films

Of Atticus Finch, “Go Set A Watchman,” And Icon Ethics

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

AtticusToday Harper Lee’s “sequel” to “To Kill A Mockingbird” is officially released, though reviews have already been published. The big story is that the new novel’s now grown “Scout” discovers during the civil rights upheavals of the 1950s that her father and hero Atticus Finch is a racist, had attended a Klan meeting, and is prone to saying things like …

“Do you want Negroes by the carload in our schools and churches and theaters? Do you want them in our world?”

The new Atticus is providing ammunition to those who enjoy tearing down American heroes and icons. Finch is perhaps the most revered fictional lawyer in American culture, admired by the public as well as the legal profession. The American Bar Association named its award for fictional portrayals of lawyers in films and literature after Finch, whose pro bono defense of a wrongly accused black man in a bigoted Alabama town forms the central conflict of Lee’s classic. Burnishing Atticus’s reputation further was the beloved portrayal of the character, reputedly based on the author’s father, by Gregory Peck in the Academy Award winning film adaptation. Peck received the Award for Best Actor as well as the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and as a civil-rights activist often stated that he admired Finch over all his other roles. In 2003, American Film Institute voted Finch as the greatest hero in American film.Wrote Entertainment Weekly, “[Finch] transforms quiet decency, legal acumen, and great parenting into the most heroic qualities a man can have.”

Atticus, however, has had his detractors through the years, notable among them the late Monroe Freedman, a  habitual iconoclast and contrarian who wrote two law review articles declaring that Finch was neither hero nor a particularly admirable lawyer. He wrote in part: Continue reading →

Shia LaBeouf, Plagiarism Addict, With Much Worse To Come

/ Jack Marshall / 27 Comments
Shia past and present, with apology...

The child star past and present, with apology…

Actor Shia LaBeouf, known to Disney Channel aficionados as the annoying little brother on “Even Stevens” and to movie fans as Indiana Jones’ son and the Transformers Guy, is so much more, and not in a good way. His rapidly expanding list of reckless and socially-clueless episodes, including the obligatory misconduct behind the wheel of an expensive car, signals that he may be the new Lindsay Lohan, a talented former child-star raised to adulthood without basic life-skills, respect for others, and an appreciation of the difference between right and wrong. This is a tragic scenario that we are cursed to witness again and again—we saw it in 2013 in the increasingly obnoxious and desperate conduct of pop star Justin Bieber. Give a child wealth, power and adulation without first imbuing him or her with values, discipline and humility and what do you get? A menace.

As LaBeouf’s acting career has waned with his growing reputation as an untrustworthy (and sometimes violent) jerk, he has refashioned himself into an aspiring artist. Unfortunately, he lacks some basic traits of successful artists, like integrity and creativity. His inclination, being raised, like most child stars, in an unstable environment by self-absorbed and dysfunctional parents, is to cheat. In 2012, LaBeouf attached his name to three short graphic novels and a webcomic series. This year, we learned that at least two of the graphic novels contained text plagiarized from other writers. Then LaBeouf attached his name as writer to the short film (which he also directed) called “HowardCantour.com,” which was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival and received some praise there. The  short, about an online film critic, included a strong resemblance to Daniel Clowes’ 2007 comic “Justin M. Damiano,” as well as large sections of dialogue directly lifted from it. No one picked up on the plagiarism until LaBeouf  released his film online.  Continue reading →

Unethical Quote of the Week: Actress Reese Witherspoon

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Him: "AchOO!" Her: "You disgust me!"

“He had a very runny nose. It wasn’t appealing. It wasn’t pleasant.”

Actress Reese Witherspoon, describing to MTV in decidedly negative terms her sex scenes with “Twilight” hearthrob  Robert Pattinson in the soon-to-be-released film “Watter for Elephants.”

I’ve always liked Witherspoon, but it just doesn’t get much meaner and unprofessional than this.  Love scenes and sex scenes are potentially embarrassing for any actor or actress, and film and stage professionals recognize this and scrupulously apply the Golden Rule. If “kissing and telling” is bad, “fake sex and telling” is worse, not merely a breach of trust and confidence, not simply unfair and disrespectful, but a stunning  violation of professional standards. It is also irresponsible for an actress to attempt to shatter a film’s premise before it even opens.

I don’t know what Pattinson did or said during the shoot that provoked the actress to go out of her way to publicly embarrass him, but good luck to Witherspoon the next time she has to play a love scene with an actor. The ironic part is that Pattinson was being thoroughly professional by gamely sticking to the shooting schedule that required him to portray passion when he was suffering from a bad cold….and this is the thanks he gets.Wow.

Reese Witherspoon’s stock in trade has been playing spunky, nice girls. It seems she’s a better actress than we ever realized.

Civility, Stupidity, Art, and “The King’s Speech”

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

"Frankly, my dear, I don't!" (United Airlines version)

I was stunned and amazed to find that United Airlines was uncharacteristically showing a good movie on my six-hour flight, the Academy Award-winning “The King’s Speech.”

Good, and in the case of “The King’s Speech,” arguably great, movies, however, are owed some respect.  If United is going to show it, United has an obligation to be fair to the film and fair to its audience by not showing it in a manner that diminishes the movie’s quality or the audience’s enjoyment. Thus I was also stunned and amazed when the famous sequence in which the Duke of York, soon to be King George VI, angrily demonstrates that he does not stammer when swearing by shouting “Fuck!” repeatedly, was mangled by United’s language police. Continue reading →