# Annie Proulx: Sore Loser, Stupid Bitch **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [March 16, 2006, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550 "2006-03-16T01:37:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Indygrrl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/58f4c7/32.png) [@Indygrrl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indygrrl)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/61 "2006-03-16T19:31:02Z")
> [@vibrotronica](#): > > _Pulp Fiction_ was better than _Forrest Gump_. _2001: A Space Oddessy_ was better than _Oliver_, and _Brokeback Mountain_, _Good Night, and Good Luck_, and _Capote_ were all better than _Crash_. Shit happens, Annie, especially at Oscar time. Now shut your fucking cry-hole and get back to work. Ditto that. It’s very unbecoming of her to behave this way about the movie, and it cheapens the awards that the movie did get. You won’t hear Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana trashing other writers, that much I’m sure of. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/62 "2006-03-16T20:26:36Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > I was disappointed in Proulx when I saw her diatribe - I think she was too sucked in by all the press the movie got and expected it to win like everyone else. Yeah, she should have kept her mouth shut. She sounds like a sore loser. > [@](#): > > Thing is, the academy got this one right - \*Crash \*is a much better movie than _Brokeback_. I saw \*Brokeback \*Monday night, and was rather disappointed. Sure, it’s an okay movie, but it’s rather slow. Boring in some parts. SpouseO remarked to me that if it wasn’t for the gay angle, the movie never would have been nominated for anything (perhaps would have gone completely unnoticed), which I can’t disagree with. This is total bullshit IMO, and I’m going to use the same argument **tagos** used when preaching to the choir of admirers of Proulx’s writing in this thread-- _BBM_ is destined to be a classic, and if you didn’t like it, the fault is yours, not the work’s. You aren’t into gay cowboys or tragic love stories? Fine. But that’s not a fault of the movie’s, which is perfectly written, amazingly acted, and took just as long to tell the story as it needed to. You liked _Crash_ better, that’s your prerogative, but don’t say _BBM_ wasn’t a great movie because you didn’t get into it. That’s exactly like me saying Annie Proulx is a florid hack with a penchant for obstructively byzantine prose, Pulitzer be damned. You say, “but she won a Pulitzer!” So what? BBM won scads of awards and you still dismiss it. Sauce for the goose and all that. ---
**Author:** ![Plynck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3e96dc/32.png) [@Plynck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Plynck)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/63 "2006-03-16T20:44:44Z")
> [@Larry Borgia](#): > > “Yeasty ferment that is America?” What the fuck is that? It was Dan Savage’s second choice of a definition for the word “_santorum_”. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2006, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/64 "2006-03-16T22:22:21Z")
> [@](#): > > She decries the “atmosphere of insufferable self-importance”… She’s got that right, in a Pot.Kettle.Black. sort of way. > [@duffer](#): > > Hmm. An analogy to a petrie dish. It’s _petri_ dish. The only _petrie_ dish I can think of is Laura Petrie, and not everyone would agree with Rob on that. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/65 "2006-03-17T00:15:41Z")
> [@](#): > > Academy members who vote for the year’s best film are “out of touch not only with the shifting larger culture and the yeasty ferment that is America these days, but also out of touch with their own segregated city,” Proulx writes. I find it interesting (and a bit amusing) that Proulx’s claim about Hollywood being culturally “out of touch” with America is the same line we’ve been fed by the right-wing ranters in this country for years. The only difference is Proulx’s attack comes from the left–the same side of the political spectrum where the entertainment industry’s supposed sympathies lie. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/66 "2006-03-17T03:41:48Z")
I dunno. I agree with her. It’s not secret that the academy is full of a bunch of gutless wonders and the movie critic scene is rivaled only by the video game writing community for it’s total lack of relevance, inability to rip in to something that clearly sucks and general high crap tolerance. At least someone is willing to call them out for being a bunch of lame-o’s. _Crash_ is based on an idea that seems utterly brilliant to every 19year old film student. “It’s all like, connected man. I’ll make a movie with a bunch of characters, and their lives are connected in some tenuous way. And stuff happens. Yeah. And I’ll talk about Racism. I know, as a white male, all about racism. Yeah! And then there will be a redemptive ending, because it’s all like okay and connected” Luckly, most film students rather quickly realize how trite that idea is (Amores Perros did it best, IMHO) and move on to tell authentic stories about stuff they have some sort of personal connection to besides contemplating the plight of the black man while listening to bad house music at a party with his all-white friends in an upper class LA suburb. Anyway, I think the award ought to have gone to _Lord of War_. Now there is a movie that has some teeth on it. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/67 "2006-03-17T04:05:15Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > And I’ll talk about Racism. I know, as a white male, all about racism. Holy shit, Ang Lee is gay!?!? Learn something new everyday. Who knew? ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/68 "2006-03-17T13:28:58Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > And I’ll talk about Racism. I know, as a white male, all about racism. > [@duffer](#): > > Holy shit, Ang Lee is gay!?!? > > Learn something new everyday. Who knew? And [Norman Jewison](http://www.nndb.com/people/186/000023117/) (director of _In The Heat Of The Night_) obviously is black. ---
