David Manning's Manifesto

I'm going through a crisis that literally means everything to me, and it's become very public. I feel I need to tell it as I see it, to question whether a class-action suit should be brought to court because of my troubles, why the Connecticut attorney general wants to get all up in my face and why it means anything whatsoever to you.

I am suffering from the most personal and, indeed, most existential of crises: I don't exist. To use the insensitive language of the press, I was "made up" by Josh Goldstine and Matthew Cramer of Sony Pictures Entertainment in order to promote four films of Sony appendage Columbia TriStar. And, yes, perhaps I was a little effusive in my praise — in retrospect, Vertical Limit is less "one helluva ride" and more "one heckuva ride" — but ... well, if we're going to talk about insincere expressions of fictional sentiments, how about:

"It was an incredibly foolish decision, and we're horrified." — Susan Tick, spokesperson, Sony Pictures Entertainment

"It's hard to believe. It's terrible. Sony has to apologize and pull the ads. ... That certainly does cross the line. We would never, never, never, ever do that." — Dick Cook, chairman, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group

Let's face it: When you have to come out and publicly state that you're not going to cross a line, it's because you've already edged right up against it.

So what's the line in question?

According to the litigants in that class action suit, by having my praise printed on promotional materials, I made people believe "the films actually have the favorable chacteristics stated in the quotes." By not existing, my opinions of the films are apparently worthless.

But worth is a comparative thing.

The reasoning is this: Words were effectively put in my mouth by Josh and Matthew to promote movies made by Sony. By offering up praise of the movies, potential viewers would theoretically be convinced to see them, but the objectivity of that praise is suspect because Sony employees Josh and Matthew have a financial stake in the movie's success — a string of failures attributed to poor marketing and they won't keep their jobs. This is sheer hucksterism — they tell people to see movies, and so long as people see those movies, they are financially rewarded.

Compare this to junketeers. Junkets are events held by motion picture studios to promote a film; the movie is screened in advance of its opening, the stars are there to be interviewed, memorabilia is plentiful and there for the taking and room, board and airfare are on the house — all for the benefit of the press invited to attend. There are people whose careers revolve around being invited to junkets: Jim Ferguson, Maria Salas, Jeanne Wolf, Mark S. Allen, Mike Cidoni, Bonnie Churchill and countless others. If those names are familiar to you, it's not because Gems Television, Good Day Sacramento or WOKR-TV Rochester's The Movie Place are among your must-see media. It's because you read movie ads in newspapers, one of the only places these words see the light of day. In fact, these are probably the most widely-read pieces of film criticism in America. And when the junketeers provide the studios with endless streams of negative, acerbic criticism, the studios readily invite them to the next junket and the next junket, where they can live for free and ask dumb questions of famous people. Wrong! When they provide the studios with unceasing, nongrammatical bursts of praise ("Battlefield Earth will rock America!" swore Salas), then the studios continue to finance this extravagant permanent vacation.

In other words: They tell people to see movies, and so long as people see those movies, they are financially rewarded.

"That certainly does cross the line." Heh.

The difference is that, unlike me, they're real — except for Jeff Craig of "Sixty Second Preview" — and their checks aren't cut by a studio — unless you count meals, lodging, transportation and baseball caps. (Granted, publications you've actually heard of send writers to junkets because that's the way to get access to stars, but many of those publications foot the bills associated with the trip to disparage any sense of tit for tat.)

With this rave machine already in place, why court the risk Josh and Matthew did? As columnist David Poland so delicately puts it: "It's hard to believe that the studio is paying a $200 per diem and these guys and gals can't even deliver an effective fake orgasm."

But why pay them at all? What possible value does it serve to pay people of questionable taste to watch your movie? Who cares?

You care. That's the issue. When the TV spot for The Mummy Returns comes on and the announcer trumpets: "The critics are all wrapped up in The Mummy Returns," followed by a string of adjectives flashed onscreen in huge type accompanied by "Earl Dittman, Wireless Magazines" in type so small that a cathode ray tube can barely resolve it legibly .... This convinces you to see a movie. It's the push you need.

Well, maybe not "you;" you apparently spend your time reading articles on the Web, meaning that the membranes that keep the incessant chatter of entertainment journalism on the outside of your head may be worn pretty thin. But most people can't tell you that Con Air and The General's Daughter and Tomb Raider share a director, or that A.I. is a Spielberg interpretation of a Kubrick film.

They only have jazzed-up previews by which to judge whether to see a movie, and they've been burned enough that they're cynical and don't want to put their — what? An hour's wage, for a lot of people? More than that? — to put their money on the table. They need reassurance that the movie they're interested in is not just going to be fart jokes starring the guy from Dude, Where's My Car? And they feel much better if they make the critical leap in logic of listening to people they have no reason whatsoever to trust — outside of the misguided notion that, well, if someone hired them to review movies, they must know what they're talking about.

Aaaah!

I mean, obviously, Flak is a magazine that publishes a lot of criticism, and I didn't come here to micturate upon their rug. The issue here is critical thinking, and the larger issue of shopping out your critical thinking to be done by the first volunteer, who usually turns out to be selling something. Movies may seem trivial in the big picture, but if you had to rank religion, philosophy, science and art with respect to how much they help you understand your place in the world, where would art fall? And the decision to not think in this matter is not so unrelated to the decision to not think in more apparently serious matters, because it's the same battle — critical thinking vs. marketing and spin — everywhere you go.

That said, there's more out there to consider than a mind can process, and so self-sufficiency isn't an answer. That's why we use others' critical thinking, but it requires critical thinking to use it. A critic refracts the world, breaking it up into the component parts characteristic to his of her particular prism so we can process that information. Sometimes the information is an end unto itself; sometimes it's coupled with our own experiences to deepen our appreciation. But if criticism is to be among the footholds by which we scale the sheer face of the world, discernment as to which outcropping you're going to lean on is recommended.

And, within the realm of the movies, discernment isn't limited to filtering out the white noise of quote whores. The New York Times gave props to Freddy Got Fingered but not to Erin Brockovich. Salon dug on Mission to Mars but not Pollock. These jokers published a positive review of Deep Blue Sea and a dis of Gladiator. I don't bring up these seeming incongruities to say they're wrong; "conventional" and "wisdom" aren't the first cousins they're made out to be. But unlike me saying Hollow Man is "Stupendous!" — which, given the particulars of my case, is as contextless as you can get — a good critical piece is an argument, a chain of reasoning. Something to think about.

"I already know all this," you say. "I'm not the herd type." Not surprisingly, of course, that what's everyone would say. Nevertheless, for two weeks, I have been the No. 1 topic of conversation about the entertainment industry, and the reality is that I'm hardly worth a second thought because I'm just an uninteresting step in a natural progression — fake praise doesn't have to come from a fake critic to be woven into the emperor's clothes. The answer to "Why'd they do it?" is "To sell tickets," and the vast majority of the media is happy to leave it at that and ruminate on the appropriateness of the punishment Josh and Matthew received; in other words, the conversation is over. If that's the case, if there's no sense of an answer behind the answer, if that's as far as your critical thinking into the matter takes you ... well, then I might as well have never existed.

— David Manning