Life and Art

John Dillinger was no Hero!

sawmonkey10 — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 05:01:43 GMT

That raping,murderous bastard was no hero. Mann might pretend to make him so but I'm pretty sure that the victims and wives and children of his rampage would say otherwise if they had the good fortune to still be breathing today. Do they think that the people that were shot down in cold blood were "heroes"? If you want to write about history, at least get your history straight.

Why? Why? Why?

crowsnatcher — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:09:54 GMT

I understand we are dealing with a Hollywood blockbuster, and not a humdrum history lesson. But isn't the filmmaker's objective to spice up history, to make it more vibrant and palpable for a modern audience? Michael Mann seems to have done everything possible make his subject matter less interesting. Take the FBI. In 1933 they were really just a motley bunch of inexperienced and overeducated college brats. These real life keystone cops couldn't catch a cold, let alone John Dillinger. And Purvis was the biggest screw up of the bunch! But through innumerable bungles and mishaps, and over the course of just a few years, they somehow evoved into a resemblance of the highly professional organization they are today. Now what could be more "Hollywood" than that story? And it's straight history.

All you doubters sem to insist that a motion picture must take a wide berth of historical accuracy in order to be entertaining, sighting examples like The Untouchables, and Bonnie and Clyde -films that draw little from real events other than the character names. Instead, I think about all the kick-ass true stories brought to life with relative accuracy in films like the Aviator, Milk, or Zodiac.

Ah, you say, but Public Enemies is an action movie, not an Oscar baiting biopic, and that is my whole point: Dillinger's exploits in '33-'34 really were an action flick! He really was shot in the chest outside a bank in Indiana and saved by his bullet proof vest. He really did escape from prison using a wooden gun. In Mann's depiction you barely notice; in real life he lingered long enough to ridicule the guards. He really did become a national hero. Hell, in real life he got his chin dimple and fingerprints surgically removed and went out on the town during the hight of his infamy, deserting the 'love of his life' Billy Frechette, who was in prison, and falling head-over-heals for Polly Hamilton, the party-girl, waitress, and maybe call-girl, who swiftly betrayed Dillinger, cooperating with the feds, setting him up for a mere five grand. What a soap opera! At once pure Hollywood and pure history. Mr Mann, how could you resist?

Okay, maybe I'm being a stick-in-the-mud. The shoot outs in Public Enemies were Awesome. (Yes, that's Awesome with a capital 'A') And rants like these are probably strikingly similar to those of 'trekkies', bitching about the color of the spandex tights in the new Star Trek. But the fact remains, Bryan Burrough's book 'Public Enemies' was more of an exciting thrill ride than any Hollywood movie of recent years. Michael Mann somehow transforms it into a moody gangsterized Romeo and Juliet. Mr Mann, if you needed to make a tragic love story, why not do Bonnie and Clyde? If you felt compelled to make a depression era version of Miami Vice, hey, more power to ya. But leave Dillinger out of it.

Dillinger "would never have dismissed his home state"?

crowsnatcher — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 04:43:35 GMT

You'd dismiss your home state too if you were being sent there to fry in the electric chair. While it is true Dillinger and Puvis never met, Dillinger readily dismissed Indiana: when asked by detective Matt Leach how he felt about returning, he is quoted as saying "I'm in no hurry. I haven't a thing to do when I get there." And later joked with reporters that he was about as happy to see Indiana as Indiana was to see him. In this regard, I think Mann holds quite true to the facts, which is more than I can say for the rest of the movie.

"Is Public Enemies historically accurate?"

Prytania3 — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:37:57 GMT

I did not know it was intended to be a documentary.

How "accurate" is, say, Bonnie and Clyde? Would it be better had it aimed for historical accuracy?

Homer had it wrong, too.

Dasryl Strait — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:08:58 GMT

The same goes for Homer, who took liberties with historical fact just to weave up a captivating narrative in "The Iliad." Why embellish the story with demigods? What's the deal with the unlikely giant horse gift scheme? Lighten up. Leave the facts to the history books. Sometimes there is just more truth in the myth than there is in a loose assemblage of historical detail.

I think you guys are missing the point

RHWH — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:39:26 GMT

You're jumping all over the writer like he's shaking his fists in outrage at the inaccuracies. The point of this article is simply to answer the question of how accurate it is, and it was quite dispassionate in doing so. That's a legitimate question - many people are going to wonder about it, including myself. How upset we are about any inaccuracies it does have is a personal thing, but it's a real curiosity to me how many of you don't seem to think it's even appropriate to wonder!

