domain:cspicenter.com
George Lucas
I agree that George Lucas had not a wide variety of interesting life experiences, but I think illicit race car driving hobby that ended in nearly-fatal accident is plenty interesting, far more than run-of-the-mill sheltered millennial can boast of. But I agree his personal life experiences provided enough material for only one film (American Graffiti) which isn't bad but not the work Lucas is famous for.
I propose a synthesis: Great films require great directors, scriptwriters, actors, camera work, costumes, special effects, score. Some of those, I imagine, are skills someone can learn if he/she has the requisite talent and aptitude and opportunity to learn (such as in a film school). However, when it comes to the story elements and character portrayal, the film school can be beneficial but it is not the only nor the best source. School education has tendency to teach formulaic standards that please the professors. So it helps when the directors and scriptwriters can draw from real experiences- while it is not necessary if they can draw from imagination and someone else's real experiences. Likewise, it is not necessary but it helps when actors can do the same thing (during the filming of Lord of the Rings, Sir Christopher Lee corrected Peter Jackson on what kind of sound a man makes when he is stabbed in back. I doubt many actors today can claim similar knowledge.)
It is necessary that the scriptwriters are very good at writing, which requires superb talent or relentless practice and usually both.
In Star Wars the original trilogy we have a bit of both: Lucas draws not from personal biographical history but from previous films he saw as a kid that were more connected to reality and they had other writing talent and producers and directors. Star Wars (1977) is a collage of samurai epic, westerns, WW2 airplane action films, and Flash Gordon. When Lucas draws from Dam Busters (1955), he takes inspiration from a film based on a genuine military operation. Kurosawa's samurai films have a more tenuous connection to history, but it is a connection nevertheless, and as inspiration it was new to the US mass audience. Flash Gordon is work of imagination, but contributes the pulp setting and plot elements. Concerning the script-writing skill part, for The Empire Strikes Back, they brought in Leigh Brackett for the first draft, who had written countless amount of pulp space opera and screenplays for noir and John Wayne films, and later Lawrence Kasdan to polish the dialogue. For Indiana Jones, they had Lucas, Spielberg, and old adventure movie serials.
As an aside, Francis Ford Coppola is a great director who did nothing too exciting growing up, but one of his particular skills as director has been in choosing great occasionally high-brow script material. I don't think people today realize how many of his films are either directly based on or inspired best-seller novels. Everyone seems to know that Apocalypse Now is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness set in Vietnam (and Joseph Conrad had plenty of varied life experience), but it is not as common knowledge that the Godfather was based on novel by Mario Puzo ("The novel remained on The New York Times Best Seller list for 67 weeks and sold over nine million copies in two year") who also wrote the script. The Outsiders and Rumble Fish are novels by S. E. Hinton. Original inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula is, you know, in the title. I think the only film of his I've seen that is based on original script is The Conversation. In comparison, Spielberg appears to be a directorial wonderkid, winning competitions at age 13 and sneaking into Universal Studios as teenager.
The generation of film-makers today have two major endogenous weaknesses: Firstly, they draw from pop culture products that are now twice or thrice-removed from the 'real' source (instead of WW2 aircraft dogfight films, the Star Wars sequels were inspired mostly by previous Star Wars) and the creators have PMC childhoods followed by college and adulthood which are more boring and scripted than 60's kids had. Secondly, both low-brow pulp fiction and high-brow literature are dead. Of pulp era media products, only the withering remains of comics are left. Pulp provided scripts and training ground and filter for aspiring writers whereas high-brow literature provided an aspirational ideal, and occasional script, too. DC and Marvel have been mostly successful at reanimation of decades-old characters and tropes.
Now I believe the weaknesses mentioned above would not be fundamental obstacles alone- the directors and scriptwriters could draw inspiration and verisimilitude from elsewhere if they had to, but then myriad of separate obstacles grind down that possibility: propensity to be blinded by activism; attention deficit among the audiences; economics influenced by streaming services; economics of producing CGI heavy blockbusters to sell toys and-or theme park rides; all sound plausible contributors to decline of the cinema.
hydroacetylene
6d ago
Yeah, but guild-busting is an accelerating trend in Hollywood.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
6d ago
They're basically all normal guys, plus rapey Kenneth and edgy Doug.
