INTERESTING BITS OF TID

In no particular order:

• While this certainly isn’t good news, aren’t a few too many people dying while seeing The Passion of the Christ? Maybe the film needs to carry a surgeon general’s warning. And you know, I meant to mention this in my dissertation-length post the other day, but why doesn’t this movie carry an NC-17 rating? Certainly it’s violent enough, and now it has caused multpile deaths, not to even mention its influence on the man who tried to crucify himself or the woman who wanted to baptise herself by driving her car into a lake. This movie is obviously detrimental to one’s health. And now, it’s even attacking men of the cloth!

• On a brighter front, I never watch Jeopardy! because it only increases my already deep and pervailing feelings of inadequacy, but this is a series of shows I may need to check -out when it airs in May. I’m putting my money on Franken and Russert to wipe the floor with Anderson Cooper and Ashleigh Banfield. And life will be pleasant indeed if Peggy Noonan just gets embarrassed. And speaking of Franken, don’t forget that his new radio show “The O’Franken Factor” premieres along with the Air America Radio Network a week from today.

• And finally, it looks like there may finally be a resolution to the debate on who should be entitled to the controversial “Film By …” tag often placed before the title of a movie in its opening credits. Since the credit generally goes to a film’s director, screenwriters have long complained about the validity of such a statement. Basically, you won’t see it as much on outdoor billboards and many first-time directors will not be allowed to use it, but as with anything, there are dozens of exceptions. I’ve always wished that there was some sort of shared credit unless the person receiving the “Film By” tag was the writer and director. For example, a director should often be able to call his/her film “A (your name here) film,” and if necessary a tag such as “By (so-and-so screenwriter)” could be added. Of course, this becomes difficult in a situation like Gangs of New York which would then read, “A Martin Scorsese film” and then “By Jay Cocks, Steven Zaillian and Kenneth Lonergan” or however the actual “and”s and “&”s need to work out. There is a degree of shared authorship between writer and dierctor on every film. Obviously, because of the absurd nature of writing credits, this could be a bit absurd, but then leave it up to the WGA to decide which credited writers deserve this additional designation. Maybe 7 writers are credited because of their contributions but only two get the “By”-line. THe problem otherwise is that it will always be too arbitrary. A Scorsese film should be called a Scorsese film. A Spike Jonze film should be called as such too. And these new rules don’t seem to exclude those possibilities, but it also doesn’t seem like it will solve the whole problem.