Self-superiority

Not at all.

Actually you've raised an issue that I've been pondering a great deal lately. Basically, the recent (say over the past 20 years or so) growing fondness for BAD. The Medved Brothers started it, sort of, with The Golden Turkey Awards book. Camp followers notably John Waters and Quentin Tarantino made it respectable. And on a website like IMDb there are thousands of young fans who pretty much spend a lot of time watching and seeking out BAD material.

The problem with all this is obvious, though apparently not to the committed (remember that "fan" is merely an abbreviation for fanatic). The trend towards bottom-feeding, that is rejecting what is respectable/conventional/good for you has been around forever, but never this pronounced. I remember as a kid being dragged to Severance Hall in Cleveland to see George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra -and I felt abused! I wanted to play pinball and read my Action comic books. Years later I became a fanatical film buff and gradually learned to mix my baser instincts (trying to see every horror/fantasy film ever made including the extant Silents) with carefully watching ALL of the films by the auteurs from the Tourneurs, the Vidors, the Rays, the Haases to Risi, Bergman, Ozu, Antonioni, Torre-Nilsson, Dreyer, Bunuel, Welles and a thousand more geniuses.

BUT, the fun of finding something that others reject still persists. Why else would some quite moronic types (check out IMDb's kingpin Woody Anders for instance) revere Franco, D'Amato, Sarno and a dozen other hacks known only for their prolific ability to crank out 100-plus films. I've seen all of John Ford's talkies, but there's perhaps 100 Silents from him alone, yet is he too respectable (and RESPECTED) to gain this type of cult following?

The basic fallacy here, which I presumptuously said was obvious, is this: while seeking out the best, or at least a progressive improvement on what's come before is laudable and a logical Prime Directive for any filmmaker as well as any film buff, the entire concept of WORST, MOST AWFUL, or any other synonym for this left-handed accolade is meaningless. There simply isn't such a beastie possible out there -such a negative Holy Grail search is a complete waste of time. The reason is that the concrete examples of BAD FILMS, constantly thrown up at us by so-called experts on badness, are all simply mediocre, routine efforts which I would categorize merely as subpar if forced to quantify them (which can't really be done, this being merely a matter of taste). There isn't really anything special about them at all -what the unwashed would-be film buffs are reacting to is the ABSENCE of whatever qualities one holds dear. Take your pick: breathtaking cinematography (NOT); moving acting performances (NOT), tight direction (ABSENT), witty dialog (FUGGETABOUTIT), story structure (WHAT'S THAT?), crisp editing (YOU WISH), meaningful thematics (EXCUSE ME?), production values (MAYBE 10 CENTS WORTH), spfx (BACKYARD VARIETY).

The point I'm making is that the presence of quality is what we aesthetes are programmed to respond to. What is pernicious about IMDb, with its voting, its Top 250 (and especially Bottom 100), is an artificial stress on conformity. All social networking is based on exploiting one's natural desire to be stroked and praised by one's peers, and to feel at one with the group. What I value is independent thinking, not this herd mentality. Even in my utopian world of film buffs who I know, the excitement comes from disagreement as well as one buff suggesting to another areas to explore. We DON'T have to like the same things or consider "my taste is better than yours". I saw SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION at a press screening when it was about to be released and thought it was an okay, if sentimentalized, example of mainstream professionalism; I'm astounded to find some sort of consensus (not among professional critics but what passes for today's avid filmgoing public) proclaiming it the greatest of all time (certainly the 100,000 Silent Films, few of which still exist, have been dropped from the comparison).

When you are completely blown away by a movie, it is a powerful moment (for some people it is 2001, others THE GODFATHER, and for me sometimes an esoteric film experience, as in 1971 when VANISHING POINT, RIDER ON THE RAIN and THE CONFORMIST, quite disparate movies, all moved to the top of my all-time list where they remain). Seeking out the so-called worst, and concentrating on that bloc of films to the exclusion of all others, is simply nutty. It is also a FAKE quest, since these slumming buffs have pretty much eliminated from condideration the all-sex porn segment of the industry, which has certainly produced at least 500,000 films and/or videos that are categorically of poorer quality, in every respect, than any of the so-called "worst films of all time". There are several quite vocal fans of hardcore porn posting their opinions on IMDb, but ALL of them repeat ad nauseum the nostalgic cliche positing a Golden Age (1971 to early 1980s) and specifically decrying the all-sex, non-story garbage that via Gresham's Law has dominated this little corner of the entertainment industry for the past 25 years.

A hero of mine, Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise, established the important principle decades ago of preserving ALL types of film -he never succumbed to a pecking order of only trying to collect and preserve the so-called "best films" (per critics of his era). This cross-sectional approach has always given me my marching orders, trying to seek out and watch films of all types: shorts, silents, docs, experimental films, mainstream, avant garde, "art", horror & all other genre pictures, every title by a noted auteurs, porn, first films, etc. I certainly have an aversion to shot-on-video (whether of the home movie variety used for today's horror & porn or the professional hi-def stuff executed in recent years by such notables as Wenders, Demme and Lumet), but have inevitably seen hundreds of videos over the years.

My advice to younger film buffs (I'm in my 60s now, having become a true fanatic in the late 1960s, seeing 400 to 600 films theatrically per year starting back then) is NOT to limit yourself. A steady diet of only the greatest Japanese, Italian and French classics of the '40s and '50s is laudable, but might make you sick as in overdosing on ice cream. Try to see films across the spectrum. You will see plenty of bad films in the processs-it is inevitable given the extremely low standard of worldwide filmmaking today and extending back at least over the past 15 years (just look at the sorry group of 10 titles chosen as the 2009 nominees for Best Picture of the year and compare these mediocre -at best- new films with any year back in whatever Golden Age you choose). But to foolishly focus on BAD as some pardigm is delusional. After all, keep repeating: "It's only a movie, it's only a movie". And recall that much of the personal ranking of films is based on a personal set of unacknowledged fetishes: I know this from my own history, but if you check out any critic you will be able to deduce his or her fetishes: drawn to the faces of Garbo, Audrey Hepburn or more cultishly Louise Brooks and Falconetti; the landscape bias that has persisted for so many generations of professional fans of minimalism; or merely the rather childish addiction to novelty (currently being manifested in the revival of 3-D and the gross overuse of CGI and sound effects in cinema, as well as the smug reverence for convoluted and contrived screenwriting, ranging from the preposterous constructs by the Nolan Brothers to the in-jokes and wilful contradictions of the creators/scripters of tv's LOST).

"Three quarters of what is said here can be completely discounted as the raving of imbeciles" - Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire (1958)