What's Wrong with Leonard
Maltin?
99.9% of the 19,000 entries in his
new 2003 Movie & Video Guide are absolutely correct.
But oh that .1%.
When I was a kid,
I read a review of a classical recording that blew my mind. It was so pretentious,
so precise in its dissection of the quality of the performance, that I
just didn't believe it. I'd heard classical music and there simply wasn't
that big a difference between performances by different musical groups.
Beethoven's 5th was Beethoven's 5th, whether conducted by Bernstein or
Toscanini.
I decided to conduct
a test. I went to Tower Records and bought every single available performance
of a single Beethoven string quartet and listened to them all. I was astonished.
One of them sucked. One of them was infinitely superior to all the rest,
giving incredible emotion to the piece that was totally missing from the
rest, making me almost cry at impossibly beautiful passages that I barely
noticed in the other performances. How can anybody listen to Beethoven
string quartets that aren't performed by the Guarnari Quartet?
I realized it really
didn't take any special skill to become an expert. What made me an expert
on performances of Beethoven string quartets was simply the fact that I
went out and listened to all of them side by side. Anybody could do it.
Wine experts are simply people who've tasted more wine than you, so they've
got more experiences with which to compare each tasting. You may taste
a wine and think it's incredible simply because it's the best wine you've
ever had, but to someone who's tasted from all the Chateaus in the Bordeaux
region of France, it's just mediocre. Subjectively, you're right. Objectively,
they are.
Maltin's guide
is one of the most stunning displays of true objectivity ever published.
No matter how many movies you've seen, Maltin has seen more. With a seven
point grading system and concise paragraphs, his book tells you precisely
where a film falls in the grand scheme of things. He has an un-erring sense
of whether a film will stand the test of time, and his ability to cut through
the publicity mayhem surrounding all successful new releases, getting to
the heart of whether they're actually any good, is uncanny. He's not writing
for you, he's writing for people in the future, way in the future, a 16-year-old
in 2020 who doesn't know Little Caesar from Little Nicky
but they're both showing tonight. If there's a film on TV that you've never
heard of and you want to know in the most immediate terms whether it's
worth watching or not, you cannot do better than Leonard Maltin.
To grade films
objectively, you've got to be egoless, leaving yourself and your idiosyncratic
taste out of the picture. You can love a film even though it's crap or
hate a film even though it's great, and you've still got to give the crappy
one less stars than the great one.
I personally can't
stand Gone with the Wind, Out of Africa, or The English
Patient. They're just not my cup of melodrama. In the case of Gone
with the Wind, I'm simply too irritated by Scarlett O'Hara to enjoy
the picture. Every time she appears on the screen, I want someone to punch
her in the mouth, but as a professional critic, I don't allow my personal
taste to get in the way of my critical assessment of the picture. Taking
into account everything I know about the film, including it's placement
in film history, I'd still give it 4 stars. It's a mandatory view, even
though I can't stand it.
Birth of a Nation
takes place in a world in which the Klu Klux Klan are the good guys. It's
insufferably racist and genuinely politically incorrect, but the fact that,
among other things, it contains the very first tracking shot in the history
of film, makes it a must see. At the time, it was unquestionably the best
movie ever made, advancing the state of cinema a hundred-fold. 4 stars.
True objectivity
is difficult to achieve under any circumstances, but particularly in the
world of film criticism where EVERYBODY has their own opinion. You may
hate punk music and be totally turned on by Pamela Anderson, but if you're
being objective you've got to admit that Sid and Nancy is brilliant
and Barb Wire is a load of crap, even if you hated the former and
loved the latter.
Reading Leonard
Maltin, you can't tell if he's gay or straight, married or single, conservative
or liberal. He reveals nothing of himself because he's not the subject.
Historians don't have opinions, they simply lay out the facts as they see
them.