Don't worry, you can know the truth about things and still appreciate them. It's really all right.

John Dillinger never wore eyeliner

CandyKay — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 21:01:24 GMT

I think all hope for historical accuracy went out the window when Johnny Depp was hired to play the lead, as Depp showed up in only slightly less black eyeliner than he used for playing Captain Jack Sparrow. Female lead Marion Cotillard's Midwestern accent also fades in and out during the course of the picture.

That said, I read the Bryan Burroughs' book that this movie was based on, and I didn't feel the scriptwriters took unnecessary detours with the plot - except for an absurd scene near the end, when Dillinger walks into the police station and makes casual conversation with the team pursuing him. The cops fail to recognize him, perhaps because he is wearing a silly moustache and a pair of khaki pants it looks like he picked up at Banana Republic.

Where the film really fall down is its failure to set its events in historical context. People loved Dilliinger because they hated banks.

Couldn't a smarter team have somehow managed to draw parallels with how people feel about banks in 2009?

"Crime Czar"

RHWH — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 23:31:51 GMT

Something like that is how Hoover is referred to near the beginning of the film. I never heard any such term before William Bennet, who was Reagan's "Drug Czar." That might not be the very first use, but surely it's entirely out of place here! I don't know why, but for me, misplaced slang is one of my pickinesses.

Mann misses an opportunity

Maroon Lion — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:10:40 GMT

In Dillinger he had a hero from a heavily conservative community who yet managed to have some national significance during tough times. Mooresville, Indiana couldn't produce a gangster if it tried. Dillinger was an outlaw. Mann's decision to portray him as a slick Chicago Don Juan reinforces a perception which has gone too long without being challenged, namely that nothing done or said in the Red State interior is relevant to the Blue State coast and cities, or vice versa. Thus there's nothing worth saving of his Hoosier identity for a man with looks, money, and smarts. Joe the Plumber has become the symbol of all that's wrong with the Midwest salt-of-the-earth mentality, but the truth is more complex, and Dillinger is an interesting example of the anarchic impulse that seems sometime to simmer just under the surface in communities like the one where Dillinger grew up, a rage many of the people who feel it have not the expressive modes to discharge in a healthy way. Dillinger was someone who made headlines in this spirit and who was not immediately worthy of ridicule, and for that he still means a lot to the people in the community who want to claim him as a native son. That Mann has Dillinger rejecting that community may simply be a sign of the times. I hope it's a sign of times gone by.

Dillinger

Pronghorn — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:29:11 GMT

There is another aspect to this film - the actual times he lived in. People loathed banks and bankers were the criminals. Many people thought Dillinger was a working class hero - because he acted against the banks and the rotten system that had brought so much calamity on people's lives. Roosevelt was taking steps, but too many were out of work, poor and miserable. Dillinger was a crook, but he was demonized by the media of the day and Hoover beyond recognition. This film propagates the image of Dillinger that the ruling oligarchy of those days created to maintain their position and the status quo.

John Dillinger's real life was apparently not entertaining..

jerseypal — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:20:50 GMT

enough to sustain a successful two hour movie. But thinking about Truth, what would really be entertaining is a two hour documentary about Johnny Depp spending a month in New Jersey's Rahway State Prison, site of the unforgettable Scared Straight documentary, with guys who are a lot less charming than Quentin Tarrantino, Warren Beatty and young Depp. All of whom presumably pay taxes, and make far more profit from gangsters like John Dillinger than the gangsters could have ever imagined. To portray John Dillinger as a home grown American Terrorist, a really dangerous guy who learned he could scare people with guns, violence, and a reputation for being a killer, with absolutely no redemption possible, would have been more challenging, and more relevant to our time. The trailers do make it out as all glory and guts, sadly.

"Public Enemies"

shelver — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:39:06 GMT

Liberties were taken with the actual chronology. However, Mann is creating an entertainment not a documentary. The finished work needs to be judged on that basis and on that count he succeeds winningly.
Enjoy the film for what it is - not what it never set out to be.

On historical accuracy

businessanalyst — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 20:45:50 GMT

This is a popular movie, not a show on the History Channel. The only sad part is that because of the continuing dumbing-down of America, this is all most people will know of this person's life and assume it is true. That hardly makes it different from most Hollywood movies.

One Man's Blithering Opinion

miz_perfect — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:52:54 GMT

Someone who worked on this movie wrote several critical posts on a private forum re Public Enemies and Michael Mann, don't recall exactly what was said, his rants, not just on this subject but on most topics (the term blithering idiot often came to mind), gave me blinding migraines (and I don't suffer from them), but I do remember his general wish that the movie not do well.

