I
was watching Robert Rossen's 1961 classic film "The Hustler" on our
PBS HDTV affiliate on the night of July 13th, 2012—the night that I began this
writing. It was the feature film on Elliot Wilholm's classic movie. He lauded
with great praise the writer/director Rossen, Paul Newman and cast, set
designers and everyone but the accounting firm and limo drivers. And then he
said this one thing, which is as egregious to me as is it seemingly a bitterly
sad statement on our current reality: "A film like this would never get
made today. Executives would never green-light its dark and…" And that's
when everything "went all black". When I awoke figuratively, I was
literally writing the following:
When
a great work of times gone by is lauded in apotheosis with the phrase 'It would
never get made today', is it an indictment of present culture, or resignation
to bow to trends? The obvious follow up would have to be "Why not?"
Those of you who’ve read me or have spoken to me have probably heard me make
this complaint: in this day and age, where technologically we have to tools at
hand to create the greatest artistic works ever, why does mediocrity (and or
mediocrity mistaken for minimalism) excel commercially and so often in the
arena of critical acclaim? Roseanne Roseannadanna might respond, "Mr.
SIDney Howard, you ask a lot of stupid questions."
