Chasing away the blahs.

I've been in a kind of funk of late. The home front is good but work has been cloyingly busy and there's just not many films out that I'm excited to see. Well, IRON MAN was awesome but I certainly wasn't excited to see it. Not like I am for the new Indiana Jones movie. I'm REALLY excited for that one.

Last week we went to Disneyland and it was so-so. I didn't get to go on nearly enough rides and I was broke (which is always a major contributer to my shitty moods) so I couldn't buy tons of awful food nor could I buy the multitude of Disney paraphernalia I usually walk out of there with. But then I got an email saying I had been quoted in the movie trailer for BAGHEAD! That made me happy.

Baghead - Theatrical Trailer


It's not that I feel the need to show off or that I get some kind of ego boost from getting quoted, it's actually more basic than that. I just feel like NO ONE READS WHAT I WRITE. Not here, I love you guys. I mean, out there with Film Threat. Day after day I see bloggers and critics higher up on the food chain routinely blow off Film Threat and it's frustrating. Or they will run a series of articles or blogs that echo my sentiments and they don't include me. I take what I do there pretty seriously and I'm not 19 year old fanboy with a broken spell check and a prematurely cynical attitude. I'm a filmmaker and I have 2 different writing degrees (a BA in screenwriting and an AA in Journalism) plus I'm like 90% done with my Masters in Cinema Study. This ain't my first rodeo. I guess my beer drinking, goofball antics on the festival circuit leave me outside the realm of hipster douchebag festival junkies. I get that, but it's still annoying.

So having been quoted on movie trailers before, it was just a nice little vindication or pat on the back to have my quote (and it's a brilliant one if I do say so myself....not) used in the BAGHEAD trailer. I really loved that movie. However this morning I got an email from Mark at Film Threat who alerted me that Roger Ebert is a fan of mine. Holy Shit!

Here's where he mentions me...


and below is what I wrote on Film Threats message board where they had already seen the quote...

Wow. That seriously made my day.

Say what you want to about Ebert, but the man (and Siskel) are singlehandedly the reason I love film so much. When I was a kid, we lived in way, way rural central California and the only movie theater in town got movies like, a year after their release. This was pre-VCR (I'm old) and we couldn't have afforded one anyway.

But "At the Movies" was on channel 9, one of the 4 channels we got and I could sort of live vicariously through Siskel and Ebert. Their show kept me going until we moved somewhere closer to civilization.

Plus, it sometimes feels like you're writing reviews that head off into a void so it's nice to know someone reads what you write.

Thanks, Roger! You really did make my day. Hell, my month really.