Chapter 1: Writing About the Movies

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Welcome back to the Deep Dive.

We are so glad you are here with us today because we are tackling a subject that is, well, it's basically the wallpaper of our lives.

That's a great way to put it.

It's something we consume constantly, something we obsess over, something we build entire Friday nights around.

But, and here's the kicker, it's something that feels uniquely difficult to actually explain.

Right.

We are talking about the movies.

It is the great paradox of modern entertainment, isn't it?

It really is.

I mean, think about it.

You're listening to this right now and I guarantee you, you have a favorite movie.

You probably have a movie you can quote line for line.

Oh, for sure.

You have a movie that made you cry your eyes out.

We argue about these things at dinner parties.

We have heated debates about whether a certain sequel was necessary or if that one actor was totally miscast.

We know what we like.

We know how we feel.

Absolutely.

The emotional connection is immediate.

It's visceral.

But if I were to stop you in the middle of that rant about your favorite film and say, okay, pause, tell me how that movie worked.

How exactly did the lighting in that scene make you feel sad?

How did the editing rhythm manipulate your heart rate?

Suddenly silence.

It's like hitting a wall.

You're tapping into a frustration that film theorists have been wrestling with for, I mean, decades.

It is not just you.

That's reassuring.

There's a very famous French film theorist named Christian Metz.

And he summed this up in a way that I think perfectly captures the vibe of our discussion today.

He has, we all understand the movies, but how do we explain them?

We all understand the movies, but how do we explain them?

That is the million dollar question.

And that is the central tension we are going to explore in this deep dive.

We are cracking open chapter one of Timothy Quirigan's book, A Short Guide to Writing About Film.

A classic text, foundational for any film student.

And our mission today is very specific.

We're not just here to chat about our favorite popcorn flicks.

We're here to bridge that gap Metz was talking about.

We want to take you from being someone who sits there with a bucket of popcorn, letting the images just wash over you.

Which is a perfectly fine way to watch a movie, by the way.

Oh, absolutely.

But we want to take you from that to someone who is actively engaging with analyzing and ultimately writing about what is on the screen.

That is the goal.

We want to hand you a toolkit.

By the end of this hour, we want you to understand that writing about film isn't just one thing.

It's not just giving a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Right.

It's not just Siskel and Ebert.

Exactly.

We're going to cover four distinct types of film writing.

We're going to talk about how to balance your personal opinion with actual concrete evidence from the film.

And perhaps most importantly, we're going to debunk the biggest myth of all.

Oh, the myth, the fear that analyzing a movie ruins the magic.

Exactly.

The idea that if you dissect the frog, you kill it.

That you're being a killjoy.

I've definitely felt that.

We're going to argue using Corrigan's text, that analysis actually increases your enjoyment.

It doesn't destroy the magic.

It shows you how the trick is performed, which in a way makes it even more impressive.

Okay.

So just to set the ground rules for today, we are sticking strictly to the text of chapter one.

We're not bringing in outside movies.

We are going to use the specific examples Corrigan provides.

And let me tell you, it is quite a lineup.

We have everything from massive billion dollar blockbusters like Avatar to high concept European art house classics like Leventura and gritty 1970s American crime dramas like Badlands.

It's a diverse list, but that is the point.

These principles apply whether you are watching a superhero movie or a black and white silent film.

That's the idea.

The goal is to translate that fluid emotional visual experience into concrete logical written words.

So let's start at the very beginning.

The 30 ,000 foot view.

Why write about movies at all?

I mean, aside from the fact that maybe your professor assigned it to you and you want to pass the class.

Which is a valid reason.

A very valid reason.

But why does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

Well, Corrigan starts the chapter by making a pretty bold claim.

He points out that films aren't just distractions.

They aren't just things we do to kill two hours.

They are deeply, deeply embedded in our cultural life.

They're a language.

They're a shared language.

They reflect our history, our anxieties, our values and the way we see the world.

They're not separate from life.

They're a part of how we process life.

He gives some really powerful examples of this.

One that stood out to me was the social network.

David Fincher's film from 2010.

A great example.

