Definition of Greatness -- Writer's Poke #293

Do you remember Brokeback Mountain? It won 3 Academy Awards, and according to wikipedia, it is one of the top 10 grossing romances of all time. But have you ever heard someone say, "Gee, let's make some popcorn and pop in Brokeback Mountain"? No, you have not. This is a movie that is good for one required viewing, but it's not a movie that most people will want to watch again and again and again.

I don't mean to pick on Brokeback Mountain. Other movies that fit in this "just watch once" category include Million Dollar Babies and The Sixth Sense. For a variety of reasons, some movies are the equivilent of "one-view wonders." Of course some people feel the same way about the Grand Canyon. See it once, and you never need to go back. It might be the "bucketlist mentality." Watch it, do it, check it off, and move on.

On the other hand, people often watch other "lower quality" films over and over and over. Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle and Napoleon Dynamite are two examples that come to mind. Almost no one, probably, would argue that these kind of movies are better than movies like Brokeback Mountain, and yet they are somehow, if not better, then preferable. The question is, Why?

(I won't even go into movies like Final Destination, which are apparently good enough to recycle the same plot time and again in countless sequels. -- Basically, no one wants to watch Final Destination more than once, but some are eager and willing to watch the same plot with different actors and in slightly different contexts...)

What is your defintion for greatness -- related to the context of movies or otherwise?

"It takes a certain courage and a certain greatness to be base." -- Jean Anouilh

Comments

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #1 - Real Coffee with Scott Adams

I've been curious about how others perceive reality. What is "true" and "real" to me is not necessarily "true" and "real" to others. First stop: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert. He's currently 67, does a daily podcast called "Real Coffee with Scott Adams" which draws about 30,000 listeners on YouTube, with 172,000 total subscribers to the channel. Podcast is also available on all the usual places, with a 4.4 rating on Apple Podcasts. Each episode is about an hour long, or a little less. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15SFbr2vj8c 1. Basic format: Just runs through news articles that drew his interest. On the April 15 episode (link above), he ran through 28 articles. Often he'd laugh at something, sometimes to show his disbelief. 2. Adams is not a big fan of science. He's open to conspiracy theories. Believes that the government doesn't tell us the truth (although he seems to think the Trump administration is an e...

"Digging for the Truth" Experiment #2 -- Bald and Bankrupt

His first name is Benjamin, but he usually goes by "Bald." Bald has been posting travel videos since 2018. His passion is anything Soviet Union, but he will take the time to learn a language before he visits a place -- not only Russian, but Spanish, say. It's important for him to have the ability to speak to people in their native tongue. On Friday, April 18, Bald posted a video called "Solo on Ukraine's Eastern Front." So far it's generated 2.7 million views, and based on viewer average, it will likely go over 5 million views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3HRnwC6pso Most of his videos are in the neighborhood of an hour in length. In them, he usually establishes where he is and what his goal for being there is. He will start somewhere and then go seek out a place, without knowing exactly what he will find there. For the latest Ukraine video, he starts at the Kiev train station. It's been 3 years, he says, since he last visited Ukraine, and he h...

The Unconventional Life

How conventional is your life? If you're in your 30s as I am, think about how much you and I have in common: Spouce? check Kid(s)? check Job? check House? check Debt? check Obviously there's nothing wrong with conventional living, but if that's all there is, it seems kind of robotic to me. We have our freewill, and yet we all go through similar life stages, and we all share basic common experiences. What makes my life any different, then, from a million other lives in the Western world? This bothers me, and I yearn to make my life more unconventional. Of course people that are "unconventional" often find themselves being unconventional in uniform ways. So, perhaps there's no way out of the box. There's no way to live a life that someone else hasn't already lived. And maybe that's okay. I would just like to be able to add some unconventional elements to the satisfactory conventional elements of my life. The question is: How can I do that w...

The Writer's Poke

Search This Blog