Friday, April 25, 2008

The Perils of Lampooning the Successful

I don't show it much here but there are some people in Hollywood who strike me as complete hacks. I don't know how they made it and their continued success confounds me.

Here's a good example of why I don't write about it much.

You end up looking like a whiny little bitch suckin' on sour grapes.

I don't know if his appraisal of how Apatow and his crew makes movies is accurate--i.e., I don't know if they're largely improvised--but most of his gripes seem to concern the sort of details that you would care about if you were a student at a film school, and especially if you were unsuccessful in real life. (Not saying that's true, just saying that's what it sounds like.)

Well, that and that Apatow uses the same people in his movies, probably people he's friendly with.

Duh.

You know, like Kevin Smith, Orson Welles, Frank Capra...

That's the thing, you could deconstruct just about any filmmaker--any artist this way. I could do it with Frank Capra. Vivaldi was accused of writing the same concerto 500 times. Etc.

4 comments:

  1. Aw. After a quick scan, I thought you were going to diss Orson Welles. And I was totally into that. I don't get Orson Welles. I never have.

    His genius seems. To be. Pausing in completely inappropriate. Places in his lines.

    So does William Shatner, but I don't hear anybody calling HIM a genius.

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  2. He paused more as he got older...and fatter.

    I have some insane theories about Welles--and some about Shatner, who, if not a genius, is at least a sort of meta-celebrity.

    But you can roast anyone, is the point.

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  3. I loved Superbad . More than Knocked Up and the latter had Loudon Wainwright!

    We'll see if I retain those feelings upon review later this year.

    But Superbad was such a dead on parody/homage/just-plain-better teen sex comedy than the ones of my youth....

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