Hilary Swank wins an award in a new category: the most winning performance in the movie I'm least likely to watch again.
Due to the recent "Spoiler" controversy here on Blogcritics, let me state clearly: This review is for people who have already seen the movie, or for people who don't care about knowing what happens in the movie before seeing it (though it's hard for me to believe anyone could be surprised by what happens in it).…
Article comments
26 - Rodney Welch
First of all, let me congratulate for writing with force and clarity -- feels good, doesn't it? If you could write all your reviews this way, you would become interesting rather than merely academic.
On to your arguments:
Let me first point out that I predicted lanced-boil comments like these in the last paragraph of my Million Dollar Baby review b/c I'm criticizing a movie in terms that the people who like it will feel put down by--though that is not at all my intention.
And let me point out that I said earlier that it wasn't mere disagreement that got me going. There are several critics who don't like it, don't feel it worked for them, whatever, and they said why. Fine -- if you don't like it, you don't like it. What bothered me was that you keep trying to intellectualize and contextualize what is, or should be, a somewhat emotional response that has something to do with the movie, that comes out of the movie. One yearns for a critic to respond personally; you don't. You respond as the fatheaded academic you dream of being. You keep force-feeding your thoughts through the wood-chipper of Western art and culture, and the associations you make aren't even very interesting.
Has it not occurred to him that knowing me personally might be a prerequisite to writing about me, as opposed to my opinions, or that at this point his escalating vituperation says more about him than about me?
Well, tit for tat: you'll recall I said earlier that your response to the movie said more about you than the movie itself. Let me elaborate: your review was self-indulgentr and the only person who could (so far as I could tell, although some disagree) gain anything from it is you. It didn't illuminate the movie, it just illuminated your own precious sense of yourself as the eternal student.
If true, everything these people have said would be true of my writing when they agree with me as well, but people never write to abuse you when they agree with you. Which probably accounts not only for the belligerence but the anti-intellectualism and the incoherence of the defenses of the movie as well.
Actually I have agreed with you in the past and even said so, but eeither I've become dumber or you've become more and more dense. as for the "anti-intellectualism" of the comments -- does that also go for ones who praised you?
Maggie doesn't get the hell beaten out of her
Really? Did I miswatch that fatal blow to the head that sent her flying to the mat, never to get up again?
what does it mean to say the "odds" are raised
The odds are against Maggie succeeding as a boxer; when she becomes crippled, they are increased.
The sentence he quotes in his fourth comment isn't meant to be understood out of context.
I have never in my life heard an admission of this kind. At any rate, dude, it isn't understandable in context. You are following some crazy train of thought (or thoughts, a pile of them) that, in the first place, are not interesting in and of themselves and at any rate are not communicated in a clear and intelligent way.
That sentence is a summary of the argument leading up to it and the point is that an accurate description of all the elements of the story is "cumbersome."
No, it's your writing that's cumbersome. This is part of what made the review so odd in the first place, that you're trying to explain in the wordiest, dullest possible way why Eastwood's film is "dull."
I'm not writing blurbs for movie ads.
Don't give up. A little work and you'll be as good as they are.
I think my writing is perhaps most unusual in that my fundamental outlook is ironic.
Only if you can wade through it.
Movies are mostly crap, always have been, probably always will be, certainly as long as the majority of the audience, like Rodney, think that a movie's use of devices already familiar from movie after movie can work in its favor.
That's a fact of Western art, and it's no different with film. I'm not talking about using cliches; I'm talking about the use of certain familiar forms. Books and movies can and do command the interest simply because these relationships are so familiar to us that they've taken on a kind of classical status. You can respond to a movie because you relate to it, and you can respond to it because you've heard this kind of story before -- the interest comes in what the artist does with it, what he brings to it, just as Shakespeare brought his own genius to stories that were very familar to his audiences.
What I write, however, doesn't even border on philosophy (which is always abstract, isn't it?). It's literary structuralism.
Well, that explains everything, because I don't even know what that is, and it may well be you are writing for an audience of literary structuralists. If this is the case, it may be that my emphasis on writing in an interesting or intelligent way have been wasted.
This is the main reason for the references to books and movies, etc., because structuralism requires an overview that stretches back farther than The Shawshank Redemption, all of ten years old in a history of western narrative dating back over 3,000 years.
