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Smug Film Podcast Episode #2 – Movie Theaters (4/14/14)
1:11:24 | View on iTunes | Download Mp3
On this episode, I am joined by fellow Smug Film contributors Jenna Ipcar and Ned Martin. We discuss all things movie theaters—from our best and worst movie theater experiences, to the best theaters we’ve ever been to. As always, we go on tangents along the way, take a quick break for a movie joke by comedian Anthony Kapfer, and close the show with questions from our mailbag.
If you have a question for the show, leave it in the comments or email us at Podcast@SmugFilm.com.
If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to subscribe on iTunes, and leave a rating and a comment on there as well. Doing this helps us immensely as far as our ranking on there, which is what allows people to be able to discover us. Word of mouth is always best of all though, so spread the word!
By the way, the beautiful painting above is by artist Marianne Kuhn, and it is called Naro Cinema Norfolk VA. You can see the full painting and buy prints of it at FineArtAmerica.
Movie Stuff Referenced in this Episode:
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Posted in All Posts, Podcast Episodes
Tagged adam mckay, akiva schaffer, alfred hitchcock, andrzej zulawski, anthony hemingway, anthony kapfer, batman and robin, blue velvet, bob saget, boogie nights, bryan singer, catherine hardwicke, charles herman-wurmfeld, chloe pelletier, christopher nolan, cinema podcast, classic monster shirt, classic scifi, classicscifi.com, clerks, clerks 2, cody clarke, dario argento, david gordon green, david lynch, diary of a country priest, dirty work, dog day afternoon, dr. strangelove, eric wareheim, ernest b schoedsack, film podcast, frankenstein shirt, frankenstein shirts, friday the 13th part 3, friday the 13th part iii, gary ross, george lucas, goodfellas, guillermo del toro, hard eight, harry d'abbadie d'arras, hot rod, housebroken clothing, inferno, jacques tati, jenna ipcar, jerry schatzberg, joe dante, joe dante pacific rim, joel schumacher, ken loach, kevin smith, king kong, lee tamahori, magnolia, martin scorsese, merian c. cooper, mike judge, monster shirt, monster shirts, movie joke, movie jokes, movie podcast, naked lunch, naked lunch the simpsons, ned martin, night of the living dead shirt, office space, pacific rim, pacific rim joe dante, panic in needle park, paul thomas anderson, phenomena, playtime, possession, psycho, punch drunk love, raging bull, red tails, rehearsals, rehearsals cody clarke, rick alverson, robert bresson, roland klick, run home slow, scarecrow, scifi shirts, sidney lumet, simpsons, smug film, smug film podcast, smugfilm, smugfilm podcast, snow angels, stanley kubrick, star wars, star wars: the phantom menace, steve miner, superman returns, talladega nights, ted brenner, the cat o nine tails, the comedy, the dark knight, the dark knight trilogy, the edge, the hammer, the hunger games, the phantom menace, the shining, the simpsons, the simpsons naked lunch, the wind that shakes the barley, tim & eric, tim & eric's billion dollar movie, tim and eric, tim heidecker, tony scott, top gun, twilight, ufo shirt, ufo shirts, white star, william a. wellman, wings
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On Exposition
There’s a great little story about how on the set of E.T., Spielberg slowly unwrapped a toy off camera to illicit a reaction from the young actor playing Elliott. I’ve always thought this story was a great way to explain how a filmmaker should approach exposition. Exposition is the easiest, most fun, and most misunderstood part of storytelling. But filmic exposition is generally stupid, because people are afraid of it.
Somebody once asked me, about my 50/50 Rule, “When making a movie, would you pay extra special attention to how it starts, since you lose interest in so many movies so fast?” The answer is decidedly no, because every frame of a movie is sacred and equally important. If you treat your entire movie like that, then you don’t need to spend extra attention to any one part of it. Exposition is too often just underestimated as something that has to be blown through in order to get to the fun stuff. To counteract this, the indies have bloated their exposition with way too much visual minutiae. You can build a ‘stark’, ‘oblique’, ‘atmospheric’ world with your story—you don’t need shots that hold too long on a girl as she wistfully puts on makeup.
Jurassic Park is my favorite exercise in exposition, and in a way, the entire movie is exposition.
