Filmmakers Daniel Gamburg ("IPO") and Michael Wohl ("Want") have started a film reviewing podcast called 2 Monkeys TV which parodies Ebert and Roper. Today, they posted a review of "I Am A Sex Addict."
I like these guys. Their review is partly critical, but I agree with their criticisms.
Today, I received the latest box office report from IFC. "I Am A Sex Addict" has just added a new digit to its theatrical box office gross. The theatrical box office is now, officially, at $101,949. Which makes "I Am A Sex Addict" the 129th highest grossing film of 2006, strangely enough.
The winner of the "guess when the film crosses into the world of six digits" contest is Chris Hansen, the director of "The Proper Care and Feeding of an American Messiah." My congratulations to Chris.
Last night, I got stoned and wrote the article for Film Comment that I had been putting off. I wrote it in one sitting, and I wrote it with pleasure.
Looking at the words on the page, I suddenly entered the writing space. Time stopped, and I felt like I was channeling a voice that was not my voice, but rather language's voice. A voice made of everything that has ever been said, and continuing to speak, wanting to say more.
The voice of language is an endless voice. It is not a person's. It is communal, like our thoughts.
Cinema is also a language, and also has a voice. As filmmakers, we are trying to listen to the voice that is already speaking, that has been speaking before we were born and that will continue to speak after we are gone. We are trying to hear what the voice is saying, and to channel, and to write it down. We are trying to capture the changing flux of existence, and to freeze it, to make it visible, before it changes, and then changes again.
Ken Loach won the Palme D'Or today. I was delighted to see that. I love Ken Loach, and have always felt that his films were wildly under-appreciated. Finally, he gets a little of the recognition he has so long deserved.
Cannes is a curious thing. It's vulgar, it's phony, it's rubbish, and yet, it's a kind of Olympics. Every year, the olympic athletes of cinema, those whose films have scored the highest on the Cannes scale of cinematic excellence, compete. They compete for the Palme D'Or, but the Palme d'Or is just a symbol of the unending search for excellence.
Artisitic excellence is radically subjective, and the critieria behind the Cannes selections are just as ideological as those of any other film competition. But, for better or worse, Cannes sets the gold standard for the film community, a standard of excellence which carries with it the equivalent of a good housekeeping seal of approval.
And generally, the Cannes Film Festival has demonstrated remarkably good taste. The judges are only human, but I would wager that if one were forced to watch all of the Palme D'Or winners of the past 50 years back to back, and compare that experience to that of watching 50 of the Grand Prize winners of any of the other major film festivals, the Cannes winners would be the more satisfying.
Yes, it's a popularity contest, but popularity is the name of the game in the interplay of money and art that is contemporary film culture. And that an artist of the stature and integrity of Ken Loach can make a film that wins this popularity contest is good news indeed for the continued survival of the art form.
"All profoundly original art looks ugly at first." - Clement Greenberg
One of the fascinating things about the weirdly vituperative reviews that my film seems to generate is the degree to which critics have resorted to attacking my physical appearance as part of their critique of my film.
Here are just two examples from yesterday. The first is from a film reviewer named Roger Moore (!) who wrote the following in the Orlando Sentinel:
"Zahedi, a Woody-Allen homely little weasel with a thing for drugs (his I Was Possessed by God recounts a vivid mushroom trip), women, and most of all, himself, creates these little pseudo-biographical essays that suggest he's either a spoiled jerk with access to cameras, or a wit whose jerkiness is something of a pose."
The second is from a film reviewer named M. Faust (these all sound like pseudonyms, don't they?) who described my physical appearance in Buffalo's Art Voice in the following way:
"A thin, toothy, curly-haired fellow who might be called "nebbishy" if it weren't for his Persian roots (the uncharitable might classify him as the type for whom the practice of prostitution exists in the first place)..."
Okay. So what's going on here?
First of all, I'd like to say to Mr. Roger Moore that I, personally, think that weasels are quite cute. I'm actually a big fan of rodents in general, and find them all rather adorable, even rats. Which brings us to the question of subjectivity.
Do these critics really believe that beauty is non-subjective?
