Idle Threats

I just want to point out that in spite of what Maxim DVD reviews convey as a message to movie studios, sometimes extras really aren't necessary. Really. Isn't "over four hours of exra footage" sort of a threat when we're talking about Stealth? You'd think that maybe they could actually cut a bunch out. Or provide a way to have just the dogfights. Or better, put all their dogfights into Firefox, which was a movie before it was a browser.

I guess fighter scenes that could be an intro for a PS2 game would be a slight upgrade over some really, really bad blue screen work. Clash of the Titans looked better than Firefox, and it was supposed to look more fantastic...and clay. Of course as a movie, and not just a bunch of tenuously linked special effects, the Clint Eastwood product comes out on top.

Stealth looks like a tie in to a fighter plane based card trading game.

I'm naive, and proud of it. I'd like to think that even Stealth was a product of love. Somewhere, probably deep, deep inside a second draft is something that somebody was really proud of. I'm sure if anybody read my book, and then it somehow got made into a movie, it would get fucked up. They'd probably make it like The Fast and the Furious IV: Deerield Drift. Yeah, it would suck. And don't come at me with the indy angle. Independent like what? Like Brokeback Mountain? Cause I could swear Annie Proulx wrote it, and Larry McMurtry adapted the screenplay, and Ang Lee, who has NEVER been indy directed it, and yeah, that was the guy from A Knight's Tale. Apparently the only guy that got paid an indepentent wage was Randy Quaid, and HE WAS IN INDEPENDENCE DAY!

But independent or not, at some point a movie, or any project, probably, switches gears from "I love the project" to "I have to cover my ass." And that's how you get 4 hours of DVD "bonuses" for Stealth. There's a commercial playing down here in Florida for Lexus pre-owned. And the announcer says, "..A literary agent finds the next best seller in a stack of manuscripts." I guess they are trying to parallel their pre-owned program with EVERY HERBIE MOVIE. Funny. But it just bugs me, because no matter what, I'm in the club now (I feel a strange allegiance to palatino linotype, because that's my font...), and I feel like "literary" and "agent" are just about mutually exclusive. And it's not their fault. I'm not going to tell you not to support crap. Hell, I like crap. We're the gran mal-ing focus group that demands Stealth, because it's as interesting as a strobe light.

Just for now, let's pinky swear. Let's not support crap all the time, at least. And the crap litmus test is simple. Does it turn the paper brown? Let's just try and figure out when something switches from a product of love and respect to a giant marketing web of CYA. That's the new standard.