Christopher Sorrentino on "Death Wish," the so-called "New York film," received critical wisdom, and a little more...

Speaking of Charles Bronson movies, and stuff:

In November of last year, Soft Skull Press initiated a series called "Deep Focus," a series of sort-of monographs precisely not in the style of the much and justly revered BFI Classics series; editor Sean Howe is commissioning terrific writers to treat films that are not necessarily, let's say, universally acknowledged as being great, or even good and good for ya. To wit, the first two books of the series look at John Carpenter's 1988 They Live and Michael Winner's 1974 Death Wish. I know, some of you are saying right now, "Why these are hardly controversial choices as far as noteworthy cinema is concerned," and I'm with you, but we are not really in the mainstream on this. That said, both books are damn fine, provocative, revelatory and engaging "reads," as they say. The one on They Live is by Jonathan Lethem, the novelist behind the likes of Chronic City, The Fortress of Solitude, and Motherless Brooklyn, who writes beautifully on film in any context and who was kind enough, a decade ago, to contribute a wonderful essay to a collection of pieces on the Star Wars films that I edited. The one on Death Wish is by Christopher Sorrentino, also a novelist (Sound on Sound, Trance) and recently the editor of his late father Gilbert Sorrentino's last book, The Abyss of Human Illusion. Christopher doesn't just examine the film itself in his book; he provides an acerbic view of the near-hysterical critical dismissals it received in its day (the reaction of then-New-York-Times film critic Vincent Canby gets close examination) and grapples with the notion of whether a fictional film can convey something of the reality of the place in which it's set/shot.

Sean Howe very kindly put me in touch with Christopher, and we decided it would be perhaps instructive to conduct a brief interview via e-mail. I asked four questions; those and Christopher's answers are below. 

Some Came Running: So when, precisely, did you begin developing that chip on your shoulder with respect to poor dead Vincent Canby?

Christopher Sorrentino: It's not Canby, per se. But given that he was the chief critic at the Times, which with NPR is sort of ground zero for middle American cultural striving, one of his reviews can give you a really good view of the received wisdom that prevails at any given time. If you go back and look over his reviews, you can set your watch by them: a movie hyped as an "important" film gets respectful treatment, even if Canby has some mild reservations; most of the rest find Canby either enjoying them or not, usually for totally arbitrary reasons; and every now and then he sinks his teeth into a film coded as "trash" that he can savage with impunity, like Death Wish. And it may well be that Death Wish is trash, but that doesn't necessarily make it less interesting than one of Hollywood's prestige productions (I am guessing, for example, that Death Wish is a more enduring, and no more schlockily exploitative, movie than Lenny, which appeared the same year and was nominated for six Oscars, and was accorded a thoughtful, if ultimately negative, review by Canby). And the Death Wish review, and the follow-up feature article he wrote about it, really show you the symbiosis that took place as Canby and the choir to whom he was preaching regarded each other in a state of unanimity. He writes about it as if it's an unearthed artifact used in some primitive ritual, totally unselfconsciously referring to its audience as if it's something quite apart from his good Masterpiece Theater-loving readership. It's a bad film, Bronson is a bad actor, its politics are right-wing, it has a bad effect on its audience, it's "irresponsible." There are a thousand ways that you can eviscerate a movie, but as soon as you say that it's a threat to public morals my Geiger counter starts clicking.  

Some Came Running: It seems you simultaneously embrace and reject the entire notion of the so-called "New York" movie, claiming that (and correct me if I misrepresent you) no location-shot picture, regardless of how accurate, can ever convey what the city was "really like" at the time it was shot. For all that, you have a pretty deep knowledge of New-York-shot pictures. I myself find that such ostensible grade-Z pictures as Lustig's Maniac pay off big time in terms of, for lack of a better phrase, Proustian rush, summoning my own private nostalgia for the mud and making the actual materials of such a film all the more resonant. For as much as you deny that...perhaps...as a component in Death Wish, do you truly believe yourself immune to such a response?

