Nordling here.
I’ve been writing, off and on, for Ain’t It Cool News for 15 years now. If I recall correctly, my first article was for a review of CHICKEN RUN, but I’d been reading AICN, participating in Talkback, and hanging out in the chatroom since 1997. I did it for the love of movies, and for the love of great conversations about movies, and for the friendships that formed through those conversations and interactions. A lot of great things have happened to me because of Ain’t It Cool, and when Harry hired me to write for him officially in 2010, covering news, reviews, and the occasional advocacy editorial, I was (and still am) overjoyed. I feel privileged to get to write about what I love, and I thank Harry, Eric, Steve, and Jeremy for their friendship, advice, and encouragement. I intend for that to continue.
It’s the beginning of a new year, and as many of us sometimes do, we reassess and examine our place in the world, and where we want to be in it. I can’t remember a time when movies weren’t a part of my life. For me, movies aren’t a drug. They are as essential as breathing. Bullshit hyperbole? Yeah. But as I write this, I’m looking at my wall of movies, reading the titles, and as my mind is wont to do, remembering each of those movies not simply as remembered moments in a theater but as moments in my life. There’s RIO BRAVO. I remember sitting down in my living room, and watching that one with my dad, who was the biggest John Wayne fan I knew (to the point that my middle name, Wayne, was directly inspired by his movies). There’s ROCKY – one winter night in 1976, my dad and mom, with a bunch of his friends and their wives, went to a midnight showing, and dragged the kids along because they couldn’t get a sitter that late at night. I remember seeing Adrian making her way to the ring, saying the magic words to Rocky, and me thinking, “That’s what love is,” and how I’ve applied that standard to my relationships for the rest of my life.
There’s ALIEN, which, sadly, I didn’t get to see in the theater that summer of 1979. Instead, my mom and dad bought me a one of those photo story books – like a comic book, but with shots from the film – that Christmas, which I read until it was completely tattered, and I didn’t see the movie until cable a year later. There’s SPEED, the first movie I saw with my wife, at a double feature with AIRHEADS, of all movies. GONE WITH THE WIND, my wife’s favorite film. The LORD OF THE RINGS Trilogy. They all have memories attached to them, and as I look over the wall, I realize that I’m not really collecting movies. I’m collecting snippets from my life – remembrances from my past, and the potential for new ones in my future. Nostalgia is a wicked drug. I chart my life through movies. I’m weird like that.
Patton Oswalt’s weird like that too, as his wonderful new book SILVER SCREEN FIEND proclaims. Full disclosure – Patton’s been a friend to Ain’t It Cool since practically the site’s beginning, and he, like we here are, is a rabid movie fan. SILVER SCREEN FIEND isn’t about that, exactly. What it is is a story of a man who makes peace with his addiction and obsession with cinema, but in a larger sense it’s about how we navigate our confusing world and how, unlike in movies, there isn’t one single moment that defines us. How art is meant to be savored, and how a cinematic catharsis can be just as life-changing as any major event in our lives. One of the most important periods of Patton Oswalt’s life was in the latter half of the 1990s, when he was finding and nurturing his voice in comedy clubs, or in writing and acting gigs, while in between feeding his junkie movie habits at the New Beverly (a cinema I’d dearly love to visit, if it’s anything like the Alamo Drafthouse).
There is no one lightning bolt moment for Patton Oswalt where everything becomes instantly clear. Instead, he describes singular moments and events (calling them “Night Cafés”, based on the seminal Vincent Van Gogh painting), both small and large, which caused him to either make a course correction, or to figure out a way to ride the tides of his life. It’s an intensely personal work, and there are moments in the book that I recognized in myself, although our life paths couldn’t be more different. For Oswalt, constant motion was key – swim or die. Adapt or drown. You can be comfortable when you’re finished, which will be never if you truly want to make art. He refined his craft, let his experiences shape him, and used those moments instead of being used by them. That’s a rare thing, no matter what the movies say. For many of us, we only realize those moments in the rearview mirror, when it’s too late to do anything about them. While SILVER SCREEN FIEND is about the movies, it’s also about how we can get lost in the dreams of others and forget to fulfill our own dreams. It takes a truly disciplined soul to do that, and SILVER SCREEN FIEND was a book I really needed to read right now.
