Looking back at 2023, forward to 2024, and setting some goals for this newsletter
Let's figure out what we're all still doing here
Happy New Year, everyone.
This is a moment to take stock, and I have some thoughts about my newsletters, my offline work, and how I think 2024 might unfold.
First, I decided to leave LAFCA.
That’s the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, an organization I’ve been part of for at least a decade. I’m not mad at them. I’m not leaving in a huff. I’m not going to write some angry screed about the organization. But I am leaving.
I feel like I’ve reached a point where I’m not sure why I’m in the organization at all. I used to say it was so I could vote on the awards, and there have been several awards each year that I feel like I was invested in, where I felt like I made a difference in the discussion and debate in the room during our annual vote. I got to write our official tribute to Mel Brooks the year we gave him the Lifetime Achievement award. I have enjoyed it about as much as I think I could ever enjoy giving awards, but this year, I have been rubbed raw about the process for the last few weeks and I have to finally be honest with myself about the reasons why.
I hate the idea that the film year ends on December 1st for most critics in NY and LA. I hated it when my job was to see everything very early, and I hate it even more now that I try not to see everything early. The film year ends on December 31st, just like the calendar year. Anything new that I see before that date is going to be considered part of my film year, and it seems silly to wrap things up before that. I started to keep a running list all year long, and every single time I watch a new movie, I rank it instantly against everything else I’ve watched this year. It’s been a very helpful exercise for me. It makes me think about the year in movies every time I add a new film to the list and rank it. It makes me think about how I feel about these films, and over the course of a year, things move up and down the list for a variety of reasons. I see something a second time and it hits me differently or maybe I can’t stop thinking about something even after I’ve watched it a few times or I read something someone else wrote that reframes a film for me and I try watching it through their filter and it unlocks something or whatever the case… if we are honest as critics, we should be able to admit a fair degree of plasticity in our opinions.
List-making in general is something I find enjoyable when thinking about movies. I’ve been working on lists of my top 30 films from every year since I was born, and I’m making these lists with the perspective of, in many cases, decades and decades of living with these movies, thinking about them, allowing them to seep into me completely. These are not the same lists I would have made in 1972 or 1985 or 1993 or whatever. I’m not doing this for any particular reason. It’s just a way to let my brain unwind a bit between writing pages for the latest draft of The Top Secret Thing That is Totally Top Secret or new entries for The Last ‘80s Newsletter (You’ll Ever Need) or new Hip Pocket entries… it’s fun. I like thinking about why these films are important to me and which ones are the most important. I’m not telling you that any of my lists are the canon for “the best” films from each of these years. I’m just telling you that these are the films that stuck to me for any number of reasons. The further distance we get from a film year, the more perspective we have on it. My favorite things now are not necessarily the things that hit me at the moment, and I think there’s real value in talking about the way our feelings change as we live with movies over time. After I finished making all of those top 30 lists, I took the top film from each year, put them on one list, and ranked them against each other. It’s just a fun way to spend time thinking about my favorite films and why they are important to me, and I suspect Letterboxd is going to be one of the few social media sites where I stay truly active in the future.
None of this has much to do with current criticism of new releases, and I feel like LAFCA’s emphasis is firmly on the new. Which is fine. When I originally joined LAFCA, it was for one very specific reason. I wanted to be part of the organization that voted Brazil as the best film of the year before it was commercially released as a way of making an end-run around Universal, who still had not given it a release date because of an ongoing creative battle between Terry Gilliam and Sid Sheinberg. That move pressured Universal into releasing the film, which is one of my favorites, and that was something I always had in the back of my head. When I started applying to LAFCA, I was rejected several years in a row. It was an elaborate process, but once I was in, I looked forward to being part of the conversation with guys like Leonard Maltin and Bob Koehler and Stephen Farber, guys whose work I’d read for years and years.
What I really wish is that there was a professional guild for film critics that worked the way the Writers Guild works, a group that would actually protect critics and give them some kind of collective negotiating strength. As it stands, studios take all kinds of personal and punitive actions against critics for any number of reasons, and they grant access to things in a tiered system that tips the scales in their favor. If there was a real critics guild, we could easily force the studios to show things to people in a way that leveled the playing field… but I don’t see that happening because things are so cutthroat now. Any advantage anyone has for any reason is so important at a time when outlets are disappearing and jobs are drying up, so there’s no reason to try to make things fairer for other people. There’s no sense that we are all working to try to make the criticism business better, and in the end, that may be what finally left me feeling disconnected. If I don’t really care about awards, especially in an era where everything is treated as a precursor to a show I reeeeeeeeeally don’t care about, and if I don’t feel like the organization offers any kind of benefit to me as a critic, then I guess it’s time to tap out. This year was pretty much the year my critical career as a reviewer of new things ended, so why not put a bow on it and take a complete step back from the last vestige of my life as a working critic?
I spent a lot of time after Thanksgiving trying to catch up on movies before the LAFCA vote, and while I certainly enjoyed many of the films, I found it exhausting to pile in so many big movies in a short period of time. I like letting a movie breathe after I’ve watched it so I can chew on it a bit. I like watching things twice if I really like them. I have a process, and mainlining thirty films in two weeks isn’t it. I wish I’d made my mind up earlier in the season, but instead, I gave in to that panic and did exactly what I didn’t want to, watching four or five films a day. I ended up hitting a wall when I watched two films back to back that emotionally annihilated me, and I think it was that exact double-feature that finally made up my mind. This is not how I want to watch movies. This does not serve anyone, and it does not give these movies their due respect.
The LAFCA vote took place on December 11th, and the results are available for your perusal. As always, and as with pretty much every organization, there are choices I like and choices I don’t. If you’re curious about what I think of the year so far, you can always follow me at Letterboxd. I don’t think I would have made any difference being in the room. The results would have shaken out the same way. I wish LAFCA well, and in the future, if there’s ever an organization in LA that works to empower critics as a group, I would be interested in revisiting the notion of membership in something. For now, I’ve pretty much cut loose the last thing that connected me to my previous professional life as a working film critic.
So then what am I now? I’m working on a project for television, and I’m working with people who have treated me incredibly well as a creative partner, people whose work is so good that I am intimidated every time I turn in a draft. I’ve been recording test episodes for my next podcasting venture. And I’m always working on the ‘80s newsletter project. I’m a guy who makes stuff and who talks about stuff other people make. There are a lot of people who now occupy this weird kind of middle ground and more than ever, I feel like I’ve found a balance that works, one that won’t burn down my creative efforts but that allows me to keep my critical skills sharp. I appreciate all of you who continue to support me as I work to rebuild my various outlets while making the most of this new opportunity. This long strike summer was difficult for any number of reasons, but it feels like I’m continuing my work relatively unscathed. Consider me relieved.
This year, I will give you one newsletter per week here at Formerly Dangerous. Those newsletters will cover all sorts of different topics, but you’ll get something in the inbox every single Wednesday starting January 10th.
For now, I’ve been keeping my brain busy with a few different things. For example…
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