 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| |||||
November 28, 2005The Monday after a long weekend… always a little schizo…
I was thinking about a not-very-well-thought-out accusation by a colleague that I "hated" her and two other journalists. Hate is an accusation that I have heard before. But it is not something I have a lot of in my life. There are plenty of people and behaviors that drive me nuts. But even the people who drive me the most insane are still people who I would help up if they fell in the Sundance snow, give money to if they were in trouble, and support if they came up against something in the world that I felt has happened to them unfairly.
That said…
The First Annual THINGS I HATE
I HATE when people assume that just because you question them intellectually that you must have a personal issue with them. Discourse is challenging to all of us. But certainly people in the communications business should develop their skills in taking criticism.
I AM UNHAPPY that almost no people in the communications business have developed their skills in taking criticism
I HATE that I and others get caught up in the competitive zeal over incredibly stupid things, like the dates I get to see movies or stories that I never thought deserved to be written about but get attention when they are written about. The only way to stay sane in all of this is to be your own North Star, though many of the lights in the sky are set by editors and not writers. There surely is value to professional competition, but sometimes, it just seems so incredibly irrelevant to anything, including the work.
I QUITE DISLIKE how large media companies take entertainment coverage so lightly that they allow very soft editing to get into their pieces. When a story like the Judith Miller story breaks, I realize that perhaps the rest of the papers are as much a mess as the movie industry coverage, but not completely. Top editors really do know the arena their reporters are covering in politics. They tend not to in entertainment coverage. So the reporters who really know the beat - and who make sure they have it right when they do not - deliver great stuff. And the others, no matter how good they are at unearthing information, deliver a lot of tripe.
I DO NOT ACTUALLY HATE "The Slump." I know that it must seem that I do. But the idea that there is something wrong with how things are going in this business is always worthy of thoughtful conversation. What I do hate is the simplification of an issue down to something so easily understood that it becomes a falsehood. What I hate is the tendency we all have to defend - even fight for - the positions we take, even when the position stops being viable.
I DO HATE efforts to control the stream of media with endlessly changing ideas of how the media and the studios are meant to interrelate. The strategy changes during award season and sometimes with summer releases that have studios particularly nervous. The most often seen version is… control the media by launching with a rave from a "legitimate" outlet… show "key long-lead outlets" who "need" to see the film for features (but who are as likely as not to badmouth the film all over L.A., no matter what they have told the studio)… show the junketeers, since they won't be publicly critical about anything (though they are notorious posters to AICN and other "early look" sites)… and then let the rest of the press see the film, trying to hold an embargo if you can… but only caring about strongly negative reviews from people who people listen to because the studio has already completed Phase One of their campaign by the time the movie is seen by most press.
I DESPISE weeks where there just aren't any new movies worth seeing… and that there are so few foreign films turning up, even in a big city like Los Angeles.
I AM NOT TOO HAPPY that the Independent Spirit Awards have become the Dependent Spirit Awards, even if the revenues that Film Independent are chasing are used to support truly independent filmmakers. Making the awards world safe for Focus and Sony Classics and Warner Indie and Searchlight seems downright counterintuitive. You can be sure that at least three or four of this year's nominees will also be Oscar nominees. But what of all the indies that cost more than $500,000 and aren't among the five highest profile late season "indies" of the year? Does a movie like Me and You and Everyone We Know or Junebug or Nine Lives or Keane have a legitimate shot at the top awards, or even top nominations? Of course, the media will only notice if a Crash fails to make the cut. And we will explain to readers, in sparse detail, why the Pride & Prejudices and Layer Cakes don't qualify. (They aren't American indies.)
I HATE that there have not been more truly great films this year, though there have been some very good ones.
I AM DISPLEASED that people forget that the media corps is made up mostly of professionals who keep embargoes and people who actually just want to do their jobs as efficiently and as painlessly as possible. Most of us end up doing features on people whose movies we don't like… but we do it and we do it with a smile. (I don't, actually… but I'm pretty self-indulgent - and fortunate - in that regard... other people have editors who want what they want.) The attempt to control this group is the publicity equivalent of record companies trying to squeeze every last dime out of CD buyers. It doesn't make everyone into a pirate, but after a while, you start to feel stupid paying retail… especially when the "pirates" seem to roam the seas, free as a bird.
I AM MORE THAN A LITTLE DISMAYED that the business of awards season has become so intensely focused on the first two weeks of December. Aren't we interested in honoring the best films of the year? Why can't we seem to wait for the year to end anymore?
I HATE hating at all. It is exhausting.
Tomorrow… something completely different.
