Watching Movies Alone with crumbsroom

Tellin' the truth is dangerous business. Honest and popular don't go hand in hand.

Wooley "The Horror Police" submits Last Year At Marienbad.

Tetsuo The Iron Man trilogy. *
Would that be more along the lines of what you’re looking for?

I’ve only seen the first one.

Day of Wrath (Dreyer)



Orson's Macbeth



Citizen Kane

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I have a friend who does freelance work (she has published pieces for Forbes, McSweeney's, and several others). I will let her know that I have a friend looking to go that way and I'm sure she will have advice.

Here is a thought: I wonder if you might be able to do script work for channels like, I don't know, Nerdwriter or some other high profile YouTube channel. You write so well about art--it could be a way to produce that content without you having to actually make YouTube videos. I'm trying to remember who I know that wrote a piece for a National Geographic video. If I remember who it is I will reach out to her.

Only God Forgives
The Magician
Lessons in Darkness
Memories Within Miss Aggie
A Woman's Torment
Her Name Was Lisa
Human Lanterns
Masked Avengers

A few of those can be considered genre hybrids, but they mix horror with genres it usually isn't paired with.

Thanks, Sedai!While I've only ever been an amateur writer (hopefully more in the sense that I've never had a paying gig for my writing, and less because of the actual quality of my writing, heh), I do know a couple of former forumers who are currently active in the freelance writing field, if you want me to try to get you in touch with them. At any rate, good luck with the life change, Crumbs!

If only honesty was my true Achille's Heel. *sigh* Having come to embrace the warts and all approach that I prefer to find in my movies (or music or painting) I'm generally viewed as being too unruly and scattered for most publications. And I sort of get it. At first glance, I think I can see why editors might not take me very seriously, or feel they have too much editing to do to make me copy ready. I've never met a grammatical rule I'd rather ignore than heed, or a tangent I'd prefer to leave unresolved.



I can of course always try and clean this up, but the messiness of my process is kind of the point. When I used to do some freelance stuff in the past, I would ultimately neuter my approach a bit which always left my feeling deeply unsatisfied with anything I ever did. Most magazines have a specific style they like to promote, and it generally is a pretty uniform one (hence, my complaint about the general blandness of most culture writing in so many legit publications). And I'm pretty bad at faking professionalism. Or at least, this has always been one of my driving concerns.


But with no other options on the table at the moment, I'm going to eventually need to find some other kind of way to supplement my income so I don't have to get into the full time death trap I was stuck in for so many years. Now that I've escaped that kind of drudgery, it's not an acceptable option for me to go back to it. So it's either going to be compromised freelance work, or cleaning people's windshields at stoplights, and one of these things is slightly worse than the other.


Also, nice catches on the 'spooky castle' stills above. Never would have considered Day of Wrath or the gothic opening of Kane.

It's definitely applicable.



I'm also looking for films that, while not remotely horror, contain an eerie vibe, or dabble in gothic or surrealistic imagery. Wooley's mention of Last Year of Marienbad is of this brand. The average horror fan would probably be put off by its slow moving, maybe even 'pretentious' vibe, but there is a nightmare undercurrent that lives in the film that's hard to articulate. And the harder for me to articulate, the better.



Which reminds me, Exterminating Angel, is another one I should be considering.

Oh, that would be wonderful. Any advice at all will be of immeasurable help. I'm so dreadful at the general work politics and professionalism, I need schooling right from the ground up.



I have a few people pushing me to doing videos, and honestly, the thing that I'm most reluctant to do with that is my general technophobe status. I'm still not ruling that out. I have no idea you could write content for these things though. I should probably look into that because, as mentioned many times before, I have no idea what's going on out there in the modern world.

Oh, my, I don't even know half of those.


*puts my research goggles on*


Can't believe I forgot about Human Lanterns

While I'm the sort of person who gets uncomfortable putting anyone out for any reason, I wouldn't shrug off any contacts I can possibly get. So thanks for the offer.


