1. As The Guardian and New York Times have been writing about recently; most book reviews on Amazon are duffs. Paid for by the authors to drum up interest. You can't trust the reviews.
2. Film Trailers are meaningless. They're not cut by the people who create the movies. They're thrown together by marketing people who'll do anything to get you into a cinema.
3. We've been sold the paradigm that release dates are important, that a new movie is an event. But a movie is just a movie, and a new release is not indicative of quality, despite what the press would have you believe. It's like with music; is the new Rihanna track likely to be better than a Beatles classic? No, it's just newer. But newer means nothing in art.
4. Hollywood movies have giant marketing budgets. The awards buzz, the break-up stories, the praise; it's all fabricated. Forced upon us. They spend as much marketing the movies as they do making them. The movie might suck, but they can send the star to sit on the couch at Letterman or Jonathan Ross to charm you. You think because Denzel Washington is a good TV guest that the movie must be good, but of course this is ridiculous.
5. They want us to believe that a movie is good simply because we hear everyone talking about it. But again, that's just the marketing team doing their work. That's the $50million marketing budget. A great indie flick doesn't have the resources. The best movie you could ever see may have been made in Ohio in 2004 but you'll never hear about it because it can't gain a foothold. And word of mouth from zero is hard.
6. The modern myth is that great quality always goes viral, but it's not the case, at least not with movies. Sure, a 30 second comedy clip goes viral based on quality, but not a two hour movie. It needs recognition from higher up the food chain -- but getting to these people is hard.
7. 'Once' only went crazy-insane after Spielberg endorsed it.
8. The cinema is the only place where you choose to repeat bad experiences. They've got it into our heads that the NEXT movie will be the great one we've been longing for, but how often is that the case?
9. It's about finding voices you trust, people that are in for for the right reasons. For me that's: The Duplass Brothers, Aaron Sorkin, Ricky Gervais, Lena Dunham, Spike Lee, Martin Scorcese, Greta Gerwig. Who is it for you?
10. This stuff is relevant to people new to the industry and it's relevant to the ones who have been in it for years: let's not lose sight of why we love movies, there is always the possibility of achieving greatness, if only we have the audacity to TRY!
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