses know it (albeit unwittingly), screenwriters know it, novelists and journalists know it. And certainly Wolcott, a writer I greatly admire precisely for his rich, rambling, old-school voice knows it.

But in this article, Wolcott, like Ziggy Stardust, got sucked up into his own mind and the result is a mildly entertaining, thoroughly prejudiced, somewhat inaccurate musing on indie film. The main gist of the article is the delivery, speed and ascendance of good television, which in my view is inarguable. But -

...[whereas in indie film] there's a slumpy sameness to the dialogue delivery and body language, as if everyone were making withdrawals from the the same tired bloodbank.

Really, Jim? The majority of the time? Of course, the more movies you see, the more clear it becomes that just because a film has "indie" or "foreign" in front of it, does not automatically mean that greatness or intellectual, hipster or existential heights have been reached. But I do think Wolcott is rather letting his age show and is overlooking some of the best movies ever put to celluloid - or digital video, as it were, and as a lover of such, I take offense at the lumping together of all indie films as pretentious exercises in nothingness. Yes, yes, we all know that "indie" films aren't generally as "indie" as they used to be. But on the whole, they are one of the few outlets for filmmakers to unleash characters and dialogue that are anything but anemic blood bank withdrawals suffering from slumpy sameness and navel-gazing.

And while the ascendance of great television is inarguably a threat to the box office, great television is hardly new - there's just more of it now.

In my view, television still offers, on the whole, a vast acreage of vapid nothingness compared to indie film. Reality programs, teeny bopper musings on Vanity Fair inspired rich-life pipe dreams (a guilty pleasure but not mine) and stultifyngly dull, outdated sitcoms the success of which mystify me. Everybody Loves Raymond. Really? Did they?

For every great television show there are 10 awful shows. So let's keep our wits about us here. Wolcott's rather sweeping take on indie film as a head-up-its-own-arse exercise in nothing-muchness is too sweeping for this girl's taste.

Despite having taken exception to the midsection of this particular Wolcott piece - I recommend reading it. Because I may be complaining here, but damn I love a good writer, even if Wolcott writes the equivalent of indie-mumblecore-caterpillar-slouching-into-intellectual pretension while protesting it at the same time. Love ya, mean it Jim. Have your people call my people.

To read James Wolcott's blog, click HERE.

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