Christopher Sorrentino: I actually respond really viscerally to that stuff. I have a permanent soft spot for relatively obscure (and probably not so good) films like Jenny, The Hot Rock, and Queens Logic because of the madeleine effect they induce, each of them having been shot partly on location near where I grew up. And of course there are thousands of brilliant Hollywood films that are "New Yorkish" -- i.e., The Thin Man. But what I was talking about, and what I probably wasn't absolutely explicit about in the book, is the almost bullying "atmosphere" that passes for filmmaking in some movies. Friedkin is a master of that, and The French Connection is one example I use in the book. He keeps telling you that you can't criticize the film, it's "really like this." But it isn't, and even if it were (which it isn't), I don't think the viewer's apprehension that "this is really like that" is the highest of aesthetic experiences. It ranks pretty low, for me. It's like junior art. "Real" can't be the point. We already have real.  

Which brings me to a guy like Lustig, and by commodious vicus, to Death Wish.  Lustig clearly couldn't have cared less about either reality or about being criticized. Maniac has got to be among the most un-real movies ever made. I wonder if Manny Farber ever saw it, because that's a termite film if ever there was one. For Lustig, New York was a cheap and expedient tool. If Lustig had been living in New Haven, Maniac would have been shot there. It's the almost incidental look of the New York in a movie like that which intrigues me, and that's what gets me about Death Wish, too.  There are maybe a total of five exterior shots in that movie that scream, "Look! The New Babylon!" It's very anonymous looking. Nothing in it has a social or economic "reason," it just is. There are bad people and Charles Bronson kills them.  We remember it as a movie that depicted New York as a hellhole, but that's just our filling in a blank that Winner leaves for us. When that movie came out, we "knew," mostly from a lot of other movies, how dirty, how sleazy, how crime ridden, how ethnic, how not white New York was.  Winner didn't have to do a thing.  Where he does—the Times Square diner scene, with the prostitutes and the two black men who end up attacking Bronson—it's awful and klutzy.  

Some Came Running: I am largely in sympathy with you concerning your impatience, or seeming impatience, with forces that call for a certain kind of "social responsibility" in the arts. Not that I don't think an artist ought to adopt such a perspective if he or she so wishes, but the notion that a sense of "social responsibility" is a necessary component to art strikes me as...dumb. As does, too, the liberal tsk-tsking that greets a picture such as Death Wish. I think your view of the material, or of such material, is a little different than my own. I have often championed what the critic Robert Benayoun calls "authentic sadistic" cinema, films that, in his words, partake in an "atmosphere of perdition." I don't know if you have any truck with this slightly Surrealist view, but in any event, if you did, would you slot Death Wish into this ostensible category? If so why, and if not, why not?

Christopher Sorrentino: It's completely dumb. Especially since, of all the Eternal Verities of the Human Condition, "social responsibility" is the most protean. If we were to catalog the social responsibility of all existing works of art solely on the basis of the community standards existing at the time of their creation, Deep Throat would end up being a more socially responsible work than Jude the Obscure.  So we can't consider such things—I mean at all—when evaluating art; and if you try to make a work of art whose defining virtue is its virtuousness, then good luck: it's not going to stick. About nine million Stanley Kramer movies have demonstrated that to my complete satisfaction.  I have to admit that I'm not familiar with Benayoun's work or the context he's referring to, but I will take as a sort of distant analogue Jean Genet's concept of the beauty of evil. In those terms I don't think so. I might be inclined to say that the film's relationship to both virtue and vice is a negative one; that in adapting Brian Garfield's novel, Wendell Mayes and Michael Winner emptied it of its Stanley Kramer-ish, "vigilantism is bad," content without quite substituting "vigilantism is good." I do think that the film celebrates the idea of having a motivating force in one's life, and that it doesn't matter what that is. Everybody else in the film begins to look faintly stupid in comparison to Bronson, with their chatter, their armchair moralizing, their politicking, their bureaucratic hassles. Bronson still has to deal with all that, but it's made clear that it's not his real life any more. He's become a man with a secret mission. The Eco epigraph I use [at the book's opening] sort of sums it up: that we hope that "from the slough of [our] actual personality" some Superman can emerge to redeem our "mediocre existence."  

