Few things in life are as glorious as being able to talk about movies with a monumental level of ease and prowess. I know this because I’m able to talk about movies with a monumental level of ease and prowess. Some of the lesser informed peons who infect this planet see my broad movie knowledge as meaningless. When I spy on them hear them talk about me, they keep saying I’m “stuffy” and “snobby.” It’s cute that they so easily confuse “stuffy” and “snobby” with “brilliant” and “educated.”
Now, talking about books isn’t always sufficient to impress total strangers (and family and friends for that matter). Therefore, a great tactic to make yourself popular is to talk about movies. One of the great benefits of behaving this way is that your friend and acquaintance group will whittle itself down to only the important people. Speaking for myself, I’ve drastically reduced the number of people who’ll talk to me by employing these methods. While some people might find this depressing, rest assured that it’s a great sorting technique, and the useless people will remove themselves with minimal effort on your part. You’ll then be left with no one but sycophants intellectual admirers. After all, friends are for poor people.
So, lesson one is to distinguish between movies and films. Boorish, lower class twerps watch movies. Educated elites watch films. While I could go into a mind-blowingly deep explanation that would help you distinguish movies from films, I’ll give you the shorthand: if you feel happy after watching something, it was a movie. If you feel like a black hole opened up inside you and has removed all the joy from your life, you’ve watched a film and are now a better person.
Unfortunately, movies are much more popular than films (probably has something to do with low IQ viewers), so you’ll have to resign yourself to watching movies from time to time to help you tolerate the aforementioned intellectual peons. Why? Because that’s how you lure people in. Then you stun them with your razor-sharp intellect that never uses clichés, especially in writing.
Of course, since someone will inevitably bring up popular movies, you have to indulge these intellectual lightweights much like you might indulge a toddler who wants to show you how he can use a fork without fatally stabbing himself in the throat. You can use this to your advantage to segue smoothly into a lecture about films. For example:
Intellectual Lightweight: I really like superhero movies. I used to be torn between DC and Marvel, but Marvel’s knocked it out of the park.
You: Yes. I’ve watched a few of those Marvel movies. If diabetes could somehow morph into entertainment, it would probably look like Marvel movies. Except more watchable. *aristocratic laugh* I mean, what’s there to talk about? Let me tell you all about this independent Albanian film I saw that all took place in an abandoned outhouse. I’m going to go into excruciating detail, so pay attention.
Your social standing will rise so quickly you’ll feel like you climbed Mount Everest, reached the summit, and then built a higher mountain out of other people’s broken dreams.
But to achieve such a standing, there are certain elements of films one must understand in order to talk about them. I’ll provide a brief list along with an explanation for each:
- Long Shots of People Staring: Amateurs think dialogue is essential to filmmaking. All you really need to do is place the camera in front of someone and have that person stare into space for ten-minute segments broken only by shots of dying stick insects. This behavior engaged the viewer at such a high level that I feel myself getting smarter just by telling you this.
- Plots Are for Weaklings: Pretty self-explanatory. In fact, the more understandable the movie is, the more likely it will turn your brain into wood shavings.
- Unique Soundtrack: Some of you who think John Williams and Howard Shore are great composers are clearly new to the film world. The best composers are people you’ve never heard of who use unique instruments to convey raw emotion. For example, Wilfred Mackenzie composed a beautiful score comprised entirely of him smashing cockroaches on his stove with his forehead. The fact that he didn’t win an Oscar makes me physically sick.
- Really Deep Dialogue: I know I said earlier that dialogue isn’t essential. That’s still true, and I’m still right. But if you do use dialogue, make sure it reeks of deep psychological insight. Also, it’s vital that such dialogue seem as close to how real people speak as possible. Here’s a modest dialogue exchange:
“The coldness has seeped into my being. And I cannot expect that the vicarious nothingness I feel will help me simulate my own reality.”
“Try as I might, I cannot reconcile the coldness you feel. The darkness that supersedes my essence engulfs the illusion of my reality. Together, we must exercise the absence of choice to fully immerse ourselves in the impending sacrilege.”
If everyone wrote dialogue that way, all wars would end tomorrow. To give you the inside scoop, that’s an excerpt from a movie I’m writing that’s already been rejected by twenty brain-dead producers who have no sense of art.
In the end, the best thing for you to do is avoid any popular movies much like you should avoid an orphaned raccoon with leprosy. Why waste two hours of your life being entertained by superheroes when you could be getting depressed about a film that’s three hours of someone staring at a pile of acorns?
Well, I’m off to watch another film. When I’m done, I’ll be even smarter and even more humble than I already am.
Photo by Jake Hills on Unsplash
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It IS a shame about Wilfred…
The world is a sad, sad place.