Can You Still Watch Your Old Favorite Movies? by David Corn July 31, 2021 
A publicity still from The French Connection. 20th Century Fox/Getty Images. I recently watched one of my favorite movies from decades ago: The French Connection. I’m not sure when I’d last seen the 1971 cops-chasing-drug-dealers thriller, which swept the Academy Awards, winning best director (William Friedkin), best actor (Gene Hackman), best picture, best editing, and best adapted screenplay, and I wondered if the film would hold up 50 years later. Friedkin’s gritty documentary-style directing, pioneering at the time, still comes across as crisp and tense. Hackman’s and co-star Roy Scheider’s performances, respectively, of tough-guy police detectives Popeye Doyle and Cloudy Russo are on the money. And that famous car chase—actually, a chase between a car and a subway train on an elevated track—established a gold standard for this cinematic workhorse.
But the film’s plot now appears a bit too straightforward; there are few twists. And, more important, the movie is loaded with abuses and misconduct that were once taken for granted. It was tough to watch Doyle hurling the n-word and other racial epithets at civilians he regularly roughed up in pursuit of narcotics smugglers. There’s another scene in which he shoots a suspected drug trafficker in the back. Uh, you can’t do that, can you? And during the final clash, Doyle accidentally shoots a federal agent—seemingly fatally—and nothing happens.
So any nostalgia I might have enjoyed was undercut by very cringey moments. In this time of BLM and concern over police abuse, it’s tough to cheer for Popeye and overlook his excesses. But reconnecting—or disconnecting—with this movie put me on a Gene Hackman jag. Soon afterward, I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, the 1974 film in which Hackman stars as a privacy-obsessed surveillance consultant whose snooping leads to the discovery of a murder plot. The film—shot while Coppola was also working on The Godfather Part II—is a marvelous exploration of the moral implications of the burgeoning surveillance state, and it remains sharply relevant decades later. The Conversation is relatively free of scenes that today provoke a wince. Although, like many past and present movies, it fails the Bechdel test, which measures the substantive representation of women in a film.
Was I being too hard on The French Connection? Have I become a caricature of a squeamish liberal, too eager to overemphasize anachronistic moments at the expense of the grander artistic picture? As our culture changes, how we perceive—and enjoy—highly acclaimed works of the past changes. There’s nothing wrong with that, though some conservatives decry this as PCish canceling. But, of course, there are no rules for these ongoing examinations, and reevaluations can be tricky and contentious. (Huckleberry Finn, anyone?) Look at the BS debate the Republicans tried to orchestrate when the publisher of Dr. Seuss discontinued several books that contained racist imagery that once was routine. Even more recent content has come under what-do-we-think-now scrutiny. “In light of all the upheaval over workplace harassment, with people (in some industries, sometimes) finally having the courage to come forward and name abusers, I have to say The Office is hard to watch,” Jaya Saxena wrote in GQ in 2018. “Whereas it was once seen as exaggeration, it’s now run up against Poe’s Law: too close to be satire.”
Some movies and shows certainly deserve to be trash-canned. When my kids were young, our family went on a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers spree. After running through most of their films, I turned to Holiday Inn, which stars Astaire and Bing Crosby and features the tune “White Christmas.” I didn’t realize the 1942 movie includes an infamous scene with Crosby performing in blackface. Bye-bye, Bing. I tossed the DVD in the garbage. (In 2018, then–British Prime Minister Theresa May named Holiday Inn as her favorite Christmas flick and was justifiably slammed for that.)
When the talented Charles Grodin died recently, I felt a pang of sadness at the passing of another actor whose work I’ve relished. In his honor, I put on his 1988 film Midnight Run, another of my old favorites. It’s an exhilarating, feel-good on-the-road buddy picture, with Grodin playing an accountant for the Mafia who stole from his boss and gave the loot to charities. Robert De Niro co-stars as a down-on-his-luck bounty hunter who must get the accountant to a court appearance while they’re being pursued by mobsters. Wonderful cross-country hijinks ensue. What’s most notable is the fabulous repartee between Grodin and De Niro, which shines for its timing, its nuance, and the obvious respect each actor has for the other. No one is trying to steal a scene here. Their back-and-forth dialogue should be taught in acting and screenwriting classes.
As I watched Midnight Run, my college-age daughter joined me, and initially I was glad for the company. Then came a stab of anxiety. “Oh shit,” I thought, “this movie must be full of problematic references to race and gender, and that’s not going to fly.” Yet it wasn’t. She liked the film so much that when it was over, she asked if there was a sequel. Unfortunately, no.
Midnight Run and The Conversation have staying power. And while film students should still learn from The French Connection, I don’t mind saying a fond adieu to it. Why be conflicted over an old film? After all, there’s plenty of past content that doesn’t weigh on current sensibilities—and far from enough time to enjoy it all.
