The Questions of Cultural Studies: Class Responses

These were some of the questions provoked by the class reading of John Gregory Dunne's Monster.  They are grouped by author, but the authors are unidentified.  They are also listed here in random order.


 

  1) Is there a set formula that must be undertaken in order to confront
the "core dilemma" of capturing the approval of a mainstream audience?
What adjustments must be made in order that viewers might be able to
identify with one or more of the characters on a personal level?

2) What effect does the overall mechanization of the creative process
have on the final product? Do "too many cooks" in fact "spoil the soup"
with regard to a surplus of minds working on a creative endeavor such as
the making of a film?

3) What were the factors behind keeping the "Up Close and Personal"
script afloat all along? Why was it not simply dropped by the wayside,
in the face of all the difficulties that presented themselves as
barriers in the way of the movie's being greenlighted?

1. By compromising the authorial vision in hopes of a larger profit, did Disney indirectly insult the intelligence of its audience?

2. Are "aesthetic" readings more or less valid than the "public" readings of the majority, assuming that the two are different?

3. What effect did the collaborative production of the "Up Close and Personal" script (Joan Didion/John Gregory Dunne, Disney/JD and JGD, Jon Avnet/JD and JGD, etc.) have on the final product?


1. Throughout "Monster," Dunne
implicitly contrasts the writing of
"Up Close and Personal" to
the"two novels (one each) and
six nonfiction books" (202) that he
and his wife wrote during the same
time period. Though Dunne's
account seems to suggest
that screenplay writing involves an
inherently different production
process thanother forms of writing,
are they really that different?

2. The correlation between the title of
the book and the storyof the Disney
executive and the "monster"
(p. 15), suggests a
deterministic relationship between
the bottom-line concerns and the
creative content of screenplays. Yet
there are other ways to interpret the
"monster' of the book's
title. How does Dunne's title
comment on the various power
relationships in Hollywood?

3. At one point in "Up Close and Personal,"Warren Justice says, "He wants us to tell the viewers what *he* thinks they want to hear. Did you ever entertain any idea you didn't get from a focus group, John?" At this moment (and others), the movie seems to be providing a self-reflexive commentary on its *own* process of creation. In what ways does this movie about the production of news offer insight into the production and circulation of culture in general?

Question #1: John Gregory Dunne highlights the various cultural forms that take root in the singular real-life existence of Jessica SavitchóAlana Nashís novelization of her life in Golden Girl, the countless drafts and rewrites that culminated in the working script of Up Close & Personal, the on-screen finished product of the film, Dunneís own history of the process as recounted in Monsteróso, to borrow a phrase from Richard Johnson, what really "constitutes the ëtextí" for our analysis (84)?

Question #2: Does an awareness of the various "ëifsí" influencing the production of a cultural text in any way detract from the essential artistic wholeness of the thing itself (that is, is there a point at which the voluminous peripheral information we have about Up Close & Personal renders it something more than a mere film and, thereby, alters our reception of it as consumers)?

Question #3: In the case of such a clearly contrived product as the film manifestation of Up Close & Personal (or, for that matter, the Mini-Metro automobile), which really determines its shapeóconsumer preferences, or executive decisions that dictate those preferences?

Question #3b: How, in the name of all that is good and just, did such an egregiously dreadful film as Up Close & Personal manage to gross $11.5 million during its first weekend in theaters?

1. In looking at Johnsonís circuit from "What is Cultural Studies, Anyway?" I canít help but wonder about a number of things concerning Disney and the motion picture industry in general. Which is it that comes first? the target audience or a writerís or executiveís ideas about a film? I think it is hard to pin point an actual start to the whole process, each side influencing the other. In light of this, it is interesting to consider how much the target audience dictates the movie industry and to what extent "Hollywood" pushes people into target audience. Which side seems to be the more dominant of the two?

2. From reading Dunneís Monster, it would seem that the motion picture industry, with its bureaucracy of Bully Boys, CEs, and starlets, is in and of itself a unique culture. Do you think this is entirely true? Why or why not?

3. It is interesting to note that the culture of "Hollywood" (to whatever extent it is culture) seems to be quite different from what Raymond Williams calls ordinary culture. Whether "Hollywood" is actually a unique culture or whether it is some sort of sub-culture of American life, what similarities, if any, are there between it what we think of as ordinary culture?

(1) How does Dunne(or Didion) justify involvement in the movie business when it is very clear that artistic integrity is constantly challenged by the monster? Does this undermine his integrity in the book, Monster? Should he not turn the critical light upon himself?

