My Bloody Valentine

In 1971, the Canadian Film Development Corporation received $10 million to aid in creating a feature film industry in Canada that would garner recognition internationally. In addition, in 1974, new tax shelter laws increased the Capitol Cost Allowance for money used in the production of movies from 30% to 100%. This resulted in an impressive output of product as all kinds of filmmakers capitalized on this opportunity. It is estimated that from the early 1970s through the 1980s, 345 films were made in Canada.

Horror movies were among some of the most popular ones to come out of this boom, specifically the slasher subgenre with Bob Clark’s landmark effort Black Christmas (1974). This led to many others, most notably Prom Night (1980), Terror Train (1980), and My Bloody Valentine (1981). The latter was particularly memorable for being set during Valentine’s Day and having several minutes of footage featuring gore and violence cut by the MPAA to avoid an X rating.

The movie gets right to it as two miners go off on their own deep within the mine. One – a woman – partially undresses and seduces the other who keeps his gear on. It’s a slow seduction scene that is heavily eroticized until the miner impales his lover on the end of his pickaxe, piercing her breast.

It is two days before Valentine’s Day and the hardworking people of the small mining town Valentine Bluffs are getting ready for the big dance – the first one in 20 years. The cast of largely unknown actors are instantly believable as hardworking, hard-playing blue-collar folks, complete with varying degrees of thick Canadian accent.

However, Mayor Hanniger (Larry Reynolds) and police chief Jake Newby (Don Francks) get an anonymous box of chocolates that contains a human heart and a warning: “From the heart comes a warning filled with bloody good cheer / Remember what happened as the 14th draws near.” Even the bartender at the local watering hole warns of the town being cursed and recounts a tale of an accident in the mine that occurred 20 years ago during the Valentine’s Day Dance and that killed four men and drove one insane – Harry Warden. He killed the two supervisors and stalks the town every February 14 in case someone is foolish enough to have another dance. The story is part town history and part local legend.

Pretty soon, people start dying and it looks like ol’ Harry is back in town, or is someone else imitating him? Of course, the sheriff doesn’t want to call for extra help for fear it will create a panic and even covers up the cause of death of the launderette owner in one of the dumbest moves since the Mayor of Amity kept the beach open in Jaws (1975).

Director George Mihalka inserts memorable touches of local color, like the three friends that cook their food on top of a warm car engine. He also shows the tension that exists among the locals, like T.J. (Paul Kelman), who went off to the West Coast to make it on his own only to come back and find his girlfriend Sarah (Lori Hallier) going out with his best friend Axel (Neil Affleck). It is these mini-soap operas that flesh out the characters and the relationships between them so that they aren’t just anonymous victims to be picked off by the killer. Some of them even act suspicious, raising questions about whether one of them is the killer or not.

The cast is populated by a few future notable Canadian thespians, like Cynthia Dale (Street Legal), Keith Knight (Meatballs), and Alf Humphreys (First Blood) who all enjoyed diverse and prolific character acting careers. Veteran actor Don Francks (Finian’s Rainbow) was the biggest name in the cast at the time, giving the movie some legitimacy in the plumb role of the sheriff that tries to cover up the truth. The younger actors do a good job of playing a believable tight group of friends. It’s the way they play off each other with a familiarity that comes from friends that have known each other all their lives.

I like that Mihalka shows the locals working in the mine, which gives My Bloody Valentine an authenticity that grounds it while all these gory murders occur. The no frills direction also keeps things grounded as the filmmakers never forget to keep the focus on the characters and the story. While most ‘80s slashers look cheap, this one is well-directed and shot by Rodney Gibbons, setting an ominous mood at the right times and during the other times depicting a slice-of-life look at a small mining town.

Inspired by John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), My Bloody Valentine occasionally employs point-of-view murders. It also features some rather creative kills, like the owner of the local launderette stuffed in one of the dryers, her skin scorched. Another victim is drowned in a pot of boiling hot dog water. Mihalka uses the dark, dank mine for maximum effect during the tense climax. The claustrophobic setting only enhances the terror as he employs jump scares and fake outs as Harry stalks the group of friends in the mine.

Director George Mihalka had a two-picture deal with producer John Dunning and when the first one – a comedy – stalled because one of the screenwriters had health problems, the second one went first instead. He was given an outline for a story called The Secret written by Stephen Miller and was told that Paramount Pictures was interested but only if it could be ready for a February 14 release. It was late July and there was no screenplay.