Tell me which old favorite movies or television shows are tough for you to watch now. Email me at thisland@motherjones.com 
If you’re enjoying This Land, please help spread the word by forwarding this to your pals, colleagues, and family, and let them know they can sign up for a free trial of This Land here. Dumbass Comment of the Week The most despicable comments of the week came from Fox hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, who each mocked the law enforcement officers who testified about being brutally assaulted by the Trump-incited mob during the January 6 attack on Congress. They deserved a modern-day version of the most famous reproach to a demagogic scoundrel: “Have you no sense of decency...at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”
And if this contest were limited to stupid questions from reporters, Peter Doocy, White House “correspondent” for Fox “News,” would win: 
In the face of all this robust competition, Sarah Huckabee Sanders triumphs in the dumbass category this week. Like many of her fellow GOPers, Sanders, Donald Trump’s former chief propagandist, who is now running for governor in Arkansas, in recent days has been urging people to get vaccinated. Now that the red states—including Arkansas—are experiencing terrible spikes fueled by the Delta variant of the coronavirus, Republicans have belatedly joined the pro-vax chorus. A few days ago, GOP Gov. Kay Ivey of Alabama called out “the unvaccinated folks” for being responsible for the spread. She huffed, "Folks are supposed to have common sense.” Sean Hannity had a nanosecond of sanity and endorsed the COVID-19 vaccination—before returning to the vax-skepticism of Fox. And Sanders joined the parade—with her own artful twist.
In an op-ed for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Sanders made the case for getting jabbed while preserving her Trump credentials by snorting that “Dr. Fauci and the ‘because science says so’ crowd of arrogant, condescending politicians and bureaucrats were wrong about more than their mandates and shutdowns.” She simply cannot surrender in the Trumpy right’s war on science and expertise. And to stay true to the Trump cult, she blamed vaccine hesitancy on…President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris: “No one did more to undercut public confidence in the vaccine than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden doubted that the vaccine would be ‘real,’ while Harris said in a nationally-televised debate that she would not take any vaccine the Trump administration had a hand in creating.”
Has Sanders not been paying attention to Fox News? And no surprise, she got it wrong. Let’s turn to PolitiFact, which recently debunked this right-wing talking point: “Biden and Harris were raising questions not about the vaccines themselves, but about then-President Donald Trump’s rollout of the vaccines and the risk that the effort would become rushed or politicized.”
Blaming Biden and Harris for the reluctance of red staters to get vaccinated is quite the up-is-down move. C’mon. Are Trump voters really taking their cues from the team that defeated their Dear Leader? This is absurd disinformation from the former mouthpiece for a president who uttered more than 30,000 false and misleading statements in office. Sanders obviously learned a lot from her old boss. Mailbag The This Land newsletter is only two months old, but it’s clear which story has so far generated the most response: last week’s lead item: “Has Paul McCartney Finally Won Me Over?” In that article, I explored the decades-long John vs. Paul debate and subjected my position on Team John to critical self-examination. It sparked a lively conversation on Twitter, and, not surprisingly, subscribers had thoughts.
Lesley Gaspar wrote:
John was my Beatle from the git-go, and Paul’s puppy-dog eyes and mugging set my 6-year-old teeth on edge (I was a precocious cynic). I identified with the things you mention, and John’s edginess fed me, somehow, while Paul’s cheerfulness and relatively uncomplicated temperament just seemed like a sellout. I approvingly noted John’s brilliant, sometimes surreal lyrics and contrasted them negatively with Paul’s more simplistic ones.
Anyway, I’m not anywhere as cynical as I was at 6 (“I was so much older then...”), and I still love John, but his flaws and weaknesses as both a person and an artist are clearer to me now. I appreciate Paul way more than I ever thought possible. But these days, neither is my Beatle—that’s George, as it has been since not long after his untimely passing…George speaks to me now as the guy on the outside of that commanding artistic partnership, who was only allowed two songs an album but managed to develop his own distinctive writer’s voice and sensibility.”
Perhaps it can be argued that George had a tougher row than the other non-drumming Beatles and demonstrated more grace as he met that challenge.
Howard Gewirtz chimed in:
As you conclude you can love one without hating the other. They were/are both amazing and talented men, and the third entity, Lennon/McCarthy are more amazing than either of them individually. George Harrison largely came into his own during his solo period “and in the end” everyone knows it was George who turned in the most memorable, standout songs on their last album, Abbey Road: “Something” and “Here Comes the Sun.” But back to Paul, he is so charming with Rick Rubin…He still sounds youthful and brilliant, which was a relief because the Paul in Michael Lindsey Hogg’s Let It Be film was a bit overbearing, pushy, and full of himself. Even Paul apparently worried about that as he was relieved when Peter Jackson told him that the long-buried Let It Be outtakes are full of the lads having a wonderful time with one another. Hogg, as documentary producers all do, decided on his narrative and chose the footage that told his take on the story, and it’s pretty grim and depressing. I’m very much looking for Jackson’s Let It Be [documentary] to give a more joyous, balanced picture.