Now, on the surface, you could say, oh, that's just a biopic about Mark Zuckerberg.

It's a movie about a website.

But if you actually sit down to write about it, you realize it is so much more.

It is.

If you're analyzing the social network, you aren't just writing about code or lawsuits or who betrayed who.

You're writing about the entire internet revolution.

You're writing about a shift in humanity.

Yes.

You are analyzing how the concept of friendship was being redefined in real time for an entire generation.

It dramatized a fundamental shift in human connection, and it did it while it was still happening.

It captured the zeitgeist.

Exactly.

Or look at the Hurt Locker, the Catherine Bigelow film that won Best Picture.

Yeah, I remember that one.

That movie came out in 2008, right in the thick of the post -invasion reality of Iraq.

And it brought the visceral confusion, the horror and the adrenaline of that war home to American living rooms in a way that the nightly news simply couldn't.

The news gives you facts, but the movie gives you the feeling.

Precisely.

The news reports on an IED.

The movie puts you in the Humvee.

And writing about it helps you process that feeling to understand the psychological cost of what you just saw.

And the text brings up an even more tragic example, The Dark Knight.

The Batman movie, yeah.

Yes.

When that movie opened, it made something like, what was it?

$66 .4 million dollars in its opening weekend.

It was a juggernaut.

A cultural event.

But you cannot separate that success or the entire conversation around that film from the tragic death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker.

Right.

It was completely inextricably linked.

So talking about that movie, writing about it at that moment, it wasn't just about reviewing a superhero movie.

It became part of a massive cultural grieving process.

It became a conversation about stardom, about tragedy, about the toll of performance, and about the line between art and life.

The movie carries the weight of the real world on its shoulders.

It's not just escapism.

It's a mirror.

It is wild to think about how much weight these stories actually carry.

We tend to dismiss them as just entertainment, but they're really how we process reality.

There's a quote in the text from Erwin Panofsky.

He was a famous art historian, and he was writing this way back in 1934, which is just amazing to think about.

Okay.

It's a bit of a journey on other art forms, honestly, but it really drives this point home.

Lay it on us.

Panofsky said that if serious lyrical poets or painters were forced by law to stop working,

only a small fraction of the general public would really notice, and an even smaller fraction would seriously regret it.

Ouch.

Sorry to all the poets out there.

We love you, but Panofsky is coming for you.

It is harsh.

But then he flips it.

He says, if the same thing were to happen with movies, if the screens just went dark, if cinema ceased to exist,

the social consequences would be catastrophic.

Catastrophic.

That is such a strong word.

It is.

But think about it.

It would leave a massive void in how we process our existence.

We use movies to dream, to escape, to understand others, to understand ourselves.

It's our collective dream space.

That's a perfect way to put it.

If you take that away, you are taking away a primary organ of our culture.

I get that.

I feel that.

But here is the rub.

Despite how important they are, and despite how much we love them, we have this massive resistance to actually working to understand them.

We treat movies like, well, like fast food.

Cotton candy is the metaphor I like from the book.

Cotton candy.

Delicious, sweet, huge, and then it dissolves in two seconds, and you are left with nothing but a sticky residue.

Exactly.

We consume them quickly.

We get that sugar rush of entertainment.

We walk out of the theater buzzing, but we don't treat them like a meal to be digested.

We don't chew on them.

There's this unspoken assumption that movies are supposed to be easy.

And if you analyze a movie, if you pick it apart, you're being a killjoy.

You're ruining the fun.

The dreaded film snob.

Oh, I have definitely been that person, or I have been annoyed by that person.

You know, you walk out of a movie, you're wiping tears from your eyes, and your friend immediately starts talking about the structural pacing of the second act.

Aye.

And you just want to scream, dude, let me have this emotion.

Stop analyzing it.

That is a very common reaction.

We feel like analysis is cold.

We feel like it strips away the mystery.

But Corrigan counters this in the chapter with a sports analogy that I think is incredibly helpful for getting past this mental block.

Okay.

Let's unpack the sports analogy.

Think about a diehard basketball fan,

or football, or baseball, whatever your sport is.

This is a person who knows the history of the teens.

They understand the defensive strategies.

