I am sitting in the Burger King on 42nd Street off Eighth Avenue, across the street from the Port Authority, availing myself of the venue’s convenient Internet service. Let me tell you, this keyboard is grimy.
I am the only one in the store wearing a suit.
I’ve been in Manhattan all day on business, and I have one last call to make at 4:00 p.m., and I was hoping to while away a couple of hours of my downtime in Bryant Park, and to make a bigger dent in Algren’s The Man With The Golden Arm. But then my Blackberry alerted me to the most recent comment by the individual that goes by the nom “Urethra Franklin.” The comment that ends “fuck you.” Up to and including that phrase, it’s a some-might-say-admirably deft Buddy Rich impersonation. But not the sort of thing I’m really interested in having at Some Came Running. I want to write a film blog and have some meaningful interaction between fellow cinephiles, not spend the day being assessed how things are going on an asshole farm, if you’ll excuse my French. So I considered shutting down the blog altogether. Then I thought about shutting down comments altogether. Then I thought, “Why be punitive?” Then I thought, “Because.” And then I thought…well, I’m still thinking. And I’m in the Burger King on 42nd Street off Eighth Avenue across the street from the Port Authority. Wearing a suit. And so on.
So here’s what I’m going to do: from this point on, comments will be held for my approval before they go up. (And I see there are a couple from “Urethra” pending. Well, the individual can…fucking well wait. If you’ll once again excuse my French. And yes, I DO fully expect this individual to now inundate me, in righteous indignation, with examples of all the other MUCH WORSE stuff that I’ve let slide, because I’m such a hypocrite. Among many other things, the internet can be soul-killingly predictable.) This will be my comments policy until a sufficient amount of time has gone by during which I haven’t seen the words “fuck” and “you” yoked together in a comment. In other words, the forseeable future. I hope this move will compel anyone who’s thinking of being abusive the way noted above to give the matter a little more thought, as they will now understand that they won’t be heard. I really do not want to have to do this. I can recall a time not so long ago when seeing the comments threads filling up was actually a joy. Maybe it will be again.
Human nature. Marvellous thing.
It will! The guy will get bored. Meanwhile, I hope the rest of your readers continue to supply you with more gratifying words.
I don’t blame you.
Mere hours ago I was marveling at how a nice and interesting film blog written and read by nice and interesting cinephiles could get those same (or rather, some) cinephiles so wound up they quickly descend into throbbing-veined, insult-slinging, potty-mouthed thugs.
It’s remarkable, really.
I’d say it’s a side-product of success – the more readers you have, the greater the chance one will be an ass.
Fuck them.
Oh hell. Now I wonder if my last one’s going to go through. Not that I wished anybody would do anything obscene to themselves, but I did let my annoyance show through a bit.
Sounds like a wise move given the past few days Glenn. Just don’t shut down the blog. This place can be a wonderful haven from the so-called ‘real’ world. Whilst I don’t contribute as much as i’d like to, stopping by here and reading your posts and the follow-up comments is one of the highlights of my day.
An unfortunate but completely justifiable move. It’s funny – I was just thinking the other day (before the business with Lex G) how this blog has a near-unprecedentedly high level of discourse in the comments section. And I still believe that to be true.
Jeff McM is right, though – in a weird way, this is sort of a testament to your accomplishment as a film blogger.
But I had this great post I was gonna make about discount Reeboks!
With all due respect, you really expect profundity from someone who signs his posts “Urethra?”
let me add my voice to the chorus encouraging you to please dismiss thoughts of shutting the blog down. everyone loses in that case. instead you might consider an unpaid intern ‘responsibilities include checking on tv repair, runs to BK, and monitoring/modulating bile spew from internet’.
My best advice – wait it out. And we can all help by taking your advice and ignoring, y’know, that guy if he shows up. It would make a weird blog for awhile, though. Everybody else talking about Hitchcock and Rohmer while that guy in the corner keeps screaming. But they will be screams we can’t hear, just like in space, even if they are in caps.
In the end, do what you think is best.