And do they really not see that our society's incredibly narrow notions of beauty are oppressive not only to others but also to themselves (and create the utterly American spectacle of shows like "Extreme Makeover")? The whole point of my film is to say: "No one is ugly. I am not ugly and neither are you." To Roger Moore and M. Faust, I say: "I think you're beautiful. I think we're all beautiful. Beauty is not a given, but in the eye of the beholder. Everything is beautiful if seen from the right perspective."
The act of callling me a "homely little weasel" or "the type for whom the practice of prostitution exists in the first place" further reinforces social pressure to live up to an inhuman (and utterly non-existent) standard of beauty. We all suffer unnecessarily when we fail to live up to this standard (as we all, eventually, must).
I recently received the following email from a filmmaker friend:
"One of the most interesting ideas you touched upon was the various critics' description of you, your physicality, etc. Interesting how so many critics are so conservative in their notions of "beauty." I wonder how many of them are aware of the fact that, at least in part, we learn our ideals of beauty from society, the media, etc. Interesting how so few "progressive" critics fail to comment on standard notions of beauty, most obviously in casting, but also in overall aesthetics. What does that say about people who don't fit the mold?
How people define beauty, more than any other issue, is a telling indicator of their "political" beliefs. For instance, has any one critic commented on Malick's insistence on casting traditionally "beautiful" people? Or how many critics admire the "beauty" of his images. Just a standard emotive response to particular stimuli - over and over again. In this regard, Reygadas is light years ahead of Malick. Not to pick on Malick - I am an admirer of his work, but he serves as a fitting example."
I saw your film last night at the little Roxie and was deeply moved. It took a lot of courage for you to tell your story so frankly, and I'm sure your commitment to being so incredibly honest about your experience has led to a deeper level of surrender and serenity for you. I last swung with my wife a year ago, and I'm finding that the more I can be open about my story with people, either in the fellowship or outside of it, the more I'm strengthened in my sobriety. My wife still desires an open marriage, and I am definitely going to ask her to see the film to remind her of how crazy the jealousy and insecurity becomes, even with the best of intentions (best of denials). Your lines about transcending jealousy, rising above it, were right out of my playbook.
It wasn't until December of last year after my wife's third "date" out on her own (I left the lifestyle in May 05 and entered recovery but agreed to allow her "freedom" to continue dating; after all I didn't own her!) that I had to surrender my idea that I was God or pure Spirit and could live with my wife out fucking other men. I asked her to stop and she has. It turned out that this idea of me being God was just one more addiction or false idol that had to fall. Thank God life arranged for me to be in the 12 step program! I love sobriety!!
Your analogy of Jason and the Argonauts is so poignant, that a more beautiful music came into your life and drowned out the Siren call of sex to fill your void. I now recognize that I use sex as a substitute for a genuine need for communion with the Divine inside of me. I can experience this union in a healthy way during sex with my wife, but it has to arise from a place of wholeness already present in me, and not from the part of me that believes I'm incomplete, not whole, and that only connecting with the feminine can make me whole. That piece of emptiness inside of me is an emptiness that can never be fully satisfied, never be made complete from something outside of me. Looking outside of myself to fill it instead just increases its appetite.
You addressed all this in your film, and I just want to acknowledge you and thank you. Tears came to my eyes at the end, when I realized your story was going to close this chapter of your life with you wedding your princess. That is my sincerest wish, that it works out between my wife and myself and she finds a way to reconcile her desire to have other men and the reality of maintaining a relationship between two people who want to live soberly. And we are motivated to live soberly, as we have a 7 year old daughter and a 5 year old son. Next week we celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary; please say a prayer for us that we continue to hear that more beautiful music of Jason's and make it safely out of range of the Sirens of sex addiction.
I am in Aspen working on the screenplay for the next film, entitled "How To Legally Overthrow The U.S. Government." I am writing it with my friend, Mark Pincus, who owns a ranch house here in Aspen. He also owns a private plane, which we flew here from San Francisco. Well, he flew it. I just sat in the back, worrying.
Ever since I started making films, this is pretty much what I've fantasized about. Writing scripts in exotic locales with friends.
It's kind of like a dream come true. Except for the motion sickness.
In any case, I'm looking forward to finally getting some writing done, which is the funnest thing I know.
