More theft

Just to prove myself morally bankrupt (if there ever was any doubt) I'll steal some more. This time from myself. Last night I was perusing IMDB.com. I was looking up movies that an old High School friend has been involved in and found the newest Jane Fonda movie- Monster In-Law. It is being released soon. I also found the message boards and saw some really steamed and totally po'd comments about Jane. Much ado. And I decided to join in the fray- cuz I can. And I was bored. So I am stealing from myself. Which makes it a little easier on the conscience.

Interesting bit of discussion. I'm wondering if all of the people who are so hot under the collar about Jane would be as ticked off about Leni Reifenstahl. Yeah- for those who aren't familiar- she was the woman responsible for directing the Third Reich's finest propeganda films. These- including the incomperably brilliant Triumph of the Will are still watched in film schools and quoted by directors. They are also scary, unsettling and hard to watch. Leni was a woman who used her art to influence politics- and denied her close associations with the Third Reich after the war- she was lucky as hell not to be thrown in prison for the rest of her very, very long life (over 100 years). I see a fundamental difference between someone who uses their art in such a way- channelling their creativity in such a fashion (she slept in the editing room during the editing of T of the W) and someone like Jane who used their celebrity to get a political idea across. One is infinately more ham-fisted than the other. And one is infinately more deliberate and ultimately effective than the other. And Leni never really aplogized for her efforts to promote the Nazis. Isn't that a little worse than Jane? Seriously- an ignorant and stupid trip to visit the enemy and later career as an actress in other people's movies versus sleeping, eating and creating for the Third Reich? Since this is a movie forum- I just thought I would discuss some actual movie making.

(So- ethically is it worse to make a great film about an evil thing, or to be a stoopid dufus and do an evil thing? Are both evils equal? Is there any redemption? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?)