6 Reasons Indy Films Are Better Than Studio

1. Studios Must Pander to Teenagers and Below.  Teenagers, especially teenage boys, buy most of the tickets in this country and around the world.  Once a movie gets above a certain budget it must cater to them, if it wants to make its money back.  The trend has been going on so long its further driven the adult market away from multiplexes.  If you’re wondering why most Hollywood movies are brainless and enjoy cartoon violence mixed with easily impressed women, it’s because that’s what teenage boys get off on. The next biggest market is children.  Cable and Pay Television tends to be more adult and attracts better writing/directing.
 

2. Indy Films Must Concentrate on Character/Acting/Writing.  These things must be adult and deeper in indy film because they can’t compete with studio films on huge ticket items like special effects.  If they have name stars, the stars will usually be working at a reduced rate because they like the script/character/filmmaker.  The good ones will take a huge paycut and work for peanuts, for an artistic challenge or something that inspires or at least interests them, even though they know the film won’t be widely seen.  Instead of being a pampered star, Charlize Theron actually went out and raised money for Monster, she believed in the script and director so much.

3. The Larger the Budget, the Smaller the Creative Risk.  No one wants to take risks with huge sums of money, that’s human nature (we're seeing this tragically right now, in the tepid political response to the economic crash).  It’s much easier to make a risky bet for one dollar or even a million than on a 150 million dollar blockbuster (the very minimum it takes to release a picture globally these days).  The result is often formulaic and dull, pandering to the lowest common denominator or mediocrity by committee.  Indy films are small entrepreneurs or local restaurants (not chains), they can afford to do things their way and put a lot of thought and care into them.  It’s the difference between a meal prepared by a chain and one prepared by a chef.

4. No Teenagers in Audience or Screaming Children.  See reason 1.

Nell Ruttledge in Prince of Swine

5. Better Sex Scenes.  Past a certain budget a studio movie must, almost by necessity, be no more adult than PG-13, or it’s losing the bulk of it market right out of the gate.  That means teasing, innuendo, and the suggestion of sex, but nothing intense, physically, emotionally or politically.  It’s hard to document but most filmmakers complain the level of skin in a sex scene won’t draw as restrictive a rating from the MPAA as physically intense sexuality, emotionally intense sexuality, or especially anything controversial (Hollywood claims to be liberal but the MPAA leans slightly right of center).  An R rating isn’t much of a blow to an indy because the audience is already overwhelmingly adult and probably bored by PG anyway.



One of the best fight scenes of the decade,
David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises

6. Adult versus Cartoon Violence.  The level of violence allowed in a PG film is truly astounding, but it’s almost all of the cartoon sort, without emotional consequence or human understanding, cheap and unconsciously sadistic, but oddly physically as well as emotionally clean and shallow.  Anything with actual violence, where the violence comes with emotional consequences or something other than cartoon death and injury, is deemed too intense and possibly damaging for younger viewers (so we admit them into adulthood addicted to violence, like a drug, but with a completely antiseptic and puerile notion of it – violence separate from humanity or self-knowledge).  In many cases this ignorance/lack of depth lasts until death and even runs for President.

Visit us online at www.war-reform.com and www.princeofswine.com.

Vote for the Wimp, Not the Pimp

Does anyone have big enough balls left to run this country right?  Or are balls even necessary any more?  Are they obsolete?  Should we just throw up our hands, admit defeat and hand the place over to Hillary?

Exhibit A:  Mitt Romney.  Here’s five reasons we can’t vote for Mitt Romney:  Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse and Citigroup, five of the largest banks and the top five contributors to Romney’s campaign. Would it be fair to say, in light of this, Mitt’s balls are no longer his own? It would be more accurate to call him a whore for the big banks, but that doesn’t rhyme with wimp, and we can’t see any way around Obama’s inherent wimpiness at this point.


