As some of you may already be aware, my capsule summary of The Brown Bunny from September, 2003 was singled out by Roger Ebert in his August 27th, 2004 review of the film. If you've been waiting to read my retort in his Movie Answer Man column, don't hold your breath: there's nothing much I could say that wouldn't come out sounding smug and/or disingenuous. But to all those who wrote asking how I was "holding up," don't cry for me, Argentina: getting reprimanded in print by someone so venerated is nothing less than an honour, and it's not like I didn't provoke him. That being said, since I had taken Ebert to task for upbraiding The Brown Bunny, a film in which he finally sees some worth now that its running time has been judiciously pruned, I find it curious that he ignored the closing statement of my cap altogether: "In Ebert's defense, the version I saw was thirty minutes shorter." -Bill Chambers

If it wouldn't be too much to ask, would you mind attempting to be even the least bit knowledgeable about

1. films
2. film history
3. film criticism
4. other film critics, and
5. film controversies

before attempting dull-witted commentary upon them? A little knowledge might improve the quality of your observations.
Steve

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Hear, hear to Roger Ebert giving you a good bitchslapping. Almost made your pathetic, pretentious review worth it.
Jim

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If I were Ebert, I would've gone on to tell you how misguided your reviews of 21 Grams and Dogville (to name the only two that I've read (and that should tell you something)) are, not that you deserve even the time of day from him.
Ari

Bill responds: You get the picture. To the peanut gallery, all I can say is you're insulting him a hell of a lot worse than I did by presuming that his comprehensive rebuttal is worth more with your two cents factored in.

Thank you for your wonderful review of the criminally overrated Garden State. As the audience at my screening burst into applause, I thought I was the only one who found it cutesy, pretentious, and unbearably smug. Given its high praise on Rotten Tomatoes, I thought for sure that no one had the courage to see it for what it was: phony, derivative, and wholly divorced from reality. And why must "the enlightened" always suffer from some kind of affliction? It's yet another example of the Noble Savage syndrome.
Matt

(Editor's Note: The quasi-poetic subject-heading of this message--"How Has the Night Offended?"--has become something of a running joke within FFC, in large part because it's hard to take the e-mail's author at all seriously when he misspells the name of the filmmaker he's ostensibly defending. For future reference: ShyamalAn; SpielbErg; SoderbergH; ScorSese. "Todd" only validated our suspicion that M. Night Shyamalan counts on his audience not displaying any meticulousness.) I shudder to think how much you despise The Village and apparently the artist behind it as well. Did Shyamalin [sic] wrong you in a past life? I have heard mixed reviews on this film-either you hate it or love it--but I was not aware that those who hated it were of the same ilk and temperament as yourself. Prior to your review I thought that those who despised the movie were on the same playing field as those who "just didn't get" The Blair Witch Project. Therefore, I believed the issue to simply be one of imagination receptors--some people love it all spelled out for them, others want it kept mostly hidden (e.g. The Mothman Prophecies). I feel like you are mostly against something you believe M. Night Shyamalin [sic] is preaching. But hopefully you won't sacrifice potential appreciation for art and talent for your disagreement with the message.

Even the message you glean doesn't seem to me like what the director was going for. I believe the village and its elders are being hugely indicted for their willingness to cause others--their own children!--to be led out onto a platform of reality that is completely false. The only reason I can come up with that you came to your particular conclusion is that Shyamalin [sic] does not make villains of those isolationistic leaders. But that is actually one of the most beautiful things about his movie. His understanding that sometimes well-intentioned people create strategies that lead them to the same or worse harm than that which they were fleeing is an honorable and rare artistic gift. It's too bad you didn't give him the same treatment. Do you not understand the pain and desperation of people who have lost preciousness to a ruthless world? Is that so foreign to you? Is it Pollyannaish to call pain, pain? To call greed, greed? I found the movie to be beautifully shot. I'm sorry you missed that. Must every movie be a throwback to some other movie? Do you really see this director as stealing ideas from others? He clearly has a style of his own. Granted, he may take himself a bit too seriously, and he may have an ego problem--let's not let that get in the way of us acknowledging, celebrating, and enjoying the devices and elements he utilizes so well in telling us captivating stories about what frightens us and what we do to control our lives.
Todd

