Comments on: An open letter to Doug Liman

By: john masheter

john masheter — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:43:39 +0000

does doug liman actually read this? I could use a job in his next film. Depaul area bars and john masheter posts were mine. Saw Kate Bosworth last night at grocery store, she has some kind of tatoo on the upper middle of her back. I was in left field and didn;t pay much attention to her. trying to lose some weight and exercise more sort of a 50ish Rocky theme going on. I think President Obama used to live in my building in Rogers Park(Chicago} in the early 1990′s.

By: john masheter

john masheter — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:14:05 +0000

did my last comment go the way of the nickel cigar or what? Favreau used to bartend in Chicago, the depaul area bars. He “wrote” it from those experiences. They took a chance, a gamble and it paid off. Liman was pround to tell his father of the success of his movie. It has stood up well to the test of time.

By: depaul area bars

depaul area bars — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:07:52 +0000

Swingers was distributed by miramax, allegedly had a250,000 budget. He had talented actors but they were flying by the seat of their pants. Dead reckoning. It took alot of stones to make that movie. The adrenaline rush of becoming successful through taking that sort of risk would be hard to replicate. They were having fun.

By: Doug C.

Doug C. — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:42:17 +0000

If he say’s he sold out I would believe him. I don’t believe Liman is saying he sold out because of the larger budgets. I think he is referring to the compromises he made to receive that budget.Not all artists can switch between the freedom and commerce, it’s not part of their instincts.(Read about the behind the scenes control exerted by producers and executives on almost any large budget film)This isn’t about high and low, it’s about compromising what you believe to be true. If you have watched Orson Welles “Touch of Evil” in the studio edited version and the recut version(from Welles’ sixty pages of notes begging for a recut)you will see clearly Welles’ version is a better more understandable and engaging film. The studios didn’t get it and in the battle of ideas vs. commerce the ideas often lose.

And Modern Love was the first Bowie Album I hated. It feels like it has sellout written all over it, and in fact, a decade or so later Bowie(no stranger to pop hits) said he sold out to make it.

By: srp

srp — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:39:49 +0000

Jappa: I saw an interview with David Bowie where he claimed to have been made very uncomfortable with the mainstream success of his “Modern Love” album. He intimated that that was why he immediately began the less accessible Tin Drum project.

By: Erik Loehfelm

Erik Loehfelm — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 16:09:46 +0000

Very interesting. I can relate to this position in a personal way. A close friend of mine is an extremely talented graphic designer. He was working in a small two person design firm in the South. I am also a designer without nearly as much talent yet I was able to worm my way into much larger initiatives and visibility – I eagerly ‘sold out’ as it were. My friend on the other hand struggled with paying rent and keeping food on the table while holding onto the purity of design, as I recall him framing it. After a conversation with his mother – of all people – who begged me to talk some sense into her son, I convinced my friend to move back to the North East where he finally was rewarded for his talent and abilities by working in a much larger shop with much larger clients. I haven’t spoken to him in awhile, but I wonder if he feels as though he sold out by not being ‘indy’ and small. Even though, on a whole, he is much more successful and recognized for it.

By: Jeppe Linnet

Jeppe Linnet — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:05:27 +0000

What is also interesting is whether this dichotomy varies across societies. Of course the romantic notion of the artist creating “sacred” singular products vs. the businessman creating “profane” commodities like block busters, these ideas are quite universal to the Western world. But still I am surprised that the dichotomy is so strong in the US. I would expect it to persist much stronger in socialdemocratic welfare states such as Scandinavia, where the employees of a large public sector, and many state-supported cultural producers, can live their professional lives without having to orient themselves towards the Hobbesian world of commerce. Further in this direction, in the socialist system of the former Soviet union the tendency to see “Kultura” as the only dignifying sphere of human activity was very strong. Many artists in those societies were receiving small pensions that they expected to sustain them for the rest of their lives, and today they live poor and alienated lives in Eastern Europe´s climate of cowboy capitalism (“New Europe” as Rumsfeld coined it being much closer to the US in this regard than Old, Western Europe). One thing I found in the Baltics of today, where I did anthropological fieldwork in 2000, is that the absence in those societies of the hippie movement and the revolts of ´68 means that there is not the same ironic, distanced attitude to hierarchies and appearances, such as those of the business sphere, as there is in much of the Western world.

So what about American society and culture continues to create this dichotomy? Would younger American directors be as affected by it?

Talking about artists that have retained their “cool” while selling massively, wouldnt´t David Bowie and Tom Waits be the primary examples of the music scene?

By: Rick Liebling

Rick Liebling — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 08:42:17 +0000

I wonder where the “Oscar-bait” category of films falls in this discussion? Atonement isn’t an arthouse flick, but neither is it a simple attempt at a money grab. These films are slightly different than the Coen Bros., who seem to make movies that are true to their vision and achieve both critical and commercial success. I don’t think they say, “Let’s try to win an Oscar” before they start making a film.

By: Hooser

Hooser — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:50:53 +0000

And then you have film-makers who have somehow managed to not sellout and simultaneously have made good films. The two that initially stick out in my mind are the Coen Brothers and P.T. Anderson.

By: Jared

Jared — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:11:58 +0000

I know you have an uneasy relationship with postmodernism, Grant, blending “high&low”, art&commerce is just postmodernism straight-up, no need to waffle about “past modernism”.