I have the strange sense that Doug is the rapey name and Kenneth would be edgy, and I have no clue why it would be that way. I've never known a Doug or a Kenneth! Anyways-
Anyway, if for whatever reason that locker room decided it wanted to actually be a co-ed discussion space instead, it would have a little problem, which is that any individual woman walking in would get the vibe — they're the barely tolerated outsider — and then leave unless they're like extra autistic/socially challenged.
Males in even slightly feminist spaces get the same feeling. Since The Motte moved off reddit I've spent more time at /r/blockedandreported than here, and while it's not "explicitly" feminist per se- one quickly finds oneself on the backfoot when certain issues or writers come up; say anything with disparate impact on men, or Julie Bindel. It has its fair share of type-B trolls, as well. And yet! There is some value to it. So I stay.
That said, there is still a line. Maybe Julie Bindel isn't quite equivalent to one of the JQ types that haunt The Motte. If Noel Ignatiev, Donald Moss, or even Tema Okun showed up, would I find it tolerable to stick around? Could I roll my eyes, downvote, and move on like with the JQ types? Maybe. But for how long? If they keep toeing the line, getting banned but coming back? Probably not.
A mod in a different forum once said that she didn't do a permanent ban "to not create a certain kind of martyr." Instead that particular problem returns on schedule, almost but not quite clockwork, to make an outrageous post and get banned again. That forum is small enough it doesn't matter. Maybe if it was only one, who showed up annually for a day or two, it wouldn't matter here, either. Alas.
I don't know where I'm going with this, so I'll end it here. If you go, I'll miss your comments, though I completely understand why you'd find this place uncomfortable to stay. I do hope you'll be better than I would, in the alternative situation, and find it in you to stay.
but if the forum can tolerate holocaust denial I think it can also stretch itself to tolerate libtards.
That is one of the unfortunate side effects of moderation based largely, though not entirely, on tone. B&R shares that issue. The calm denier gets a pass, the gasket-blowing lib does not. They get a pass for calling Appalachians retards (it's not a direct insult of another comment, you see); I get a suspension for calling them a bigot. So it goes.
oats_son
6d ago
my government did a surprise attack on Iran
Are you the first Israeli that's posted here? I'm not aiming to make any policy suggestions based on this but I think Israel is really cool. The resurrection of Hebrew is super interesting to me. I've seen some mourn the major loss of Yiddish speakers, but there has never been a successful imposition of something like Hebrew that I am aware of. I had thought that the only way to get Esperanto really in force would be to force a bunch of people from disparate backgrounds to learn it, but there's no real great way to force someone to learn something like that, and also it would result in a bunch of horrifying stories. The creation of Israel was not without horrifying stories, but a lot less than my scenario, and it actually worked, which is shocking.
You should definitely stay, if you are able, because you make a lot of great posts and I've seen and spoken to Palestinians online, but I don't think I have with Israelis. Maybe that doesn't matter! I've found that my thinking that non-English speaking peoples would have more unique perspectives on the world turned out to be true, but not that exceptional. Humans are humans, wherever they seem to be.
HereAndGone
6d ago
At this point, I'm starting to lean towards you being either Impassionata (hi, guy!) or even Darwin himself. You're doing the same darn thing of repeating the same point over and over ("Darwin had AAQCs!") and ignoring every other point being presented.
AAQCs mean nothing. I've gotten some myself, and I certainly never put any effort into the ones that got recommended. I've also gotten some bans, and I have to admit I did flounce off once myself, and those are more meaningful.
professorgerm
You shall love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart
6d ago
But seriously, this autoformatting. Why is it designed around a use case where someone starts a numbered list with a number other than 1 but actually wants 1? When would that ever possibly happen? And what can one do to get around it?
