4 August 1999

Xita writes: "Your articles always make me really mad. You are not at all fair. You can't give credit where credit is due. You spend countless columns defending Godzilla and worshipping The Matrix (one obviously not deserved and the other one obviously so). On the other hand, you spend your time harassing movies that have buzz and do well at the box office. The Blair Witch Project ha(s) gotten better reviews than either of the above movies or your other beloved picture (Star Wars). Let's face it, a movie columnist you might be, but nobody would ever use you to pick critic's circle's prizes or the Oscars® (The Blockbuster Awards maybe). You don't want to give credit to the movie TBWP because you feel somehow that if you do you will be humbled or perhaps (it is) more scary (for you) to you be proved wrong. You have done it before and I expect you will continue to do it. You are the reason that I have begun to avoid RoughCut and I wish they would get another columnist, one with an open mind. Oh, of course most of your letters would be negative, most of your readers are your flunkies. Most people who disagree with you (silently as I have), have left long ago realizing that you never change your mind. Listening to what others have to say is really a skill you might want to try to master. TBWP will continue to do good business even while people like you are trying to bring it down. Titanic had incredibly bad buzz after a few weeks. People got fed up with hearing about it, yet it continued to do business because it was a good movie going experience. Don't be surprised by anything.

DAVID RESPONSE : No point in responding to much of this in public. But, please note Xita, roughcut.com was the only non-TBWP Website at the premiere of The Blair Witch Project. Why? Well, we did have the advantage of a good relationship with Yahoo! But more to the point, I decided we needed to be there when the opportunity arose. Roughcut.com paid for the trip, but the decision to go was 100 percent mine. I understood then, as I understand now, that a lot of people absolutely love this movie. And frankly, I have been shocked at how many people have not liked it at all. I'm not sure what readers like this expect from me. Maybe I'm not writing enough press releases for the films they love. Sorry, not my job. A columnist with "an open mind" is a columnist without a mind of his/her own. This theme continues in the last of the letters.

RB: "Saw BWP with a packed audience. I have to say that the only thing that freaked me out (were the scenes) while they were sleeping and then running. What is the big deal about this film? I could've seen this on public access. It's not bad, but nothing great either. I've also never witnessed such a negative vibe after a film. People stated a few lines like "I should've seen American Pie!" or "That was it!!?!!" or "That sucked." One person complained about waiting in line to see a "stupid home video." Most of the audience seemed to just talk quietly and nod their heads at what they had just seen. I found the audience's reaction more entertaining than the movie. I hate when I keep looking at my watch and falling asleep to such a short "movie!"

Jana: "I wonder if someone could conduct a poll to find out (if) those who didn't like it were non-readers. So many films fill in every blank that one doesn't have to exercise imagination. Reading involves self-made image making. Thus, I suspect but do not know that those who didn't like it have lost some ability of imagination from too much video and not enough reading. This was a good ghost story. I'm surprised at the reports of motion sickness because I'm a long time sufferer, can't see IMAX films, but didn't get queasy here."

JC: "What is this July's answer to, 'How far can hype carry a movie?' Well, a projected 100 million dollars. Un-real. I think The Blair Witch Project as an event deserves four stars, up there with Star Wars and JFK Jr's ocean landing. But as a film? Tedious garbage. A couple of Frat guys were sitting beside me, obviously sucked into the hype surrounding it and not only did it bring them (in hordes) to the theater, it brainwashed them into sitting through and simulating enjoyment. They like it because the hype has told them they are supposed to. The Blair Witch Project is the fake orgasm of the year. As a mock-umentary it blows because, what is the point of making something fiction if you're going to use bad, mundane improv techniques and terrible film stock. Gritty realism? Hardly. I felt like I was watching "America's Funniest Home Videos" with Daisy Fuentes or MTV's "The Real World", a really terrible episode of MTV's "The Real World". As a fictionalized piece of art, it just doesn't work. Structure isn't a mess or confusing, it is non-existent. Dialogue? Well, I mentioned it.

Theme? Impossible to gauge because of the lack of aesthetic congruity. As horror, get real. Next time, in The Blair Witch Project 2 or whatever, it would be scarier if we couldn't see out of the woods. Rocks and twigs, horrifying? I know that it takes a certain level of skill to make a film where the audience doesn't see what it is they are scared of, they don't see the monster or the witch or the werewolf. Hitchcock was the master of this, as we've all heard. Well, that isn't an end all. Just because you don't show it, doesn't mean we'll be scared. I didn't see the monster in You've Got Mail and I wasn't frightened. I didn't see the real terror in Runaway Bride, they never showed it but I still wasn't terrified. As non-fiction, it isn't an entity. It is fiction. It has been hyped as "non-fiction" on Web pages and crossover television specials. This goes along with my thought of JFK as the film of the '90s...it ushered in an era in which the public suspects it's getting lied to, knows it's getting lied to, and eventually, doesn't even give a damn.

I got into a little verbal argument with the Frat dudes as I walked out of the theater. This one, in love with the crap, says, sure of himself, "Man, you just don't understand what makes that a scary movie." "Buddy," I reply, "I don't understand what makes that crap a f***ing movie, period." Have a great rest of the summer, Dave. Here's looking forward to the fall and Scorsese, P.T. Anderson, Kevin Smith, Ang Lee and the rest of the bunch, the directors who made 1997 so wonderful.

"Page 3, Blair Witch In Detail"