They know all the stats.

They know the statistical probabilities of a shot from a certain spot on the floor.

They understand the physics of the game.

Now ask yourself,

does knowing all of that make the game less enjoyable for them?

No, definitely not.

They are usually the ones screaming the loudest at the TV.

Exactly.

They are more engaged, not less.

When they see a player execute a perfect pick and roll, they appreciate the difficulty of it.

They see the strategy unfolding in real time.

A casual viewer just sees a ball go in a hoop.

Right.

But the expert fan sees a narrative of skill and execution.

They see the chess match.

So the knowledge deepens the intensity.

Precisely.

Or think about a dance enthusiast watching a ballet.

If you know the technical names of the moves, if you know how hard it is to hold a specific pose, you aren't bored by the details.

You are mesmerized by the mastery of them.

You appreciate the craft more.

You appreciate the craft.

The argument here is that critical awareness sharpens pleasure.

It doesn't dull it.

Critical awareness sharpens pleasure.

I like that.

It's like when you understand how the machine works, you appreciate the ride even more.

And the text actually has a perfect case study for this, involving a student writing about the movie Avatar.

Yes.

James Cameron's Avatar from 2009.

The Blue Aliens.

The Giant Tree.

The Box Office King.

The one and only.

Now, pretty much everyone saw this movie, and the student's initial reaction, which Corrigan describes, was probably like most of ours.

Just sensory overload.

Pure sensory overload.

Right.

The student writes about being blown away by the 3D technology, the special effects, the immersive world of Pandora.

It was a wow experience.

That is the fan reaction, the cotton candy reaction.

And there's nothing wrong with that.

That's the first step.

Right.

But then the student had to write a paper about it.

And this is where the shift happens.

By forcing themselves to sit down and articulate their thoughts, they couldn't just stay in that wow phase.

You can't write a five -page paper that just says it was cool over and over again.

Well, you can try, but you probably won't get a good grade.

So the writing process forced the student to look closer.

They started moving past the surface spectacle.

The text mentions that upon reflection, the student started picking up on themes of imperialist aspirations.

Imperialist aspirations.

That's a heavy phrase for a movie about blue cat people.

It is, but it's there.

They noticed the brutal goals of corporate superiors.

The whole unobtainium plot.

Right, the mining operation.

They started seeing the film not just as an action movie, but as a commentary on humanity's history of colonization.

They saw it as a story about nature versus technology, and specifically about the ethics of connecting with indigenous species.

So the analysis revealed that the film was, and this is a quote, more complex and subtle than they originally gave it credit for.

Exactly.

And the key takeaway here, and this is crucial for you listening, is that writing about Avatar didn't turn it into a boring textbook exercise.

It revealed a layer of meaning that made the film richer.

It added to the experience.

It transformed from just a visual roller coaster into a story about what it means to be human.

That is what Corrigan calls challenging pleasure.

Challenging pleasure.

That is such a good term.

It's the difference between the pleasure of a warm bath,

where you just lie there, and the pleasure of a good hike, where you have to work a bit, but the view is worth it.

That is a perfect metaphor.

And that leads us directly to the next section of the chapter.

We need to talk about the transition from just chatting about movies to actually writing about them.

Right.

Because believe it or not, they're two very different activities.

Yeah, let's unpack that.

Because I feel like I review movies all the time with my friends.

We walk out of the theater, we go get a drink, and we argue, I hated the ending, or that acting was so fake, or best movie ever.

Right.

Why isn't that writing?

Those are valid emotional reactions.

They were the raw material.

But writing, according to Corrigan, is essentially refined and measured talking.

When we're just chatting, we're often lazy with our language.

We'll use shorthand.

We rely on shorthand.

Exactly.

It was just weird.

It was weird.

It was boring.

It was cool.

Those words are placeholders.

They don't actually describe the experience, they just describe your reaction to it.

Okay, I see.

Writing forces us to locate the specific cause of that reaction.

So if I say it was weird,

writing asks me, okay, what was weird?

Was it the camera angle?

Was it the dialogue?

Was it the music?

Was it the performance?

Yes.

It demands evidence.

