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"The problem with Hollywood movies today is not necessarily stupidity or too much sex and violence. It's that in too many of today's movies, characters never change. . . .
"Liberal orthodoxies about politics and culture have become sacramental in some circles, and better to make a movie that moves from point A to point A than risk undermining those beliefs. In 'North Country' -- which tanked -- a woman has to take on the sexism of her workplace, and is exactly the same person after two hours. George Clooney's 'Good Night and Good Luck' spends almost two hours on Joseph McCarthy and the 1950s and never mentions Mao, Whittaker Chambers, or any of the actual Soviet spies who were in the government. Edward R. Murrow serves as liberal Gibraltar, everlasting, unchanging, implacable in the face of a genuine communist threat. Forget politics -- how much more tonic would be a film about a character who must alter course at the risk of his life. Indeed, why has no one ever made a film of 'Witness,' the remarkable memoir by Whittaker Chambers?
"Because Chambers traveled from left to right, and that just can't be depicted in Hollywood."
Mark Gauvreau Judge.
