I Shit You Not, My Friend: A Meditation on Going Forward
I'm a big fan of Roger Ebert. Yeah, that one. The film critic.
I'd seen his show with Gene Siskel for years growing up - I remember it when it had the production values that resembled first-season Saturday Night Live set design. I never understood why they were always lampooned as bickering battle generals. Sure, they disagreed, but the dicussions were intelligent and civil, not even close to the talking heads parading around cable news today. I felt more tension watching Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park on HBO than I did from Siskel and Ebert.
In something like ironic turnabout, it was Siskel's death that really clued me in to Ebert's writing about movies, and thanks to the Internet, I've been Ebert devotée - an Ebertée? - ever since. The Internet is rife with "critics." Go to the Movie Review Query Engine at www.mrqe.com (then bookmark it - you'll want to return) and type in any contemporary movie - say, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - to see what I mean. An ashtonishing number of reviews pop up - far more than IMDB catalogs. For real blockbusters, your Matrixes and Lord of the Ringses, the reviews available online number in the several hundreds.
Most of these critics are the "Movie Poop Chute" crowd (thank you, Kevin Smith) - whiny teens that tear apart modern movies according on the the sucks/rules curve. Ebert is different. So different, in fact, that to read a collection of Ebert reviews is to learn about movies, to think about why one likes them and why they should or should not be liked. I'd never really been able to explain to friends how I could easily and happily watch a double feature of, oh, Au Revoir Les Enfants b/w Ernest Saves Christmas and throughly enjoy them both. Ebert expresses it perfectly in his #1 rule of film criticism: It is not what a movie is about, but how it is about it.
As any devoted reader of a regular column can attest - even the most objective reporters infuse stories with personality and personal tastes. Ebert openly admits that it is not a critics job to be objective, in fact quite the opposite. And so Ebert's columns tend to take on the feel of an extremely well-written blog. His writing avoids much discussion of his non-professional life, and yet remains very personal. His style isn't outlandish or all that distinct, but it's solidly consistent and nuanced in a way that over time reveals hints of the author behind it. After years of regular reading, it's pretty easy to map the tastes and quirks. For example: Ebert likes to be removed from the fast-pace of his journalistic life by a good, long, deliberately paced film. film. Ebert likes to be reminded of his childhood, especially ages around 12-16. Ebert likes movies about movies. Ebert adores bold stylistic leaps. Ebert likes beautiful actresses, loves the ones with talent, and absolutely adores those with big, full breasts (the two screenplays credited to him were written for Russ Meyer). By this equasion, Jennifer Connelly has no better friend than Roger Ebert, and Dark City was destined to occupy a special place in his heart.
But I'm getting off track. I bring Roger Ebert up because, like all regular writers-by-deadline, Ebert often falls back on well-used and comfortable phrases ("which I shall not reveal") that regularly turn up in his work. This is pretty acceptable for columnists - there are only so many ways one can explain a thing - but one phrase he reuses just sticks in my craw - partly because it's overused by just about everyone, and partially because it's a vacuous phrase that masks as an intelligent one. Everytime I hear it, it's inevitably from somebody, usually in a group of young people, trying to sound authoritative about some topic which they clearly know nothing about. Think of the Marshall McLuhan pontiffs queued up to see The Sorrow and the Pity with Woody Allen in Annie Hall.
That phrase is "meditation on." As in "Far from Heaven is a meditation on the underbelly of life in the 1950's." We've all read it a hundred times in any number of places because everyone's read it somewhere and thought it would sound good and now use it any chance they get. It's become such a ridiculous cliché that it's used to describe things that are as close to "meditation" as Metallica (whose documentary, by the way, was described by another movie reviewer as "a meditation on what went wrong with them over the past few years").
I pick on Ebert because a) he's a high-profile serial offender and b) he's the man and deserves an intervention. A search of the exact phrase on his website at www.rogerebert.com returns no less than forty instances across reviews, essays, interviews, and articles. Some are easily digested, even right on. Yes, The Thin Blue Line is definately deserves the title of a "meditation on...fact[s]." If any filmmaker can be described as meditative, it is Errol Morris. Though no
But Eberts other examples reveal his wanky, see-it-from-all-sides, liberal kinda-sorta sensibility that I can point out because it's a trait Ebert and I share. In a sucks/rules, either/or, us/terrorists world, Ebert and I meditate on the shades of grey. From the Gospel According to Roger:
Ah, well, in looking up some examnples I came upon an article that argues this point much better than I would. They call it a "university press" phenomenon. Interesting. Read it here.
Some more I'd add to the moritorium list:
Going forward - so overused in business (especially here in Silicon Valley) that it's nearly a replacement for uhhhhh. "I'd like to see, going forward, more repurposable copy that we can leverage in our overseas offices." Just count how many times managers use it in meetings when they're on the spot. Going forward, I'd like to hear it less.