The text gives the example of arguing about the ending of Inception.

Or, even better, comparing Buster Keaton to Charlie Chaplin.

Oh, the silent film stars, a classic debate.

Right.

In a conversation, you might simply say, I prefer Keaton because he's funnier.

And your friend says, no, Chaplin is funnier.

And then you disagree to disagree.

And that's the end of it.

It's just a clash of preferences.

But if you have to write it down?

If you have to write it down, you have to explain the mechanism of the humor.

You might analyze Keaton's physical stoicism, the great stone face, and how he uses his body as a mechanical object in a chaotic world.

You might contrast that with Chaplin's sentimentality and his use of facial expressions to solicit pathos and pity.

So you're moving from I like this to this works because… I'm moving from opinion to argument.

Yeah.

And that is the whole game.

And to really illustrate this power of writing to clarify our thoughts, Corgan brings in a heavyweight example, La Ventura by Michelangelo Antonioni.

A classic of Italian cinema from 1960, a real arthouse staple.

Now, for listeners who haven't seen this, we need to set the scene because this is a notoriously difficult film.

It's the kind of movie that makes casual viewers throw popcorn at the screen.

It is.

It breaks all the traditional rules of storytelling.

It's famous for what it doesn't do.

So the text discusses an analysis by a critic named Jeffrey Noel Smith.

The scene involves a man Sandro and a woman, Claudia.

They have arrived at a deserted village in Sicily.

It is a ghost town.

Modern architecture, but completely empty.

Very strange.

Very eerie.

They walk around.

They call out.

No one answers.

They are looking for their missing friend, Anna, who disappeared earlier in the film, but they don't find her.

They just walk.

It's quiet.

You hear their footsteps.

The wind.

That's it.

And frankly, if you are watching this with a blockbuster brain, nothing is happening.

It's just people walking in an empty town.

But then suddenly the film cuts and we see a close -up of Sandro and Claudia lying in a field, laughing and looking happy.

Now, a casual viewer, a chatterer might say, That was weird.

Nothing happened in the town.

And now they're randomly happy.

This movie makes no sense.

The editing is bad.

Right.

Where's the plot?

Where's the explosion?

I'm bored.

But Noel Smith, the writer, digs deeper.

He moves beyond the nothing happened complaint to analyze the feeling of the scene.

He doesn't dismiss his confusion.

He interrogates it.

Okay.

He describes the village as a labyrinth.

A labyrinth.

That changes the vibe immediately.

It's not just a town anymore.

Right.

It implies they're trapped.

Lost.

He notes how the architecture and the nature seem to oppress the characters.

It's not just an empty town.

It's a hostile environment.

He argues that their panic in the town turns into a sort of desolation.

An existential dread.

Exactly.

They realize they are small and disconnected.

And that sudden cut to happiness in the field, what does he make of that?

Noel Smith argues that it isn't a mistake.

It's the whole point.

It suggests that their feelings are unstable.

They're unmoored.

One minute they are panicked, the next they are laughing.

They're disconnected from their environment and from each other.

Wow.

The film is showing us through that jarring edit how fragile their connection really is.

That their love, if you can call it that, is just a fleeting emotion, not a deep commitment.

So the writer takes a moment that feels confusing, a missing plot moment, and connects it to the bigger picture.

He realizes the movie isn't about finding the missing girl.

It's about modern alienation and the fragility of love.

That is the power of writing.

It turns confusion into meaning.

It takes the boring parts and reveals them as the most important parts.

So we know why we write to understand better.

And we know it's different from just talking because it requires precision and evidence.

But there is another variable here that the chapter gets into.

Who are we writing for?

This is a crucial question.

The subject of your writing is always shaped by your audience.

You have to know who is reading.

It's not a one -size -fits -all situation.

The example Corrigan uses is the movie The Blind Side.

Yes, the 2009 film about American football and adoption starring Sandra Bullock.

Now let's play this out.

If I am writing a review of The Blind Side for an American audience, say for a local paper in Texas or a class at an American university, what does that look like?

Well, you can assume a vast amount of shared knowledge.

You don't need to explain what a quarterback is.

