Film Critic: A Decade Behind the Scenes in the Movie Industry

By Laremy Legel

"Film Critic: A Decade Behind the Scenes in the Movies Industry" is an insider look at the world of criticism, celebrity interviews, and movies. Ever wanted to know how a professional critic goes about his or her job? "Film Critic" alternates between hilarious and serious, offering something for writers and movie fans alike!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Laremy Legel
• Release date: May 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481915021

Laremy Legel

When not at the movies, Laremy can be found walking his dog, writing angry letters to the management of the Miami Dolphins, and attempting to find a recipe for the perfect lasagna. Having seen the inner-workings of Hollywood, the studio system, film festivals, and celebrity interviews, Laremy was compelled to share his anecdotes with the world. Enjoy them, world!

Book preview

*Easter Egg

Prologue

First off, a note on the title, Film Critic: A Decade Behind the Scenes in the Movie Industry. In no way am I claiming to be the omnipresent, ubiquitous voice of film criticism, and there may be critics out there far more suited to your tastes or sensibilities. However, just to establish my bonafides, I am one of a handful of critics accredited by both the Online Film Critics Society and the Broadcast Film Critics Association, meaning I’ve been recognized for my radio, television, podcast, newspaper, magazine and online work. Film festivals I’ve attended include Cannes, Toronto, SXSW, Sundance and of course my home town of Seattle.

Over the past decade I’ve signed a screenplay deal, written two novels, visited movie sets, attended junkets, been named an associate producer of a short film (Okay, in name only), seen a couple thousand films and reviewed around 750 of them, both online and on podcasts.

In addition, I’ve also predicted box office for the past seven years, so I have a pretty good feel for the incentives and inner machinations of the studio system. I’ve championed and interviewed indie directors, seeing them blossom into names everyone is now familiar with. As a critic, I’ve done my level best to inform myself about bias with copious amounts of outside reading and research. In my time with Film.com I did my best to foster the publication of original editorials, a practice that is now commonplace within the industry, forgoing the traditional method of casting rumors and release date announcements. This decision may have cost me some readers and popularity, but it was a principle I was more than happy to be pilloried upon.

I’ve also managed to befriend, debate, and edit the work of dozens of film enthusiasts and critics, so I have a fairly useful cross-section of knowledge about what makes the blogosphere tick. Many of my writers went on to achieve their own significant level of accreditation, two of them signed screenplay deals, and some went on to freelance and run other websites.

These credits took untold hours of toil to accomplish, and were not without serious highs and lows, so I feel it gives me some level of credibility within the community. But don’t worry; the rest of this tome will be massively self-effacing, full of my biggest screw-ups and previously held misconceptions.

However, the real reason it’s called Film Critic is pretty simple. From here on out, I can end any argument with, Hey, I wrote the book on film criticism! That’s going to drive my peers and rivals absolutely batty, all while I cackle with glee. Thanks for your contribution to that amazing moment.

Having established who I am, what will the book actually be about? What you’re about to read is a collection of essays, reviews and interviews that I feel detail a broad swath of the craziness I’ve been privy to while seeing and critiquing films, plus everything strange and compelling that happened in between. In short, you’ll get some great anecdotes, a bit of bickering, a couple of kudos and of course theories about where the industry has been and is headed. Near the end I’ll be doling out some general life advice should you want to become a critic, writer, hobo-clown or animal trainer.

Some of these are works that originally ran on Film.com or RopeofSilicon.com, though I’ve re-worked, annotated and added notes where I felt it added context or helped the material. Still, if you have a photographic memory you might be a leeeeetle disappointed, at least until you get to my review of The Notebook, my interview with Matt McConaughey, or a full-fledged examination of the review that got me fired. What do all these works have in common? They never ran on any official site, and live on only in my personal archives. Extremely close readers of the Laremy experience will recall that I’ve also freelanced for Hollywood.com, Slashfilm.com and FilmDrunk.com. I plan on addressing all of these sites in the second book in the series (Film Critic II: The Empire Strikes Back). As the second effort in the series is always the best, (Kill Bill Vol. 2, Step Up 2: The Streets) you’ve got to be looking forward to that.

Naturally, all of this material is based upon my own recollections, though I’ve utilized audio and video recordings of interviews where available. None of the content held within is meant to offend the hundreds of people who have helped me to get places (places with free macaroni and cheese) - though I’ll try not to sugarcoat my personal experiences either. Truthfully, I can’t imagine any of these high-powered folk reading my musings. Chances are they’re busy trying to market the latest Alien Fish out of Water Rom-Com project that Warner Bros. has come up with. Ha, ha, only kidding WB, you know I love you boo. Note: All of these essays can be read as stand-alone pieces, so if you’re not enjoying any particular topic feel free to skip ahead, though of course you should probably notify your congressperson.