The film does screw it up; it introduces some smart cop into the scenario who catches Bronson and makes him stop, but I think the film is joyous, in a strange way.  Bronson realizes that who and what he had been has become irrelevant, and he locates his relevance in something taboo.  In a weird way, it's a classic '70s movie: it's a portrayal of discovering one's freedom in the aftermath of adversity.  

Some Came Running: Are there any examples in contemporary cinema of work that contains the particular kind of charge that Death Wish did/does? If not, why do you think that's the case?

Christopher Sorrentino: I would have to think really hard about what transgression means anymore.  Maybe not "transgression," because to the extent that Death Wish was a transgressive movie, its sins were interpreted politically. There was a bumper crop of transgression back then, but as long as the work could be interpreted as being consistent with the supercilious or paternalistic centrist liberalism that's often characterized Hollywood's prestigious films that deal with social issues, transgression was kind of OK.  All in all, with Death Wish, a perfect set of conditions obtained: not only did it fly in the face of those centrist liberal conceits, but it was a basically shoddy movie, based on a pulp novel, directed by a journeyman, and starring second-rank actors. Plus it was funded with real money, and released to big first-run movie houses -- so reviewers had to pay attention to it. If it had been a B movie or a grindhouse kind of feature, it would have vanished without a trace. You could even take it a step further and suggest that if the reviewing establishment had been at all serious about really, truly loathing Death Wish to the bottom of its collective heart, it would have ignored it. But it couldn't. A certain algebra existed. Dave Hickey makes the point that "the raw investment of attention, positive or negative, qualifies certain works of art as 'players' in the discourse. So, even though it may appear to you that nearly everyone hates Jeff Koons's work, the critical point is that people take the time and effort to hate it, publicly and at length, and this investment of attention effectively endows Koons's work with more importance than the work of those artists whose work we like, but not enough to get excited about."  I might suggest that there's a sneaky quid pro quo here; that emphatically hating something for grandstanding reasons is a more personally profitable venture for a commentator than reasonably taking the measure of something. Now, I can't really think of a recent movie that's lit a fire under both the reviewers and a mass audience. I think everything's too demographically and technologically atomized nowadays. There is no way you'll ever have to see one of the Saw or Hostel films even if your kid is playing it on the computer across the room. If you're willing to take an example from an industry that still just dumps its product indiscriminately into the marketplace, though, how about Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones?  

Comments

[Brian]

Cool interview, Glenn-- sounds like a really interesting book. And thanks for mentioning the series-- I love those kinds of film monographs, but hadn't heard of that particular series. And thanks for commissioning that wonderful STAR WARS piece from Lethem all those years ago-- your reminder of it makes me want to put it on my class syllabus this semester (we're starting with the first SW film).

[warren oates]

Yeah, very cool. Any interview that convincingly compares DEATH WISH to Littell the younger's Holocaust horror art novel THE KINDLY ONES has me at hello. This kind of thing is exactly why we all keep clicking on SCR.

[lipranzer]

Dear Mr. Sorrentino,

Here's my problem with your thesis (at least, it should be said, as described in this interview; I haven't read your book yet, and you could very well be glossing over points here that you cover in much more detail in the book); I have no problem whatsoever with revenge movies. POINT BLANK, the original GET CARTER, THE CROW (which is also arguably a ghost story), THE LIMEY, Tarantino's KILL BILL movies, all of them are movies I love, and to varying degrees, all of them contain the brutishness you seem to like DEATH WISH for. But they all have one thing in common; the characters in all of those movies operate outside the law. So I judge the movies strictly on their merits (or, in the case of the remakes of POINT BLANK and GET CARTER, the lack thereof). But what DEATH WISH does is blame the whole mess on the "goddamn permissive liberals" that caused Bronson's family to be killed, and explains his actions afterwards. Don't you think that's just as much pandering as the Stanley Kramer sensibilities you and the interviewer mock? (And just for the record, I agree many, if not all, of his movies were too preachy, and no, movies don't have an obligation to be "socially responsible)

On the other hand, I do love QUEENS LOGIC.

