Patrick Walsh
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Film School Confidential
posted Friday, 21 July 2006
I just saw Art School Confidential (A-), the new film from Terry Zwigoff, director of two of the most interesting comedies of the past few years, Ghost World (A-) and Bad Santa (A-). I loved it.
It might be for a niche audience, though. And that audience would be people who attended school for film, art, fashion, or any of the other majors that draw pretentious windbags like moths to the flame.
My God, did it bring back a rush of memories, just about none positive. This thing really made my skin crawl, in the way that only something truly accurate can.
I went to film school in St. Louis, and I made maybe five friends who I still keep in touch with to this day. The reasons for this are threefold. One, I go through long spells of being extremely introverted, I really loved the friends I had going into college and didn't feel I needed any more. Two, I commuted to school, joined no extracurricular clubs, and generally kept to myself except for the times I would approach a girl only to babble on about how much I missed my ex-girlfriend. Three, most importantly, is that aside from those five people, just about everyone attending film school is absolutely insufferable.
There was a guy I had nearly every class with who wore a beret. I'm not kidding here. A beret. Big fat guy. Not French. Not even close. A beret. That really says it all, but I'm going to go on anyway.
I found every film making experience to be beyond frustrating. The school had older equipment, and I was awful at using it. Many a night I'd be out at 3 in the morning trying to get a shot and the camera would freeze up. These nights would usually end with me screaming and punching walls. This was before I discovered alcohol, mind you. I much preferred the writing process, and yet even as teachers would praise my scripts for their dialogue and humor, fellow students always had something to say about how "insubstantial" they were.
"Well," I'd think to myself, "when you hit the multiplex, you generally don't see many grainy black and white movies about a feather falling to the ground in slow motion. But you keep on doing what you're doing. Good luck with that."
When we would have "screening days" in my film classes, the film roster would usually look like this:
1) Some guy's film about the dual nature of man. There would be a lot of light and shadow representing good and evil. Very little dialogue. Maybe a symbollic chess game at some point. At the end, a naked girl would be doused with honey. Fin.
2) Some chick's film about the exploitation of women. Would often involve a girl in a pretty pink dress being leered at by men in monster masks. Probably a tampon stirring a cup of coffee would find its way in there. At the end, a naked girl would be doused with menstrual blood. Fin.
3) My film, which generally started with the setup, "So this guy can't get a date for the Homecoming Dance..."
Now after the first two films, the class would fall silent. The instructor would murmur approvingly, and then the class would begin discussing the "sublime use of light and dark," the "simple but strikingly effective color scheme," and usually seven or eight uses of the word "Felliniesque."
During my films, there would often be lots of laughter, (the good kind, they were comedies), and when they ended, the class would fall silent. The instructor would say something like, "Your film...is...not good." And the class would say things like, "Entertaining in a pedestrian way I suppose, but what does it mean?" "What was the young man's motivation for attending the Homecoming Dance? Does it have anything to do with the Holocaust? Shouldn't it?" and "Yes, I laughed, but at what cost?"
The most frustrating example of this was my final "thesis" film. I worked really hard on it and it was basically a long-form music video for my then-band, The PTA. Done in the style of a cheesy 80's "Let's show the stuffy old faculty how this high school can ROCK" flick, the movie was bright, funny, ridiculous, and still holds up when I show it to people today. The class responded kindly, with lots of laugher. But afterwards, it was right back to "Shouldn't there be something more going on here? Does the principal represent fascism? Shouldn't he?" Even without any "stylistic nods to mid-period Truffaut," I managed to get an A, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
When my major would require the occasional "artsy" type class, that's when the true freaks came out. I had a photography class with an instructor named Dominique. Early on, he brought in a nude picture of his wife. No matter what photos the class brought in, when we would discuss them, he always found a way to make the picture about a vagina. Now, if the picture was of a tunnel or an opening flower or something, fine. But he managed to make anything and everything about it. Picture of an alarm clock: "I guess that alarm clock is about to go into a vagina?" Picture of a mule: "It seems that mule has one thing on his mind: vagina." It got really uncomfortable.
