We're here to watch movies

not examine the private lives of people we don't personally know in physical reality. We're not here to poke our noses where they don't belong.

Am I right or am I wrong? This board exists for the examination and celebration of film and cinema, not the social goings-ons of people we dont personally know. Please please please correct me if I'm wrong.

Let us be frank, direct and mercilessly true.

Depends on the sub-forum. Depends on the thread. The actors, awards, and directors thread is presumably for talking about people and not just products, for example.

You're obviously implying something, so in the interest of being "frank, direct and mercilessly true," it's probably best to turn that implication into a clear statement. Are you saying you don't like people talking about celebrities/gossiping/discussing what they do outside of the creation of film? Also, are you including possible crimes under the heading of "social goings-ons"?

Talking about film, without also talking about the people who make them, the people who watch them and the people who critique them, would drastically reduce the value of talking about films.

I always felt like movies were a good way to break the ice for my ulterior motives. Why else would I waste time on such drivel.

Can I fart on your sandwich?

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I took it that Act III meant he didn't like MoFos attacking each other personally and feels MoFo is for movie talk. If I'm wrong I'll have to take back that rep I just gave him


I don't mind talking about the private lives of actors/directors etc it adds a little wine sauce to the cheese.

Yeah, really need clarification. Which is a little ironic given that this is a plea for forthrightness, as well.

Whatever the point is, I'll just preemptively agree that celebrity gossip can be really stupid and insipid and I'm not a fan of it, but that there's a lot of more substantive and interesting talk about actors and personalities that doesn't get to that level and can enhance our understanding and enjoyment of things.

Yeah, I hate the gossip mags and that whole spy on celebrities thing, I mean, who really wants to know what so and so did in their backyard? I have not actually known anyone in my lifetime who was genuinely interested in the personal lives of anyone, really, famous or not. It seems sort of creepy and inherently wrong to see these weirdos be driven to infiltrate the personal lives of someone whom they did not directly know. I think the only people interested in this junk are the ones that make the magazines, its a small group of people and almost all of them are working together. So for example theres a celebrity and theres a non celebrity middle class type. Neither care much at all about one another, not interested in learning personal details about each others lives, and on any normal day if passing each other in public wouldnt think much about it. But then you got this clan of trashjunkmag makers shoving celeb images into the face of the casual shopper and 99.99% of the time nobody gives a ****, so really, the magmakers are doing everyone a disservices and neither side likes them. The shopper doesnt like them and celeb dont like them.

I think this might be a function of the kinds of people you know, because I'd say interest in that kind of stuff, good or bad, is fairly common. Most people are naturally interested in gossip, even if only on an innate level, and even if they try to suppress it.

Yeah, worship of any public figure always seems kinda nuts to me. Actors, musicians, politicians, anything. Parasocial relationships in general are pretty corrosive, I think.

I don't think this is correct, I think people are genuinely interested in it, unfortunately. I don't have any trouble believing that selling it so hard adds to it, but I don't think it's creating that interest, and I don't think it's true that almost nobody cares.

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Anyway, more to the point, I can't tell whether this thread is you just venting about celebrity gossip culture, or if you're specifically taking aim at some forum members/threads, or what. The OP seems to assume a level of familiarity with your thought process leading up to it that I don't think any of us had/have.

No, its sort of a mockery to those watching this forum that are of that trashjunk gossip type. This forum seem tightly sealed against becoming a gossip column and does a good job of giving film a serious consideration, allowing for intelligent discussion and examination of movies rather than an a fan-based ego contest where a buncha dumbasses fight over who has the better tee shirt rep.

Thats why I didnt name it "We're here to talk about so-and-so's pool party pictures"

Ah. Well, that's very kind of you. Gotta say, that's not how I read the first post at all. "This board exists for X...not Y" would seem to imply that there's a lot of Y happening here, but if that wasn't the intent, cool.

I wanted to make sure, in case you know, someone gets the wrong idea. Extra insurance.

A place where I agree with ACT III is when people go digging invasively into the private lives of artists looking for hints about a work of art. If it is public knowledge, fine. If the the question is about the artist and not the artwork (e.g,. did Cosby do it?), fine. If we are talking about how an artwork is connected to a milieu or movement, fine. Not every question that interests us is a question about, in whole or even in part, a "text." There is, however, a bad habit of looking for clues about the artwork everywhere but in the artwork itself. Private diaries, journals, interviews, marginalia, drafts, or psychoanalyze the author to find something hidden in the text.



If the author didn't want to share her draft with the public, then the finished product should not be judged by the draft. If the author (e.g., Kafka, David Foster Wallace) asked that a draft not be published, it is their right to NOT share her text with the world. If you're judging the movie, watch the movie; if you cannot infer your "reading" without becoming an extra-textual tomb raider, it is dubious that your reading is actually a part of the text itself.

Amen to that! And that's because us MoFos are serious about movies!

Well, the way I see it is that there's a short window of time when anything is created and a lifetime of examination thereafter, plenty of time to stuff between the lines interpretations that the creator didn't have in mind. You stare at any piece of wood long enough and you'll start to see things that aren't there.

And so what of instances where a reading can be substantially backed up by the text, and very convincing arguments can be made that this is very much the point of the work, but the artist is on record that this is a completely incorrect interpretation?

I essentially agree with this, even though a world without Kafka immediately becomes less worth living in.



I haven't read the Pale King, so I don't know how important that should be to my existence. But everything else that guy has done has been pretty incredible....not Kafka incredible though so...maybe we can live without that.

The author doesn't get the final word in the interpretation and evaluation of the finished text. They are only strongly authoritative (and only to the extent that their memory and motivation is not suspect) in telling us what they were trying to achieve.



If the reading can be found "in" the text, then I don't really beef with it as an acceptable reading. However, if the reading is only really plausible by way extra-textual evidence (if you have to squint at the artwork in light of some biographical fact), then I am more inclined to reject it, and this goes for an authorial interpretation which is at odds with the text itself. I am not sola scriptura when it comes to the text, but the author doesn't get a free pass to serve as our eyes and ears either.