I am a great believer in ebb and flow.

There is a time to create. And a time to consume.

I don’t know that I have ever gone into the September festival season more ready to consume. I am HUNGRY.

I’ve already watched 3 different movies to prepare for La La Land. I had never seen Medicine for Melancholy. Now I have, in preparation for Moonlight.

As a busy person, seeing at least 4 or 5 movies for work each week, and having a 6-year-old, and a wife, and shooting interviews, etc, I sadly don’t often consume movies the way I once did. But I am throwing Blu-rays into the player every day lately. Coppola, Mel Brooks, Friedkin, Scorsese…

I am watching the cable networks I pay for every month with a vengeance. I’ve even watched some stuff in standard definition, stretched or shrunk to look like HD. Every movie seems to lead me to another movie that I haven’t seen in forever, or need to see for some reason.

And I am feeling very zen about work in general. I shouldn’t. But the idea has been settling in with me that work has a personal voice and we need — I need — to stop trying to see it through a single set of eyes that are not those of the artist. A chat with Derek Cienfrance last week prompted that reflection. We talked about what connects his films although I didn’t ask that question. He offered it up because it was important to his process and his choices. And his thoughts — about his real family and the family that presented itself while others were around — fit like a glove. And his feelings about his films, once confronted by others who saw them from a different perspective, were quite beautiful in their precision.

Then there is my work. My interviews. If you build it, 1,700 half hours will come of it, I guess.

I treasure the conversations that I have with artists. And I am not nearly worried enough about how many other people get to enjoy them. But each one is a surprisingly vivid memory.

And yet, we are all now surrounded by a parade of roundtables, actors talking to actors, podcasts and stunt talk shows, making my format, which was already obscure in this era, even more so. People are still very generous with their time, but it’s gotten harder to get some subjects that I want… even if the actually eyes and ears I can deliver are greater or at least equal to almost all non-big-network outlets.

But all that is more measuring. It misses the point. It’s an endless seduction, but I never started doing this to win the prize… to be #1. I believe in the work.

So the other day, I listened to some of the newer shows. Three or four. And they were fine. But they were missing something. They were missing that thing that makes me — for better or worse — me. I could never do what those hosts were doing. But then again, they could never do what I do.

I wrestled with this a couple years ago regarding Marc Maron, who I was friendly with before his podcast, and who I genuinely like. There are many reasons why his podcast is much more famous than my show(s). But a big part of that is just… Marc. I mean, I cringe listening to him talking to some people, not because he was terrible, but because I wished he knew more going into the interview. But what he doesn’t know is a big part of who he is. And that naiveté, from a man who is not at all naive, is a big part of the magic of his interviews.

I recently listened to a bunch of Howard Stern interviews and again… I would never, for a second, think to ask most of the questions he asks. For a guy who has been a star for decades, he asks a lot of rube (and rude) questions. But it works really well because people who go on his show are ready and willing to go there.

One guest, who I had a hard time with years ago, was so forthcoming and friendly… and I think it was the rhythm. He paced the person in a way with which they were comfortable. I, clearly, had not. And in the long view, that was fine.

What I do is what I do. It is part of me. There is no other version. And it’s not for everyone. And it’s not always supported by the biggest organization. But I treasure those moments like I treasure the moments when those same people like up the movie screen like a pinball machine (a great old one… not the new digital bullshit).

Getting back to movies, I realize that I get a little shy, then a little overly aggressive, about telling people about Pete’s Dragon. That movie is so much a product of David Lowery. There is no denying it. It is an intimate piece. And yet, it is still about an animated, sometimes-invisible dragon.

I am starving for the unexpected… the artistic… the silly… the banal… the passionate… the real… the fake… the movies.

When I caught The Martian on cable the other night, I realized that the film didn’t exist for me, aside from one-sheets, a year ago. And then, in a multiplex at TIFF, not quite expecting the world, this lovely, complex-but-not-showy work by a truly great director with a great cast and a script of a great idea came into my life. What a wonderful thing.

So I am going to The Church in The Mountains, then going to The Palace North of Buffalo to gorge myself on everything that I can consume. I want to fall in love. I want to be weighed down with hate. I want to wipe away tears I am embarrassed to shed and to quietly make faces in the third act hoping no one will notice (but secretly hoping someone will). I want to get poked in the eye and stroked on the… back.

It’s the movies I love. The people who make them. The tightrope walk that every movie truly is, successful or not.

Let’s go!

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