It does take balls, on the part of the banks anyway, to stand up in front of the country and insist what they’re doing is good for all of us or even most of us.  That whole “a free market will save us” and “get government out of business’s way” – they don’t even believe that any more.  The big banks are currently taking our money (from the Federal Reserve, at zero percent interest) and buying government bonds with most of it (i.e., charging us interest on it) without risking or investing a dime.  So the biggest champions of the free market (the banks) won’t touch the market with a ten foot pole under these conditions.  Betting on the government instead.

What are the banks doing with most of the rest of our money they’re charging us for?  Gambling with derivatives again (which has zero to do with growing the economy and is a huge risk to it), still completely unregulated in this regard, still government insured, we’re still on the hook if they lose, and they’re even bigger now than when they were too big to fail in 2008.  If one of the big ones bets wrong and we don’t bail them out again it could collapse the already fragile global economy.

If we vote for this crap again by voting for Romney, it’s not him that lacks balls, it’s us.  It’s akin to saying to someone who just robbed you, “Thank you sir, can I have another? Would you like to have sex with my wife too while you’re at it?  Because I don’t think you fucked me well enough the first time.”

 

What's the difference
between these two?
Hint:  It's not race or party



Which leaves us with: the wimp.  Why is Obama such a wimp?  Because he talks big and does nothing or next to nothing.  He keeps quoting Teddy Roosevelt for instance.  You know what Teddy Roosevelt did under these circumstances?  He brought anti-trust law down on Wall Street.  That’s exactly what Obama should do now.  It would solve too big to fail as well as breaking the lobbying power of the largest banks (divide and conquer).  It’s the political equivalent of bitchslapping them into submission so they shut the hell up and aren’t corporately unified enough to bribe Congress any more.  Wall Street squawked about it then, just as it does now.   Do you know what Roosevelt said of this?  “They hate me and I revel in their hatred.”  To translate that from Edwardian English:  Scream bitches and enjoy it, there’s plenty more where that came from.

For the record, anti-trust law doesn’t hurt business at all, just the opposite, it has the same economic effect as diversifying ones portfolio, i.e., it spreads and minimizes risk, as well as pruning our economic tree to make it fuller and larger. It’s just breaking up a gang of crooks who’ve grown too big for their own good and the good of the country, big enough to sink the global economy, big enough to buy both houses of Congress and the Presidency, and stack the deck in their favor.  Did breaking up the phone company a few decades ago hurt our economy or did telecommunications grow like mad after that, the now smaller companies renewing themselves, with new management, now competing with each other at everything from cellphones to the internet, so that we are now a world leader in telecommunications?

So our advice: hold your nose and vote for the wimp, praying that, with nothing to lose and his legacy to think of, he’ll wise up, stop bending over for Wall Street and grow a pair in his second term.  There is some cause for hope.  He hasn’t threatened anyone with anti-trust law yet, but we do have a new anti-bullying law. He’s warming up to go after the big banks by first standing up to fourth graders in other words.  And those little savages can get pretty mean, so, ya’ know, after them, the banks should be easy.

Visit us at www.war-reform.com or www.princeofswine.com

Next Up:  What the Rest of Us Can Do to Restore Our Balls in the Meantime 

Has Anyone Seen Our Balls? Part II

Before we use Part I of this series (http://www.princeofswine.blogspot.com/2012/06/pardon-me-miss-has-anyone-seen-our.html) as the basis for an anti-feminist rant on the secret agenda of Hillary, Steinem, Oprah and the rest of the crew, consider an even more alarming trend.  Women not only have a casual attitude about castration regarding their pets and their men, but also about themselves (and this can be tragic on a profoundly human level).

Ms. Magazine Actually Agrees With Us!

It pains us to do this, more than you can imagine, but we’re going to have to cite (positively!) an investigation from none other than Ms. Magazine in support of this idea. http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2011/09/12/the-hysterectomy-epidemic-where%E2%80%99s-the-outrage/

The key findings of this study? Over 70% of hysterectomies are unnecessary.  While some women do experience relief from pain, health improvements and other safeguards from removal of the uterus, many more than this do not, and in fact, the procedure increases health risks in more areas than it avoids in the long run.  Finally, a common side effect of hysterectomy is loss of ability to orgasm, reduced libido, and/or greatly reduced intensity of orgasm.  It’s hotly debated exactly what percentage of women this occurs in but one of the most anti-hysterectomy organizations (the HERS foundation) puts the number at 54% for loss of orgasm, 66% for loss of sexual desire, and those numbers bump up 10-15% when loss of the ovaries or loss of ovarian function occurs with hysterectomy (which happens in about half of all hysterectomies in the US).