[bill]

Fantastic interview. Sorrentino's point about DEATH WISH fitting in quite well with the tradition of transgressive/outsider filmmaking in the 70s, but running into trouble by deviating from the accepted political line, is an excellent one that I'd never even considered.

Unfortunately, lipranzer has a point, too. There's stuff in DEATH WISH that is clearly calculated to prick the liberals in the audience in a way that might be considered preachy, or "shocking" (the line about black muggers springs to mind). Of course, I'm of the opinion that what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and you can point to any number of widely accepted films from that era that aim to prick the other side, and do so just as clumsily or in a way just as knuckleheaded as DEATH WISH, but it's still a fair point. DEATH WISH is not a subtle film, and had it walked a line closer to MANIAC, while maintaining the same, I don't know, sensibilities, I guess, then I think it would have gotten under people's skin in a much more effective way. Although I guess then it would almost be TAXI DRIVER, but maybe you get my point anyway.

Also, DEATH WISH does "screw it up" as Sorrentino says, though I don't blame the introduction of the cop character (who's played by Vincent Gardenia anyway, so it can't possibly be a complete wash), but rather the folk hero status of Bronson's character. Not that it's not a logical road to go down, but it's in that arena that DEATH WISH seems to preach.

And I really, really want to read THE KINDLY ONES, even moreso now.

[bill]

Damn it, I meant to mention, just as an aside, and having watched DEATH WISH again recently, and coincidentally, that Bronson does some very good work in the early parts of the film. Particularly when he goes to the hospital after hearing about the assault on his wife and daughter. Look at him in that scene again: he does a great job of playing the panic just beneath his skin.

[Robert Cashill]

In DEATH WISH Bronson finds his purpose and gets his gun in Tucson, which should have been enough to launch a thousand thumbsuckers.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

This contempt for any notion of social responsibility in film strikes me as a lazy piece of complacency, only possible because in our present society, people with values relatively close to the mainstream are the only ones with the financial wherewithal to make and distribute movies. DEATH WISH's "you dumb liberals" preaching is obnoxious, but no one thinks the makers, or viewers, of DEATH WISH were about to bring back lynching. If you were watching the latest Hutu-directed epic about the perfidy of the Tutsis---or just a real, actual, non-Bronson-targeted black person watching BIRTH OF A NATION in a theater in Texas and pondering how the hell you were going to get your kids out of town before sunset---that comfy love of transgression would vanish real quick-like.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ That Fuzzy Bastard: It's always funny how the proponents of the "socially responsible" always cite negative examples, e.g., "Birth of a Nation," and very rarely give a name of a work that might inspire more Films They'd Like To See. Now is it just me, or is that because most "socially responsible" films are so preachy and boring that they make you wanna shoot yourself, or puke blood, or what have you? I know I'm putting the question snarkily, but, um, tough; unless you can convince me otherwise, I'm going to believe that you'd prefer that every film made from hereon in be some combination of "Sounder" and "Half Nelson." (Speaking of puking blood.) There's also the fact that "socially responsible" really is in the eye of the maker/beholder, as in, for instance, "I Am Cuba." Also, TFB, I'll bet five dollars that you were entirely okay with Kalefa Sanneh's championing of Toby Keith, who actually DOES, as far as I can tell, wanna bring back lynching.

[bill]

"or just a real, actual, non-Bronson-targeted black person watching BIRTH OF A NATION in a theater in Texas and pondering how the hell you were going to get your kids out of town before sunset"

That seems like a very odd construction. What era are we talking about? Is this happening in 1915, or now?

And the point isn't that films can't be irresponsible, but that using social responsibility as an aesthetic measure is lazy, and blinkered. Which isn't to say I've never done it myself, but it's aiming pretty low.

[James Keepnews]

I've always been surprised by Vincent Canby's enduring reputation among critics (e.g. Amy Taubin), since he's always struck me as the textbook definition of fuddy-duddy since I was a teenager, and not just because of his dismissals of George Romero (though he tended to refer to his films as "garbage," not "trash" -- inadvertant praise?). Perhaps I've missed some come-to-bury takedowns by others, and I'd love to read them. I mean, could you think of anything LESS descriptive of HEAVEN'S GATE than "a forced four-hour walking tour of one's own living room"? I'm sure that I cannot.

