On My Disgusting Attitude (Was Good Will Hunting Before I Was So
Dave Koch (dkoch@sas.upenn.edu)
Thu, 08 Jan 1998 11:40:34 -0400
<fontfamily><param>Times</param><bigger>Hello Everyone-
The point I was trying to make (and I hope it hasn't gotten entirely
lost by these bad feelings that arise when I don't like a movie that
you do like, silly as that is) is about more than Good Will Hunting
(terrible, terrible movie), it's about modern fiction generally and
people's attitudes towards it. I'm a creative writing minor here at
school, so I've taken my share of creative writing classes. There's a
general feeling, I've found, that writing is *easy* to do. That
everyone's not only got a novel in 'em, they've got a damn *good*
novel, too. People have no respect for what an really huge achievement
a good piece of fiction is anymore and, as this discussion of how
fantastic Good Will Hunting is (it was, I'll remind everyone here,
compared to Catcher for christssake) shows, they don't know good
fiction when they see it and, even worse, they see bad fiction-godawful
fiction, to be honest about it-as good fiction. And so the produces of
such crap think that what they've done is really no different than the
Ginsberg's poetry (next, I'm sure, someone will tell me how Good Will
Hunting is just like Kaddish or something) and so they dedicate their
horribly predictable movie to the memory of one of my favorite poets.
I've only be reading this list for a short time but one of my favorite
aspects of it already is how *nice* everyone is to each other, so I
hope everyone isn't taking this the wrong way. But *I* just *have* to
say that I'm much more disgusted with people who take fiction (and
Allen Ginsberg for that matter) and good writing generally for granted,
who think it's easy to produce as a slice of mediocre apple pie than
people who disagree with my movie tastes. But to each his own and all
that stuff, I suppose.
Has anyone else seen this movie? Or maybe, on second thought, we
should just let the whole matter drop.
--Dave
>
>i really think that's a bit harsh.
>
>no matter how shitty his film was, it was *his*. and he's as worthy
of
>dedicating it to ginsberg as you are. what, do you *own* ginsberg or
>something? he's private property? do we have to pass an entrance test
in
>order to qualify as 'worthy'?
>
>i don't want to start a flame war here, but i just *have* to say that
i
>find your attitude disgusting.
>on mon 05 jan dave koch <<dkoch@sas.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>> Another thing that annoyed the hell out of me was the dedication to
>> Ginsberg. The audacity it takes for an up and coming screen writer
to
>> produces this crap and then think he's done something worthy of
dedicating
>> to the memory of Ginsberg amazes me.
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