**Author:** ![Snickers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@Snickers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snickers)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/69 "2006-03-17T16:27:51Z")
> [@Rubystreak](#): > > This is total bullshit IMO, and I’m going to use the same argument **tagos** used when preaching to the choir of admirers of Proulx’s writing in this thread-- _BBM_ is destined to be a classic, and if you didn’t like it, the fault is yours, not the work’s. You aren’t into gay cowboys or tragic love stories? Fine. But that’s not a fault of the movie’s, which is perfectly written, amazingly acted, and took just as long to tell the story as it needed to. > > You liked _Crash_ better, that’s your prerogative, but don’t say _BBM_ wasn’t a great movie because you didn’t get into it. That’s exactly like me saying Annie Proulx is a florid hack with a penchant for obstructively byzantine prose, Pulitzer be damned. You say, “but she won a Pulitzer!” So what? BBM won scads of awards and you still dismiss it. Sauce for the goose and all that. Wow, **Rubystreak** , I’m sorry that you’ve taken so much offense at me thinking that \*Brokeback \*was meh. I’m glad it captured you. It didn’t capture me. Gay cowboys had nothing to do with me not getting into it (honestly, I could care less about the gender of the people involved), and I think the tragic love story angle has been handled better by other people. The acting was amazing, however. And remember, the converse works as well - just because something has won awards doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, either. I’m not dismissing the movie, I just didn’t see where it’d said something new or made some grand point. My point in the whole thing is that Hollywood latched onto “gay cowboys! this is groundbreaking!” and parroted that message, when it seems to me that that misses the point of the movie and reduces it, in some way. While \*Crash \*was contrived, unsurprising, and relied too heavily on tired coincidences as plot devices, it left me with more than \*Brokeback \*did. But **even sven** ’s right - _Lord of War_ is better than both of them, by a country mile. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/70 "2006-03-17T16:56:15Z")
> [@Snickers](#): > > Wow, **Rubystreak** , I’m sorry that you’ve taken so much offense at me thinking that \*Brokeback \*was meh. I’m not offended. I just think it’s kind of hypocritical to defend Annie Proulx by saying she won a Pulitzer, thus any criticism of her as a writer is off-base, and then think it’s valid to turn around and dismiss _BBM_ despite its many awards. I didn’t set these criteria, I’m just trying to apply them uniformly. I think BBM is as worthy of defense as Proulx is, and this was turning into a “dis on BBM” thread, which is most definitely flogging a dead horse. > [@](#): > > I’m glad it captured you. It didn’t capture me. Gay cowboys had nothing to do with me not getting into it (honestly, I could care less about the gender of the people involved), and I think the tragic love story angle has been handled better by other people. The acting was amazing, however. I think the gender of the people involved is a key element to the story, and to dismiss it as not being important is disingenuous. Tragic love stories are hard to tell without being derivative, and I think BBM avoided this quite well. I also think it’s an important story to tell, just as important as Crash if not moreso. > [@](#): > > And remember, the converse works as well - just because something has won awards doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good, either. I’m not dismissing the movie, I just didn’t see where it’d said something new or made some grand point. You’re entitled to your opinion but I do think it was new in some significant ways and did make a grand point. I also think it deserved more awards than it got. However, people in this thread were saying that no one could say Annie Proulx was a bad writer because, hey, she got a Pulitzer! Please. > [@](#): > > My point in the whole thing is that Hollywood latched onto “gay cowboys! this is groundbreaking!” and parroted that message, when it seems to me that that misses the point of the movie and reduces it, in some way. While \*Crash \*was contrived, unsurprising, and relied too heavily on tired coincidences as plot devices, it left me with more than \*Brokeback \*did. Don’t you think it WAS groundbreaking? When is the last time you saw a movie this “mainstream” featuring gay cowboys, a direct confrontation of the horrendous effects of homophobia and the ripple effect it has on entire families of closeted people trying to pass in a virulent culture? I was very moved by BBM and I think it’s a story that needs to be told b/c it’s easy for people to ignore how harmful homophobia can be and how far-reaching its consequences. > [@](#): > > But **even sven** ’s right - _Lord of War_ is better than both of them, by a country mile. I haven’t see it but I’m going to put it on my Netflix queue. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/71 "2006-03-17T17:32:17Z")
> [@Rubystreak](#): > > if you didn’t like it, the fault is yours, not the work’s. Let me make sure I understand this. If there’s a person that _doesn’t_ think that BBM is the greatest film of all time, that _Citizen Kane_ is _Ishtar_, then that person is obviously defective? That they need to go through a series of psychotherapy and painful shots to the bellybutton and having their eyelids held open and subjected to nothing but BBM over and ovver while someone puts drops in their eyes?[sup]\*[/sup] \*This is hyperbole. In no way, shape, or form am I trying to suggest that you made this arguement, or that you actually think the above. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/72 "2006-03-17T18:33:37Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > Let me make sure I understand this. If there’s a person that _doesn’t_ think that BBM is the greatest film of all time, that _Citizen Kane_ is _Ishtar_, then that person is obviously defective? That they need to go through a series of psychotherapy and painful shots to the bellybutton and having their eyelids held open and subjected to nothing but BBM over and ovver while someone puts drops in their eyes?[sup]\*[/sup] > \*This is hyperbole. In no way, shape, or form am I trying to suggest that you made this arguement, or that you actually think the above. You might want to read the whole thread, **Superdude**. She was parodying **tagos** ’s earlier argument about Annie Proulx’s _The Shipping News_. Sure, it’s a stupid argument, but **Rubystreak** isn’t the one who introduced it. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2006, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/73 "2006-03-17T18:40:12Z")