I'm sorry I was the one to inform you, Mr. Literary Structuralist, that the structure of this particular movie has more to do with The Shawshank Redemption than it does Die Walkure. That must have come as a blow to one who has absorbed three millenia of narrative art. You are going to have to take a whip and make your overview do your bidding and not the other way around. The references are clotting up your prose and inspiring responses such as mine.
In addition, it's an attempt to do for others what I appreciated having done for me. In her reviews Pauline Kael referred very widely to older movies and literature and I was grateful to have someone point me toward them and put them in context so they were more than just data from a database like IMDB.
READ KAEL, then! Yes, she did refer to other books and movies, but she didn't let them get in the way of her own voice.
It's funny in a sick kind of way that this would draw fire on a website devoted to criticism.
It's even funnier that a critic would mind being criticized.
And as for the common charge that the critic is "just" trying to make the movie over into the kind of movie he wishes it had been: Well, duh. If someone says, "That movie sucked!" he is inherently saying he wishes it had been a movie that hadn't sucked. Pressed even a little bit, he'll start describing what was wrong with the movie, which again implies how the movie could have been better.
You have to deal with the movie that is, the movie before you. You always sound like you're upset that you weren't personally consulted for input.
The critics who have meant the most to me are almost all Anglo-American, by the way.
Consider imitating them.
These commenters are entitled to their opinions, but no amount of abuse gives me any reason to do anything differently.
Stay in your intellectual ghetto then, Alan. You seem to have made a home there.
27 - Rodney Welch
Aaman --
As I try to point out above, there is a great difference between using references and letting the references use you. Besides being impersonal and dull, Alan's writing is overwhelmed with literary references to the point that they cripple whatever style he has left.
28 - Alan Dale
Maggie is holding her own when the German fighter hits her from behind after the bell has rung. Maggie falls--in slow motion--and accidentally hits her neck on the crossbars of the stool in her corner. No "fatal blow to the head." And "fatal"? Did you mean "fateful"? She doesn't die from it.
In Die Walküre a father raises his daughter to be a fighter. Acting on his wishes she does something in battle that he feels requires him to put her to sleep.
29 - Rodney Welch
I concede this plot point. Please keep in mind this sprang from me pointing out to you that the film had a clear, logical sequence of events that defied your poorly-argued idea of a cumbersome narrative.
30 - Rodney Welch
The so-called cumbersomeness, by the way, sprang from what you yourself applied to it: you seem to have imagined a Clint Eastwood who thinks in terms of "Hmm, I'll go for a naturalist style" or "Hmm, I'll try a Romantic style" or "Hey, this has kind of a Die Walkure thing going for it" and then you condemn him for failing to make the kind of movie you would have made had you been in the same position. This is the essence of my problem (among many) with your review. I think you are, possibly, the only one in the world who could see such a totally unencumbered narrative as being cumbersome.
I see Eastwood's style as clear and you see it as cumbersome; I see your writing style as cumbersome to the nth degree and you think it is rich in irony and intellectual history.
31 - Rodney Welch
And what does this mean?
> It's a movie for people who think of "guilt" as a profound "theme."
Ever heard of Bergman? Wake up, Alan -- it IS a profound theme.
32 - Joey
Without writing a diatribe, I'd like to echo the sentiments of Rodney. This isn't film criticism. Its like cinema reconstruction by way of root canal. And why is it necessary to bold certain lines. Are they more important than the rest of the article? Shouldn't the gaudy words be able to stand on their own without the bold typeface? Can you do that in the Harvard Review?
33 - Alan Dale
A final note: One of the major problems with vituperative exchanges is that they make it difficult for all parties to think clearly. Thus, Rodney insisted on his mistaken memory of the plot of Million Dollar Baby, while I, for my part, failed to recognize that what he said about "certain familiar forms" is what the literary structuralism I'm interested in is all about. Apart from our divergent responses to Eastwood's movie and to my writing, the difference seems to boil down to the fact that I look for correspondences among works as widely, and going as far back, as possible. Otherwise it seems to me you risk making generalizations on the basis of non-representative samples. (Not to mention it's fun to make connections that seem improbable on the surface.)
