When it is time to leave film criticism

The other day, I saw a tweet from film writer Chris Webster that got me intrigued:

As someone who recently tried to direct a film, I felt like I understood what Webster was talking about. When you try to go through the process of making a film (even a tiny indie film), it changes your perception of movies altogether. It makes the great ones seem even more miraculous, and the terrible ones feel more tragic.

I contacted Webster to see if I could get him to talk more about his decision to leave film criticism. He agreed to answer a few questions via email. You can follow Chris on Twitter or at places like Screen Anarchy and Quiet Earth.

David: How long have you been reviewing movies (in print or on the internet)?

Chris: The first time I was paid to review a film was in 2005 when Sergio Leone’s Duck, You Sucker (aka. A Fistful of Dynamite) was re-released through the arthouse circuit. I was writing a film news column for a local weekly called SEE Magazine and lobbied to be allowed to review it as I was a big spaghetti western buff and was desperate to see the film on the big screen.

I remember the photo that was published along with the review was from a completely different film, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon as I recall, and for some reason I was crushed when I opened the paper the following Tuesday morning on my way to University, thoroughly convinced that readers would assume I was responsible for the gaff and my days as a cineaste would end prematurely.

That weekly paper folded two years later which is when I started investigating the online world, reading sites like Ain’t it Cool News, Twitch Film (now ScreenAnarchy), First Showing, Slashfilm, Bloody Disgusting and others. I was immediately impressed by the relentless pace and scope of the coverage that was possible when you assembled a team internationally and hit most of the major festivals. It was clear that you didn’t need to expend a lot of travel costs for instance, just ensure you made connections with contributors in crucial locations.

I threw myself in and joined the founder of Quiet Earth on a mission to emulate that model. And for a few years we did a decent job growing the team and readership as well as making some great friends in the community along the way. I also have the pleasure to be writing at many of those sites now.

Why did you decide to get into movie writing in the first place?

Look, everyone loves movies, but there’s a limit to how long your friends and family will sit and talk with you about them. I’m sure most of us who have gravitated to blogging about film have faced this and it’s pushed us to find other ways to keep the conversation going. Writing about movies, podcasting, that’s what we’re doing, keeping the conversation going ad infinitum.

Do you make money from writing reviews? What portion of your personal income does it contribute to? Do you have a full-time/day job?

The money I make from writing about movies fluctuates as it’s based on various revenue streams including affiliate partnerships, advertising and commission work. If you’re not staffed full time at a big site, the trick seems to be writing for multiple sites. Since the monthly figure is generally in the hundreds of dollars it doesn’t make up a significant portion of my income. For that I rely on a full-time job in marketing/communications.

Is there a movie review or a moment in your writing career you’re particularly proud of?

As you know, there’s nothing more important than being FIRST! in the online world, so I would say my firsts have been my some of my proudest moments.

For example, I had the opportunity to publish the first English review of Switzerland’s first science fiction film, Cargo. With my permission, Io9 ended up re-publishing the review, which was a nice surprise and I was glad to have been able to help that film get some exposure. It’s very ambitious and beautiful and the director is a really cool guy.

Reviews where I have been extremely positive on a film also seem to stand out as well. My review of Kevin Smith’s Red State for example sticks out because I was able to attend one of the director’s roadshow screenings and the film completely rocked the house. I was floored by that movie and that whole experience definitely helps the review I subsequently wrote stand out in my mind.

I could go on, but I’ll stop at two.

What made you decide to stop writing reviews?

In 2010 I made the choice to try writing a screenplay, just to see if I could. Finishing that 100 page script was incredibly challenging, but also insightful. I sent it around and managed to attract an established director and a producer of movie video game tie-ins. Development hell, as they say, ensued and that project eventually fell apart. But I had caught the bug, so I wrote another one which lead to some time working with an Australian producer, which in tern lead to working on another project with a well known Canadian director. Most recently, I’ve worked on the upcoming series, Dark/Web, from the producers of last year’s Circle.

Once I had gone through development on a number of feature film projects that experience started to warp my process of reviewing films until it became a totally unrecognizable endeavor.

Knowing how the sausage was made on a creative level alerted me to the fact that there was some investigation missing when it came to truly understanding the intention and considerations of a writer and his/her collaborators, which debilitated discussing a film completely. I began losing my ability to write about movies from an emotional perspective, while at the same time, I became frustrated by how I saw others writing about films.

