TWILIGHT TIME
In Bill Desowitz’s “Twilight of a Bygone Era” (March 8), he speaks of a time when movies weren’t so cut-and-paste. I’m 35, but I still remember an era when movies were often about something more than just aliens, explosions and guns.
Even in movies where those things did appear (“Taxi Driver, “Close Encounters,” “Apocalypse Now”), the films themselves didn’t seem just pap, as they do now. One thing left out in the article is that, though Hollywood is embracing foreign grosses of American films like mad, we should all acknowledge that trying to make “world movies” dumbs them down, as much of the world is sub-literate.
Only capitalists in Hollywood wouldn’t blink at the proposition of selling to people who can’t read, write or feed or clothe their families properly, films that excite them with fireballs, car chases, little dialogue (dubbed or not) and almost no plot. It’s more than a little pathetic.
MICHAEL HUENS
Los Angeles
Only good movies
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