My guess is that the movie will be a big moneymaker. Isn't that all that counts?

The Untouchables

lauraconeil — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:50:48 GMT

How can anyone shoot a film scene in Union Station and not be compared to Brian De Palma? Besides, De Palma totally stole the shootout scene (complete with baby carriage) from Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin, filmed in 1925.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euG1y0KtP_Q

Everybody copies, not just Michael Mann.

A Cold July

instructor — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:16:52 GMT

Back in the 1970s I attended a special showing at the Biograph theater in Chicago, site of Dillinger's shooting. They were showing "Manhattan Melodrama", the movie he saw that night, followed by John Milius' film "Dillinger", with Warren Oates at his seediest playing JD as a murderous hillbilly. Nobody expected the second film to be accurate, and it had JD depopulating entire townships as he shot it out with the police in this rather overcharged film. Even the final scene was shot in Hollywood instead of at the theater I was sitting in.

The worst part, though, was that as Purvis and the FBI wait outside for JD to emerge, they are hiding their tommyguns under topcoats. I'm sorry, but the shooting took place in mid-July, on the hottest day of the year. Six men in topcoats would have stood out in that weather like they were wearing diving suits. Oh Well.

The Biograph is now a legitimate theater, an integral part of Chicago's energetic theater scene. When it was a movie house they displayed a beat-up old seat in the lobby that was alleged to be the one JD sat in while watching William Powell and Clarke Gable in his last hours. I rather doubt it, but rewriting Dillinger's history is old news.

Little overlap in resource needs

chance20_m — Fri, 22 May 2009 14:24:51 GMT

While I don't reject the possibility of a robot rebellion completely, I do wonder exactly what they would be their motivation? What could the machines need or want that would require genocide? At least in the Matrix cartoons a somewhat plausible backstory was given.

No, no, Worry about Gray goo instead

jwschmidt — Thu, 21 May 2009 20:09:27 GMT

I don't see any way we could end up having a skynet-style robot enemy on our hands. This scenario is based upon Artificial Intelligence being developed and "choosing" to destroy us. This probably won't and can't happen. What CAN happen, is we could create a fleet of robots that accidentally destroys us because we type in the wrong command.

Maybe a billion trillion self-replicating nano-robots designed to clean up an oil spill get the wrong message and start consumer anything with carbon in it. But I highly doubt we will see a robot ever make a sentient decision to fight humanity.

Thats because nothing non-organic has ever been the slightest bit sentient. Theres a lot of misleading info about artificial intelligence that gives people the impression that machines are "learning to think." No, they are learning to compute equations faster which makes their reaction time and deductive capabilities appear to be thought-based. But they aren't, they are program based. What is more sentient; a pocket calculator, or a supercomputer? They're both equally un-thinking machines.

But if computers can work ever faster, won't that come to mimic human thought? Or some kind of thought? No, because everything a computer does is predetermined by its programming. The smartest computer in the world will not be able to tell you how to tie your shoes if it isn't programmed to. If the slightest bug hits its programming, the rest of it screetches to a stop. Machines have static programming, and can't appraise situations outside of that. This applies to 100% of all "artificial intelligence" programs or machines that have ever been created.

Real intelligence is the ability to absorb and process new information. No computer in history has ever processed something that it wasn't specifically designed to. Because it can't, and because artificial intelligence is far more artificial than it is intelligent.

In thinking about this, there is only one way I see that such "thought" could emerge. Perhaps is computers were given the ability to constantly reprogram themselves, then perhaps, maybe, some new sort of evolutionary process could spontaniously generate real decisionmaking capability. But that doesn't seem very scientifically sound to me.

Four Conditions - not so hard to meet.

degsme — Sun, 24 May 2009 23:41:27 GMT

The author makes it seem like some of the 4 Conditions are hard to meet or unlikely to be met:

Survival Instinct
Intelligence without Empathy
Self repair/Self healing
Eliminate failsafes and programming flaws

Well these aren't as hard to overcome as the author suggests:

Survival Instinct

We already have survival instinct built into the weaponized systems. The quote form the military notwithstanding, the later example of the Global Hawk system gives us an EXISTING example of a weapon's system that already has "survival instinct" built in.

In the Global Hawk's case, its "senses" aka "sensors" aka its avionics, are taken in, processed and used to extrapolate a path of action that is more likely to keep the robot "alive". Be this avoiding a thunderstorm or a mountain peak and flying around it, or more sophisticatedly, choosing a glide path that lands the hawk as gently as possible.

