Taki Taki

My fury at Fury, a film only a vampire could love

There's enough blood on the screen in Brad Pitt's new blockbuster to turn Dracula to masturbation

I have always believed that the mission of most movies made after the Fred & Ginger era has been to reduce, insofar as it is possible, the manners and morals of the community. Long before the camera was invented, the Ancient Greeks used to throw playwrights in jail for corrupting society, old Aristophanes always one step ahead of the sheriff, a practice that has not been followed by our generation because there are not enough jail cells to accommodate all the ruffians responsible. In between, Cervantes was funny with money and did a Taki as a result, Ben Jonson killed a man in a duel and was something of a jailbird, Racine was a gigolo to Madame de Maintenon, Samuel Johnson was arrested twice for debt, Voltaire was thrown out of France three times and did Bastille time, and the wonderful Tennessee Williams abused booze and boys all of his short life. The list goes on and on, and only the sainted and best of all, Sir Tom Stoppard, escapes the hall of shame.

Now please don’t get me wrong. The men who directed and wrote the motion picture I’m about to review have as much in common with the above names as popinjays do with lions, their lack of talent constituting a legitimate disability. The movie premiere of Fury, starring Brad Pitt, was well attended by homeless people, or so it seemed, as the dress code was expensive rags and pork-pie hats as worn by the richest hobo of them all, Brad Pitt himself, who waved from the stage but said nothing, thank God.

I was a guest of Michael Mailer’s, hence I will control the vitriol; suffice it to say that 15 minutes into the gross-out porno-violent movie, I was rooting for Brad to be killed, preferably roasted alive inside his Sherman tank.

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