ASK MICK LASALLE
Hi Mick: The novel “Gone Girl” was riveting for most of it, and then I felt betrayed when the end left me cold. Have you read any disappointing books that have turned into really good movies?
Rayne Merrywood, Concord
Hi Rayne: I’ve read many and have always been impressed at how good screenwriters can make strong screenplays out of bad books. You see it all the time — but only when the book isn’t famous. When a book is famous, adaptation becomes more difficult, because then the movie has fans who will be outraged if the movie isn’t a celluloid replica. It’s what made the Harry Potter movies unbearable (at least to me), and it’s a huge source of weakness in “Gone Girl,” which, with a few adjustments, could have been a great thriller.
Dear Mick LaSalle: You reviewed “Last Weekend,” and yet I never saw it in a local theater listing. My wife combed the newspaper thoroughly for days and after being totally frustrated I took over, to no avail.
Bill Makinney, San Francisco
Dear Bill Makinney: Those listings that appear in a grid in the newspaper are actually paid advertisements, and they always have been. So if distributors or individual theaters choose not to advertise, their listings aren’t in the paper. This is an inconvenience, but think about it this way. If a company stopped advertising with you, would you adjust your normal ways of doing things to ensure that company lost absolutely no business as a result of leaving you? That would send a weird signal to the advertisers who’ve remained loyal. I should hasten to add that, in terms of what I do, I have no idea, as I’m writing the review, whether there will be a listing or not. It’s not something I ever think about. I just do the same for every movie.
Dear Mick LaSalle: What would have happened if the Production Code in 1934 had never been created? Would there be fewer bad movies? Do you think the Code was necessary, or would you have just erased it from existence?
Eli Sanza, Oakland
Dear Eli Sanza: There would have been fewer bad movies, but more to the point, there would have been fewer destroyed and damaged movies — movies distorted by censorship into making no sense, good movies funneled into dead formulas, movies where women had to hold onto borderline evil husbands because divorce was shunned, pro-union movies turned into pro-management movies because authority couldn’t be questioned, and love stories so neutered as to make the entire succeeding generation associate romance with phoniness and sexlessness.
We are still suffering the effects of 34 years of censorship. Sex and romance on the American screen remain in a state of separation. Our love scenes are the least convincing in the Western world. Actresses remain second-class citizens, and our films (good and bad) are almost entirely concerned with external, public life, with few devoted to the internal movements of the soul. These are all legacies of the Code. Anyway, I can go on for 20 pages about this, but to be brief, the answer is yes. For 19 out of 20 years, starting in 1934, a reactionary anti-Semitic goon named Joseph Breen, who had the story sense of a drooling idiot, controlled screen content in the United States. He and his successors were a calamity, and it would have been better if the Code never happened.
Dear Mick: Who’s your favorite actor/director, besides Ben Affleck and Chaplin, of course? Welles doesn’t count, either, because “Citizen Kane” is too good. My favorite is De Sica.
Howard Junker, San Francisco
Dear Howard: I’d also like to be able to say someone fancy, like Vittorio De Sica, but if you hooked me up to a lie detector and asked me 10 times, the needle would be jumping up and down until I finally just admitted it: Woody Allen.