So, back in the nineties I used to keep a journal. It was mostly an emotional steam valve, not for anyone's consumption. But now and then I'd read a passage and think, this is good stuff! I can't publish it, of course, because it's very personal and it would ruin my life and the lives of those around me. But the idea nagged at me nonetheless. And there was a point where I realized that MS Word could export HTML without much trouble, and Apple provided we with a a little web publishing space for free. So I started publishing PARTS of my journal. I wasn't advertising it or anything. It was the web equivalent of an old couch on the sidewalk. If you happen to be in the neighborhood and you need a couch, take it away.
So, given that any post about people I knew was off-limits, I mostly published complaining about things. Maybe that would mean bad traffic or airline food to a normal man. I mostly weighed in on TV and movies.
Okay, so going all the way back to my first movie theater job, I had been stunned by TREASURE OF THE FOUR CROWNS, an early 3D effort by Cannon Pictures. It was awful. It starred Tony Anthony (an Italian with a much longer real name) but I noticed that it also starred, and was written by, a man named Gene Quintano. And throughout the ensuing decade, that name stuck with me and I watched for it, and every time he came up he was associated with a movie that I thought was terrible. (Most of them were also from Cannon Pictures, and almost everything they ever did was terrible.) But by the time I started this online journal, so-called because no one had coined "blog" yet, I was a kind of expert. A Quintanologist.
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| Gene's Acting Debut, COMIN' AT YA |
Then, a week later, the weird part.
I got this unsolicited email from Gene Quintano.
My first thought was OMG GENE QUINTANO IS WRITING TO ME HE'S FAMOUS HE'S A WORKING SCREENWRITER THIS IS GREAT THIS IS GREAT and that faded as I read the email and realized that he was furious with me and I had made his kid cry because the kid didn't understand why anybody would hate his daddy.
And I wrote back, respectfully and explained that I was devastated that I had caused that trouble and had no idea that he would ever see it (also that he would care about my opinion but I kept that part to myself) and I'd do anything I could to make it right. He replied! If I could write an email to his kid and explain that I didn't hate Gene, that might help. So I did. I composed a short note in which I said that Gene Quintano himself was surely a wonderful guy and I just didn't care for the movies he was associated with.
That smoothed it over, kinda. Quintano wrote back a week later and pointed out that he was only the screenwriter and he didn't make the final decisions and his drafts were much better than the movies wound up being. I suggested he direct more. He did eventually helm 4 films, Including Honeymoon Academy and National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon. You be the judge.
What's the takeaway from this? It seems like a really early example of the internet's power to magnify a grievance. I think Mr Q and I were both sucker-punched by this, which is why it became such a thing. I was a nobody pretending to be a real film critic and not realizing that I had the reach of one, as long as you were an artist Googling yourself. Eventually all "real" film critics lost their clout to this phenomenon.
Anyway, maybe I'll issue another apology to Gene Quintano every 20 years or so until one of us is dead. If it's any consolation he's made a LOT more money in this business than I have, and rightly so.
Oh, and don't get me started on Lorenzo Semple Jr.
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