Now this guy loved all of my photos. I took some cool shots, one of a great area of Saint Louis called "The Loop" where an old-style movie theater was showing Hitchcock's Rear Window. It looked like it had been taken in the 50's and I dug it. Another picture was a building I made out of cereal boxes that we had in my family's cabinet. I ate three to five bowls of cereal a day at this time, so we had tons. Another froze a co-worker in mid-air as she jumped off a countertop. Some cool pics. But as soon as we had to discuss them, I would want to slit my wrists. You would never believe the pretentious things that were said in these classes. Words like "spatial," "Victorian," "minimalist" and "deceptively banal" were thrown about with ease. When the teacher would ask my opinion, I always said something like "That one's really cool. I like that."
"Why?" he'd ask.
"Um, I've never seen anything like it before. It's really exciting, has a lot of energy?"
"Mmmhmm. Go on."
"I don't really have anything else to say. I mean, it's really neat."
"Yes. Continue."
"I just like it! What do you want me to say here?"
"What about the surrealistic qualities of it? Do you find them too Daliesque?"
"Um. No?"
"Excellent work, Patrick. Let's take a look at another picture of my wife's open vagina."
I spent most of film school very angry. It is nailed so perfectly in Art School Confidential, how people praise mediocrity like it's the second coming, how these people think if something is entertaining it probably can't have much value, and how far up their asses these peoples' heads really are.
It was a trip. In Art School Confidential, John Malkovich points out that 1 in 100 artists will be able to make a living off of it. I think that's being generous. It takes a certain kind of person to "just know that they can make it" in "the arts," and most of them are no good. BUT they memorize text books and regurgitate stuff they've heard other pretentious people say and then put down anything even remotely commercial, neglecting the fact that their own stuff is so boring, stupid and full of itself that it would never work outside of a class full of people trying to appear smart. These are the kinds of people who can talk for three hours about a painting of a circle. Are these people happy? Do they ever enjoy anything that isn't ironic or considered by everyone else to be "artistic?" And what is art? It certainly isn't a painting of a circle, but you can find these things in world-renowned museums. I'm not saying I've never been moved or intrigued by a painting or a photograph, but I usually like the ones that look like they took more than the three minutes between espressos to complete.
That's a lot of what "art school" is, trying to teach things that, outside of the technical aspects, can't and shouldn't be taught. And man, did this movie nail it.
Check it out.
By the way, tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of this blog! Pretty cool. Haven't quite decided what it will entail, but expect a special post on Monday.
It might be for a niche audience, though. And that audience would be people who attended school for film, art, fashion, or any of the other majors that draw pretentious windbags like moths to the flame.
My God, did it bring back a rush of memories, just about none positive. This thing really made my skin crawl, in the way that only something truly accurate can.
I went to film school in St. Louis, and I made maybe five friends who I still keep in touch with to this day. The reasons for this are threefold. One, I go through long spells of being extremely introverted, I really loved the friends I had going into college and didn't feel I needed any more. Two, I commuted to school, joined no extracurricular clubs, and generally kept to myself except for the times I would approach a girl only to babble on about how much I missed my ex-girlfriend. Three, most importantly, is that aside from those five people, just about everyone attending film school is absolutely insufferable.
There was a guy I had nearly every class with who wore a beret. I'm not kidding here. A beret. Big fat guy. Not French. Not even close. A beret. That really says it all, but I'm going to go on anyway.
I found every film making experience to be beyond frustrating. The school had older equipment, and I was awful at using it. Many a night I'd be out at 3 in the morning trying to get a shot and the camera would freeze up. These nights would usually end with me screaming and punching walls. This was before I discovered alcohol, mind you. I much preferred the writing process, and yet even as teachers would praise my scripts for their dialogue and humor, fellow students always had something to say about how "insubstantial" they were.
