Gimme Gimme "Shock Value" Treatment

This week, in the latest edition of Nomad Editions' Wide Screen, I review Jason Zinoman's Shock Value. Here is an excerpt, which largely concerns portions of the book that met with my disapprobation:

One of the several unfortunate byproducts of the success of Peter Biskind’s 1998 book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which chronicled the glories and excesses of a group of filmmakers in the “New Hollywood” of the early ‘70s, is that it created a template for any would-be popular film histories that followed. And “template” becomes just another word for “trap” in Jason Zinoman’s Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, in which the author, who’s clearly an enthusiast of the genre, tries to shoehorn stories of the likes of John Carpenter, George A. Romero, Brian DePalma (who also figures prominently in the Biskind book), Wes Craven, and European émigré Roman Polanski among others, into an Easy Riders-style narrative.

The book begins with an imagined / reconstructed editing room meeting between Craven and his early-‘70s partner, producer Sean Cunningham, and the two poring over graphic footage from Craven’s early-‘70s groundbreaker The Last House on the Left. Cognoscenti may find considerable comic value in the idea of Cunningham being brought to stand in for some kind of idea of artistic conscience, but this book isn’t for cognoscenti. In any event, the passage does indicate that Zinoman’s not entirely uncomfortable with the trap he’s walking into.

While Biskind’s book threaded a kill-the-father narrative throughout (starting it off with a bang with Dennis Hopper’s “We will bury you,” directed at poor little old George Cukor) Zinoman dispenses with his right off the bat, and makes a hash of it with a chapter on Hitchcock and Psycho that is so rife with perversity and misinterpretation that it may well have ardent Hitchcock scholars throwing Shock Value into the nearest roaring fireplace. 

Zinoman cites the great book Hitchcock/Truffaut, the epic-length interview between the suspense master and critic-turned-filmmaker François Truffaut, over and over again, and then writes, with a straight face, “At best, [Hitchcock] was a competitive type who had no interest in revealing his secrets.” Well, Hitchcock/Truffaut is a book in which Hitchcock, um, reveals his secrets — at some length. Zinoman goes on and on about how the Simon-Oakland-played psychiatrist in Psycho “ruins” the film by explaining away Norman’s madness, referring to this sequence as the film’s “last scene,” and of course it is not; Psycho’s last scene is of Norman/Mother in custody, and it’s unsettling and hardly represents a “comfortable point of view,” as Zinoman insists Psycho finally does. And it goes on: “Hitchcock also had a teasing style that handled murder and crime with a dry sense of humor.” True that, but Psycho is one of his least jokey films, so to bring up this quality in connection with that film is stacking the deck. Zinoman never misses an opportunity to quote a “modern horror” master saying something deprecating about Hitchcock, and it doesn’t take long before it seems like beside-the-point piling on. He cites Herschell Gordon Lewis protesting that he thought Psycho “cheated.” Now Lewis is a delightful fellow and a great showman and all that, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna put aside the salt lick when contemplating film criticism from the director of Monster a-Go Go, which I have actually seen and hope Zinoman has too. We learn that a teenaged George Romero was put off by Hitchcock’s “chilly demeanor” on the set of North by Northwest, and hell, even if we’ve read The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock, we’re like, “Enough already, we get it.”

And just as Biskind’s book had its misunderstood-genius-who-was-screwed-over-by-the-system-not-to-mention-his-so-called-friends in director Hal Ashby, so Shock Value has Dan O’Bannon, a film-school-and-beyond collaborator with John Carpenter who, after getting thrown off the boat by the focused and, we are to believe, ruthless future Halloween director, had a strong hand in the creation of arguably the best horror/sci-fi hybrid, Alien, before getting thrown off the picture, and went on to a rather more desultory career before his death in 2009, at age 63, of complications from Crohn’s disease. Not to speak ill of the dead, but O’Bannon’s filmography doesn’t testify as compellingly as Ashby’s did, and Zinoman does O’Bannon and said filmo a disservice by omitting from discussion one of his most beloved-among-horror-hardcore-types works, the script he co-wrote with Ronald Shusset for Gary Sherman’s still-awesome 1981 Dead & Buried.

The entirety of the notice can be read by subscribing (it's cheap!) to the e-publication in question, which I also edit. Go here to learn more. 