> [@Superdude](#): > > \*This is hyperbole. In no way, shape, or form am I trying to suggest that you made this arguement, or that you actually think the above. Thank god. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 5:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/74 "2006-03-18T05:29:19Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You might want to read the whole thread, **Superdude**. She was parodying **tagos** ’s earlier argument about Annie Proulx’s _The Shipping News_. Sure, it’s a stupid argument, but **Rubystreak** isn’t the one who introduced it. Actually, I HAVE read the entire thread. I guess I just got wooshed. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/75 "2006-03-18T06:19:23Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > Holy shit, Ang Lee is gay!?!? > > Learn something new everyday. Who knew? Ang Lee has presumably been around gay people, and had some actual conversations with them. I’ve known a lot of film people, and while all them would profess to be good liberals and deeply troubled by the plight of the black man and oh-so-in-touch with the urban crises of the modern age, not more than a handful of them ever actually spent so much as lunch actually having a real talk with a black guy. I can only think of one black kid in my film classes at the large state university I went to. You’ve never seen so many white men in one room. The world of film may be full of liberal guilt and macho street posturing, but it is still very very much an upper-class white male world. There are endless movies like this. They lay out a bleak world full of bad guys and all the drama and darkness makes it seem deep. They trot out the boogie men from both the left and the right, and that makes it seem balanced. And the only person who isn’t condemned is the camera, the viewer. They all boil down to “The world sucks, and it’s pretty much everyone’s fault but my own or they systems that I am a part of.” The white middle-aged audiences walks away from the theater feeling educated and properly distressed, but reassured that nothing in their lives has to change. “Oh dear, it’s just terrible”, they tell themselves as the chat over lattes, calmed because at least they’ve done their part by being politely horrified by the problem and now there is nothing more to do. Traffic. Elephant. Thirteen. House of Sand and Fog. Mystic River. It’s the hip trend. I’ll tell you a great hint for telling a movie’s real intentions- just check to see if they portray sex with a black guy as the protagonist’s ultimate fall. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/76 "2006-03-18T13:52:58Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > Ang Lee has presumably been around gay people, and had some actual conversations with them. I’ve known a lot of film people, and while all them would profess to be good liberals and deeply troubled by the plight of the black man and oh-so-in-touch with the urban crises of the modern age, not more than a handful of them ever actually spent so much as lunch actually having a real talk with a black guy. So you know, in fact, that Paul Haggis has had no more contact with black people than having lunch with one? Cite? Give us a fucking break. Ang Lee is no more qualified to comment on the plight of the gay American than Paul Haggis is to comment on the plight of the visible minority, and you know it. In any event, the point here is not that “Crash” was a worse movie than “Brokeback Mountain,” which is a valid point of view, but that Annie Proulx is a dumb, bitter biznatch whose “column” is rife with contradictions, hypocrisy, tortured attempts to make herself sound smarter than she is, and general idiocy. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/77 "2006-03-18T16:28:51Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > There are endless movies like this. They lay out a bleak world full of bad guys and all the drama and darkness makes it seem deep. They trot out the **boogie men** from both the left and the right, and that makes it seem balanced. Unless you want to be seen as using a racial slur, better change that to **boogeymen** or **bogeymen**. “Boogie” is a derogatory term for blacks. [Cite.](http://www.rsdb.org/) (You can learn a lot from this site, Ms. Betty Crocker). 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/78 "2006-03-18T19:41:53Z")
Anyone who thinks the Oscars or Pulizters mean anything is a fucking tool. ---
**Author:** ![duffer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duffer/32/1026_2.png) [@duffer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/duffer)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2006, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/79 "2006-03-18T23:20:15Z")
> [@even sven](#): > > Ang Lee has presumably been around gay people, and had some actual conversations with them. Well, I’m married to a woman, have conversations with her and even have sex with her from time to time. Based on your criteria I’m an outright feminist with the authority to make a film based on a woman’s psyche. If you’re saying having lunch with a gay man gives you authority on the issue and justifies being able to make a movie, then I declare myself an expert on women. What if it turns out Haggis had lunch with a gay black man? That would be fun. Sounds like a litte white guilt is in play. Doesn’t mean your view of _Crash_ is correct. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2006, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550/80 "2006-03-19T00:35:02Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > Well, I’m married to a woman, have conversations with her and even have sex with her from time to time. Based on your criteria I’m an outright feminist with the authority to make a film based on a woman’s psyche. Well, see, you are already about 500 miles ahead of almost all of Hollywood when it comes to making movies that portray women as actual human beings and not strange curiosities. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/annie-proulx-sore-loser-stupid-bitch/348550.md?page=5)