Writing About Movies, Good or Bad
I finally made it through American Movie Critics–the anthology edited by Phillip Lopate. It seemed to be a great compilation and historical review of American film criticism. I was struck by the thoughtfulness of criticism even back when film was just emerging. For some reason, that was a revelation to me. Sometimes criticism (and film, for that matter) seems so ephemeral, so “of the day”. I sort of assumed that there was a time that movies were just movies. Sheer entertainment, nothing more. But the tradition goes back to the beginning. It heartens me to know that people have always been thinking critically about movies.
The other pleasant surprise was the discussion of those movies which aren’t exactly considered high art. From Manny Farber’s “White Elephant Art vs. Termite Art” to Pauline Kael’s “Trash, Art, and the Movies” to J. Hoberman’s “Bad Movies,” they all instilled in me a wider appreciation of what movies are and can be. One of my faults is putting too much emphasis on the quest for high art in film while neglecting what is great about not-so-great movies.
On a related note, in a recent interview in the AV club, Bruce Campbell described what makes a movie a cult classic:
…one that has been fully embraced by an alternative audience, not the popular audience. There are two different audiences. One is a very specific sci-fi lover or a horror lover. The difference between my fans and Tom Cruise’s fans is that no one is tattooing Risky Business on their back. Yet I’ve seen the poster for Army Of Darkness on a guy’s back—his whole back. It was beautiful.
I still think tattooing the Army of Darkness poster onto your back is really creepy and kinda sad, but I certainly take his point. I once briefly considered getting a tattoo of Alfred Hitchcock’s silhouette.
Anyways…I’ll certainly be returning to the Lopate book in the future, especially to those three pieces mentioned above. The book also inspires me to begin writing better about movies. While I’ve been writing my short Week In Review blurbs for the movies I see, the quality of analysis and writing is well short of my desired intentions. To this point, it has been mostly thoughtless. Hopefully in the near future I can begin to take my writing more seriously and start writing thoughtful stuff in the form of proper reviews, academic articles, or critical essays.
I just need to carve out some time and energy to do it. And if it’s something I really want to do, it shouldn’t be so hard to find the extra time and energy for it.