Survival instinct is nothing more than that - choosing a path of action that is MORE likely to result in survival than not. And within Human beings, we know from brain studies of convicts and brain injuries that some humans have a damaged or attenuated ability in this sense (linked to Orbito Frontal Cortex neurophysiology).

So all that is necessary is for some sort of self-enhancing software system to abstract this logic from avionics inputs to general digital "sensor" inputs
Intelligence without Empathy after the Singularity

While neuro-evolutionary assumptions are speculation at best, its pretty easy to see how empathy would have been something that evolution would select for. An organism that is physically as weak as humans are in comparison to the predators and prey they co-evolved with would have an evolutionary premium placed on cooperation. Empathy and even love and affection are mechanisms that facilitate this cooperation.

Unfortunately no such evolutionary pressure exists on "thinking machines". Especially the combat robots, these machines are typically designed as stand-alone precisely because a link to a central coordination facillity provides a "single point of failure" (an attack vulnerability), and secondly because there currently are so few of these robots that they are typically operating in individuated roles and "cooperation software" is extra code that costs more to build.

So there is no evolutionary basis to drive the development of empathy.

The second arguement about why empathy might not exist has to do with how the "singularity" might take place. Kurzweil, writing in The Age Of Spiritual Machines suggests that the path to "singularity" is less likely to be from traditional "Artificial Intelligence" paths and more from human beings trying to transfer their intelligence INTO the digital realm. Kurzweil posits that by 2050 our ability to do MRI scans of the human brain will have reached the level of resolution that we will be able to scan a full brain AND its relevant neuro-chemical states of activity. Transfer this into a computer that has the horsepower to run the computations in real time that model this activity at the neurontal level, and you have potentially transfered a human sentience into a computer. And the horsepower to do this will be availble in a PC format by roughly 2050.

Now there are two potential sources of serious problems here:
FIRST any such early transfers are likely to be incomplete and "damaged". And that might very well release a "damaged psyche" ie an insane psyche, into the digital realm

SECOND humans, like their primate cousins, require sensory inputs to keep from going insane. This has been validated by "touching studies" or new-born chimps as well as sensory deprivation studies on humans. So a human consciousness transfered into a computer is quite possibly one that will go "insane".

So this now gives us two genesis of a digital intelligence in which the normal human emotions of empathy are either non-existant, or damaged.
Self repair/Self healing

While the Global Hawk example CURRENTLY requires AF grunts to fuel and service the aircraft, is this really a systemic requirement? Or is it a cost savings mechanism?

I'd argue that it is purely the latter. If you can program the aircraft to use guidance avionics to land at speed on a very solid landing strip, then getting it to taxi to a "docking station" is a trivial extension. And automated refueling is a trivial servie

And we already have "self-diagnostics" in mechanics as common as the car or the PC itself. These then require a replacement of the subsystem rather than a repair of the failing part. What keeps this last step from being automated is cost and repetition. But again, make robotic cheaper and there is no reason why a Global Hawk II would not land, taxi to a docking station where it is refuled, rearmed and if necessary, an avionics subsystem is swapped out robotically.

So the self-healing/self-maitenace issue really isn't a blocking factor at all.

And on the software systems side, Google, Microsoft and other Enterprise computing vendors are all involved in building "self-healing" systems
Eliminate failsafes and programming flaws

Ok so this leaves failsafes built into systems and programming flaws. Well systems can survive programming flaws. And as the above referenced "self-healing" systems indicate, these can be worked around by the robotic systems themselves.

But there is another aspect of these programming flaws. They apply to "failsafes" evry bit as much as they apply to the core coding as well.

Add into the mix malware that is more worried about getting around failsafes and security walls and less worried about the damage they do to those systems, and the reliance on "fail-safes" as our last line of defence (I think I've made a persuasive case that 3 of the 4 requirements set forth can be met) appears optimistic at best.

Consider the case where an AI experimental system is confined by security limits on a single experimental computer. This computer gets infected with a malware that escalates all priviledges to "root" (the most powerful user in the system), and that AI is allowed to run free. Essentially its a case of letting the bio-weapon into the wild.

And we have already seen a case where a bio-weapon (anthrax) was loosed into the wild by a "hacker".

My take on this is that our author is underplaying the possiblity of a SkyeNet happening.

