Trash Has Given Us An Appetite For

Watching Old Movies Is Like Spending An Evening With Those People Next Door. They Bore Us, And We Wouldn't Go Out Of Our Way To See Them; We Drop In On Them Because They're So Close. If It Took Some Effort To See Old Movies, We Might Try To Find Out Which Were The Good Ones, And If People Saw Only The Good Ones Maybe They Would Still Respect Old Movies. As It Is, People Sit And Watch Movies That Audiences Walked Out On Thirty Years Ago. Like Lot's Wife, We Are Tempted To Take Another Look, Attracted Not By Evil But By Something That Seems Much More Shameful -- Our Own Innocence.

The Words "kiss Kiss Bang Bang" Which I Saw On An Italian Movie Poster, Are Perhaps The Briefest Statement Imaginable Of The Basic Appeal Of Movies

Movies Are So Rarely Great Art That If We Cannot Appreciate Great Trash We Have Very Little Reason To Be Interested In Them.

Mcluhanism And The Media Have Broken The Back Of The Book Business; They've Freed People From The Shame Of Not Reading. They've Rationalized Becoming Stupid And Watching Television.

For A While In The Twenties And Thirties, Art Was Talked About As A Substitute For Religion; Now B Movies Are A Substitute For Religion.