The Price of Creative Freedom: 99-Seat Theatre Plan

I love getting paid for my work. I can’t deny that. Honestly, I don’t think that anyone can. Given the option of being compensated or not, I would venture to guess that 100% of people would rather earn money for their contributions to any particular business than give up their time and talents for free. Lately, this issue has become quite prevalent in the theatrical community based on a possible ruling out of Los Angeles that would drastically effect the operating procedures of small theatre companies.

Here’s a brief overview.

For decades, the Los Angeles arts scene has been full of small, 99 seat theaters. These theaters have a reputation for producing new, boundary breaking works that are sometimes considered too risky to mount in larger houses, but because of the small house sizes and production budgets, the companies that use these spaces can continue to innovate and grow despite their relative lack of financial gain. One key factor that helps this process is something called the “99-Seat-Theatre-Plan” which allows union actors to work in these houses for a small stipend as opposed to their usual union wages. These stipends often range from $7-$15 per performance with unpaid rehearsal hours and usually max out around $240 for the run of a show.

The new piece of legislation being brought forth by Actors’ Equity would require all theaters to enforce a $9 minimum wage during rehearsals and performances for their union members – effectively quadrupling the aforementioned budget allowance. This week, Los Angeles Equity members will have the opportunity to vote on this proposal, and as of now, both sides of the aisle are speaking quite fervently in order to convince the fence sitters of their position.

And honestly…I’m not sure where I stand.

Thus far, my theatrical education has cost over six figures. Many of my professional colleagues are in the same exact boat financially, and the idea of using that rather expensive skillset to work for nothing doesn’t necessarily make sense to me. I wouldn’t ask my accountant to do my taxes for free nor would I ask a graphic designer to make me a logo out of their generosity. All of these chosen professions have value, but artists as a whole seem to be more and more content to work for free or next to nothing – thus potentially devaluing the importance and respect that the craft deserves. If I’m running a company and one good actor will work for free while another good actor demands a check, the answer seems apparent. The books require me to save as much money as possible. The worry is this: if enough actors, painters, musicians, and designers give in to this mindset, there won’t be a reason to pay anyone anything, much less a living wage. Because of all that, I could absolutely understand voting YES on this proposal.

However…

Many of my friends in Chicago work at theaters where they are paid relatively low stipends, if at all, but whenever I have seen these productions on my visits to the city…the quality absolutely blows me away. The plays are bold and uncompromising, and it is clear that every single person involved in the process undoubtedly loves the product that they have created. In an industry where many bigger houses are asking actors to do Fiddler for the 42^nd time, these small companies are beacons of creative freedom, exploration, and innovation, and if they were all forced to quadruple the money needed to operate at the same level…many of them wouldn’t last the season. Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and numerous other cities could potentially be robbed of their most interesting companies, and we as a culture could miss out on the opportunity to witness new works that multi-million dollar theaters wouldn’t risk staging in a thousand years. And for all of those reasons, I could absolutely understand voting NO on this proposal.

And here we find the current impasse within the artistic community. Both sides have extremely valid points, and regardless of this vote’s result, its impact will be felt throughout the country. Do we want money or creative freedom? Clearly, we want both, and occasionally, that is a very possible goal – I have been lucky enough already to be involved in incredible shows that paid me well, but I’m not foolish enough to think this commonplace in the industry.

I love acting. I love creating characters, and I love collaborating with some of the most intelligent and passionate people in the world, but I know that the questions that this vote poses will follow me throughout the rest of my career. Some of the most incredible processes I have ever been a part of have barely covered my gas money while the occasional mind numbing commercial gig has paid my rent in less than three hours. At twenty-three, I am also very aware that I have so much more to learn about the industry into which I have inserted myself, and luckily, I have attempted to surround myself with people that can do just that.

Ultimately, the vote in Los Angeles this week will make a bold statement about the actors of California (and quite possibly, the nation), but regardless of the outcome, there’s no job I’d rather have.

Migraine

The breath in my lungs never fills me completely.

Some unknown entity is taking up an illegal residency somewhere in my body,

seeping mercury,

and the toxicity is killing me.

Ionic frequencies ricochet off of my bones and pulse along my brain stem until my eye balls lubricate my cheeks in desperate hope of recognition.

I’m not a child.

I’m not a servant.

But I am slave to forces beyond my comprehension, cognition, and recollection.

God damn this lightning burning through the circuits of my mind;

frying ideas that have never been given a chance to shine,

and now

forever will they stand in the queue of cognizance unable to move up a spot in line. What promise they once showed.

What glorious advancement they swore to unveil,

and now,

their masters beat them into submissive passiveness removing all their drive to break free of chained oppression.

The rhythm is constant as the drums percuss violently into the cosmos through the pores already filled with sweat.

Let me out.

Let me out.

These bars are rusted and frail yet inexplicably hold fast against my constant battery.

Perhaps I’m weaker than I thought.

Perhaps the strength I thought I had has always existed as nothing but a hopeful mirage in the face of horrific destitution.

