A thousand years ago – give or take a decade – I was a movie critic.
In my madcap and untethered University days, I used to wield the poison pen regular-as-you-like for the University Student Newspaper. Not just film reviews, but music and live theatre as well. If it sang, danced or tried doing anything resembling entertainment, I happily cast judgement.
I remember thinking I’d near won the life lottery every time I got to take home a bunch of free (vinyl) albums from the record company. Same with getting sent along to one of those ‘Press only’ film screenings or scoring complimentary tickets to the latest play showing about town.
Yep, living the life on the fringes of glamour, celebrity and popping ‘Opening Night’ champagne corks I most definitely was. For a while. Or so my nineteen-year-old brain thought.
Slowly however, a sinking realization as heavy and dark as a ready-to-pop rain cloud came floating into view. There was a price to be paid for being showered in entertainment freebies.
That price came in the form of having to sit through, listen through and, towards the end, sleep through literally hour-upon-hour, bucketload upon bucketload of what I would sniffily refer to back then as ‘mediocrity’.
You realize eventually that though you may live in hope for it to be otherwise, masterpieces don’t come along very often. I mean, why would they?
The ‘really goods’ and even just plain ‘ol garden-variety ‘goods’ also, it turns out, manage to stay hidden for long stretches of time.
If you’re seeing lots of ‘entertainments’ – in their great many forms – it’s easy to develop a type of numbness or what could be termed ‘repelling shield’.
You become, in the words of my old mustache-twirling advertising copywriter teacher, ‘hard to impress’.
And when that happens, and you start mistaking your own tastes for some objective, Godly yardstick for quality and what’s worth people’s attention, well… you may very well be on the sunken, sad road to self-deception on the grandest of scales.
That and the fatiguing chore of having to wade through and think up creative ways to talk about just so, so, soooooo much featureless chaff to get to the golden, life-giving wheat, were the reasons I walked away from the life of a critic.
These memories came flooding back to me the other night as I watched an ol’ time Bob Hope movie CRITIC’S CHOICE (1963).
Hope plays a caustic theatre critic whose wife (played by Lucille Ball) decides to write a play. Reviewing his wife’s play on opening night in his usual fault-finding manner leads naturally to all manner of marital strife. Here’s a taste –
Log on next week for…
Hey Glen, nice Friday afternoon read! It got me thinking about the good, old Uni days. Back when I had so much energy that I was bouncing off the walls lol.
Back then, writing assignments seemed to get in the way of my social life, so as much as I love critiquing movies, and discussing with other people, the thought of writing MORE would’ve sent me to the loony bin (earlier than expected lol).
But it also got me thinking of a time when you invited me to a movie with one of the greatest story tellers and actors of all time – Sylvester Stallone. The man is still going now and he’s a genius.
I’m biased when it comes to Rocky and Rambo because I grew up watching and re-watching those movies. They taught me many lessons (the beach in Rocky 3 with Rocky and Adrian comes to mind) and it’s rare for me to want to re-watch any movie.
But, anyway back to that movie I went to with you – Rambo 4 – rated R. More blood and guts than usual, and not my favourite of the series, but still enjoyable. I remember looking over during the movie and watching you take notes. And, sure enough, there was a review on SWS the following week.
So even now it’s encouraging that you still like to put- it-out there and do your own review. We all have such different tastes, so in my books it takes a certain amount of courage, that I don’t have, to put it on paper and share it. You did other reviews as well on SWS – All the Money in the World – springs to mind, as does the review.
Anyway, I’m not sure where I’m going with this lol. Maybe just to say it’s good to have another person out there that is as passionate about movies as me.
We only had a few movies on VHS when I was younger, so ‘Days of Thunder’ – Cruise, Kidman, Duvall – was one that was watched so much that I knew the words of the final race of-by-heart. Still to this day I could recite it, as could my brother.
Anyway, I’m going to finish on this, and maybe create so controversy at the same time. The Marvel movies in my opinion are not classics. They may have made a massive amounts of money but were not re-watchable. But, everyone I talk to raves about them. Towards the end they bored me 😞
Like I said earlier, it’s all about individual taste…..
The modern (post 2000) epidemic of Marvel movies is one of the reasons I stopped going to the cinema. Damn that IRON MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA and THOR and all their slap-dash sequels!
nothing beats the original block buster
Good move, Glen, getting out before you went completely to the dark side, never to return again! I love the clip: ‘He’d do it to HIS own mother!” lol That looks just like the kind of movie I would have watched as a kid on a Saturday afternoon. How’d I miss it?!
I agree with Anonymous about the mystery of the masses loving certain things. My husband and I just look at each other, baffled. And sometimes when reviewers really slather it on and the movie was obviously just total and utter crap, we realize there really IS a dark side, and people get seduced there constantly! lol
Nailed it once more Stacey!
The movie CTITICS CHOICE (1963) is EXACTLY the type of good-natured, watchable ‘fare’ (er, not sure I’m putting this right but hopefully people know what I’m talking about) I used to watch on a Saturday afternoon back in the 70’s as well!