OBSCENE ONSCREEN

Movie-going is getting increasingly awkward

I enjoy going to the movie theater. Watching shows at home is OK, too, but there’s something about a movie on the big screen that makes even a bad story seem better.

I’ll watch just about any genre, although foreign flicks with subtitles and horror movies are at the bottom of the list.

Maybe my love for movies says something about my psyche; maybe I love to watch stories on film because I’m more interested in the lives of others rather than my day-to-day routine. Or maybe I like watching stories told on a screen because I make a living reading and writing stories myself. Or maybe I’m just too lazy to read books.

Anyway, my usual movie companion is my wife, who has far more limited movie tastes. She absolutely refuses to see a movie if there’s too much drama or blood, although she’s always willing to make what I invariably point out are hypocritical exceptions for movies with Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger or Harrison Ford.

She loves Westerns, which is a pretty limiting characteristic of movies these days. And she refuses to see provocative or sexually suggestive shows, although that prerogative is starting to severely limit what she can watch these days.

So I was surprised when she volunteered to see the latest Chris Rock movie, Top Five. Rock is a funny guy, but he has a sharp edge to his comedy and he’s no stranger to an obscenity-laced monologue. But the previews she saw on David Letterman looked harmless and funny.

So off we went, settling in with two strangers as the only people in the theater. And then it began: Top Five has everything in a movie she hates, except for blood and death. It was crude, obscene, sexually provocative and downright disgusting. It literally made my wife cringe, and I was right there with her.

It’s the kind of movie that, had any of you or worse, either of our sons — been sitting next to us, I’m not sure there would have been a hole deep enough to crawl into.

I wondered why Rock felt the need to go as far as he did when he could have made his point and told his story just as well in a lessdisgusting way.

In fact, why do so many entertainers feel the need to push boundaries in such a way that a viewer like me is almost embarrassed to be seen in the theater?

This movie featured a tampon soaked in generic hot sauce (I guess Tabasco refused to pay product promo fees) rammed up a naked guy’s kiester; I guess it was meant to show that the guy was being a jerk to his girlfriend.

In addition, one of the coming-attractions previews shown prior to the movie showed a naked guy stretched out face down in front of a naked woman, with her holding his legs in wheelbarrow fashion (this is a Vince Vaughan movie, so it’s probably only going to be rated PG-13).

I hate to sound like a prude or someone who can’t take “edgy.” And from a business standpoint, I understand the need to push the envelope a bit to ensure that an idea doesn’t become lost among the millions of other entertainment ideas out there today.

Of course, I have the option to stay home and not spend money supporting “trash” and “filth,” as some describe movies these days.

Maybe I’m being too sensitive. Maybe I’m asking too much. It’s just becoming harder and harder for me to separate things that “sort of” cross the line from those that obliterate it completely.

I don’t ever want to be someone who thinks that, in the middle of a movie purporting to address serious racial issues, a hot sauce-soaked tampon jammed somewhere it shouldn’t be is laugh-out-loud hilarious.

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Q&A: Monte Anderson

Real estate developer Monte Anderson reinvented the Belmont Hotel almost 10 years ago, and he focuses his work on Oak Cliff and southern suburbs — Duncanville, DeSoto and Midlothian. He’s a capitalist, always concerned with the bottom line, but increasingly he is becoming known for responsible development. Anderson is a founding president of the North Texas chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism. He’s a vocal opponent of the Trinity toll road, Mayor Mike Rawlings and any city councilman whose votes go against what Anderson considers common sense. We asked him a few questions about his ideas for southern Dallas.

Let’s talk about your ideas for responsible urban renewal.

We need owner-occupied entrepreneurs instead of real estate developers. I want other entrepreneurs to be owners. I have my anchors, the Belmont and some other things, but otherwise I’m interested in owner/entrepreneurs; they don’t just rent from me. It’s

“gentle-fication”: The real key is that in the early days, the creative business owners would own their building so it doesn’t get gentrified so brutally. We did that in Bishop Arts. How did Bishop Arts grow? How did Jefferson maintain itself all these years? One little business at a time. It has good streetscapes. Jefferson is one of the best streets in Dallas as far as form. It moves people and traffic pretty well.

How do you think the city is getting it wrong in southern Dallas?

We’ve tried everything in the world to fix southern Dallas. Walmarts, distribution centers, failed mixed-use by big developers. But what has maintained and survived are little pockets. Davis-Hawn, Wingfield’s, the motorcycle shop on Clarendon. Instead of enhancing what’s already there, [the city thinks] they need to put a big golf course and a five-story mixed-use apartment building, when all you had to do was fix the old gas stations along Beckley. Create streetscapes and on-street parking like we did in Bishop Arts in the early 2000s.

But at least the mayor’s Grow South plan spends money south of the Trinity, right?

I’ve quit believing in large economic development grants. That just breeds corruption and self-interest. And then grants and tax abatements create unnatural development. If you don’t have that, if you don’t have the money, you won’t do these big projects that fail; you’ll do things out of desperation. Maybe you only have the money to put up a tent or a trailer or a small building. The community will grow slower, but it will grow healthier.

The city does have money for economic development, so how should they be spending it?

They should be spending it on rebuilding infrastructure in places that are already doing well. Again, going back to the Community Development Block Grants in Bishop Arts. The sidewalks were bad. There were no street lights. The city ought to be taking money in small amounts and putting it into those types of improvements.

Aside from fixing sidewalks and streetscapes, how else would you spend economic development dollars?

Provide assistance and credit enhancement for entrepreneurs who are willing to go into risky areas, so they could own the property. The city could help guarantee loans in the next edgy area that’s not quite there. North Oak Cliff is going to be fine. Even Elmwood will be fine now.

South Oak Cliff and South Dallas are really the question now. There’s probably already a chef in South Dallas who always wanted to open his or her own restaurant. We need to help them get their own building in their neighborhood so that they can inject their own ideas and energy. Owner-occupied entrepreneurs are the key to planning a neighborhood because they become the neighborhood guard. They’re invested, and they care. It’s just like a homeowner neighborhood versus a renter neighborhood. It’s very common-sense.

You’ve been involved with Elmwood. What’s going on there?

I started working with Kenneth Denson and some other people who are very involved in that neighborhood to figure out what they can do and how the [Congress for the New Urbanism] could help. Elmwood was designated a legacy project for CNU 23 [the congress’s annual convention that’s coming to Dallas this spring]. What I like about Elmwood is that if you fix the streetscape — head-in parking, nice sidewalks — then all those parking lots could be one- and two-story buildings.

We often hear that it’s more costeffective to tear down old buildings and build new. Is that really true, or is it just that builders want to build?

Yeah, it is true. But consider this: What is the real cost of tearing down a building and putting it in the landfill? What is the real cost to our grandkids? Everything we look at in the world of finance, we look at what it does in the next five years. But what does it do in 20 years or 50 years? It cost a lot more to restore the Texas Theatre [Anderson served on the Oak Cliff Foundation, which saved that building from the wrecking ball]. We could’ve torn it down and built a new theater. But we’ve preserved it for the next 100 years. Also, we made it possible for an independent operator to run it and hopefully make money. [The Oak Cliff Foundation, which owns the theater] doesn’t have to make money, so we charge them really cheap rent. It adds to the X factor. It’s the secret sauce. That didn’t come from a development plan; it came from desperation.

—Rachel Stone

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