"We live in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art." - Henry James
Tonight, I attended the San Francisco premiere party for The Puffy Chair. I am a huge fan of the film, and it was a pleasure to finally meet Mark Duplass, who is not only a preternaturally gifted actor, but also an exceptionally warm and charming person.
Also in attendance was J.T. Leroy (a.k.a. Laura Albert). I had my camera with me, so I walked up to her and started filming. She immediately stopped me and asked me to erase the footage. I turned the camera off, switched to VCR mode, and rewound the tape to show her what I had shot. Once she saw the footage, she changed her mind, and said that I could keep it.
I then told her that I had recently been given two t-shirts that say "I Am JT Leroy," and that my wife and I had worn them last weekend, along with floppy hats and sunglasses, when we ran Bay To Breakers, San Francisco's annual cross city race. This seemed to tickle her, and we got into a long discussion about faith and God.
The domestic theatrical gross for I Am A Sex Addict is now, officially, at $94,381. It has been slowly inching its way toward a six figure total like Achilles in Zeno's paradox. (Zeno's paradox states that Achilles can never reach any given finish line because in order to arrive there, he must first arrive at the halfway mark, and in order to arrive at the halfway mark, he must first arrive at the quarter-way mark, and in order to arrive at the quarter-way mark, he must first arrive at the eighth-way mark, etc. ad infinitum.) And, indeed, it is starting to feel like the film will never actually attain the $100,000 benchmark, which has hovered on the horizon like an infinitely receding mirage ever since the film first opened on April 5th. Each week, the film seems to make a little less than the week before. I suppose that's normal, but I keep hoping that the numbers will actually start to go up as a result of word of mouth.
In anticipation of actually crossing the six figure finish line in the not-too-distant-future, I have decided to offer a free poster to the person who most accurately guesses the day on which the film crosses over into a six figure theatrical box office gross.
Harold Bloom, in "The Western Canon," argues that what makes a work canonical is the quality of "strangeness." By this, he means a work that is unassimilable by previous categories of interpretation, i.e. a work that exceeds and overflows any of the conceptual boxes that one might try to put it in.
I recently finished teaching a class on film history. I tried to show my students films that I thought were important in the history of cinema, films that I thought would best illustrate certain ideas I was trying to get across, and films that I thought they might actually like. All of the films I showed were films that I, personally, love. They were:
The Gold Rush, Freaks, Cat People, The Bicycle Thief, Tokyo Story, The 400 Blows, Breathless, The Passion of Anna, Family Life, Badlands, L'Argent, Stranger Than Paradise, Kids, Gummo, and Elephant.
I hadn't seen many of the films in a long time, and some I had only seen once before. Some I loved more than ever, and others I loved less. But the ones that struck me as the most unassimilably strange were:
The Gold Rush, The Bicycle Thief, Tokyo Story, Breathless, L'Argent, and Family Life.
Two of these films, "The Gold Rush" and "The Bicycle Thief," were widely popular when they came out, and have become so familiar as to seem "not strange" anymore. But I would argue that they are both utterly unassimilable, and that something about them exceeds or overflows any of the categories or conceptual boxes we might try to put them in. I have the same reaction to "Tokyo Story," "Breathless, "L'Argent," and "Family Life."
I can imagine having a different set of reactions to the above films in the future, but for now, these are the films that struck me as the most unassimilably strange and therefore as the most promising contenders for inclusion in the cinematic canon that is to come.
I am in Tucson, Arizona for the opening of I Am A Sex Addict. Have you ever been here before? It's one of the most mystical places I've ever visited. There's sauguaro cactii everywhere, just like in the movies. They're hundreds of years old, and they're protected, so if you cut them down, you go to jail. And there's also strange birds, and jackrabbits, and gila monsters. It's kinda hot during the day, but the nights are sublime - the perfect temperature for walking through the chapparal or for swimming in the pool (there are no lakes).
Today, I received the following email from a young filmmaker in New York:
"I wanted to propose to you a new form of cinema I'd love to help you explore... The form of cinema I'm proposing is one where the director is more like Mike Leigh (thinking aloud with actors instead of writing alone with actors in his head), the actors are actually people with cameras (not filmmakers per se, but participants willing to use cameras/editing as needed), and rehearsals happen publicly online in a site that looks like a threaded message board but with video posts: for example, http://tinyurl.com/rsqmv.