I came on this site in the middle of some fracas about a critic who Glenn called out for having a crush on Ellen Page. I’d never heard of her before and I went and watched an interview with her afterwards. While I’m sure she’s a decent human being and I guess she’s pretty she reminded of some of the unreality I feel watching actor’s who are supposed to be “young” these days and a weird kind of precociousness and commodification that seems like anything an actual pedophile would be interested in anyway.…
but I guess it was a pretty good slam and sells copy or blog. I was far more disturbed by the critic’s constant reminders that he was in some posh hotel in Cannes and that he thought they must be somebody because they were there too…and his glowing discovery that they were wondering who he is also…
i hate that kind of shit
I also read some of the other guys postings regarding female anatomy and his crass ascertations that only 16 year old girls can be attractive and I didn’t approve of his very personal attacks on Kenny’s appearance and job standing…for what it’s worth
and maybe my handle is a little crass but i look on here and I see a guy named cadavra and i figured it’s no big deal. If you’ll read my postings I think you’ll find I didn’t deserve the kind of treatment I was met with. Unless you’re all completely insane and have your heads up each others butts I think you can go back over everything and see when things started escalating…
that said though… the most distateful thing and the thing that Lex‑G in all is meaness had absolutely right in my opinion is that you guys act like a gang…and your snobs. If you want to examine human nature…perhaps you should examine that first. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say you guys are synchopantic to Kenny but I think theres a certain defensiveness and knee jerk protectivness to this site and yes a certain amount of condescension towards if not each other any tone that’s not back scratching and patting that kind of sucks…you want to like skeletons go ahead and like skeletons…just don’t insult my fucking inteligence by telling me that your an inoccent bystander and don’t know what you’re doing when you rudely interupt me and bust that out of clear blue sky
no big deal… I won’t show up again. wanna stop baiting me?
@ hisnewreasons: “That guy in the corner,” incidentally, was recently seen over at Wells’, expressing some regret at his feces-throwing tantrum here, but also whingeing about how he thought I, of all people, should have been someone to “get” him, and that I let him down by not. It’s like he’s Jake Gyllenhaal in “The Good Girl,” and Wells is his Aniston. Fits.
@ Cadavra: ‘Urethra’ could be weirdly OK. Not ‘Urethra Franklin’, though. But let’s not start another pointless flame war; I preferred to abstain adding my thoughts to the L_G business. We’ve been courteous.
To veer wildly off topic but in a (I hope) constructive way: is there any way to effectively pressure and convince the BBC or the BFI or Criterion or whoever dares to to release in DVD certain unavailable Alan Clarke films? Let’s say, a pack with ‘Road’, ‘Contact’ and ‘Christine’?
@ Urethra Franklin: Okay. Let me try to engage. Just a little bit. Let’s see how this works.
I’m sorry you “hate that kind of shit,” that is, stories in which the teller is staying at a fancy hotel in Cannes. I wasn’t relating the story to try and lord it over anyone. You know, once upon a time I worked at a big magazine, and we had a good T&E budget, and I got to stay at a fancy hotel when I went to Cannes. At Sundance I shared a condo with six other people once. When I was a college student I lived in a pretty crummy part of Paterson, N.J. When I’m telling an anecdote, sometimes the environment figures in the anecdote. Not to be indelicate here, but BIG FAT FUCKING HAIRY DEAL. The fact that you think I’m lording it over you when I’m telling a story in which I’m staying at a fancy hotel is about your head, not mine. “You know what? No. Don’t book me there. Book me in a fleapit five miles out, on the bad side. My festival experience will be more REAL that way. Besides, I don’t wanna offend some guy who might comment on my blog in three years.”
Look, the Ellen Page anecdote was just that—an anecdote. Not a big deal. (Nor was what you term a “glowing discovery” anything like a glowing discovery. Why do I have to defend myself against your projections, because you assume from a random, casual anecdote that I’m some kind of starfucker?) (Okay, somebody stop me before I say something stupid like, “You should hear the names I don’t drop on this blog,” etc.) Just as making fun of that John Derbyshire guy was an idle amusement. One thing I like about blogging is that it encompasses a lot of different forms of writing. I can post a considered essay, an annotation of a group of references in a given film, or a goofy one-or-two liner. I can write about film or about something funny that happened in my neighborhood. None of it has to fit together, but it ends up fitting together because of the form, and because it’s mine, just as all your random stuff might fit together on your blog.
I don’t get it. I’m blessed with a comments section where people respond to each other positively and engage in some kind of conversation, and then you come along and you’ve got this chip on your shoulder because we’re all “condescending” to the likes of you while we’re patting each other on the back and being snobs. So we’re snobs. So this is a snob site. Well, sorry, but there are about 20 million non-snob sites out there you could go to…But no, you wanna stay here and either say “fuck you” or whine at being rejected. What is it that you really want, finally? From me or anybody else here?
Oh, I’m sorry, is the commenteriat here just NOT UP to the profound intellectual challenge you’re posing? Sorry, but the mere act of pissing in a bowl of Fruit Loops doesn’t constitute much of a challenge, except to good manners.
Well, THAT didn’t work out. Go, stay, whatever. I really don’t get it.
Glenn, that comment was the equivalent of Daniel-san’s crane kick at the end of Karate Kid.
Win, lose, no matter. Was well done.
First of all…mea culpa. I didn’t know that was an anecdote that YOU delivered…I thought you were commenting on another critics writing. I guess I didn’t read the thing too well. Whose the pedophile then just out of curiosity? That’s a serious question.
