Mr. Rosenbaum:
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Mike D’Angelo (I know you lie awake at night wondering what Mike D’Angelo thinks of you) said that you have “gone off the deep end of late, interpreting innocent genre films in a bizarre neo-Marxist framework,” although you have never been a communist in your life, and if one actually READS your books and reviews, there seems to be a more aesthetic approach to film in general that a one-paragraph reviewer like D’Angelo can only approximate. You do admit the omnipresence of politics (and philosophy and religion and being human) in film, but somehow other people interpret this basic determination as “Marxism.” Don’t ask me why they make this leap, except that you make no bones about your interest in dethroning George Bush fils. Perhaps this somehow makes you a line-toeing leftist; I don’t know.
Maybe he has resorted to inoffensive pablum in order to preserve the expression of his political convictions. Maybe anything more mercurial would alienate the parade of well-known actors eager to participate in his lukewarm stories without their typical compensation.
