Read Instead…in Print

”One of the first basic lessons in filmmaking
is chasing the light. Without it, you have nothing –
no exposure that can be seen; even what you see with your
naked eye needs to be shaped and enhanced by the light.”

Read instead…in print #22

Chasing the Light: How I Fought My Way into Hollywood from the 1960s to Platoon is the book about that time in a filmmaker’s life who is working outside of Hollywood, in complete freedom. Before making it big. It is Oliver Stone’s story up until that brief year of 1986, the year when Salvador hit theaters and Platoon soon followed, when he was the unknown, the elusive, the unexpected. There is just one such moment in an artist’s life and Oliver Stone builds that moment up with all the personal fervor, rawness and freedom he has shown in his movies.

“Her review,” Oliver Stone writes referring to Pauline Kael’s dismantling of his screenwriting work for Scarface when the film came out, “typified a new kind of self-conscious film criticism, and it darkened a lifetime of going to the movies for me. A sort of super-fandom wherein the critic, putting himself or herself between the movies and the audience, reveled in his or her subjective, specialized knowledge of the filmmaker, as opposed to just watching a movie without knowing who made it – as when we were young. The audience, for the most part, might not know who directed it, and it shouldn’t matter. A film exists on its own merits – no cheating allowed (reviews, money thrown at it, promotions, etc.)”. He puts his faith in the audience and in the film itself. That’s all that should matter.

Read instead… in print is about a good book about cinema or filmmakers. No discursive, pretentious analyses, no verbose scrutiny. Because the idea is to invite you to read the book, not read about it here. But instead of using social media, I use my journal. Back to basics. Take it as a wish to break free of over-reliance on social media (even if it’s just for posting a photo of a good book) for presenting my work, cultural finds and interests. These are things to be enjoyed as stand-alone pieces in a more substantial and meaningful way than showing them in the black hole of Instagram thronged with an audience with a short attention span. This is also a look through my voluminous collection of books about film that I use as research in my adamant decision to rely less and less on the online and more on more on print materials.