THE PITCH

Would you call me crazy if I said that God told me to write about the movies?

(Way to lose your audience in seventeen words or less, Alan.)

Okay, let's try a different approach.

I'll be honest with myself from the get-go: not everyone has the patience to sit in front of a computer screen and subject themselves at length to another person's opinions, especially concerning a topic that is by and large a simple matter of taste, exempt from standard notions of "right" and "wrong."

Kathleen Murphy wrote in Film Comment a few years back, when discussing cyber-film-criticism:

Online, the eye often won't stick with a complex sentence, nor do vision and memory persist long enough to trace the evolution of a formal gambit through an essay. The surface of cyberdata is slippery; one's attention slides away so easily, locking on to those provocative underlined or bolded hotlinks that encourage one to drift off, distractedly, into further fields of superficial exploration.

And yet many of us do read these sort of essays regularly, and for a good reason - the movies cost money and time. Few feelings equal that restless sensation as you leave the theater, at the end of a film that didn't live up to expectations, that you've been had. Movies exist for our entertainment, distraction, and edification, and if none of the above results palpably occur by the closing credits, the experience is almost akin to having been conned. Too bad theaters don't offer refunds once you've seen the whole movie and decided you didn't like it.

We've all learned that lesson at least once. And we subsequently vowed to become a more discerning consumer of motion pictures, taking advantage of all available resources before again entrusting our leisure time and disposable income to the local multiplex. Among those resources: film reviewers, most of which endeavor mightily to dissuade the public from giving film producers the satisfaction of luring you into what they regard as a stinker.

But there's another reason why film critics, wanna-be and otherwise, are themselves the lucky recipients of your leisure time.

TODAY'S (OTHER) TEN-DOLLAR WORD: CINEPHILIA

Let me tell you what this site isn't. Believe it or not, it isn't just another Web site about the movies.

Instead, this is a site about an affliction (and affection) many of us share: the love of the movies.

This site has an inexcusably unwieldly name for a very good reason. You've probably parsed it out already: "cinema" plus "adoxography," the first word likely more familiar than the second.

Adoxography is a legitimate entry in the English lexicon, meaning good writing on a trivial subject. And this site is dedicated to contradicting its own name.

I wouldn't have already spent so many hours of my life watching innumerable films if it didn't somehow feel important. As poorly as I might ultimately articulate why motion pictures matter to me, it remains a given that, by virtue of its continued existence over the last century as a viable commercial enterprise, the cinema is not a culturally insignificant phenomenon. Yeah, it ain't curing cancer, it ain't ending apartheid, it ain't feeding the hungry or parenting a child, but movies have long filled a human need. Movies mean something to people. Just ask a person about their favorite film and watch them spill their guts.

This is that other reason you're still reading. Not because you wanna find out if a movie is any good or not, but simply because you love the movies, period. Guys like me, unlucky saps with a case of cacoëthes scribendi, we write this stuff for the same reason you read it - because there is also nothing like the feeling as you leave the theater after watching a movie that totally kicked your butt. We live for that. The weird draw of awards season each winter, the rush from finally seeing the trailer for a movie you've been waiting forever to come out, the subconscious sense that all's well with the world when a movie hits all the right notes; these are uniquely human joys that no one has to apologize for.

THAT'S MR. PRETENTIOUS ASS TO YOU

Entertainment, distraction, and edification: this is what I'm aiming for as well. Whether it's in the theaters, in a magazine, on cable, or here on the Web, it's all movie love that's being fed, all part of (what they called in grad school) the "film complex." And for cinephiles, there's no such thing as too much of it, in any form.

But before you bookmark me, before you're convinced that you've found a site that's absolutely up your alley, let me dish out some caveats. Cinemadox-ography.com makes no claims to being comprehensive, to being ahead of (or even alongside) the curve, to being "right." Its writer may subscribe to certain philosophies and worldviews, but his work plans on speaking for itself. And above all, a site with a seventeen-letter name has probably already betrayed its love of language; call me crazy (again), but a day where you don't learn at least one new vocabulary word, is a day wasted. To quote James Baldwin:

People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.)

So the more words you have at your disposal, the better, if you ask me.

