Entry 8:

Reeeerrrr!

"Breakfast Table" Meow Mix! But Andy, while I'm prepared to join the media equivalent of the Secret Service to protect Katie Couric from ill opinion-making, I'm worried for you. It sounds almost as if you're ready to embark on a one-man crusade to clean up lousy writing. Does man make a mop that big? You're better off trying to cure cancer or stop Monica from marrying Chandler. While not being entirely curative, I think bitch-slapping the media is pretty effective. The center cannot hold, and it's making you crazy. I think watching and filtering every reality show through your wily media-logged prism should be enough. You're only man, my friend.

What of Alex's beef with critical lameness and the attendant resentment of applying an intellectual approach? I'm delighted that you still think rock writing is the last bastion of anti-intellectual player-hate. We've been having this discussion for a while, and for a split-second you had me convinced that it was simply a case of the grass being greener. But I think film writing is always under siege by the "it's only a movie" crowd, a segment of the population that eats its popcorn too loudly and sends hate mail too hastily to be relegated to peanut-gallery status. Still, I don't wanna play "who's more oppressed" here.

I got a letter from someone in San Francisco, complaining that they didn't like what I had to say about Freddy Got Fingered. (After the edit, I wasn't all that psyched either.) But this guy's gripe was that I spent too much time explaining Tom Green and his relevance when all he wanted to know was whether he should see the movie. To which I say, try USA Today or trust the blurbs, if you dare. I dig the process of coming to the conclusion that something like Freddy is bad; my writing is about the arrival to that conclusion. In Green's case, the movie's badness is its point. And I'd rather risk overthinking a film, especially one as seemingly trivial but too insidious to be ignored as this one, than play the unengaged hack who calls the movie drivel and makes a lot of "falling asleep" jokes.

If I get the movie, it's incumbent upon me to explain what it is I've got. I can only hope that my assessment will enlighten someone else's experience should they chose to go, too. If that's wrong, I don't wanna be right. By the way, Tony Scott and Jessica Winter both have written extremely informed, but sorta different Freddy pieces.

Alex, I think your beef is a wonderful one to have. I love that Nick Hornby irks you so, but I'd rather have him being underengaged, laconic even, as opposed to being a blurb whore whose movie reviews have conditioned the culture to hate critics who take what they do seriously. I think the David Denby-Anthony Lane divide is a neat barometer. What does your favorite film critic say about you?

Wesley