kayla

you know the problem with hollywood? they make shit. unbelievable, unremarkle shit. im not some grungy filmmaker wannabee searching for existentialism through a haze of bong-smoke. its easy to pick apart bad acting, short-sighted directing, or the purely moronic stringing together of words many of the studios term as prose. no, im talking the lack of realism. relism. not a pervasive element in the modern american cinematic vision. three men sit at a windoW booth drinking coffee and talking. two of the men sit on one side of the table, stanley is in his early thirties, agent roberts, early forties. both wear suits, the youngers is fairly expensive and well cut, the others is polyester, enough said. the man across, however is quite different. he is what they used to call a "cool-cat." take Dog Day Afternoon for example. arguably Pacino's greatest performance, excepting The Godfather part I and Scarface, of course. A masterpeice of directing, easily Lumet's best. the acting, the script, cinematography, all top notch. but, they didnt push the envolope. what if in Dog Day sonny really wanted to get away with it? what if, and here's where it gets tricky. what if they'd started killing hostages? no mercy, no quarter, meet out demands or the cute blonde in the bell bottoms gets one in the back of the head, bam, splatter. what? still no bus? how many innocent victims would they let get sprayed across the windows before the city reversed its policy on hostage situations? and this was 1976. no C.N.N, no C.N.B.C, no M.T.V. no internet. fat forward to the present, same situation. can you imagine the feeding frenzy of the modern media? in hours it would be the top story from boston to budapest. all caught in 150 millimeter zoom, computer enhanced, and colour corrected. you would practically taste the brain matter. six hostages die, ten, twelve, twenty, thirty, relentless, one after another. all over a bus, a plane and a couple of million dollars that were federally insured. just a thought. i mean it's not really within the realm of conventional cinema, but what if..?