My friend - I'm specifically referring to those who would use these words to add (usually false) gravitas to a half-baked opinion, ergo: "I'll tell you this, my friend, a vote for Bush is a vote for safety" or to add dramatic tension before the big payoff, such as "And now, my friend, you will understand what it is to be an android on fire." "My friend" is a male office. Women rarely do this. I've never heard a woman say, "Listen up, my friend. This year, Pitt wins Best Actor or I'm not having sex for a month."
If anybody, anybody, puts his hand on your shoulder and begins with, "Look, my friend....," slap it away, call them a scurrilous churl, and suggest they meditate on being more interesting.
Lastly, I shit you not. Closely related to "my friend," used by many of the same offenders. It seems there is a whole class of Americans that would add credibility to outlandish proclamations by serifing it with a trailing or mid-sentence "I shit you not." I figure it came about as a response to "Yer shittin' me," a statement of surprise that's at the low-octane end of a gas pump that includes "You're kidding" at the midgrade and "Surely, you jest" at premium. The faux-mality alone gives the phrase and speaker a nouveau riche preciousness that says, "I ain't trashy, dammit" - like breaking out the Modelo Especial after 2 when the 'riff raff' party guests have all gone home. This is only enhanced when the phrase is preceded, as it so often is, with the word "dude." One can imagine George W. Bush saying it a lot, and Dick Cheney responding with another phrase worth avoiding:
"No shit, Sherlock."
I'd seen his show with Gene Siskel for years growing up - I remember it when it had the production values that resembled first-season Saturday Night Live set design. I never understood why they were always lampooned as bickering battle generals. Sure, they disagreed, but the dicussions were intelligent and civil, not even close to the talking heads parading around cable news today. I felt more tension watching Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park on HBO than I did from Siskel and Ebert.
In something like ironic turnabout, it was Siskel's death that really clued me in to Ebert's writing about movies, and thanks to the Internet, I've been Ebert devotée - an Ebertée? - ever since. The Internet is rife with "critics." Go to the Movie Review Query Engine at www.mrqe.com (then bookmark it - you'll want to return) and type in any contemporary movie - say, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - to see what I mean. An ashtonishing number of reviews pop up - far more than IMDB catalogs. For real blockbusters, your Matrixes and Lord of the Ringses, the reviews available online number in the several hundreds.
Most of these critics are the "Movie Poop Chute" crowd (thank you, Kevin Smith) - whiny teens that tear apart modern movies according on the the sucks/rules curve. Ebert is different. So different, in fact, that to read a collection of Ebert reviews is to learn about movies, to think about why one likes them and why they should or should not be liked. I'd never really been able to explain to friends how I could easily and happily watch a double feature of, oh, Au Revoir Les Enfants b/w Ernest Saves Christmas and throughly enjoy them both. Ebert expresses it perfectly in his #1 rule of film criticism: It is not what a movie is about, but how it is about it.
As any devoted reader of a regular column can attest - even the most objective reporters infuse stories with personality and personal tastes. Ebert openly admits that it is not a critics job to be objective, in fact quite the opposite. And so Ebert's columns tend to take on the feel of an extremely well-written blog. His writing avoids much discussion of his non-professional life, and yet remains very personal. His style isn't outlandish or all that distinct, but it's solidly consistent and nuanced in a way that over time reveals hints of the author behind it. After years of regular reading, it's pretty easy to map the tastes and quirks. For example: Ebert likes to be removed from the fast-pace of his journalistic life by a good, long, deliberately paced film. film. Ebert likes to be reminded of his childhood, especially ages around 12-16. Ebert likes movies about movies. Ebert adores bold stylistic leaps. Ebert likes beautiful actresses, loves the ones with talent, and absolutely adores those with big, full breasts (the two screenplays credited to him were written for Russ Meyer). By this equasion, Jennifer Connelly has no better friend than Roger Ebert, and Dark City was destined to occupy a special place in his heart.
But I'm getting off track. I bring Roger Ebert up because, like all regular writers-by-deadline, Ebert often falls back on well-used and comfortable phrases ("which I shall not reveal") that regularly turn up in his work. This is pretty acceptable for columnists - there are only so many ways one can explain a thing - but one phrase he reuses just sticks in my craw - partly because it's overused by just about everyone, and partially because it's a vacuous phrase that masks as an intelligent one. Everytime I hear it, it's inevitably from somebody, usually in a group of young people, trying to sound authoritative about some topic which they clearly know nothing about. Think of the Marshall McLuhan pontiffs queued up to see The Sorrow and the Pity with Woody Allen in Annie Hall.
