Liar Liar/The Graduate/Selena/Crash/Kolya

Gene Siskel - Host: "Crash" was directed by David Cronenberg, the adventurous Canadian filmmaker of "Scanners" and "Dead Ringers" fame, and my honest reaction is that the subject of "Crash" left me feeling empty, not even challenged in the "Am I hip enough to get it?" way. "Crash" has some beautiful bodies on view, but also some ugly ideas and, as I said, I think it did leave me cold.

Roger Ebert - Host: Well of course, it was intended to leave you cold. I liked the movie a lot more than you did.

Gene Siskel - Host: Wow.

Roger Ebert - Host: I would like to make it clear that most people are probably gonna hate it, be repelled by it, or walk out of it, just as they did as the Cannes Film Festival.

Gene Siskel - Host: Why is that?

Roger Ebert - Host: Because it's too tough for them to take.

Gene Siskel - Host: Oh you mean, now Roger...

Roger Ebert - Host: Yes, it is. It is.

Gene Siskel - Host: If you think, wait a second...

Roger Ebert - Host: Sex involving wounds and blood and scabs and braces, a lot of people don't want to see it, don't want to have anything to do with it.

Gene Siskel - Host: But, wait, I wanna be clear. Do you think that's my objection, the nature of my objection?

Roger Ebert - Host: I felt that your objection was you didn't really bring any sympathy to what he was trying to do, and I'll tell you what he was trying to do: He's trying to make a pornographic movie without the pornography. He's taking the FORM of a pornographic movie, without the function or the content. He's substituting car crashes for the usual erotic stuff, in order to show the mechanism of human compulsion and obsession.

Gene Siskel - Host: Okay, but wait a second.

Roger Ebert - Host: And it's a fascinating study of the way the mind works in connection with images that we connect with sex.

Gene Siskel - Host: Roger, it can't - I'm gonna review the movie, and then I'll review your review. My objection to what you said is, I think there are, quote, "soft porno" stuff in the picture. When you see sex on the hood of a car, when you see people making...

Roger Ebert - Host: NONE of the sex scenes in this movie are directed in a way to be erotic.

Gene Siskel - Host: Oh, I think that the, oh, I think that the, uh, the one scene in bed between Deborah Kara Unger and James Spader, I think that that's intended to be erotic. I think a woman touching her breast, pulling it out of her bra, I think that's intended to be erotic. And I think it CAN be erotic. I'm saying that the ideas in the film, said by the performance artists, that somehow this is a connection between life and death, that's a bunch of hooey!

Roger Ebert - Host: Well, y'know, the movie...

Gene Siskel - Host: It's hooey!

Roger Ebert - Host: Uh, the movie thinks so TOO, Gene! The movie is ABOUT crazy people!

Gene Siskel - Host: Yeah...

Roger Ebert - Host: That's what it's about. The movie doesn't argue these people are right, or even that they make sense.

Gene Siskel - Host: But are they interesting?

Roger Ebert - Host: Yes!

Gene Siskel - Host: Not to me.

Roger Ebert - Host: You've never seen anyone like THIS before.

Gene Siskel - Host: Uh... well, I haven't seen a lot of people in bad movies before that I don't like, either.