Tuesday, July 28, 2009 - 15:42:39
Saying Goodbye to a Thing I Loved
It was sometime in 2005, or maybe it was in early 2006, when the Arkansas Times decided to incorporate community bloggers into its Web property, arktimes.com. Because my friend Jim Harris who was at the time serving as the entertainment editor of the Times knew of my love of movies (he had invited to review for the paper on occasion, and sometimes not very well) he mentioned to me that I might consider proposing a blog about film. I did and the paper accepted my application. Within a few weeks I was a blogger.
So it is some sadness that I report that I will no longer be writing The Moviegoer. It may continue (and I hope it does), but I no longer have the ability to nurture it in a manner which a good blog needs to be nurtured. And this should be a good blog.
The idea of The Moviegoer, an obvious rip off the Walker Percy novel which I adore, was to participate in what was, at the time, becoming a vibrant discussion of film culture in Arkansas and around the southwest. This dialogue was spirited by a growing number of people interested in it. I met many of them, like Jim and his wife, Tricia, who worked with me and who was gracious to me when it was clear that in my early days as a lawyer I was in way over my head. There were others that liked to go to movies on Sunday afternoons and watch the Academy Awards, and when I met some of them I suggested we start a movie club. And we did.
This gave me a good foundation for the blog which I began with trepidation, a feeling most bloggers I know admitted to having at their own beginning. At that time, I had not grasped the full power of the blogosphere. This was many months before another blog that I write, Blake’s Think Tank, would launch. In my time writing The Moviegoer, however, I met Kris Tapley who runs InContention.com and who, for almost a year, allowed me to contribute original content to his Web site. That was great fun. I also met Jeffrey Wells of Hollywood-Elsewhere.com and Sasha Stone of AwardsDaily.com. I became addicted to Anne Thompson’s blogging at Variety.com, GreenCine Daily, The Big Picture by Patrick Goldstein, Nikki Finke of DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com and Mahola Dargis of The New York Times, who is the finest at her craft. They all make a substantial contribution to our everyday conversations about film. I hope you will visit their sites and read their work.
I studied political science in college and then I went to law school. In that time I took one course on the movies and I cannot recall how I did, which probably means that I did not do well. I never formally studied film or worked on movie sets. So what I have learned, if anything, has come from watching movies, reading books about the movies and talking to people a lot smarter than me about all of it.
Philip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat Gazette and I became friends through my blog, and we remain friends today. Each January he published my ten favorite movies of the year.
Sometimes, on Tuesday mornings, David Koon of the Times will tip me off to a critics screening. In our real jobs, Mr. Koon and I share a parking lot and so we will often bump into each other around lunch time and we will chat briefly about movies.
Craig and Brent Renaud, along with Owen Brainard and Jamie Moses, began the Little Rock Film Festival around the time I was getting the blog rolling, before my back gave out on me and I had to have surgery to fix it. This caused me to miss their first festival entirely, but they fed me information over e-mail and text, and I kept up as much I could from my bed at home. I admire what they are trying to accomplish.
Sam Blair, my guidance counselor at Little Rock Central, remains the most avid moviegoer I know. Mr. Blair loves movies, and we have been discussing them for years. We have a debate over the virtue of the movie musical, films I rarely enjoy. It is one that began posts and in the comments section of The Moviegoer, and one that we will continue for the rest of our lives, I hope. Most importantly, I have him to thank for my admission to Middlebury College.
There in the Champlain Valley of Vermont, I watched science fiction movies and funny movies and movies about the Wild West. I became addicted to 1940’s film noir - The Third Man, The Maltese Falcon, Double Indemnity, The Big Sleep and Gilda, specifically. I watched Bullitt and wanted to drive like Steve McQueen. I saw The Hustler and longed for the days of the pool hall. I fell in love with Julie Christie and Diner, and for very different reasons. I thought Mickey Rourke was the coolest film actor I’d seen since James Dean.
Here in Arkansas, thanks to Matt Smith’s wonderful and endangered boutique theater, Market Street Cinema, I have seen films by Olivier Assayas, Guillermo Del Toro, Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu, Sophia Coppola, Errol Morris and Charles Burnett. Arkansans have made fine movies that have played there, including Jeff Nichols’ Shotgun Stories and Joey Lauren Adams’ Come Early Morning. My friend and Little Rock native Kathryn Tucker produced a heartbreaking movie called Loggerheads that I saw at Market Street and that made me cry. The Moviegoer gave me a place to write about all of these movies, and more.
I will miss it. It’s funny, in some ways I already do. For more than three years it’s been a wonderful hobby for me and, I hope, enjoyable for you, the reader.
With no formal training and nothing more than a passionate plea, the Arkansas Times was kind enough to have given me this opportunity. And for that I say thank you.
BSR
(This entry is posted in its entirety at http://www.blakesthinktank.com)
