By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
Buff's bluff: what do today's screenwriters dislike?
David Anaxagoras, a recent UCLA MFA graduate in screenwriting and blogger, tackles the meaning of “film buff”, a phrase as pleasant to my ear as the word “flick” or road work outside my office window. His take… “To me, film buff implied a broad affinity for film in general — a wide ranging appetite for celluloid, be it Hollywood blockbuster, experimental, silent or new wave. Film buffs seem to love it all, almost indiscriminately. I’m not indiscriminate. I like what I like… Here’s my confession: I… managed to get through film school never having seen… The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, Apocalypse Now, Chinatown,
On the Waterfront, The Graduate, It’s a Wonderful Life, The French Connection, Platoon, Ordinary People,
and a whole bunch of other films you probably assumed… I had seen. I don’t want to watch these movies because I have strong suspicion they will bore the hell out of me… I don’t think a film buff has to pause the DVD and walk away from the TV three times just to get through a viewing of A Streetcar Named Desire— which I did (it was required viewing, and it damn near made me drop the class). If I’m going to watch a bad film, it’s going to be something very sci-fi and very cheesy… I have a strong suspicion that there are plenty of young Hollywood execs who also have not seen these films, but pretend they have… Is there really anyone out there who made it past the first 20 minutes of The English Patient? Didn’t think so… I’ll sneak an [oldie] in with every three or four Netflix discs. If I water it down like that, I might be able to take it.”