That said, great Herbie Hancock soundtrack notwithstanding, my beef with the uber-manipulative DEATH WISH (the film -- haven't read the book) is not its, >ahem<, liberal-pricking than its lynch-mob enabling. The thieves/rapists are so loathsome and the deck so stacked against them and in favor of copycat hardhat "Joes" taking the law into their own hands, the resolution of Bronson's liberal character into a retributive force right out of the Old Testament (albeit differently weaponized) becomes less a function of narrative than of form. Any sop to anti-vigilantism given by others in the script comes across like Alan Colmes on Fox News -- "oh, Jesus, do we really have to let this pansy talk sense to us?" It is, pace Devo and conceivably others, a triumph of the will.

[bill]

I feel like this is exactly what Sorrentino was talking about, though. DEATH WISH enabled no lynch mobs that I'm aware of, but because its stance, such as it is, is not in line with, as Sorrentino says, the centrist-liberal line of the era (and now), you guys find much more to pick at, on moral grounds, than you would for something like -- not to bring this up again, but it's an easy example -- BONNIE & CLYDE.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

I'll take the low-hanging fruit first: Bill, my example was indeed intended to invoke the audience for BIRTH when it first came out, inspiring the return of the Klan and a whole lotta murder. Duh. My point being that relishing a film for its transgression of liberal values is only possible because those values are so completely triumphant that you can't actually imagine them being transgressed. It's complacency masquerading as daring.

@ Glenn: I'm quite happy to say that social responsibility is more a negative than a positive virtue. That is, no artist is obliged to deliver "a positive message", but you are indeed obliged not to be actively evil. Y'know as if you were a person---you don't actually have to do missionary work, but you should refrain from yelling "ching-chong-Chinaman" every time you see a Vietnamese person on the subway. I understand, you like the surrealists, transgression, Fleurs de mal, Lester Bangs, Huysmans, blah blah. But even Bangs eventually acknowledged that it's not nearly as fun to talk up evil when you think evil might actually jump out of the screen.

Oh, and you just lost that $5. Sanneh enjoyment of Keith was, imho, one more example of relishing the Bedlamites, condescending to Keith, his audiences, and the ever-present and always possible shadow that it can indeed happen here. . Paypal?

[bill]

@TFB - Well, for a guy who often comes in here demanding civility from our host, you get no points for it yourself. And saying that a film is only able to transgress "completely triumphant" liberal values because you can't imagine them being transgressed is nonsensical.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

@ James: Well yeah, that's how the structure works. It very enthusiastically wants you to regard the liberal anti-vigilantist as an Alan Colmes, and to feel in your heart that shooting the darkies what look at you funny is the only solution. Not, of course, that the makers of DEATH WISH actually want you to do that! No, heavens no. Like Glenn Beck---now there's a guy who probably truly loves DEATH WISH, diner scene and all---it wants you to feel deeply that white power murder sprees are the best solution, but then only to sit in your room, grumbling that the damned liberals won't do what has to be done to save this country. An unsatisfiable desire is evoked, so you'll happily shell out for the sequels that provide the only outlet for the feelings that have been engendered. If someone was actually inspired to vigilantism by DEATH WISH, pace Bill's recent comment, the makers would furiously deny that they intended to say anything at all.

[bill]

When was the last time you even saw DEATH WISH? Do you remember the race of those who assault/murder Bronson's wife and daughter? Or of the first mugger he kills? This "white power" bullshit betrays a deep ignorance of the film you're arguing so vehemently against.

[bill]

"If someone was actually inspired to vigilantism by DEATH WISH, pace Bill's recent comment, the makers would furiously deny that they intended to say anything at all."

If...that's my favorite word in that whole sentence.

[James Keepnews]

I won't comment on Fuzz' decorum here, since he's all Rimbaud and transgressive and whatever...