Comments

[Jason M.]

Not to mention that the final shot of Psycho, in which Marion's car is winched from the swamp that Bates sank it in, remains (to me, at least) one of the more unsettling cinematic representations of one's sins/guilt/deep, dark secrets being dragged out into the light of day. Hardly comfortable.

[James R]

In the interests of fairness, Bill Rebane was also responsible for at least some of (if not most of) Monster A Go Go; Lewis bought it from him when Rebane ran out of money to finish it (four years before Lewis took it over).

I once saw that film described as a "surrealist anti-masterpiece", while at the same time it was sitting at #2 on the IMDB's bottom 100 list. Both strike me as equally valid responses to the film (which, apparently, also nearly starred Ronald Reagan).

[Paul Anthony Johnson]

Paul Anthony Johnson

"O’Bannon’s filmography doesn’t testify as compellingly as Ashby’s did"

I don't know about that. There's not much there obviously (just two directing credits), but re-watching Return of the Living Dead recently left me awed at how well he juggled the mix between camp, viciousness, and affection. The sweet absurdity of the 'just-regular-joes' interplay between James Karen, Thom Matthews, and Clu Culager shows off O'Bannon's superb ear for dialogue and his deft handling of seasoned and unseasoned actors alike. The whole film has a kind of swing and looseness that I think was beyond Ashby, whose films usually suffered from a kind of stuffy over-refinement. I prefer ROTLD to pretty much every Ashby film aside from The Last Detail. And The Resurrected, while not in the same league, ain't bad either.

That said, the book sounds as absurd as the Biskin book, and the Hitchcock fixation is just weird. I'd think it would be much more interesting and on point to highlight the examined filmmakers' attitudes toward the Universal and Hammer horror film canon,though then I guess that would be a less dramatic kill-the-father narrative for most readers ('oh-my-god! John Carpenter had serious reservations about Terence Fisher's directing style.' I mean, my heart would be broken, but would yours?).

[Paul Anthony Johnson]

And I have no idea what kind of formatting hiccup occurred to put my name at the top of the post. Weird.

[Joseph Neff]

"I’ll be damned if I’m gonna put aside the salt lick when contemplating film criticism from the director of Monster a-Go Go."

That's classic, Glenn. In an interview in RE/Search's INCREDIBLY STRANGE FILMS H.G. goes on a hyperbolic anti-Woody Allen rant ("he has made some rotten films that are beyond human understanding") because of the "dark symbolism" he dared to "inject" into "what is supposed to be a comedy". It really synches-up with his P.T. Barnum-esque mindset that it's apparently fine to inject Colonel Snaders into BLAST-OFF GIRLS.

[Oliver_C]

How can a long speech clinically detailing just how utterly, irrevocably warped the human mind is capable of becoming be considered reassuring?

[The Siren]

I always found that shrink speech in Psycho more than slightly campy, and intentionally so--as is the "fly" scene. But then we get the car being pulled out of the swamp, and I'm completely with Jason; it's one of the best, most coldly frightening shots in the movie and slams the narrative shut like a coffin lid. In fact I prefer that kicker to Janet Leigh's eye, although that is probably a function of not having had the car analyzed to death.

I enjoyed the hell out of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, despite its flaws. It makes a highly entertaining case for that generation of American filmmakers, and though people question everything from Biskind's prose style to his judgment calls (and I sure ain't saying they're wrong) it's well-done enough for his basic thesis to have taken root in a big way, especially with people outside the serious film-nerd world. I don't think the book's at its best when he's passing critical judgment--I don't find the insights that insightful--but he's got a flair for the telling anecdote.

Still, I never wanted it to be the model for all film histories to come. Particularly not its endless rambling subtitle.

[Jaime]

Glenn, did you have a chance to read my O'Bannon piece for Slant? I tried to argue on his behalf - not making great claims as "an auteur" but, well, trying my best to be precise about it while honoring his legacy.

2nd the love for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. I had a chance to watch a crap VHS of his unfortunate 2nd (and final) feature, THE RESURRECTED, which struck me as just the kind of film that failed artistically thanks to moronic money-men who barred the director from the editing phase, but has some residual kernels of promise. He coulda been a contender, to say the very least.