That phrase is "meditation on." As in "Far from Heaven is a meditation on the underbelly of life in the 1950's." We've all read it a hundred times in any number of places because everyone's read it somewhere and thought it would sound good and now use it any chance they get. It's become such a ridiculous cliché that it's used to describe things that are as close to "meditation" as Metallica (whose documentary, by the way, was described by another movie reviewer as "a meditation on what went wrong with them over the past few years").
I pick on Ebert because a) he's a high-profile serial offender and b) he's the man and deserves an intervention. A search of the exact phrase on his website at www.rogerebert.com returns no less than forty instances across reviews, essays, interviews, and articles. Some are easily digested, even right on. Yes, The Thin Blue Line is definately deserves the title of a "meditation on...fact[s]." If any filmmaker can be described as meditative, it is Errol Morris. Though no
But Eberts other examples reveal his wanky, see-it-from-all-sides, liberal kinda-sorta sensibility that I can point out because it's a trait Ebert and I share. In a sucks/rules, either/or, us/terrorists world, Ebert and I meditate on the shades of grey. From the Gospel According to Roger:
- The Cook, The Thief, his Wife, and her Lover is "more of a meditation on modern times in general."
- Forrest Gump is a "meditation on our times."
- Disney's The Fox and the Hound is "a rather thoughtful meditation on how society determines our behavior."
- Four Friends "wants to be a meditation on love."
- Gremlins is a "meditation on movie myths."
- Gremlins II: the New Batch is a "meditation on sequels."
- Andy Kaufman's peculiar form of comedy? performance art? was a "meditation on the idea of entertainment."
- Meet Joe Black is, among other things, a "meditation on the screen presence of Brad Pitt." (This one isn't so far out there - I know quite a few - men and women - that meditate to thoughts of Brad Pitt with reliable regularity).
- il Postino is a "quiet meditation on taste, tact, and poetry."
- In the review for the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ebert declares Kill Bill Volume 1 (!!!) a "meditation on the martial arts genre."
- "A meditation on loss"
- "Abraham Lincoln's Meditation on the Divine Will"
- "Rambam's Ladder: A Mediatation on Generosity and Why It is Necessary..."
- "A Meditation on Flight"
- "The Ruins: or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires"
- "The Last Link: A Meditation on Web Literacy"
- Shadow of the Vampire is satisfying meditation on a classic film
- The Polish Brothers' Northfork [is a] Disquieting Meditation on the Vanishing American Frontier
- Kim Ki-duk's Spring, Summer...; A Minimalist Meditation on Life's Seasons
- Gods and Generals: A Meditation on Patriotism
- Happenstance represents an intriguing meditation on the unseen forces that no one can escape
- The Company Robert Altman's gossamer, tension-free meditation on the ballet...
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a thoughtful, audacious meditation on love and finally, the oddly appropriate:
- Creative Criticism: A Meditation on Epinion Writing
Ah, well, in looking up some examnples I came upon an article that argues this point much better than I would. They call it a "university press" phenomenon. Interesting. Read it here.
Some more I'd add to the moritorium list:
Going forward - so overused in business (especially here in Silicon Valley) that it's nearly a replacement for uhhhhh. "I'd like to see, going forward, more repurposable copy that we can leverage in our overseas offices." Just count how many times managers use it in meetings when they're on the spot. Going forward, I'd like to hear it less.
My friend - I'm specifically referring to those who would use these words to add (usually false) gravitas to a half-baked opinion, ergo: "I'll tell you this, my friend, a vote for Bush is a vote for safety" or to add dramatic tension before the big payoff, such as "And now, my friend, you will understand what it is to be an android on fire." "My friend" is a male office. Women rarely do this. I've never heard a woman say, "Listen up, my friend. This year, Pitt wins Best Actor or I'm not having sex for a month."
If anybody, anybody, puts his hand on your shoulder and begins with, "Look, my friend....," slap it away, call them a scurrilous churl, and suggest they meditate on being more interesting.
Lastly, I shit you not. Closely related to "my friend," used by many of the same offenders. It seems there is a whole class of Americans that would add credibility to outlandish proclamations by serifing it with a trailing or mid-sentence "I shit you not." I figure it came about as a response to "Yer shittin' me," a statement of surprise that's at the low-octane end of a gas pump that includes "You're kidding" at the midgrade and "Surely, you jest" at premium. The faux-mality alone gives the phrase and speaker a nouveau riche preciousness that says, "I ain't trashy, dammit" - like breaking out the Modelo Especial after 2 when the 'riff raff' party guests have all gone home. This is only enhanced when the phrase is preceded, as it so often is, with the word "dude." One can imagine George W. Bush saying it a lot, and Dick Cheney responding with another phrase worth avoiding:
"No shit, Sherlock."
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