I find the way structuralism works appealingly straightforward. To simplify it, if an accurate and reasonably detailed plot paraphrase applies equally to two works, then the two works belong to the same genre (even if only in part). Thus, I believe this paraphrase of the father-daughter romance in Die Walküre also applies to the father-daughter romance in Million Dollar Baby: A father raises his daughter to be a peerless fighter; in the climactic battle she breaks a rule he has laid down and as a result he ends up feeling called on to put her to sleep. (Remember, this applies only to the father-daughter romance, not the Siegmund-Sieglinde first act of Die Walküre, for instance, or to the melodrama involving Maggie's mother or the kid from Texas in Million Dollar Baby.)
By contrast, The Shawshank Redemption is a Christ story: An innocent man is unjustly punished but miraculously escapes from his stone "tomb"; in the process he both brings punishment on the wicked man (the warden) and frees the man who believes in him (Morgan Freeman). (Hence the use of the religious term "redemption.") The fact that Morgan Freeman does the voice-over narration in both Million Dollar Baby and The Shawshank Redemption doesn't address underlying narrative structure. How would the structure be changed if different actors had appeared in the two movies? The plot of an opera is unaffected by the rotation of the casts.
The point isn't that Clint Eastwood consciously thought he would use one genre or another (though the movie might be better if he had), or that anyone involved with Million Dollar Baby was familiar with Wagner. The point is an almost anthropological one. Humans tell stories in only a limited number of ways and it's interesting (to some of us, anyway) to tie new works into the 3,000-year-old tradition in order to think about the basic urges behind storytelling.
34 - Rodney Welch
Alan, I understand what you're saying, but I think this literary structuralism business -- which I only understand insofar as you have described it -- is something you should leave in your dust. It's a dead end. The first thing anyone notices who writes about books or movies with any regularity is the similarity between story forms; the connections that can be made between them are interesting and sometimes illuminating, but it's a limited interest, and if you stay there you're just going to be stuck in second or third gear. So many times I've read or seen something and I could immediately see that the writer or director was riffing on a particular narrative model -- like Scorsese using Citizen Kane in The Aviator, just as Oliver Stone did with Nixon, or in seeing any number of movies that are the result of watching Vertigo way too many times -- but that's so completely on the surface that it's barely worth mentioning. There's something a little too medical about the idea that you can get to the heart of a movie by charting its influences; diagnosing a movie by examining family history, you might say.
My comparison between Million Dollar Baby and The Shawshank Redemption doesn't have anything to do with the stories. I just got the impression that Eastwood saw how the gravity of Freeman's voice and supporting presence served to anchor one movie, and he thought it would work for him. Nothing deeper than that.
35 - Aaman
The old 'there are only six stories, and seven characters' argument - a terrifying thought to any writer, if true.
36 - Rodney Welch
Another thing, Alan: "Rodney insisted on his mistaken memory of the plot of Million Dollar Baby..." -- well, crow if you wish, but it was hardly a fundamental error and I'm not even sure saying Maggie got the hell beaten out of her was an error at all. You will recall she was sucker-punched by a dirty fighter, which is why she was thrown off guard to begin with, which is why her head hits the chair and why she winds up immobilized. What happened to her happened because of the German.
37 - Skeptyk
If anyone is still reading this thread, here is two more cents to stir the pot:
Everyone brings themselves to the experience of reading literature or seeing cinema, and criticism, hopefully, can enhance the experience.
I have a hard time seeing "Million Dollar Baby" as a great movie, or even as a good one, when Clint Eastwood drops all pretense of authenticity during the last half hour. Maggie, as a person on a ventilator, did not need Frankie to sneak into an oddly unsecured rehab center (no locks? no security staff?) and do what her dad had done "for" the dog, i.e., kill it. She could have made the request herself, and would have been given sedatives (not "adrenaline" as seems to have been said in the movie) to ease the death. So, we can assume that the character Maggie had a horrific death, suffocating while her heart raced wild. Some "mercy killing", eh?
