The Stupidest Statement I've Ever Read

[Damien]

the only auteur untouchable I can think of offhand not really "getting" is Howard Hawks, but I continue to try cracking that nut over and over (and haven't seen many of his key works like Rio Bravo or Only Angels Have Wings, so I could've just had a bad first hand dealt).

I generally have not "gotten" Hawks in that his sensibility is so different from mine. But then whenever I watch The Big Sleep (and also To Have and Have Not) I'm ready to argue he may be the greatest filmmamker ever -- the world he creates here is so singular, so personal and so completely convincing.

[Zahveed]

I'm not even in my twenties and my favorite movie is Casablanca (a good thirty years before Godfather). I will admit that I'm not that knowledgeable when it comes to just about anything, but it kind of comes with the territory of age. A lot of people just don't bother with anything 40 years before their birthdate.

[Eric]

I think the problem isn't lack of knowledge but, rather, over-eagerness to rebuild the canon (sorry for channeling Paul Schrader here) and to establish the uniqueness of one's own taste instead of demonstrating an understanding of one's own knowledge. Usually the quickest route towards doing so is trashing the auteur untouchables and elevating the outcasts. I will admit to being guilty of this myself sometimes, though more the latter than the former -- the only auteur untouchable I can think of offhand not really "getting" is Howard Hawks, but I continue to try cracking that nut over and over (and haven't seen many of his key works like Rio Bravo or Only Angels Have Wings, so I could've just had a bad first hand dealt).

[The Original BJ]

I've found that most early twenty-somethings who consider themselves "knowledgable" about film (and, hey, they're all my friends, so I should know) are, for the most part, pretty darn ignorant. They think cinema began with The Godfather, and that nothing beforehand is at all relevant to making film now, so why bother watching or studying the classics?

I remember watching The Searchers in film school -- most people thought it was a total snooze. And for the rest of my life I will never EVER forget my film school screening of The Rules of the Game: many of the students walked out commenting that it was one of the worst films they'd ever seen. Fassbinder is "impenetrable," Sirk is "laughable," and It Happened One Night is, according to one friend, "the most overrated bore of all time." Put on Kill Bill, though, and those film geeks will get all their jollies out in one giddy sitting.

Ford, I think, is one of the biggest casualties for the younger set, as it's incredibly un-hip for today's film school crowd to like a lot of the studio giants. (I once said I loved Stagecoach and got greeted with a room full of pitiful stares.) That being said, there are definitely some of us who aspire to take a much less ignorant approach to film history, though, as of right now, we definitely don't outnumber the bozos.

(P.S. I did enjoy Kill Bill, and, stereotypical though it may be, I'm a big fan of Paul Thomas Anderson . . . I just don't like ONLY contemporary films made by hipper-than-thou directors.)

[dws1982]

I was looking at one of those film logs on a website maintained by one of those early twenty-somethings who thinks he's a lot more intelligent than your average early twenty-something, but his thoughts about movies are never much different than anything your average early twenty-something movie fan might say (highest possible marks for Paul Thomas Anderson films, etc.). But then he, like so many others in this group, tries to go against the grain of popular wisdom, and does so so pathetically and stupidly that they end up making stupid statements like this, while trashing Fort Apache:

Why do we still talk about John Ford like he wasn't the Ron Howard of his day?