I’ve wanted to make art all my life. It’s always been a war between my dreams and my complacency. It’s a hard thing to write, especially in this world of constant distractions and noise. Still, there is no voice as loud and as incessant as the one in your head, the one telling you to step away from the keyboard, or the canvas, or the guitar, and stop documenting life and simply live in it. Except, you don’t really live in it. Your apathy and disconnect keep that from happening. And before you realize it, years have passed. They may have been grand years, years full of loved ones entering your life, and happiness. And yet, there is that place of disquiet, where you know you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and what makes it worse is that eventually you get numb to it. Great art isn’t made by the satisfied ones. Art is made by the hungry. And no matter if you’re 25 or 45 or 85, the minute you get comfortable is the minute that your art dies. It’s a painting on a hotel wall of some trees and a pond, provoking nothing, and simply filling space.
SILVER SCREEN FIEND is about that moment when an artist decides that imagination is a wonderful thing, and meaningless without the work to make those ideas and visions into reality. That living other artists’ dreams is nothing if you can’t live your own. And finally, it’s about appreciating those other dreams for what they are, allowing them to inspire you and to challenge you, but not letting them keep you back. I have a lot of friends (and I’ve been guilty of this myself) who binge-watch movies, or keep an annual tally of everything they’ve seen, as if it’s a race. I can’t do that. When I go to a film festival, I can’t do more than 3 movies a day if I can help it, because I don’t feel like I’m giving the film I saw the proper attention and weight. Even at Butt-Numb-A-Thon, which is an event that I love to attend every year, it becomes a struggle, especially at the late hours of the night when the movies start to blend together. I love going to BNAT, and I’ll keep going if I can. But I also know that BNAT doesn’t do me much good if I want to examine a movie on its own merits; it’s just too intensive an environment for that.
But there’s something else that SILVER SCREEN FIEND helped me understand, and I’ve realized something about myself, and even as it hurts to write, I cannot deny that it’s true, no matter how badly I want it to be otherwise.
I'm not a critic.
Some people say that a critic is a dispassionate examiner of art, its impact on society, and while critics can also be advocates for new, exciting works of art, they must also point out when that art fails to achieve its purpose. I'm finding it very difficult, lately, to do that second part. I can't be dispassionate. I approach movies (and most other art) from a personal place, and while that may seem interesting to me, it reads very self-centered and solipsistic to others. Frankly, no one cares what happened in my past that caused me to react to a piece of art, and I have to learn to separate my personal nature from my writing. That's becoming harder to do for me, and I no longer want to pretend at a role that doesn't suit me.
I read many other film writers I admire, like Jeremy, Steve, Eric, Harry, or Karina Longworth, Amy Nicholson, or Drew McWeeny, or Devin Faraci, or Daniel Carlson, or David Ehlrich, and many others too numerous to mention, and I admire their work ethic and skill and their ability to break down a film and still convey excitement and appreciation. It frustrates me because I frankly can't devote the time and energy to this passion that I'd like. I love movies, and I'll be writing a ton this coming year about the great movies I see, and hopefully talk to many people who share that passion. But I can't help but think that, in the end, this is all some hobby, and that I'll be a chronic appreciator without adding anything interesting to say about, well, anything.
I want to be able to write about any film I see, good or bad, if it inspires a reaction in me. But what I do isn't criticism. I don't quite know what it is. Maybe it's a kind of advocate - advocating for cinema I'd like to see, and appreciating the cinema that I love and enjoy. It's getting more difficult to make the words flow, and I hate it. I hate slogging through a difficult piece, but I love the joy that comes when I complete it.
I've wanted to be a writer all my life. But it's time to stop wanting to be one, and, you know, actually be one. I have stories in my mind, things I want to experience, and I need to read more and get out of my comfort zone a bit. I need to stop looking backward and start looking forward. I still intend to write about movies, still intend to write for Ain't It Cool as long as Harry will have me. But I have to come at it from a place of passion, or it's not going to work. In SILVER SCREEN FIEND, Patton Oswalt states, matter-of-factly, “Movies should be a drop in the overall fuel formula for your life. A fuel that should include sex and love and food and movement and friendships and your own work. All of it, feeding the engine. But the engine of your life should be your life.” Or, to quote a beloved movie, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
That’s goddamn right.
Enjoy every movie.
Nordling, out.