I am emaciated and atrophied,

but every minute of self-pity is assaulted by the war that rages eternal behind these walls.

I surrender.

I submit.

Take this cup from which I never drank, and fill it with

sand,

blood,

love,

anything to satiate the thirst of he who punishes his inferiors.

There is no shame in this submission,

and even if there was,

you would hardly see me protesting.

This treatment cries out for respite,

but ears of stone are deaf to mortal pleas.

Rivers cascade across the valleys of enlightenment forever destined to elude my grasp,

but their force resonates still even deeper than before.

Screams coalesce with solidity in my throat;

further hindering the breath already weakened by the battles, and deeper I sink beneath despair until I reach a level that has never known the warmth of light in hopes of finding peace.

Bury me in shadow if therein lies my destiny of silence,

for I shall no longer fight in a conflict that holds no victors.

Rest.

Rest.

Rest.

On Mental Illness/Developmental Disabilities

I almost witnessed a fight today.

It was terrifying.

I have been substitute teaching for almost two years now in a variety of schools, and although I have received attitude from a number of relatively annoying individuals, I have never felt afraid in a classroom. Until today. I was not the target of any aggression, nor was I the sole party working to stop the fight before it began, but throughout the rest of the class period, I couldn’t shake the tension that was assaulting me. My breath was labored, my palms were sweaty, and my equilibrium felt slightly off despite the fact that no actual violence had occurred.

I don’t know how it started. One of the many issues plaguing American education is the increasing volume of class sizes, and when faced with 25-30 kids at a time, it is rather difficult to monitor every morsel of semi-intelligible conversation. My days are often filled with a soft focus wherein I pretend not to hear the kids swearing to each other under their breath (you have to pick your battles), so you can imagine my surprise when I see a kid in the back of the class stand up and challenge his neighbor to hit him. Customarily, this invitation would be spoken with an air of fallacy or comedy, but the student’s voice remained disturbingly vicious throughout his declaration. His eyes were piercing, his body was rigid, and from thirty feet away, I could tell that every muscle in his body was ready to explode the second that his terms were accepted.

“Do it! Fucking do it, man. You ain’t shit. I’m not gonna back down. I’ve already hit you before.”

His words were dripping with malice as he dared his victim to throw the first blow and absolve him of responsibility, and I’ll admit…I hesitated. For a person who stages violence for a living on occasion, I am quite unaccustomed to the actual thing. I know what the body should look like when preparing for an altercation, and I know how to convincingly portray the force necessary to inflict a specific amount of pain, but I had a feeling that these guys weren’t going to stop if I called “Hold!” My toolbox had nothing to equip me for this situation, but in my second of hesitation, another woman stepped between the boys. She immediately began talking the larger boy down and eventually got him out of the room before the seated boy had a chance to retaliate.

She’s a paraprofessional. The seated boy has Asperger’s.

From what I gathered by listening to various conversations after the incident, this was not new information to any of the surrounding students.

“Yeah, his parents used to hit him…”

“He gets like this sometimes…”

“He’s fucking crazy, man…”

I was shocked. Awareness was not the problem. Evidently, the aggressor had a temper problem of his own, and for some reason, today was the day where he wanted to exploit this student’s disability to fulfill his personal well of violence. Thankfully, any physical violence was halted before it could begin, a specialist took the students out of class, and a relative sense of calm swiftly returned to the room…but this incident continues to fester in my gut, because it signals a much larger problem that I haven’t considered in quite a while.

Awareness isn’t enough. When I was in high school, I barely knew what autism was, and I think I may have heard the term “Asperger’s” on a tv show, but I definitely wasn’t educated on the proper way to understand someone with any type of mental disorder. Any type of mental illness or developmental disability was seen as weakness, afflicted students were bullied, and we blissfully continued our lives in ignorance. Nowadays, students are clearly aware that these conditions exist, but as today showed me, they are still far from understanding how to properly address these students with any sort of compassion and empathy.

After the class was over, a fellow teacher and I had a brief discussion about the benefits and downfalls of “mainstreaming” education – the practice of dismissing the need for Special Education classes in favor of a more inclusive strategy with tudents of all backgrounds taking the same courses. Personally, I’m still not sure where I stand on the issue. I would never want to socially or professionally ostracize a group of people in a discriminatory fashion, but I also believe that it is ignorant to assume that the implementation of students with disabilities will have absolutely no adverse effects on the classroom environment as a whole.

Maybe the students this morning were having a legitimate argument that escalated beyond repair, maybe the aggressor knew exactly which buttons to push in order to manipulate this other student into forcing his hand, or maybe this violent flash appeared out of nowhere…like I stated earlier, I will never know. Perhaps his disability was a factor, and perhaps it was inconsequential, but at the end of the day, the paraprofessional and I had to spend the rest of the hour fearful for the safety of the rest of our students, and that is a feeling that I would very much hate to replicate in the future.

Regardless of your stance on mainstreaming education, the events of today proved to me that the discussion needs to continue not only to maximize the effectiveness of each child’s education, but also to create a generation of young adults that are respectful and informed about issues that many of us like to keep in the shadows.