No.

You don't need to explain the cultural importance of college recruitment.

You don't need to explain the concept of the Friday Night Lights culture.

Your reader already has that context.

Right.

I can just say he's a left tackle and everyone knows what that means and why it's important.

Exactly.

So your writing can jump straight into the themes.

You can talk about the acting, the pacing, the racial dynamics, the sentimentality, the film's message.

But let's flip it.

Imagine I am writing for a French film journal or for an audience in, say, Japan where American football is a complete mystery.

Now you have a completely different task, a much harder task in some ways.

Right.

You would have to start from square one.

You'd have to explain the basic rules of the game.

You'd have to explain why protecting a quarterback's blind side is a critical job.

You'd have to explain the entire social ecosystem of high school and college sports in America.

So for that international audience, the subject of the essay isn't really the movie anymore.

It's American culture itself.

Correct.

The movie becomes a window into a foreign world.

Your job as the writer is to be the tour guide.

If you wrote the Texas version for the French audience, they would be completely lost.

And if you wrote the French version for the Texas audience, they would be insulted that you are explaining what a touchdown is.

Yeah, we know.

So knowing your audience actually dictates what you write, it's not just about the movie.

It's about the bridge between the movie and the reader.

Exactly.

You're always writing to someone.

All right.

This brings us to the core technical part of this chapter.

We have talked about the philosophy of writing, but now let's talk about the forms.

Corrigan outlines four distinct types of film writing.

These are the four pillars.

And to make this really clear, the text uses one single movie to illustrate three of these forms.

It's a brilliant pedagogical move because it allows us to see how the same material can be treated in completely different ways.

A real side -by -side comparison.

And the movie is Terrence Malick's Badlands from 1973.

A masterpiece,

truly one of the great American films.

Before we dive into the forms, can you give us the 30 -second elevator pitch on Badlands just so everyone knows what we are visualizing?

Sure.

Badlands is a crime drama set in the 1950s.

It stars a very young Martin Sheen as a guy named Kit, who looks a lot like James Dean.

And an even younger sissy Spacek as a girl named Holly.

Okay.

They are young, they fall in love, and then he kills her dad and they go on a killing spree across the American Midwest.

It sounds a bit like Bonnie and Clyde.

It is often compared to Bonnie and Clyde, which came out a few years earlier.

But the vibe is totally different.

It's not high energy and romping.

It's very dreamy, detached, and strange.

Just ass.

Characters seen almost bored by their own violence.

It's narrated by Holly in this very poetic fairy tale voiceover that completely contradicts the brutal things we're seeing on screen.

Okay, got it.

1950s.

Crime spree.

Dreamy, detached vibe.

So let's run through the four forms using Badlands.

First up,

the screening report.

The screening report is the most basic form.

Its purpose is usually academic.

It's preparation for a class discussion or an exam.

So this is what a student might write in their notebook immediately after the credits roll.

It's for your own use, mostly.

Yes.

And the style reflects that.

It's objective, concrete, and descriptive.

You generally avoid strong opinions here.

You aren't saying, I loved it, or it was trash.

You are cataloging what you saw.

You're gathering data.

You're gathering data.

That's the perfect way to think about it.

In the example note on Badlands provided in the text, the student organizes their thoughts under specific headings.

Right.

They have a heading for narrative.

They describe it as a road movie, which is a genre classification.

That's a good start.

Yeah.

But then they note a specific detail.

Yeah.

There's a lack of clear goals for the characters.

What does that mean?

In a normal road movie, you are trying to get somewhere.

You're going to California, or you're trying to reach the border.

In Badlands, Kit and Holly are just fleeing.

They are moving for the sake of moving.

There's no destination.

That's a great observation for a first viewing.

It is.

The student also notes composition, the visuals.

They mention the moving perspective of the car, the open roads of the west.

And they contrast that with the empty spaces surrounding the characters, even when they're inside.

They are noticing the isolation, visually.

Yes.

And don't forget the sound.

The student knows Holly's voiceover.

They describe it as having a romantic novel feel.

Which is that contrast you mentioned.

That is a crucial observation.