The "better dead than disabled" attitude is riding high in the awards this year, with "The Sea Within" and "Million Dollar Baby" winning nominations and awards. While the former is part of the author's publicity campaign for his own "right to die", the latter looks like another step in Clint Eastwood's contempt for people with disabilities. After spending $600,000 to fight the lawsuit that noted that he should have spent about $7,000 to make his hotel accessible (and he had half a decade after the ADA to do this, but says he should have had more warning, go figure), and spending more money in his ongoing campaign for a "notification" amendment to the ADA (give me 90 days notice that you are going to sue me under the ADA), even though the ADA has no other enforcement mechanisn except that a disabled person sue the offending business...well, now he makes a movie that looks to me (and to the National Spinal Cord) like "Clint Eastwood's Revenge".
Some folks get situationally depressed after a spinal cord injury, no surprise there, and soon after the injury, some express suicidal desires. But there is a pervasive, and wrong, idea that "better dead than THAT" is a reasonable, widespread, opinion among folks with SCI (spinal cord injury).
In some famous cases where someone not terminally ill requested "right to die" (such as Larry McAfee), the despair was likely more related to lack of services than to disability. When one is not offered assistive technology, personal assistive services, et cetera, or when one is told that one is "a burden", when we abandon our responsibility to one another as a society, forgetting that about a third of us will become disabled at some time in our lives, denying that disability is a normal consequence of being breakable biological beings, then it becomes easier to "help" one another die.
Why do we not praise the "bravery" of other depressed folks who off themselves? Why is it a tragedy for queer/fat/bullied teen to kill themselves, but a reasonable choice for someone "wheelchair-bound" to commit sucide, and an act of love/despair/bravery for the parent of a disabled teen to kill their child? (Christine Busalacchi's death, among many others.)
Of course, it is more satisfying, more like movies and books, if we have a conclusion, and death of an individual is a conclusion. In life, messy and contingent and unpredictable and long, there are lots of little stories overlapping. And if we do allow some real life disability into our popular movies, it had better be all "inspiring" or all "tragic", because the day-to-day lives of folks with disabilities are as boring and mundane and bad TV as anyone else's.
BTW, as a parent of a disabled adult, I have a "million dollar baby", too. Yes, indeed, he has "cost" all of us who pay taxes and insurance premiums about that much money, and has contributed little financially as yet (most of his classmates have also contributed little; teenagers have only had a short time to work). So, in the words of the old eugenicists, he has been rather a "useless eater" for nearly two decades.
How much easier and cleaner and more like a story if I could have spent these last two decades with the halo of tragic motherhood which would have been mine to wear if he had just died during one of those many times he came close. Maybe I could have written a screenplay about my wonderful son, my angel, instead of using my writing time actually living with him. And, how much more money, after all, is this kind, intelligent, creative person going to cost us "normals"?
38 - Eric Olsen
very powerful Skeptyk, thanks for sharing with us. I too am extremely skeptical about the morality and certainly the "heroism" of "mercy killing." As you demonstrate, in many ways it's just the easy way out and life isn't supposed to be always about the easy way out, as far as I can tell.
Regarding critical philosophy, I feel very sympathetic to Alan's approach because my mind works in many of the same ways, but I don't have the energy or knowledge, usually, to pursue these thoughts to their logical and fleshed out conclusions. Perhaps I too take the easy way out.
39 - Rodney Welch
Skeptyk,
You know your stuff from personal experience, so your qualms about the ending sound reasonable, and I can't argue against them, except to say that this particular rehab center was run a bit on the cheap.
Your comments about Eastwood, however, do not make good sense; neither does the right-wing talk show rhetoric you seem to be spouting, figures intact. Whatever his problems with the ADA, it sounds perfectly loony to say he's now getting "vengeance" on the disabled. Vengeance how? By taking a poor woman with a dream, having her realize it, and then putting her in a wheelchair so he could kill her? The idea is stupid on its face.
I agree with much of the rest of what you wrote, and I don't agree with the decision of Hilary Swank's character. I do, however, think it was true to her particular character. it seemed believeable to me that a woman who had reached her success in life through purely physical means, by making her body the only instrument she had, could conceivably want to die after her body had been rendered virtually useless. By the same token, I could see her manager, after struggling with the idea, deciding to do as she wished. I'm not saying it is right at all -- but fictional characters don't always do what I want them to. They make their own decisions, and the best we can ask is that those decisions do not seem contrived. In my opinion, the movie delivered in that regard.
And Eric -- I think it is Alan who is taking the easy way out. The kind of approach he's using is nothing more than a digression.
