5 Comments

This was a phenomenal bit of writing. Thank you.

Expand full comment

I know this won't necessarily be about movies, but it's something I've been thinking about, so I apologize in advance in this isn't what people want to read.

With regards to everything, I think the best thing we can do as people is get offline and get back into real life and live in that real world again. Social media is a disease. It is a cesspool. Without sports news, twitter has devolved into chaos, and it turns even good people into raving lunatics filled with hate for those with whom they disagree. I logged off twitter yesterday. Maybe for good. Who knows. Probably at least until football is back.

I just can't take the hate anymore. I can't take the Left or the Right. I don't like Trump and would never vote for him, but when people I've thought of as good people compare him to Hitler and honestly mean it, as someone who has a history degree and understands who Hitler was and what he did, the lack of historical context is flabbergasting. People on the Left comparing Trump to Hitler is a great disservice to those murdered in the Holocaust. It sullies their deaths. And the same goes for the good people I know on the Right who compare Bernie to Stalin or Mao. It's insane. It is literally, not figuratively, insane. Stalin and Mao killed even more people than Hitler; their own people! How is Bernie anything like them? Words have no meaning anymore. People have no concept of historical perspective. Everyone and everything they disagree with is "fascist" or "commie." I'm burnt out on social media and how it transforms people into the worst reflections of themselves. I've tried straddling this line and trying to make peace and trying to get people to see reason. No one wants reason. They want anger and invective. They can have it.

George Floyd shouldn't have died. Same goes for Philandro Castile. Daniel Shaver shouldn't have died, either. If you want to see what it looks like when a cop executes someone in cold blood, if you have the stomach, you can find that video. These men died needless, pointless deaths because of individuals who have little regard for human life. I don't condemn entire police forces for these deaths, but I do hold them responsible for not doing enough to weed out unfit officers in their ranks.

The two best things we can do to immediately change this situation for the better is:

1. Comprehensive psychological testing of all LEO recruits before they're allowed to join and then every year they're on the job to weed out those who are not fit for service

2. Immediate de-militarization of an increasingly militarized police force. No more purchasing military hardware. What the hell do police departments need with armored personnel carriers and .50 caliber sniper rifles? Giving them military equipment sends the wrong message. Their mission is to protect and serve, not to fight America's enemies abroad.

Do these things, and in time we should find a police force more in tune with its purpose. Enough with paying lip service to the problem. It's time for solutions. I hope everyone is well. Take my advice about living online. Log off. I'm feeling itchy today about it, which tells me that it really is an addiction, a dopamine addiction, like some doctors say it is. Think about that. Think about what social media is doing to you psychologically and chemically in the same way drugs or alcohol work in your brain.

Again, apologies for not talking about movies. I'm sad. I'm angry. I want the world to reflect how I've always seen it, where the only thing that matters and what defines us is the choices we make.

Expand full comment

"But we can ask ourselves if entertainment is meant to be a mirror of the way things are or if it’s a way of showing the world the face we wish it wore or if it’s supposed to be a way to vent our darker natures in a safe way or if it’s a combination of all those things."

Ideally, it's all of those things. If it's not, you don't ever get DO THE RIGHT THING in the summer of '89 while we were all riding high on LAST CRUSADE, BATMAN & DEAD POETS SOCIETY. DO THE RIGHT THING melted our brains that summer if we were fortunate enough to see it.

But look at that summer, you get DO THE RIGHT THING, you get Tim Burton reinventing the comic book movie, Spielberg and Lucas pairing Ford and Connery to kick Nazi ass one more time, Robin Williams making us give a shit about poetry. We get WHEN HARRY MET SALLY & PARENTHOOD. THE ABYSS & UNCLE BUCK. And then we get an indie brain melter of a different kind in SEX, LIES AND VIDEOTAPE.

We got a taste of almost everything that summer. It was a perfect summer for entertainment. We need more summers like that. With more voices. We need escapism. We need realism. We need surrealism. We need laughter. We need it all. If you just tell one kind of story, it stops being engaging entertainment and is just a product. Product doesn't inspire. But a summer like '89 does inspire a generation of many kinds of filmmakers and storytellers. I know people who became actors just because of Robert Sean Leonard in DEAD POETS SOCIETY. Or they became teachers. And Burton helped take superhero movies to a new level. Writers are still chasing recreating the next WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. And Spike and Soderbergh inspired a generation to tell their stories.

Expand full comment

"Self-medicating with movies" is easily the best description I can think of for what many of us are doing just to get by. Be safe, Drew.

Expand full comment