"Well," I'd think to myself, "when you hit the multiplex, you generally don't see many grainy black and white movies about a feather falling to the ground in slow motion. But you keep on doing what you're doing. Good luck with that."
When we would have "screening days" in my film classes, the film roster would usually look like this:
1) Some guy's film about the dual nature of man. There would be a lot of light and shadow representing good and evil. Very little dialogue. Maybe a symbollic chess game at some point. At the end, a naked girl would be doused with honey. Fin.
2) Some chick's film about the exploitation of women. Would often involve a girl in a pretty pink dress being leered at by men in monster masks. Probably a tampon stirring a cup of coffee would find its way in there. At the end, a naked girl would be doused with menstrual blood. Fin.
3) My film, which generally started with the setup, "So this guy can't get a date for the Homecoming Dance..."
Now after the first two films, the class would fall silent. The instructor would murmur approvingly, and then the class would begin discussing the "sublime use of light and dark," the "simple but strikingly effective color scheme," and usually seven or eight uses of the word "Felliniesque."
During my films, there would often be lots of laughter, (the good kind, they were comedies), and when they ended, the class would fall silent. The instructor would say something like, "Your film...is...not good." And the class would say things like, "Entertaining in a pedestrian way I suppose, but what does it mean?" "What was the young man's motivation for attending the Homecoming Dance? Does it have anything to do with the Holocaust? Shouldn't it?" and "Yes, I laughed, but at what cost?"
The most frustrating example of this was my final "thesis" film. I worked really hard on it and it was basically a long-form music video for my then-band, The PTA. Done in the style of a cheesy 80's "Let's show the stuffy old faculty how this high school can ROCK" flick, the movie was bright, funny, ridiculous, and still holds up when I show it to people today. The class responded kindly, with lots of laugher. But afterwards, it was right back to "Shouldn't there be something more going on here? Does the principal represent fascism? Shouldn't he?" Even without any "stylistic nods to mid-period Truffaut," I managed to get an A, but it just left a bad taste in my mouth.
When my major would require the occasional "artsy" type class, that's when the true freaks came out. I had a photography class with an instructor named Dominique. Early on, he brought in a nude picture of his wife. No matter what photos the class brought in, when we would discuss them, he always found a way to make the picture about a vagina. Now, if the picture was of a tunnel or an opening flower or something, fine. But he managed to make anything and everything about it. Picture of an alarm clock: "I guess that alarm clock is about to go into a vagina?" Picture of a mule: "It seems that mule has one thing on his mind: vagina." It got really uncomfortable.
Now this guy loved all of my photos. I took some cool shots, one of a great area of Saint Louis called "The Loop" where an old-style movie theater was showing Hitchcock's Rear Window. It looked like it had been taken in the 50's and I dug it. Another picture was a building I made out of cereal boxes that we had in my family's cabinet. I ate three to five bowls of cereal a day at this time, so we had tons. Another froze a co-worker in mid-air as she jumped off a countertop. Some cool pics. But as soon as we had to discuss them, I would want to slit my wrists. You would never believe the pretentious things that were said in these classes. Words like "spatial," "Victorian," "minimalist" and "deceptively banal" were thrown about with ease. When the teacher would ask my opinion, I always said something like "That one's really cool. I like that."
"Why?" he'd ask.
"Um, I've never seen anything like it before. It's really exciting, has a lot of energy?"
"Mmmhmm. Go on."
"I don't really have anything else to say. I mean, it's really neat."
"Yes. Continue."
"I just like it! What do you want me to say here?"
"What about the surrealistic qualities of it? Do you find them too Daliesque?"
"Um. No?"
"Excellent work, Patrick. Let's take a look at another picture of my wife's open vagina."
I spent most of film school very angry. It is nailed so perfectly in Art School Confidential, how people praise mediocrity like it's the second coming, how these people think if something is entertaining it probably can't have much value, and how far up their asses these peoples' heads really are.