40 - Incredulous
Oh my God this is the most amazing piece of shit I have read lately. I am flabbergasted.
41 - Dave Nalle
Hey, I'm all for death. The more people of whatever description who take themselves out of our overcrowded society the better.
Dave
42 - Tom French
The popularity of this movie can only be explained by the unwillingness of American audiences (and Mr Eastwood, apparently) to belive that good people can do bad things and bad people can do good things. This movie's characters are so polar, they are completely unbelievable. Frankie and Scrap are too good, the only thing that made Frankie bad was that he screwed up his relationship with his daughter and wasn't sending her letters like he told the priest (who he good naturedly harrassed). Then we find out he is sending her letters. Even in the scenes where he was supposed to be gruff and reveal a side of himself that must have caused the rift with his daughter, he directs himself to say it with a smirk, so we know he really doesn't mean it. How can anyone believe he did anything wrong to alienate his daughter? The characters of maggie's family were so unbelievably evil. You mean to tell me even an uncaring mother will show such callousness to go to Disney world and show no sadness seeing their quadrapelegic daughter for the first time? The only reason I could ever see to have such one dimensional characters would be to portray some great truth. I didn't see the great truth in giving up on your one dimensional life and the man who helps you. Would have been much richer to see her use her power of determination to change her life into something else when her first obsession is taken away from her. Swank was great but she was dealing with terrible lines in a terribly written and directed movie.
43 - Skeptyk
Hey, Rodney, this is a first for me. I have never been accused of spouting "the right-wing talk show rhetoric you seem to be spouting, figures intact." Yikes. Lest all my anarcho-socialist queer atheist credibility be lost, let me say that I did not find those figures (about how much $$$ Eastwood spent to fight inconvenient wheelchair users) on a right-wing talk show, but in Mary Johnson's radical, rational book on disability rights, "Make Them Go Away"
Johnson has a good essay on Ragged Edge Online about the curious experience of being left out of the Left, and she, Marta Russell and others have been asking why neither the Left nor the Right seem to grok disability rights. To the loudest mouths on the Right (those religious bigots who hijacked the Republican party) disability activists like Not Dead Yet are seen as a little, weird subset of right-to-lifers, which they are decidedly NOT.
As for the Left, there is a history of identity politics, and folks who identify as, say, anti-war, may also be gay, disabled, Latina...different identities are ascendent politically in one person at one time. In the early 70's feminists argued about the sexism in the anti-war groups, in the 80's gays argued about the homophobia in the anti-nuke groups, et cetera. It is a complex discussion but maybe you get the idea.
I have complained for years about how frequently the meetings of anti-war and civil rights groups are held in inaccessible places. Still. This complaint is ignored usually, or resented: since I know the group has little money, I should not complain, and since "you are not in a wheelchair, and no one else here is, who is being excluded?" Or folks offer to carry a wheelchair user up the steps, as if every transfer is just a matter of brute strength, as if that is as good as a ramp and/or an automatic door.
Don't even get me started on little things like asking for a closed captions or even just a transcript for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing folks when a film is shown. Every time I hear "No, no one else ever asked for that...", I realize again how resigned most folks with disabilities are to being left out a lot. Not to mention the internalization of oppression.
I, of course, do not know what is in Eastwood's head. The man has good taste in music, some fine scoring in his movies using old jazz recordings. He did not write the original story from which he spun this movie, but he chose it. And Maggie is not the only character in the movie associated with disablement, there are also Danger and Scrap. But for a guy who prides himself on telling a tale with authentic detail, Eastwood spends the last part of the movie wallowing in anachronism. Is that so he could tell the story from the book, which was written decades ago? Then why not film the whole thing as a period piece, of a period before the ADA, before the Bouvia case, before the disability rights movement?
Like any other work, viewers bring themselves to the viewing, and I found myself wondering about all the newly disabled folks returning from Iraq and Afghanistan seeing this film. Maybe the reduction in VA and other services will politicize them, but the popular media prefer stories of "overcoming" or despair, treating disability rights like special rights, accomodations like a medical problem rather than a civil rights issue.
BTW, those who want to suicide themselves after such disablement are almost always the newly disabled, (or folks who have been disabled a long time and have new issues, physical or otherwise).