As a filmmaker, you would get to think aloud with a small army of young people with cameras (so to speak) while you explore certain topics, subjects, and emotions. After a few weeks/months of this, you might find a few participants who would fit a certain film you'd like to make. You might simply have a final set of assignments/ideas that the participants would explore. You might set a deadline for when the project ends. Or maybe you choose some moments you hope to find in the process - and when you've found them, the project ends.
The hope would be that 1000s of videos exploring truth are created and 100s of young people are inspired having collaborated with you and each other in this new exploratory form. If you decided to create something linear out of this, we could then turn all that media back over to the community of participants for editing, you could edit it yourself, or we could do a mix of both.
One short-term way to start this project would be to get participants to shoot things relevant to I Am A Sex Addict... Another way would be for this to be a separate film/project - something that might work well while you're on the road. (We have it set up so that you can download all the new videos, and watch them while not connected to the web.) It would also be easy to turn the whole project into a DVD."
I replied by saying I thought it was a great idea, but that the videos should all be under a minute. He wrote back the following:
"It would be easy to post them to your blog/vlog. We should use medicinefilms for upload - http://www.medicinefilms.com. (You can sign up...) The site lets you upload, and then gives you HTML to post into whatever site."
So to start this off, I am putting out a call to anyone who is interested to send me a one minute video letter (which you can upload on medicinefilms.com) in which you can communicate anything you like about me, the film, the blog, or the idea. I will then post them on my blog or vlog. The only requirement is that they be honest in some way.
Today, a video interview that was recorded a month ago when I was in New York for the opening of the film finally went online on TimesSquare.com. The only problem is that the film is no longer playing in New York.
It reminds me of one of my favorite jokes (this joke is interactive and requires an interlocutor):
- "I'm a comedian. Ask me what my biggest problem is." - "What's your biggest..." - "Timing!"
Emily Morse, one of the lead actresses in I Am A Sex Addict, recently started her own radio talk show. It's called Sex with Emily, and it's about sex. It can be heard in San Francisco on 106.7 FM or it can be listened to and downloaded as a podcast over the internet.
She recently asked me to be a guest on the show, and I brought my camera along.
When IFC Films asked me to start a blog, I had no idea what I was getting into. Trying to come up with something new to blog about every day has been no small challenge, and it has been alternately incredibly fun and totally stressful.
What I least expected were all the comments (until recently, I didn't even know that people could comment on blogs). These comments are often confusing. Some people express a preference for less of this or that, while others seem to want just the opposite.
My blog has been getting an average of two to three hundred hits a day, although for a while there (during the Mark Cuban imbroglio), it was getting almost a thousand hits a day. I'm not sure what most of the people who check out the blog are interested in reading about, but I'm curious to find out.
My first thought was to just document the process of distributing the film, but somewhere along the way, it veered into something more reflective/polemical.
Critics sometimes appear to be addressing themselves to works other than those I remember writing. - Joyce Carol Oates
Today, my film opened in Rochester, New York. A friend called me to read me the review in the local paper. All of the films had been given ratings between 1 and 10. "The Poseidon Adventure" received a 5. "Art School Confidential" received a 4. "Tsotsi" received an 8. And "I Am A Sex Addict" received a 6. My friend was impressed that "I Am A Sex Addict" had beat out both "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Art School Confidential." I, personally, was underwhelmed, and could think only of "Tsotsi" getting an 8.
A few hours later, it was revealed to me that the local film critic hadn't had time to watch my film, and had made his prognosis based on what he had read about the film on the rotten tomatoes website. And in fact, the grade does reflect the average grade on rotten tomatoes.
I suppose I should be grateful that the critic bothered to mention my film at all. He could have just ignored it (like a lot of other critics). But I can't help wondering what numerical value my film would have gotten if he had actually bothered to watch it. Would it have gotten an even higher score than "Tsotsi"? Or an even lower one than "Art School Confidential"? And did he even see "Art School Confidential" and "Tsotsi," or were those prognoses also based on hearsay?
