I've purposefully tried to model my speech patterns, for certain situations, after Steve Albini and Ralph Nader. They each have a way of speaking to an issue without overly coloring their words with emotion, and I've always admired that quality. Wish I could do it without so much "umm"ing and "uhh"ing though.


Yes.


It's been in my queue for a while, I just need to find both the time and the right mood.


I appreciate your joke here, because I do sometimes feel silly criticizing anything that I couldn't do myself. But the opinion of the consumer is just as valid as that of the creator, despite their different frames of reference. And while Abrams is obviously "smart" and understand both the techniques and the business side of filmmaking, that doesn't negate the fact that his big-budget spectacles often fail to make an emotional connection with many viewers.

I would never intentionally imply otherwise.

Fascinating.

Sort of a followup to our discussion: I listened to Vince Vaughn on the Maltin On Movies podcast last night, and he was talking about how when he and Favreau were writing/shopping the script for Swingers, it was really important to them that they tell an authentic story; that their experience in LA, around the nascent swing revival, had not been told yet. So once they finished the script, all these producers would say "We're interested in this, but we want a female co-star, and we want to change all the music to grunge." Vaughn & Favreau felt this would not be authentic to their story -- that the inclusion of a woman would negate the entire story, and that the grunge thing was just not their experience in LA at that time...

Long-story-short, they stuck to their guns and got the film made the way they wanted to see it made. It was such a huge hit because it uniquely captured a moment, and in effect became part of the zeitgeist of that time and place.

I thought this was a really interesting experience in how authenticity in film needs to be intentional, and has to be protected from outside commercial influences to survive the production process.

Oh i love Swingers so much. Its a film that got kinda lost right? I also love Made, the follow up that Favreau did.

Yeah, you know...i was thinking about what authenticity means for film for example...its tricky. I had a discussion about that the other day, about how you need to do you your stuff instead of copy whatever is in vogue these days, about genuine love for the craft, about doing something honest or just wait and copy what you think could work.

I wouldn't say it was "lost" here, it was a huge sleeper hit, though I bet a lot of younger viewers today are not familiar with it. I never saw Made, I should watch it sometime.

It was a big thing back in the day for sure, but its should get more praise.

Made is fun.