Why I Love: Listening to Other People Talking About Movies

From long before I was born, film magazines were the only medium where audiences could find out about and engage in conversations about movies. During my own infatuation with movies, I've bought more magazines than I can count, including issue one of Empire (still going, of course) which had a really well-researched article on Bond title songs. I carried on buying Empire until I felt I'd outgrown it, getting rid of all my back issues when I stopped, except for the first five (nostalgia wouldn't let me). At various times, I also bought Sight & Sound (which is also still going), Neon, Cinescape, SFX, Cinefex (the US special effects quarterly), Deathray, 007, Premiere, Starlog, Starburst & Cinefantastique, while I'm still buying MI6.

I loved movies and movie magazines so much in fact that I even wrote for one after university. It may not have been the most impressive magazine; the look resulted from the editor's PC only having three fonts and without professional sub-editing, the editor was able to indulge design whims leading to things like unbroken, solid pages of text. But Movie Collector still has a special place in my heart as a magazine for people who genuinely loved movies.

The proliferation of media and the cost of paper have led to a slow decline of film magazines in print, which has had an impact in terms of numbers, quality of output and circulation. The ubiquitous internet has of course started to provide a lot of things we used to get from film magazines for free (or thereabouts, depending on how you look at it). There is of course an argument that the quality of what we get on the internet doesn't necessarily rival what we paid for in print, even if it is more timely. And although there may be occasions where this is merited, it should also be observed that internet clickbait (overhyped trivia designed to draw hits for advertising money) is matched by self-generated content of similar quality in print - I'm thinking particularly of articles listing 10 of the greatest car chases or the 10 greatest horror movies, which don't really give the reader anything new.

This kind of dull, generic content, whatever the medium, is the opposite of unique, engaged writing and surely the enemy of good film journalism of whatever flavour you're after. And its effect has been compounded by the break-up of film journalism into more niche areas. Movie magazines always used to deal in stars, fashion and glamour, but that's since been largely hived off into celebrity news and gossip. I have to admit to getting engaged by this until literally one day, I realised that I didn't care about most peoples' personal lives and just stopped. I also stopped years of reading Variety and The Hollywood Reporter when I realised that I wasn't genuinely that interested in the movie business as such (I used to believe that it gave me insight into what movies got made - which it did, but again, I just didn't care that much about that particular aspect). I stopped reading Cinefex when I realised that practical effects were becoming used less and less and the ingenuity that went into them was being replaced by a different kind of ingenuity (better and better CG) that I was just indifferent to.

I'm personally only interested in the final product - the actual movie. And hence I'm interested in interviews where filmmakers of whatever specific profession are able to talk about their intentions (not those awful press-junket write-ups), well-written reviews with properly articulated opinions (whether deciding on what to watch or - more often - after the movie to see if others' thoughts stimulate my own feelings in any way), other bits and pieces of critical thinking and sometimes just silly fan stuff.

Nowadays, my film journalism and commentary comes from The Playlist blog as well as Vulture, while I'm also catching up on several years of the James Bond Radio podcast, in addition to listening to directors interviewing directors as part of the Directors' Guild of America podcast. Although I've talked predominantly about film magazines, it's taken me a long time to realise that what I valued wasn't the magazines themselves (hence why they're not mentioned in the title of this post) but what I was getting from them; the reason I love reading other people writing about their love for movies is that it constantly rekindles the joy that I get myself from them. The passion and the voice are mandatory; anything less just passes the time.

Sacred Cows

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?