This seems to be the wave of the future. Gossip in lieu of criticism. We're already half-way there. Why not just make it official? Who has time to watch films anyway?
Once it became clear to me that the filmmaking life would not be the path of glory that I had initially imagined it to be, what remained? The work, which is inestimable. And the community, which is arguably even more inestimable.
When I was younger, inspired by biographies of the French Surrealists, I imagined that the filmmaking life would be one of endless comraderie, punctuated by frequent group travel. But in reality, the filmmaking life is a generally lonely one, and the comraderie anything but endless. And the travelling is almost always done alone.
Right now, I am in Ithaca, New York, presenting my film at Cornell Cinema. I am staying in a guest room at the University, which has previously been occupied by many of the luminaries of the independent and experimental film world. Many of these people I have met before, and a few are actually friends. But the main experience is of a virtual community rather than an actual one.
And yet, it somehow warms the heart and makes me feel less lonely to know that others have been here before me and that others will be here after I'm gone. Because if it is connection that we seek (and it is certainly connection that I seek), then this is the heart of our connection: these others who have left their mark on film culture, whose works have inspired me, and whose ghosts inhabit the room in which I am about to spend the night. Some of their names are:
Martin Arnold, Craig Baldwin, James Benning, Sadie Benning, Alan Berliner, Abigail Child, Jem Cohen, Kirby Dick, Su Friedrich, Sam Green, Lewis Klahr, Ross McElwee, Bill Morrison, DA Pennebaker, Jay Rosenblatt, Carolee Schneemann, and Thelma Schoonmaker.
We are all travelling a path devoid of glory. But the path is inhabited by the ghost of a community, and it is in this invisible community in which we all share that the only glory that there is will finally be found.
"Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail, in good spirits." - Robert Louis Stevenson
Every filmmaker secretly hopes that his new film will break all box office records, and become the next "Blair Witch Project." And until a film is tested in the marketplace, it's hard to know how well it will be received. But the dust eventually settles, and a film's market value starts to become more clear.
And the question is: is the theater half empty or half full?
For the first few weeks of the release of "I Am A Sex Addict," the theater was feeling half-empty. And the negative reviews were painful to read.
But I've started to get a more accurate sense of the film's public reception, and I've started to accept the film for what it is. It is not a blockbuster, and it is not a runaway hit. It's an odd film, and it doesn't appeal to everyone (I'm not sure why this surprises me, but it always does). But the film does appeal to a lot more people than my previous films ever did, and that, at least for me, is the equivalent of a miracle.
And so, the very same theaters no longer feel half-empty to me. For some reason, they have started to feel half-full.
I saw Sex Addict again tonight at the IFC Center, this time with two close friends. We're all with you.
I want you to know how your film has already done good here in New York: Two weeks ago, at an SAA meeting I attend, a newcomer to the group told us that she'd googled SAA after seeing your film. She hadn't known about sex addiction, nor that there was help.
Thank you!
Peace, B."
It's letters like these that make it all worthwhile.
2. Q: Are you and your wife still together? A: Yes.
3. Q: Do you still go to meetings? A: No.
4. Q: What does your wife think of the film? A: She likes it.
5. Q: How long did the film take you to make? A: It took ten years to raise the money and 4 years to shoot.
6. Q: Why did the film take you so long to make? A: I made a lot of mistakes along the way.
7. Q: What do your ex-girlfriends think of the film? A: Their reactions vary widely.
8. Q: What possessed you to make this film? A: I found going to my first Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting very healing, and I wanted to do for others what the men at that meeting had done for me.
9. Q: When did you get the idea for the film? A: At my first Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting.
10. Q: What's your next project? A: A film entitled "How To Legally Overthrow The U.S. Government."
I recently met a writer of some repute who had been in the army during the first Gulf War. We got to talking about the film and he was moved to share some of his own prostitute experiences. He told me that the U.S. military provides prostitutes for its troops, and that the prostitutes in question are paid for with tax dollars.
I had never heard of such a thing, but then again, I don't know a lot of people in the military. Still, I was shocked to hear it. It's one thing for the U.S. government to tolerate American soldiers having sex with prostitutes, it's quite another thing for the U.S. government to actually pay for it.