Maltin's an incredibly
tough critic. Flip through the book looking for films with 4 stars and
you'll go for long stretches of time without finding any. He saves 4 stars
for films that are unquestionably flawless and timeless, films that will
go down in every history book as major classics. The Wizard of Oz. Citizen
Kane. Grapes of Wrath. Films like that. Anything less gets 3 1/2, which
makes 3 1/2 pretty much his actual top honor. Even The Godfather
only gets 3 1/2, which pretty much says it all.
He's stingy with
his bottom ranking too. He doesn't give 1 star, replacing it with "BOMB,"
and you won't find very many of them. A film has to be devoid of the slightest
shred of quality or entertainment value to get the BOMB accolade. Myra
Breckinridge. Howard the Duck. Robot Monster. Films like that. Anything
with the slightest shred of entertainment value gets 1 1/2 stars. Even
Town
and Country gets 1 1/2 stars which pretty much says it all.
When a book is
this perfect, the mistakes become all the more glaring. I couldn't find
many, but the following 4 in a book of 19,000 bother the hell out of me.
I don't care much
about our 1 star differences of opinion. He gives Being There 2
1/2. I would have given it 3 1/2. No biggie.
No, the big problem
is the few films that are entirely and unforgivably wrong, the 1 1/2s that
deserve 3 1/2 or 4, the films that Maltin mysteriously and totally didn't
get.
Here are the 4 most
egregious examples of Maltin's rare inability to be objective.
Maltin must be the
only person on earth who thinks Return of the Living Dead III (2
1/2 stars) is better than The Shining (2 stars).
It's extremely
telling that he gives Nic Cage's The Family Man 3 1/2 stars but
The
Shining only 2. The Family Man is about a man with an empty
life who finds fulfillment when he realizes there's nothing better than
a child and one good woman to love. The Family Man says that heaven
on earth is the nuclear family. The Shining is about a man with
an empty life BECAUSE he's got a child and one good woman to love.
The
Shining says that hell on earth is the nuclear family.
That's a message
that Maltin can't stand. In this case, he's clearly espousing the message
of The Family Man over the message of The Shining, unless
he actually thinks that Brett Ratner is a better, more important filmmaker
than Stanley Kubrick. He obviously doesn't. Maltin's opinion of The
Shining is based upon who he really is. He's being subjective. Naughty
naughty.
There's nothing
counter-culture about Leonard Maltin. He IS the family man, with a loving
wife, loving kids, and a split-level home in the suburbs. He has gone through
the change that all parents go through concerning the importance of good
family entertainment, films you can watch with your kids, films with values
you want to pass on to your offspring. It's not till you're a parent that
you can truly realize the genius of Dr. Seuss and Walt Disney. Though he's
certainly capable of appreciating the counter-culture (He gives Easy
Rider 3 1/2 stars and the Monkee's Head 3 stars), when a film
gets TOO pessimistic or anti-establishment, his brain short circuits.
He gives Blue
Velvet 2 stars, calling it "too strange to be easily enjoyed."
He calls Taxi
Driver "ugly and unredeeming," as though those were bad things. What
makes the film great is the lack of redemption and compromise. One can
only imagine how a studio executive would have insisted upon ending the
film. They certainly wouldn't have allowed Travis Bickle to walk off into
the sunset with the prettiest girl on the block when we know he's a murderous
psycho. Irony's never been a best seller. No matter how good and important
we all know Taxi Driver is, Maltin's only capable of giving it 2 stars
because it's one of the most pessimistic movies ever made. Same with The
Shining. (For a more detailed analysis, read Five
Things You Probably Didn't Notice in The Shining)
I enjoyed The
Family Man. I don't automatically dislike films that spout family values
any more than Maltin should automatically dislike films that don't. The
Family Man is a good movie but if you miss it, big deal. The Shining
is a good movie that is an absolute must-see. It's a 4. (Okay, Maltin,
you can give it 3 1/2)
Maltin must be the
only person on earth who thinks Rambo III (2 1/2 stars) is better
than First Blood (1 1/2 stars).