Movies matter to you too? Then let Cinemadoxography be a gateway to exploring the universal human impulse to express oneself visually, verbally, narratively, subtextually. Or if more highfalutin's your style, to celebrating art's transformative capabilities, its potential to help improve the human race. Or, more prosaically, just because it's fun, and helps make the days go by easier.

DON'T HATE ME BECAUSE I'M BEAUTIFUL

I'll sidestep admitting to the more predictable litany of motivations behind an endeavor such as this: self-aggrandizement, pecuniary interest, aspirations of immortality. But I will confess to one curveball agenda I'm hoping to further by setting up shop in a little corner of the World Wide Web: contradicting a stereotype. Over the years the image of the impassioned film fan has morphed into a particularly unattractive archetype commonly known as the Film Geek. Much like Comic Book Guy on "The Simpsons," the public has come to all-too-easily equate individuals who spend inordinate amounts of time and money amassing an encyclopedic knowledge of an aspect of popular culture with a complete lack of sex appeal. I will agree that all stereotypes are based on fact to some degree - believe me, the dating pool among my former classmates when I was studying film at NYU would not score highly on Hot or Not.com - but in all honesty, and subjectivity, Film Geek is a label I fail to identify with.

I'm not sure whether claiming to be more physically active or well-rounded or easy on the eyes than the average film critic is supposed to boost my credibility (or simply call me out as shallow and mindlessly subject to outmoded notions of masculinity), but I do know one thing - you gotta have a gimmick. And why not try to reclaim the once-romantic image of the attractive writer - the passionate, driven, fearless arbiter of taste, as opposed to the anemic, fragile (or portly), awkward, developmentally-arrested, tunnel-visioned, hunched-over-a-laptop milquetoasts that we are readily assumed to be. Ideas and criticism can be as sexy as they are essential - and if the movies are themselves accused of being too rife with sexuality, why can't some of that rub off on film critics? There are worse problems we could have.

OKAY, THE GOD THING

Did I say God? I meant Gore Vidal. Another one of those homos who doesn't make his homo-ness the sole lens and overriding imperative through which he interprets the world.

Everyone has a calling of some sort in this life, all equally valid, all realized (or forsaken) with different degrees of speed and ease. Mine hit me while I was watching Mr. Vidal discuss his career on Charlie Rose's TV show a few years back. Charlie asked him, after all the fiction and nonfiction he's contributed to the literary scene for decades, for what he'd like to be most remembered, what he'd like his legacy to be.

His answer? Simply that there would be one facet of human thought that, had he not contributed his ideas, would have been wholly different.

For Vidal, that field was the political arena. For me, it occurred to me at that moment, it should be the movies, in all their populist glory, commercial crassness, and potential to challenge. To get my voice into circulation, to believe that the terms of the dialogue would be worse off were I not a participant, that finally lent a purpose to this wandering undergraduate English major.

Okay, so that's not exactly shunning a stab at immortality. But we don't choose our Grand Commission, it chooses us. And yes, my Reformed Christian worldview would call that God at work. And if this little tale is causing your eyes to roll uncontrollably in their sockets, then hit the Back button and let's let the writing speak for itself. If it isn't solid, then that's what the Links section is for - plenty of other good critics out there. (I got you to read this far, anyway, so how bad can I be?)

SHUT UP ALREADY

In conclusion, I'd like to say this site isn't about me - except that would be a lie. You might have seen a quote I posted on the Home page when Cinemadox first launched in June of 2003, which encapsulates the central principle that guides me as a writer:

"The good critic is he who narrates the adventures of his soul among masterpieces" - Anatole France

Movies cannot exist in a vacuum. They were made for us, not us for them. Whatever a critic has to say about a film, therefore, is filtered through the sum total of his life experiences. Whoever discloses an opinion on a film, he is also revealing something about himself. So as much as I might pretend that all the verbiage throughout this site are objective assessments, they are in fact wholly personal. Cinemadoxography therefore constitutes an inadvertent memoir of sorts, chronicling my individual encounters with motion pictures. It's a history of I came, I saw, I opined, I evolved.

The critic cannot avoid expressing himself any more than the filmmaker whose work he criticizes. So like it or not, this is all about me.

And it should be pretty clear by now that "me" can be awfully loquacious. Consider yourself warned. And consider yourself welcome to all Cinemadoxography has to offer. Happy Zeroth Anniversary to me!

June 2003