Customer Reviews

Sex, Stupidity and Greed: Inside the American Movie Industry

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Ian Grey is an angry man, and being angry has traditionally provided fodder for many fine writings. Grey is a disatrous exception. His writing style is that of a detached yet mock-interested outsider displying equal touches of naiveté and arrogance. Naiveté and arrogance works remarkably well in the wirtings of, say, Carl Hiassen, but Grey's ramblings read more like that of a pretentious high-school student.

The similarities with high school do not end there. Like most high schhol term papers, Grey strives for too much and ends up with too little. The chapters show little, if any, cohesion and one must wonder who had bribed the proof-readers prior to their assignment on this book. When Grey does explore some interesting themes he is either a)uninformed (i.e. too lazy to do the research needed), b)too anxious to get on with the next boundary-breaking "insight" or c)both, as is most often the case.

The real horror-story (or comic relief depending on your frame of mind) of Grey's work is his "field-work", i.e. 7 hastily conducted interviews with less-interesting people where one in every four questions concern the "fascinating" breast-implant phenomenon of Hollywood. In between these 7 interviews, presented for some daft reason in original transcript form as if to say 'Look, I Really did do these interviews', Grey tacks on various stories of encounters with friends of stars or has-beens in and around Hollywood that one does best in avoiding.

Like a high-school student, Grey will mature in time, get a better perspective of things, develop his writing skills, find more interesting stories to write about and get some psychotherapy for all that 'anger'. Unless, of course, having this rubbish published gives him a big ego, in which case we'll have to brace ourselves for more incoherent ramblings from this 16-year old stuck in a grown man's body.

While few filmgoers today would dispute the idea that Hollywood cranks out dozens of pieces of garbage for every one truly good film that is produced, Ian Grey's SEX, STUPIDITY, AND GREED: INSIDE THE AMERICAN MOVIE INDUSTRY is not, as its title and cover promises, a daring examination of Hollywood that "splits the carcass of the American movie industry from gizzard to groin." Employing a sometimes vulgar invective--one that he would surely cite as socially or culturally subpar were it to show up as part of the dialogue in some recent film--Grey frequently pits recently produced films against those from the pre-MPAA era as a way of illustrating how the Hollywood movie has "devolved" over the past four decades. Reading between these lines, the astute reader can't help but conclude that it is not the American movie industry per se that Grey hates so much, but what angers him instead is the fact that recent movies--with all their newfangled technical FX and new methods for storytelling--have usurped the beloved films of his youth in the projectors at the local cinema, an attitude that makes this read more like a reactionary rant than an exposé.

If one can forgive Grey for using the book as a soapbox for his personal rant, it is still difficult to surmount the other obstacles within these pages. One of the most glaring problems with Grey's arguments is his constant use of AD VERECUNDIAM logical fallacies. At least two major chapters in SEX, STUPIDITY, AND GREED: INSIDE THE AMERICAN MOVIE INDUSTRY are built around interviews with "authorities" that have little expertise in the American film industry, one centering on a publisher of soft-core porn magazines and the other a psychiatrist who apparently treats patients with self-image issues. Another irritating aspect of the book is its overall style. Rather than reading like a formal book-length exposé from an industry insider--which is what the jacket declares the book to be--the writing style is more akin to that of an amateur internet blog, with the same sort of abrupt shifts in thought and subtopic that one often sees when reading online diaries and such. And there is an apparent lack of professional editing, too, as one comes across numerous grammatical and punctuation errors throughout the text (again, the same sort of errors one commonly finds when reading entries on an amateur web site).

Also, the frequent comparisons of certain recently produced films against specific films from the pre-MPAA as a means of "exposing" the deterioration of quality and morality in Hollywood make it seem as if Grey is unaware of--or perhaps purposely ignoring--the history of filmmaking in America. With everything from the racism and blatant historical inaccuracies of D.W. Griffith's THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915) to Roman Polanski's dalliance with an underage girl in the 1970s, the pre-MPAA movie industry in the United States certainly had its share of controversy regarding the morality and aesthetic quality of the films it produced and the people who produced them. Grey's arguments that such problems are something new to the industry simply fall flat in the face of history.

