Wednesday, August 15, 2007

DMc has an interesting blog post about There's No Accounting for Taste:

My favorite kind of criticism is the kind where the people run down what they didn't like about something, and I can't really disagree with it. I remember feeling that way about Superman Returns. My agent ran down a particularly devestating critique of that movie, and I saw every one of his points. I couldn't really disagree with them.

Yet I loved the movie. I think it's in these moments that you see little things about yourself. Some good, some bad -- always interesting.

I'm having a similar reaction to Californication right now. Further down in comments there are several people left scratching their heads by Mad Men, another show I just love.

See, now, I'm watching MAD MEN and I find it intriguing. But I can't explain to my dad why I like it. (Except the hilarious take on the late 50's as the time when there were no car seats, kids played cheerfully with BB guns and plastic bags, doctors recommended cigarettes for their health benefits, and everyone smoked in bed.) I don't like Don Draper, but I find him watchable in the way I did not find David Duchovny's pissy, whiny character in Californication. (It helps that Draper doesn't complain, I guess; it makes him more of a mystery.)

Nice thing about being a story teller is that you're not obliged to satisfy everybody. Just enough to keep your net consistent with your nut. I'd hate to be a network guy and have to pick hits. I would have passed on LITTLE MOSQUE, and just about every Adam Sandler movie ever. And I would have stuck with FIREFLY until I was fired.

Labels: watching tv

3:18 PM

3 Comments:

Come on, The Wedding Singer was good!

By  Anonymous, at 4:11 AM  

What I sometimes have to remind myself is that 99% of the audience don't analyse, they just respond. When I was a kid I watched all kinds of stuff with love and awe. Inadequacies were invisible to me, because they were swamped-out by the positives and my will to embrace them.

When I watched the sneak of the BIONIC WOMAN pilot, I found a zillion things wrong with it. But somewhere buried deep, the kid was having his buttons pushed. Don't ask me to defend it. I grew up with spaceships on wires you could see.

By  Stephen Gallagher, at 5:49 AM  

In many ways, I would rather trust the truthiness of that inner child when judging what other people will like.

By  The_Lex, at 10:12 AM  

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