If Drugs are an evil so great that they should be withheld from free people, then what the hell is Leftism? Many millions more have been killed by Leftists than have ever been killed by Drugs.

Because in Leftyland, counting is a skill reserved for the gifted.

They should make a 1980-82 reunion mega-concert featuring Loverboy, Survivor, April Wine, and Billy Squier. They could call it Monsters of Suck.

More than you think, Old_Tom, if Hannibal Lector is right:

According to him, we covet what we see every day...

I can't understand where that comment is coming from? Are you a director who just knows he could do better? Are you a bigger-than-his-britches film school student trying to awe everyone with your teacher's sophistication? Are you an amateur film fan who thinks anything more substantial than B-grade zombie flicks is pretentious and boring? It's difficult to judge whether you're even worth engaging on the subject unless you give us some clue.

In any event, you couldn't be more wrong (in my opinion, of course). ApNow isn't the best film ever made, but it's absolutely ridiculous to rank it among the worst. If it happens to be on TV somewhere (un-hacked), I'll generally choose watching it for the gazillionth time over watching practically any movie made today for the SECOND time. It may be that I just have lousy taste in movies, but I have a DVD library that I think would pass muster with most serious critics. And ApNow is definitely in it.

P.S. Sorry, can't let this pass. You're right that Duvall was great, but he also played a particularly flamboyant and memorable character in a movie full of them. When I look at ApNow I can't spot a bad performance in the bunch, with the possible exception of Brando, who chews up the scenery, spits it out, then picks it back up and chews it a little more. But Colonel Kurtz is intended to be an enormous, pompous, twisted train wreck of a man, so in the end he fits, or can be made to fit, the story.

P.P.S. I like the original cut. I don't care for the longer version at all. If that's the one you're talking about, I'd be more inclined to agree with you, although I still wouldn't go that far.

It actually makes perfect sense...when applied to the Left. Whether you call their fictional account of the world a "narrative" or a "story," they *will* in the end be very abruptly de-storied and given that non-refundable membership to the swim team down in Fire Lake they all seem to want so badly.

I imagine Mumia Abu Jamal must be pretty pissed off right about now that Polanski's stealing all his supporters. I mean, cop killers are one thing, but a child rapist? Now there's a man all good libertines can really get behind. Sorry Mumia.

I see marchers marching, pasty fists punching at the sky: "Free Roman!" "Free Roman!" Candles sway to and fro in the twilight: "We shall overcome..." The patron saint of Baby Boom leftists is invoked: "Imagine there's no rape laws..."

Sigh. Hollywood is so fond of remakes...

I think dum-dum needs to get a brain-brain so her ass won't be so fat-fat from holding all that hot air-air.

I wonder if anyone can dig up any of Whoopi's commentary on the priestly abuse scandals? For some strange reason, I don't recall her drawing the same distinctions or demonstrating such magnanimity in those cases, even though they were similar in many ways, and in many (most?) instances lacking in the whole drugging aspect that makes Polanski's particularly vile.

It seems to me you're making an argument for the NEA and public television, John, if private enterprise and the profit motive tend to produce the fragmentation you decry.

Seems to me you're forgetting Jimmy "Dynomite!" Walker, Flip "Here Comes Da Judge" Wilson, Rerun & Company from "That's My Mama," etc. I don't have anything against these performers, I just think you've got your rose-colored glasses on if you think there weren't self-consciously black characters on the networks during that time period (or maybe I've misunderstood your point?).

They certainly weren't stereotypes (although Redd Foxx in Sanford & Son came distastefully close), but it was pretty hard to miss the fact that they were black--sometimes militantly so.

I think things are much better and much healthier today. There's not much "Us and Them" left on TV. For the most part, blacks on television have assimilated into the mainstream of society and no one thinks much about it any more.