I could not help but think of THE RESURRECTED when I wrote about Louis C.K., whose bitter experience making POOTIE TANG seemed to mirror O'Bannon's almost to the letter.

Anyway it's here:

http://slantmagazine.com/film/feature/shock-value-dan-obannon/265

[Tom Block]

>It makes a highly entertaining case...it's well-done enough for his basic thesis to have taken root in a big way, especially with people outside the serious film-nerd world. I don't think the book's at its best when he's passing critical judgment--I don't find the insights that insightful--but he's got a flair for the telling anecdote.

Farran, I find all this true, but in a bad way--bad for movies, bad for thinking about movies, and bad for reading about movies. It'd be one thing if Biskind had brought the same enthusiasm to the actual films that he did to the hedonism, but this just gave the tabloid treatment to a really important time in American filmmaking, and it (along with its many disputed anecdotes) has become the de facto standard take on the era. Biskind failed to make even the most basic critical distinctions, e.g., between moviemakers that were actually freed by the new permissiveness (say, Ashby in "The Landlord") and the movies that merely cashed in on it ("The Exorcist")--to him, Friedkin, Polanski and Altman were all just drug-using peas in a pod. I could go on, but you get my drift. It's exactly those "people outside the serious film-nerd world" who I'd hope would get a more positive introduction to these films and the people who made them. (How would you feel if the most famous book about Hollywood's Golden Age painted Joan Crawford as a glorified slut?) I'm not denying that the hedonism is a part of the history, but Biskind got into gutter-level detail years after Steven Bach managed to discuss the subject without a lot of voyeuristic twaddle.

[bill]

SHOCK VALUE is sort of appalling to me. I haven't finished it, and have put it aside for a while, but the attitude behind it is quite blatantly that the horror that started developing around the time of BLOOD FEAST and took off into the mainstream with Romero and Craven, is ipso facto better than what came before due to its graphic violence. There's a very strong, and hugely obnoxious, "This is not your father's horror movie" bullshit that just puts me off completely. It's not even original to Zinoman -- it's what the worst kind of horror fans say all the time. Horror is gore -- that's it. If it's not rated R or higher, then it's "pussy" or some kind of mainstream sell-out. It's a philosophy, or basis for taste, that is rooted almost entirely in not knowing what the fuck you're talking about.

And I'm not anti-gore, in case anyone was coming to that conclusion.

[The Siren]

Tom - your seriously don't wanna know how many books paint Crawford as a glorified slut, and of course, there IS a tabloid-style book that dominates all discussion of her. So I completely see your point; Biskind isn't the best intro possible to 1970s film. The critical analysis generally comes in asides to the hedonism, not the other way round as you'd expect from a truly serious history. I'd never turn to Biskind first for a serious look at any of the era's key films. Bogdanovich, for example, not only gets the toe of Biskind's boot on a personal level but gets his movies seriously undervalued as well. There are a few where Biskind hits the mark for me, though. The Exorcist, for example; this probably won't be a popular opinion on this blog, but I thought his view of the film's bone-deep hostility to women and their sexuality was deadly accurate. (Biskind owed some of that to other critics, but he cited them.)

The sad truth is that if Easy Riders went heavier on the analysis, it would never have sold the way it did. And his sympathetic treatment of someone like Ashby probably did raise that director's profile. I try to be philosophical. If a non-cinephile reads that book for all the sex and drugs and comes out with McCabe and Mrs. Miller in his Netflix queue, it's all good to me.

[Gordon Cameron]

I don't actually recall ER/RB as being all that lurid, but it's been a while since I read it. I certainly enjoyed it, so it makes me a bit sad if folks consider it so distorted as to be essentially useless.

[Glenn Kenny]

Just to be clear, I don't think that saying that poor Dan O'Bannon didn't accrue a filmography as impressive as Hal Ashby's ought to be taken as a slap at O'Bannon; that's part of the reason I cited "Dead and Buried" in the first place. What I am saying is that "Shock Value" tries to do something with O'Bannon's case that I consider ill-advised.

As for the individual strengths and weaknesses of Biskind's book, that's a knottier issue for me; the man is a former colleague after all, and we're socially acquainted still, and I do believe the book has some particular value, which the Siren's comments I think shed an appropriate light on. I think for me to say a whole lot more would involve telling out-of-school tales that wouldn't be proper at this time. (I'd be happy to share them with some of you in private some time, though.) The Siren says that "Easy Riders" would not have sold as well without the titillation factor and this is no doubt true; and that I think only strengthens my point concerning how it's become the template for subsequent modern film history narratives.

