Twitter can be the most extraordinary prompt of creative ideas, partly because you often come in in the middle of someone’s stream of consciousness: if you miss the beginning, you can miss the context of a single 140-character post. Like the other day, when I saw that filmmaker Errol Morris had tweeted:
Why are people interested in film? I must be missing something.
It turns out (if you look at previous tweets) that he was talking about the medium of celluloid versus the medium of digital, and wondering why people are interested in hearing the technical details of how he shoots his movies.
But as a standalone question, it’s so glaringly obvious as something that needs to be discussed, and I don’t think we ever have here before. It’s clearly to be taken as a given that anyone reading this site is interested in film as a way of telling stories and as an entertainment, but why?
Why are you interested in film?
What is it about The Movies that enthralls you? What keeps you coming back for more? What drew you in in the first place?
I hope it’s clear from my writing over the years here that I was initially drawn to movies as a child and a teenager because of the escapism and the spectacle, and that I still love that as long as it’s connected to a good story about intriguing characters. And that I am also fascinated by looking at movies in their larger cultural contexts, and by figuring out what makes some movies resonate with mass audiences and what makes some movies fail to click with them.
You?
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTD sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
I’ve always been interested in film since I was a lil squirt lol. But because of my introverted behavior its hard for me to put myself out there and ask random people “Hey you like to make movies! Me too! lets team up!” Coming across a person who is interested in film is hard for me and I know I’ll be able to accomplish more if I had a team!