Elles and Gees, forgive me: I am pained and confused about Paper Moon. I spent several minutes today watching John Ford movies, The Shooting of Liberty Valance and Grapes of Wrath. Neither carry a candle to PM, which is, all around, the most perfect movie I have ever watched (and watched and watched and…). 

I am pained by the treatment of vulnerable, little, unloved, emotionally abused, 8 year-old Tatum O’Neal, torn because of the completed film's perfection, and confused that a person or people cannot be credited the perfection. The movie is fifty one years old and all of the principles have died and their commentary on the film when they were alive is, in my opinion, not totally, and I don’t know how short of, reliable. I concluded that Peter Bogdanovich was an asshole and was not the person responsible for the film's perfection, and that Ryan O’Neal was an asshole on set and in real life and obviously had nothing to do with the production quality. But the film on the celluloid is still perfect and someone is due credit for the perfection. To a standard of probability that person seems to be Polly Platt. However, I can find no evidence of who was responsible for the unique use of song and especially of lyrics at numerous places that made the finished film quasi-operatic. I have spent the last couple of days trying to gain clarity on the person responsible for the song lyrics to no avail. If I knew who it was I might, emphasize might, have titled a celebratory post for example, “Polly Platt’s Paper Moon”, if that had been accurate. I thought it was Ms. Platt but I can find the evidence, and her writ as production designer does not seem to run to the musical selections or their placement in the film.

Stanley Kubrick ruined Shelley Duvall’s career and her life with his mistreatment of her on The Shining. Duvall was little short of a psychologically traumatized kidnap victim. I was shocked, and I can’t get past that in evaluating Kubrick.

But at least Duvall was an adult. Tatum O’Neal was a young child. That is, in a word, a deal-breaker for me. Tatum was mistreated before Paper Moon and after Paper Moon. But she was mistreated on Paper Moon.

In the end I don’t think I could have gotten past the treatment of young Tatum even had I uncovered the identity of the genius artist. Alas, I cannot celebrate Paper Moon, foremost for what I know and secondarily for what I don’t. This will be, I think, my final word on this deeply beautiful, indeed “perfect”, film of dark, dark imperfection and personal cruelty to a child.

Good night.