And Bill, in Zinoman's defense, and as I point out in the full review, there are some sections of the book where an interesting critical sensibility, and some non-conventional observations, make themselves known, as when the author, who's also a theater critic, discusses links between Theater of the Absurd material and the "modern" horror film. These passages suggest that Zinoman has a far more interesting book in him. But I agree that too much of "Shock Value" is concerned with overselling the ostensible virtues of the post-"Psycho" horror picture.

[Bettencourt]

I'm glad to see some defenders of "Easy Riders," which is probably my favorite book on Hollywood. I've never heard anyone truly refute any of the stories in it (though Glenn seems to allude to such refutations in his "telling out-of-school tales" remark), and amidst all the juicy stories I felt that Biskind really did seem to respect the films if not always the filmmakers.

But on the other hand, I haven't read any truly convincing refutations Kael's notorious Citizen Kane essay, since most seem to be of the "Peter Bogdanovich says it's not true" variety (which I'd trust about as much as Richard Schickel defending Clint Eastwood). I suspect those refutations are out there -- I'm probably just too much of a Kael-ite (do you have to be an actual critic to be a "Paulette"?) to hunt them down.

Much as I've enjoyed some of O'Bannon's work, I have an unpleasant memory of him and Don Jakoby speaking at USC after a Blue Thunder screening, and one of them making a snickering reference to the Twilight Zone helicopter crash that made it seem like they were alluding to a dirty joke and not to an incident that was horrible and tragic for all concerned.

[The Siren]

Bettencourt, I'm a Kael admirer, but even more so a Welles woman; and Robert L. Carringer did a thorough and scholarly rebuttal of that essay which I can't find online.

I always had the impression that Biskind's reporting was fairly solid, although I seem to recall that Warren Beatty disputed some stuff. Which causes me to put on my Mandy Rice-Davies voice: "He would, wouldn't he." Anyway I would love to hear specifics on that as well.

[Bettencourt]

One of my best friends is a Welles devotee who can never forgive Robert Wise for his part in the Magnificent Ambersons recut/reshoot. Not to overly defend Wise (who made at least one of my favorite films), but Welles hardly needed help to sabotage his own career.

Which, I know, has nothing to do with your point.

Probably one of the reasons I responded to Kael's Kane essay is that, as a has-been hack screenwriter, I appreciate a critic actually valuing the writer's contribution as much as the director's for once.

For years, Fincher was developing a Herman Mankiewicz biopic from a script by Fincher's (late) father. I'm not surprised it never got made, but I'd sure love to see that movie.

On yet another irrelevant note, considering all the films that have been made about Hollywood in the last several decades and how firmly the auteur theory has become entrenched, I'm still surprised at how few biopics exist on film directors. There's Attenborough's "Chaplin," Varda's "Jaquot de Nantes" (which is part-documentary)...am I forgetting any?

[Glenn Kenny]

Actually, Bettencourt, here's a funny story about Biskind and Coppola that's not out of school at all:

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2009/06/tetro-francis-ford-coppola-and-the-hot-tub-mystery.html

[Bettencourt]

Thanks for sending me to that post. I started reading SCR religiously this May (I read pretty much everything in it except for comments by a few readers who shall go nameless) and have been reading backwards, and hadn't caught up to that piece yet.

I'd meant to e-mail a fan letter to you to let you know how much I cherish a film blog where A.I. is treasured and Armond White is trashed, though some of your loves (Wild Grass, Wong Kar-Wai) are lost on me.

[Brian]

Siren, was that Carringer essay the basis for his MAKING OF CITIZEN KANE book? I don't know if it's still in print (it came out around 1988, if memory serves, I don't have it in front of me), and it's excellent. Bettencourt, I'm sure there are some I am forgetting, but for directorial biopics, RKO 281 (made for HBO several years ago) is a fun look at the making of KANE, with Liev Schrieber as Welles, John Malkovich as Mankiewicz, James Cromwell as Hearst and a very good Melanie Griffith as Marion Davies.

