Why does everyone want to be in movies?

but there's always gonna be someone making money off you and your work, in any industry. if yr gettin rich making movies, I guarantee you someone else is gonna be right over your shoulder getting even richer off you... that seems like specious reasoning (or, rather, thinly-veiled self-justification)

1) I could give a fuck that he's my wife's ex-boyfriend, and this still befuddles him. I guess he expects that I should be all meatheaded about it.
2) I absolutely refuse to let him get away with crap like this. The only reason he did get away with this particular statement was that he made it during the cocktail hour of my wedding this past May.

He seems to be used to folks allowing him to get away with stuff like this. I guess I'm a welcome change.

Robinson

So you're saying that literature and comic books are currently more innovative, exciting or culturally relevant than movies?

Also, if we're talking about writing/directing/producing as opposed to acting, I don't know how drastically the money differs between film and television. I mean, I'm sure it does differ, I just don't know how much.

So, if you want to be recognized in both Zaire and Bangkok, and possibly make $45 million for six weeks of work, you need to go the movie star route. Compared to let's say Brad Pitt, Oprah works way too hard for her money.

However, I can't come up w/a whole lot of other comics that fit that bill, to be honest.

Have you been watching the Swedish Chef?

No, but seriously. I'll wait here while you compile.

It's easier to go rent a copy of Lost Highway than an episode of Baretta to fulfill your Robert Blake fetish.

Isn't that just more incentive for someone like Clowes do get in there and do something kind of different? I can't imagine he'd even bother if there were already a slew of films doing what he wants to do.

Easy for you to say, PAUL.

That was about the most amazing experience of my life, so yeah.

When was this time that you were excited about more than one or two movies per year? Are you sure the difference was Hollywood and not you? The cynical p.o.v. would be that there are only ever one or two good movies a year and it's always been that way. But maybe your standards are simply too high and you're missing out on a lot of great movies because of that. It's hard to say.

So you're saying that literature and comic books are currently more innovative, exciting or culturally relevant than movies?

In terms of innovation and excitement, movies don't really deliver very often at all. Ice Haven (at least in its original form which I read several years ago) made me go "WOW" in a way that I can't really remember any films doing in a long time. I don't insist on innovation or excitement from art/entertainment, and I enjoy a wide array of stuff of varying quality, but it's nice to be awed now and again. W/r/t movies, I'd say it's more a fault of the industry being pretty creatively bankrupt of late than any fault of the medium itself.

To be honest, I'm more easily impressed by a good story than anything else in narrative-driven media, and I think it's sad that so few films can even deliver on that level. That said, I'm more consistently impressed by some television (Arrested Development, SFU) than by most movies.

I admit that my dissatisfaction towards film at the mo' is probably stemming from shortsightedness at least in part, seeing as how this has been one of the most resoundingly DUD movie years I can remember in my adult life.

As I admitted above, I can't really think of much else in the comic world that's blown me away, so I won't deny the moribundity of the medium. And I honestly don't read enough novels (contemporary or otherwise) to make any kind of forecast of that particular medium (apropos of nothing in particular, the last, most recent novel that I read and really enjoyed was White Teeth, which came out, what, 5 years ago?).

One thing that I haven't questioned in the slightest is the suggestion that movies are more culturally relevant than literature or comic books. That pretty much goes w/o saying.

That's true. For some reason CGI animated movies and the use of previously impossible visual effects in live action films feels like a more drastic change to me than using digital coloring in comic books. But you're correct that there is a technological parallel there even if the possibilities are not being explored to their fullest in either medium.

I disagree about the impact on form though. You seem to be defining form as something that is only part of the narrative while ignoring the fact that CGI has brought about a huge shift in visual form.

But movies have become rather static - everything has become increasingly narrowed down to fit the formula of a three-act, 100-minute or so conventional narrative

But once again you're focusing soley on story and ignoring visual trends, which makes sense when you're talking about writers moving to film but not so much for comic book artists. To some extent it's only recently become feasible for the visions of comic book artists to be translated to the screen so it's no surprise that some of them have taken an interest in hollywood. Although I'm not sure how that applies to Dan Clowes!

That's precisely the thing, though: possibilities. The possibilites for amazing cinema are there w/o question. The problem is that they're not really being fulfilled.

And I think it's precisely these unfulfilled possibilities that attract artists from other media. That and the money.

I see what you're saying here - films physically *look* different due to the increasing use of CGI, but to me so far the differences seem about as extreme as the difference between 50s Technicolor and grainy 70s film stock (ie, who cares, really?). You're correct about my being more concerned with narrative, this is where my main interest lies in all the mediums discussed. That a dinosaur looks "more realistic" with CGI than with stop-motion animation is of less significance to me than, say, how "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" is a more affecting love story than some by-the-numbers romantic comedy like "Truly, Madly, Deeply". The shift in visual form seems insignificant to me, in a lot of ways, maybe because so much CGI stuff still looks unbearably bad (or is just badly executed, or has no real ideas behind it).