I kid -- these are interesting responses. Bill, I do get Mr. Fuzzy's point in re: complacency vs. daring, though I think he overstates that here. This did come out in Nixon's law-and-order, McGovern-trouncing, post-DIRTY HARRY America after all, and the paranoid style in "someone's got to say it" knee-jerk (emphasis on jerk) right-wing media sure didn't start with Fox News. The film's vibe, for me at least, comes off as far more as luxuriating in an atavistic, reactionary complacency than in anything as progressive as "daring".

Also, BONNIE is a good parry, and I'd say it's precisely because of the problematic morality at play in that film that makes it a richer work than DW. Better writing and acting, too (along that line, WEHT the Oscar-nominated Mr. Pollard?). There is the not-inconsiderable fact that Bonnie and Clyde were viewed as folk heroes in the depths of the Depression and that would have to be duly represented in any film about them. And yes, we regularly love our outlaws. Yet, as shocking as the denouement remains, there is the implicit indictment of the state's terror while at the same time a very Old Testament sense that these lovebirds lived by the tommy-gun, and thus...Briefly, BONNIE & CLYDE does nuance, whereas I'm racking my brain trying to think of any nuance whatsoever in any of Michael Winner's films. Not THE NIGHTCOMERS, though Stephanie Beacham (speaking of WEHT) does gamely attempt to close the gap.

[bill]

Well, I don't remember a great deal of nuance in B&C, but I won't rehash that whole thing again other than to say that "we love our outlaws" is a rather disturbing truth that I sure as hell got dissected more by those who love those outlaws. DEATH WISH is, quite simply, a film for people who do NOT love their outlaws, and if the filmmakers aren't going to be held responsible for any (non-existent) killing sprees inspired by B&C (who murdered a good dozen or more civilians and cops before the state "terrorized" them), then why should we demand that Winner take the stand for the (non-existent) rampant vigilantism brought about by DEATH WISH? It's a stacked deck.

Which is more TFB's point than yours, James, but through your left-wing (emphasis on "bleeding-heart commie") lens you're still praising B&C for being a better made film than DEATH WISH, giving the aesthetics the prize of place, which is also, unless I'm misreading him, Sorrentino's point.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

@ James: Heavens---I'm arguing *against* Rimbaud and transgression! I think a love of transgression is a symptom of complacency! Is that not clear? As for decorum, well, are we really arguing for playing nice in our movie thoughts on Glenn Kenny's comments board?

@ Bill: Actually, I think B&C is a dippy piece of piffle more or less for the same reasons you object to it---the contrast between B&C and BADLANDS is the difference between being a movie-mad dipshit and being an artist in the world. But in B&C's (limited) defense, the extensive back-projection, silent-film gags, and other old-Hollywood references at least establish that this story is happening only and entirely in movieland, while DEATH WISH's location photography and ripped-from-the-headlines chatter screams "you can't handle this truth!" with every frame

As for my "if"---well, that's sort of my whole point. DEATH WISH is a terribly preachy film that inspired no one to action, and it's ineffectuality is pretty much its only virtue.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

@ Bill: Ah, sorry, only now saw your other comment. I gave up on calling for civility at least a year ago, and have come to accept that it can be kinda fun to just let it rip. I suppose my "duh" was gratuitous, but my point seemed pretty obvious.

On the larger issue: I'm not saying a film can only transgress liberal values because one can't imagine them being transgressed. That would indeed be nonsensical. I'm saying what I wrote---that the *enjoyment* one takes in watching a film transgress triumphant liberal values (i.e. "the government should have a more-or-less monopoly on violence") is a product of the complete triumph of those values. Watching Tom Cruise in jewface in a contemporary Hollywood movie is funny precisely because no one thinks TROPIC THUNDER will inspire pogroms. This strikes me as lazy and complacent, especially as the Weberian ideal of people not gunning down those who bug them seems ever-more unstable.

Oh, and yes, there are indeed white crooks throughout DEATH WISH---the filmmakers are at least that savvy. But given the thick atmosphere of racial paranoia that hangs over every appearance by a black character, it strikes me as the same sort of cop-out that Scorcese (understandably) made when he altered Schrader's script to make all Travis' victims white.