IIRC, I'm not a programmer, it's been brought up before but it's part of the inherited codebase and apparently difficult to fix. Looking around it may be an issue with Markdown formatting, that both the motte and reddit use?
The easiest way around it is to just use lettered lists instead of numbered, and do nested lettering as you go. Maybe that spacing thing at the link will work? Let's try
- one
- two
three - four
Ah ha! It still won't do nested labeling correctly, but to get your 1, 2, 3 to number right, put four spaces in front of your 1a and 1b paragraphs. Or any other paragraphs that don't start with a list number.
HereAndGone
6d ago
Problem is, if you were one of the people who engaged regularly with Darwin, you soon got to know his tricks (and yes, he did engage in tricks). As Amadan said, he was very, very good at riding the line between what would be just that step over it to get a ban, and provoking his interlocutor into taking that one step.
It's more of a "whole body of work" thing rather than "this specific post here, this one, this one" because ain't nobody got the time to make a list and checking it twice over arguments from years back (I know, somebody will pop up with just such a list). It's like somebody new coming in to a pub and hearing about Billy 'BabyEater' McGee getting barred, and asking why, and going on about how "but all you're telling me is that he got into a fight, and the other guy was the one who threw the first punch anyway!"
Yeah, that was the last straw which gave the ostensible reason for barring him, how do you think he got the name "BabyEater" in the first place?
HereAndGone
6d ago
The only thing better than Darwin and Jussie Smollett was Impassionata betting the house on Trump going to jail, for sure, this time, definitely, just we all wait and see, by this time next week he'd be locked up for real.
How many years ago was that, does anyone remember? Ah, good times, good times!
HereAndGone
6d ago
The Sting
Redford and Newman, couldn't go wrong with that combo at that time. That's characters + plot meshing well.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
6d ago
I guess I have some experience here. Starting back in 2021 I was the heaviest I had ever been (260 lbs) and decided I wanted to lose weight. I saw a nutritionist, we worked on a meal plan and routine. I changed a whole bunch of my habits and about 18 months later I was down to 185 lbs. Over the two-ish years since then I've gained most of it back and am about 220 lbs as of this morning.
Losing weight this way required changing a lot of daily habits. Counting calories. Keeping regular track of my weight. Paying attention to portion sizes. I would venture to say most people don't do any of this. They eat in a very intuitive way that likely matches the way they grew up eating or their social environment. I think likening it to drug addiction makes sense. Not necessarily because people become physically addicted to food, but because the scope of changes to one's life can be similar. I'd liken it to mild alcoholism, which is also something I struggle with. Losing weight was much harder than controlling that!
In terms of why I gained the weight back, the habits necessary to maintain that lower weight require active upkeep, at least for me. If I fall out of the habit of counting my calories or macros, of weighing myself every day, it's easy to get back in bad habits that involve eating a lot more.
But what makes someone — who for months now has been eating much less — be unable to maintain the amount they've been eating for months but instead be compelled to keep eating more even though it's actively physically hurting them (and costing them in other ways, like socially).
This part is weird, to me. I was significantly weaker at my primary form of exercise (powerlifting) after my weight loss. And no one I had ever interacted with had commented on my weight in a negative way socially. The reasons I started losing weight were definitely internal to me, not anything I felt pushed on by anyone else.
HereAndGone
6d ago
I certainly get that impression from him, and I also (where I may well be doing him a disservice since I know Sweet Fanny Adams about his background) get the impression that he's on a lower rung of the ladder, aspiring to a higher rung, and resenting the hell out of the fact that he may be confused with the low-lifes one rung below him.