Everywhere I looked, critics seemed willfully unwilling to explore how movies were made in any significant way to enhance their writing. And I started to think, ‘In a world where VICE will go live with terrorists in Iran, or whatever, to bring a level of authenticity to their reporting, I don’t see any movie critics really willing to gain a rich understanding of what it’s like to produce a film from script to screen.’

I believe if more film critics went down this investigative path, tried to write a film or work on a set, it would radically change the profession and the discourse. Because what I see in the space now are critics proclaiming reasons a film isn’t working with very little content to back it up. It’s not enough to say, “Oh, the script was terrible, some of that dialog was on the nose,” which you read all the time, because what are you even talking about exactly? Did you read the screenplay? A screenplay isn’t just the dialog; it’s everything from what we hear on the soundtrack to how the characters are costumed to the tone and pacing. It’s a thousand considerations, each of which will go on to be compromised in some small way by each person who comes along after it’s written to help bring it to the screen. Nobody sets out to make a bad film. For that reason, I think great films are miracles and the idea of reducing this rich and collaborative art form to 500 snarky words seems preposterous to me.

And look, what I am suggesting happens in the film industry as well. I just realized that watching a lot of movies doesn’t necessarily equip you with a robust enough understanding of how films work, or should work, and I realized I was likely doing more disservice to filmmakers than good by bringing more uninformed criticism into the world.

I’ve noticed that many of our critic colleagues who have gotten into producing have quietly moved away from reviewing films altogether. I won’t name names — people can do their research — but I suspect it’s because writing reviews began to feel like a strangely disingenuous exercise for them. Now that I’ve discussed my own decision here, I think I’ll ask them about it. And who knows, maybe they’re just too busy.

Which brings up another reason: it takes a lot of time to write about the work of others when I could be focusing on my own work. Ben Wheatley’s recent comments about not understanding the desire to criticize rather than create hit me right in the gut. It made me consider all the time I had invested in writing bout other people’s creativity and how I wished I had some of that time back to invest in my own endeavors. A very intelligent filmmaker friend of mine takes issue with Wheatley’s sentiments and has suggested that criticism is a critic’s art. After about a year of mulling his opinion, I have decided to respectfully disagree. It’s okay though, we’re still friends.

The final reason I’ve lost interest in reviewing films is that I believe criticism is moving in a very toxic direction where films are being used as political lightning rods to discuss identity politics by some people I would suggest have little interest in movies. I think the market has dictated this. Conflict has always generated clicks, but what this preoccupation with whether or not La La Land is racist [Editor’s note: Um…] has done is drown out those discussing the movie and movies. And I miss that.

On a recent episode of The Canon podcast, critics MTV’s Amy Nicholson and indie Wire’s David Ehrlich discussed the 1998 Academy Award winner Shakespeare in Love. Both of them marveled at how, when going back to read through criticism of it from the time of its release, there was barely any talk of how the film represents gender. They went on to imagine how the film would be put through the think-piece meat grinder if it were released today which struck me as incredibly sad. Gender is a topic worth considering in the film, no question, it’s not that, but it reminded me that we used to sit on films, let history do its thing before assessing their place and relevance in the culture, using context and perspective as an important ally. Now we sort of speed date with movies, savage them with judgment and move on to the next table.

What blogging hath wrought

John Biggs has written a reflection for TechCrunch on the impact that the internet, blogging, and social media has had on how we consume news:

Because my experience is a microcosm of what happened to media in the 21st century, it can begin to explain how we ended up in an era of intentional ignorance and with a truly broken media. The tools we perfected in those early days were some of the most pernicious and powerful tools in existence, honed to razor sharpness to cut off only the fattest parts of the truth, abandoning the nuance. We were not originally butchers – we had loftier goals – but when traffic (and traffic bonuses) became our driving impetus and when Google advertisers valued eyeballs over brains we had to provide content that fit a certain mindset and provide it at speed. It was as if we had invented a steam engine and set off across the landscape without inventing a brake. And we had limitless tons of coal.

The new 30 for 30 Podcast is great

ESPN has recently launched the “30 for 30” podcast, based on its 30 for 30 documentaries. Hosted by Jody Avirgan, each episode explores an untold side of a popular sports story.

The first episode chronicles the trials of Reebok’s once-ubiquitous “Dan and Dave” ads. As someone who was a kid when these first came out, I was fascinated by the backstory of Reebok’s bold marketing campaign, and the consequences that befell them when they put the cart before the horse.

