Cecil Vortex interviewed Ze Frank about a year ago and what a wonderful article that turned out to be.
With The Show project, I’ve also been thinking a lot about this culture of authorship that we’re entering into. You’ve got so many people that are making things now, whether it’s emails or instant messages or uploading images to Flickr, making movies, creating audio on cheap prosumer technology. What’s really interesting to me is that, as anyone knows who’s gone into a creative discipline, the second that you start doing those things, the world around you changes. If you draw, you start seeing the edges of things, and you start seeing the deformities of their shape when you move around them. When you start playing guitar, you start noticing notes in all the music you play, and in fact, the music that you listen to never sounds the same from that point on. I think that a lot of people are focusing on the content that’s being produced right now. And I think it’s the wrong thing to look at. It’s actually the pursuit and the perception change that I think a lot of people are experiencing about the world — that’s the thing to focus on and the thing to celebrate.
—Ze Frank
(Editor’s note: This rambled on longer than I expected or even dared. There’s an old saying, “Talking does not cook rice.” This here is a lot of talk but I also consider it as filling the pot and lighting the fire.)
The very minute I got serious about becoming a writer, it’s as if everything I had seen before, everything I knew or thought about them was different. I’ve seen movies from the 90s that, at that time I enjoyed, but now I notice all the lazy gags and simple-minded tricks. That style of “storytelling” has ceased to amuse.
What I’m saying is my enjoyment of movies has morphed. This is to the chagrin of friends who don’t really care about things like beats or story logic or plot holes you could steer an oil tanker through.
The summer blockbuster has it’s time and place but nowadays I want something juciy. I crave ideas that are more than filler. My taste buds have gone exotic. They’re starved for information that goes beyond the norm. I just want something more. I want to make something more. If it’s going to be a stupid silly thing, I want it to be stupid and silly on it’s own merit. There’s nothing worse than lazy talent.
So when I bitch about a movie or book or comic being beyond worthless. I’m really disappointed and angry about the time I spent on that failed idea. Then I have the urge to make something worthwhile but I get this fear about sharing it.
Can I make anything that is worthwhile?
That’s the only way the Michael Bay’s and Jerry Bruckheimer’s of the world have beaten me. They have the audacity and sheer force of arrogance to sell us their “works”. The bastards make millions off us with their poorly thought out plots.
While I, and so many others like me, sit here afraid to test the waters for fear of rejection or worst yet, becoming the next Michael Bay. The pay may be good but I’d rather not sell off my spark one crappy movie at a time.
…
Fuck that shit. Let’s cook some rice.
Happy birthday, Groonk.net. Who knew five years later, I’d still be doing this. Whatever *this* is.
Photo courtesy of “Scott Beale / Laughing Squid” http://laughingsquid.com/
