{"id":1167,"date":"2012-12-01T18:10:03","date_gmt":"2012-12-02T02:10:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1167"},"modified":"2012-12-01T18:10:03","modified_gmt":"2012-12-02T02:10:03","slug":"podthoughts-smoviemakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=1167","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: SMoviemakers"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><center><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/static.libsyn.com\/p\/assets\/d\/e\/f\/e\/defeb0093e31e9cb\/smoviemakersitunes.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" \/><\/center><\/p>\n<p><strong>Vital stats:<\/strong><br \/>\nFormat: Kevin Smith interviews the makers of films he likes<br \/>\nEpisode duration: 50m-2h30m<br \/>\nFrequency: erratic<\/p>\n<p>Finally, someone has given Richard Kelly a chance to explain himself. Actually, wait a second \u2014 he <em>had<\/em> a chance to explain himself, back on the <em>Donnie Darko<\/em> DVD commentary track. Or at least he had a chance to explain the movie \u2014 and to my great dismay, he did, with a sweaty, near-schizophrenic detail and consistency. But Kelly\u2019s appearance on <a href=\"http:\/\/smodcast.com\/channels\/smoviemakers\/\"><em>SMoviemakers<\/em><\/a> [<a href=\"http:\/\/smodcast.com\/channels\/smoviemakers\/feed\/\">RSS<\/a>] [<a href=\"http:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/smoviemakers-smodcast-com\/id409706073\">iTunes<\/a>] happened years later, after the world had already sneered his follow-up, the chaotically paranoid <em>Southland Tales<\/em>, into an early grave. Say what you will about the coherence of Kelly\u2019s movies; they\u2019re <em>something<\/em>, or at least they aspire to that state. My memories of <em>Donnie Darko<\/em> remain as hauntingly askew as the film itself, and as for <em>Southland Tales<\/em>, well, J. Hoberman and Manohla Dargis don\u2019t win themselves over. I never would have expected a guy like Kevin Smith to lend Kelly a sympathetic ear, but so he does on the debut episode of this, his filmmaker-on-filmmaker interview podcast. And in a certain maligned-auteur-on-maligned-auteur way, the invitation makes perfect sense.<\/p>\n<p>Whenever I bring up the maligning of Kevin Smith, I ask myself whether I\u2019ve done my share of that maligning. Alongside many cinephiles of my generation, I thrilled to <em>Clerks<\/em> and everything it revealed about the potential of micro-budget independent filmmaking in the nineties. But like several other of the subsequent movement\u2019s leading lights, Smith has arguably proven damp cinematic powder. Even a picture like <em>Chasing Amy<\/em>, regarded as one of his strongest efforts, falls victim to both a half-hearted interest in craft and an unpalatably thorough seediness. Smith himself admits, as a born writer and talker, to never finding film a particularly good fit. With the advent of podcasting, which made possible his flagship program <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2010\/02\/28\/podthoughts-colin-marshall-smodcast\">SModcast<\/a> and its countless spin-offs, he may at last have found his medium. <em>SMoviemakers<\/em> goes up a level by sitting him down with other directors, and ones he admires, thus harnessing his considerable drive as a film fan and his experience (even if he disclaims real skill) as a filmmaker.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.maximumfun.org\/2012\/12\/01\/podthoughts-colin-marshall-smoviemakers\">at Maximum Fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vital stats: Format: Kevin Smith interviews the makers of films he likes Episode duration: 50m-2h30m Frequency: erratic Finally, someone has given Richard Kelly a chance to explain himself. Actually, wait a second \u2014 he had a chance to explain himself, back on the Donnie Darko DVD commentary track. Or at least he had a chance [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1167"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1169,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1167\/revisions\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}