Wednesday, June 20, 2007

The father of the hot dog cinema mustard new wave relish movement

I'm so fucking tired of trying to read something new about John Cassavetes, and instead continuing to be bombarded with people calling him "the father of American independent film," godfather of independent cinema, master of independent low-budget American cinema, ground zero independent film, independent film starts here, blah blah blah, shut the motherfucking fuck. He's not the founder, originator, or godfather of anything except John Cassavetes films. Maybe he's "independent" of the need to lick money publicly, but he's not "independent" of the influence of previous filmmakers, writers, musicians, chefs, cab drivers, fellow human beings, friends, love, hate, getting out of bed, going to sleep. What does "independent" mean? I know what it means in terms of "independent" film or "indie" rock. A mediocre product squeezed from the hard work and blood of unappreciated, hard-working artists and peddled to dogmatic youth cultures and consumerist apathetic couch potatoes alike by young men and women with no guts, balls, clits, or souls on behalf of old white men with enormous sums of money. This is obvious, pamphleteering stuff, and I'm in danger of sounding as stupid as what I'm complaining about. It's an unfortunate but shrewd result of the successful selling and consumption of mediocre, profitable capitalist American "culture" products that any complaint about this way of life sounds even stupider, shriller, more obvious, and more immature than the way of life itself. It's a testament to the incredible power, profitability, fashionability, and potential ridiculousness of film and music that these are the only two arts saddled with the meaningless buzzword "independent," or "indie" if you're lazy, or "Ms. Indie" if you're nasty. Have you ever heard anyone say, "I'm going to the museum to check out some indie art," or "I'm going to the library to pick up some indie books." This word means nothing. And if you think John Cassavetes is responsible for films like "Thumbsucker," "Boondock Saints," any movie about how the suburbs are secretly bad places, etc., you grossly misread not only his work, but life itself. Eat a fucking hot dog and shut up.

2 comments:

bumblepuppy said...

mmm....that hot dog was delicious!

bumblepuppy said...

well, actually, if i could draw any sense from that, i agree with the whole thing. i really fucking hate the whole culture. And i can't keep up with the consumption rate of the true "film-lovers." Cause it's insane. And I don't make connections with every other movie I've seen anymore. Cause I'm not a fucking idiot. It's just teenage fanboy shit, and becomes less and less about the work. And there's no way to be original when your convinced the only way to be great is to make films like Cassavetes--which nobody can do, cause he was a dude with different experiences and interests. I really think they should just cut it off. Cassavetes is allowed no more fans, until they talk to you. And that will be your new job. And then you can kick Ray Carney in the balls at a charity event.

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