I wasn’t as crazy about their second episode about the Yankess Suck phenomenon — not because the podcast wasn’t well made (it is) but because this particular story sums up a lot about what I dislike about American society and sports fandom in general.

Nevertheless, it’s a really strong start to what I hope will be a great podcast. I’m subscribed for the foreseeable future. [Apple Podcasts link]

“What if writing, full stop, isn’t a job anymore?”

Bryan Curtis over at The Ringer has some thoughtful reflections on last week’s MTV craziness:

Let’s imagine a pivot to video is genuine rather than just a scheme to give everyone a pink slip. Other than Vice and a few other shops, there’s almost no model for what a good web video job would be. Last week, Vanity Fair unveiled a profile of Serena Williams with beautiful photos from Annie Leibovitz and a story from Buzz Bissinger. But as The Awl’s Silvia Killingsworth wrote, a video that accompanied the article was just a collage of Leibovitz photos and pull quotes from the article. The article’s sentences were labored over; the pictures were composed; the video was an afterthought.

Some of this may just be timing. A decade ago, if a web publication said it was “pivoting to podcasting,” the news would have been greeted like the End Times. Now, getting tapped for a podcast is like earning a journalistic merit badge. In a few cases, writers have realized they could both write and pod. In others, writers realized that if a zippy conversation about the news of the week consumed the time they’d have otherwise spent crafting a memorable piece, well, that’s the price of success. It’s a lot easier to have the zippy conversation.

The culling of online publications will likely continue as viable business models for video sort themselves out. In the meantime, let the good times roll.

Meeting Joanna

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I’ve been podcasting with Joanna Robinson for about six years. This past weekend, we met in person for the very first time.

It was about six years ago that Joanna first pitched me the idea of doing a recap podcast about Game of Thrones. I was unsure whether this would be a good idea — I didn’t know that much about the world of the show and I’d never done a TV podcast before. But I trusted in Joanna to guide the way.

So we decided to give it a shot, and we launched A Cast Of Kings. We entered a crowded field that already had DOZENS of other Game of Thrones podcasts.

Fast forward to present day. A Cast of Kings is the most successful podcast I’ve ever had a part in, generating over 5 million downloads, with hundreds of thousands of fans from all around the world. Moreover, Joanna’s star has risen dramatically in the intervening years, as she’s become one of the most respected and widely read Game of Thrones writers on the internet. It’s been an honor to work with her during
this ascension.

Despite this, Joanna and I had never met in person before. But yesterday, at a Podcaster Meet And Greet at #ConOfThrones, surrounded by many fans of the show we created together, we finally had the chance. This photo commemorates the occasion (thanks to Jim from Bald Move for taking it).

The internet can be magic, if you will it to be. All it takes is the willingness to take chances with people and a passion for what you do.

And persistence. A lot of persistence.

GQ’s baffling investigative piece on fires in the Mission

Last week, I read a rather baffling piece in GQ by Jon Ronson (a writer I greatly look up to and author of books such as So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, as well as a screenwriter on Bong Joon-Ho’s Okja). Entitled “San Francisco Is Burning” and accompanied by a spectacular photo illustration of houses on fire, Ronson’s piece posed the question: “Are the city’s landlords using arson to drive out low-income tenants? And is this the deadly endgame of gentrification and tech-boom greed?”

These are good questions that bring up important issues, especially in an age where higher property costs are pushing out more and more middle-class folks. Problem is, the piece was a whole lot of smoke and not a lot of fire.

Ronson starts by interviewing an unnamed landlord — referred to as Gideon — who Ronson says “plotted to burn down the apartment building he owned.” But Ronson uncovers zero evidence that any such arsons actually occurred. Gideon only plotted to burn down his apartment building; he never actually went through with it. Ronson ends his piece with this wistful reflection:

I wonder how real estate agents are attracting buyers for all these new apartments. And so, posing as a prospective client, I arrange a viewing of a fancy condo. Not long ago, a real estate agent named Jennifer Rosdail blogged that the Mission should be re-christened as “The Quad, a newly defined meta-hood.” “Quadsters are young,” she wrote. “They like to hang in the sun with their friends. They work very hard—mostly in high tech—and make a lot of money.”

The man showing me the condo is less brash; in fact he’s very nice. So is the apartment, even if $2.6 million seems crazily excessive for 1,800 square feet. But it has a beautiful roof deck, which the two of us now stand on. It’s a lovely evening. A few streets away, I can see the empty space where Mauricio Orellana lost his life. I can also see Lazy Bear, a restaurant off Mission Street that does a 14-course tasting menu for $185, including foie gras and rabbit and sweet-pea custard.