Wasn’t trying to be profound. I’m actually pretty confused about what’s going on right now and my heads kind of reeling but I absolutely refuse to back down on certain convictions I have. I know a lot of really terrific people and they find themselves very isolated and I have a hard time believing that comics, transformer movies, video games and any other number of things has anything to do with where their lives are at. I see very few films or have very few conversations that seem to correlate with what seems vaguely to be going on. I’m also quite sick of people treating me like some kind of aberation because I feel like that. I’ve never been a particularly political person and I know I don’t need to tell you this but there are guys in charge of a clean-up and compensation down on a beach that just irrevicably altered our landscape and everybody seems so fucking calm and everytime I try to say anything regarding how insane this makes me feel I loose friends or am treated like some kind of criminal myself…or told this isn’t the place for it. Is that fucking profound…who fucking cares…what do any of us have for any of our profundity? I don’t give a shit what hotel you stay at… does it give you a right to make snap judgements about me because maybe I don’t know all the literary allusions you do…or stopped seeing the movies a long time ago even though I used to love them at one point. or can’t talk your talk? Is it wrong for me to make a little noise to remind myself I’m still here when I find myself dissappearing? I won’t come back on this site but you don’t know me. I can and have hanged with anyone. I don’t give a shit. I experienced bullying like this in elementary school worse from a bunch of mean spirited smart allecks than i ever did from a bunch of tough guys. have what ever site you want I wasn’t asking to be your friend…i don’t know what the fuck i came to this site for to tell you the truth I’m not interested in most of it anyway..
.enjoy
Reading all this the last few days I feel like Pippa Scott in PETULIA. This is a joke, right?
Right.
And, scene.
See above post.
Then why are you reading it?
I think I’m as confused as Urethra. It’s like he went apeshit because he wandered into an Olive Garden and couldn’t get a taco.
You know what’s unforgiveable to me? When Première left print, instead of refunding the remainder of my money, they sent me some US Weekly’s. Because if I like movies, I must like gossip about The Hills and paparazzi pictures. Same thing, right?
@ Krillian: I can understand your irritation and your long-standing grudge. And I can even understand your complaining to me about it, as, well, I’m the only blog presence from that Première era to complain to. (I know there’s Anne Thompson, but she wasn’t on full-time staff when the magazine folded. On the other hand, what difference should THAT make? Why don’t you complain to Anne Thompson? Oh, wait…) Still. You should know that there was no one on the editorial staff of the magazine that was consulted on the decision to switch subscribers over to US Weekly. That was carried out not even by Hachette’s in-house circulation department, but by a fulfillment house somewhere in Oklahoma (I think). And for all I know, the decision might have been made by a computer.
I know, I know. More sensitivity to our readers should have been displayed. But honestly, it’s not as if anybody from editorial could have gone in and said, “Hey, subscribers ought to have the remainder of their subscriptions fulfilled with…” The Atlantic, or Sight and Sound, or what have you. It’s just not how the now-dying business worked.
If Première had published nothing else, William Goldman’s annual eve-of-Oscars appraisals, in particular his long, brutal and detailed demolition job on ‘Saving Private Ryan’, would’ve made it all worthwhile.
Oliver_C – I subscribed to PREMIERE from 1991 to 2000 and those William Goldman Oscar pre-mortems still pop into my head from time to time. (Other fond Première memories include the DFW Lynch piece, the David Strick photos, and the John H. Richardson stories on Scientology and Sonny Gibson.) Good call.
Hasn’t everyone figured out by now that this current troll is merely the latest incarnation of the previous troll? The same sociopathic subtext (and subject-derailing result) underlies the comments of both.
I lived for Goldman’s Oscar appraisals. Magic times!
I still have all my issue of PREMIERE stored away in boxes, I can’t bring myself to part with them. Whoever is responsible for the downfall of that magazine should be ashamed. I still hope somebody resurrects it one day, even as an online site. Is that old PREMIERE site still online? What an embarrassment if it is.
Owain and others—have we forgotten Goldman’s incredibly stupid dismissal of GANGS OF NEW YORK’s Oscar run? I like Goldman just fine, but I still can’t forgive him for going philistine on that flawed, wonderful movie.
His suggestions for the original STEPFORD WIVES were foolish too.
I would disagree strongly with Goldman’s take on Saving Private Ryan, but I remember totally agreeing with him when he brought up the flaws in L.A. Confidential.
I agreed with his take on Saving Private Ryan, although he was a bit over the top. I’m not a Gangs Of New York man, and I can’t remember what he said about it, so …
No matter how spot on or inflammatory he was, he was always a fantastic read.
“I’ve never been a particularly political person and I know I don’t need to tell you this but there are guys in charge of a clean-up and compensation down on a beach that just irrevicably altered our landscape and everybody seems so fucking calm and everytime I try to say anything regarding how insane this makes me feel I loose friends or am treated like some kind of criminal myself…or told this isn’t the place for it.”
And I am Marie of Roumania.