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I don't know, man, your review of The Village would have more credence if it weren't so shrill. You sound positively angry, as though Shyamalan has stolen something from you or owes you something that he refuses to pay back. You talk about him espousing something he is obviously criticizing and you seem to be furious with him for trying to inject a story or ideas or ambition beyond making a buck into his movie! I mean, shit, I say God bless the guy for trying to make a big Hollywood summer movie that has more brains than The Chronicles of Riddick. I'm not saying that noble intentions a good movie make, but you seem to be saying that ambition makes a movie bad. Be careful you don't wind up on the ridiculous side of history with those critics who are laughed at now for being outraged by Hitchcock or Beethoven or Shakespeare. I'm not saying that Shyamalan is at their level, but each had his critics, too, who said very similar things to what you're saying about Shyamalan. Heck, say he fell short. I disagree, but that's all right. But with all that vitriol, it seems like something personal, and you yourself seem to be lacking the sensitivity or originality of thought that you seem to be taking him to task for not having. The overriding sense you come away with in your review is not that you thought the movie failed for these reasons--but that you just don't like Shyamalan and maybe are even jealous of him.
Mike

Walter Chaw responds: For the record, I think Shyamalan is a helluva filmmaker--I even say so in the review. But I think his ego has gotten the better of him the last two films; he's regressed to Wide Awake, and that's a bad place to be. In another time and place, I gave both The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable four stars out of four, felt they were brilliant, thoughtful, masterful--the comparisons to Hitchcock were fitting back then. Suddenly, his name is getting bigger than the titles of his films--suddenly, his face is appearing on the boxes of his DVDs and within the promotional art for his pictures. Suddenly, he's telling people to fuck off if they have a problem with his logic. And now M. Night is talking about God. It isn't ambition, per se, it's hubris. All of his subtext is text--you wanna talk about the 9/11 America analogy in his picture? He's already done it for you. When you empty your basement and put it on display, you don't have anything left in the basement, if you know what I mean. It's impossible to analyze The Village or Signs because what they're about is what they're about. There are no great ideas in these films, no great movements, no great revelations. What there are, are gimmicks. Shakespeare dealt in undercurrents, so did Hitchcock.

You warn me about legacy, let me warn you, too. Careful you don't fall on the side of people championing guys like Michael Cimino. Believe me, for a lot of people he was the Second Coming and they used a lot of the same words to describe him that they're using to characterize Shyamalan. But Cimino started reading his own press, and though he had a few folks who thought Heaven's Gate was a masterpiece, y'know what? It really isn't. If you have the inclination, check out my reviews of Dario Argento's work, or Tarantino's, or George Romero's, or even Sam Raimi's. (I take a great deal of joy from genre pieces.) Then re-assess, again only if you're so inclined, why it is that I've come down so hard on Mr. S. Could be that I care more--and he's really let me down...

Thank you for your insightful review of The Belly of an Architect. May I add that Étienne-Louis Boullée is not an obscure guy. He is one of the most influential European architects of the 18th--i.e. Napoleonic--century along with some others whose plans were equally too grandiose to be built. This "Revolution Architecture" still exercised an enormous influence. These artists wanted to build ideas (one of them, Lequeu, even drew plans for a stable in form of a gigantic classicistic cow) and break away from the classical Vitruvian formula by making more sculptural buildings that fully embody what they house. Idea and form become one. (This is also the time when Galen claimed that your character is signalled by your facial features.) What happened, though, was that the European restoration did not really buy into these concepts, since it was interested in re-establishing the old order. However, the tyrants of the 20th century--Hitler chief among them--instantly embraced this kind of architecture, planning gigantic domes and avenues to represent and further their ideas. The Louvre glass pyramid in its current form is a late tribute to Revolution Architecture. And those diners along U.S. highways built as giant oranges or coffeepots are based on the same concept of identity of form and content. Finally, back to Greenaway: I think the ambiguities you talk about and Caspasian's fascist penchants are already present in the material of the exhibition these two men are working on.
Sabine

Travis Hoover responds: Oops. Not being as well-versed in architecture as I am in film, I was pretty much left with only the evidence offered by the film's dialogue, much of which refers to Boullée's apparent non-celebrity status--I realize now that meant among non-experts in the field (like a certain FILM FREAK CENTRAL reviewer). Apologies for my gaffe. As for the intimations of fascism in Boullée, I feel the film crosses its wires on that point, teasing us with his connection to Albert Speer only to yank it away to provide Kracklite a moral exit and a differentiation from the explicitly fascist Caspasian. If that makes sense.