It was a trip. In Art School Confidential, John Malkovich points out that 1 in 100 artists will be able to make a living off of it. I think that's being generous. It takes a certain kind of person to "just know that they can make it" in "the arts," and most of them are no good. BUT they memorize text books and regurgitate stuff they've heard other pretentious people say and then put down anything even remotely commercial, neglecting the fact that their own stuff is so boring, stupid and full of itself that it would never work outside of a class full of people trying to appear smart. These are the kinds of people who can talk for three hours about a painting of a circle. Are these people happy? Do they ever enjoy anything that isn't ironic or considered by everyone else to be "artistic?" And what is art? It certainly isn't a painting of a circle, but you can find these things in world-renowned museums. I'm not saying I've never been moved or intrigued by a painting or a photograph, but I usually like the ones that look like they took more than the three minutes between espressos to complete.
That's a lot of what "art school" is, trying to teach things that, outside of the technical aspects, can't and shouldn't be taught. And man, did this movie nail it.
Check it out.
By the way, tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of this blog! Pretty cool. Haven't quite decided what it will entail, but expect a special post on Monday.
What do you think? Leave me a comment! (8)
1. Flick left...
Friday, 21 July 2006 2:31 pm :: http://kaflickastan.blogspot.com
I enjoyed this post. It made me laugh.
2. Mike left...
Friday, 21 July 2006 3:24 pm
I went to school with Pat, and he really nailed it on the head. But
outside of it containing some of the most mediocre of "artists", it is also
probably a less than mediocre school. If a typical state university was
the equivalent of a 10 dollar bill, then our school would be like being
1000 dollars in debt. Its reputation is so bad that it cripples every
person who leaves.
3. RØB left...
Friday, 21 July 2006 4:41 pm :: http://www.pancakeproductions.net/
I went to the same school as Pat, and that's basically where I met him. He
was just a hair ahead of me though we walked at graduation simultaneously
(I did lots of catching up in my last several semesters there). Somehow he
musta gotten all the crappy classes with all the crappy people, cuz I had a
blast and everyone I worked on films with hated pretentious assholes like
"beret-wearing man" and "Glasses" (no doubt Pat thought of Glasses while
watching ASC, even if he didn't talk about him here--I'm sure there's an
entire entry on that dude). None of my film classes were even remotely
what I'd refer to as "too artistic." Heck, I even had that Dominique guy
for Photo I, but it was a summer class--I never once heard the guy mention
a vagina (I did have his wife, whose naked picture I never saw but did hear
about, for a French class as well; she was Belgian and he was French).
Maybe it's cuz there were 50-year-olds and shit in our class. It's weird
we went to the same school at the same time with the same major but only
had maybe one class together (tops) and had completely different
experiences.
4. Patrick Walsh left...
Friday, 21 July 2006 6:37 pm
Mike, you would definitely love this movie. Really enjoyed the child locked
in a basement line, I must admit I never went to a counselor myself. And
you know how much I loved my "advisor."
5. RØB left...
Friday, 21 July 2006 9:37 pm :: http://www.pancakeproductions.net/
Which reminds me, I still want a copy of your overview very badly.
6. Benjamin left...
Saturday, 22 July 2006 10:05 pm :: http://www.hiddenflicks.com/
Hey Pat. Not sure if I should find this post entertaining or painful to
read, as I went to film school as well...
7. sam left...
Monday, 24 July 2006 5:17 pm :: http://craftysam.blogspot.com
Pat, I usually really respect your movie opinions but I have to argue with
you on this one. Art School Confidential was one of the WORST movies I have
seen in a while. The writing was horrendous. The potential was totally
there and it just sucked a biggie. It felt like maybe Wes Anderson should
have made it and it would have been a million times better. Seriously, the
writing was GOD AWFUL. As a future writer (hopefully) you should have
noticed that. I wanted to punch that lead in the face over and over again.
SO much so that when he was threatoning to jump off hte building, I was
begging him to. Out loud. In the theatre.
8. Patrick Walsh left...
Tuesday, 25 July 2006 12:44 am
Sam,