|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Good Cinema:
Dr. Denny Wayman's a senior pastor and psychologist at the free Methodist Church and Hal Conklin's a former mayor and councilman. Once a week, they congregate in another house of worship looking for movies that put traditional values above sex and violence.
|
|
 |    |
|
Marlow [host]: Ethics aside, everyone here would agree that sex and violence sells?
Schickel: Not necessarily. I don't think so. I mean, sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
Zavala [host]: Why do they use it so much then?
Schickel: Lack of imagination. (laughter)
Zavala: And it does pay off in many ways, doesn't it?
Schickel: Well, it -- you know, it's like these guys. They put movies through this particular narrow filter. I mean, there is --
Zavala: -- but they have a right to do that, no?
Schickel: Did I say to cut them off? (laughter) No, I didn't. (laughter) I just think that, you know, you can't look at a movie like "Pulp Fiction" in terms of its violence. I mean, actually you could make quite a powerful ethical case for "Pulp Fiction". I'm sure you can. But it's a subtle case and it's not a case where you've got light sabers and guys having a duel and one guy's clearly defined as right and one is clearly defined as wrong. But I mean, if you're asking me is that a better movie than "Mississippi Burning"? Yeah, I think it is. It's subtler, it's smarter and, whatever lesson it teaches, it teaches you that it's a good movie.
Huffington: I want to take up something that Richard said before we went to that segment from Santa Barbara. This is the fact that you don't believe that movies can have a sort of redemptive, transformational power. This is like saying that art can't have a redemptive, transformational power --
Schickel: -- yeah, I don't think it does either. (laughter) I think it's a pathetic rationale for art.
Huffington: But we've had some major debate coming through centuries and there's always been two views. One is sort of art for art's sake, to simplify it, and the other is art for the sake of some larger purpose, but not to be didactic or preachy. But if you take just one example, in nineteenth century England, Benjamin Disraeli before he ran for prime minister wrote a novel called "Sybil"" which became the sort of run-away success of the times and it changed how England viewed child labor, a lot of social injustice, through that one novel. So today, rather than done through novels, it would be done through movies. If they --
Zavala: -- so if they have an impact, should they therefore take their moral responsibility more seriously?
Selleck: Yeah, they should take it seriously. I mean, sex and violence may sell, but it will sell a lot better in a good movie.
Marlow: Have you consciously made those kinds of choices in the roles you've taken? In "Magnum, P.I.", there was violence there, but not --
Selleck: -- well, we had our share. I think you always filter it through, or should filter it through, some sort of screening process. That being said, if everybody played perfect characters who didn't do anything wrong, we wouldn't have any lessons to learn. The journey of character goes on. I believe films are about people and, if you don't care about the people, you're probably not going to care about the movie no matter how --
Marlow: -- so there's social value of seeing violence at times?
Selleck: Well, it isn't a question of whether a film is violent or not violent. It's a question of the result on an audience when they walk out of the theater. Sometimes in a movie like "Pulp Fiction", the result can be quite different than the content they saw. But that is so subjective, everybody I think in our industry could spend a little more time thinking about what they should do as opposed to what they can do. I mean, we can do almost everything. That being said, everybody's idea of should is going to be different.
|
|
|
|