Dunning brought in Los Angeles writer John Beaird who started working on a first draft while the line producer and production designer scouted locations in Nova Scotia. The only place they could get coal mines was on Cape Breton Island. They knew that a few were being decommissioned and ended up in North Sydney with the Princess Mine that was about to be converted into a museum. They met with mine experts who pointed out things to them that they used in the movie to give it authenticity.

Filming began in mid-September 1980 and was a challenge not only because of time constraints but shooting in the mine was dangerous with the possibility of methane gas buildup. No lighting fixtures could be more than 25 watts because of the danger of sparking. The production used lime dust to prevent sparking but it would get in people’s lungs and eyes. In addition, at that time of year it also got quite cold down in the mine. Principal photography was finished at the end of October/early November.

The producers sent a cut of My Bloody Valentine to the MPAA who told them that it would get an X rating unless they cut out some of the gore and violence. The popularity of bloody slasher movies like Friday the 13th (1980) and the murder of John Lennon caused a significant backlash against movie violence and Mihalka believes that his movie was punished as a result. The MPAA still wasn’t satisfied and the movie underwent several more edits with approximately nine minutes of footage removed, some of which was reinstated on the 2009 DVD and some lost forever.

As a kid I can remember the movie’s iconic poster and its notorious reputation as a particularly violent horror movie. The added footage of gore and violence in the 2009 DVD certainly enhances this reputation. My Bloody Valentine still holds up as one of the better slasher movies from the ‘80s with its novel setting and the Valentine’s Day festivities. It was later remade into a lackluster movie that was released in 2009 replacing the realistic-looking cast with one populated by attractive young stars and starlets while also diluting the original’s political commentary.

Mihalka has jokingly referred to My Bloody Valentine as The Deer Hunter (1978) of horror films and he’s not entirely wrong as his movie deals with some of the same issues – blue collar protagonists in a small town where the main industry is drying up – only instead of having harrowing scenes of Russian Roulette, he employs a series of graphic deaths that begin with the wrong end of a pickaxe. This gives My Bloody Valentine a little more depth than your typical slasher movie and is one of the reasons it remains highly regarded among fans of the genre.

SOURCES

Burrell, James. “Heartstopper! Harry Warden’s Reign of Terror Continues.” Rue Morgue. January/February 2009.

“Canuxploitation: The Primer.” Canuxploitation!

“Interview: George Mihalka.” Canuxploitation! May 9, 2009.

“My Bloody Memories: An Interview with Director George Mihalka.” Terror Trap. January 2005.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz

Canadian author Mordecai Richler let his best friend and roommate Ted Kotcheff read the manuscript of his fourth novel, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz in 1958. At the time, they were sharing a flat in London, England and the latter proclaimed it to be “the best Canadian novel ever written.” Others felt the same way, too. It was published in 1959 and went on to become one of the most highly regarded examples of Canadian literature. Described as Canada’s answer to The Catcher in the Rye, it chronicles the misadventures of a scrappy young Jewish kid from the streets of Montreal.

Ever since he first read Richler’s manuscript, Kotcheff had wanted to adapt it into a film and finally got the chance in 1974 with a young Richard Dreyfuss in the title role. The actor famously was so disappointed with his own performance that he feared it could potentially end his promising movie career. He had turned down a pivotal role in Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975) and begged to be cast in the film before any negative buzz from Duddy Kravitz could reach the powers that be. The rest is history and Kotcheff’s film not only became the most commercially successful Canadian film at that time, but also features what might arguably be Dreyfuss’ best performance.

The film immediately immerses us in the sights and sounds of 1950s Montreal by showing how the whole neighborhood comes out to see the cadet marching band making its way through the streets. We see kids playing on the street, men talking on the street corner and old women buying produce at the fruit market. Duddy Kravitz (Dreyfuss) slips away from the parade to a local deli where his taxi cab driver father Max (Jack Warden) is holding court, telling an engrossing story. The veteran character actor commands the screen with his animated style of storytelling that harkens back to a time when guys like him would tell colorful tales in bars and delis.

