OK, here's a batshit crazy suggestion: Federico Fellini's 8 1/2. Hear me out on this.
First, I would really love to hear you guys talk about a Classic Important European Art Film. Why? Because it strikes me that you guys, and really all of us here on the forums, were the target audience for these films when they originally came out: people who were interested in, and even knowledgeable about, cinema, people who were interested in non-mainstream/non-Hollywood stuff, the sort of audience who today would go to the theater to see an indie film or a documentary. And, in that context of course, 8 1/2 was a huge critical and commercial success.
I'm really curious to have a discussion about how a film like this plays for a modern audience. I don't mean anything to do with any film-school type analysis. Just questions like: Does it work? Is it interesting? If not, why not? What's different about a modern film-going audience? How does what Fellini's doing compare with more modern 'art' filmmakers like, say, Darren Aranofsky or Shane Carruth?
And I think 8 1/2 would be a good choice specifically because it's all about film-making, the creative process, one's obligations as an artist, if any. That sort of thing. And, unlike me, all of you guys (and many people here on the forums) have been deeply involved in those sorts of issues for much of your adult lives. Not only as writers and directors, but as any creative person involved in a film, I'm sure there are analogues to the everything that's going on in 8 1/2-- the scenes where the main character has all these people giving him their opinion, dealing with writer's block, producers in his ear telling him to do a, b, c, there's only X amount of money and you need to get going, etc. etc.
And I also wonder whether there isn't any connection between the old fashioned auteur-cinema (both as portrayed in the film and in real life) and modern low-budget film-making, particularly fan-films, which, again, all of you guys have been involved with. A £200 million Hollywood blockbuster won't be like that of course, but surely the reason one goes to all the hassle of getting a fan-film or indie documentary actually up there on the screen is because you believe in something, you have a point of view, there's something you think that people aren't doing and that you want to do, etc. etc. So it's not just a gig to pay the rent. You do think about "OK, why am I actually doing this? What am I trying to achieve?"
Anyway, I'd be up for it, he says, as the crickets begin chirping and the tumbleweeds roll by....
For the next hour, everything in this post is strictly based on the available facts.
