Shooting Down Pictures

I spent hours more on this essay than I had done with any of the preceding ones.

I sort of want to wait to comment until I have something more substantive to say, but what the hell: those hours definitely show. I’ve been a pretty rotten citizen of the movie blogosphere lately, and this is the first one of your video essays that I’ve watched since you took on …And God Created Woman. I was intrigued by what you were doing then, but that was nothing compared to this. The way you’re using cinematic technique to add things to your essay that remain unsaid (I got a whole lot of “the critic and moviewatcher as participants in the filmmaking process” out of this one) is . . . yeah, it’s definitely inspirational: this is what I want to be doing.

And by the way: congrats on the marathon! My longest distance run has been stuck at 20 miles since many years ago BC (Before Cigarettes), but I remain optimistic that one day I’ll join the company to which you now belong.

Hi Andy – thanks much for saying what you said. Let’s just say that I watched a video essay that critic B. Kite shared with me and felt the need to kick it up a notch. I don’t think I can do this with every single vid essay, I just don’t have the time. But it does feel good to think that these essays are growing in sophistication.

As for the marathon, like the old Confucian adage says, “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” And maybe no cigarettes too. Ed Gonzalez used to be a smoker and he ran faster than I did.