I conceived this blog as an outlet for my obsessions with weird film and the little byways of pop culture, after years of attempting to communicate my discoveries and enthusiasms to friends and acquaintances and encountering annoyance, incomprehension, blank stares and frequent assumptions of my being a nut, a geek, or a pervert.
The advantages of writing for the Web should be obvious: on the Web, your words and only your words count; there is no need to buttress them with attitude or the appearance (illusory or otherwise) of being "qualified." In terms of audience, you are on equal footing with any other person, and your words stand and fall on their own merits.
Like most people in my generation, I grew up on too much television, which is where most of my exposure to classic Hollywood came from. Back then, late-night television was filled with cheap prints of thirties, forties, and fifties movies, creature-feature type shows on Fridays or Saturdays, and of course, lots of darkness, quiet, and a half-awake state of mind that made me receptive to the odds and ends of old Hollywood. In my adolescence, I was a major art-geek, and read as much as I could about modern art. Surrealism, which particularly interested me, led to learning about surrealist film. When I was fourteen or so, I requested to see Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou at the AV department of the Folke Bernadotte Memorial Library at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota (one of the only consolations of growing up in a small town). At the college library I read about other trends in avant-garde film, retaining names, titles and other bits of information that floated around in my skull for decades.
Other influences include Harry and Michael Medved's book The Golden Turkey Awards book, which made me aware of B-movies and low-budget film, and later, Re/Search Publications' Incredibly Strange Films, which served as a necessary corrective to the Medved brothers' insufferably superior and snarky attitude. In my mid-twenties I briefly dated a really cool chick who was similarly geeky about films, and she turned me on to some good stuff too. But I really was only able to explore film righteously when I finally acquired a television about ten years ago, and I have been trying to catch up ever since.
Today, it is amazing how much stuff is accessible. My blog is about my ongoing explorations in this ocean of culture. I don't pretend to be an expert, but I try to be as well-informed as I can. My passions and obsessions wax and wane, sometimes I write about this, sometimes about that. But I strive to be clear, to be fair to the artist, and to communicate the activity in my head when I experience a work, which I believe is the essence of criticism. I don't always achieve those goals, but I do the best I can. Don't expect thumbs-up or -down reviews, one-to-ten ratings or the snarky derision implicit in phrases like "so bad it's good." Just from a logistical standpoint, film is one of the most difficult art-forms one can attempt, and even the worst films are the product of hard work, single-minded determination, and the juggling of the practical with the artistic. No one ever made a film for the purpose of others' being cruel, and I always try to keep that in mind.
Whether music, literature, or film, culture and the endless exploration of it have been among the constant passions in my life, and I hope this blog can communicate that passion and enthusiasm to others.