First Blood
is
one of the greatest counter-culture movies of all time. It falls right
into the category of Hitchcock's best, where an innocent man finds himself
on the run in circumstances beyond his control.
In North by
Northwest, Cary Grant is dancing with a woman on a crowded dance floor
in the U.N. His partner is stabbed in the back, and as they fall, the knife
comes out in Grant's hand. Somebody screams and everybody turns to look
at him, standing there with a bloody knife in his hand and a dead bleeding
woman at his feet, clearly guilty of murder to everyone in the world except
us, the viewing audience, who are the only ones who know he didn't do anything.
In First Blood,
Sylvester Stallone plays John Rambo, a man who is just walking through
town when a local cop decides to hassle him for absolutely no reason other
than he can. Every black person, every ex-hippie, nowadays every Muslim,
can relate to how it feels to be picked on for not hurting anybody, just
for being yourself. It is the essence of counter-culture to be found wanting
simply for not fitting in (10 to 1 that Maltin's never been hassled by
the man), and Rambo is an essential counter-culture hero because boy, did
they pick the wrong innocent man to pick on.
Once in jail, things
get worse fast. The sheriff's deputies are sadists who tie him up and beat
him. He escapes to the mountains where things escalate beyond comprehension.
Soon there are hundreds of soldiers combing the hillsides for innocent
John, where his Green Beret training comes in extremely handy as he single-handedly
slaughters them all with the catch phrase we've all grown to know and love,
"I didn't do anything!"
Sure it's unbelievable.
That's what happens when you're dealing with archetypes, and despite the
fact we know he couldn't possibly be surviving all that mayhem with nary
a scratch, it's great fun and we're rooting for him all the way. Who cares
if you can't understand a word of his final monologue, which seems to be
Maltin's main complaint. First Blood is a fabulous fantasy of the
ultimate underdog. 3 1/2 stars all the way.
Maltin must be the
only person on earth who thinks The Mole People (2 stars) is better
than John Carpenter's The Thing (1 1/2 stars).
Along with Kubrick's
The
Shining, Carpenter's The Thing is one of the scariest movies
ever made, actually scarier each time you see it, scary precisely because
what is revealed about human nature is so repugnant.
Current computer
graphics are capable of delivering any horror imaginable, but at the time,
Carpenter was quite rightly proud of The Thing as being the only
horror movie in which the monster didn't turn out to be a guy in a monster
suit. Even Alien, as scary as it may be, is just a guy in an alien
suit.
Not so The Thing.
The
Thing is the most horrible and repulsive thing I've ever seen, and
that's a GOOD thing. It's A HORROR FILM, for Christ sake, and what could
be more horrible than to see a man's head pull itself off his body, grow
spider legs, and go scurrying across the room. Completely and totally horrifying.
A "non-stop parade of slimy, repulsive special effects," according to Maltin.
Yep. That's why we're scared of it. To put down The Thing because
the monster is too horrible makes no sense whatsoever. That's why it's
one of the BEST horror films of all time, not one of the worst.
The greatest moments
in any horror film, the ones we wait for, the entire reason we go to them,
are the moments when we're glad we're not there, when we want to scream
to the characters "Oh shit, get the hell out! You're dead! Get moving!
It's right behind you!" These scenes get our adrenaline pumping like no
others in the world of the cinematic thrill ride, and The Thing has
the king of them all.
As in The Shining,
all the characters are trapped in a building in the middle of nowhere with
no possibility of escape. The Thing can change itself into any shape
it wants. They are all in one room and they know one of them is The
Thing and they've got to find out which one before it kills them all.
It's like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians from hell.
They devise a little
test. All the suspects are tied to their chairs so they can't escape. They
figure that every cell of The Thing is the equivalent of The
Thing itself, so they each give a little blood and jab it with a hot
poker, knowing The Thing's blood will react differently. It does.