Duddy hangs out with his grandfather (Zvee Scooler) who imparts pearls of wisdom like, “A man without land is nobody.” He’s one of the few adults Duddy respects and the words really make a big impact on the young man. He gets a summer job as a waiter at a Jewish resort hotel in the Laurentian Mountains – a world away from the streets of Montreal – where he uses his hustling skills to make money on the side. He soon finds that there’s a definite pecking order with the waiters, all of whom study at McGill University and look down at the working class kid. This includes the cook who gives the other waiters their orders first. However, Duddy is a fast learner and works harder and earns more money than the others by knowing which wheels to grease.

Duddy is full of quick rich schemes, from filming bar mitzvahs to selling pinball machines. He’s got street smarts, which rubs his uncle Benjy (Joseph Wiseman) the wrong way and lets his nephew know it: “You’re a born pusher, a little Jew boy on the make and guys like you make me feel sick and ashamed.” This provokes Duddy to say, “Oh, you lousy, intelligent people! You liars! Your books and your socialism and your sneers, you can be one more pain in the ass, you know that?” It’s the summer resort all over again with the educated university students laughing at Duddy. He feels the same sense of superiority from his uncle. It is a wonderfully delivered speech from Dreyfuss as the scene underlines one of the film’s central themes – street smarts vs. intellectualism.

Richard Dreyfuss’ Duddy is a whirlwind of energy and the actor instills the character with a vitality that is exciting to watch. It’s hard not to get caught up in his dreams of making money even if they turn out to be schemes more than anything else. The actor conveys a confidence and bravado that often comes from being young with nothing to lose and this ideally suited a character like Duddy. Dreyfuss isn’t afraid to show the lows that come with the euphoric highs, like how Duddy vomits after losing all his money in a roulette game.

Duddy Kravitz makes a point of showing the distinction between classes, most significantly Duddy’s working class neighborhood vs. the rich, snobby university students that work at the resort. He resents this and, as a result, always has something to prove. Father figures also play a prominent role in the film as Duddy’s dad hardly gives his son the time of day and so the young man looks to people like his grandfather or an alcoholic blacklisted film director (a hilariously bitter Denholm Elliott) for approval and wisdom, which makes him something of a tragic figure as the impetus for what he does comes out of trying to impress his father.

Ted Kotcheff was born and raised in Toronto and wanted to be a film director but ended up working for the CBC in the mid-1950s directing live television dramas. There was no film industry in Canada at the time and so he moved to London, England to learn about making movies. It was there that he met, became friends with and roomed with writer Mordecai Richler in 1958. At the time, the author was writing The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz and when he was finished, let Kotcheff read it. The director told Richler, “This is the best Canadian novel ever written. Someday I am going to go back to Canada and film it.”

For years, Kotcheff tried to get Duddy Kravitz made but potential producers feared that the subject matter might be misconstrued as being anti-Semitic, much like the accusations leveled at Richler when his novel was published. One American producer – Samuel Z. Arkoff – wanted to change Duddy Kravitz to a Greek character. Finally, the Canadian Film Development Corp., which was government financed, agreed to help back it and National Film Board of Canada veteran John Kemeny agreed to produce it. However, the existing screenplay needed work and Richler came in to rewrite it in six weeks. Kotcheff was able to make the film on a thrifty $900,000 budget.

The filmmaker had no problem finding the supporting cast but found choosing the right actor to play the titular character a challenge because he would have to make the audience care for a guy that does awful things over the course of the film. Time was running out when a friend of Kotcheff’s, casting agent Lynn Stalmaster, recommended a young actor by the name of Richard Dreyfuss, fresh from appear in George Lucas’ American Graffiti (1973). Kotcheff remembered, “As soon as he opened his mouth it was electrifying. Richard had everything: the core of Duddy’s drive and obsession.” The actor recalled, “As soon as I read the script, I realized I was holding in my hands the greatest part ever offered to a young actor.” Dreyfuss had never heard of the book and “got on a train, read the book and spent the rest of the time on the train writing ‘Add this, add this, add this’ because the novel was so rich.”

At the time, Dreyfuss had repeated turned down a role in Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film Jaws but had a change of heart when he saw himself in Duddy Kravitz. He thought that his performance was so bad that he would never work in film again. “I thought it was a wonderful movie but I didn’t like my performance because I had no experience in watching me for that amount of time. I saw all the things I didn’t do. I didn’t see it as story-telling.” He begged Spielberg to cast him in Jaws.