I also think that to criticize artists who want to move into film is to deny them any ambition or scope of vision. Dan Clowes' art involves him sitting at a desk drawing pictures of whatever he can imagine. When he finishes something, somebody will publish it, and he can probably continue to sit there and do that until he dies. If somebody comes along and offers to finance a huge production involving actors dressed up like his characters and hundreds of craftsmen devoted to making his stories come to life, why would he turn that down? What sculptor would turn down a chance to design and build an entire city? Even if the project is an artistic failure, it will probably be fun (and lucrative) for Clowes and he can always go back to drawing pictures alone at a desk.

So that's what I'm getting at when I talk about the possibilities of film and the visual shift brought about by CGI. To deny that there's an essential difference in possibility between film and literature or comics is like denying the difference in scale between a statue and a skyscraper. I think you'll find that anytime artists are given the opportunity to work on a project that involves resources they couldn't possibly access on their own, they'll jump at the chance.

The narrative vs. visual issue could be a whole discussion on its own.

I dunno, Shakey. I think we're on the cusp of a major paradigm shift in screen entertainment: though multi-voiced stories are hardly new (Hi, Grand Hotel) we're accepting a more and more streamlined type of storytelling within recent films that allows ensemble cinema to become popular and accessible in a way hasn't previously happened. And given the rapidity with which we can tell a story that once took much longer to convey, it's quite possible that all of these can be 'complete' and fully dramatic; not just an agglomeration of personalities surrounding an Altmanesque arc. And not taking three hours to tell.

Concurrently, we're experimenting more frequently with multi-window design (cf the TV show 24, Incredible Hulk) in a way which indicates our computer-usage has influenced our viewing habits, and we're also experimenting more formally with time dilation, speed adjustment (I just heard of a TV ep. whose season finale edit clocked in at two minutes over the alloted slot, so the whole shebang was played at something like 105% normal speed w. pitch-shifted audio), and elliptical storytelling. While none of these are yet in the uniform practice that would allow them to become 'formal movements' , it doesn't seem impossible that one - or all - of these will be regarded as formal achievments of 2000s cinema.

Not to mention Time Code.

x-post

The time-dilation stuff is so much of the style CSI (and its leagues of clones) use, and a lot of big-budget blockbuster can't seem to tell an actiony set-piece without slowing down, speeding up, splitting frame, changing direction and making a concerted effort to bludgeon the viewer into adrenal-charged confusion. But I digress ... a small dramatic pic like 'Sideways' flips to a multi-window screen at one point in a way that would've been jarring and improbable 20 years ago ... 'Huckabees' , a comedy with existential pretensions goes all google-eyed a few times ... 'Kill Bill' mashes-up historical split-screen use and a strange modern deployment of it through the House of Leaves sequence ... 'The Incredible Hulk' is all over the place on this charge ... I can keep going.

The thing is that none of this stuff is truly new, but I think it's being used more actively and interestingly now than as a rare experimenter's toy (see De Palma) which it's historically been.

wha?

Yeah, I think it's not the newness that's important so much as the cheapness and accessibility which allows these techniques to be explored in a small art film and not just the big sci-fi blockbuster.

which makes sense. Its just to me, I don't really see that happening in Hollywood film. Potentialities is right - they're there, but they aren't really being exploited.

[And to Shakey above -- I agree, new media and the experimentation it allows aren't used enough outsie of film, and film itself is embarrasingly more conservative than it should be. But in the same timeframe, (5 years), I'm allowing for my argument of Big Changes, how many groundbreaking works of graphic art or literature have permeated the public consciousness? But I definately see your point -- and I just think that an artist's 'reach' might have a lot more to do with the turn to film than a vague discounting of their native media's inherent qualities].

which, I dunno, I find kinda sad, being someone who still enjoys comics, books, and music, as well as film....

And I'm sure there are some people who get a taste of being really rich and don't see that as anything worth abandoning.

I've been thinking that one really fun thing I'd do w/a time machine is show a young Ice Cube a copy of Are We There Yet?.

Is a painter who dabbles in sculpture admitting that his medium is inherently inferior because of its lack of 3-dimensionality?

It seems sorta sad, to me, that people aren't proud of the things comics, or fiction, or music can accomplish that film cannot (or perhaps they don't acknowledge that film's incorporation and use of these other media often diminishes them).

If you think that moving into film sacrifices something then aren't you just arguing that film is an inherently inferior narrative form? I don't think that any of these media are superior forms of storytelling, they're simply different. And presumably the artists who move between them feel the same way.

As far as musicians are concerned, I can't help but wonder if some of these pop stars realize that they have an inevitably short career in music. Maybe we would complain about Ice Cube's decline even if he had never gone into acting. What about someone like Beefheart who gave up music for a career as a painter? He had a good run, ended on a high note, and avoided the criticisms of people who would be saying he's too old to keep going.

Presumably the musicians who go into acting are in it for the love of performance and acting is simply another type of performance they want to attempt.