It turns into The Thing while the suspects are still tied to their
chairs, unable to escape while this hideous killer THING grows and grows
into a Boschian nightmare. Possibly the single scariest scene in any movie
ever made.
In the end, there's
only one human left. Talk about pessimism. The Thing leaves us with a moral
quandary in which the only solution, the only way to save mankind from
a horrible fate, is suicide. Aside from its nihilism and total lack of
a happy ending, The Thing is the quintessential film NOT to show
to your kids before bedtime, which is another reason Maltin must hate it.
I'd give it 4 stars. Maltin should give it at least 3.
Maltin must be the
only person on earth who thinks Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama
(2 stars) is better than Blade Runner (1 1/2 stars). I don't care
how much you hate Blade Runner. You can hate it as much as I hate
Gone
with the Wind or Spike Lee must hate Birth of a Nation, but
it is unquestionably one of the most influential movies ever made, not
only influencing every subsequent futuristic film but the actual future
itself. It's view of a multi-cultural crowded planet is THIS close to coming
true.
Sure, they're called
replicants in the film, but the debate they stir is completely relevant
to the current debate about cloning. What happens when mankind develops
the ability to clone humans who are actually better than us? Blade Runner,
that's what.
For Maltin to complain
that Blade Runner has "main characters with no appeal whatsoever"
is simply nuts. The quest of the replicants to find their creator and ask
him why they were given limited lifespans is one with which every human
can identify. How more serious can a movie be than one that asks "why do
we die?" We might not identify with the replicant's methods or lifestyle,
but how can we not identify with their quest for a longer life? The scene
in which a replicant doesn't get the answer he wants and proceeds to kill
his creator, with a brilliant performance by Rutger Hauer, is one of the
most profound in cinema.
Other than crappy
movies that have no meaning whatsoever, there are basically only two kinds
of films: those that say life is worth living, that everything will work
out in the end, that man is, by nature, good (Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg,
et al.), and those that say life is a bowl of crap, that nothing works
out in the end, that man is, by nature, self-destructive (Stanley Kubrick,
Ridley Scott, et al.). Whichever of these philosophies you find most like
your own, in the objective world, they have nothing to do with whether
a film is good or bad. There are lousy movies full of optimism and brilliant
movies full of pessimism. Maltin hates the latter and lets it cloud his
objectivity. (Not always. Clockwork Orange has the most pessimistic
view of mankind imaginable and he gives it the stars it deserves.)
Maltin's supposed
to be devoted to artistry. There is absolutely no excuse for giving Blade
Runner such a low grade. It's 4 stars all the way.
What the hell, your old copy's shot to
shit.
Order Maltin's new 2003 Film & Video
Guide here.
Leonard Maltin's 100
MUST-SEE FILMS OF THE 20th CENTURY.
Personal note: When I was charged with
contempt of court for allowing CBS to make a movie about my life, Leonard
Maltin wrote a personal letter to the judge defending me, so everything
I've said here is with the utmost love and respect.
Special Personal Bonus Story
about Maltin & Me
When you get into
the WGA (Writer's Guild of America), the first thing you do is attend a
monthly orientation meeting for all new members. I was given a date and
a time to be there, I showed up, and there was no one in the room. I asked
somebody wandering by where the orientation meeting was and they gave me
a different room number. I went to the room, opened the door, and sat down.
There was a long oval table surrounded by about 12 people. Hmmm, small
turnout. They started talking serious WGA matters, like how to publicize
the opening of the new building and what famous artist to hire to decorate
the outside. Within minutes I realized this couldn't possibly be a meeting
of new members. This was serious, high-level shit.
At some convenient
lull in the conversation, I said "This isn't the orientation meeting for
new members, is it?" I was told the orientation meeting was tomorrow, I
got the date wrong, this was a meeting of the all-powerful Media Relations
Committee, that all committee meetings were open to the membership, and
I was welcome to just hang out.
