Crimes Against Humanity

What is the worst movie of all time?

A writer at The Guardian recently took a stab at answering that question. El Ranchero made some useful points here. I'd like to throw my hat into the ring.

For those of you disinclined to follow those links, allow me to summarize their arguments:

The Guardian's Joe Queenan claims that in order for a film to be worthy of worldwide derision, it must meet the following criteria:

1. It must have "started out with some expectation of not being awful."
2. It must be famous.
3. It "cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever."
4. It "must feature real movie stars, not jocks, bozos, has-beens or fleetingly famous media fabrications like [Paris] Hilton."
5. It "must generate a negative buzz long before it reaches cinemas."
6. It "must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it...that they may one day be forced to watch the film again."
7. It "must keep getting worse."
   

Derek countered by saying:

1. the qualifications upon which he insists are virtually impossible. How can a movie both start with the promise of not being awful and have a terrible reputation that precedes it... and live up to that reputation?

2. The writer's choice for Worst. Movie. Ever., the 1980 "anti-western" Heaven's Gate, may have offended the sensibilities of the fine hosers at the Toronto Film Festival, but it then moved on to Cannes... where it was nominated for the Palm d'Or. I'm not saying it's not a terrible movie (I haven't seen it so I don't know), but it sounds like it only did so much damage because it was so horrendously expensive. Plus, the director's cut received better reviews.

Ok, since enumeration seems to be the order of the day, I will begin by numbering my qualms with Queenan.

1. It must have "started out with some expectation of not being awful."

I agree that a movie must believe it is good in at least one of the following two respects. It must believe that it has a grand, artistic vision or it must believe that it will be sufficiently entertaining. The first covers avant-garde badness. The second covers stupid popcorn movies. From this point, one could get into a debate over the relative merits of "high" and "low" culture, but I think that controversy would only serve to distract us from our current purposes. Let's just say that movies should be judged on their own terms; Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was not made to wow the NPR crowd. We can shelve the business of how best to compare apples and caviar for the time being.

2. It must be famous.

I agree that a movie must be famous. In order for a movie to earn a universal title like "worst ever," it must first reach a universal audience. After all, before Miss Carolina can share her wisdom with the world, she must first prove herself in the gauntlet of the Miss Teen USA pageant. Not to mention the practical difficulties of accounting for all the terrible footage out there. This has become even more true with the advent of YouTube and the avalanche of unwatchable e-trash it has unleashed.

3. It "cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever."

I agree that a bad movie is made exponentially worse when it's trying to be good. Taking one's self too seriously is the death knell for any pretense of quality. A karaoke corollary: the bachelorette party that shouts its way through "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is usually tolerable for a minute or so. Much like the amiable heroines about whom they sing, they're really just in it for shits and giggles. But the self-styled songstress who vamps it up to Gloria Gaynor - screeching into the microphone with all seriousness the drunken female anthem "I Will Survive" - tends to leave the audience wondering if she'll even make it back to her table without having a nervous breakdown. Yet self-awareness merely mitigates suckage; it doesn't cure it. The tone-deaf drunk who ambles up to the stage and slurs his way through "Hollaback Girl" is usually unintentionally charming until it occurs to him that he's funny. When the laughter finally penetrates his stupor and he embraces the newfound identity of "ultimate party dude," the bloom is off the rose. It makes me think of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!. Nobody involved in making that movie could possibly have believed it was the next Casablanca. And so we take its parodic prerogative into consideration when ranking it. Though the fact that it's not a very good parody means it's still in the running.

4. It "must feature real movie stars, not jocks, bozos, has-beens or fleetingly famous media fabrications like [Paris] Hilton."

