Quote of the Day

“I have particular things I will never see. I will never see any ‘Star Wars’ films, because I resent that I know so much about them and the characters. Why is all that in my head when I’ve never actually seen one, you know? Why do I know about R2-D2 and Darth Vader and all these things when I’ve never even seen any ‘Star Wars’ film? ... I’ve never seen ‘Gone with the Wind’ and I never will, just because I feel like it’s forced on me and it’s some kind of corny thing. ... But I watch all kinds of stuff. On a plane recently I watched ‘Cruella.’ I love the ‘Naked Gun’ movies because they’re so stupid. I’m sort of amazed by the ‘John Wick’ movies, just by how many people he can kill. I haven’t seen the ‘Twilight’ movies. ... These are very subjective, just kind of stubborn things on my part. I don’t like mass things being shoved on me, but I will go see them. Like ‘The Terminator’ is a masterpiece of cinema. It’s a big action movie, essentially. So I don’t really differentiate. ...

But I have to tell you one thing I hate — and you can just do a little test yourself: watch any recent action-oriented movie and look for any shot that’s more than three seconds long. I find that really insulting and shit filmmaking: like they have to keep it moving every three seconds. And that’s the longest they’ll leave a shot on! And then cut. One second, cut! Two seconds, cut! Three seconds, cut! Man, I get a headache. I just turn it off. I’m like, Come on, man, go to film school! Watch something! Go read a book! Look at a painting! Look at something. This is nonsense. I can’t stand that."

I just went ahead and plopped down the entirety of what director Jim Jarmusch said to Believer mag about where he stands with regards to Pop Culture because -- my god, am I Jim Jarmusch? I mean I'm not the world's biggest Jarmusch fan -- my favorite movie of his is probably everybody else's least favorite, his zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die -- but he and I as people seem to have an awful lot in common. Not that I haven't seen the Star Wars movies -- I have, and more than once -- but I one thousand percent get where he's coming from. Indeed it's a lot of what I was getting at when I wrote about Barbie last week. That movie itself is fine, it's fine, but I actively resent that it's what an artist like Greta Gerwig is forced to work with by the system, and its bonanza box-office success -- while I can recognize the good stuff (A woman dominated product breaking box office records! It's not a superhero movie!) -- just depresses me. So let people sneer at things, is my point. Snobbery is sometimes good! The democratization of culture has good things about it, but the idea that everybody has to appreciate the same things and hate the same other things is exhausting.