With all of those caveats firmly in place, let’s get on with this thang! You didn’t plunk down your hard earned money to read some fool equivocate. You did it to read about some fool getting involved in extremely foolish situations. That fool is I, and that time is now. Off we go.

Getting Lucky with Big Brother

My chance at full-time criticism had its roots in the oddest of places, a show where they filmed people in a house, 24/7. You know, like The Truman Show, except everyone was in on it. The show is called Big Brother, and at press time, was nearing its 15th season, generally winning its time slot for CBS as summer counter-programming (counter to the other networks simply giving up).

I consider Big Brother to be the purest of all reality shows, as it’s just 12 to 16 people asked to live in a house and play out the prisoner’s dilemma. The goal is to not get nominated for eviction, and if you are nominated the goal pivots toward winning a competition to assure your safety.

It’s a brutally simple game, ah but the machinations we humans can get up to are nothing less than spectacular. Where does Big Brother fit in with me conquering RottenTomatoes, mingling with the stars and generally making a nuisance of myself to publicists and studios alike?

Let’s break it down.

I was trolling Craigslist for jobs one fine afternoon when I came across a job posting that said something to the effect of: Love watching reality television? Want to blog about it? Though I didn’t truly love reality television, I did love writing and I was ready to write about anything. I’d already struck out on novels and screenplays, but I was actively looking for more online outlets. Keep in mind I responded to about 100 of these offers, almost never hearing back a peep. Here’s what I wrote to the (anonymous) poster.

Hello,

I am a writer for a few sites online and think I could fill the bill as an extreme lover of reality TV. I'm currently watching the Real World, The Exile, Hell's Kitchen, The Simple Life, Making the Band 3 and quite a few others. I’d love to be considered for the position.

I sent off this little ditty, never imaging the life-changing direction it would inspire. A day later I heard back the following:

Laremy,

As you can imagine, I'm swamped with responses. Yours is bubbling up to the top level.

It's an editor job, responsible for the daily maintenance of a few sites, updating links, headlines and a blog-type feature. I'll let you know by Friday.

The email came from a Yahoo account, not a corporate account, so I still wasn’t entirely sure it wasn’t an elaborate scam to murder me, or perhaps involve me in a Ponzi scheme. Still, much of the email looked promising, and it seemed as if I’d get a chance to learn more.

It turned out the gig involved programming a news site with video headlines and content, plus a bit of blogging about the show Big Brother. No problem, I’d have done that job for free. However, the best part came during the in-person interview process, after the initial phone screenings.

Let me set the scene. A fancy corporate office in downtown Seattle. People dressed casually, but with an air of getting things done that involve fun surrounding the entire enterprise. At this point, I’d already begged three people for the job, offering bribes and favors, before finally it was time to sit down with the boss, the overall decider. I could hear the song, The Final Countdown blaring in my head. Then, like a miracle, something inexplicable happened. Head boss person asked me, point blank, Hey, we have this URL we’ve been sitting on called Film.com. I see you’ve got some film writing experience, do you think you could do anything with that URL?

I don’t often pat myself on the back, but I would like to give myself at least half a pat for my casual response, especially considering the slot machine noise that was ringing in my head. I made sure not to raise my hands toward the heavens and scream, Hallelujah! What I said, as cool as a cucumber, was Sure, yeah I think I could do something with that. Result!

The rest isn’t history, because it involved an enormous amount of hard work. I started out only writing a few weekly columns for Film.com. Then I produced the movies section. Then I ran the site. There’s seven years for you. However, that moment was kismet. A complete and utter affirmation of everything I’d worked so diligently to be ready for, that moment, that lucky break that I was going to pounce on like a mountain lion mauling an unsuspecting hiker.

So let’s pause for a beat to savor those moments that truly matter. Your marriage day, the moment your child was born, adopting a pet or getting a job you’ve been pining for. These are massively rare occurrences in life, we might get less than a dozen of them, and so they are worth remembering. Mine sure as hell was.

In the next few years I’d still be blogging about Big Brother, answering fan email and conducting cast interviews, but I also got to live out my film critic dreams half of the time. Truly, if 20 hours of my week had been assigned to shoveling coal, I’d have done it with a smile just to do the 20 hours a week on Film.com. I’m likely the only critic in the universe that owes his start to reality television, but there you have it, that’s how it initially went down.

