See My Movie. And Know Your Place.

Vis-a-vis Whoopi Goldberg saying that Polanski didn't commit "rape-rape," and that Europeans look at 13-year-old girls differently than US citizens, here's director Luc Besson, as quoted in the Telegraph: "I have a lot of affection for him, he is a man that I like very much but nobody should be above the law. I don't know the details of this case, but I think that when you don't show up for trial, you are taking a risk."

Just so. The kicker is, Besson is French. More proof that Goldberg's theory is insane. The fact that no one is calling for her to be canned is telling.

Besson's comments came after he refused to sign a petition calling for Polanski's release. The Telegraph reports that 100 movie bigwigs have signed it so far.

Could Hollywood be any more removed from the people that they're trying to sell tickets to? This is rape, not shoplifting.

Here's a post I wrote a while back. I think it holds water:

Musing on Fans, April 6, 2009

I was doing some work last night and had the TV on in the background. The Academy of Country Music Awards was on. As company, it was good enough for me. During the broadcast, I heard the presenters and award recipients say the word "fans" dozens of times. Fans-this, fans-that. "I'd like to thank the fans." And, "If it wasn't for the fans, I wouldn't be here." And, "The fans made this song a hit." The speeches were maybe ten or fifteen seconds long, and all of them revolved around record labels, family, and fans.

Country music is good at marketing itself to the people that matter: the fans that buy albums and listen to the radio.

Contrast that with the Oscars, where the show is designed to prove how far the movie business has gone in alienating its audience. Every speech is about "me," followed by an endless string of names that the home audience has never heard of. Agents, script consultants, producers, on and on.

A few years back, Hilary Swank made the faux pas of forgetting to mention her husband during her Academy Award speech. She was knocked around for it by the rags. I asked: why? It was perfectly understandable. These people dispose of marriages like coffee cups. (Swank is since divorced).

After thanking their sycophants, movie stars then get on a soap box. You have the writer of Milk preaching for gay rights, Sean Penn thanking "Commies" and "homo lovers" for granting him the Best Actor award, and any number of stars bashing the former US President. When they're finished, they go to a ritzy after-party, get drunk, and sometimes drink and drive. Want to meet a movie star? Depends how much they've had to drink and how fast they're driving. Movie stars can afford to buy ten thousand BMWs, but not one chauffeur.

During this year's Oscars, I heard the word "fans" exactly twice, one time as a joke from Will Smith (he correctly observed that action movies are great because they have one thing that most Oscar contenders don't: fans). Someone else mentioned the fans almost by accident. And that was that. All of the other speeches were about people we've never seen and never will.

Think about that. A room full of people, rich because people buy tickets to watch what they do, and it never crosses their mind to thank the people buying the tickets.

It really is amazing that people still line up to meet movie stars, or ask for their autograph, or even go to the movies. We know these people don't give a damn about us. To paraphrase Warhol, they tell us how to think, how to vote, how to behave and, more importantly, how to look while we're behaving. We pay their salaries and treat them like royalty while they treat us with indifference. They'd just as soon never meet us, let alone shake our hands. But we love them.

Amazing. Amusing.