Yeah, I kinda do. Let me ‘splain why.
This blog got started way back when because I was getting an itch to do a bit of writing. I had been poking around Usenet in the film groups and had tried my hand at some short commentaries, and this had whetted my appetite for more of the same.
It was about at this time that the concept of the weblog started to really gather steam. A Usenet acquaintance named Tom Sutpen had started his own blog, and as I read it, I began to think why not? This was the perfect forum for what I wanted to do – To write about something I was passionate about. Thus, filmscreed was born in the fall of 2005, featuring an essay on Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain. My intent was always to do commentaries on off-the-beaten-track stuff, just like my blog description says.
I was trying to sit down, do the toil, and perhaps create something worthwhile. In looking back at those first entries, I see that they were far from perfect, but they were at least created with enthusiasm. After a while, however, I started to be bothered by the small number of responses I got, and I began to think that doing an entry every two or three weeks wasn’t enough, that people needed a more steady diet or they’d get bored.
That’s when I decided to start supplementing the blog with photos and film posters, thus keeping a more steady flow of material out there. This was interesting, and it was kind of fun to hunt up stuff to put online.
The change was gradual, and it was abetted by some changes in my life. A new job cut drastically into my free time, making watching movies a lot more difficult, and writing about them nearly impossible. The result was that the blog became saturated with “quick & easy” stuff – Photos, movie posters, magazine covers, and writing took a backseat. When I did write, I had to cram it into the rare bits of free time I had. The quality suffered for it, culminating in the piece I did on Underworld Beauty a few weeks back. It was sloppy, I wasn’t happy with it, but I posted it anyway.
So, now I have made a decision. I briefly thought about just shutting down the site, but decided that that wasn’t an option, so I am just going to dedicate myself to re-inventing filmscreed the way I originally envisioned it – An "insufferable film snob" writing about movies. The posts will be more infrequent, and the film posters and other images aren’t going away completely (I’ve got waaaay too many of them on my hard drive, and I’m not going to have done all that for nothing, dammit!) but the focus will be put back on me sitting at a keyboard and hammering out my thoughts on movies.
If you are one who reads this blog with any regularity, I hope you continue to. I've got a lot of stuff that I want to talk about, and a lot of work ahead of me. Please, just be patient with this time-challenged amateur scribbler.
Thanks
Jeff
