Every year around mid-April I start to get Cannes Fever. Though I’ve never been and probably will never get the chance to go, it’s still fun to follow the festival from trying to predict which films will screen all the way to the awards ceremony. While Venice, Berlin and Toronto are important festivals as well, Cannes is still “The Big One” and can significantly shape a cinephile’s viewing habits for the year. But let’s not forget that there is a flipside to that coin, and that Cannes is also a marketplace where some of the most crass and commercial films are bought and sold by people who only care about their bottom line. Alec Baldwin and James Toback’s decision to seize upon this duality as a microcosm for the current state of the industry is brilliant…and also heartbreaking.
The opening quote from Orson Welles says it all: "I look back on my life and its 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them.” No matter how great the artist, all must eventually beg, bow and compromise at the feet of those with the purse strings. Gotta have the right star, gotta set it in a place with great tax breaks, gotta make sure that it will not offend anyone. So many hoops to jump through. The fact that great film art continues to be produced in this day and age feels like a miracle. Ever watched a movie and wondered if something like it could get made today? Seduced and Abandoned answers that question definitively and with a resounding, "No!" Yet despite all of that, the real-deal filmmakers keep coming back for more. God bless the artists who continue to go through this increasingly futile dance so that we might have something beautiful, enlightening, and exciting to watch on that screen.
The opening quote from Orson Welles says it all: "I look back on my life and its 95% running around trying to raise money to make movies and 5% actually making them.” No matter how great the artist, all must eventually beg, bow and compromise at the feet of those with the purse strings. Gotta have the right star, gotta set it in a place with great tax breaks, gotta make sure that it will not offend anyone. So many hoops to jump through. The fact that great film art continues to be produced in this day and age feels like a miracle. Ever watched a movie and wondered if something like it could get made today? Seduced and Abandoned answers that question definitively and with a resounding, "No!" Yet despite all of that, the real-deal filmmakers keep coming back for more. God bless the artists who continue to go through this increasingly futile dance so that we might have something beautiful, enlightening, and exciting to watch on that screen.
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