Put Focus on Positives of AFI’s List

As one of the producers of Tuesday’s CBS special “AFI’s 100 Years . . . 100 Movies: America’s Greatest Movies,” I am compelled to take exception with Kenneth Turan’s column last Wednesday.

His biggest criticism, that the omissions on the list “are numerous . . . and frankly a scandal,” smacks of a naivete not often seen in Hollywood. Firstly and admittedly, there are omissions. But as Col. Blake acknowledges in “MASH,” “it couldn’t be helped.”

The wonderful truth is . . . there are more than 100 Great American Films of the last 100 years. Any attempt to pare the list down to the century mark is going to do an injustice to those films that do not make the list. Is Turan right? Do films like “The General,” “Ninotchka,” “Trouble in Paradise,” “Little Shop Around the Corner,” “To Be or Not to Be,” “The Lady Eve,” “Sullivan’s Travels,” “Camille,” “Gunga Din” and at least one film by Astaire and Rogers, or Busby Berkeley or Garbo deserve to be on the list? Absolutely. And what about the movies Turan missed? What about a Laurel and Hardy movie? Or Mae West? Or W.C. Fields? Surely he didn’t mean to exclude them? Scandalous!

What is more, in adding all these “deserving” movies, did Turan once mention which three or 15 or 27 of the films on the AFI list he would remove to make room for his list of omissions? Perhaps “Giant” or “Wuthering Heights” or maybe one of the three Chaplin films? Or surely “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” ’cause Spielberg’s got enough already!

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The paradox here is that making such a list is an impossible task. The AFI knew this. So it opted to use another flawed system: democracy. It felt people should vote on this list rather than create one themselves by royal proclamation. Seems fair. Until you realize that in a democratic society, there is inevitably going to be a rather large number of people--let’s call them the minority--who are not going to be happy.

The way I look at the whole thing is that, Wow! the AFI attempted to create an event that would acknowledge and pay tribute to the 100th anniversary of a medium that is arguably the most influential of our century; that the AFI’s creation fostered a new and healthy discussion of this art form; that because of the AFI, more people are interested in film and may even see some of these wonderful and oft-forgotten movies; and that in the process, the AFI will procure funding for itself, an effort that I believe is both noble and worthy.

So why not focus on the good that the AFI has done and point out the real shame: that an organization whose creation came from an act of Congress is now being forsaken by that very body and is forced to get into a business it was never meant to be in--the one of raising money. Our government’s support of this important institution has dwindled to the embarrassing: a mere $40,000 a year.

So let us rail against that injustice. Not against democracy or the impossibility of an absolute list of 100 greatest anything. And along the way, let us remember that nothing and no one is perfect. Except for God, and of course, the occasional critic.

Dann Netter is a TV producer and one of the producers of last Tuesday’s AFI special on the top 100 American films.