SEX, STUPIDITY, AND GREED: INSIDE THE AMERICAN MOVIE INDUSTRY is not without its merits. The chapter discussing the establishment of the MPAA in the late 1960s and the frequently inconsistent application of its rating system is very eye-opening, and Grey's interview with the sometimes reviled actress Sean Young is also an interesting read. Yet despite these way-too-infrequent good points, Grey's purported exposé of the deterioration of aesthetics and quality in the Hollywood movie-making juggernaut is actually little more than the reactionary ranting of a man who is miffed because "they" don't make movies like "they" used to, and being such, it will be of little interest to anyone hoping to get a genuine look at the inner workings of the current American movie industry.

Ian Grey has all the right ingredients for a first rate litary drive-by. He has perfected the self-righteous swagger of a master polemicist and he's got the staccato sarcasm down pat. He's glib and witty, and has just enough of the been-there-in-the-trenches (and see who I've rubbed shoulders with) authenticity (he's a failed rock star AND a failed screenwriter) to play the oucast insider the genre demands.

Unfortunately, he forgot to have a point worth making or anything resembling a solution to the problems he cites.

So what we get are series of thematically linked essays concerned centrally with the artistic death of the American movie brought on by corporatization, the MPAA, the "200 vice presidents," Ronald Reagan and a host of other carboard boogeymen, held together with a handful of interviews with the fairly famous (Wes Craven), the nearly famous (Ulli Lommel) and the famous-only-to-the-self-appointed-cognoscenti demograpic (Julia Strain).

The essays are, in general, interesting, if ultimately devoid of any real insight (what, the blockbuster syndrome hasn't been great for the prospects of art films? who'd have thunk it?). They're most entertaining when Grey sticks to innuendo and insult or to matter-of-fact portrayals of some of the more absurd effects of blocbuster bloat (Waterworld's budget, for instance). When he wanders into more 'serious' theoretical speculation, he reads like a high school student turned loose with publishing deal and no ability to critically analyze his own sources (he approvingly cites [at considerable length] a Peter Biskind essay from "Seeing Through Movies," without acknowledging that the piece in question is not only an antiquated exercise in academic Freudian maundering, but also includes the almost inconceivably retarded implication that George Lucas is in some sense responsible for the Reagan Presidency). Other times, Grey is undone by his own naked prejudice: he snidely attacks "Last Action Hero" on several occasions, but reserves voluminous praise for "Scream" - essentially the same film but with different subjects.

The interviews, on the other hand, are simply terrible. In addition to mostly being made with peripheral figures of neither artistic nor commercial importance, they're filled with leading questions and Grey's own self-important ejaculations (not to mention his irritating habit of inserting his subjective reading of body language, voice tone etc. into the text of the interviews). Worse, many of his interview subjects share Grey's abominably self-congratulatory posture - at one point, Wes Craven compares "Scream" to Shakespeare without the slightest trace of irony (or any objection from fanboy Grey). Ulli Lomman is almost as bad. He seems to believe he is bringing the spirit of Fassbinder to the unwashed Americans (because, as we all know, "Bogeyman" is just a work of sheer, avant-garde brilliance).

But what is most off-putting is the smarmy, masturbatory self-promoting glee with which Grey imbues the whole book. In the end, "Sex, Stupidity and Greed" isn't about exposing the failings of Hollywood or proposing a solution (which Grey implies lies with hipsterish, z-grade, ironically so-bad-it's-good horror schlock), it's about showing the world what an insightful, in touch, all-around awsome guy Ian Grey thinks himself to be.

...is one sentence in an early chapter, talking about ballooning budgets. While he could make a good case about how we are spending our money as a society, he instead contradicts his own points, shows a lack of insight into the reality of the industry(ie things cost money), and a line about James Camerons upcoming disaster film costing almost 250 illion to make. In response to this he exclaimes, "this would have to be almost the highest grossing film of all time to earn its money back." Perhaps before taking bold potshots at one of the most successful and consistant directors of all time, he should have waited to see how the movie would pan out first. This is typical of the book, which is angry, foolish, rambling, and now painfully out of date.

I'm flabbergasted to learn that some readers actually enjoyed this pointless bit of piffle. Truly, there's no accounting for tastes. Here's the deal: this Ian Grey guy was briefly, peripherally involved in screenwriting. He's been in the same room with a few third-tier celebrities. He doesn't like think very highly of the movie business. Oddly, Grey seems to believe that this all adds up to some sort of sensational now-it-can-be-told muckraking extravaganza. It's a bit like a meter maid writing a tell-all account of the inner workings of the justice system. How these aimless drivelings ever found a publisher is a complete mystery. If you feel like rolling around in some real insider sleaze, read Charles Fleming's "High Concept".