The most shocking finding according to Ms.’s author (Frances Whittlesey)?  Women, by and large, don’t seem to care much. Where’s the Outrage, as she asks in her title?  Ms. Whittlesey points out, “Can you imagine this sort of silence if a doctor threatened to remove the male testicles without a life threatening reason?”.  No, we can’t in fact, which is probably why we still have our testicles, however much trouble they keep getting us into, whatever the pain, and however much you’d all like to remove them for your own piece of mind and the benefit of the planet.

Forty years after the groundbreaking publication of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch, it seems some things have changed but much more hasn’t.  The most disturbing fact and what Greer missed?  Men aren’t the ones most in favor of castration, of men or women.  What women do to dogs, for reasons of behavior modification, not overpopulation, they’d like to do to men if they could.  And don’t expect much outrage or sympathy if you point this out to them.  They’re even more merciless to their own kind, why should they feel sorry for you?


Next Up:  Does Either Presidential Candidate Still Have His Balls?

Visit us at www.war-reform.com or www.princeofswine.com

Pardon Me Miss, Has Anyone Seen Our Balls?

Pros and Cons of Neutering Your Man Dog

When moving in animal rescue circles one often hears the mantra, “Spaying and neutering is a social responsibility.”  There’s also the common refrain, “How we treat animals is a reflection of how we treat ourselves.” 

Given this we thought it might be a good idea to examine exactly why we spay and neuter our animals in the hopes it might shed some light on how we treat ourselves in these troubled times.

Neutering Our Poor Puppies and the Implications for Mankind

The primary reason we spay and neuter is to keep down the huge and ever growing unwanted pet population.  That’s an excellent reason to spay and neuter our own species, and the reasons we don’t do this (save for the tragic and brutal wave of unnecessary hysterectomies in this country which we’ll examine in Part II of this series) beg the question:  why not find a less painful, brutal and invasive method to treat our animals? Why not a doggie vasectomy or tubal ligation?   (Relax, we’re not espousing a doggie condom, diaphragm or pill, though we often wonder if some owners would go to this length after watching them brush their dogs’ teeth as well as trail them with the infamous scooper and plastic bag).

The answer to this is truly illuminating.  The veterinary establishment stands firmly against this, not for reasons of pet overpopulation or cost (vasectomies and tubal ligations are just as cheap, if not cheaper, than castration and hysterectomy), but for reasons of behavior modification, especially in males.   A dog vasectomy might solve the problem of overpopulation, but it leaves the male hormones dangerously in place.

Surprise!  Men and Women Have Different Views on Neutering

The first thing one notices in sampling the available literature is opinions on neutering differ sharply and predictably along gender lines.  Women are the primary caretakers of animals in this country (as well as being a large majority of those who volunteer at animal shelters), and also the most steadfast voices in favor of spaying and neutering. 

And here’s the most striking fact for our own ulterior agenda (you knew we had one, of course, you didn’t really think we were writing this article out of a scientific interest in dog testicles, pity the poor bastards though we might?):  pet owners and veterinarians, but women especially, insist there are no adverse side effects to castration, or side effects whatsoever, despite all evidence to the contrary.  We could cite various studies for this, but you can informally confirm it yourself by googling “dog neutering male” and counting the responses in favor of neutering.  Results will vary, but we think you’ll find something similar to: 80% of all responses period (on the first page of results) come from women.  Over 90% were in favor of neutering, but an even more striking fact, over 70% of women claimed there were no negative side effects to castration or the side effects were minimal and unimportant.