Also, Siren-- thanks for the reminder about Biskind's take on Bogdanovich. I also thought his treatment of him, compared to the other self-destructive directors, felt weirdly personal in tone, the implication being that Bogdanovich's problem was that his egotism and mania just wasn't macho enough, or something (compared to Altman, Coppola, etc.).

[jbryant]

Probably not many directors would make good biopic subjects. Maybe William Wellman, Raoul Walsh, Victor Fleming -- guys who did adventurous stuff, mostly in their pre-Hollywood years. Something might be done with Huston (guess WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART gets disqualified on a technicality).

Best subject would undoubtedly be Merian C. Cooper. What a life!

[Bettencourt]

Though his reputation isn't quite what it once was (at least, he isn't talked about all that much these days considering how many major films he made), George Stevens would make a fascinating subject for a biopic -- a life that went from making 30s musicals and (reputedly) dating the likes of Ginger Rogers and Katharine Hepburn to filming the opening of the concentration camps could make a hell of a story.

[haice]

GODS AND MONSTERS and ED WOOD worked pretty well.
I've always thought a good Ealing like story could be made about Ealing Studios under Sir Michael Balcon and the eccentric group of directors from Hamer to Mackendrick.
A Vigo biopic would also be interesting.

[haice]

I should have said a Vigo biopic "would" have been interesting but Temple shot that wad.

[Bettencourt]

I completely forgot about Gods and Monsters and Ed Wood (and it's not like they were Oscar-winning films or anything...oops).

Though that does make it even more ironic that the most acclaimed Hollywood directors of their time have gone without biopics, but James Whale and Ed Wood have had their lives filmed.

[jbryant]

I think a big part of the problem is that filmmaking itself isn't inherently cinematic. This is perhaps why GODS AND MONSTERS focuses on Whale's later years, when he wasn't working. ED WOOD is the exception that proves the rule -- the filmmaking scenes in that are interesting (and humorous) because of Wood's status as a hapless underdog working on the fringes of the business. Who wants two hours of watching, say, Willie Wyler put his stars through multiple takes on studio sets, with the occasional exciting digression (MEMPHIS BELLE, love affairs with leading ladies) -- I mean, we cinephiles might be interested, but it's hardly a solid commercial bet. Great behind-the-scenes films like THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL shape fact to fiction, thereby avoiding the problem.

[Jason Zinoman]

Glenn,
I appreciate this thoughtful review and I plead guilty to being influenced by Biskind although my book ended up being far less juicy than Easy Riders, Raging Bulls which set the bar awfully high. Ashby also set the bar rather high as a misunderstood genius, but of course that’s your bar, not mine. My goal was not to argue O’Bannon was greater than Ashby, nor was it to cover his entire career, which explains the omission of Dead and Buried, a movie I also like.

Most of this above is about one chapter about Hitchcock and I would like to clarify my intentions. Shock Value is a book about a discrete historical period rooted in reporting. Of course, it has a critical point of view, but more often than not, you are arguing here with the directors more than me. I spent years tracking down as many people as I could who worked on these movies and focusing mostly on primary sources from this period. I also read criticism and academic works since, but I bring up my method because I did not set out to attack Hitchcock or slight the last scene of Psycho. That point originally came from the artists who made these movies.

So what I heard from many directors was admiration, respect and awe of Hitchcock – but also some criticism, most of which focused on that scene. And since I wanted to map the key influences of this period, I didn’t ignore this. So I am not using Lewis as a critic. I am using him as a source. Same goes for Friedkin and Craven and Romero. You describe citing them with quotes as "piling on," but your reaction only confirms my strategy. Obviously saying that horror directors were reacting against Hitchcock as well as influenced by him would be controversial, so I wanted to demonstrate as thoroughly as I could that this was not just me trying to bait Hitchcock scholars into breaking lamps. What you read is a point of view rooting in on-the-ground reporting. You can claim that these directors aren’t telling the truth or that they are poor critics of their own work, which directors sometimes are (Hitchcock called Psycho a comedy), but that’s not my take.

One last thing: Cunningham is not the artistic conscience, although I do think it’s funny to imagine that. His nervousness over Craven’s extreme violence was, in my opinion, purely commercial. He was a very savvy producer and knew what the audience wanted. What he saw in the editing room was something else entirely.

Best and thanks again for the review!
Jason Zinoman