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz was a box office hit in both Canada and the United States. It was also named Canada’s Best Film of 1974, won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, and was nominated for an Academy Award for its script. Pauline Kael said of Dreyfuss’ performance: “No matter how phenomenal Richard Dreyfuss is in other roles, it’s not likely that he’ll ever top his performance in this teeming, energetic Canadian film.” Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars and wrote, “It’s a little too sloppy, and occasionally too obvious, to qualify as a great film, but it’s a good and entertaining one, and it leaves us thinking that Duddy Kravitz might amount to something after all, should he ever grow up.” In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby found it an “alternately sad and hilarious movie of dreams rampant.”

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz is about a selfish opportunist, a young man desperate to make money and realize his dreams any way he can and along the way he ends up hurting those close to him, either emotionally or, indirectly, physically. Dreyfuss delivers a fearless performance in a breakout role. In the end, Duddy achieves his goal but at a terrible cost and it seems like a hollow victory at best. The film is a coming-of-age tale with Duddy learning some harsh lessons about life.

SOURCES

Howell, Peter. “Ted Kotcheff Finally Brings The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz to Cannes.” Toronto Star. May 22, 2013.

Johnson, Brian D. “Richard Dreyfuss Owes Jaws to Duddy Kravitz.” Macleans. May 22, 2013.

Knelman, Martin. “The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz Gets New Life.” Toronto Star. February 16, 2013.

Lacey, Liam. “Dreyfuss on Duddy: ‘Roles like that don’t come along very often.’” The Globe and Mail. May 22, 2013.

Enemy

As a rather astute reviewer over at The Playlist observed, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) was the best thing to ever happen to Jake Gyllenhaal’s career. The much-hyped studio blockbuster was a commercial and critical failure prompting the actor to take stock of his career. He began working with directors that thought outside the box (Duncan Jones) and films that subverted their genres (End of Watch). This deliberate decision to turn his back on mainstream movies in favor of more challenging fare culminated with Enemy (2013), a psychological thriller by Canadian filmmaker Denis Villeneuve. With a storyline that involves a man discovering he has a doppelganger, which leads to their lives intersecting in ways that threatens their very existence, Enemy invokes the Harlan Ellison short story “Shatterday,” and, in particular, its adaptation that aired on the mid-1980s anthology television show, The New Twilight Zone. While Villeneuve’s film exists very much in the thriller genre, there is a pervasive feeling of dread and unease reminiscent of David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) that sees Enemy crossover into the horror genre.

An ominous vibe is established right from the get-go with shots of the Toronto skyline enshrouded in smog through a sickly yellow filter coupled with a menacing, minimalist score by Daniel Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans that puts you immediately on edge. College history professor Adam Bell (Jake Gyllenhaal) is teaching a class about how dictatorships work, which he claims, among other things, involves a repeating pattern that keeps the population busy through lower education, entertainment, limited culture, and censoring information as well as any kind of self-expression. In a way, his life is that of a self-imposed dictatorship as he repeats the same routine – he teaches his class, has dinner with his girlfriend Mary (Melanie Laurent), they have sex, and she leaves. It’s a rather banal existence that includes residing in a non-descript apartment among one of many similar-looking buildings. Adam is clearly stuck in a rut and in need of a change.

A fellow teacher (Joshua Peace) strikes up a conversation one day and the man recommends a film for Adam to watch entitled, Where There’s A Will There’s A Way. He watches the movie and notices an actor that looks exactly like him! Intrigued, Adam looks the man up online and finds out that his name is Daniel Saint Claire a.k.a. Anthony Claire, a struggling actor in a troubled marriage with his pregnant wife Helen (Sarah Gadon). Soon, Adam’s obsession with Anthony affects his work and his personal life as he decides to make contact with the actor. At first, he thinks Adam is nothing more than a stalker, but is soon intrigued by this person who sounds exactly like him and arranges a face-to-face meeting. Pretty soon their respective worlds unravel as they dangerously dabble in each other’s lives.

Enemy gives Jake Gyllenhaal a chance to show his range as an actor as he starts off by portraying Adam and Anthony as two men that lead very different lives. The former is a slightly depressed professor while the latter is a confident actor. Gyllenhaal not only relies on wardrobe to differentiate the two men, but also in the way they carry themselves. Adam adopts a kind of defeated posture complete with slightly hunched shoulders while Anthony is self-assured in the way he moves around a room and interacts with his wife. This culminates in the scene where the two men first meet each other and the reaction shots Gyllenhaal gives as Adam and Anthony scope each other out is fascinating to watch. After that meeting, things change dramatically as their identities begin to blur together.

