Devin Faraci and I have sparred online on numerous occasions, but I’ve always found my in-person interactions with him to be agreeable and engaging. This evening, he was in town to help out with Drafthouse Films’ first movie, Four Lions. Luckily, I had a chance to catch up with Devin in his hotel room and chat extensively with him about a variety of topics, including his new website and the future of online film journalism.
There were a number of issues on which we both agreed:
- The current market cannot sustain the glut of current online film websites. Eventually, only a few will emerge as the most prominent and worthy of attention.
- Writers should try to avoid writing for free for someone else, whenever possible. There are a variety of reasons for this, some of which Devin discusses.
- As geek culture has gone mainstream, the place of online film websites has gotten extremely murky.
- Film websites will need to do more than just rehash news from other film websites in order to stay relevant and interesting.
Here’s the audio of our chat: