Kevin Smith explains the world, and it's really all about farts.

I have been a big fan of Kevin Smith for years. How could I not? Smarter than the room fat guy from New Jersey? Come on!
But I have only recently subscribed to his blog. (The lecture at Wizard Con sort of reminded me to do that) And twice in the last week he has nailed my feelings on pop culture. It always amazes me that people who peddle pop culture are, often, the ones who have the most incisive insight. But, it isn't like he will stop peddling his wares and making goody movies.
Seems that Kevin told a story about Jason Mewes getting off heroin and having "relations" with Nicole Ritchie. Of course, after thesuperficial.com reported this story, the Daily News decided to cover it.
I was just pleased by what he wrote at the end:

"Sadly, it’s not news that Jay - with nearly both feet in the grave at the lowest point in his life - was able single-handedly pull himself out of the self-made Hell of drug addiction and work his way back to the land of the living, clean and sober; what’s news is that he had sex in a bathroom stall with one half of the “Simple Life” dorks."

And therein lies the problem. Everything we have been talking about in "Objectification vs Empowerment" and the like.
We're not interested in a story about personal achievement, we want the dirt and that's it. And that sucks.

It sucks the same way that Instant Films sucked last night. For more info on Instant Films and why it can be a good, nay, great thing, go here. As she always does, Beth was in an Instant Film and shot til 2 in the morning and the film was....well it wasn't the best but she was amazing.

Okay. Platitudes for my wife out of the way.

There were 2 films that, I think, explain what's wrong with pop culture and why it won't change.
The first is Smash. A "parody" of the film "Crash". I use the term "parody" very loosely. Because Smash was a poorly shot, terribly edited, abysmally acted movie about....gas. Faltulence. One character spent the better part of the 7 minute movie rolling around on the floor in pain, while sounds of unbelieveable flatulence filled the theater. ha ha. And he kept passing wind to his customers (he was an insurance salesman). These people were offended (hence the parody....I guess they were racist against chronic farters). Another actor sat at the restaurant table passing wind and explaining the virtues of gas passing...ugh, I am spending way too much time explaining this piece of crap. (It should be noted that the female characters did NOT fart in the film and I don't know what that says). This film sucked.
This.
Film.
Sucked.
And the audience loved it. Hooted and howled.

Now, film 2 was called "Tough Guy and flowers". It was directed by a woman named Aine who is quite accomplished. Her site is www.aineandmremery.com. The film was about a couple who have grown distant, distaff. The wife has an affair with a man we believed to be the uber-male voice in the husband's head.
It was dark. Dank. Diffcult. The empty spaces between the sparse dialogue would have been envied by a young David Lynch.
The pounding sounds of the wife's barefeet scaling their carpeted steps was resonating.
This was a film that took a mediocre script, one which, in lesser hands, would have been just another Instant Film jokey joke movie, pulled it out of the box, deconstructed it and made it something that, well, I would be happy to watch again.
So moved was I by this singular piece of visionary film making that I went to the director afterwards, introduced myself, went on and on about what she had done and gave her a card and said, "Anything you are ever doing, if you need an actor, I will be there".
I have never done this before.

What is my point?

At the end of the night everybody votes for the films. We take printed slips of paper and put them in the bins of the films we are voting for. A slip for best cast. A slip for best editing. Best cinematographer. Best Picture. The Instant Films version of the Oscars.

Which film do you THINK won best picture and which won nothing at all?

We are more interested in corpulent flatulence, people's sex lives, whose dating who.....than we care about raising ourselves up and trying, just trying to climb the bar. No, wait, Kevin Smith said there is no bar anymore now that Paris Hilton is famous for being born and having sex on camera, so, we need to go out, get a bar, and install it and then maybe, just maybe we can raise it.