"At the risk of being labeled a scold – the ultimate in uncool – I have to ask: before cashing those big checks, shouldn’t we at least pause to consider what we are saying with our movies about the value of life and the pleasures of mayhem?"
That was Mike White chiming in via The New York Times Op-Ed section regarding the media’s partial responsibility for the Virginia Tech massacre. I think he’s right insofar as it’d be better for the world if Hollywood made more thoughtful pictures like Claire’s Knee every now and then, but, seeing as how Hollywood can’t make Claire’s Knee for obvious reasons (French people don’t shower and are therefore savages), I suppose we’ll have to make due with the occasional Chuck & Buck, which challenged my deep-seated notions about creepy childhood friends who, once upon a time, pressured me to blow them.
Unfortunately, Mike, Hollywood will keep churning out the horror shows as long as teenage boys keep showing up to delight in them, so you might as well resign yourself to the fact that Oldboy will kill again (in the guise of another disaffected youth). But Reese Witherspoon is doing her part! Her Type A Films just snapped up the rights to Rebecca Godfrey’s Under the Bridge, a journalistic investigation into the murder of a fourteen-year-old girl in British Columbia – they murder in British Columbia? – by her own classmates. It’s sure to be a chilling look into aimless, misspent youth as it is commonly incited to violent acts by E.C. Comics, The Rolling Stones and Merv Griffin.
Actually, the material sounds entirely worthwhile. I’m just doling out the undeserved snark in lieu of anything interesting to say.
Witherspoon may just produce. Catherine Hardwicke is being eyed to direct.