[James Keepnews]

Um, yes, Fuzz, it was clear, where one imagines my humor was not. Of course, I never want to offend Glenn, old ladies, bunnies or Lester Bangs, because, pace Lloyd Llewellyn, I'm a pussy. I do agree BADLANDS FTW, where BONNIE gets the prize of place. Or show. Or worse.

Bill, I guess you mean ""we love our outlaws" is a rather disturbing truth that I sure as hell WISH got dissected more by those who love those outlaws" (emphasis mine, and hopefully "WISH", not "DEATH"). Isn't that, to generalize indefensibly, 33% of the "research" coming out of media studies?

As for: "DEATH WISH is, quite simply, a film for people who do NOT love their outlaws" -- is that so? You hate Kersey the outlaw? I'm suggesting that would not be a common response to the film. It's also hard to know how else to assess these works without invoking aesthetics as something, well, prized. I prize socio-politics, but can't imagine I feel much better about those invoked by DEATH WISH just because there was not a rash of mass, lynch-mob-fueled copycat vigilantism in resonse to its release.

This is nuance, maybe?

[bill]

@TFB - Your "if" doesn't really play like your whole point. That sentence very clearly states that Michael Winner would behave like a coward should anyone take him literally. I mean, that's what you said.

And DEATH WISH does have its preachy moments. I said that before even you did. But you're still hammering on the idea of social responsibility in films, and taking DEATH WISH to task for being "actively evil", when all the film is about is the frustration law-abiding citizens, particularly those in big cities in the 70s, felt due to being victimized by violent criminals. Your stance is the same as those claiming TRUE GRIT is pro-death penalty, or that any revenge film is. You're being extremely literal in your approach to these kinds of films.

As for why someone might enjoy a film like DEATH WISH, and that being tied to the triumph of the values being criticized in the film...er, so what? I might not want a rise in vigilantism, but I might understand the drive to blow off steam by seeing it in a movie. I don't know, man, drink some tea, relax, do whatever.

And not all of Bickle's victims are white. The ones at the end are, but they're not his only victims. The armed robber in the convenience store, with Victor Argo, is black.

[bill]

@James - Yes, I left out a "wish". Well spotted. And even if the good folks at "media studies" are handling it, I don't see them around here, so blithely tossing out "well, we love our outlaws" as a defense of BONNIE & CLYDE isn't really enough.

And yes, Kersey is an outlaw in DEATH WISH. I think you see what I'm saying, linked to my response to TFB -- Kersey is not threatening law-abiding citizens, but in the fiction of the movie serving as a bit of catharsis for those who live in the real world, which means "not in movies".

[James Keepnews]

Yep, socio-politics also occur "not in movies" -- perhaps you see my point?

And with that in mind, I meant BOTH DW and B&C when I wrote "And yes, we regularly love our outlaws" -- regularly, not always. And insofar as I was making a distinction between the perceived morality of two films, the second of which you brought, I wasn't aware I was supposed to be defending BONNIE, or that, presumably with the other points I made, that one point in isolation wasn't enough. Still, it's nice to know those who live on the planet Earth could get the catharsis from DEATH WISH that eluded me, Fuzz and very possibly one or two others -- since I only live in movies, evidently, I'll defer to your (and, of course, Gurdjieff's) expertise where the "real world" is concerned.

[bill]

I made no claim to having expertise in the real world, or more than you, in any case. All I meant was that Sorrentino's (remember him?) point about "real" being a pretty unambitious aim in art is one I agree with, and all the hand-wringing about morality in DEATH WISH seems to be a product of attributing realism as a primary goal of the film.

And before you say anything, yes, my arguments against B&C aren't really any different. I've acknowledged that. I'm just trying to hold that film accountable on the same grounds as some are holding DEATH WISH.

If you're not defending B&C, then fair enough, but your point about outlaw love struck me as something that one merely had to accept.

