Thank You for Writing Well

The San Francisco Chronicle is more or less the nearest major city newspaper to where I live---it's the one that's on the stands here, anyway. So I read it as much or more than any other daily newspaper. There may be writers as good or better in papers I don't read.

And I've been published in 5 different sections of it over the past several years, so I am prejudiced by that, though not altogether for.

But it's hard for me to imagine that there can be better writers than some now writing for the Chron. Columnist Jon Carroll is so good at what he does, and what he does is so unique, that the high quality of the writing is just part of the package. Mark Morford, who cut his teeth as an on-line only opinionator (a proto-blogger, as it were) has found his voice as a regular columnist. A terrific writer. As is my old friend and colleague, Kenneth Baker, the art writer. I've admired his writing for many years, even when I wasn't so crazy for the art he wrote about. Tim Goodman, the TV guy, is pretty good, too, although they give the TV writers about twice the space they need to say what they say.

But what prompts this effusion is Mick LaSalle, the chief movie critic. He is simply the best writer on film I know of. His reviews are the best written, most knowledgeable, most trenchant and most interesting of anybody's I've read since at least Frank Rich (and I mean his movie reviews in the 70s and 80s.) His Sunday question-and-answer column is terrific, too.

Friday he reviewed "Thank You for Smoking," about a tobacco lobbyist. I saw the writer of the book (Christopher Buckley), the screenwriter (?), the director (Jason Reitman) and the star (Aaron Eckhart) on Charlie Rose. Such a group of self-satisfied cynics, it was dismaying. Wondering if I got the right impression of the film, I went online to read reviews. "Rotten Tomatoes" had a ton of them, and I read several of the major ones, learned a little, but not very much.

Then comes LaSalle in the Chron on Friday: "Thank You for Smoking" is a glib satire with a slick surface, lots of snappy patter and nothing to sell but its own cleverness. It's as smooth as its tobacco lobbyist hero and almost as empty, for despite the incisiveness of its observations, about the nature of media and the idiocy of the public, it operates without a strong point of view. This results in a lack of passion and intensity, but the movie has something else going for it, something that's not as entertaining but interesting all the same: a deep-down hopelessness. "

So this is exactly what I wanted to know about this movie. It confirms the feeling I got from the Charlie Rose show. Now I know I'm not going to rush out to see it. But I keep reading---because the review is itself compelling.

""Thank You for Smoking" doesn't exactly represent our era. Rather it is, in itself, an embodiment of it, a litany of complaints followed by a shrug of the shoulders, a movie about the morass that can't see through the morass. "

This places the movie in the cultural context, which is the context in which we'll see it. But there's the form of the movie itself, the approach it takes:

"This lack of vision limits the film. After all, seeing through the morass is precisely what great satire does -- it takes a position above the current situation, sees past it, understands it and gives a warning. "Network," "MASH," "A Face in the Crowd" and "The Manchurian Candidate" all belong in that exalted category, whereas "Thank You for Smoking" is more along the order of spoof, a send-up of identifiable types that is meant to amuse all and offend none. "

Maybe it's a measure of the dumbed-down mediaverse we're used to now, but to be reminded of the difference between "satire" and "spoof," is a real gift these days, and it means something. Something besides making me wonder how many other film reviewers know the difference, since most seem to use the terms interchangeably.

The review then closes the deal:

"Yet at the heart of "Thank You for Smoking" is a belief in the importance of one thing: success. Nick's talent is real, and in the construct of this film, it would be a terrible thing if he did not get a chance to practice his gift and enjoy its rewards. That's an amazing way to see Nick, a point of view that's cynical in the extreme without the filmmaker seeming to notice. Obviously, just a little beneath the surface of this supposedly biting satire, there are attitudes and assumptions in serious need of satirical treatment. "

The deal is: I learned enough about the movie to make a decision about seeing or not seeing it. And I've learned something by reading the review, and I've enjoyed the reading experience. I got pleasure from the writing. Confirmation of my intuitions about the movie is a big bonus.

Of course these aren't the only fine writers on the Chronicle, not to mention those perspicacious editors. But I should mention one more, a writer in pictures and words: Don Asmussen. I must mention his comic genius, as I steal his panels every once in awhile for this blog. (Fully attributed to him and the Chron, mind you---don't go recommending me for a Washington Post blog.) But I reproduce them from the web site only at least a day after they appear in the print edition. This thief has some honor.