"Shit has its own integrity," as Gore Vidal put into the mouth of the an old hack screenwriter.
And I really think that is all that needs to be said as a rule of thumb. The question is why does some shit have integrity and some just ... well I'll leave to your imagination.... So I prefer some sentimental shit over other sentimental shit, not because it is authentic, but because shit can't be faked anyway.
But what really shocks me in this whole damn thread is that Brian seems to prefer Leo McCarey over Joseph Mankiewicz or thinks that Mankiewicz is somehow more sentimental or less authentic than McCarey....
But maybe I miss understand him here. Maybe he meant to put McCarey on the sentimental side of the equation. Because stuff like "An Affair to Remember" is just intolerable stuff. "The Bells of St. Mary's" is so bad that somebody should show it to film classes repeatedly to drive people out of the business.... Torture!
Which brings up another point. McCarey never did a decent movie unless he had a decent screenwriter to tell him what he needed to do. Look at all of his movies that are good and then look at the screenwriters that worked on them and look up their credits and you will see that McCarey was "auteur" of nothing. When he was assigned to or chose a decent screenplay he could churn out a good movie. Other wise he churned out some of the most torturous insufferable movies that only an auteurist could find something good in.
I would give you 10 "An Affair to Remember"s for one "All About Eve." But of course the brothers Mackiewicz knew how to use their pens to construct a story and brother Joseph knew how to tell that story with a camera.
Rodgers and Hart, much better than that Hammerstein stuff. But "it never entered my mind" to think otherwise.
Jerry
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