I, too, am looking forward to Lord of the Ring director Peter Jackson’s upcoming three-part documentary, The Beatles: Get Back, which chronicles the Beatles making Let It Be. It’s based on 56 hours of never-before-seen footage and is due out in November. If you missed the sneak peek released in December, here it is: Claud Scales sent in this note:
I greatly enjoyed your piece on Paul McCartney. My friend Larry Kirwan…wrote a play, later turned into a novel, called Liverpool Fantasy. It's written from the perspective of 1987, imagining a world in which the Beatles never made it. This happened because of a dispute between John and Paul over what should be their second single release. Paul won, it flopped, and the band broke up. Paul then crossed the Atlantic and became a wildly successful Vegas lounge act. One of his accomplishments was writing the theme song for Spiro Agnew's successful presidential campaign…Paul returns to Liverpool in triumph and has a reunion with his old bandmates. George is a Jesuit priest. Ringo soldiers on, playing drums with Gerry and the Pacemakers. John is an alcoholic lay-about who one night runs through the streets naked, shouting "All you need is love!" His son Julian has shaved his head and joined the National Front, becoming a soldier in the race war in Britain's steets…Larry [went on] to form Black 47, which I once described as "a thrash metal hip-hop traditional Irish band." They were successful for 25 years, then dissolved amicably. Larry now devotes himself to writing. His wife June was my daughter Liz's dance teacher in elementary school.
Sorry, Larry, but I’m glad I never saw that play. I wonder if Danny Boyle did. Interesting side note: Black 47, Wikipedia tells us, was one of the few groups to be banned from the legendary NYC punk club CBGB. The owner, Hilly Kristal, apparently said it was “too demonic.”
Want to appear in the next Mailbag? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com MoxieCam™ During a summer storm, someone is worried about thunder. For much of her life, Moxie hasn’t minded the big booms in the sky. But in recent years, she has become nervous when those shockwaves hit. And, no, we will not be getting her a thunder shirt. 
Read Previous Issues of This Land July 29, 2021: Is a country music star encouraging more January 6-like violence?; a civil rights hero more people should know; and more.
July 27, 2021: Are Republicans going to sabotage police reform that doesn’t even go far enough?; how to put a senseless murder to good use; how sober is Liz Phair?; and more.
July 24, 2021: Has Paul McCartney finally won me over?; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Mailbag; MoxieCam™; and more.
July 22, 2021: My bizarre encounter with Rep. Jim Jordan—and why Speaker Pelosi was right to bounce him from the 1/6 committee; celebrating and grieving with musician Steve Earle; and more.
July 20, 2021: The time a Republican president did the right thing to stop an epidemic; Trump’s big narcissism fail; Nelson Algren and Norman Podhoretz; a new psychedelic Beatles-esque tune; and more.
July 17, 2021: Why the Guardian’s Trump-Russia bombshell—dud or not—doesn’t fully matter; Dumbass Comment of the Week; why Bosch works in spite of Bosch; MoxieCam™; and more.
July 15, 2021: Does President Joe Biden really stand with the Cuban people?; the time I really pissed off the Cuban regime; J. Edgar Hoover vs. MLK; one of the best movie reviews of all time; and more.
July 13, 2021: A coming referendum on Donald Trump; a suggestion for Hunter Biden; a new book on how the super-rich screw us all; and more.
July 10, 2021: Why the Republicans are right to be terrified of the new House committee investigating the 1/6 attack; Dumbass Comment of the Week; Joni Mitchell’s Blue 50; and more.
July 7, 2021: How The Summer of Soul counters the GOP’s season of hate; a debate on the recent UFO report; Garry Trudeau, American Dostoyevsky; MoxieCam™; and more.
July 3, 2021: Donald Rumsfeld, Christopher Hitchens, the Iraq War, and me; the perils of taking a home DNA test; Dumbass Comment of the Week; a Springsteen story; and more.
July 1, 2021: Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump Jr., and perjury; Adam Serwer’s new book; Cézanne’s crime scene; and more.
June 29, 2021: How the new UFO report is bad news for UFO believers; my own UFO tale; HBO Max’s Hacks; an anti-racist anthem; and more.
June 26, 2021: Is Josh Hawley dumb or evil? (The answer is not both); Dumbassery that encourages mass “executions” in the United States; renowned guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson’s new tour and new book (and his claim regarding the best strings arrangement ever on a popular song); MoxieCam™ (before and after photos!); and more.
June 24, 2021: How an alleged 1/6 conspirator who called for executing Trump’s foes hooked up with a prominent Republican Party official; new Los Lobos; and more.
June 22, 2021: Why the GOP is pushing “political apartheid”; Ted Cruz wins Dumbass Comment of the Week; recommendations for an Apple TV+ series and a book on the curious origins of the universe; the first Clash tour of the United States (and being trapped in a van driven by a punk on acid); MoxieCam™; and more.
Got suggestions, comments, complaints, tips related to any of the above, or anything else? Email me at thisland@motherjones.com.
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