For the record, any serious veterinarian, and any scientific literature on the subject will confirm the following: castrating a male dog has the following side effects (aside from making him unable to sire puppies):  1) he will likely be unable to have sex, and is very likely to have very little interest in sex period, 2) he will fight less and be much less aggressive with other dogs, 3) he will be much less likely to roam or run away, 4) he will be much more likely to gain weight and lose muscle tone.

All of these were considered either great improvements or unimportant side effects by most women.  The attitude can best be summed by one chipper pet owner, “All of the best things about your dog will still be in place, he’ll be happier, he’ll still love you, and he’ll be a far less troublesome and livable pet! Most dogs don’t even notice they’ve been neutered!”.

(Editor’s Note:  We confirmed this on a recent trip to the suburbs, they were all sitting around still wagging their tails as if nothing had happened, still fat, dumb and happy. The dogs, of course, we mean).

Next Up:  Why Have the Feminists Been So Quiet Lately and What Exactly Are They Up to Behind Our Backs?
(http://www.princeofswine.blogspot.com/2012/06/has-anyone-seen-our-balls-part-ii.html)

Visit us at http://www.princeofswine.com/ and join us at http://www.war-reform.com/.

Prince of Swine’s Jerry Farber: A Man for Our Time?

Q: Now Jerry Farber is a metaphor for our time, for the banking collapse and Wall Street scandals in your view? Corruption at high levels dragging the country down?

MT (writer/director): He’s the Hollywood version of that (partially based on Don Simpson) the same psychology that led to the collapse, an era going down in flames and good riddance, which is probably the best way to see Prince of Swine. Something old and corrupt dying, and something new and pure being born, a phoenix rising from the ashes. If you accept a canary in the coal mine theory of the arts, these things show up artistically before they do in the country, and that whole cult of high concept Simpson created, it’s the same culture and mindset as the rot on Wall Street.

Q: Explain.

MT: Well, you get away from academia, and actually visit and work on Wall Street, so you know the players and the mindset, and beyond the eggheads who enable the crooks, there are guys who proudly say, “I’m about the money, money talks, losers walk.” In their world everything is for sale, and weirdly, they’ve got the same naïve mindset as the academics, even the worst sort of hustlers often don’t see themselves as hustlers or evil, they rationalize it. They could take a cancer patient’s last dime selling them bad health insurance and consider it a productive day like they’ve done good for the country. These guys are salesmen, they can’t afford to doubt themselves, doubt reads as weakness, there can be no self-reflection or science in their world. They come out of the womb selling, they know very little about the world except how to sell, and that they want to be rich. Their actual ideas about the world are laughable -

Q: What do they tell themselves?

MT: Basically, any kind of business is good for the market, even if you’re completely ripping somebody off, lieing, and selling a product that’s pure crap, still, it’s economic activity, so it’s good for the market.

Q: And how is Jerry Farber a metaphor for this?

MT: He’s the Hollywood version, which I think is more accessible to people than Wall Street. You really can’t understand the madness and widespread fraudulence of Wall Street unless you understand math and economics. There’s been a few good documentaries on Wall Street, but it would be hard to capture it in feature film form, because it’s so complex and esoteric. I’d rather do it the way we did and put it in an arena people can understand. The psychology is the same and any monkey can understand Hollywood, it’s like watching Entertainment Tonight –

Q: You dumbed Prince of Swine down for a general audience?

MT: That’s cynical. I would say instead a general audience can enjoy and understand it, but if you want to look deeper, that level is there too.

Q: Jerry Farber is partially based on Don Simpson?

MT: Yeah, that part is the same as Wall Street, this sort of dim, tasteless, aggression, “Money talks, losers walk” that’s something Don Simpson would say, that’s almost something out of one of his business talks, “We don’t make art, we make money.” They don’t know anything else about life except they want to succeed, at any cost. At the same time, he had this childish, deluded view of himself as a good guy and an artist, Simpson actually thought he was making good movies, and was something other than a drug addled pimp who cheapened the taste and lives of everyone he touched, including his audience -

Q: That’s a bit harsh.