I hope folks also go see "Murderball", a documentary about quad rugby. Maggie/Hillary could have been only a slightly different story and the movie could have ended with her slamming her chair into other athletes on the rugby pitch. Ka-pow!
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45 - MakeMyDay
CTOBER 6, 2000
ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY
By John M. Williams
The Clint Eastwood Verdict Makes My Day
A jury has found in the actor's favor, and that sends a strong signal about the Disabilities Act: It's a good law, but don't misuse it
Famed film star Clint Eastwood couldn't have scripted it better himself. On Sept. 29, a U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., ruled that the Academy Award-winning director and actor wasn't liable for damages in a case filed against him by Diane zum Brunnen. A resident of Alameda, Calif., zum Brummen alleged that Eastwood's Carmel Mission Ranch Inn violated title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (see BW Online, 5/10/00, "Now, Dirty Harry Is Gunning for the ADA ") and 5/17/00, "Clint Eastwood Explains His Beef with the ADA ").
Disregarding a closing argument from zum Brunnen's attorney that compared her to Rosa Parks, the five-man and three-woman civil jury found the disabled woman had suffered no harm at Eastwood's inn. The jury did find Eastwood guilty only of two minor violations -- lack of a wheelchair-accessible ramp and not having a sign to point disabled patrons to wheelchair-accessible bathrooms. Eastwood has long since remedied both of these situations.
The verdict makes my day. Many in the disability community have voiced outrage over this outcome. As anyone who reads this column knows, I strongly support the ADA. I believe every building and bathroom should be accessible to the disabled. Access to public and private buildings is a right, and it should be protected.
That said, I also believe that sometimes attorneys and people with disabilities abuse the ADA. The Eastwood case is one of these instances -- and never should have gone to court. Furthermore, I believe these ill-advised lawsuits do far more harm than good by frightening business owners, encouraging expensive litigation, and making cooperation on compliance far more difficult to achieve.
The battle between Dirty Harry and zum Brunnen, who has muscular dystrophy, started when she and her husband arrived on a Sunday afternoon in January, 1996, to spend the night at Eastwood's inn. According to documents filed in the case, the couple didn't have a reservation and learned the only room for wheelchair users was occupied. They stayed for dinner. Afterward, Mrs. zum Brunnen claimed she was directed to an inaccessible bathroom. There was a wheelchair-accessible bathroom closer than the bathroom to which she said she had been directed, but no one told her about it, according to filings submitted in the case.
NO ANSWER. The zum Brunnens left the hotel and sent several letters to Eastwood complaining about the inaccessible bathroom. When the letters went unanswered, on Jan. 21, 1997, zum Brunnen's attorney, Paul Rein, who has initiated more than 20 ADA cases, filed a federal suit against Eastwood. John Burris was brought in for the trial. He specializes in litigating complaints of ADA violations and believed Eastwood had broken the law. "There was a clear violation of the rules when Mrs. zum Brunnen visited, and Mr. Eastwood, as owner of the Mission Ranch, is responsible for the violations of those rules," said Burris during the trial.
For more than two years after the complaint had been filed, zum Brunnen and her attorney sought a cash settlement from Eastwood. Last spring, Eastwood told a congressional committee that zum Brunnen wanted an out-of-court settlement of $576,000. It wouldn't have been her first. Previously, zum Brunnen had won an ADA lawsuit filed against Mendocino's historic Heritage House Hotel, which paid $20,000 to her and $48,000 to her lawyer. In that case, zum Brunnen complained that a doorway was too narrow and an ocean-front path too rough for her wheelchair.
Not only did Eastwood refuse to settle but he also turned the case into a media war and a four-year legal slugfest. "I'm doing this to help protect small-business people from the same kind of lawsuit," he told this columnist before the trial. Eastwood's attorneys warned him that if he fought the case in court, he could end up stuck paying $1 million worth of zum Brunnen's legal bills. Under the law, the complainant's attorneys in ADA cases can collect their legal fees from the other side if they win. This double-whammy is why businesses often settle out of court rather than fight.
During the trial, Eastwood's attorney, Chuck Keller, told the jury that zum Brunnen may not have even visited the hotel. "There are many discrepancies in her story, and there is a lack of corroboration," Keller said. "For zum Brunnen to win, she must prove that she visited Mission Ranch as a bona fide guest, not on a pretext, setting the stage for this lawsuit." For her part, zum Brunnen had pledged to give her legal winnings to charity.