There’s a definite Lynchian vibe with technology portrayed as a menacing presence, the city as a claustrophobic hell and the use of darkness reminiscent of Lost Highway as Adam is sometimes framed in his dimly lit apartment or appears and disappears into the shadows. There is also a perverse streak that manifests itself in a subplot in which Anthony belongs to an exclusive, Eyes Wide Shut-esque sex club that we are teased with early on as a beautiful woman allows a dangerous-looking spider to crawl up her leg. This scene also introduces an unexplained recurring arachnid motif that climaxes with the startling last image of the film.

Filmmaker Denis Villeneuve read Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago’s novel The Double and it inspired him to make Enemy. He was working on another film at the time and hired a screenwriter to adapt the novel. Eventually, another writer by the name of Javier Gullon came on board and wrote a draft with the director. Villeneuve had the daunting task to find the right actor who could play two different characters that looked the same. He saw Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko (2001) and felt that he would be “willing to do strange things,” and marveled at how strong he was in Brokeback Mountain (2005) – two qualities he was looking for in Enemy.

He heard that the actor was available and sent him the screenplay with a manifesto describing what he wanted it to be and how he planned to make it, which intrigued Gyllenhaal. The actor invited Villeneuve to drinks in New York City. While talking over glasses of wine, a woman approached them and claimed that her son looked exactly like the actor. Gyllenhaal thought that this encounter would make a good premise for the film. The two men discovered that they shared similar artistic sensibilities and hit it off.

Villeneuve was looking for a specific urban landscape that was “spreading forever.” He felt that most big cities in North America, like New York, had been overshot, but not Toronto, which had mostly been used to double for other metropolises. He ultimately chose to film in Toronto because it had the “kind of claustrophobic oppressive environment” he was looking for and had some of the same identity issues as the protagonist: “When we were shooting, there were moments you could feel like you were in Sao Paulo or Hong Kong of anywhere. Culturally, it’s pretty extraordinary … and I think that question of identity, in an interesting way, is at the heart of Toronto itself,” commented Gyllenhaal. The distinctive yellowish color scheme came out of a “feeling of sickness, a feeling of nausea, a feeling of discomfort, feeling of paranoia, fear” that Villeneuve got from reading the novel. They were originally going to add CGI smog to the outdoor scenes, but there was so much actual pollution the summer they shot in Toronto they didn’t have to add anything!

Filming had a very loose vibe to it with some takes lasting 20 minutes. In order to create the “artificial world” of the film, Villeneuve needed enough time to work with the actors and allow them to improvise “in order to create sparks of life in front of the camera,” he said in an interview. In the scenes where Gyllenhaal plays opposite himself, computerized motion control technology was used so that any camera moves could be duplicated exactly. The actor would perform half the scene, consult with Villeneuve about which takes were the best to use, change outfits, and shoot the other side with audio playback in a tiny earpiece.

As often happens with doppelganger stories, the other person’s identity begins to eclipse that of the protagonist. Adam begins to question his existence and becomes rightly paranoid of Anthony who starts to take a disquieting interest in the professor’s life. Adam is a slightly sympathetic man that lives in fear of Anthony who is an amoral opportunist. The director does an excellent job of gradually building tension as Adam and Anthony meddle in each other’s lives and there’s an almost tangible feeling of impending doom as the film progresses. What is also interesting is how the existence of these identical-looking and sounding men affects the women in their lives in disturbing ways. Both Melanie Laurent and Sarah Gadon do a nice job of showing how their respective characters gradually sense something amiss about their significant others.

Enemy examines the notion of identity and what happens when what makes you unique is no longer the case. How do you deal with the knowledge that there is someone out there that looks and sounds exactly like you? How does that affect the way you live your life? Villeneuve’s film wrestles with these questions and offers no easy answers, leaving it up to the viewer to figure things out. As he said in an interview, Enemy is “designed to be a puzzle … to be an enigma … You’re supposed to be disoriented. The way we tried to do it, it’s supposed to be an exciting disorientation, not a frustrating one.” Or, as his leading man put it, “To me now, when people go What the fuck? I love that response. And this is a movie like that.”

SOURCES

Braun, Liz. “Jake Gyllenhaal and Denis Villeneuve Enjoying Close Creative Partnership.” Toronto Sun. January 9, 2014.