“A new restaurant opens here every week,” the agent says. He pauses as we gaze out over the Mission’s rooftops. “It’s funny to think that a few years ago you wouldn’t be seen dead in this neighborhood.”

I wasn’t the only one who found the piece strange. San Francisco magazine’s Scott Lucas described this piece as a “massive troll with shoddy reporting.” (For some reason the site is down right now as I write this, but here’s the cached version). Firstly, Lucas quickly concludes that “Gideon” is actually a man named Richard Earl Singer, as many of Singer’s details match those of Gideons. But the apartment complex that Singer owned wasn’t even close to the Mission. It’s in Oakland.

Most damningly, Lucas drops some statistics and facts on us about some of these Mission fires:

Leaving Gideon—and Singer—aside, the article is marred by failing to take into account what Fire Department investigators have actually found regarding the Mission fires. Last year, in an article for Curbed, I put together a statistical analysis from public data that showed that, in fact, the Mission was burning at a slightly higher rate than would be expected from its population, but so were the Tenderloin, SoMA, the Financial District, and the Western Addition. Despite the popular narrative, there’s no fire cluster in the Mission.

What we do have in San Francisco, like many cities, is an unfortunate truth that older, poorly maintained buildings that often house poor people burn more often than others do. Arson just doesn’t seem to be the cause.

For example, KQED points out that the fire at the Graywood “was likely caused by a discarded cigarette or barbecue charcoals, according to a Fire Department investigation.” No evidence that the fire was deliberately set was found. A January 2015 fire that killed one person was found to be “unintentional.” When the dollar store at 2632 Mission Street went up in flames in April 2015, investigators found code violations—no smoke alarms or sprinklers—to be part of the problem, not arson. That was also the case in the March 2016 fire that killed two.

Ronson doesn’t cite any of that. Instead, he offers this: “As I stared at the charred walls, a passerby called out to me, ‘Was it arson or something? Then he shrugged and answered his own question: ‘I guess nobody knows.’”

Not good enough.

Really not sure what happened with Ronson’s piece but feels like he spent months trying to uncover something that never actually happened and had to crank something out to show for it.

The rise and fall of MTV News

Jordan Sargent has written what will probably be the definitive account of how MTV News’ experiment into serious journalism and commentary went awry. As I pointed out the other day, MTV News’ struggles are emblematic of deeper issues in online publishing.

Sargent’s piece tackles it as such, with a ton of choice quotes:

The dissolution of this micro-era of MTV News in just over a year and a half leaves us with several questions: Can a behemoth media company like MTV succeed in reinventing itself from within simply by creating a “prestige journalism” arm? Further, what kind of journalism does a company like Viacom—which is largely reliant on friendly artist relationships for its financial success—support and allow? And what even was the intended outcome? Fierman and Hopper both came to MTV News from publications—Grantland and Pitchfork’s longform print magazine, respectively—that had not been economically viable from the perspectives of various suits. Why would Viacom want to attempt it again? […]

Other issues faced by MTV News were also not particularly unique to the site. Hopper outlined a “dream world” in the press that may very well have been a fantasy, but editors overselling new sites in the hopes of drumming up excitement—and thus an audience—is part of the deal. Constant high-level turnover is also common across this tumultuous industry, with one executive hiring a group of editors and writers and then leaving them in the lap of another. New hires are often assured by their bosses that they will be given a certain period of time to see a new endeavor through, only to have it be cut short months early. Both Fierman and Hopper also came to MTV from places where prestige journalism projects were unable to be sustained—Fierman at Grantland, which was beloved and had readership in the millions, but was deemed no longer useful to ESPN once it jettisoned Bill Simmons; Hopper at Pitchfork, where she helmed the bulk of the issues of the Pitchfork Review, its boutique print magazine that stopped publishing soon after she left. In the context of MTV, too, this MTV News experiment met a routine and familiar death.

“There’s this cycle that happens, that I was a part of. Someone gets the idea that they want editorial, and then a couple editors who all know the other editors are like ‘Come here, the faucet is on’,” Suarez said of the state of the industry. “And everyone runs to that faucet and it attracts the attention of higher-ups who realize there’s too much money coming out and shut it down. Then somebody you bring to your faucet gets their own faucet, and so you run over there.”