[bill]

@TFB - And another thing. Aren't you trying to have it both ways? On the one hand, you claim DEATH WISH either has or supports a "white power" agenda, then you only acknowledge the various white criminals in the film (including the three worst) when it's pointed out to you, calling it a "savvy" move by the filmmakers. Then you call the inclusion of those characters as a cop-out (on par with the not-really cop-out in TAXI DRIVER). DEATH WISH could have never won with you, at least racially. The black criminals represent a racist attitude, and the white criminals represent a cop-out.

[Scott]

I think this "Deep Focus" series is a really cool idea. I read Jonathan Lethem's book last year, and it totally made me want to go back and watch a film I never thought I'd ever see again, let alone reflect on.

I usually have this irrational skepticism about fiction writers who write about film. It just seems that in every interview I read where novelists are asked to list their favorite movies, they come up with really pedestrian, unadventurous choices. I remember Joyce Carol Oates said her favorite movies included "Boys Don't Cry" and "Monster". And, in this Time interview between the Coen Brothers and Cormac McCarthy, (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1673269,00.html) CM extols the greatness of "Five Easy Pieces", while declaiming against "exotic foreign films". But I realize that's not fair, and Lethem's highly persuasive and knowledgable book proves that.

Anyway, thanks for this fantastic interview. Great, probing questions and extremely thoughtful answers. I'll definitely check this book out. I find it really interesting that Sorrentino cites Jonathan Littell's "The Kindly Ones" as a rare contemporary example (from another medium) of a work that contains the incendiary charge of something like "Death Wish". I absolutely loathed that book, but it's definitely one of the most transgressive novels to be released under the banner of pedigreed literary fiction in a long time.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

@ Bill: I suppose I am having it both ways a bit with DW. But the atmosphere of racial animosity is so thick every time someone of another race is on screen, it's hard to avoid. As for relieving the frustrations of law-abiding city dwellers---ah, well, see, that's the problem! If the movie really does intend to have some real-world impact, albeit only cathartic, then we kinda have to engage with what that impact is, how it's intended, and what it leaves out. Like I said before, part of what is so irritating about DW (as opposed to a more expressionist portrait of urban decay like THE WARRIORS) is the ways its grubby location-heavy realism and dueling-speeches dialogue demands to be engaged as the harsh truth, even as its admirers insist that it's gauche to treat it as having any relation to reality.

[Glenn Kenny]

@ TFB: Oh well. Paypal it is, then; send your info to the e-mail address on the "About" page. How do I know you're telling the truth? Well, I don't, but that you manage to, um, both refudiate Sanneh AND imply a defense of Toby Keith (who, as far as I'm concerned, has earned a lot worse than condescension) constitutes a feat of sophistry well worth five bucks!

(Incidentally: transgressive, moi? That might reflect my taste in art, or something, but as far as "lifestyle" choices are concerned, I'm as bourgeois as they come, and proud of it. As we're not likely to see the pansexual non-patriarchal socialist utopia of Robin Wood's dreams in our lifetime, I'll have more of that delicious Dalmatia fig spread, please.)

Interesting and potentially disquieting tidbits about "Taxi Driver," gleaned from the long-disappeared Criterion laserdisc commentary, "Scorsese on Scorsese," the supplements from the Sony DVD, or some combination thereof: one of Schrader's drafts of the script had Travis Bickle ONLY killing blacks or Hispanics, and both the producers and Scorsese said, maybe that's not such a great idea. Does this mean Schrader was/is racist, or that he was just crafting TOO CLOSE a homage to "The Searchers?" Also, when Harvey Keitel was "researching" Sport, he had a devil of a time finding a white pimp to follow around, and eventually just gave up.

[warren oates]

@GK, off-topic, but this puts me in mind of other TAXI DRIVER supplements I'm half-remembering wherein it is disclosed that Keitel lobbied hard to play Sport because, well, obviously, "actors love to play pimps." I've somehow merged this in my mind with an American Cinematheque Q&A with Millard Kaufman, writer of BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK, who asserted that it was the producers' idea to give the protagonist only one arm because "actors love to play cripples." And it worked, as soon as they lopped that arm off Spencer Tracy signed on. So who's going to be the first one to write the role no actor could resist: the crippled pimp. Bonus points if he's mentally retarded too. Though, of course, he shouldn't go full retard.