(2) Why does a movie like Up Close and Personal, which is so horribly bad, sell so well to the public? In other words, what does it mean that the Disney formula work?

(3) How does the collaborative nature of movie making affect its status as a cultural "text"? Would it change the situation if one person, for instance the director, were in complete control of the whole process?


1. First and foremost, what kinds of questions should we be asking about this book/movie as cultural critics?

2. Can "Up Close and Personal" still be regarded as a work of art considering the degree to which it was tailored to the feedback from screenings and focus groups during post-production?

3. Does the marginalised status of writers in Hollywood result from their lack of presence in the ìfinished product,î much as the importance of the Metro carís designers fades once the car is on the showroom floor?


1. Even though the Hollywood Industry is purely a business profit, is its artistry (if can be maintained) justified in yielding to commercialism?

2. Some reviews point out "Up Close and Personal"'s shallow love story; however, doesn't the audience of mass entertainment enjoy a successful heroine in Tally Atwater's Cinderella story of the "American Dream" without knowing about (or, should they be informed) the eight years of process behind the Big Screen?

3. What does "Monster" in the industry of movie making devour (for its own nourishment) out of the "circuit" of culture?


1. In what ways can we attribute the production of Dunne and Didions' script to a
kind of Johnsonian circuit?

2. Looking at the book as a study of a Hollywood culture, how does Dunne's version of what goes on in the movie business seem colored by his own biases and ideologies and what conventions of establishing credibility seem common to anthropological studies of culture?

3. How do we reconcile Dunne's critique of monsterism with his own state of being
a mon[ster?]


- Dunne makes it clear early in the book that "Hollywood is largely a
boys' club." On p. 124, he tells us about Joan's solo trip to
Hollywood, a trip during which she is shabbily treated by Rudin and
Avnet, yet she decides to "stick it out." Given that Dunne and Didion
had supposedly tried to walk away from the project multiple times, what
motivation could the two of them have had to allow her to be mistreated
this way? Was money the only factor? Does Hollywood remain a "boys'
club" because insiders like Didion and Dunne tacitly allow it to do so
successfully?

-A reference in the script to Redford's flop movie "Havana" was
supposedly deleted, yet other blatant references to "The Great Gatsby,"
"All the President's Men," and "The Way We Were," all Redford hits,
permeate the movie. Dunne makes no reference to this. How different
would this film have been with unknowns in the lead parts? Would there
have been more of an effort toward real character development on the
part of the scriptwriters, rather than just the multiple cut-and-paste
jobs they seem to have done on the roles of Tally and Warren?

-How important is the test audience at advance screenings? Are they
more than just a token effort to gauge audience reaction? How much can
a test audience of run-of-the-mill moviegoeers actually affect the
finished film, given that decisions have been made all the way down the
line by the Hollywood elites?

1. Taking your comment about how Richard Johnson might view "Monster" as a
productivist, I was wondering what EXACTLY was being produced by this text: A
written account of the making of a movie, or a more "meta" narrative of the
entertainment business (movie as entertainment, book as entertainment about the
movie)? Personal reputations? The "last word"?

2. As an elaboration on my first question, what about the circulation of this
"product"? Who are the intended audience/consumers? For instance, Dunne
describes Michael Crichton as

"doctor, novelist, and filmmaker [who] has been for years our authority about
matters medical and scientific...the marvelous thing about Michael Crichton is his
absolute equanimity when asked out-of-the blue questions by friends he has not
heard from in a year or more" (78).

On the cover the paper back edition, there is a very generous review by Michael
Crichton in the LA Times:

"'Tells more of the experience of writing for Hollywood than any other book ever
written...Cheerful, human, funny and very informative.'"

How insular is the circulation of this text meant to be? It may be about popular
culture, but is it for popular culture?

3. Finally, Dunne outlines the plight of "writing for hollywood":

"The screenwriter's problem is that he is neither a writer, in the sense that a script is
not meant to be read but seen, and its quality only then judged, nor is he a
filmmaker, in the sense that he is not in control of the finished product, granting to
the director, as the medium dictates, such writer's tools
as style, mood, pace, rhythm, texture and point of view, much of which is
manufactured in the cutting room, wher the director is sovereign" (7).

Does writing this book about his experiences in Hollywood ultimately empower
Dunne in ways that writing the actual screenplay or writing in Hollywood does
not? Who has the power over this "productive" as compared to who has the power
in the events he portrays? In hollywood, what kind of composition process occurs?


