the warrior of glamour vs. hollywood

on the comment board of the jonas brothers post, it has been suggested that we here at the bc are "anti-hollywood" and that we are predisposed to disliking any product that comes from it. although we sometimes are a tad overcritical toward hollywood pictures,(because we think with the talent and the method of production they could do better) to say we are anti-hollywood really couldn't be further from the truth.

see, i have pretty much spent the last ten years educating myself on film and film history and one of my primary tools has been the turner classic movies channel(with uncle bob osbourne) now anyone who has ever seen the lineup on a normal tcm evening should be able to see that what they offer is a small sampling of some of the best(and worst) of what hollywood has to offer. it is during the past decade that i have cultivated my love of the classic hollywood style and in particular the first golden age(roughly 1930-1945) my love for artists such as ernst lubitsch and george cukor and howard hawks and the like has grown to the point that i revere each of these men and their work as if they are gods in my own personal mythology.

what i love about these films is the fact that they weren't trying to sell themselves, they were just films sent out to theaters so that in two weeks they could be replaced by new ones. there is a sense of anarchy in the films of someone like preston sturgess, as if they were simply throwing ideas against a wall to see what stuck. films like his incredible palm beach story are zany, madcap pieces that often remind me of the best scenes from the recent output of the apatow gang in that there is such spontinaety that the viewer senses that alot of it was made up on the spot by really creative people in the moment(all the beard jokes in knocked up) this to me is the best of what hollywood has to offer, talented people using their talents to make really interesting works.

but that was old hollywood, and that still doesn't mean that i can't be anti hollywood now. this is true for the most part as it often seems to me that the work coming out of hollywood right now is meant for either product placement or merchandising rights, as if just making a good movie is not enough. and that is what it comes down to most of the time, hollywood pumping out trash for public consumption so it can make a buck. but like all things there are various sides to it, and i have to say that occasionally hollywood puts out some good material. right now i dig the apatow productions, although dewey cox makes me fearful that like their idols such as hal ashby they are losing touch with the audience that they seem to portray so effectively in knocked up. i also really really dig pta and respect guys like scorcese for being able to bring unique personal visions to the screen while still within the confines of the studio system.

but all that doesn't really answer the question, "is beer cannes anti-hollywood?" the answer to that is a little tricky because i feel that for one to be anti something, they must have its structural opposite accounted for and therefore must be pro something. we here at beer cannes are pro-cinema. and that is about it.

usually, i try not to make judgements based on labels given to films like hollywood, indie, french, bollywood...etc, i prefer to enjoy them in the moment which in a way is like a vacuum that allows for a world where only the piece in question and i coexist. we begin the viewing process with no real sense of judgement about what we are watching.

and this is glorious as it allows us to put all forms of the medium that is electronic pictoral representation on the same plane to start. that is why here at the bc we can hype a film like joe wisner's structuralist masterpiece bacon or zach proctor's historical leaning johnson county fair and put them right next to a pan of the new batman or praise for aaron katz or hou hsiao hsien.

because to us, these things are all the same. just because bacon is not playing at the local multiplex does not make it less relevant in our eyes, as it is a work like any other that deserves its own specific careful consideration of its merits.

it took me forever to come to this point, as i too, used to kind of sneer at local films and video art and treat them as if they were somehow second class citizens in the abundantly large world of cinema. but then a funny thing happened...i started to try to do something.

some of you might remember a while back when mike scott and myself were forcing all of our people into viewings of our to date video masterpiece esteban sunglasses:the warrior of glamour. it was around this time, when viewing it with friends that i began to realize that the line i believed existed between home films made with one's buddies and standard studio fare in fact did not exist. i began to notice that at points during our film, we were eliciting the same types of laughs that something like ron burgundy does. we had made something for public consumption(however small the public) and it was being viewed and hopefully being thought about.

it was at this point that all the labels put on films became irrelevant to me. it was at this point that i became an advocate for going out and making your own low budget original shit, because it was no longer hollywood's latest release vs. shane white's reunion because those things are on the same side, they are the same thing. they were made with the same purpose in mind and that is to simply be seen.

so in answer to the question, no we are not anti-hollywood because hollywood doesn't come into our realm of consideration when dealing with film. when i say the names hawks, hitchcock, proctor, nolan, berg, wisner, godard, myers, hou, the one thing they all have in common is that i have seen their films in the last year. it's like, i can look at the art of picasso and then look at the work of scott grow and judge them both as works of art, because they are. ultimately in the beer cannes universe it's a simple equation:

batman=bacon.

so no we are not anti-hollywood because to me and my relatively small viewing public, i like to believe that esteban sunglasses is right there with them. the warrior of glamour is hollywood, baby. and we here at the bc don't ever hate ourselves.

so what does all this mean to the reader? probably not a whole hell of a lot other than i urge each and everyone of you to pursue your particular creative passions and i will as always offer thoughtful criticism without the slightest hint of snobbery because what you are doing is on a smaller scale. on this slice of the web universe there are no scales...because everything is phat to us. keep working and the beer cannes will keep working to blow good, interesting shit up.