Braun, Liz. “Denis Villeneuve, Jake Gyllenhaal Team Up Again for Enemy.” Toronto Sun. March 7, 2014.

D’Addario, Daniel. “Jake Gyllenhaal: Movies are like Dreams.” Salon.com. March 10, 2014.

Emmanuele, Julia. “Director Denis Villeneuve Says It’s Normal to Be Confused by Enemy.” Hollywood.com. March 17, 2014.

Jagernauth, Kevin. “Denis Villeneuve Talks Shooting Toronto for Enemy, Dipping into the Subconscious and His Next Projects.” The Playlist. March 20, 2014.

Lawson, David Gregory. “Interview: Denis Villeneuve.” Film Comment. February 26, 2014.

Miller, Julie. “Jake Gyllenhaal Plans to Do Something Crazier Than Be Tasered or Lose 20 Pounds for a Film.” Vanity Fair. March 5, 2014.

Olsen, Mark. “Jake Gyllenhaal Doubles Down in Enemy.” Los Angeles Times. March 15, 2014.

Suskind, Alex. “Jake Gyllenhaal Talks the Duality of Enemy and Why He Wants You to Be Confused.” The Playlist. March 11, 2014

Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media

"It's true that the emperor doesn't have any clothes, but the emperor doesn't like to be told it, and the emperor's lapdogs like The New York Times are not going to enjoy the experience if you do." – Noam Chomsky

With the media frenzy that surrounded Michael Moore’s documentary, Fahrenheit 911 (2004), it is interesting to observe how the controversy that swirled around it (Disney backed it financially but wouldn’t distribute it) had been documented in the press. It made a film like Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) all the more relevant more than ten years after its release. Noam Chomsky is a soft-spoken professor at MIT who has become quite a vocal political activist and critic of the American media. He believes that ordinary people can comprehend and act on the issues he raises, but this is not always an easy task because of the thick web of deceit and doublespeak that the government creates to blind us from "elementary truths" that are right in front of us.

However, he believes people are indoctrinated to be apathetic so that they don't want to make the effort that is needed to see what is really going on. And the media doesn't help either. In fact, one might say that they promote this sense of apathy by showing redundant, repetitive sitcoms and reality shows that turn us into mindless couch potatoes. Now, you might be thinking, this sounds like a lot of conspiracy theory garbage, but Chomsky does not look, act or speak like some crazed conspiracy nut. He is an intelligent man who talks to a BBC reporter the same way he would talk to an ordinary person. Chomsky is a clear and concise speaker who backs up everything he says with an ample supply of facts and unfaltering logic. He is a man dedicated to uncovering the deception and atrocities that are committed by governments all over the world and teaching others how to become aware of and act on these acts.

With funding from the National Film Board of Canada, filmmakers Peter Wintonick and Mark Achbar followed Chomsky around the globe for five years. The result was a two hour and forty-five minute documentary that explored Chomsky's view of the media and his relationship with it. The film acts as a sort of "stepping stone" to Chomsky's books, which are filled with pretty heavy concepts and a lot of information to absorb. The film doesn't water down his ideas, but rather represents them on a visual level so that they are a bit easier to grasp.

The film wisely begins with Chomsky’s origins so that we can get a handle on who he is and where he came from. Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1928, his parents taught Hebrew and as a result Chomsky became fascinated with literature, reading voraciously at an early age (often borrowing 12 books out of the library at once). He grew up during the Depression and was surrounded by a frightening amount of anti-Semitism, which were probably the roots to him championing the cause of the underdog. Growing up, Chomsky would take the train to New York City and hang out at anarchist bookstores on Fourth Avenue, which exposed him to working class ideals and culture. He learned all about politics and how to organize and fight back against oppressive institutions, which he would employ later in life.

Chomsky started as a linguist with the publishing of Syntactic Structures in 1957, which offered a radical new way of looking at grammar. He began to look at language and behaviorism. The established belief at the time was based on the writings of B.F. Skinner who stated in his book Beyond Freedom and Dignity, that "the control of population as a whole must be delegated to specialists—to police, priests, owners, teachers, therapists, and so on, with their specialized reinforcers and their codified contingencies." Skinner suggested a control of speech, creating strict rules for us to follow to make the world a safer place. These rules are really restrictions to ensure that people say what is politically correct so as to ensure advancement. Anyone who deviates or questions the party line is punished.

