Books, Arts & Manners: Seven Types of Exiguity

IT is almost impossible to make a serious movie in Hollywood these days. (Actually, it wasn’t much easier before.) If the idea is a potentially good one, such as that of Running on Empty, the following requirements are sure to reduce it to pap by the time it comes off the production line.

1. The picture must not offend anyone. The story of Arthur and Annie Pope, who bombed a government-sponsored laboratory that made napalm for the Vietnam War, and who have been living on the run with their two sons, was triggered by the actual bombing of the mathematics building at the University of Wisconsin, where a graduate student, working late, was killed. In the movie, the victim was a janitor (less valuable than a grad student), and he was only blinded and crippled (no actual blood on the Popes’ hands): the Popes need the blessing and forgiveness of the audience.

JS

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John Simon

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IT is almost impossible to make a serious movie in Hollywood these days. (Actually, it wasn’t much easier before.) If the idea is a potentially good one, such as that of Running on Empty, the following requirements are sure to reduce it to pap by the time it comes off the production line.

1. The picture must not offend anyone. The story of Arthur and Annie Pope, who bombed a government-sponsored laboratory that made napalm for the Vietnam War, and who have been living on the run with their two sons, was triggered by the actual bombing of the mathematics building at the University of Wisconsin, where a graduate student, working late, was killed. In the movie, the victim was a janitor (less valuable than a grad student), and he was only blinded and crippled (no actual blood on the Popes’ hands): the Popes need the blessing and forgiveness of the audience.