tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2822786333825612436.post3730212484325800730..comments2023-09-18T05:37:52.392-07:00Comments on A Bugman Blog: DAY TWELVE - "Am I Glad We Saved This For The Last Day," or "You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!"Todd Onehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13920139949782332790noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2822786333825612436.post-36537749803306069422009-11-03T17:10:56.250-08:002009-11-03T17:10:56.250-08:00Ugh.... You're familiar with the Emperor's...Ugh.... You're familiar with the Emperor's New Clothes? I hate to be the guy who points out the naked dude (yes, makes me sound like a fag, which is probably the real reason why nobody had the guts to say so) anyways...<br /><br />What's up with all the Spielbergian obsessiveness? I mean, as a critic, I hope this won't be taken as hating, it ain't. Look, saw your trailer, and the first thought I had was, why attempt to do your own version of "Sky Captain: World of Tomorrow" since that film sucked so badly in the first place. Clearly, I would bet that your intent isn't do a ripoff of that awful film. But when you think about it, why didn't that film work in the first place? Because to do post-modern ironic filmmaking in the vein of Spielberg or Lucas is simply, well, boring. Spielberg and Lucas already did the post-modern thing, so to do their style is like copying a guy who already copied someone else in the first place. Post-post modern? Indie filmmaking is fun precisely because it can be an alternative to the mainstream. So these filmmakers like Chris Seaver, Mike Watts, you, trying to do no-budget versions of epic crowd-pleasers simply sounds like a waste of time to me. Why pay to see your film when I can pay to see the real thing? What's killing me is simply the lack of versimilude (sp?) here. I think you forgot that what made Lucas and Spielberg's early efforts so fun, and ironic, was that they had huge budgets and amazing resources to make their serial b movies 'believable.' A film shot on a green screen, looks like a film shot on a green screen. College aged actors pretending to be WW2 pilots and heroic professors look like young people 'pretending' to be things that they are not. I love Spielberg too. So plagarizing him in the cheapest way possible, even if I come close to replicating some of his charm, is hack work at best and creepy obsession at most. You guys seem SO talented. Why not make a movie from the heart. Did you forget that those fantasies from Lucas and Spielberg were more about their passive-aggressive hatred toward abusive father figures and their desire to escape from the abuse to fantasy worlds? The whole b-movie serial gimmick wasn't what drove those films. It was their candid acceptance of the kind of behaviors that demonized men children scared of growing up. Indiana Jones' schizophrenia mirrored Spielberg's own obsessive need to prove himself to a world he was too insecure to believe accepted him. Darth Vader was a play on the words Dark Father which was a demon that Lucas was always trying to escape from with help of his elaborate fantasies. Those films, the early ones at least, had pathos. All I'm seeing here, like in "Project: Valkyrie", is a love of spectacle and irony. I don't see the same personal tales of what makes you guys interesting people ending up on film. Think of Roger Ebert's early review of "Raiders of the Lost Ark". He said, "This a young jewish boy getting to indulge in his fantasy of whooping some Nazis." And to know Spielberg's troubled history of growing up in a society that mocked his heritage is to know this to be true. I think the next time you very talent folks get together to make a movie, you should drop the ego to prove yourselves and instead tap into the hidden stories of your lives that drive you as people and start there. Sure, you might not end up with a glossy spectacle. But you'll have a story that people like me might actually care about. It might be fun going through the motions of making a film like "It came from Yesterday" like a bunch of kids pretending to be big Hollywood professionals making a big Hollywood film. But the truth is that you aren't using film to connect with your audience. You are using it to play act, to indulge in some obsession, etc. When you figure out that "It's the story, stupid" and not what you have to prove, then I can promise you that you'll find true satisfaction and validation in that mysterious artform called moviemaking. Good luck.<br /><br />GleibermanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com