Movies

You know, I like movies.

I do.

I've always had a weird relationship with making films.

It's always been a matter of re-inspiration. It's never that one film that makes me a filmmaker.

It's the one that makes you love film again.

Filmmaking is filled with cynicism. It's always been a part of it. Thomas Edison was an evil dude. Any TMZ scandal pales in comparison to what William Randolph Heart did to Fatty Arbuckle.

You have to fall in love with film again. It's too difficult not to. That's what love is. It's embrace in the face of defeat.

I remember when I was in the fifth grade. My father was working on this script project that fell into development hell. It bummed him out a lot.

Hell, watching that made me depressed too.

But whatever. I'm beyond that now.

I remember my love of horror films was sort of this weird accident.

I was always nostalgic about 80s action movies.

I used to think that Terminator 2 was one of the greatest films ever made.

I still do.

I remember how in high school, every film that came out was trying to be the next Harry Potter. It sickened me. Something deep inside told me it was bullshit.

I hate that. I hated it when you were a kid, and they always pushed an aspiring franchise on you. Trying to bland up the ol' monomyth.

I remember watching Commando. I remember thinking that last scene where Arnold goes full God Mode was something to aspire to create as a filmmaker. Spraying and praying is tactically a horrible decision to make in a firefight, but it looks amazing on film.

There's a scene in Commando where Arnold chops a dude's arm with a machete. I thought that was cool. I was constantly preached about the evils of R-rated movies as a kid, and the idea that I would be able to create what I was not able to watch, a sort of homebrew punk rock of violence, was awesome to me. I purchased a book on horror films in the hopes of doing an action sequence like that in the future.

One thing led to another, I became entrenched in horror films.

We need a next generation of horror filmmakers. I thought that would be a cool thing to be. That, and rock stars.

We have another generation of rappers. We have another generation of comedians. We have another generation of basketball players. We need the next generation of genre filmmakers and rock stars who are more interested in making cool shit than Twitter followers. That preceding statement is both ironic and self-loathing.

A sixteen year old making R-rated films. You need to be at least seventeen to watch those. I wouldn't be allowed to watch the films that I had made. All of that bullshit about how violence in cinema is bad for children, and I would be a child making violent films, as if telling the entire establishment as a whole to piss off.

How the hell are you supposed to warn your children of the horrors of Isis when you cry when you watch Psycho?

I remember reading A Long Way Gone, and how Ishmael Beah talked about how he would watch violent movies and listen to rap mixtapes while serving as a child soldier.

You have to understand, this was during that post-Iraq war-everybody-hates-America era. The fact that the world loved violent movies (even for the wrong reasons) was something I found interesting. I always think French action movies are interesting. Cause they're French. They're not supposed to like action movies. But The Professional is still one of the greatest films of all time.

It was also cool to make films you weren't allowed to watch. To be told that you cannot get into an R-rated film, so you went on the weekend and made your own R-rated was kind of cool.

There's an enthusiastic violent creativity about high school. It goes away when you're in your twenties worrying about how to pay the bills. You spend your waking life as a creative worrying about quotas and demographics. That's not how good stuff is made. Sure, I try to aim for those things, but I don't think it's always going to work.

I apologize for that now, but that's a hard game to play.

Every story needs conflict. It's easy for society to take conflict personally if bad things happened to a character of diversity.

I use the third act of Star Wars as an example of this. Imagine if Luke Skywalker was black. He goes in to stop the Death Star, but Darth Vader closes in. But then, Han Solo comes in to shoot Vader away.

Social critics would say that was a symbolic of white oppression. That Luke Skywalker would not be able to finish his task without help of the white man.

Now, let's flip it, make Han Solo black. He saves Luke Skywalker, and helps the save the day.

The social critics will call him a lapdog. They say he projects an image of obedience to the white man.

The ubiquitous directionless agenda drivers (I don't know what they want, hence the title) have decided to turn everything into this inane political debate. It rarely makes things better. It doesn't award cool obscure diverse culture. It forces the already bland mainstream to adhere to quota.

You've taken a simple friendship in storytelling, and you've turned into this bullshit projection. And ironically, it stops Hollywood from casting awesome roles for women and minorities.

You try to force a conversation, when there is no room for it.

So, don't get caught in the bullshit, apologize if you really mess up, and do your thing.