A scene from the far-flung fringes of the post-Columbine media frenzy: at Cannes last month, director Spike Lee was asked what should be done to decrease violent behaviour in the wake of the massacre in Littleton, Colorado. "The problem is guns," he replied. "We've got to dismantle the NRA." And what about Charlton Heston, the former star of The Ten Commandments who still acts like Moses the Lawgiver in his capacity as President of the NRA? "Shoot him with a .44 calibre Bulldog," replied the director, who later claimed he was "being ironic, as a joke about how violence begets more violence." Heston's reply was smug, infantile, and utterly beside the point: "If he wants to come and take a shot at me, let him try it!"
Predictably enough, politicians, particularly Congressional Republican Leader Dick Armey (whose name is the punchline to a well-worn Washington joke: "What do you call 10,000 penises marching in step?'') jumped on the Columbine bandwagon. "Spike Lee obviously has nothing to offer except more violence and more hate," he crowed fatuously. "I hope no child in America takes his comments as an encouragement to use violence to settle disagreements."
Welcome to another exciting edition of Washington versus Hollywood, or rather the same old mutually accusatory festival of finger-pointing between DC and Tinseltown over the causes of teenage killing sprees: Guns? Or violence in the media? It's a debate whose loudest sound is that of self-promoters and the professionally broken-hearted stampeding for the nearest bank of microphones.
First up were the politicians. They by and large avoided minor issues like the obscene availability of handguns in American society (as easy to come by as skunkweed or a fake ID), and the alienating, hierarchical nature of the American High School Experience and went straight for the the really obvious candidates. These included Marilyn Manson, German noise-niks Rammstein, the shoot-'em-up videogames Doom and Wargasm, the movie The Basketball Diaries - in which teen-idol Leonardo DiCaprio opens fire in the classroom - and even The Matrix, which had no connection whatsoever with Littleton except that its heroes all wore trenchcoats.
Marilyn Manson, it almost immediately transpired, had not featured in any way on the killers' Top-10 playlists. The point, however, is that condemning Marilyn Manson is the fastest, surest way - short of going postal at your high school - to get your face on national television. But such tactics can backfire, even on a hardy self-promoter like say, Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, a man whose vanity demands that he be perpetually warmed by the Kleig lights and flashbulbs of the DC press corps. Recently, when Hatch was photographed brandishing a Manson CD, it looked as if he was waving his own business card, one reading "Anti-Christ Superstar".
Still, the congenitally dishonest politicians, whether or not they've taken blood money from America's most formidable lobbying group, the National Rifle Association - which abruptly cancelled its convention in Denver the week after the killings - were almost preferable to the self-regarding egomaniacs who soon crawled out of the Hollywoodwork to broadcast their moral rectitude vis a vis teenage gunplay. Sharon Stone handed her own shooters in to the LAPD on May 14th and issued a press release saying she had decided to "no longer retain firearms in her home", adding that she had chosen "to surrender my right to bear arms in exchange for the peace of mind of doing the right thing." All very commendable in Tinseltown, of course, where talk is cheap, and press releases are so intimate.
Hard on Stone's heels came afternoon talkshow host Rosie O'Donnell, who decided to beef up her reputation as the nation's big sister by opening fire on, of all people, Tom Selleck. Expecting to talk about his new film, Selleck was greeted with a fusillade of hostile questions about a recent print ad he'd done for the NRA which opened with the ill-chosen words: "Shooting teaches young people good things". Shock-jock Howard Stern took it upon himself to respond, calling O'Donnell a "hypocrite" for her ad campaigns for K-Mart, one of America's biggest vendors of rifles and shotguns, and berated her for ambushing the unwitting Selleck. "She brought on a big dummy like him - who's comparable to a retarded person - and argued with him when he wasn't prepared."
In another part of the forest meanwhile, TV schedulers started getting cold feet about upcoming shows. The biggest casualty was the two-part season finale of the WB network's teen hit Buffy The Vampire Slayer, whose second episode featured a high-school graduation ceremony in which the mayor turns into a giant serpent and Buffy and her stake-wielding homegirls have to tool up with guns-amundo to save the day. Although Part One ran on schedule, WB's chairman Jamie Kellner delayed transmission of the conclusion, "out of compassion for communities that have been devastated by recent acts of senseless violence on high school campuses." Remember, Littleton wasn't just the biggest high school massacre - it was also the 12th in the last two years. Kellner also talked of "a deep sense of responsibility to the WB's loyal young audience." Which is more to the point, since that large, wealthy audience fuels the current boom in teen movies and TV shows.
Once bitten, twice shy, they say, but the ever-chipper O'Donnell - who, to her credit, donated $50,000 to a Littleton memorial fund shortly after the killings - was back for a second public spanking less than a week after the drubbing she'd taken over Selleck. It was reported, to general hilarity and derision, that O'Donnell's musical guests, the Broadway cast of Annie Get Your Gun, which included Bernadette Peters and former Dukes Of Hazzard star Tom Wopat, had been asked to change the lyrics of the almost entirely innocuous show tune Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better, in particular the line, "I can shoot a partridge with a single cartridge." Everyone involved backed away from the story, claiming it wasn't true. "It's her show; she can do what she wants,' said Wopat. "I'm a good camper. I do what I'm told." But the song was finally dropped in favour of an ensemble dance number.
In the end, however one may disagree with the self-aggrandising ways in which Stone, O'Donnell, et al make their case, they are largely correct in their belief that the problem lies with guns. President Clinton had to go on national television twice after the Littleton killings in order to shame an obdurate Congress into closing certain ease-of-purchase loopholes in its Juvenile Crime Bill. The NRA still insists that "Guns don't kill people, people kill people"; and somehow the gun manufacturers manage to win all the arguments. Probably because they've got all the guns.
The best response to the NRA's pea-brained philosophy comes, finally, from Hollywood. In Men In Black, Vincent D'Onofrio's shotgun-totin' redneck, faced with an alien that wants his body for a jumpsuit, quotes verbatim a favourite gun-nut bumper-sticker: "You can have my gun - when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!" To which his tentacled tormentor replies: "Your terms are acceptable." SPLAT!
If only it were that easy.