I couldn't help thinking of the far right's perpetual attempts to cut arts funding in this country, and their insistence that the arts should be funded exclusively by private philanthropic organizations. In that case, perhaps the far right should set up private philanthropic organizations to provide complimentary hookers to our military personnel as well.
History has not been kind to Narcissus. His name is synonymous with an unsavory amount of self-absorption, and those who are typically described by an allusion to his name tend, for the most part, to be unbearable.
But, I would argue, Narcissus was right.
In the myth of Narcissus, his mother is told by the seer Tiresias that her new-born son will live a long life if and only if "he doesn't know himself."
Compare and contrast this to the Delphic Oracle's injunction to Socrates to "know thyself." In Plato, knowing yourself is synonymous with virtue. In the myth of Narcissus (as recounted by Ovid), to know oneself is synonymous with death.
But what does it mean to know oneself? Which self does one know? And which self is the knower? And is the myth really a warning against excessive self-absorption, as is often assumed, or is there a more compelling reading of the myth?
Perhaps the myth is allegorical, and the self that Narcissus apprehends in the water is not his body but his soul. Perhaps the self that Narcissus falls in love with is not his temporal mortal self but his eternal self.
In this sense, Narcissus is the mythological precursor of Rumi and the Sufi mystics. Perhaps the Narcissus who dies is the ego, and the Narcissus that remains (the flower that is called a "narcissus") is the eternal soul.
To know oneself is to know that one will die. And so, Narcissus is he who sees his own reflection, but from the other side. What he sees is his own death, but he sees it in life. He accepts his death, and in accepting his death, he is transformed. And so, his death is not a tragedy but a transcendence, not an act of suicide but a mythical instance of rebirth.
Narcissus is he who knows that love is never outside himself. When we love, it is not true that we love the other. There is no outside to love. We love Love, and the other is encompassed in that love.
Love is the space in which love becomes possible, but it emanates from within, not from without. Perhaps the deeper moral of the story is not, as is commonly believed, that one must refrain from excessive self-love in order to be able to love others, but that one cannot truly love others until one has learned to love the self.
We all need to resist our desire for symbiosis, and to go inward to find what we need rather than to try to get another person to give it to us. Perhaps this is another way to read the myth of Narcissus. Perhaps we could all use more inwardness and more self-love, and perhaps history's scapegoating of Narcissus is merely a reflection of our collective self-hatred as a species. Perhaps Narcissus is the Greek equivalent of Christ.
If one were to do a concordance of all the reviews of my film that have appeared in print so far, the most frequently used word would undoubtedly be "narcissist."
To quote from just a few:
"Narcissist turns camera on himself," "...his infuriating narcissism...," "...the same narcissistic tune over and over again...," "...a large disquieting dose of narcissism...," and "...the ultimate narcissism of the project..."
But what is narcissism exactly?
I would argue that a narcissist is a) someone who is self-absorbed to the point of not caring about others and b) someone who tries to make themself look better than they are. And it's true that the character I play in the film (which is me twenty years ago) is self-absorbed and insufficiently caring about others. That, in a nutshell, is the definition of an addict. But to say that the film is narcissistic or that I, as a filmmaker, am narcissistic, is to miss the whole point of the endeavor.
Moreover, I certainly don't try to make myself look better than I am. If anything, I make myself look significantly worse. Which is why the film is a critique of narcissism, rather than an instance of it. To think otherwise is to assume that any film about oneself is, by definition, narcissistic.
Last night, I saw "Wide Awake," the brilliant new film by Alan Berliner about his own insomnia. We were talking afterwards, and he told me that he too is routinely accused of narcissism, simply because he makes films about his own life. But I know Alan Berliner, and he is one of the least narcissistic people I have ever met. And his films are about as generous and caring about other people as it is possible for a work of art to be.
Neitzsche, in The Birth of Tragedy, argues that there are two kinds of art: the Apollonian, as exemplified by the epic poetry of Homer, and the Dionysian, as exemplified by the lyrical poetry of Archilochus. Almost all of cinema is Apollonian, its primary qualities being measure and restraint. But almost all of poetry is Dionysian, its primary qualities being lyricism and self-expression.
