The Forgotten
© James C. Hess
More often than I care to admit to I find myself in a heated verbal exchange with an individual who holds the rather skewed and unrealistic opinion and perception that because he religiously watches The Sundance Channel on cable television he knows the film- and movie-making process.
These exchanges are usually ignited with my disputing these claims. Not surprisingly, my disputes are met with passionate and emotionally charged replies. Without, mind you, benefit of known fact or readily available truth.
Fact: I have worked on more than a few films and movies, in a variety of capacities, in my life thus far and have come to one certain conclusion with regards to them: No two productions are alike. Regardless of how exacting the production is by way of duplicate screenplay, direction, and acting no two will result in identical efforts.
Consequently, attempts both academic and non-academic to qualify and quantify what makes for a successful film or movie or what makes for a failure are a certain exercise in the worst form of self-abuse.
Consider as example of this thesis the film "The Forgotten". Here is a movie that should not come even close to finding success, yet it does. (Prediction: The odds are this movie will spike at the number one spot at the box office its opening weekend. If I am wrong, please feel free to let me know.)
Why? Especially when there are films and movies Out There, far superior in technique, craft, form, and style, that should have succeeded and didn't.
I hold it goes to a certain truth. That is, a truth not a truth. A deviation from known truth, more accurately. Bluntly, simply, then: The perpetuation of a lie, intended through repetition, to become true.
Consider as proof of same the on-going suggestion that aliens from far away places who abduct human subjects, and subsequently carry them away, far away, in spaceships and the likes, to poke and prod them by way of concerning and weird experiments, that often involve probes and brights lights to determine. . . who knows what? (Don't mind me, but if a lifeform from a far away place were to come this way and had its choice of nine billion individuals to consider, don't you think they would do a better job of selection than they reportedly do? I can accept the possibility they capture one of the lesser humans, the sort who is given to living in or, more likely, under a trailer home, but come on: Surely they know, by way of their technologies, there are smarter humans about, and for a proper data scale to be mounted, capture of same is mandatory.)
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