{"id":425,"date":"2012-03-05T08:02:40","date_gmt":"2012-03-05T16:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=425"},"modified":"2012-03-05T08:02:40","modified_gmt":"2012-03-05T16:02:40","slug":"podthoughts-how-did-this-get-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=425","title":{"rendered":"Podthoughts: How Did This Get Made?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nVital stats:<\/strong>
\nFormat: discussion of the various unbelievabilities of non-respected movies with comedians \u2014 and sometimes the filmmakers themselves
\nEpisode duration: 35m-1h30m
\nFrequency: biweekly (with previews on the weeks between)<\/p>\n

When I grew old enough to watch, I began watching films. When I grew old enough to read, I began reading film criticism. I\u2019ve never slowed in either pursuit, but only lately have I realized that I don\u2019t care if a movie is \u201cgood\u201d or \u201cbad.\u201d By that I mean not only that it doesn\u2019t matter to me if a critic, even one I read religiously, thinks a movie is good or bad \u2014 I figured that out first \u2014 but that it doesn\u2019t matter to me if I<\/em> think a movie is good or bad. We build no more rickety structures than opinions, instinctively slapping them together in the heat of the moment on foundations of shifting sand. Thumbing a picture up or down may make for a satisfying declaration of self \u2014 \u201cI feel this way about this movie, and moreover, I exist!<\/em>\u201d \u2014 but I need to hear more. I long to discuss film as an experience<\/em>, not as a mere object of acceptance or rejection \u2014 and I suspect, on some level, that you do too.<\/p>\n

How Did This Get Made?<\/a><\/em> [RSS<\/a>] [iTunes<\/a>] keys into that desire, though it doesn\u2019t announce its mission in quite those words. \u201cHave you ever watched a movie so terrible, so unwatchable, that it actually is amazing?\u201d its iTunes description asks. Admittedly, that question alone hardly gets my blood flowing; I felt forced long ago to, in the manner of Dave Erdman<\/a>, abandon enthusiasm for the intellectual and aesthetic dead end of the so-bad-it\u2019s-good. But I didn\u2019t replace it with undivided pursuit of \u201cthe good,\u201d since, when I try to get my mind around it to define it, the concept disperses like smoke. I began to conceive of all cinema as a circle, with the movies people call \u201cgood\u201d and the movies people call \u201cbad\u201d meeting at one particularly fascinating point. I downloaded a slew of this podcast\u2019s episodes when I heard Patton Oswalt, in a guest appearance on How Was Your Week?<\/em><\/a>, tell Julie Klausner that its crew doesn\u2019t just bitch and moan about movies they don\u2019t like; they treat their widely reviled subjects as sources of interestingness equal to their most respected brethren.<\/p>\n

This crew, by the way, comprises comedians Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas (who, we are often told, is not on Twitter). They watch recent and recent-ish releases like Sucker Punch<\/em><\/a>, Gigli<\/em><\/a>, and Battlefield Earth<\/em><\/a>, movies whose box-office performances vary but around all of whom the stink of failure hangs heavily. They sometimes discuss them with comedy-type guests like Matt Walsh [MP3<\/a>], Paul Rust [MP3<\/a>], and Maximum Fun\u2019s own Jordan Morris [MP3<\/a>]. In a series of clever coups for a show not about to dole out praise, they occasionally bring in guests involved in the production of the fortnight\u2019s film, like Greg Sestero, co-star and jack-of-all-trades on Tommy Wiseau\u2019s immortal The Room<\/em> [MP3<\/a>] or \u2014 wait for it \u2014 the star of Cool as Ice<\/em>, the one and only Vanilla Ice [MP3<\/a>]. (For the last fifteen minutes of the episode, anyway.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing at Maximumfun.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vital stats: Format: discussion of the various unbelievabilities of non-respected movies with comedians \u2014 and sometimes the filmmakers themselves Episode duration: 35m-1h30m Frequency: biweekly (with previews on the weeks between) When I grew old enough to watch, I began watching films. When I grew old enough to read, I began reading film criticism. I\u2019ve never […]<\/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-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-podthoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","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=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}