Sunday, June 24, 2012

I watched a bit of Kevin Smith's Hulu series SPOILERS, 'cause I'm in the States (on St. Jean Baptiste!) and I can't watch it in Canada.

The first half of the show is Kevin Smith asking an audience of normal people (the "spoilers") what they thought of a movie. Then he has a guest on. In this one the show was PROMETHEUS. I dunno. Why do I want to watch a handful of random people talk about what they didn't like about a movie? I love the IMDB ratings, because after a couple of thousand people have rated a movie, you can get a pretty good idea of how well it pleased its audience. Between the IMDB and Rottentomatoes, I can get a pretty good idea whether I'm going to like a movie. But this is just a few people.

I think it might be a stronger first half if there were editing -- if Smith asked every member of his audience for their feedback, and then edited in the most insightful answers. But this is uncurated.

The second half is wayyyyyy more interesting. In the episode I watched, Smith had PROMETHEUS's writer Damon Lindelof on the hot seat (an intentionally ridiculously large throne with golden lions). Lindelof has interesting things to say, including the importance of wearing the right t-shirt to your interview with a showrunner, and how he pitched the rewrite on PROMETHEUS.

You can learn a lot from an interview with a guy like Damon Lindelof: how to think about movie stories, sure, but also how to present yourself, how to talk about the guy you're rewriting.

So I recommend the second half of each episode of SPOILERS, if you can get Hulu.

Labels: learnings

12:35 PM

2 Comments:

Totally agree about the 1st and 2nd half. Honestly, I think the 1st half is there to justify the hook -- a bunch of fanboys are gonna watch a movie and geek out about it! Which in theory sounds great, but not so much in practice.

Does Kevin Smith seem oddly over-enthusiastic to you? Maybe it's just me, but it seems like he's trying to hard to be the show's host.

I like Kevin Smith when he's just talking. He's naturally entertaining without playing it up. This seems a little pandering to me.

By  James, at 11:28 PM  

The Damon Lindelof part is also here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MpCDGiHKk

By  tommy, at 7:04 PM  

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