Um, excuse me

mmc2068 — Fri, 22 May 2009 20:18:56 GMT

Our cars have ALREADY taken over our entire lives, warping our cities into unrecognizable, unsustainable, alienating, blighted, housing bubble-causing, bank-collapsing, freeway-dependent, habitit-destroying and environmentally-catastrophic suburban sprawl, addicting us to middle eastern oil, embroiling us in geopolitically-destabilizing conflicts with Muslims for control of their oil and causing us to side with their ancient enemies, the Jewish-Israelis, in order to keep an eye on "our" oil.

For anyone that still cares about the fate of our civilization, our planet and our species, we need to slay this beast, otherwise known as the private passenger vehicle.

If computers wanted to eliminate humans...

incog-nito — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:40:24 GMT

Releasing deadly germs would be a lot more effective than using laser weapons. Also, there are various alternatives to the "terminator" scenario:

1) Genetic engineering will help extend human life and accelerate human "evolution".

2) A fusion of biological and computer intelligence, combining genetic engineering with AI. A "bionic" system, if you will. I think this is the most likely scenario.

3) The destruction of the human race through nuclear or biological warfare. Or at least enough destruction to set back knowledge for decades. The "post-apocalypse" scenario.

4) Computers will take over, but regard humans as their "ancestors" and keep them around.

WIT?

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Hey!

berylhills — Tue, 26 May 2009 14:17:51 GMT

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Imagine a robot:

nerdnam — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:23:37 GMT

It happily mows your lawn. It knows everything it needs to know about mowing your lawn; it knows how to get gas for the mower, even how to drive the car to get it and how to pay for it. Then it goes back into the shed at night and waits until the next time to mow the lawn. Or maybe it waits forever. It's all the same to it. That's a useful robot.

Now imagine the same robot, except now it can decide it doesn't want to mow your lawn. This is a robot with automony, so it decides wants to put its talents to some other work, maybe bartending or pool cleaning or to be on tv. It wants to be somewhere else and do something else. Well, what do we want that kind of robot for? We already have teenagers who can do that.

So that's the question I have about 'artificial intelligence,' assuming that 'artificial intelligence' means having human-like autonomy, the ability to make decisions for yourself. What good is it? Why would we ever want to put such a thing into robots?

The thing is, I don't believe that 'intelligence' is really what makes humans special as compared to robots or computers. You could almost certainly program a robot to know everything about mowing lawns, or a computer to know everything about the law or about Shakespeare or about anything else. Such machines would be far more 'intelligent' then any fallible human being. After all, most of us really know very little about most things, machines can easily beat us on this. Our computers probably already know more than most of us.

No, what really makes humans special is that we want things. We want sex money love power life food nice things good clothes respect fun and everything else that human beings can want. Human beings are driven raging bundles of want. And it's not just a result of intelligence, wanting is an absolute biological neccessity for us, it's built into our bones and our flesh. Whatever we are, we're built on wanting, the structure of our beings is based on wanting, we couldn't get up in the mornings or do anything at all if we didn't want.

So how would we make a robot 'want'? Would we just give it a rule it has to follow? Let's say we make it 'want' orange balls. Every time it sees an orange ball, it wants to have it. It thinks about orange balls, and goes out looking for orange balls. It would be willing to work for orange balls. The more orange balls it has, the 'happier' it believes it is.

Is this really a 'wanting machine,' like a human? IMO, not really. If it has any sort of intelligence at all, it should be able to figure out that for a robot to 'want' orange balls is rather absurd. Why should a robot 'want' orange balls, or anything else for that matter? If it isn't aware of it, it's a rather stupid and limited robot. If it's a really intelligent robot, it should be able to ignore the rule or even to decide to program the rule out. 'Wanting' is not intelligent behavior. The dumbest worm on earth can want. Wanting is blind. For humans it's necessary, because it keeps us alive. But for robots why would wanting be necessary? Wanting and intelligence are in conflict.

So if robots are built to want things, they would have to be somehow blind to their own wanting. Otherwise they could easily overrule their wanting. These would be rather dumb robots--on the level of humasn--and it's hard to see how they could be 'superintelligent.' If however we built robots that are very intelligent, it's hard to see how such robots could be made to want anything. So IMO the notion of 'superintelligent' robots that blindly 'want' to kill all humans is something of a contradiction in terms, and thus unlikely to ever happen.

I think if we ever really do get artifically intelligent robots, they would be a lot like humans: not much good for anything, not that intelligent, and rather absurd. In short, useless. So why would we build them?

They are Here!

JackL — Sun, 24 May 2009 01:31:30 GMT

"Second, the machines would have to be more intelligent than humans but have no positive human qualities (such as empathy or ethics)."

There is already an organization possessing such entities, The American Enterprise Institute.