This is the kind of book that needed to be written. But sadly, it did not need to be written by Ian Grey. He's illogical and apparently blinded by self-righteousness.

This book is really a collection of essays and interviews on similar subjects, and it's not just because of the lack of cohesion that they contradict each other. In one chapter he writes about the scandalously huge budgets movies get today, but the very next section is an interview with a Hollywood insider who reveals that movies' budgets are actually exaggerated by studios, and they aren't really too much. So what was the point of the first chapter? Grey could at least have written "Oh, I was mistaken," but he just moves on. Later there's a chapter on how actors and especially actresses must get surgery to look young and attractive so they can remain employed. That chapter is truthfully grim, but it's followed up by an interview with actress Julie Strain, and Grey almost seems to praise her for "remodelling" her body. ("Remodeled" sure sounds better than "They slit her open and shoved in implants," the kind of language he uses in the other chapter.)

Grey seems to think that Strain can do no wrong since she makes low-budget movies, which most would probably call B-Movies. Well, there really isn't an impartial "good" and "bad" when it comes to movies, but Grey assumes that anything without a big budget is better than any blockbuster hit and really, anything from a big studio. The truth is that low-budget does not equal objectively good. Grey cannot grasp this concept, and he sticks with it throughout the book.

As I wrote before, this book needed to be written. The evils of Hollywood should be revealed to the public, but it is impossible to read this book without loathing it. Grey wanted to get the message across, but he was defeated by his own contradictions, predjudice, and, ironically, stupidity.

This book really makes you sigh, in the end. It has been said for years that cinema is where art and commerce meet...and in the eighties art went home. Ian Grey basically explains how the little piggy that went home that is art--people with something to say--in American cinema, was told to go, and why it still is staying there.

The anecdotes can be funny; the social commentary is often fascinating. The double standards and schizophrenic ideals concerning the standard for portraying violence in film is such a powerful social statement on our society that it is worth the price of admission by itself (irony thy name is horror movie ratings system: the message behind the standards do more harm to society than the films that fall beneath it). The only problem is what is easily detectable in Ian Grey's outlook or personality. Ian sounds a lot like the famous preachers obsessively pointificating on the wages of sin in front of the bordellos: you know, the ones who are on a first name basis with the madams and the most expensive of the employees! In other words, there are few times in the book that you don't get the impression that he is one gig or sold superficial action movie screenplay away from refuting virtually all of what he wrote here and living it up with the very people he is trashing. There is a thin line between simple insiders and true heretics; Ian seemingly wrote a book that, instead of having him hung in effigy by the elite and run out of town, will seemingly merely have him be heretofore excluded from only all of the very Hollywood parties he no longer wants to go to. Which means, well, the obvious: the real elite of elites in Hollywood are having as much fun with his book as he is.

Just the same, whether the leit motif of sour grapes is or is not running through this symphonic critique of the devolution of the art form of American movies over the past two decades, you learn a lot about how the business is run--or how this Frankenstein runs itself. When I think of how difficult it must be to get a screenplay or acting career established in Hollywood, his book simultaneously deflates a lot of secret hopes, and reinspires a belief in the redemptive power of artistic integrity over fame. And then it makes you laugh with a new sense of hope; after all, if some of these characters in the business could actually become famous and successful, anyone could!

How this book managed to slip past the publishing industry amazes me. This book reinforces the sanities that I find being pressed, everyday.

Should be mandatory for film students and anyone else who wants an inside look at the Hollywood meat grinder.

Ian Grey answers the question everybody asks themselves as they exit the multiplex: why do movies suck ? He also has ideas about what to do about it. And if you don't feel like doing anything... he'll make you laugh instead of grinding your teeth. Some of these interviews and essays are fabulous (Wes Craven, the life-affirming qualities of gore, yes... the Oscar night, Sean Young, Ulli Lommel...). Others are "merely" great, and the whole book is enlightening and immensely entertaining. It should be a must read for moviemakers, for moviegoers, and for all those who have stopped going because, well, indeed, movies suck.