Most TV shows are after the unexpected. They want to create that water cooler moment that brings you back the next week, still buzzing about what you saw before. John Locke was in a wheelchair. Livia Soprano takes out a hit on her son. Michael Scott drives a car into a lake. The secretary runs over the new guy’s foot with a lawn tractor. All of these moments – good and bad – traffic in that instant when you gasp in shock and awe, amazed by the way the storyteller led you away from what you expected and toward something else entirely. Being surprised by a story is one of the most basic of human thrills. But I don’t think it should be the only thing we build our stories off of. The more storytellers try to surprise the audience, the more the audience goes in always expecting to be surprised. But stories can do other things as well. They can move us or comfort us. They can create a way for us to re-hear truths we’ve long believed. They can reflect our lives as they’re really lived. Surprise is a great tool, but it often seems like the only tool TV fans and critics value anymore. There’s something to be said for a story that holds a mirror up to our own flaws and emotions and says, “We know how this feels, too.”

Todd VanDerWerff on “Huge”

I was asked at lunch today who or what I worshipped. The question was asked sincerely, and in the same spirit I responded that I worshipped whatever there might be outside knowledge. I worship the void. The mystery.

–Roger Ebert

Pornography, from the Greek, means literally ‘whore writing.’ You know you are a whore and you write about it. This differs from other literary careers in which you may write for years before you discover you are whore.

–Lars Eighner

I have neglected poor little Nuts, Zoe’s Boston terrier. Nuts follows her everywhere, and whenever he gets a closeup, he barks appropriately, as if he understands what is said.  When was the last time in a movie where somebody said something, and there was a cut to a dog who barked, and you thought, “That’s so funny!”

Ebert: The Back-up Plan

Repost from old blog, 5/10/2009

From his review of “Little Ashes“:

I have long believed that one minute of wondering if you are about to be kissed is more erotic than an hour of kissing. Although a few gay Web sites complain “Little Ashes” doesn’t deliver the goods, I find it far more intriguing to find how repressed sexuality express itself, because the bolder sort comes out in the usual ways and reduces mystery to bodily fluids. Orgasms are at their best when still making big promises, don’t you find?

One huge problem with art lies with the extent of artists who need to connect with an audience. What I’m talking about is a relationship with art. The success of this relationship seems to rely on a certain limitation of public interaction. It’s not absurd to regard art as a coded outcry to be loved properly; therefore when you start giving it away it invariably dilutes in an almost alchemical sense. This pervading sort of pathetic hopefulness—the idea of wowing people, is corrupt from the start. I find it disgustingly vain and needy. So to undercut all that it’s been my method of obsessively questioning the purity of an expression and accepting its expiration date so I’m only left with the inception of the idea when it’s most exciting. I realize that some of the truth behind this is that I can’t endure defeat gracefully, so I act fast and take what I can. Achievements mean little; any enjoyment I’m lucky enough to scrape up usually just gets buried in the process anyway.

- Mark McCoy (from DC’s)