Crackpots United
Part Two of Robert Welkos‘ article about Hollywood Blogger Wars, subtitled “Crackpot Ratings – Nikki Finke, Sharon Waxman, David Poland, Jeffrey Wells” — went up last night. Poland is deemed the crackpot-wackiest (i.e., level 5), followed by the equally-rated Harry Knowles, Tom O’Neil and Sharon Waxman (level 4) and then myself (level 3), and then Scott Feinberg and Sasha Stone (level 2) and finally Nikki Finke (level 1).
Wait — Finke is the least crackpotty blogger-columnist of everyone in the front lines?
Significant excerpt: “As for the Hollywood blogosphere, the sad truth is that no matter how many cutting edge directors Anne Thompson of IndieWire fawns over at Cannes, or Kristopher Tapley of In Contention handicaps the Oscar race (Up in the Air breaks out of the gate and into the lead, and Precious is charging hard along the rail at the quarter-mile pole…on the backstretch, it’s Inglourious Basterds weaving through traffic…into the far turn, it’s Avatar pulling away by 24 lengths, and it’s The Hurt Locker winning by a nose!…), they will never get the eyeballs that Perez Hilton, who draws horns on Kate Gosselin and writes headlines like ‘Chelsea Handler Makes Us Pee Pee!’
“Still, you can’t ignore these bloggers. They’re growing more influential by the day, while setting Old Media back on its heels.”
This is almost like the episode of Dr. Phil this morning (hey, it was on in the break room!) where — no joke — they were trying to determine which of the pedophiles was least likely to offend again. In some contests, even when you win, you still lose.
(FYI, I’m just saying most bloggers have a tendency to learn toward “nutty” — NOT lecherous — lest my underwhelming analogy to be taken the wrong way
).
“Many would argue that Wells deserves a Crackpot Rating of at least 4, but we believe a middling 3 is accurate because of the originality of Jeff’s prose, the hard work he puts into his ‘daily steam-of-Hollywood-consciousness’ column and the refreshing candor he brings to his reviews.”
Kudos.
Agreed about Finke. However, Jeff, it’s obvious that if you really want attention from the Perez Hilton crowd, it’s high time that you start telling us which filmmakers make you “pee pee”, how often, and how much. Get to it!
“In fact, the only people who work longer hours and get less respect are Broadway Dancers and House Press Corps, and we already know they’re CRACKPOTS!”
Ugh. Did Welkos really just make this statement? Longer hours is debatable in and of itself, depends on your definition of “work.” Are you ever really working when you’re at home? I mean, yeah, you’re googling and researching and fine-tuning your paragraphs and whatnot, but you’re also probably letting out the dog, brewing a pot of coffee/tea, skating around DVDPriceSearch to see if ANYONE is selling the new Blu-Ray for under $20, half-checking the CNN/ESPN tickers, snding out a txt, and microwaving frozen White Castle Slyders (*the only person that has ever attempted that last one sober is Devin Faraci). Doing any single one of these things could have you terminated, esp. in lower-level jobs like retail. But yeah — in its own way, blogging is presumably a series of endless 24-hour cycles, so I can roll with that statement, even if it’s a little exaggerated.
I know he’s not really being 100% serious, but nonetheless this “less respected” meme– it’s not the first time I’ve heard it (and unsurprisingly, the other times were also from the ‘net) kinda needs to die an instant death. Has this guy ever visited Iowa or Indiana, or any other place that’s not NYC or L.A. before in his life? Does he even realize the sort of work farmers and gravediggers are doing a solid 6 — maybe even 7 — days a week for practically NOTHING? If some dweeby blogger was driving through one of these “flyover states” to get to some Chicago film festival/junket and his car broke down, I bet the vast majority of those hard-working guys wouldn’t even blink or think twice about lending a hand.
If I was one of those guys, and the dweeby blogger was on his Blackberry or Bluetooth and started complaining about being stuck out here in “awful” BFE, his lack of wi-fi, or — worst of all — how little “respect” he gets in life, I’d probably punch him in the fucking face.
Sorry, rant over. Been a long day. Or perhaps reading about the Jim Thompson film just stirred my soulless inner self or something
.
1) That Kaned rant RULED.
2) I thought this part 2 was especially harsh on Poland. I can’t claim to know him especially well, but I’ve met him and he’s a pretty nice, supportive guy. I’m guessing all that stuff about his finances and numbers is going to have him blowing his stack.
Thought if Poland really attracts those kind of numbers, I’m even lamer than I thought… I was running my antics on his Blog for three years, apparently to 90,000 readers, and only picked up 30 or 40 “fans” out of all that effort.
3) I should start a movie blog but all that schmoozing and, er, talking to people and leaving the house is nerve-rattling for someone as OCD and regimented and reclusive as I am. It would probably devolve into just me swearing a lot in between posting pictures of Jessica Alba. Plus Lou Y. Thompson tells me they usually make critics sit in the back and everyone takes notes at screenings? Fuck that.