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Posted in All Posts, Greg's Essays
Tagged 50/50 movie, 50/50 rule, back to the future, big, bill fichner, citizen kane, coen brothers, e.t., greg deliso, h.i. mcdonnough, indiana jones, jurassic park, m. night shyamalan, nicolas cage, raging bull, raising arizona, signs, smug film, smugfilm, spielberg, steven spielberg, the burbs, the dark knight, the joker, titanic, transformers
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Rest in Peace, Harold Ramis
Since we started this website, I’ve always felt like I was on a mission. A mission, despite the fact that, at the end of the day, nothing anybody says about art matters at all. Art is an individual experience—even in a group, it’s an individual experience. I can’t convince you of anything, and you can’t convince me. And it should be that way. But right now, fuck all that.
Ghostbusters is high art. Ghostbusters should be thought of the way the Mona Lisa is—as this sacred, unachievable thing forged from genius—because that’s exactly what it is, and it’s been my mission to explain that concept. There are only about a dozen great movies, and these movies are untouchable. They are perfect in every way, and they represent the ultimate synthesis of story, performance, writing, color, music, and all the myriad elements that come together to make whatever is on screen at any given moment the perfect thing.
People don’t give a fuck about art. They like things all willy-nilly and just regurgitate whatever fucking nonsense someone says about why Raging Bull is brilliant. Fuck all that noise. Movies like Ghostbusters are advanced. They do all of the artistic shit Raging Bull does, but for the purpose of entertainment, of making you soak into the movie. That is beautiful, that is advanced, that is transcendent, and that could only happen a dozen times in about a century because it’s insanely hard to do.
And Ghostbusters isn’t even his best movie.
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Posted in All Posts, Greg's Essays
Tagged animal house, as good as it gets, bedazzled, bill murray, caddyshack, chevy chase, danny noonan, ghostbusters, greg deliso, groundhog day, harold ramis, harold ramis death, harold ramis rip, helen hunt, jack nicholson, multiplicity, national lampoon, orange county, playboy magazine, raging bull, rip harold ramis, rodney dangerfield, sctv, second city, smug film, smugfilm, snl, ted knight, vacation
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Rocky vs. Raging Bull
Since Hollywood decided to do Rocky vs. Raging Bull, I figured I’d do the same.
Stories are a template. For practical purposes, the story is the plot (it actually isn’t, but just bear with me). A story is only as good as the way it’s told. Rocky has a decent story, a story we’ve heard a million times, but it’s told with care and craftsmanship. Rocky, the story, executed as the film Rocky, is transcendent—whereas Rocky, the story, executed as the film The Mighty Ducks, is okay I guess. Raging Bull is not a story—it’s information about a guy, dressed up stylistically. That doesn’t make it bad, but, it makes the two difficult to compare.
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Posted in All Posts, Greg's Essays
Tagged after hours, copland, goodfellas, greg deliso, grudge match, indiana jones, john alvidsen, lean on me, martin scorsese, raging bull, robert de niro, robert deniro, rocky, rocky vs raging bull, smug film, smugfilm, sylvester stallone, the karate kid, the mighty ducks
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My Streets: The Best ‘So Bad It’s Good’ Movie You’ve Never Seen
My Streets (2009)
When I was sixteen, I made an extremely bad feature-length film called The Velvet Autumn. It’s two hours and thirty minutes, and it makes absolutely no sense.
The reason it doesn’t make any sense is because at that time in my life, I was obsessed with the visual construction of a movie, and I didn’t yet understand that you don’t just construct images, you construct them in a way that expresses a story. I was consciously working off of the Raging Bull hypothesis—that you create the images first, and your story will come later. Scorsese did a better job at this than me, although he had access to much better materials and had way more experience. But in any event, The Velvet Autumn, and Raging Bull alike, are proof positive that the hypothesis is incorrect—you gotta have the story first.
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Posted in All Posts, Greg's Essays
Tagged bad movies, best bad movie, best bad movies, birdemic, funny bad movies, greg deliso, jimmy angel, justin kady, my streets, my streets 2009, my streets movie, raging bull, roger ebert, smug film, smugfilm, so bad it's good, so bad it's good movies, the room, the velvet autumn, troll 2, unintentional comedies, unintentional comedy
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