I don't know what "real movie stars" are. Do they get stamped by the celebrity mint? May I point out that one of the stars of Return of the Killer Tomatoes was nominated for his FOURTH Oscar this year? This criterion seems dumb or, at least, much less important than the others. I loathe Paris Hilton, but is her fame any less legitimate than that of, say, Freddie Prinze, Jr.? They're both vacuous and pretty. They're both horrible actors. They're both famous by virtue of having famous parents. Neither of them "made it" in nose-grinding fashion. I fail to see any essential distinction. And can we really afford to forget all "bozos" and "has-beens"? If the inclusion of Meat Loaf in Fight Club was inspired (and it was), then we can't automatically discount all of the attempts at stunt casting that dragged films down. Hell, just ten years after brilliant turns in Psycho and The Manchurian Candidate, Janet Leigh was reduced to making films like Night of the Lepus, a film so appallingly bad that I bought a DVD copy just to make sure I didn't dream it up in a fever-induced delirium. If Coleridge had taken a bad dose of opium, he might have conjured up giant, mutated rabbits instead of Kubla Khan. To say that that movie is ineligible because Leigh was no longer a going concern is like exonerating a criminal because you don't want to see an old man go to jail. There's no statute of limitations on poor decision-making. If anything, the older you are and the better you were, the more you should know and the less forgivable your mistakes. There's a PSA for you, NBC. Help yourself.

5. It "must generate a negative buzz long before it reaches cinemas."

I disagree entirely. Bad movies should thwart expectations. They should arrive on a crest of positive buzz. And then immediately disappoint. Advance warning only softens the blow. Horrendous films are a sucker punch to your sensibilities. If you tell me the food is going to be awful, I brace myself and manage to choke it down. If you tell me the food is going to be good, I end up being more pissed when it tastes like hot garbage.

6. It "must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it...that they may one day be forced to watch the film again.

I can agree with this. Truly bad movies can't have camp value. Or make you nostalgic for the "bad old days." My friend Rachel & I still remember a fun night we had in high school when we watched Jason Goes to Hell. It was abysmal. The only reason I haven't watched it again is that I'm afraid it won't be as delightfully bad this time around.

7. It "must keep getting worse."

Yes. See #6.

Now, as far as Derek's objections go, I agree with #1 and most of #2. But the financial havoc caused by Heaven's Gate - that's important. Here's my theory:

b = (x)($), where b = total badness, x = subjective badness, and $ = the movie's budget.

There is no empirical method for measuring "x." By its nature, it must be an estimate. Consider some possible benchmarks:

How Bad It Is Compared to Other Works By the Same Creators

I hate Beerfest. I hate it more than Club Dread and I HATE Club Dread. These movies aren't funny or original and - without trying to flaunt my snobbery too obviously - they are not worth my contempt. Still, I seethe when I think about them. Why? Because when I think about them, I remember they were made by the guys from Broken Lizard. And Broken Lizard made Super Troopers, a movie that I didn't expect to like, but which was a pleasant surprise. Beerfest was so bad, I sought out their debut film - Puddle Cruiser - with the hope of resurrecting my high opinion of their troupe. No luck. Beerfest is so bad that though I saw it for free, I still wanted my money back. Beerfest is so bad that it has tainted other movies with which it is associated in my mind. Like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Except instead of Kevin Bacon, it's botulism. Still, it doesn't get my vote for worst movie.

How Bad It Made You Feel

This may be a good indicator for your likelihood to watch a movie again, but it's not a good measure for much else. Alexander Payne, Todd Solondz, Noah Baumbach - they make movies that highlight human ugliness. The proper response to their films is misanthropy. And even though I'm rarely in the mood to watch them, I own About Schmidt and The Squid and the Whale. I love Election and Sideways. So you can't really judge a movie based on the emotions they generate. Charges of manipulation sometimes stick, but more often than not the accusation underscores a director's skill or a writer's talent. Of course, some feelings are harder to evoke than others. As Bart said in The Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza": "Ah, making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel."

How Bad the Production Values Are

I finally got around to seeing Plan 9 from Outer Space. It will be fifty next year and in half a century we have not yet developed snark strong enough to describe how badly this movie was put together. Still, for all its many defects, I'd still rather watch it than Bring It On.

How Bad Its Effect on Real Life Was

Most bad movies end when you stumble out into the light of day and your shoes begin to shed the soda residue you picked up from the theater floor. Maybe you have a bad dream or two. Perhaps you hammer out a furious letter to your congressman or stage a rally. But, for the most part, the world of the cinema does not break through the fourth wall in any meaningful way. But what about Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will? You could argue that her paean to Nazism only documented a movement already in full swing. Or you could say it helped ramp up nationalist fervor by utilizing the cutting edge technology of the day. Either way, one thing is certain: the film did not hurt Hitler. But Hitler hurt a lot of people. Can movies be blamed - however tangentially - for genocide? As a student of history, I tend to get very upset about movies that do damage to public awareness. When people conclude, for instance, that the American Revolution or the argument for Scottish devolution can best be described in terms of arch-conservatism and the cult of modern fatherhood, I wonder how I can right this wrong in the eyes of my students. Conor wrote a post on movies, too, and he mentions Rambo. He has remarked to me in the past that most Americans still view Vietnam through that lens. We lost not because our soldiers didn't KICK FUCKING ASS but because all those hippie pussy liberals hamstrung our generals with quaint anachronisms like "restraint" and "congressional oversight." Maybe if we elect McCain we can finally cut that leash.

