From Richard von Busack's
Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Whaddya want for $7.50 anyway?

A: What I look for in a good movie and all I can think of is Jean Cocteau's comment "Etonnez-moi," astonish me. I want to be astonished. While I agree with Satyajit Ray's comment "It is wise for a director to lower his brow a little," it's hard for me to accept that just because somebody ought to buy a movie and that everybody ought to be able to buy it.

Q: Where do you guys get off dissing movies when you don't even make them?

A: "You don't have to be a chicken to know that an egg is rotten"--Pauline Kael. Plus it seems to me that the idea of "dissing" ought to be dissed itself. The other night, I heard an FM DJ using the phrase "kiss it or diss it" to describe a new release, and that too often seems to be the attitude that the people in marketing want: genuflection or ape-like rage. Ideally a movie should submit an idea to the audience which begins a discussion in their hearts; they might accept all of the argument or some of it; they may have the urge to answer back on some level that's more complex than kiss it or diss it. I realize how silly this sounds in the age of Twister. Mostly, I hope that a critic helps levels the playing field.

Q: Look, I come home from work, I'm tired, and I just want to pop something in the VCR that'll make me forget about my problems (will please my kids, et cetera).

A: There's nothing wrong with a smart, empty diversion or an intelligent kid's movie. I'm overly fond of James Bond and the Three Stooges myself. But just because movies are a conduit for a lot of easily-digested tranquilizing stuff doesn't mean they all should be child-safe and easy-to-chew. And, hey, as a former file clerk, I guarantee you, a really great movie will invigorate you, will fork-lift you out of your rut, more than any number of 99 cent no-brainer specials.

Q: What's your favorite movie?

A: The answer to this changes every time I get asked it, depending on my mood and my memory. But Orson Welles deserves his reputation as the most towering American director. There may be better movies than Citizen Kane but you won't be able to watch them over and over again as you can with Kane. Hitchcock's Vertigo, in current release, astonishes me every time I see it, and North By Northwest is my idea of a perfect movie. These are all American movies, the best examples of a system which has pretty much clobbered the globe. Hitchcock, who knew how to get most of what he wanted from the studio system (no easy task, sort of like milking a tiger, really) was sometimes accused of having sold out to the Yanks: he responded, "If you make a movie for America, you make a movie for the world, because America is full of foreigners."

Under a near half century of cathode ray bombardment, franchise building and automobile culture, we're not all as foreign as we once were. You'll look in vain in most American movies for the mysticism of Bergman, the humanity of Jean Renoir, the cynicism of Henri Clouzot, the killing humor of the best of the Ealing comedies from England ... I could go on, but the good thing is they're all there waiting to be discovered at the video store. Right next to 800 copies of Home Alone II.

Q: Siskel and Ebert gave this movie two thumbs up, and I saw it, and it sucked. What gives?

A: Did you go to the right movie? The problem with multiplex theaters is that sometimes they aren't clearly marked. You could wander into one of those anonymous doors trying to see The Spitfire Grill and end up in Joe's Apartment, wondering what all of those cockroaches are doing in rural Maine. Sometimes viewers forget to take notes during the Siskel and Ebert show and mistakenly remember a "thumbs down" as a "thumbs up." In some rare cases, viewers may be laying sprawled on the sofa with their heads at an angle, and this causes them to be unsure of which way the thumbs are pointing. The best thing to do is to take notes studiously, checking them carefully at the end of the show during the summaries, and to watch Siskel and Ebert in a sitting position, relaxed but with back erect. Most of all--don't try giving any films a thumbs up or thumbs down of your own: Siskel and Ebert are virtouosos who have trained their thumbs over the course of decades; to try to imitate them could cause injury or sprain. Which is why, though almost every time I've been on tv, that someone has asked me, "So, Rick, would you give Gleaming the Cube a 'thumb's up' or a 'thumb's down', I have to say, "Hey, leave that question for a professional!"

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