Jeffrey Katzenberg is a Crazy Person
by Scott Hardie on December 26, 2008
I'm no fan of 3-D. I have lazy eye, which makes my right eye blurry and my left eye sharp. During a normal movie, I usually sit up front to be absorbed in the picture so that it doesn't matter, or if I sit in the back, I can concentrate to correct my vision. But 3-D doesn't work for me. The images come floating out from the screen with 50% opacity, since I only see them with one eye. They look superimposed on the solid background like transparent holograms.
That's why I dread the future predicted by Jeffrey Katzenberg, Robert Zemeckis, and James Cameron, who say that all films will soon be 3-D. They're doing their part to bring about that future by only making their own films that way. I can take or leave the films of Katzenberg and Zemeckis, but Cameron is something else, a man who makes entertainments like nobody else and whose work I will not want to skip. Still, as much as I dread it, I doubt that their future will come to pass, since there are so many "wave of the future" ideas that never come to pass. Just a few years ago, all films were going to be shot against bluescreen with CGI sets, and that turned out great.
All this is why I read with interest Roger Ebert's interview of Katzenberg, who is gearing up for release of his 3-D magnum opus Monsters vs Aliens this spring. Katzenberg comes off like the hilariously out-of-touch movie executive that he is, talking about how "story matters" and "quality makes the difference" in a movie about a gelatinous blob fighting a robotic hamster from space. Pixar has demonstrated the importance of putting story and character first in an animated production, but Katzenberg's Dreamworks Animation keeps churning out craptacular toons year after year that fail to learn that lesson. Maybe Monsters vs Aliens will be the Gone with the Wind of talking CGI animals, but I doubt it. Katzenberg's description of the film, especially the emphasis on what he thinks is important (character name puns, Will Arnett in the voice cast), indicates that this will be yet another forgettable piece of garbage from the Dreamworks Animation crap factory.
And that's what makes him sound even crazier with his "end is near" prophecies about 3-D taking over: He's convinced that quality will lead the charge and make 3-D adoption inevitable, but he wouldn't know a quality film if it bit his box office returns in the ass. He's tone-deaf for what makes a movie good. Against this backdrop, all of his other predictions start to sound crazier: People can't watch 3-D movies at home because they can't make their living rooms dark! People are going to buy widely-available prescription 3-D glasses that they walk around wearing in their daily lives! Wow, Jeffrey, it's like you have your finger on the pulse of America. The more I read of this fool's ravings, the more I breathe easier about a 3-D future that will clearly never come, at least not the way this idiot says it will.
Two Replies to Jeffrey Katzenberg is a Crazy Person
Amy Austin | December 31, 2008
I had not heard such things about these filmmakers... crazy indeed.
Logical Operator
The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »
Pug Life
A friend recently contacted Kelly and me out of the blue to ask if we could take care of her dog for six days while she was on vacation, since the arranged sitter was suddenly unavailable. Neither Kelly nor I have experience taking care of dogs, and we're definitely not dog people. I was attacked by a dog when I was little and I've never been comfortable around them, especially any dog large enough to leap up from the ground and reach my face with its teeth. Go »What's Funnier Than a Heart Attack?
Everything, but especially finding out that it's not a heart attack. The pain started after I finished my usual Tuesday dinner with my mom at 8pm. I stood up to leave, and stiffness shot up my back and across my chest. Go »The Tiger
This is the second of four weekly blog posts about diagnoses that have completely changed my life since the pandemic started, after The Dragon. Last week, I wrote about my liver disease, which doesn't have any direct, detectable signs. It's not as if I feel any pain in my liver, or that I can sense that it's not working in the same way that I could tell right away if, say, my eyes stopped working or my lungs stopped working. Go »This Blog Post Definitely Doesn't Conform to NPOV Standards
I once coined a rule that you couldn't read more than three complete articles on Wikipedia without running into a reference to some obscure joke from The Simpsons, Monty Python, or most commonly, Family Guy. Seriously: I just now clicked two links and landed at Anarcho-syndicalism of all things, and sure enough, there's Holy Grail in the "trivia" section. Should it be plural like that, since no one is ever going to enter another item of trivia? Go »Música de la polca
"I had to chaperone the prom at the high school where I worked. Most of the kids at that school are Hispanic, so they got to choose the music. You'd think they'd want to listen to hip hop or techno or something cool. Go »
Scott Hardie | December 26, 2008
For the record, if the future really is all 3-D, then I hope Katzenberg is right about prescription glasses becoming available, even if only by specialty order. It might finally solve the vision problems that prevent me from seeing a 3-D film properly.