It's not just the exploitation elements that have disappeared from filmmaking. I'm sure there are many filmmakers who would still love to grind out films like Terror Planet, but once they do, there are virtually NO outlets left to show them in. It's more than the closing of all the former grindhouses. In fact, I'm sure there are more screens than ever. For instance, there are now 21 screens in my small town of 50,000 people, but film makers literally have zero access to most of those screens. Even the independent screens (five of them) run by a friend of mine, you would be amazed how hard it is for him sometime to bring a film to town. The politics and placating of distributors is stunning. There are dozens of screens in town, but the distributors literally hold theater owners in a "DeathGrip." (Wouldn't that be great title?)

Another signifigant change is in film financing. The days when a young film maker could go out and con a group of bored dentists into coughing up a couple hundred grand were done away with long ago. It used to be a fun tax write-off for these people.

But ultimately it is true that the corportization of financing, distribution and film making has leached all the sleazy fun from movies. A great example might be another film in theater's right now, "The Hills Have Eyes 2" a sequel to a remake of a much superior original film. The original was gritty, gruesome, and horrible. Somehow, the remake was both more graphic and yet less horrifying. Frankly, the remake was boring and pointless.

I haven't seen the current film, but it seems to be even more clueless about what made the original the grotesque treat it was. The grindhouse films were formulaic, sure, but they were also, often, surprisingly personal films, as filmmakers working at lightning speed dumped grotesque bits of their own psyche and obsessions onto the screen.

I've had a careening career for pretty much my whole life. Fortunately, I've never had a carreering careen.

I just saw some of McCain's address to the cadets. How sad and dispirited he seemed to me.

I'm sure most people have seen "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers." McCain speaks like a pod person who is fully aware that he IS a pod person. One who can remember a time when he was his own person.

His quest for the presidency has cost him his soul. No real vision, no passion, just that one driving idea: "I should be president." Even if he can't exactly remember why. That's the part the pod conversion took from him.

What a zinger on Rove's part. It was Osama's idea.

And we always do exactly what Osama tells us to. Because... you sort of have to, I guess.

Thank god he didn't tell us to have national health care because then we'd have to do it, and that, as we all know, would be the end of health care in America.

Is there no end to the idiocy exemplified by the "genius" of Karl Rove?

Hatch continues:

For instance, at a time when even John Ashcroft couldn't deliver all the spookiness we need in an attorney general, you stepped into the yawning breach to deliver all the spookiness we could possibly imagine, and more -- and I, personally, feel this country owes you a huge debt of gratitude.

I remember when she first came home and began trying to set the record straight. For this to have meaning, you also have to remember how huge the myth had already grown, even though facts had already begun to emerge to refute the myth, it was still being pushed by certain people.

I remember letters to the editor in our local newspaper touting Lynch as proof of how liberals once again had it wrong about the rightness of the war. A little West Virginia girl was going to show all us liberals how to fight for freedom, and etc. blah blah.

I also remember how when Jessica began to refute her own myth, how quickly some of these same letter writers and media mythmakers attempted to shout her down. Here they were, just beginning to get the Jessica cash-cow franchise up and running, and here she comes trying to knock the legs out from under all their hard work.

I remember the suddenly patronizing tone of letters to the editor by some of the same people: Okay, little girl. Isn't it so cute when the little girls speak? Why don't you just shut the hell up now little lady? I said SHUT UP!

I have always wanted to meet Jessica and tell her how much I appreciated her full out courage and heroism in the actions she took following her return home. I don't know if she really understood the enormity of the lie factory she was bucking. Maybe she just assumed that people would appreciate having the record set straight. But I'm sure we was seeing more than one level of pressure on her to just let the lie ride a little longer.

For whatever reason, thank you for your service to this country, Jessica! You are a true American hero.

I wrote an earlier reply in this thread citing Jessica Lynch for her extraordinary courage in her actions upon her return home. She did indeed face trouble on many fronts.

I can't speak to Salon, but I doubt anyone here was really spouting the rhetoric you claim for them. I don't deny it might have been going on somewhere else, however, but mostly I remember the incessant mythmaking from the right.

As to Air America, you absolutely did not here anyone say anything like that because — in this land of virulently slanted and unrelenting liberal media bias (see Elephantman's endless posts) — there was no such thing as Air America, nor anything even remotely like it. It didn't exist yet, so it is indeed unfair that you lay anything at their doorstep.

Cheers!