READY TO APPEAL. The jury took only five hours to deliberate -- and it came down squarely on Dirty Harry's side. "The verdict was correct. I hope I set an example for other small businesses to follow," said Eastwood, adding he would have appealed if he had lost. And he's right on the money. All along, Eastwood says that he has supported the ADA's access requirements and continues to. And the facts support him: Eastwood's hotel did have a wheelchair-accessible bathroom and a wheelchair-accessible room. When notified of existing problems, he fixed them, as mandated by the law. And zum Brunnen's offer to settle for nearly a half-million dollars seems excessive to this columnist in light of the circumstances.
By standing up and taking the case to trial, Eastwood sent the right message. Since Congress passed the ADA in 1990, the disabled community has filed thousands of lawsuits against businesses, most of which have been settled out of court. The vast majority of ADA lawsuits have rightfully served as a last resort to force business owners to put in place legally mandated equal-access provisions. And this strong legal crowbar has played a major role in literally opening doors to the disabled across this country.
But the outcome of this trial should serve both as a warning to trial lawyers and a wake-up call to businesses, especially small ones. The ADA is a landmark law. People with disabilities should resort to it as a legal weapon only after they truly have been denied access and have exhausted all other remedies. And small-business owners should understand that they have rights and recourse to reasonable remedies under the ADA, too. Lawyers who knowingly -- and repeatedly -- misuse the ADA to try to collect cash settlements should be dealt with by the American Bar Assn.
At the end of the trial, zum Brunnen's attorney declared that the case was a victory for the disabled by raising awareness of the issues. It sure did, in more ways than he realizes.
What do you think about this issue? Let us know at BW Online's Assistive Tech Forum. Or drop John a line
Edited by Alex Salkever
46 - Aaman
Interesting
47 - SFC SKI
While the comments went far outside the original post, it is nice to see assertions regarding Eastwood's legal matters answered, at least as far as we know, by legal fact. If anyone follows up on this, I'd like to know about it.
I am just glad I can have a Do Not Resuscitate order alongside my organ donor card if I am ever disabled to such a terrible extent. I am not for taking the easy way out of a tough situation, but if I could no longer care for myself in a semi-vegetative state, I think I'd rather not live in such a manner, nor burden my family.
48 - MakeMyDay
Btw, the best Million Dollar Baby review I've read, Dale.
49 - Alan Dale
Thank you.
50 - sydney
ya I agree with SFCSKi on this one,
More people have to be aware of the legalities surrounding their deaths/or incapacitation.
My mother works in intensive care and she says it outrgeous how many millions we waste on people who are brain dead and comatose, and only thier heart is going. By law they have to keep rescusitating and it's a major drain on health care not to mention a miserable way to go.
People fill out the cards and check that box that says "let me die a reasonable, and natural death", and the other box that says "donate my organs to the smoker who wasted his".
oh and.. if hillary swank dies, i think she should donate her boobs to someone else. Those are nice boobs.
51 - bhw
I'll take 'em!
52 - Alan Dale
Okay, the last two are my favorite comments in the whole string.
53 - Eric Olsen
you hit the motherlode (not sure of what exactly) on this one Alan
54 - hz
This is an interesting piece which reveals to me, all at once, why film critics are real scholars and why they are irrelevant. The simple fact is that people like Alan Dale has seen so many movies, and tried so hard to sort throught and make sense of them, that movies became something totally different to them than to the average audience. In other words, their reaction to a movie bears no resemblance to that of a real human being for which this movie is produced. This is not a unique phenonemon but one that troubles all kinds of scholars. They're nice people and know a whole lot, but they're simply out of touch and irrelevant. If nonsense is defined as unfounded statements, scholars don't talk nonsense - their comments are well researched. But most of them end up in the same place: when they talk nobody listens, but they keep on talking to themselves, gaining self-righteousness as they talk.
55 - Pretentious Reviewer
This has to be the absolute shittiest review I've ever read. I hope you're not getting paid for this.
56 - Henri Duong
57 - Linda Lam
Feelings - if you fall for everything, how do you know when it's true?