She talks about their life like it's a cheap romance paperback, which clashes so sharply with the fact that Kit is shooting people in the head.

The screening report captures that contrast without necessarily analyzing what it means yet.

It just notes that it is there.

Right.

Here are the facts I observed.

So the screening report is like taking inventory.

Here is what is in the movie.

Exactly.

It's the raw ingredients before you cook the meal.

Now compare that to the second form,

the movie review.

This is what most of us are familiar with.

This is the consumer guide.

Yes.

The purpose here is to recommend or not to recommend.

It is usually written for a general audience, like a newspaper reader or someone scrolling a website who has not seen the film yet.

That's the key difference.

The audience hasn't seen it.

Right.

Spoilers are a no -go.

Usually minimal spoilers are just the basic setup.

The style needs to be readable, engaging, and it needs to evaluate the quality.

Is it good?

Is it worth your money and your two hours?

The text uses Vincent Canby's review of Badlands from the New York Times, and right away the tone is completely different from the screening report.

Night and day.

Canby opens with high energy.

He calls the film cool, sometimes brilliant, always ferocious.

You would not put that in a screening report.

That is an emotional judgment.

Precisely.

It's an evaluative word.

Canby also provides context.

He introduces Terrence Malick as a debut director.

He mentions he's a former Rhodes Scholar.

Why does he do that?

He's establishing the director's pedigree for the reader.

He's telling you, this isn't just a B -movie from some hack.

This is art.

Pay attention.

And he summarizes the plot as an all -American joyride across the Upper Middle West.

Note the language.

Joyride.

That implies energy, recklessness.

It's a very evocative word choice.

And interestingly, he compares it to Bonnie and Clyde, which was another famous crime couple movie from a few years prior.

Which gives the reader a reference point.

Exactly.

If you know that movie, here's how this one is similar but also different.

He says Badlands is less about psychological explanation.

There is no Freud here.

It's about detached behavior.

So Canby is telling the reader, if you liked Bonnie and Clyde, you might be interested in this.

But be warned,

it is colder.

It is less emotional.

He's managing expectations.

So the review is about context, plot summary, and a verdict.

It's a service.

It's journalism.

Okay, that makes sense.

Now we move to the third form, the theoretical essay.

The big one.

This one sounds a bit more intimidating.

Theoretical.

It can be.

The theoretical essay isn't usually about one specific movie.

It's about the movies with a capital M.

It explains the large structures of cinema, reality, or ideology.

The target audience here is definitely not the general public.

It's advanced students or scholars.

Yes, people who are already deep in the study of film.

The text gives an example from a 1953 essay.

It discusses the relation of film to reality.

It argues that cinema is unlike literature or theater because it preserves dramatic performances in a way the stage cannot.

So it's not asking, is Badlands a good movie?

It's asking, what is the nature of the film medium compared to a stage play?

Exactly, it's abstract.

It might use Badlands as an example, but only to prove a larger point about how film works as an art form.

It's about the forest, not the individual trees.

Which brings us to the fourth form, and probably the most common one for students and the one most of our listeners might want to try.

The critical essay.

This is the sweet spot.

This is what most film classes are training you to write.

It falls somewhere between the review and the theoretical essay.

And the big assumption here, and this is where people get tripped up, is that the reader has seen the film.

That is the crucial difference from the review.

It changes everything.

In a critical essay, you do not need to recap the plot.

You assume the reader knows the basics.

So no long paragraphs explaining who Kit and Holly are?

No.

Your job is to reveal subtleties, to unpack specific themes, or to analyze complex sequences they might have missed on their first viewing.

You're adding to their understanding.

The example here is Brian Henderson's essay on Badlands, and it is completely different from Canby's review.

Totally different.

Henderson isn't telling you to go see the movie.

He's analyzing how the movie achieves its strange effect.

His argument focuses on the lack of emotion in the characters.

He has this great phrase where he says, Kit and Holly are blank and not blank.

Blank and not blank.

That's a very specific, nuanced observation.

Can you explain what he means?

Well, he argues they're blank in the sense that they don't seem to have a deep inner psychological life like characters in, say,

traditional drama.

