Twitter Games & The NSFC Vote
So I decided to take the week off of Twitter when, shocker, a couple of writers decided to use one tweet of mine in a misleading way to make their point.
The issue was the NSFC choice of Goodbye to Language by Godard.
I tweeted (and the lower tweet precedes the higher in these clusters)…
These tweets were made within 90 seconds of one another. But both writers with an ax to grind (the high hat can get very sharp) chose not to include the first tweet, which clearly informs the second. One of the guys, Jason Bailey, didn’t even bother to quite the whole tweet, avoiding any indication of a continuing thought.
At least Kris Tapley included the entire tweet… but not the one leading to the one that seemed to upset him so.
But what neither writer bothered to do at all – as it might have contradicted their posturing – was to do what Richard Brody, a member of NSFC (MCN, by the way, is the affiliation for two members of the group) a straightforward guy, and a thoughtful film critic did. He asked for clarification on my position.
But first, more actual context…
I responded when I saw the tweet RTed here, which referred to the Lisa Schwarzbaum thread about the NSFC vote…
I would go into more detail on my reaction later. But Mr. Brody commented…
A few minutes later, he engaged again…
This apparently caught NYFCC member Bilge Ebiri’s eye…
And that’s where I left it. A pretty civil series of exchanges. No apparent urge by either Brody or Ebiri to get into a Twitter discussion about the mechanicals of either group. No one beating anyone to death. And no mention whatsoever about the effect of any of this on the award season.
The next day, prompted by Kris Tapley’s piece, I tweeted…
And one last comment…
It was unfortunate that Tapley felt compelled to lump me in with The Idiotic Scott Feinberg who tweeted that the vote made NSFC irrelevant and that the choice was “snobbish and elitist.” I think none of that. Bailey adds other voices who had strong opinions about why the NSFC choice was made.
In point of fact, I never ascribed motive to NSFC or their choice. Not once.
I had and have a concern about the most legitimate of critics groups in America having a membership of nearly 60 and the vote, apparently, coming down to 15 people. Really, I don’t consider any group that has that few people voting for an award and presenting it as from a branded group to be legit. As Richard Brody noted, these are the rules NSFC has followed for years. And I counter, again, that times have changed.
I recall discussions about traveling to New York for this event with a number critics who were/are members, including Roger Ebert and our own Michael Wilmington, and that it was like the swallows coming back to Capistrano to rebuild their nests and raise their young. But age, finance, employer interest, etc, have clearly changed how this works. And the by-laws emphasizing being on site for the vote seem archaic about now. And that would be true whether Boyhood, Godard, Interstellar or CitizenFour (etc, etc, etc) won this year. But that is a broader discussion.
Of course, chest-thumping Tapley praised his own co-worker’s take, “ADIEU TO LANGAGE may be the most National Society of Film Critics choice in the history of the National Society of Film Critics. Love them,” and gloated how Guy Lodge “gets it.” But if he wasn’t so busy trying to play “gotcha” with me, he would have realized that Guy and I had said practically the same thing in my very first tweet… the one he ignored so that he could get so indignant. “In a year where there is no obvious, singular choice, National Society of Film Critics picking Goodbye to Language as Best Film is glorious.”
The reason I am so often verbose is that I crave as much clarity as possible. Ironically, living on the internet is to live with being endlessly interpreted, as often incorrectly than not. There are few things I dislike as much as when someone willfully misinterprets something I wrote. And as the leading tweet in both of these pieces, I am aggrieved.
I love a good debate. Probably too much. And I am certainly guilty over the years of leaping to assume the meaning behind something and ultimately finding out I was wrong to presume. But I never seek to simplify the ideas of others when a more complex thought is right there in front of me, clear and obvious as the allegedly offensive one. That’s weak.
Four more days of not Tweeting to go… feeling pretty good about the choice right now. Sorry to those who were bored by this response.
Guy Lodge is not Tapley’s co-worker anymore, he writes for VARIETY these days. And he is a damn good writer, something that Tapley’s site is very much in need of. But having a self centered, egoistic prick for a boss was probably the reason he left.
I agree with you concerning voting being legitimate when you have less than 25 % of you membership voting. Hope they change the rules next year and tutor their members how to use skype 😉
There should be regular outliers of disagreement amongst the filmmakers of the guilds and the extreme film viewers of the critics.
In other words, statistically, for every Blind Side, there oought to be a Goodbye to Language. A lack of outliers indicates either an outlier year of total agreement (Schindler’s List) or a dishonesty in the process as one group or the other attempts to chase/predict/not-diverge from the perceived consensus. The filmmakers really have no motivation to be dishonest or chase critical recognition–except in the oscar for foreign films where they changed the rules to include up to three festival films that comprise the totality of foreign films critics have seen but are not representative of a country’s overall output just of the festival circuit of the moment–so it’s usually critics who try to be relevant by skewing their results towards a perceived consensus.
Nate Silver calls this behavior herding, and blames it for the bad poll results of the 2014 election. So congratulations NSFC for not herding and doing your own glorious thing independent of filmmakers awarding themselves. 🙂
I would think that if you accuse any group (or individual) of “jerking off,” you should be prepared for all manner of unpleasant responses.
I also think that “stupid and self-congratulatory” is indeed ascribing motive.
Mark: I appreciate the kind words about my writing, though the potshots at Kris — a loyal friend and supporter to whom I owe many of the opportunities I have subsequently been granted — are unmerited.
@GuyLodge: You’re welcome. 🙂 As for Tapley – allow me to have my own opinion, I may not know him personally, but you can certainly learn a thing or two about someone from his writing and the way he treats people who comment on his site. My apologies for making an assumption those were the reasons you left, it was uncalled for.