Brian wrote:
"Being avant-garde is all well and good. It doesn't change
one's obligation to tell a good story if one wishes to be
successful. Welles did precisely that with both "Citizen
Kane" and "Touch of Evil" (a superb film I should have put on
my top ten list instead of, say,
"Double Indemnity."). People who take big chances like Welles
and Altman shouldn't (and as far as I know, don't) complain
when those big gambles don't pay off. By the way, I *do* in
fact think that Altman is frequently brilliant. I liked
"M*A*S*H*" and loved "The Player." Say what you want about
"The Long Goodbye", it was a failure at the box office and it
certainly failed to hold my attention. No correlation?
Perhaps. But to quote an often abused maxim of the Joe
Sixpack crowd: I may not know art, but I know what I
like."
In reverse order:
As I said in my previous statement, I think the last is true
of all, but some, including me, feel compelled to frame our
gut responses with high falutin' terms.
Not saying it was by any means a hit, it most certainly was
not, but I'm pretty sure Long Goodbye made back its
investment. And I certainly don't think everything Altman's
done was good. He's made some stinkers. And even though I
like Long Goodbye, I don't think it's even close to his best
-- in my mind, MASH, McCabe, Nashville and, maybe, California
Split. As far as it goes, I often prefer his former assistant
director, Alan Rudolph, who has also made a PI film, though
not an adaptation, Love at Large.
I've always far preferred Touch of Evil and Lady of Shanghai
to Citizen Kane. I found the stories far more interesting.
And this brings me to your main point:
"Being avant-garde is all well and good. It doesn't change
one's obligation to tell a good story if one wishes to be
successful."
I couldn't agree more. I believe style should follow
substance. There are far too many avant-garde works that I
believe to be style overriding substance, if there is any
substance to override. Nothing but empty exercises.
However, when the two come together, either in old school
writers like Chandler or new school ones like Marc Behm
(chosen simply because his Eye of the Beholder happens to be
in my line of sight at the moment), it can be great. But
you're right, first and foremost, there must be a story worth
reading. And I'll even agree with part of what Jim
wrote
(of course I couldn't agree with him while arguing with him;
that's bad strategy), in order to play with the genre, a
writer must know it and satisfy it. I immediately think of
Jim Sallis when I say that -- his Lew Griffin books satisfy
on genre terms, but also work on changing it from
within.
And when it all comes down to it, isn't that what all of us
are looking for, a story that satisfies our expectations, but
also gives us something exciting and unexpected. We just
happen to have a variety of opinions about how successful
various writers are with the something new they add (or how
well they satisfy the core expectations).
Mark
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