MT: No, that’s the literal truth actually, go talk to the hookers he turned out and abused if you doubt it. I don’t understand why people defend and make excuses for him, it’s as if we’re afraid to have good taste or ethics nowadays, it’s too painful given the climate. Defending Simpson is like defending Bernie Madoff.

Q: Well, Americans have been repeatedly traumatized in the taste department -

MT: Yeah, I mean, when you can cheapen the taste and lower the values of a Hollywood studio, that’s cheap, that’s taking tacky to a whole new level -

Q: Let’s just say you’re not a fan of the high concept school of thought -

MT: Well, not being fifteen, no, I don’t think it makes very good movies. I don’t even think fifteen year olds think they’re good movies, it’s just they’re more prone to having their buttons pushed while someone picks their pocket at that age.

Q: Well they obviously sold.

MT: So what? So did mortgage securities. I’m so tired of that mindset, especially from people who want to be taken seriously as artists, or seriously as Americans for that matter. It’s basically saying, “Well, why not pimp the kids? There’s good money in it.” Yes, surprise, surprise, you can sell crap to suckers, thus cheapening both them and you. Guess what, you can also make something great, make it a hit, and do something that actually deepens and uplifts people –

Q: Name one movie –

MT: I didn’t like the cheap shot Cameron took at the troops, but Avatar is brilliant otherwise, stunningly imaginative. American Beauty made an s-load of money, the Sopranos was wildly successful, so is Mad Men, it can be done, maybe it takes more time, more work, its harder –

Q: Now Jerry Farber and women –

MT: If you believe, deep in your soul, that everything is for sale, and you base this belief on yourself, because you’re for sale, and aren’t about anything but money and power, how can you see women as anything but whores, and thus hate them? Of course when you believe that you attract that sort of woman to you. I believe that’s true of Don Simpson, it explains his behavior with women perfectly. I know it’s true of Jerry Farber. It’s a pretty ugly, damned and doomed place to live. I hope the country is coming out of that mindset now, and we’re ready for something new and better.

Q: Keep hope alive?

MT: There’s hope and beauty in our lead actress’ face, in that character, once you get past the scowl, the pain and the anguish, I’m stunned by what’s underneath, it’s redemption and rebirth, those are the most beautiful images of the movie, and the most beautiful things in the world to me, seeing that in a woman’s face. That can be a symbol for our time too. People will fight for that, for redemption and rebirth, as much as they can be swayed, ruined and sold out by a cheap pimp. Once you see the real thing in fact and know what it is, your standards go up and you’re pimp proof. She’s triumphant in the end and Jerry Farber is brought down, seen for what he is at least. Evil never goes away but once you can see it, then there’s hope, you can be something else. We can take another way in our time.

Prince of Swine opens at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood on the Sunset Strip at Crescent Heights, Memorial Day Weekend, for a limited engagement, May 28th to June 3rd.

Get tickets for Prince of Swine online at the Laemmle Sunset 5 or the Prince of Swine website http://www.princeofswine.com/ (discounts available for advance and group purchasers).

Join the Prince of Swine revolution on Twitter and Facebook.

Visit Prince of Swine at http//www.princeofswine.com.

Prince of Swine's Flawed Heroine

Q: Your lead actress said earlier that her character, Julie, is a “good person with a hard past, whose anger prevents anyone from being close to her”. Expand on that.

Mark Toma (writer/director, Prince of Swine): Nell had an extensive back story, she knew Julie's past, I threw out my own ideas, so we both knew her past, but we deliberately don't go into it in the movie.

Q: Why not?

MT: We wanted to make Julie universal. It doesn’t really matter how she got to that point in her life which the movie depicts. There are a million ways to get to that place.

Q: Name some.

MT: Just a person witnesses tragedy or injustice, on a personal level, it effects them personally, and that happens to everyone sooner or later, if that doesn’t happen to you in your life I don’t know what planet you’re living on. It happened to her fairly young. And she’s in that stage of that where she still takes that very personally, she has to make sense of it or she can’t go on living.

Q: Well what is the tragedy or injustice she witnessed?