Ok. So we can't quantify with any exactness how bad movies are . At some level, the number one derives for "x" is a gut-level call. But if such gastrointestinal calculations are good enough for Stephen Colbert, they're good enough for me. We can, however, count how much money a movie costs to make. That's the key. Now, if a movie were so bad that it busted a producer or bankrupted a studio, you could make the case that the market is working by culling the herd, etc. According to that holistic arithmetic, the bad movie redeems itself by taking its blameworthy progenitors down with it. But I don't think the macroeconomic interpretation is the best one. What about the money itself, the actual dollars and cents used to light the sets, to power the jib hoist, to stock the craft services table, to pimp the best boy's trailer? When you think of the millions spent on the production of bad movies, this is when your blood pressure should rise. Bury the rag deep in your face, for now's the time for your tears. Of course, private citizens and corporations should spend their money creating any art they like. I'm not recommending censorship or even creative guidelines. I'm merely suggesting that given the myriad options available for utilizing one's capital, there are constructive projects and then there are bad movies. That these producers believed that they'd make money with the script for Batman & Robin makes them bad businessmen. That they allowed director Joel Schumacher to have a fluorescent orgasm all over the screen while children are dying of malaria makes them bad people.

To sum up: "bad + cheap" = regrettable, but harmless. "Bad + expensive" = misallocation of resources tantamount to a crime against humanity.

At the beginning of Dead Poets Society, John Keating (Robin Williams) urges his students to disregard the introduction to their literature books. It is an exegetical piece on poetry by a one Dr. J. Evans Pritchard and Keating disavows its thesis so strongly that he encourages his students to tear it from their textbooks - a classic scene in this quintessential "teacher porn" (a genre that includes Mr. Holland's Opus and Dangerous Minds and is deserving of its own blog post. Have you seen The Substitute with Tom Berenger? He throws a student out of a window. Easily the feel-good movie of the year.). Pritchard's chief offense is his attempt to determine the value of a poem by charting the importance of its theme and the degree to which that theme is effectively rendered on a set of "XY" axes. In the context of Pritchard's essay, the method is absurd. But it might work for my equation.

I'm no good with Excel, but feel free to try out my hypothesis by plunking in some of your own numbers. Rate a movie in quality from 1-10, with "10" being the worst movie you've ever seen. Then look up its budgetary stats and graph the results. The film that yields the greatest total area on your chart may just be the Worst. Movie. Ever.

You've been patient. My own pick for worst movie of all time is Con Air with Battlefield Earth in a secondary orbit. With a "modest" budget of just $75 million, Con Air doesn't evoke my rage for purely monetary reasons. No, it is the perfect storm of a ludicrous premise (a modern judge in a well-publicized trial condemning a soldier/hero for protecting his wife), phony dialogue, predictable plot "twists," and outrageous special effects seemingly designed to waste money (crash-landing an aircraft on the Vegas strip?). It could only be worse if there were snakes on that plane. The government should seize Jerry Bruckheimer's assets. Wait. I just remembered he did Pearl Harbor, too, a movie they debuted for WWII vets on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He belongs in Leavenworth. And as for Battlefield Earth, well, what can I say that hasn't been said? Catch me on a bad day and B.E. sits at the top of my list, with extra points for its connection to sci-fi scam-artist L. Ron Hubbard, the architect of the spiritual pyramid scheme that is Scientology.

UPDATE: Con Air made three times its money back. I can't believe they haven't made a sequel. Or is that what the National Treasure franchise is? At any rate, it's not that the movie has to lose money. It has to waste it. And Con Air most certainly did that. $300 million worth.

Whew. Now, that's what I call exorcise. Who's up for a snack?