mattwitt’s whereIstand Blog

Now this just adds insult to injury . . .

It isn’t enough that Bush has squandered the lives of over 3,000 innocent American soldiers on this half-assed invasion of Iraq.

It isn’t enough that he and his administration have wasted billions of tax dollars and added more to our national debt than any other executive administration ever has before.

It also seems to not yet be enough suffering for the American people that this presidency has dealt the most despicable blow to the United States’ international relations.

And it’s not enough, apparently, that this brainless twit we’ve somehow elected TWICE to lead the most powerful nation on earth couldn’t deliver a rousing and intelligently-articulated speech if his own life depended on it.

Now Bush has just rubbed salt in the wound by commuting the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, a man found guilty of violating national security and endangering the life of one of our CIA agents.

I honestly believe that George W. Bush is the most incompetent and useless president in our nation’s history. Whoever succeeds this dismal failure of a presidency will face an unprecedented mess to clean up. Truly, to right the wrongs of Bush and his goons will take decades. Yet at the same time, no matter who is elected president in ‘08, they will instantly look positively marvelous compared to the insipidly corrupt administration that is now kicking sand in the face of democracy.

whereIstand Tags

• Should President Bush pardon Scooter Libby?

I was a little torn at first on this issue, because quite frankly, I hate it when historical accuracy is shunned in filmmaking. I’m not a big fan of "The Patriot," for example. Mel Gibson’s Benjamin Martin is loosely based on Ethan Allen. They even have him trying to build furniture in the opening scene. Why not base the story on the real Ethan Allen and the heroic Green Mountain Boys? Why steal Allen’s tactics and adventures and cover them all in such a transparent action coating? And how ridiculous is it that they make Gibson’s character not a slave-owner actually but a man who employs and pays African Americans to work on his plantation? That’s an insult to African American history & culture and incredibly inaccurate, all in order to make Martin more likable by today’s social standards.

Then I reflected on a far better film, "Schindler’s List," which is also inaccurate in some ways — but it gets the big picture right. Ben Kingsley’s Itzak Stern, for example, is a combination of two Jewish men, and by some accounts they had to prod Schindler far more than the film portrays in order for him to act against the Nazis and save the lives he did. However, that detail, that hair-splitting is all moot here. Why? Because it does not stop Spielberg from telling an amazingly compelling story, one that 14 years after having first seen it, still inspires me.

The emotional membrane that this film possesses, the way it sticks with the viewer, haunts them with the horrors of the Holocaust and the hope that even a philandering, drunk profiteer can see that human life is priceless beyond comparison, is absolutely indelible. "Schindler’s List" is less about the play-by-play facts of Schindler’s life than about how Spielberg sees such hope and miracle amidst madness and destruction.

whereIstand Tags

• Is it acceptable for directors to present altered versions of historical events?

When most people think of blaxploitation films, titles such as Melvin Van Peeble’s "Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song" and Gordon Parks’ "Super Fly" come to mind. However, I wanted to draw attention to another filmmaker, not as well known perhaps, but a truly talented and inspiring man, Mr. Oscar Williams.

Oscar was a writer for such classics as "Black Belt Jones" and directed the seminal "Five on the Black Hand Side." He also has worked for the past decade or so as a professor at the University of Southern California, where he has taught multiple classes, including Bill Cosby’s Summer Production Workshop, with which Mr. Cosby has offered the chance for underprivileged minority high school students from Los Angeles to discover their filmmaking voice at USC during the summer. As a grad student at ‘SC, I was a teaching assistant in the editing portion of the Cosby classes, and as a student filmmaker myself, Oscar was a tremendous influence on me. He taught me that the world isn’t a fair place, offering up opportunity to every kid with a camera and a story to tell. You have to have guts; you must have fire in your veins and courage when you’re up against the world, the studios, the jackass executives whom Oscar ubiquitously labeled "the muthaf—as."

He is an amazingly inspirational instructor and learned through ’70s blaxploitation filmmaking that if you get a shot at success, at pursuing your dreams, then you take it. That’s what blaxploitation filmmaking was about to me, empowering oneself, saying to hell with the rules and the system and taking a chance on yourself.

Oscar is still at USC, and the school is the better for it. We need more filmmakers and mentors with his zeal, his spirit and guts.

whereIstand Tags

• Do exploitation films have artistic merit?