Maybe I am a snob.
I like truly excellent movies the best. 2023 was a very good year for movies, at least for the very good ones, so maybe I shouldn’t complain. We don’t get the truly terrible anymore (and I miss those) and we’ve never gotten many of the truly excellent. And it never has been an industry striving for originality. So I think I can complain, or at least examine the why and the what for that would normally prompt me to complain. Let’s!
I’ve been accused of having too high a bar. It’s just that I know we can do better and I hate witnessing the settling-for-less-than-we-are-capable-of on the screen. Or rather —if I must be honest — I do kind of like that, as I find others’ shortcomings informative in helping me recognize where we make mistakes or where we have room for improvement. Yeah, I like to see what disappoints me. Kinda weird, isn’t it? How we come to like that act of disliking…
Let’s be direct though. See that elephant? The one in the room, that we aren’t talking about? Know it’s name? It’s called: “It is really hard to make a good movie, let alone a truly excellent one”. Cute little Ellie. Make’s a big mess though, because everyone forgets that it is there. It is also known as the Third Rule of Filmmaking. It’s the one that everyone in the industry has instantaneous collective amnesia about.
Filmmaking is generally about dealing with all that goes wrong (not making it right, at least not from the start). That’s Rule #4 (don’t worry, I am collecting these for you.) And adaptability – that’s what most of us have yet to master. And when things are always changing around you, it is not so easy to stay on track with what you sought to create. Some folks deal with that quite well, rolling with the punches, and finding a solution that is even better than the intention. When you are getting rocks thrown at you daily though, you often acquiesce just to get to the end. You abandon the goal of excellence. And that’s understandable. And that’s why it is really hard.
If this is the part in the post where you wonder, what-the-f I am writing about, let me tell you: I am building the list for you — the one that tries explain why we get so much of that which we like to dislike. In any creative field there is ton of it, but most creative laborers get to hide it in their sock drawer. Our work and art down here in the cinema mines however costs so much to make we usually have to wave it in the wind for everyone to see, even when it stinks to high heaven — unless our overlords choose to use it as a tax write-off that is. The idea of the list is for you to see the forest for the trees. It is the map that shows you where you are. And you should use it to avoid ever showing up in this neck of the woods the again — the place that stinks of mediocrity and the no-fun-sort-of-strictly-badness. Let’s return to that story shall we?
And I should give some credit to the genesis of this list to the good folk at KJZZ who reached out to talk to me about all this for this article and interview. I of course over-prepared and gave more thought to the issue than we had time to talk about. And you my kind readers, are now the beneficiaries. But yeah, perhaps you want to take five minutes to listen to me ponder first.
The environment you make the film in has a tremendous effect on the outcome. Indifference and opposition seem to be the two most common corporate environments in opposition to ambitious creative design. And it is not just
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