MT: We don’t go into that because then it would be all about her and not universal. It wouldn’t be funny either. Prince of Swine is a comedy, and Julie is coming out of that when we meet her, she’s not headed into tragedy, she’s coming out of it. She’s triumphant, not defeated.

Q: But you both knew what the dark thing or tragedy was?

MT: Of course, we discussed it extensively. Nell's a very brave actress to go to that place. I don't know what exact history she finally settled on, it's not important, but we went over every square inch of the psychological territory she's coming from.

Q: Which is what?

MT: The actual history is not important, there's a thousand ways to get to the same place, this is a universal thing people go through. It’s not as if Julie’s mortally wounded, suffering like this to grow is the law of the universe. It could be someone close to her died, she’s still grieving, they believed in something very strongly, this is her way of honoring them. Or maybe a parent had their career or life destroyed by someone that reminds her of the Defendant in this case. Or maybe she failed to protect somebody she felt responsible for, they came to a bad end, so now she’s doing some sort of penance. We don’t need to know why, the point is, she takes it very personally, this is a personal matter of honor to her, we just need to know that she’s an honorable person, working through a personal demon.

Q: She’s somewhat of a flawed heroine in your eyes?

MT: I think she’s fighting the good fight, she’s a good person. Most of her anger is spent flagellating herself more than anyone else. She doesn’t really hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it. She’s a bit much to take for the people who care about her, it’s difficult to be her friend. I don’t think you want to go through life eternally angry like that.

Q: Will she do that?

MT: Well, a lot of the anger is exorcized in just the time we know her. Still, I don’t think she ever laughs once in the movie. Sometimes she’s ironic or acerbic, but never quite laughs. This is a multi-dimensional, layered character, she’s as deep a character as you’ll see on screen, at the same time she’s the archetypal humorless feminist! She cries a lot, in a strange way that might be a precursor to laughing in the future, being able to feel joy again. That might be the sequel hopefully: “Prince of Swine II: Julie Laughs”.

Prince of Swine opens at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood on the Sunset Strip at Crescent Heights, Memorial Day Weekend, for a limited engagement, May 28th to June 3rd.

Get tickets for Prince of Swine online at the Laemmle Sunset 5 or the Prince of Swine website http://www.princeofswine.com/ (discounts available for advance and group purchasers).

Join the Prince of Swine revolution on Twitter and Facebook.

Visit Prince of Swine at http//www.princeofswine.com.

The Real Life vs. the Onscreen Lawyer

(Tony Luti is a California superlawyer, and founder of The Luti Law Firm, which serves as the setting for the fictional firm in Prince of Swine).

Q: How did you become involved with the movie Prince of Swine?

Anthony Luti (founder, Luti Law Firm): Mark Toma, the writer/director walked into my office one day and asked if he could shoot a movie at my firm during our off hours.

Q: (laughing) Just like that?

AL (laughing): Pretty much.

Q: Why did he come to you?

AL: We practice the same sort of law as in the movie, Title VII, employment litigation. We’re a plaintiff’s firm, just as in the movie, and as Mark said when he first saw our offices, “This is the coolest looking law firm I’ve ever seen! Check it out! Malcolm X is on your wall!”. I guess we’ve got similar taste in décor too, he loved the color scheme for Hi-Def. Maybe not many lawyers would want a movie crew shooting in their firm or for their firm to be up on the big screen. I thought it was a blast.

Q: So give us your professional opinion, how much is the movie Prince of Swine like your real life practice?

AL: Well, I haven’t actually seen Prince of Swine yet, but as I understand it, the head of the firm is an African American attorney who wanted to blaze his own trail, his own practice, so that’s the same. They excel in a David vs. Goliath type situation, that’s the same. According to Mark, Prince of Swine has many meanings, and the characters in my firm are the Princes in the title, not the swine!

Q: Who are the swine?

AL: Again, I haven’t seen the movie, but I take it the swine of the title refers to very swinish behavior by powerful institutions or individuals, when they’re very far over the line, and think they’re above the law. They need to watch out for that, because that’s why we’re in business.

Q: So this movie is your life story?