We should get Lex and DeeZee a shared blog. Lex writes the opinion pieces, DeeZee keeps things ticking over with links to other sites.
You can tell Welkos got bored of writing that, and forgot a lengthy piece about Finke, so just added her in at the end as an afterthought.
Kaned’s rant is spot-on.
Welcome back, my man (and great handle, just like the last one…).
This blog is 90% cut and paste journalism, stereotypes, and fat people rants. Wells is a 6.
“I should start a movie blog”
I’d read that.
I’d read it, too.
Lex, start your own movie blog, dammit!
I don’t know if I could handle all the crazy love for KStew and Michael Bay on a LexG blog.
Can I ask in all seriousness, since a lot of the readership overlaps:
What is going on with Poland’s blog lately anyway? I’m afraid to ask over there, and again as everyone knows, I like DP and have written a few things for him and would never say a bad word about the guy.
Maybe it’s a new perspective since he became a father, but his heart really doesn’t seem to be as into the blogging thing lately. His fuse seems a little shorter, but he’s still smart and funny and all… but posts are fewer and far between. Comments seem a lot more sparse.
And for all the rap that Wells gets about being “misanthropic” and whatnot (I don’t really agree, he’s pretty gentlemanly actually), how come for the most part, 90% of the HE commenters are nice, funny, sardonic, good-natured guys, and on Poland’s blog it’s a lot of “You are retarded and ugly and I hope you die, you are a totally worthless loser and your mom fucks strangers.” Yeah, there’s a very little of that here, but something about MCN attracts so many negative, permanently unenthused whiners. It kinds bugs me when people over there have said my raunchy posts or indulgent rants or profanity or CAPS have an ill effect on the community, because I’m probably one of the sunnier people there. It’s a lot of sour motherfuckers on MCN… It’s relatively easy to post something off-beat here and get some appreciation, even from Wells himself… Posting on MCN is like Eddie Griffin getting up to do 3-5 at a biker bar in Wyoming.
Poorly written, I thought. And poorly reported. Why take anybody’s word for their readership? That’s checkable. And since this crowd is known for exaggeration, it’s a must.
Finke can’t be as unstable and compulsive and wired as she seems, but every tale of her legend certainly suggests she’s hands-down the nuttiest of you lot.
I did, however, like the attempt at figuring out where the Broadcast Film Critics’ money goes. They get TV money for their awards. II dropped out of the group some years back because I couldn’t figure that out, pure and simple.
“Many would argue that Wells deserves a Crackpot Rating of at least 4, but we believe a middling 3 is accurate because of the originality of Jeff’s prose, the hard work he puts into his ‘daily steam-of-Hollywood-consciousness’ column and the refreshing candor he brings to his reviews.”
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Finke is closest to Perezhilton in writing style and quality but why that gets her a low crackpot score is a mystery. It would be easy to build up traffic with more gossip and less depth but are those the people you really want to attract. As has been pointed out above by LexG and in other posts, the web has far too many commenters who think being snarky makes them tough, hip and cool — probably everything they’re not in real life.
It’s very poorly written. He refers to incidents that the casual reader wouldn’t have any awareness of, and doesn’t explain the context.
I can see the 3 working. It’s an average. After all, when it comes to writing about film, Wells is a 1, maybe a 2 on an “off” day. Which is why we read him.
As for everything else, well… it’s an average, you see…
I used to be a regular Hot Blog reader but switched over to HE a couple years back. I still visit Hot Blog from time to time but the quality of the writing has really gone downhill over the years. Poland almost never adds context to what he’s talking about — couple that with his predilection for being annoyingly coy and unless you’ve got your nose buried up the ass of the industry his posts often make little sense.
He just doesn’t seem to have much passion (with the exception of his vendettas again N. Finke & S. Waxman) and his comments section mirrors that loss of passion.
Jeff definitely annoys me off with some of his posts but at least he always tries to explain the reasoning behind some of his more outlandish views and I respect him for that. Also, Jeff expresses more outright passion for film than any other blogger I know. You may find his position misguided (obsessing over conservatives and body shapes) or just plain wrong (grain!) but at least it’s coming from his heart.
Poland’s biggest problem is his design. Wells’ site is clean, well organized and visually appealing. Poland’s looks like a GeoCities site, and MCN as a whole is far too spread out. It should have a single homepage from where everything is linked, not The Hot Blog on some separate site that’s even less visually appealing than the main MCN one. The comments are mess, too.
In other blog-related news, where has ThePlaylist gone? Blogger shut it down? It’s high time they moved to another host, because the site is too good to be a simple Blogspot site. They could make it into a decent, ad-supported site.
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