Guns and Money

[John Gelles <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	                 GUNS AND MONEY
	   "The Last Man Standing" and Making Money

	I just watched a bullet ballet on video called
	"The Last Man Standing", choreographed by Walter
	Hill in slow motion mayhem, and starring Bruce
	Willis, the working man's hero.

	I thought of the intellectual arts and crafts
	that are committed to such a project, the time,
	resources, effort and reward all tied up in a
	film to satisfy our need to escape ordinary life
	and live in a place where we and our hero prevail
	over evil calculated to grab us and our money.

	The love of action movies as distinguished from
	love of activist commitment to solve political
	problems, from the viewpoint of producers,
	directors, stars, etc., offers an interesting
	contrast.  The moviemaker competes with the
	best to satisfy the worst.  He looks for what
	turns us on and tries his best to do it.  It is
	harder and better paid work than informing
	students or their teachers what to think.

	Although money drives the characters in the
	movie, guns drive the audience to part with
	good money in return for cheap thrills.

	Willis kills half a hundred bad guys. Andy
	Warhol made a movie 12 hours long of a guy
	sleeping. I think there may be some money
	to be made in a sequel to "Last Man" that
	runs 4 hours and kills 4 times as many bad
	guys each one meaner than the other and all
	in slow motion and Dolby sound.

	So what about economics?  Gunfire leads
	inevitably to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

	Where does money lead?  The team that made
	the movie wrestled with a real budget. Made
	a real product. Lead real lives. What about
	the team in Washington that's giving us a
	national budget?  The team on PKT that's
	giving each other infomed opinion -- what
	is more real?  Them or us?


          John