They started talking
about the problem of publicizing the work of the writers and how to get
them more awards. "I have an idea about that," I said. I was told to keep
my mouth shut, that though I was invited to ATTEND the meeting, I was not
welcome to join in the discussion. I was not an actual MEMBER of the all-powerful
Media Relations Committee, so my comments were not welcome.
I continued to
sit there as they discussed the sad plight of the screenwriter and the
horrible consequences of the auteur theory of filmmaking that gives all
credit to the director. They hated the "Film by" credit accorded to directors
who didn't write the film, the idea being that if Ridley Scott were conducting
a performance of Beethoven's Ninth, the publicity wouldn't read "A Symphony
by Ridley Scott," so how come every performance of a script by Ridley Scott
is called "A Film by Ridley Scott?" The were in the midst of discussions
with the DGA (Director's Guild of America) to change it, but it was obviously
a fat chance. It would take a pretty goddam decent human being to give
up a mandatory credit that might not be deserved, and Hollywood film directors
don't have a reputation for being magnanimous.
They went on to
discuss other ways to give the writers the respect they deserved. One manifestation
of the problem was Leonard Maltin's hugely popular film guide, which insisted
on naming the director of every single film while barely ever mentioning
the writer. The back of the book listed every director and their films
with no similar list for writers.
"Excuse me," I
said.
"Shut up," I was
told.
Finally the meeting
was drawing to a close, so I stood up and went to the door while everyone
was still sitting down. "I've got to go," I said. "Now that the meeting's
over, can I just say a couple things."
I was finally given
permission to speak. They all looked up.
"I'm a member of
the Los Angeles Film Critic's Association. Last year some publicist actually
sent every member of the association a copy of a script, and just by coincidence,
we happened to give that film the award for Best Screenplay. So I've got
to say that if you want your screenplay to win an award, send the goddam
thing to the voters and actually let them read it."
"Also, there happens
to be a meeting of LAFCA tomorrow at the President's house. Since I'm going
to be in his living room, would you like me to ask Leonard Maltin why he
doesn't list writers in his book?"
It was like that
shot of the audience in The Producers right after the Springtime for Hitler
number. Dazed faces, wide eyes, a bunch of jaw drops. The guy in the back
whom they'd been telling to shut up had the answer to all their problems.
"Sure, go ahead,"
someone said, giving me their card to call them back before I walked out.
That was a moment.
Going to LAFCA meetings
was a trip because they always took place at a member's house, usually
the President's, and the houses were always amazingly nice. Charles Champlin
lived in Bel Air, Jorge Camara had one of those incredible Hollywood hillside
cliffhangers, and Maltin had a giant suburban manor in the valley. Here
I was, a professional critic grinding out paragraph after paragraph about
the latest releases and barely able to make the rent on my squalid little
bungalow, going to the abode of a millionaire who did the exact same thing
I did. It was inspiring to see the possible outcome of my pitiful career.
I loved Maltin's
place and always brought my kids along to play with his kids during the
meetings. The house was full of incredible knick-knacks from film history,
and you could easily spend a day just going through his Disney memorabilia.
Before the meeting
started, I asked him about putting writers in his book. He said he understood
and was on our side completely. He'd love to list writers in the book.
The problem was purely physical.
"We're talking
about the thickest paperback book ever produced," he told me. "It physically
can't get any larger. The binding wouldn't hold. Every year we have to
take things out in order to add things. The fight for space is so tight
that right now we're going through it trying to get rid of widows and orphans."
(Widows and orphans are those untidy single words that take up a whole
line) He told me he'd do the best he could, and that he always mentioned
the writer when they won the academy award.
I reported back
to the Media Relations Committee who were pleased. This year they achieved
a balance with the directors of sorts. Maltin didn't add a list of writers
to the back of his book. He took out the list of directors.