Chomsky disagreed with Skinner's theory, effectively saying that we are not living in a democracy where the power is exercised by a population free of hierarchy or ordered classes, but actually living in a "regime of dictatorship," as Michel Foucault says. The most powerful class uses violence and coercion to control the masses. Chomsky criticizes these powerful institutions for the abuses they perpetrate on weaker nations and exposes the subtle and not so subtle ways that they go about performing these actions. It is important that we understand, as he puts it, the "nature of power and oppression and terror and destruction in our society," and combat it. The United States in particular, is guilty of all of these abuses, and we are guilty for sitting by and letting it happen.

Once Chomsky realized that the government and media were working hand in hand to support this system of behaviorism, he decided to take an active role. His first major action as a dissident was participating in a weekend anti-war demonstration at the Pentagon on October 19-21, 1967. He was arrested and ended up sharing a cell with Norman Mailer. From that point on Chomsky has never looked back, releasing countless books criticizing the U.S. government, its foreign policy, and how periodicals like The New York Times push these covert actions under the carpet and out of sight from the public.

Chomsky has always remained a sort of character on the fringes, never getting any real media exposure. He has never enjoyed the limelight, emphasizing his ideas more than himself. To this end, he avoids becoming a role-model for other people, instead stressing that you can change your own life. Chomsky rarely does T.V. because it is a medium that does not conform with his way of speaking. He will make a radical statement and then have less than two minutes to support it. Chomsky just does not fit into the two commercial time slot of Nightline. However, on those rare occasions where he does get his time to speak, like on Bill Moyer's show, A World of Ideas, he garners a huge response. Chomsky's appearance generated over 1,000 letters and more requests for transcripts than any other show in the series.

In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky reveals that all major decisions over what happens in our society are controlled by a heavily concentrated network of corporations, conglomerates and investment firms. This network also has considerable influence over positions in the government. Just looking at the big Savings and Loans scandals that plagued the U.S. years ago reveals this link. Corporations also own the media and therefore decide what we watch and hear for the most part. They control the resources and as a result show only what is in their best interests. This is achieved by propaganda or the "manufacturing of consent," a term borrowed from political philosopher and journalist, Walter Lippmann. Manufacturing consent is a technique of control over the masses — in other words, propaganda or the creation of necessary illusions to marginalize the general public or reduce them to apathy in some form. The news media participates in this manufacture of consent by simplifying, selecting, and dramatizing events. Propaganda affects not only the masses, but is targeted at what Chomsky calls the "political class," approximately 20% of the population who are educated and articulated decision makers. These are teachers, managers and so forth — people who vote and whose consent is crucial. The rest of the population follow orders, are apathetic, and rarely vote, therefore paying for their inactions by living in impoverished conditions.

The national media for example, The New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC, or CBS set the general framework for local media to adapt to. The national media ignore and place emphasis on certain issues, in effect shaping history. Another great trick of the trade is rhetoric. Everyone knows about the military doublespeak used in the Persian Gulf War, but the government used it long before then. During the 1980 and 1984 elections, the Reagan administration blasted the Democrats as the "party of special interests," which was negative because special interests were considered a bad quality. However, upon closer scrutiny, they listed special interests as: women, poor people, workers, young people, old people, and ethnic minorities — everybody, but corporations because they belonged to the national interest, and everyone is in favor of that. So, people voted for a person who was against the population and who supported corporations.

Perhaps the most effective part of Manufacturing Consent is a case study of how selective the U.S. media is of what they report. They usually support the party line, rarely criticizing their actions. There are always exceptions to the rule, but the most startling case of selective reporting by the U.S. media is the simultaneous genocides in Cambodia and East Timor between 1975 and 1978. In Cambodia during these years, the Communist backed Khmer Rouge wiped out thousands upon thousands of people, which received tons of press coverage because it was backed by our official enemy. What the press barely covered was the period before that (1973-1975) when U.S. backed forces were wiping out the people of Cambodia. That period was described by the U.S. press as a tranquil, peaceful time. While the Communist backed genocide was occurring in Cambodia, a genocide on a comparable level was taking place in East Timor, a little country north of Australia between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It was hardly covered at all in the U.S. press because it was backed by the U.S. government. They provided 90% of the arms to the Indonesian forces and Ford and Kissinger were even near the area prior to the invasion, but conveniently delayed the attack so that their hasty departure would not look suspicious. By February of 1976, approximately 60,000 people were killed in East Timor. When 1978 rolled around, the killings were approaching real genocidal levels with around 200,000 people dead.

