Can we ban the word “pretentious” from the dictionary?
My friend John Luke Retard e-mailed me and a mutual Critic friend the Toronto Film Festival best of the decade list. John Luke confessed he had fallen asleep during Syndromes and a Century and the Critic sent a brief reply dismissing the list as pretentious. I expect that kind of shallow reaction from an intimidated and insecure mainstream moviegoer, but coming from a critic it really bothered me. Especially after he had already said the same thing about The Hollywood Reporter’s list

Beyond the Shitty First Draft
There is no such thing as a first draft, or an OK first draft, or a pretty good first draft. There are only Shitty First Drafts and Super Shitty First Drafts and the only way to graduate from Super Shitty to just Shitty is to write several Super Shitty First Drafts.Every screenwriter, at least the ones that live in the reality of this planet (believe me, there are many who don’t and most reside in Los Angeles) knows that the first draft is not even good enough to show your mother. This is particularly hard to stomach if you are a beginner screenwriter and you think everything you write is super clever and compelling. Write a few scripts, show them to some people, and watch tha

Wilder’s Eleven Tips on Screenwriting
This year, as a screenwriter and also as a film critic,  I have learned to take the audience into consideration and even respect it. I think Billy Wilder expressed it best:"An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark - that is critical genius."In the documentary Billy Wilder Speaks, Volker Schlondorff asked Wilder what should be in a screenplay. He responded: "Interior. Exterior. Day. Night. That's it."Watch Billy Wilder speaks in

Is it true that the few remaining truths are graffiti, suicide notes, and shopping lists?
Umberto Eco recently said in an interview "I like lists for the same reason other people like football or pedophilia." Read full interview here.I agree that

It's the end of the decade and you know what that means:
lists and more lists.While there were many, many great movies this decade, I had to settle on one. My first choice would have been Hedwig and the Angry Inch, but since I'm always quoting from Ghost World (Dir: Terry Zwigoff, 2001, that was a more obvious and personal choice.The tria