Now streaming on:
“
Like most people today, Judy was a cynic and was offended
by the slightest hint of fantasy.” So reads a portion of the opening text of
the new movie directed and co-written (with his now former wife, Louise
Stratten) by Peter Bogdanovich. This clunky observation, I think, misreads the
modern or post-modern condition rather grievously. Cynicism today is in fact
fed by fantasy, or at least delusion; it’s a mask that affects to connote a
reckoning with The Real, which in fact merely enables its wearers to distract
themselves from the true horror of the world as it is today. But anyway.