“Zaslav is at it again.”
I was telling my neighbor Swamp Rabbit that the same high-level hatchet man behind the mission to make CNN more rightwing recently took action to dumb down, or perhaps destroy, the only TV outlet that shows quality films on a routine basis. That’s Turner Classic Movies, of course, which dips into every movie era and genre, showing everything from classics to obscure curiosities, 24/7, with intros from knowledgeable hosts and no commercial interruptions.
“You mean David Zaslav?” Swamp Rabbit said. “The CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery who hired and fired Chris Licht? The media boss who answers only to guys like John Malone, the rightwing billionaire and leading shareholder at WB Discovery?”
“Yeah, that’s the guy,” I replied. “Zaslav the bigshot corporate cutthroat. He’s supposed to be a film nerd, but he fired all the talented staffers who molded TCM into a unique repository for movies that not only entertain but also shed light on the historic and cultural trends that shaped the world we live in today.”
“Don’t overdo it,” Swamp Rabbit said. “TCM ain’t perfect. They have a lot of turkeys on their playlist, and they show them classics too often. At this point, I think I could recite all the lines in Casablanca from memory.”
I shrugged. “Nothing wrong with that. You should memorize Citizen Kane, too. And My Man Godfrey. Fill your head with content that makes you think instead of with reality TV and video games.”
I told him we’re all lucky that film directors Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson intervened, possibly before Zaslav might otherwise do irreparable harm to TCM. Lucky that those guys apparently are skilled diplomats as well as first-rate artists, able to talk Zaslav into believing it’s better to be thought of as an enlightened patron of the arts than an all-powerful philistine.
“You don’t know how their talks with Zaslav went down,” Swamp Rabbit said. “You don’t know what he’s planning to do with TCM’s humungous library. With them naughty pre-Code movies like Baby Face, and screwball comedies, and noir from the ’40s, and sci-fi from the ’50s. And so on.”
That’s true, I told him, but maybe the three of them convinced him there’s more to life than mergers and maximizing profits. That the world is more than a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.
“You stole that line from Network, Odd Man. Your problem is you think movies are like real life.”
“The best movies are like real life,” I said, “except with better dialogue and storylines that are more coherent.”
Odd Man Out 
I paid for TCM for years, until it got too expensive. I rationalized its disappearance by telling myself I’d fill my freed-up evening hours with work. And that’s what occurred, but still I miss those old movies. I didn’t like it, though when in Giant the horse that bucks off Hudson’s sister, killing her, is shot in the original version, and in an edited version is simply no longer seen. I guess that Western realism was too tough a concept for some viewers. And toward the end of my viewing, the TCM presenters were constantly defending the storylines, trying to make the audience understand that these films need not be canceled due to their violations of contemporary opinions. TCM is not being attacked solely from the right. I would guess that the left is far more incensed with films that portray uncritically the way things were. The way things were was at times pretty awful, but I don’t need some film host to apologize. If you don’t like an old film, you’re free to turn it off, but you shouldn’t be free to cancel it. On a positive note, probably nowhere else on TV can a viewer watch foreign films, which are in most ways superior to Hollywood. Writing this makes me want to subscribe to TCM again. But then I’d resume watching instead of working.
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I get TCM as part of a cable package, but that’s the price you usually have to pay to escape commercials. The channel might be accessible without cable if you pay for a streaming service. I watch when I’m too tired to write, or when I’m procrastinating… I like all the hosts on TCM, especially Ben Mankiewitz, grandson of Herman Mankiewitz, who cowrote the Citizen Kane screenplay with Orson Welles. And Eddie Muller, who hosts Noir Alley. Never heard any host apologize for content. I hope they don’t get the ax from the bean counters.
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