The 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week: Francis Ford Coppola

The 411mania Dumpster Fire of the Week

Hello, everyone, and welcome to The 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week. I’m Bryan Kristopowitz.

I think I’ve talked about this before, but I don’t remember when that was and I think it’s worth bringing up again because, when it comes to how TV stations are programmed, why do channels, when showing multiple movies in a franchise, air the movies out of order?

I mean, sure, when doing an all weekend marathon of something like the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, it makes a kind of sense to air the movies in the correct order, then show them “backwards,” then showing them in order again. I get that. But I’ve seen where a channel, like the Sci-Fi Channel, decides to show the first five Freddy movies and starts with part 5 and ends with part 1. That doesn’t make any sense.

I’ve also seen channels air franchises like the … Has Fallen series air the second movie, London Has Fallen, before Olympus Has Fallen. And I’ve seen them do it multiple times. USA, TBS, TNT, Sci-Fi. HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and channels like that don’t seem to do that, though.

So what the heck is going on here? Why do channel programmers do this? Why air part 2 before part 1? How does this make sense?

And now onto this week’s Dumpster Fire of the Week.

This week, the 411 Dumpster Fire of the Week goes to legendary movie director Francis Ford Coppola, for calling Marvel movies “despicable.” While accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Lumiere Festival in Lyon, France, Coppola proclaimed that he agreed with fellow legendary director Martin Scorsese that superhero movies, and specifically the movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, “are not cinema.” Coppola also went on to say that he thought MCU movies are despicable.

Despicable? Really? That seems awfully harsh, especially when you consider that Coppola has produced three movies from convicted pedophile Victor Salva (four if you count Salva’s first movie, Clownhouse, which Salva made when he was “just” a pedophile). If Coppola wanted to say that he didn’t particularly care for superhero movies, that he wished that movie studios wouldn’t make so many of them, and that movie theaters should take chances screening movies that aren’t mega Hollywood blockbusters like the movies of the MCU, all of that would be fine. People are allowed to have opinions and there are loads of people who don’t like superhero movies. And I know I would love to see movie theaters screen more and different kinds of movies (there’s room for everyone, or at least there should be). But MCU movies are despicable? That’s just insane. And, again, when you consider what kind of movies Coppola apparently likes to produce and the moviemakers he likes to help out, it makes you question his morals and his priorities.

Victor Salva is a convicted pedophile. He raped the star of his Clownhouse movie, Nathan Forrest Winters, while making the movie, and police found child pornography that Salva made while raping Winters, alongside “commercially available” child pornography. After serving fifteen months of a three year sentence, Salva was eventually allowed to be a movie director again, making Powder for Disney and The Nature of the Beast for New Line Home Video in 1995. Coppola then produced all three of Salva’s Jeepers Creepers movies, which came out in 2001, 2003, and 2017. While Disney and New Line might be able to argue that, at the time Powder and The Nature of the Beast were being made, they didn’t really know all of the details surrounding Salve’s criminal past, Coppola couldn’t. He knew exactly what Salva was convicted of, what Salva did (again, Coppola produced Clownhouse, the movie where Salva raped a 12 year old while making it), and yet decided it was a good idea to allow Salva to make movies for him.

As far as I can tell, Coppola, of The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now fame, has never been questioned about his ongoing association with Salva or why he thinks Salva is a wise bet, but I think he needs to be. And before someone says “Eh, you’re just some butt hurt comic book movie nerd who doesn’t understand real movies” or some version of that, I’ve wanted Coppola to explain himself for years. It’s just mind boggling to me that he would want to be associated with someone who raped a child while making a movie he produced. It’s also amazing that Hollywood in general seems to be okay with all of this, especially when damn near everyone in the fucking world knows the whole sick Victor Salva story.

You can hate comic book movies. That’s fine. In fact, you can hate or dislike whatever you want. It’s a free country. But to call a certain genre of movies despicable (not bad or terrible or awful but despicable) when you produce movies from a convicted pedophile, that’s just beyond the pall. That is despicable.

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And now for this week’s honorable mentions…

-The National Basketball Association, or the NBA, for its muddled response to China’s demand that Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey be disciplined for pro-Hong Kong tweets. While it isn’t surprising in the least that the NBA would, in the big scheme of things, ultimately side with the Chinese government because not siding with the Chinese government could potentially cost the league hundreds of millions, maybe even billions, of dollars, it’s still sad that the NBA would have to actually think about whether or not it supports free expression and freedom. Because that’s what the league did when it had to figure out what to say. Instead of telling the Chinese government that it doesn’t control what its members say or think, that Americans are free to associate and support who and whatever they want, and that China needs the NBA more than the NBA needs China, the NBA wimped out and initially capitulated to China’s government. On top of that, several top NBA stars, like LeBron James, also wimped out and essentially sided with the Chinese government, likely so whatever endorsement deals they have in China wouldn’t be ruined. Because, in the end, it’s all about money. Money is the only thing that matters. Again, that isn’t surprising at all, but it sure as hell is sad as fuck.

–Mick Mulvaney, President Trump’s Director of the Office of Budget and Management and acting Chief-of-Staff, for his disastrous press briefing last week and his attempt to “fix” what he said. Mulvaney really wants you to believe that he didn’t say that President Trump deliberately held up military aide to Ukraine in exchange for information on his political opponents, but that’s exactly what he said when pressed by ABC’s Jonathan Karl during a press conference last week. And we all know that’s what he said because it’s on fucking tape. There was a “quid pro quo.”

At this point, I don’t know how much more evidence people need to see that the President is a criminal and a thug who surrounds himself with criminals and thugs and he needs to be removed from office. Every senate Republican should be forced to explain, on television, in front of the world, why this kind of shit is okay.

-Dumpster Fire Hall of Famer, 2018 Dumpster Fire of the Year, and (Jesus Christ) 45th President of the United States Donald Trump, for the whole “hosting the 2020 G7 meeting at my resort in Miami” controversy. Even if it’s true (and I seriously doubt it is true at all) that Trump’s Miami resort was deemed the best of the available choices for the G7 meeting, Trump had to know that having the meeting there looked bad. He had to. And even among the various “yes” men he surrounds himself with someone within that group must have suggested that it would be better to hold the event at a place that didn’t bear the President’s fucking name. The President eventually announced that the 2020 meeting wouldn’t be taking place at Doral, but, shit, why did it even get as far as it did?

–NBC, for its ongoing response to the revelations in Dylan Farrow’s book. It’s just terrible. A conspiracy theory? That’s all Farrow is doing, concocting a conspiracy theory? Just go ahead and read the article at the link and ask yourself who is telling the truth, NBC or Farrow?

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