TRU #6: the evidence is in
A quick survey of FilmStack leads to the usual conclusions
The RoundUp (aka TRU)
The RoundUp is a collection of five FilmStacks that caught my eye this week. I don’t know about you, but there is too much of everything if you ask me. Even too much of good things. When it comes to FilmStack, I’ll curate a handful for you in hopes it may ease the pain.
“This obsession with effortless success is CLASS WARFARE dressed in cashmere.”
Sophie delivers not just one of the most spot articulations of the divide in acting styles, but manages to help bring clarity to our vision of the world today in the process. When was the last time something you read on cinema did that?
“We've developed an entire lexicon for dissecting the cult of personality around performers while remaining functionally illiterate when discussing the actual work. We can discuss who's dating whom or who's fighting with a director, but we stumble when asked to talk about the work itself. We've become fluent in personalities and forgotten the language of craft.”
She also makes it all great fun to read, with an openness and wit few bring to criticism. Reading her and others now writing on this platform though, I feel a change coming. What would happen when you blend The Jeremies with The Kierans? I see it in Sophie’s and other’s writing on Substack, and something I constantly aspire to. We want the passion, but we also want to see what at least feels like authenticity. We want them both in the same package. It’s the sort of thing that both music and sports delivers at times — the accidental brilliance. It doesn’t have to be the effortless sort. We know it has taken a lifetime of effort to get there, but there is the moment when they hit the zone, when the accumulation of desire and skill, talent and commitment, allow them to sore.
It is so exciting to read online when you feel an author in the zone — or even just approaching it — writing about the things you too care about deeply, but in a voice that is so so so their own. We haven’t met, perhaps never will, but feel more than that you know them by their words, but that they know you by theirs.
And yet others are more blatant regarding class warfare — like our ENTIRE industry…
“we’re starting to see a bifurcated entertainment economy: The vast majority of consumers may watch free or low-price media: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and FAST services such as Pluto TV and Tubi. Maybe they’ll add one or two streaming services loaded with ads. Meanwhile, top earners will pay for premium products to have an ad-free experience — just like they do to skip the lines at theme parks.”
“The sad fact is that the losers of increasing income inequality will be . . . mass media. Everything from TV to theaters to music to even affordable merchandise will be materially affected.”
Prepare for the NIGHTMARE SCENARIO that will become our reality
We are f’d and @Richard Rushfield nails it:
This is the NIGHTMARE SCENARIO that will become the reality of the entertainment business in the next few years, due to these factors:
• Legacy studios’ major revenue source is disappearing.
• Rapacious tech companies will be given the green light to gobble them up.
• The flight of production out of L.A. is now well past the tipping point.
But RR offers 7 ways to deal & one big way to overcome — which is what I’ve always believed and wanted: “Go out there folks and forget everything you hear from your bosses. Take some risks, do something crazy. Ignore the naysayers.” Fuck, yeah!
Maybe we can just call a STATE OF EMERGENCY right now?
How’s America’s theatrical exhibition biz doing? NOT GOOD at all… So far, we have had…
three weekends (out of 10 again) so far under $60 million. Last year had two total. 2023? None. Pre-COVID, when ticket prices were considerably lower? Unheard of.
It takes a lot to shock me, but this does. Bill Clinton was president the last time weekend box office fell below $60 million prior to COVID. And in 2000, the average ticket cost less than half than it does today.
Who FilmStacks well these days?
“I totally dig what you are doing here on UNDEREXPOSED, Alex. You make me want to become a filmmaker all over again. You hit it all and with enthusiasm, passion, and insight -- hipping us to what came before, curating the cinema news & writing on Substack, and excellent interviews that help understand what filmmakers are actually doing when they are doing what they are doing. And yeah: lovelovelove RAISING VICTOR VARGAS. Thank you!”
Or say I said to Alex Rollins Berg…
And JIC you are wondering about tomorrow’s post today:
Subscribers will find the answers in their inbox, tomorrow.
And can you tell me something?
Truly love how you've taken the amalgamation of jeremies/kierans and applied it on current film writing/criticism. It applies across all creative industries, doesn't it? I'd actually had a paragraph on this in my first draft but ultimately cut it out for brevity:
"Beyond this false binary waits an unexplored territory where seemingly opposing methods could transform each other. What glorious monster of a performance might emerge if Strong's method work met Culkin's lightning-in-a-bottle spontaneity? What if we stopped with this middle-school lunch table division of the "try-hards" versus the "naturals" and recognized that both approaches get to the same destination—making us forget we're watching something constructed? Sadly, this possible collision of approaches never materializes because we've decided it must be either/or, never both."
Thank you as always for your immense and relentless support of my work. You're officially my film dad ❤️
I’m so grateful for this curated list! There is soooo much good stuff out there and it’s overwhelming! One can only absorb so much. I could spend my whole day reading cool stuff and never get any work done, so there has to be a cutoff!