Coverage in The New York Times had a definite bias. Between 1975-79 the Times spent only 70 column inches on East Timor, while 1,175 column inches was dedicated to Cambodia. These stats are just of index listings and don't even cover the length of the actual stories which would probably show an even more dramatic gap. The Times made the excuse that they couldn't possibly cover every story with the same detail and depth, but this act was on such a devastating level that it should not have been ignored. And it wasn't ignored in the international press. Australian media in particular, deserves a large part of the credit for keeping the story alive. At least six Australian journalists lost their lives covering the story that the U.S. media tried to bury.

Manufacturing Consent goes on to not only identify this problem of manufacturing of consent, but how to fight back. Wintonick and Achbar take a look at various forms of alternative media, from the successful independent publishers, South End Press to Alternative Radio that is dedicated to reporting events that the U.S. media conveniently ignores and giving people like Noam Chomsky more exposure. The film has certainly exposed Chomsky's ideas to a wider audience creating a sort of cult following in Canada and in Europe where he is more popular than in his native United States.

The film doesn't talk down to the viewer and brilliantly conveys Chomsky's ideas on a visual level utilizing all forms of media. The directors also dedicate time to show some of Chomsky's detractors like William F. Buckley, Jr. and Tom Wolfe who come across like pretentious bullies while Chomsky appears calm and rational in response to their vicious, snide attacks. They are ironic scenes that add more credibility to Chomsky's views.

Manufacturing Consent received positive reviews from critics at the time. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby wrote, “Whether or not you agree with Mr. Chomsky's conclusions, his reading of the American scene is persuasive: that the government is most responsive to the wishes expressed by the minority of citizens who vote, which is also one of the principal points made by John Kenneth Galbraith in his recent book The Culture of Contentment.” The Washington Post’s Hal Hinson wrote, “With regard to this journey, Manufacturing Consent makes an excellent starting point. With it, Achbar and Wintonick have made a significant and timely contribution to the debate. Even if their arguments are not wholly persuasive, their movie is well-supported, confidently reasoned, imaginatively presented and, without a doubt, seductive." The Chicago Sun-Times gave the documentary three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "Ultimately, we shouldn't judge a film like this on whether we agree with its positions, but on how well it presents them. On those terms, Manufacturing Consent is a brilliant success. It casts a haunting, post-1984 glow with its use of video imagery – Chomsky's talking head is seen, among other places, atop Times Square and on a giant amalgamation of screens. At the same time, it plugs into a deep, humanist belief in the people's ability to change things.” The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle wrote, “The documentary is a good movie in different ways. For one thing, it's an admirable piece of film making that provides satisfying visual contexts for what is essentially three hours worth of ideas. Though the film begins to strain in the last 20 to 30 minutes, Manufacturing Consent is often fascinating and never boring.”

When asked about the documentary, Chomsky’s biggest gripe about it was that he felt it portrayed him as a leader of a movement for people to join: “I don't think the medium can make people understand that if they film me giving a talk somewhere, that's because somebody else organized the talk, and the real work is being done by the people who organized the talk, and then followed it up and are out there working in their communities. If they can bring in some speaker to help get people together, terrific, but that person is in no sense ‘the leader.’ That somehow doesn't get across in a movie – what gets across is, ‘How can I join your movement?’ And then I've got to write a letter which is a big speech about this. So I am ambivalent about it.”

Manufacturing Consent is a fascinating look Chomsky and his ideas that are guaranteed to provoke discussion. It also makes one want to check out some of his work and sparks a desire to wake up and realize what is going on in our society. The film is a real eye-opener to the behind the scenes mechanics of our government and the media and how little we realize what they are really up to. The film does not dip into tabloid or conspiracy depths, but presents a logical and intelligent analysis with a good sense of humor that is often missing from such material. Chomsky is a man who sincerely believes that we can identify and react to the problems in our government and media, but realizes that it cannot be done by just one man, it will take a massive grass-roots organization. First, people must be educated and this is hard because it is so easy to do nothing. Realizing that there is a problem is the first step, correcting it is the next.

 
This documentary is available to download at the Internet Archives.