Origin story established, next up is a closer look at what a modern film critic actually does, as it may be a little different than the version that’s in your head.

My Time at Film.com

How does one even earn the right to call himself or herself a film critic? My own criticism career started at a site called RopeofSilicon.com, owned and operated by Brad Brevet (more on this tall man later). Brad was nice enough to let me freelance review films for him, to build up my portfolio, and he has a site that looks as though 50-100 people are working on it, even though it’s really just one giant crazy person.

I parlayed that success, along with my other writing credits, into that aforementioned job at a company that just so happened to be sitting on the Film.com domain name. Once there, I helped re-launch Film.com in 2006, eventually earning the title of Managing Editor, before the site was sold to Viacom in mid-2012. Happily, even after the sale, I’ve been able to stay in touch with the new editors, writing weekly articles for the site I poured so much sweat and tears into over the years. Trivia: Film.com was also the site that helped me earn my Online Film Critics Society membership, giving me access to a delightful bevy of plunder.

But what does a film critic do all day? And how is it worth, well, you know, a living wage? The sad news is that it’s usually not, at least not anymore. There was a glorious time in film criticism, when about two-dozen people were doing it, where you simply wrote every week for 60 years at a newspaper, then retired with a full pension. These days, as papers deal with new and harsh economic realities, print media criticism jobs are nearly impossible to come by. This has given rise to the Internet critic, which I generally am. Indeed, many of the writers and critics I admire the most have turned to the Internet to open up their own shop, with the criticism being offered as part of a larger daily voice of news and opinion.

As such, the way I earned a salary wasn’t from film criticism alone, and this is now the case with most Internet critics. You aren’t paid for two to three film reviews a week, you’re paid for everything else. As the fellow who ran the website, I was in charge of hiring, firing, scouting for new talent, managing all the writers, pitching and assigning relevant articles, processing invoices, attending various meetings, ensuring our editing team was on the same page, measuring traffic growth, making sure the marketing and ad sales teams were happy, and a few dozen other daily tasks.

In between all of that is when I was fortunate enough to write, often at nights and on weekends. Every day I’d monitor a couple dozen sites, though I as I’ve mentioned I attempted to turn Film.com into a place that didn’t rely on scoops, instead opting to carve out a niche for great writing mixed with large doses of levity and gregariousness.

While at Film.com I did manage to write over 1,000 columns, many of which I assigned to myself. To all the writers of the world, this is the job you want. It allows you to skip throwaway cinema like The Expendables and instead explore the historical significance of Pixar.

My days at Film.com would often start around 7 a.m., though even at that early hour I felt like I was behind due to our west coast location. There were many nights I wouldn’t get home until 9:30 p.m., and it would be even later if the rubes over at Lionsgate decided to not screen one of their films, meaning a Thursday midnight show was my only option. To say it was not all glitz and glamor would be to somehow imply that even one percent of it was glitz or glamor. The actual percentage of glitz was about quarter of a percent, if only to reflect my time in beautiful Nice, France, to attend the Cannes Film Festival.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful. The horrible moments running a website (and occasionally seeing terrible films late at night) are clearly better than 99 percent of the jobs out there. A bad day at Film.com was when we ran a piece I loved; yet no one clicked. The trade-off was myself and the team got to be creative on a near constant basis. I was able to interact with truly genius writers bursting at the seams with great ideas, as if we were all on the set of The West Wing, but with more jokes about Brett Ratner. I also interviewed hundreds of writers, directors, actors, reality show contestants, a congressman and a former Playmate of the Year. This was a good job, but these days, to stumble upon a profession like film criticism, you’re going to need large amounts of good timing and determination.

We’ll get to some of the basic steps to attaining a career near the end, but right now I’d like to explore some of the specific mediums I’ve utilized to get better at the craft of criticism.

Podcasting

Podcasting is the future! Okay, that’s the opener a crazy person would use, so let’s unpack that sentiment a bit. Podcasting may be my future? There, that’s a bit better, and it’s potentially accurate.

The main thing podcasting has taught me is that people are far more likely to be invested in your writing if they’ve also heard your voice. I’m not sure if it’s the ability to infer inflection or determine earnestness, whatever the case, I’ve found that the people who listen to me are much cooler about potential disagreements we have on movies. I tend to get the benefit of the doubt when they can actively hear I’m not a buffoon (even if the writing would suggest otherwise). Additionally, podcasting is a low-fi technology that places control in the hands of the artist. There’s something about a 1,200-word