But they're not blank because they're constantly performing.

They're constructing their identities from pop culture.

Kit poses like James Dean.

Holly talks like she's in a romance novel.

That's their surfaces.

They're all surfaces.

He analyzes the style, the makeup, the clothes, the attitudes, the roles they play.

And he looks at a specific scene to prove this, right?

The scene where they are hiding from the law.

Yes.

I mean, they are fugitives.

They should be terrified, anxious.

But instead, they are playing cards and talking about celebrity gossip.

It's that existential boredom again, the disconnect.

Precisely.

Henderson argues that the film demands a delicate balance from the viewer.

It requires the audience to look at the characters,

their poses, their constructed images, rather than through them to find some deep inner soul.

Because the point of the film is that maybe there isn't a deep inner soul there.

Maybe not.

Maybe they are just products of their environment, of the media they consume.

So let's recap the difference.

Canby, the reviewer, says, This is a ferocious cool joyride.

Henderson, the critic, says, This is a study in existential blankness and surface level identity.

Both are writing about the same film, but the aim and the audience create a completely different text.

Canby wants to sell you a ticket.

Henderson wants to explain the art.

That is such a clear distinction.

It really helps to see them side by side.

It does.

And notice, Henderson uses evidence.

He talks about mise en scene, which is a fancy French term for everything visually in the frame.

Lighting, sets, costumes, acting.

Everything you see.

He talks about narrative structure, voiceover, music.

He's using the tools of the trade to back up his very specific argument.

Now, speaking of arguments, we need to talk about the word eye, because this is a trap I think a lot of us fall into when we try to write about movies.

I felt this.

I thought that.

I liked this.

The trap of eye.

It is a delicate balance.

Personal opinion is unavoidable.

We are humans, not robots.

But if you lean on it too heavily, it weakens your argument.

It makes it sound less authoritative.

Corrigan shows a student essay on Laurence Olivier's film version of Henry V to demonstrate this.

Right.

Let's look at the weak version first.

It goes something like this.

The opening is the first part that grabbed my attention.

It transforms what I feel is a dry play.

It makes the play much more alive for me.

It's all me, me, me.

My attention, I feel, for me.

Exactly.

And the critique is that this makes it sound like the writer's personal problem, not the film's merit.

If you say, I felt it was dry,

that's just your feeling.

It's not an analysis of the film.

It tells me about you, not about Henry V.

It makes the writing feel small and kind of solipsistic.

That's the word.

So how do you fix it?

How do you take that valid personal feeling and turn it into strong criticism?

You remove the eyes and focus on the film itself.

You made the film the subject of the sentence, not yourself.

The better version reads, in these opening images, Olivier acknowledges the original stage world, showing how the movies can transcend those dramatic limits.

See, that sounds authoritative.

It sounds like a fact about the film, not just a diary entry.

It's an observation about Olivier's technique.

It validates the feeling by anchoring it in the text of the movie.

It's not just, I felt it was more alive.

It's here is how the movie makes it more alive.

But, and this is important, Corrigan clarifies that feelings aren't banned.

We aren't trying to act like we don't have emotions.

Oh, absolutely not.

That would be impossible.

Feelings are the fuel.

They're the starting point.

There was a great quote from Francois Truffaut, the famous French director and critic.

What did he say?

He said, instead of indulging passions in criticism, one must at least try to be critical with some purpose.

Distinguishing a film, good or bad, but explaining why.

Explaining why, that's the key.

It always comes back to that.

Right.

Think back to Camby and Henderson writing about Badlands.

Camby openly uses his enthusiasm.

He calls the film ferocious.

That's an emotion.

But he backs it up with descriptions of the plot and tone.

Henderson is more detached, focusing on how the film works.

But you can feel his fascination with the film's strangeness.

That fascination is what drives the essay.

So the golden rule seems to be your confusion, your excitement, your boredom, those are clues.

Treat your emotions as data points.

They are the beginning of an investigation, not the end.

So if you are bored watching a movie, don't just write, it was boring.

Ask yourself, what is the movie doing to make me bored?

Is the pacing slow?

Is the camera static?

Is it intentional boredom like we discussed with Elventura?