The accusation that my films are "narcissistic" is an instance of the Apollonian worldview at war with the Dionysian worldview epitomized by Archilochus and his heirs. Is Rimbaud's "A Season in Hell" narcissistic? Is Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass" narcissistic? Are the poems of Emily Dickinson narcissistic? And what about the Beatles' "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"?
It is unfortunate that so many film critics have so narrow a view of cinema that only the Apollonian model is considered legitimate, and that any deviation from that classical model is dismissed as narcissistic. But cinema is as vast as life itself, and can easily accomodate a multiplicity of styles and approaches. Aren't we all frankly a little bored by the numbing sameness of almost all of contemporary cinema?
I Am A Sex Addict opened in Los Angeles this weekend at the Sunset 5, which used to be one of the more frequented cinemas in the city but has recently fallen on harder times ever since the Arclight and the Grove cinemas opened, with much deeper pockets and a more mall-like experience.
The numbers were underwhelming. They say L.A. is a tough town for an independent film to open in, and that seemed very true (although I'm sure the negative L.A. Times review didn't help matters).
The good news is that the nights are warmer in L.A., so the Q and A's were especially pleasant, despite the lower attendance. Actually, I'm getting used to smaller turnouts and am no longer as discombobulated by not breaking box office records. As a result, it has been a lot easier to enjoy the process, which is remarkably unglamorous.
Also, I'm getting used to negative reviews, and no longer feel as compelled to respond. I will quote from one though:
"Maybe it's time for Zahedi to consider joining another support group: Narcissists Anonymous."
Yesterday, I received the following comment in response to my blog entry about the smugness of film critics.
"But Caveh - You are quite possibly the most smug elocutionist ever to grace the blog-o-sphere! For a man who purportedly makes films about self-revelation and honesty, you display a glaring lack of self-understanding here! Read your own posts and see who's smug."
Well, okay. The point is well taken. But I would like to say three things in response.
1) There is a difference between a personal blog (which I see as the modern-day equivalent of pamphleteering) and a film review (which I see as an art form which demands a much higher degree of equanimity and circumspection). A derogatory film review isn't just a random person's opinion (which would be no big deal whatsoever). It's a random person's opinion which has a tangible and immediate effect on the career and fortunes of the filmmaker in question. In short, it has a very real effect on the shape and content of contemporary film culture.
If a filmmaker is truly untalented, then so much the better. He or she is an embarassment to humanity, and arguably should be ostracized from the social arena. But a critic has a certain responsibility to be well-educated in film history, and to write about films with a certain amount of fairness and pre-meditation. What passes for film criticism these days is often a film illiterate's knee-jerk response to something he or she doesn't understand, and with no humility whatsoever as to the possibility that there may be more going on than meets the (beholder's) eye.
2) The truth is that no one knows anything. I don't know anything. Anthony Lane doesn't know anything. And my blog commenter doesn't know anything. So why not discuss things from that place? "It seems to me that..., etc." It's both more civilized and more conducive to understanding and persuasion. To the extent that I often fail in this, I too am guilty of the smugness that I object to in film critics and I hereby concede the point and apologize. But it does seem to me that this particular problem is at the root of a lot of other more serious problems (like war), and that a greater reflection on the forms and ideological implications of our modes of discourse would be a good thing for all concerned. I see no reason to exempt film critics from that high standard.
3) I once interviewed Frank Black about a proposed collaboration with Morrissey which had come to naught. Frank Black explained that he had made a thoughtless and derogatory comment about Morrissey's first solo album after only one cursory hearing, and that Morrissey had subsequently rejected his collaboration offer. Frank Black expressed regret about his published comment because he admired Morrissey's work, and feared that he had inadvertantly offended him. I expressed surprise that Morrissey would care, but Frank Black defended Morrissey, saying:
"I mean he was just defending his own art. He didn't need some little like punk rock guy telling him that his record was no good... Some people get really offended because it's close to them and they can't help but being offended... It's their baby. It's what they're most paranoid about. It's what they love the most but it's also the thing that they're afraid of the most: "Oh am I really any good?" So it's really hard to hear something like: "Oh, so and so can't stand you're new record." You're just totally getting them in the Achilles heel."
I thought that was a beautiful and insightful thing for Frank Black to say.
