Many years ago, when I first left college, I used to review movies for a magazine called 'Movie Collector'. The magazine had a fairly small circulation for something nationally published, but a strangely vociferous readership. Being younger and even stupider than I am now, I used to write with enthusiasm but not really understanding; I was by far the youngest of the critics and had ridiculously little context to bring to bear. I figured that the older guys would be interested in reviewing the classics and I'd be doing 'The Fugitive' and 'The Specialist' on laserdisc. Yeah, not so much. They took those particular gems and I got all this stuff by these people called Fellini & Ingmar Bergman. I am of course being a little bit disingenuous in that I knew who they were; I just had no clue what they were about. I don't have sacred cows; not then, not now. I certainly wouldn't be embarrassed about any opinion I expressed, as I suspect that I'd have been pretty honest about it. There's a good chance that many of those opinions won't have changed in the meantime; I just hope that I'd be a little more erudite about them if I was given the same job now. I'm a big believer that everyone's entitled to their opinion if they're honest about it. I'm ambivalent about - I believe it's attributed to Harlan Ellison - the idea that everyone's entitled to an educated opinion. Anyway, when it comes to how you feel about a movie, no-one else is allowed to tell you you're wrong as I just don't think that there's any objective truth to it.
Try telling that to the readership of the magazine. If memory serves (I could just go over and pull old copies of the magazine out from the racks, but I can't be bothered) the first letter written about me claimed that the author "treasured every copy of Movie Collector, except for the articles by J K Fouzder, which I cut out and burn". This was genuinely - I was told - signed 'A McLoone, Dublin'. But my favourite still has to be "Dear Movie Collector, J K Fouzder. Why? Yours sincerely" etc. At first, I was - no, not petrified - ruddy offended. But then I thought if those people aren't smart enough to respect other people's opinions or insecure enough to feel quite so threatened by someone who doesn't share their own feelings then they deserve their own misery. And it's misery that's entirely of their own making. And another thing, I laughed at them because it was funny. And still is.
I still feel this way, but the strength of vitriol I received doesn't come anywhere near what it turns out happens on forums nowadays all over the place. For those of you who know about it, I am indeed alluding to something currently going on all over the blogosphere. The people who wrote to me are probably progenitors of the trolls we see everywhere nowadays. Actually, they probably are some of those trolls. What is the world coming to?
Try telling that to the readership of the magazine. If memory serves (I could just go over and pull old copies of the magazine out from the racks, but I can't be bothered) the first letter written about me claimed that the author "treasured every copy of Movie Collector, except for the articles by J K Fouzder, which I cut out and burn". This was genuinely - I was told - signed 'A McLoone, Dublin'. But my favourite still has to be "Dear Movie Collector, J K Fouzder. Why? Yours sincerely" etc. At first, I was - no, not petrified - ruddy offended. But then I thought if those people aren't smart enough to respect other people's opinions or insecure enough to feel quite so threatened by someone who doesn't share their own feelings then they deserve their own misery. And it's misery that's entirely of their own making. And another thing, I laughed at them because it was funny. And still is.
I still feel this way, but the strength of vitriol I received doesn't come anywhere near what it turns out happens on forums nowadays all over the place. For those of you who know about it, I am indeed alluding to something currently going on all over the blogosphere. The people who wrote to me are probably progenitors of the trolls we see everywhere nowadays. Actually, they probably are some of those trolls. What is the world coming to?
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