Degeneration Gap

Bob Quinn has long been a tireless critic of the ethics and machinery of filmmaking in Ireland. Here he shares his thoughts on the state of the art in the early years of the 21st century.

There is a rule of thumb which says that whoever can write a personal cheque for a million is a rogue and a thief. Another rule states that whoever can't is a loser.

Are these also the ground rules for film? That nothing counts, not family or tribe, flag or country, not love or hatred, good or evil, only The Movie and the proof of its existence: money. The latter certainly brings clarity, melts the elements of talent, creativity and ethics into one useful solvent: corruptibility.

How fares the filmmaker's canvas in the Irish microcosm of this western experiment?

Are actors now only people who aspire to do commercials? Are novelists defined only as those who produce clit-lit? Are writers really people who manufacture soap opera dialogue on a piecework basis. Is everybody actually working on a film script? I know that producers manqué make deals, accountants and lawyers sense spare fat and move in. But must directors sublimate their imagination to technique? Are film editors allowed an attention spell of but three seconds max? Is the real subplot a comfortable life? Yes, film schools teach words like semiotics to get their cut from wannabe's and film boards offer money for dressing short film mutton up as if it were expensive lamb. It is certain that the keeper of new certainties, the marketeer, makes silk purses out of sows ears and that the tabloidisation of all media reinforces the illusion. But do we really need more moolah, must the global fundamentalists control the supply, must good cinema die? And so on and so forth, blah, blah, blah.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 100