Being a person who for many years was extremely well conntected to both the publishing and television world, I have worlds of regret that I never tried to make any use of those inside connects because I thought it was 'tacky' to ask anyone for advise or help. Thankfully, I've put those needs to keep composed appearances behind me in my middle age. Help is always needed. Especially, as I'm sure you know writing on similar topics on these forums all these years, having the interest or the knowledge to do the job is rarely enough. Having connections is about 70 percent of the battle.

If you still need films that flirt with horror without really being one, I'd suggest Brimstone.

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Oh, oh...



The Weird Man



Not the best thing you'll see for your piece, but there's a lot to unpack.



Good luck, Crummy!

You know, this is actually a good idea. You don't have to convince someone to "hire" you, and you've got complete creative control.

There's a Youtuber named Jenny Nicholson that I find entertaining and I think could serve as proof that your "thing" could catch on. Her focus is on geek culture but rather than just review the latest comic book movie, she'll do deep dives into some really niche areas. She once did an hour-long review of the Avatar theme park. I have no interest in that park or the film but I watched the entire hour just because her take is so idiosyncratic and it's evident that she covers things she really cares about. Her latest video is a 2-1/2 hour discussion about The Vampire Diaries. I haven't watched that one but it's currently got almost 2 million views after one month.
Most of her videos consist of her sitting on her bed, so there's not a lot of fancy video stuff going on, and I wouldn't even say that she's a natural in front of a camera. My point is that these are videos that would not have been approved if she'd had to submit them to a publisher/media company but she's got 680K subscribers and her videos consistently get over a million views. You'd have to ask her if that equates to making an actual living, but the point is she's attracted an audience.

https://www.youtube.com/c/JennyNicholson/videos


So having read a lot of your stuff over the years, I can safely predict that you could also gain a significant following (a different following from hers, obviously). A good chunk of my current watchlist consists of films I had no interest in until one of your reviews convinced me that it was worthwhile. You've got a built-in "hook" which would be horror or cult films, so it wouldn't take long for film fans to find your stuff.

Having had no previous interest in Citizen Kane as a young man, I was coerced into watching it by a friend who told me "the opening scenes look like a Universal horror film". Turns out it was a pretty good flick.

Jenny Nicholson is good content-wise, but she does that thing a lot of bad YouTubers do in that she edits out her pauses. Don't do that, Crumb. It's exhausting to listen to.

True.
And just to be clear, I wasn't trying to convince anyone else to like her stuff, only to point out that something that would seem to have a limited appeal on paper can actually find its audience. That's one of the good things about Youtube. No producer would say "Make an hour-long dissection of Last House on Dead End Street", but on Youtube you can do exactly that if you choose.

Thinking about Valerie & Her Week of Wonders has given me some thoughts. It's fairly generally considered a horror film by association. That's how I first heard of it, along with a picture of the vermin villain, and initiated a three year search for a copy (this was late 90s when it wasn't available). Naturally, the film isn't quite the horror film one would imagine (the description of "surrealist fantasy" better applies), but more of a rustic fable. The archetypes of fables are rich in horrific imagery. Somewhat full circle, although Gretel & Hansel is Oz Perkins' weakest film, I was happy to see his incorporation of a similar vampiric spectre clearly taken from Valerie.


This got me thinking about all of the, officially non-horror, images throughout children's films that are considered by victims as "nightmare fuel", and how appropriate the connotation is to images that almost primally regurgitate a kind of incognizant terror. Wizard of Oz is a prime example (Return to Oz - even better!), as is the Queen's transformation from Snow White, the banshee in Darby O'Gill, the zombie army from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, the psychedelic boat cruise from Willy Wonka. Children's liturature and films are full of such examples without being explicit exercises in horror.


I guess I'm doing your job for you. Anyway, just some thoughts, and feel free to pilfer. I'll deny any responsibility.

The Banshee used to scare tha ***** outta me, yo!

Valerie's a weird movie (obv) in that I had heard about it more as a sort of surreal fantasy and then a couple years later I heard it dropped as maybe obscure horror and so then I figured it must be the former with smatterings of the latter. And that's kinda what it is. In a lotta ways it's hard to say it's not a horror movie. But looked at another way I can see how it maybe isn't.