AL (laughing): No, not really. From what I can tell, I probably would not have taken the client in the movie, if she walked into my office!

Q: Why not?

AL: We’re extremely particular about our clients. We only take a very few and in a very specific situation. The client has to have a very strong case. The Defendant has to be in the wrong legally, the facts must be clear about this, but the Defendant takes the stance, “This person is pennyless, they’re powerless, we can step on them with impunity. Go ahead, do something about it.” When I encounter that sort of blind, unethical, arrogance of power, I say to it, “Make no mistake, this case will go to trial and you will lose when it does.” If they don’t back off, my trial record speaks for itself. I’m not bluffing and they know it.

Q: How did the movie client fail that litmus test?

AL (laughing): The Defendant in Prince of Swine was way over the line, but the Plaintiff was sort of flaky and morally dubious too! Morally and legally, from what I understand, it somehow comes together in the end, but that wasn’t clear when they took the case. The facts weren’t there at the start of the case, something smelled fishy, but it wasn’t a clear enough case of wrongdoing. The young associate in the film, as I understand it, just had a very strong feeling, she pursued it and then uncovered the facts. That’s something you do if you want to make a movie that sheds light on the craziness of the system, it’s not the greatest way to win an actual lawsuit.

Q: Your cases are more airtight?

AL (laughing): Well, it’s not an interesting movie, if you know from the time the lawyer takes the case that he’s going to win, where is the suspense? It’s more than that, even though, on the surface, the movie takes place in the same legal arena, from what I understand talking to Mark, the message in the movie is something different, which, I think I might support, but in fact, it’s not my practice area in real life.

Q: Explain.

AL: I’m upholding a revolution that took place 40 years ago, I’m upholding the tradition of civil and human rights laid down by my heroes, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, amongst others. This is the law of the land now, there is no argument about it. We are living in truly miraculous times, we have an African American President now – a potentially great one, in my opinion. It makes you believe in miracles when you look back at our history, only in America. So if someone is going to treat that law with contempt, I uphold that tradition and that’s what I’m about.

Q: How is that different from the movie?

AL: It’s the same in spirit, but I think he’s interested in a different area of law. I’m taking this from talking to Mark, not from seeing the movie, but as I understand it, the harassment case in the movie is just a device used to explore the psychology, decadence, and arrogance of power, he’s not interested in making some social statement about harassment law, because it’s already settled law, what’s the point?

Q: The movie is more a metaphor for what’s going on with the country right now, or on Wall Street?

AL: That’s my educated guess. Metaphorically, artistically, that works for me as a movie, and I certainly see the same sort of arrogance of power that led to the banking collapse in my practice area every day. Maybe it’s easier to see it in employment law, because the issues are so human, everyone can understand the human dynamics and emotion of a harassment case. Part of the scandal on Wall Street, it’s so abstract, it’s so convoluted and specialized, no one can understand it in human terms, and that’s how the perpetrators got away with it.

If the movie is saying, “These forces are running out of control, they are lawless, they are destructive, they need to be brought to heel for their own good and the good of the country”, I would agree with that. When you talk about that, you’re talking about finance reform, the way the Obama administration is taking on Wall Street right now. I support that as a lawyer and an American, but finance reform is not my practice area. And it would probably make a less interesting movie too. Banking is pretty dry compared to a harassment case!

Q: It’s the same dynamic psychologically, emotionally and artistically, just a different fact pattern?

AL: Exactly. That’s not an argument I can make in court, it’s not specific enough, but it’s fascinating as a work of art. Hopefully Prince of Swine will hold up in the court of public opinion, which I think is the court we’re really trying for here.

Prince of Swine opens at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in West Hollywood on the Sunset Strip at Crescent Heights, Memorial Day Weekend, for a limited engagement, May 28th to June 3rd.

Get tickets for Prince of Swine online at the Laemmle Sunset 5 or the Prince of Swine website http://www.princeofswine.com/ (discounts available for advance and group purchasers).

Join the Prince of Swine revolution on Twitter and Facebook.

Visit Prince of Swine at http//www.princeofswine.com.