A:  Because she's the lead hooker who Johnny Depp has
to fall in love with (duh), and she's Heather Graham
whose immaculate and sexy image cannot be tarnished
(duh).

Q:  Why do all the murder scenes in FROM HELL play out
like teenage slasher movies where the idiot victims
trust the killer for no better reason than grapes and
then, of course, get killed?

A:  It's hard to say, because these scenes are
entirely predictable and devoid of suspense.  I guess
the filmmakers assumed that the audience just wanted
to see some grisly killings.  It would have been much
more interesting to see only the aftermath of the
killings and have the murders themselves occur only in
the audience's imaginations--making them much more
scary.  This technique worked brilliantly in SEVEN,
but unfortunately, the filmmakers seemed to think that
suspense can simply be watching people get butchered.
Instead of creating suspense, they created boredom,
which is far less enjoyable.

Q:  Why was it so obvious from early on that Ian Holm
was Jack the Ripper?

A:  Because anyone can easily see that the incredible
evil of the goateed doctor early in the film was
placed there as a red herring, and that since he was
so obviously evil and was not the Ripper, then it had
to be someone not so obviously evil, like Holm's
character, who, for some reason known only to the
screenwriters, volunteers to help Johnny Depp solve
the murders.  Who knows why?  There's no explanation
in the film so any justification is most likely
wishful rationalization.  After realizing that Holm
did it, we spend the rest of the movie questioning the
voice effect placed on his voice in the first 2/3 of
the film and the use of the black eyes effect when he
reveals himself as the killer.

Q:  Why was the character of the French prostitute in
the film?

A:  To make us think that Heather Graham was getting
butchered without actually having her get butchered
(thus resulting in a happy ending of sorts).
Unfortunately, this unclever ploy didn't work at all.
It was clear that Heather Graham wasn't getting
butchered because they didn't show the victim's face
at all.  As an intelligent audience, we know that if
the lead actress (who is also a big star) is about to
be killed, that we sure as hell will see her face
right before it happens so that we may cringe in fear
at the prospect of losing our lead actress.  Since we
aren't shown any face, it's clear that Heather Graham
escaped during the night and was replaced on the bed
by the French prostitute who must have found some food
and come back to bed in a scene which was kept from us
in the vain hope of tricking us.  Nice try.  We're not
that dumb.

Q:  Why do filmmakers love to trick audiences?

A:  Because they think they're smarter than audiences,
because they assume that since they are at an average
intelligence and that the audience has the
intelligence of chimps, they will always fool us.
However, the filmmakers often become very chimp-like
when making films.  Such trickery only works when it
is a character who does the tricking (like Kevin
Spacey did in THE USUAL SUSPECTS) and when the rest of
the film is good even without the trickery.  When it
is the filmmakers doing the tricking, it is slimy and
manipulative.  Like in THE SIXTH SENSE, when for no
reason other than tricking us, M. Night Shymalan kept
from us the fact that Bruce Willis was dead.  Or in
SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, when Steven Spielberg told us
that the old man was Tom Hanks by cutting from a
closeup of the old man to a closeup of Tom Hanks,
using the sound of the landing boats as a flashback
cue.  In the end, it turns out that he had lied to us
because the old man was really Matt Damon, who had
somehow remembered the D-Day invasion without ever
having been there.

Q:  Why did Ben put FROM HELL on his top 10 list?

A:  I think he was in a very good mood when he saw it
and was prepared to like anything.  No offense to Ben,
but I challenge him to watch it again, if he likes it
so much, and see if it holds up on a second viewing.
The same thing happened with THE PERFECT STORM.  It
happens to others, too.  A Toronto critic wrote a
second review for PLANET OF THE APES after his first
review praising the film as brilliant was printed.  He
saw the film a second time and then wrote the second
review, in which he stated that he has no idea what
the hell he was thinking, because it's a terrible
film.

I've done the same thing in my days.  I shudder at the
thought of once enjoying STRANGE DAYS, EVENT HORIZON,
TITANIC, GOOD WILL HUNTING, DANCES WITH WOLVES, SAVING
PRIVATE RYAN, THE PELICAN BRIEF, A TIME TO KILL, and
other films which I watch again in horror at what a
bad film I seemed to have once liked.

Q:  Would you write something with Ben?

A:  Definitely.  Certainly after this year's over.
I'll be far less involved with other projects then.
 

r.