That's the reason I made the Hyacinth Bucket comparison: Hyacinth plainly comes from a background that is working class/teetering on the edge of lower middle class. She made it firmly into lower middle class territory, then clawed her way by sheer force of will into middle middle class land (and is dragging Richard along with her) and aspires, rather pathetically, to the upper middle class reaches that will always be barred to her. She's terrified of her lower middle class roots being discovered and held against her, in the company she now aspires to, or even worse - to be identified by them as such after all her work to climb out of that level.
hydroacetylene
6d ago
Could it be daycare/preschool? Nowadays even most SAHM’s send their kids to it for some reason or other, I’m not sure why.
HereAndGone
6d ago
spend half the movie looking at her phone
That's absolutely a problem with audiences today, and part of the reason our attention spans and focus are so frayed. And yeah, the writers have to compensate for "if we don't keep the action moving, we won't keep eyeballs on the screen".
muzzle-cleaned-porg-42
6d ago
It can be difficult to properly pierce one's bubble. I was a bookish kid. When I became aware of that I had zero experience of grittier side of life, my first instinct was to explore gritty darker shady parts of life ... in form of reading more books and watching the Wire. Later I have realized I did not obtain a realistic experience.
Genuinely adventurous researcher must act like an old-school journalist, travel to places and meet people he/she would never talk to. You have to be clever enough not be hoodwinked by first charlatan in the way. You must have enough background knowledge to contextualize what you see but not let be too influenced by your background "context" so that you fail to see evidence that contradicts it. Most of the research done and readily available today is .... not that.
And if you were invested in researching and writing a period-accurate historical drama, it is not given that anyone else is interested in historical accuracy.
HereAndGone
6d ago
Oh yeah - make this a pirate movie, it'll work. Even a space pirate movie. But that doesn't seem to be what it is. People judge by the marketing, so seeing something with a kid with an eyepatch, that looks to be "moral lecture about disability". I was going "why the hell is he wearing an eyepatch?" when looking at the posters etc. instead of going "oh this looks like fun kid's SF cartoon and maybe smart as well!"
GBRK
6d ago
Okay, so why don't studios make movies for less?
They do. But mostly those cheaper movies end up going straight to streaming, because nothing short of a blockbuster puts butts in theater seats.
hydroacetylene
6d ago
I mean, viewing Jews as a class the same way SJW’s view whites as a class could just be performance art.
hydroacetylene
6d ago
It’s interesting because I’m one of the few who grew up being taught fairly reactionary social values. We were not cave trolls. But it is immediately obvious when someone grew up with these attitudes vs being a convert.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
6d ago
Probably seen friends, family and coworkers spend a weekend in jail on some trumped up charges.
I was gonna say "surely that's exaggerating" but then I remembered that I know someone who literally went through this kek
oats_son
6d ago
I am happy to see this same take I have expressed in the wild, though you feel stronger than I do. I think the first one was definitely the strongest, with everything afterwards having some Marvel-like quality about them, but still with pretty decent action scenes, usually with some stupid gimmick.
It's too bad you hated them enough to stop watching them. I wanted to ask what you thought about the flamethrower fight in Ballerina. I thought it was dumb as hell, but everyone around me and everyone online said that it was awesome. It had a bunch of other problems, too, if you ask me.
MonkeyWithAMachinegun
Dancing to Tom Paine's Bones
6d ago
I'm pretty sure there are a few Jewish Mottizens
There's a few. I don't know how many are still running around but I remember there being about three or four of us who waved the flag in an old "do you conform to stereotypes about your ethnic group" post.
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
6d ago
That's always been the case for TV - script writers were encouraged to write plots that a woman preparing dinner could follow along with. It's actually decreased somewhat - now we have "prestige TV" and podcasts have taken over the niche of "Give Mom's brain something to think about while doing mindless repetitive task."
hydroacetylene
6d ago
Guatemalans are pretty heavily Mayan, to the point that describing them as ‘mixed’ is a bit of a stretch- most Latin American countries are indeed mostly mestizo, but Guatemala is mostly Indio- in the sense of still living in villages.
WhiningCoil
6d ago
Right?! It's like either you've seen it, or you have some sort of mental blinders on that make what you've seen "not count".
You're really selling it. Are you taking the weekly injection?
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