1. The comic disparity between Jessica Savitch and Tally Atwater seems to me to
resonate with last week's discussion of the S.U.V., as the consumers of the product in
each case are on the whole ignorant of its original intent. Is there a fundamental
reason (other than the Marxist project of reconnecting humans and the products of
their labor) why we should be concerned with reconciling original intent and ultimate
use? Is the field of literary studies misguided in the dismissal of original intent implied
by those who insist on "the death of the author"?

2. Dunne and Didion's ideas are continually compromised over the course of the
script's eight year trip through the Hollywood machine. Complexity and originality
are scrapped and the story is fleshed out with bits and pieces of "time-tested" formulas
and conventions that have a history of selling tickets.
In a sense, the monster -- Disney's money -- is more deserving of the writing credit
than Dunne and Didion. What does it mean when cultural products seem not to be
authored at all, but just recycled from extent materials or compiled from pie chart
data?

3. This is kind of an unanswerable "chicken or the egg / life imitating art" question,
but is something like Up Close and Personal made because it sells or does it sell
because it's what's made? Would a Jessica Savitch movie have made nearly as much
money? Does the consumer cast the ultimate vote, as a good capitalist would
maintain, or is there something more pernicious at work in the production of popular
culture?


1. The book can be read (and I assume is being read in this class) as an analysis of
Up Close and Personal as it is placed in a cultural context. However, it does not
offer an analysis of the movie itself so much as one of the movie industry and the
role of the screenwriter. Dunne rarely mentions the specifics of the script itself, and
any details from the script serve as illustrations of the process of moviemaking
rather than any meaning within the text. Is this an appropriate approach to take in
analyzing a cultural text, seeing that the focus is entirely on the production of the
text and the external influences that shape its final outcome?

2. As Rubin insists throughout the book, Up Close and Personal is not about the
news industry nor is it a Cinderella story of a poor girl pulling herself up by her
shoestrings ? it is about two movie stars. This reading depends entirely upon the
intended effect on the movieís audience rather than the text itself, and moreover is
one of which the audience is meant to be unaware. Can this approach be applied to
any film, or should it be specific to the blockbuster romance genre depicted here?

3. Dunne claims that the movie was about Jessica Savitch for only a few minutes,
then was easily changed into a happier love story. Did the movie truly abandon
Savitch, leaving her memory unscathed, or is the movie (as it was connected to
Savitch in the reviews anyway) still guilty of a severe injustice to her story?

1.) "Hollywood conversation is all context, shared references and coded knowledge
of the private idiosyncracies of very public people....(70)" Does Dunne's text
effectively give the context of Hollywood to the extent that the reader can 'decode'
and interpret this particular culture?

2.)On page 31 Dunne tells us that " Truth was relative." How does the relativity of
truth pervade the text?

3.)Do you find this narrative at times borders on the absurd? To what extent do
statements like: "I had an engagement in the real world (83)," cater to this
interpretation?


1. How do or where do writers Dunne and Didion fit in Richard Johnson's circuit?

2. What other parts of Johnson's circuit are required for the writers to fit?

3. How do the screenings--so late in the production of the movie--imply the audience's role in moviemaking?


1. How do the circuits of money influence the direction of a film through mediators such as agents, contacts etc.?

2. How is Joan Didion's role as a female in a male-dominated profession constructed?

3. With so few women in the entertainment hierarchy--are women's focies ever truly represented?


1. What factors make Up Close and Personal an example of a circuit of the
production?

2. Is money Hollywood's real motive for producing a movie?

3. Does Monster best reflect the circuit of culture?

1. If what Robert Towne claims is at least partially true ó that ìgifted movie
actorsî affect the audience most by simply ìbeing photographed,î that a ìfine
actor on screen conveys a staggering amount of information before he ever opens
his mouthî (160) ó then what role does the screenwriter play in reproducing the
actors/actresses (even before knowing who they will be)?

2. In what ways does the anonymous Disney CEís statement ó that his job
requires ìëassessing the taste of my VP so I can say what he wants to hearíî (32)
ó serve as a microcosm for other aspects of Hollywood movie production, and
what does this type of cultural process envision as the purpose of the resulting
artifacts?

3. Where does this populist approach to cultural production position the consumer?

1) I THINK THIS MOVIE IS GREAT. WHY DOES EVERYONE THINK THIS
MOVIE IS SO BAD????

2) As a writer, the issue of staying true to the novel is important to me. Why is the
spirit of and honesty to the novel (so often) compromised when it comes to making
a movie into a Hollywood movie?

3) What ever happened to the other movie they were planning for Michelle
Phieffer? Did they ever hear from her partner regarding the script?