Exactly.

Don't just report the boredom.

Analyze the source of the boredom.

That is criticism.

This is actually really empowering.

It means my gut reaction is valid.

I just have to do the work to explain it and back it up.

That is the essence of it.

Your response matters, but your analysis is what makes it writing.

All right.

We have covered a massive amount of ground.

We've done the why, the who, the how, and the what.

Now, let's get practical.

The chapter ends with some exercises for the listener or the reader to practice these skills.

Yes.

And these are great exercises to try next time you watch a movie.

They really solidify the concepts.

The first one is called the debate.

How does that work?

You take a single film and you write two paragraphs.

In one paragraph, you criticize it, you tear it apart.

In the other, you defend it.

You praise it as a masterpiece.

Oh, that's tricky.

I have to play devil's advocate against myself.

But here's the catch that makes it a real exercise.

You have to focus on the same scene for both points.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

So take that scene in a Leventurer again.

Perfect example.

You could write one paragraph saying the scene in the deserted village is pretentious, poorly paced, and alienates the audience for no reason.

It's self -indulgent, arthouse nonsense.

Okay.

That's a negative take.

And then you'd write another paragraph saying the exact same scene is a brilliant atmospheric depiction of the hollowness of modern life and the crushing silence creates a necessary and profound tension.

The same evidence, two different arguments.

Exactly.

And by doing that, you learn how to manipulate evidence.

You see that the truth of the movie is often in how you frame it.

It forces you to look closer at the details to support your argument, whichever side you're on.

And the second exercise.

It's called the transformation.

This is all about understanding audience in form.

You start by writing a screening report on a film, just the facts, objective description.

Step one, just the facts, inventory.

Then you rewrite that same material as a review for a friend or a local paper.

You add opinion, context, and a recommendation.

Step two, sell it or don't.

Then you rewrite it again as a critical essay for a class.

You drop the plot summary, you assume the reader has seen it, and you dive into a specific theme using the data you gathered in step one.

That really forces you to switch gears.

You see how the form and the audience change the information you present.

It highlights that there is no single correct way to write about a movie.

The truth about the movie changes depending on who you are telling it to and why.

I love that.

It's like cross -training for your brain.

If you can do all three, you really truly understand the film from multiple angles.

It really is.

It makes you a more flexible thinker.

So we've unpacked a lot today.

Let's try to distill this down before we wrap up.

What are the big takeaways for our listeners?

I'd say there are four main points to carry with you from this chapter.

Number one, writing extends the pleasure.

Don't be afraid of it.

Analyzing a movie doesn't kill the magic.

It reveals the complexity underneath.

It turns a sugar rush into a satisfying meal.

Don't be afraid to dig.

Got it.

What's number two?

Number two, move from talking to writing.

We need to go beyond, I liked it or it was weird, to finding specific evidence narrative choices is on sound design that explains why you feel the way you do.

Be specific.

Find the evidence.

Okay, number three.

Number three, know your purpose.

Are you reporting facts for yourself like in a screening report?

Are you recommending it to a general audience in a review?

Are you making a big argument about cinema in a theoretical essay?

Or are you analyzing themes for an informed reader in a critical essay?

Know the form and know the audience.

If you don't know what you're writing, your reader won't either.

And the last one.

And number four, use eye carefully.

Use your personal reaction as a spark, but support it with objective observation from the film.

Don't let your feelings crowd out the film itself.

Make the film the star of your writing.

That is a solid toolkit for anyone wanting to take their movie watching to the next level.

It is.

It's the first step to becoming a more active, engaged viewer.

I want to leave you with one final thought.

The next time you finish a movie and the credits are rolling and you have that swirl of thoughts and feelings in your head, don't just let it fade away.

Don't just immediately check your phone.

Take a beat.

Take a beat.

And try to write down just three sentences about why you feel that way.

Find one specific thing in the movie that made you feel that way.

You might be surprised at what you discover.

Indeed.

The real movie experience often begins when the screen goes dark.

I love that.

Thank you so much for listening.

This has been a deep dive from the last minute lecture team.

Thank you.

We'll see you at the movies.