At least you got my gist. Written late at night; I'll fix.

On the ugliness of D-Crash: Well, I didn't want to come out and say it. Shane West does a credible job of impersonating Darby, but he's WAY too pretty for the part. I think the other stuff I mentioned, like the movie's lack of a convincing social context or (here I go with the pretentious BS) philosophical/artistic vision, is more of a problem. But I guess you could say they're connected.

I didn't want to drag the review down my own memory hole, but I agree that there were other, arguably more *musically* interesting bands from that period and that marginal little scene. You guys have mentioned several. I'm from SF, not LA, so I was more familiar with the Avengers and (a couple years later) Flipper. I was briefly roommates with a dude from the Zeroes! And obviously there was X, a great band that rapidly transcended anything connected to punk or "hardcore" (a word not much in use until the early 80s, I think).

I never saw the Germs (not too many other people did either), and I wouldn't call myself a fan. The L.A. punk scene was scarier than shit; I saw Fear and Black Flag and I think the Circle Jerks and other bands I'm not sure about, and was always grateful to go home with all my teeth and only minor bruising. Still, you see Darby in the Spheeris film and you get why he & that band were "important." Like I say above, he epitomized the ultimate fuck-everybody nihilism of that LA scene more perfectly than anyone else. There was a debased purity about him, a certain terrible, self-destructive romance. He was like the Rimbaud or the Alfred Jarry of white-trash, smack-shooting California.

So I think he's a great subject for a movie, and I don't want to be too mean about this one. Glad it exists, impressive they made it, etc. Even if it's kinda too much of a love letter.

Far from it, in fact. Yes, two of the actors are way-minor celebs, but it was pretty much made with nickels from under the couch cushions and is being distributed by a tiny Canadian company, way at the low end of the indie spectrum.

>>Your insistence that art is somehow concerned with "self-expression," or that it exists or ought to exist independently of commercial demands, itself betrays a certain ignorance of our artistic tradition -- and specifically, of its cultural context.<<

I never said or implied any such thing. And all I meant by "old-school art careers" is that those artists are getting paid by art institutions of various more familiar kinds. Art and money have been inextricably linked throughout their shared history, and I believe I was very careful to avoid any explicit value judgment, except in my honest response to McFetridge. I suggest that these questions need some careful examination, but that's really all. I don't claim to have the answers and do not advocate a return to some imaginary and unreclaimable past.

But one of the central ideas of Beyond the Multiplex is to foreground cultural product that for various reasons is not validated by the market. Or at least is validated on a vastly smaller scale than, say, "The Dark Knight." So if that's what post-romantic means, I'll grab it. Mind you, I didn't invent the distinction between Hollywood and independent films, and there are times and places where it seems particularly meaningless. But over time and in a broad, general way, the terms do convey something. Do I possess what you would consider some "post-romantic" view of how good films get made? I doubt that very much.

And I still believe you've created a straw man here. Or you may be reading into my words a political or philosophical disagreement. I think it's clear enought in context that my use of terms like "corruption" and "selling out" is not quite straightforward. It's meant to be provocative, and to pose questions rather than answer them. I introduce the terms because they're in people's heads. I do not accuse any of these artists of being corrupt or of selling out, although I do accuse one of them of deluding himself. In fact I don't think those terms are clear, or do much to define these problems, but I also don't see the alternative as "It's all good, we all like to shop at Target."

Nor do I think that it's *better* to have an old-school art career -- by which I mean an art career of roughly the 1950s to the 1970s -- than to have some other kind. The term was descriptive. Do I hold to some old-fashioned idea of art history or art training? That's like asking whether I believe every American city should have streetcars instead of interstates.

Of course I'm not trying to be "value-neutral." A) There is no such thing, and B) This is supposed to be criticism. I am trying to suggest that in the totalizing system of consumer capitalism, in whose operations we all participate, the artist finds him- or herself in a peculiar pickle. (The podcast interviews I do for Salon are sponsored by Post Grape-Nuts.

They're delicious, all-natural and unsweetened!) I'm well aware that in the Renaissance artists had to make work that glorified the king or the church, but the argument that nothing is different about the institutionally ironic contemporary situation -- where artists who grow up within a DIY, punk-informed ethos are designing Nike sneakers before they're 30 -- strikes me as shallow. Tintoretto never pretended to be a rebel or a "beautiful loser," far as I know.

It is evident to me that the artists in "Beautiful Losers," even McFetridge, are uneasy around this question. As I wrote, Stephen Powers (probably the artist in this group whose work I like the best, personally) has stopped accepting commercial work and so, I think, has Mike Mills (who's immensely smart in talking about this stuff). The entire film vibrates to an odd, anxious frequency whenever the question comes up. If you believe it's a totally uncomplicated matter, just agents operating in a free market, then good for you. Not how it looks from here.