Posted by Moon Raper at emly-466.res.umass.edu on September 23, 2001 at 19:43:12:
In Roger Ebert's answer-man column where, for the most part, people send in ridiculously sad questions, "Clerks" was mentioned by one of the people writing in:
Q: To what extent do movies made prior to Sept. 11, 2001, still remain relevant in our lives? We still look at movies made prior to Dec. 7, 1941, such as ''M'' and ''Citizen Kane,'' and recognize them as the great films that they are, but I watched ''Clerks,'' one of my favorite films, earlier this evening, just to try to divert my mind from the current goings-on, and the petty complaints of a couple of my brethren (I'm from Monmouth County, N.J.) seemed not funny anymore, but rather irrelevant in light of how our existence has changed since 8:58 a.m. that Tuesday. I know that we will eventually be able to again appreciate the accomplishments produced by the better angels of our nature, but I wonder if we'll ever be able to again appreciate the small, silly personal and political issues that seemed so large and overwhelming in the '90s. I wonder what you think will become of the wonderful, if seemingly petty, movies of that decade.
Thom Tolan, Norwalk, Conn.
A. I am having less trouble these days with the small and the silly than with the grandiose and the heartless. There are some movies from the 1990s that seem almost prescient now. A few that come to mind are ''Magnolia,'' ''Bringing out the Dead,'' ''The Sweet Hereafter,'' ''Schindler's List,'' ''Malcolm X.'' But those films fought against irony, and to one degree or another paid the price.
I have just returned from the Toronto Film Festival, where two directors said things that continue to resonate. Norman Jewison told me, ''The Hollywood studio movies of the last two years have been the worst in history. And you would not believe the crap that doesn't get made. I look at a screenplay and ask them if they're serious. And they are.'' And Paul Cox said, ''A movie should not make you a more disgusting human being.''