Those of you who know me or read this website with any regularity at all know one thing about me for certain: I hate movies.

Okay, that’s not true. I should rephrase it this way: I hate most movies.

What is sad about that statement is that I have actually loved movies for my entire life. I started making movies as soon as I had access to my friends’ parents’ video cameras. I’ve written movies. I studied film a bit as part of my undergraduate degree. I even considered going to film school.

But somehow, the film industry has managed to destroy all that. It started back in high school, when I realized, after watching U2’s concert film Rattle and Hum that I hated movie theaters (oh, and I also realized that U2 were self-important shite during that period). This was before the renaissance of theaters with stadium seating and amazing sound systems. This was in the era of tiny, uncomfortable seats, crammed into the backside of a crappy mall. That was the last movie I saw in a theater for many years, until college women I was interested in would convince me to go see a flick, or my friends and I could smuggle bags of wine into the theater and watch something totally ludicrous like Major League.

Simultaneous to the decline of theaters ran the decline of cinema. At some point, you realize that every big movie is the same. You remember that most popular actors are talentless and only there because of their good looks, freakishly large heads and tiny physical size that somehow plays well on celluloid (I used to live in Aspen; I’ve seen them in person). Also, at some point, somebody decided that every movie was going to be blue. They claimed it was a tribute to the lighting in “film noir” movies. It got boring very quickly.

I’m not denying the roots of drama here. I know there are x number of plots. I know the classic Western Civilization Narrative Traditions. But I’m not Ebert, here; I don’t go to movies expecting to love them. I’m Siskel, but alive: I expect it to suck. I’m rarely disappointed.

I know that we’ve seen a rebirth of sorts in film. Lots of Indy movies and quality productions sneak through the cracks. But let’s face it; they don’t play in the comfortable theaters and its just easier to watch them at home. But the exceptions to the rule of interminable suck are still out there. My buddy Gavin makes movies. He is a natural and gifted storyteller, and he doesn’t pay much attention to the conventions of popular cinema. He just imagines what he thinks would make a really cool movie and he gets to work. “Brass Tacks”:http://www.brasstacksthemovie.com is his first feature. I can’t wait to check it out. Gavin is unburdened by a lot of formal training and study, and motivated by telling a story with enthusiasm and knows how to be sure that the flick is packed with entertainment.

The reason for this little rant was that I read an article which reported that 2003 was a down year for the movie business. Of course, the article quotes some analyst as saying the problem isn’t so much 2003’s crop of movies, but the fact that 2002’s movie year was so huge. That may be, but I wonder if people are just waking up to the fact that movies suck.

Remember when the Dead Kennedys put out Frankenchrist? It had a song called “MTV Get off The Air,” a cantankerous, but sardonic, look at the state of the late-80s music business, from which I quote:

Sales are slumping
And noone will say why
Could it be they put out
One too many lousy records?

I tip my glass and say “cheers” in hopes that this may be the case. But the scary part is that, rather than up the quality on their features, Hollywood will most likely blame piracy and “the Internet” in the future. Be prepared for them to come out with as many barrels blazing as they have in the arsenal. It’s going to be a shitstorm.

Maybe I’m just bitter because I never pursued my so-called talents and ideas in movies and you can dismiss this whole mini-rant. But I don’t think I’m alone in my assertion that movies suck. I think I’ve just managed to cut myself off more successfully than most.

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