What’s Wrong with the Movies? by Aleister Crowley in Vanity Fair, Jul 1917.

“SOME months back two wealthy gentlemen where lunching at the Knickerbocker Hotel, in New York, where all movie magnates seem to make a habit of foregathering. They were trying to think of a book to ‘film.’ A pause. One suggested Victor Hugo’s ‘Hunchback of Notre Dame.’ ‘A grand sweet story! Some story! Some Punch! Some pep!’ A longer pause. ‘Say, why, in out film, shouldn’t that hunchback marry the beautiful gipsy chicken?’ ‘But, say, we can’t have that little pippin tied to a hunchback.’ ‘I got it, bo, we’ll get a Johns Hopkins guy to straighten him out on the operating table.’ ‘Say, you’re some artist, Al.'” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “O, purblind crew of miserable men, cannot you see that the only way to succeed in the movies, or in any art, is to get the men who really know how, to create new effects of art, and then to trust them implicitly? The worst author is better, as an author, than the best ‘producer’ or ‘director,’ however highly paid, unless he sticks to his business of visualizing, with sympathy and fidelity, the author’s conceptions and ideals. The only good films, the only popular films, are those by living authors of repute, who have somehow been able to insist upon having their conceptions literally carried out, and not meddled with by a band of misguided and inartistic managers.”
  2. Anonymous EtherSec: #OpEPOCH
  3. “In the movies this confusion is accentuated to the point of dementia. What costumes! What furniture! What ladies! What ballrooms! What clubs! What love scenes! What butlers and footmen! What dinner tables! What debutantes! What boot and slippers! What coiffures! What jewelry! What manners!”
  4. “And so, alas, it all came about. These two master minds could not foresee that everyone who had read Hugo’s great story would leave the theatre foaming at the mouth, raving for blood. Similarly with ‘Hedda Gabler.’ They had to improve on Ibsen’s great curtain, and bring in George Tesman to confront Brack, who faints on hearing the pistol shot, and asks, ‘Why should you faint at my wife’s death?’ with all the air of one who proposes an amusing riddle!”
  5. “MILLIONS of dollars have already been lost in the movies by the many errors indicated above; and it may be well to point out that the public recognizes that the business is everywhere approaching a grave crisis. You, gentlemen, who are still making money, take heed: you are going to lose it in another few months unless you learn a little something about good taste in matters of art.”