Five Stringin' Past Midnight

His fingers felt numb as they methodically traced the lines of the strings. Reflexively, his mind rejected the possibility of incoming cramps, and though strained from hours of unrelenting pressure and the sting of cheap whiskey, his voice continued to course over the microphone seven years past its prime.

Was anyone listening? Who gave a shit at this point. One-thirty in the morning in a beach bar thirty miles from nowhere wasn’t exactly the ideal atmosphere for folk, but he knew the dying pulses in the crowd would end up paying for that A string. The last three gigs had proven nothing if not inventive with the loss of the string, but Chris was nothing if not innovative.

And really fucking thirsty.

His mind filled the silence with thunderous applause as his final note fizzled out over the floorboards. Five stringin’ a triple set was no small feat, but bragging rights held little power when compared to a decent meal and a pack of smokes. He permitted a brief interlude to take a drag off of the Winston he had been nursing for the last forty minutes, and as the smoke leaked out over his cracked lips, he felt his muscles breathe a sigh of collective relief.

“I got one more for ya. I wrote this a while back, when…uh…” The story caught abruptly in his throat as he gauged the dwindling remnants of the crowd one final time. They didn’t deserve this. The story. The song. One more minute of his fucking time. He could leave the stage at that exact moment, and he guaranteed nobody would notice until the power cut out an hour later, but some damnable sliver of pride kept him firmly planted on the stool.

No gig left unfinished. Son of a bitch.

“This is Lady of the Lake. Thanks for stickin’ around…you guys have been—” Shit. “—great.”

Three weeks had passed since Lady had become his closer, and he still wasn’t sure how to feel about her placement. Her lyrics were immaculate; her chords ingenious; but he couldn’t help feeling like he was hiding her by leaving her for last. Her inception had been nothing short of miraculous, and with every subsequent repetition, her words were carved deeper and deeper into his soul. Each line transported him once more to that lakeside where he had found her…or she had found him, more appropriately. To this day, he swore that the lyric sheet had materialized beneath him as he slept, but then again, if fairy tales were real, then he had been stuck in the wrong fucking story for far too many years now.

Chris snapped back to reality just quick enough to hear himself pluck the final note, and immediately, a sense of panic flashed through his veins. Autopilot was perfectly adequate for the majority of his pandering repertoire, but not for her. He had never betrayed her like this. A cold sweat began to bead upon his brow as the implications of this potential disaster weighed upon his brain, but a sudden crack split the air and rocketed him back to his surroundings.

He was clapping. A crusty, sunken sort of a man, probably around 50 or 60, had been sitting at the bar with his back turned since Chris’s arrival—so much so that Chris had assumed him a permanent part of the infrastructure—but now he was…clapping. Respect flooded the man’s eyes as he stared down the young musician, and with one final resounding crack, he returned to his previous post.

“Th—thank you.”

A subtle creak shot across the bar as Chris dismounted the stool and reached for his dilapidated case he had craftily hidden behind the makeshift stage. With the gentle caress of a midnight lover, he lay the guitar across the cracking velvet. He soothingly stroked each fret before shutting the case; a ritual he had picked up long before memory was necessary, and as he closed her once more inside her carriage, the familiar stench of pine and cabbage flooded his lungs.

“Not bad, Ellerson. Not too bad.”

An involuntary wince denoted Sal’s arrival upon the stage, but Chris prayed that the gesture had gone unnoticed before the manager. “Thanks, Sal. Do what I can.”

“Clearly. Thanks for…ya know…packin’ the place.” A clammy hand motioned toward the vacant lobby as a hearty guffaw channeled out across Sal’s jowels. He was always so proud of his jokes. “How could I ever thank you?” A slightly suspicious wad of cash floated gingerly down atop Chris’s case. More rapidly than he had anticipated, Chris swiped the bills away and began counting as Sal’s moist footprints retreated back to the bar.

Five…ten…fifteen…twenty…twenty…motherfucker.

“SAL!” Not again. “C’mon, man…we talked about—”

“We TALKED—” The cartoonishly plump bastard turned on a dime. “about you bringing in some actual business to this fine establishment. I believe a ‘following’ was mentioned in your original pitch. Or do I remember incorrectly?”

Chris could feel a hard night’s pay slipping once more through his calloused fingers, but he was too damn exhausted to quell his stubbornness. “I remember you quoting me three times as much as this petty shit, or do I remember incorrectly?”

“Listen up, you little hippie fuck…” Sal’s sausagious finger had arrived once more within the effective area of Chris’s nostrils, much to his displeasure. “I gave you an estimate based on what any performer worth his salt can bring into my bar. I work on a percentage system far too complex to explain to an ungrateful ass like you who can’t even be bothered to properly string your goddamn instrument.” Blood was rising fiercely in Chris’s cheeks, but his fist remained pinned to his side…the last thing he needed was a hospital bill. “What you need to do is take your raggedy ass case and my more than generous ‘petty shit’ and get the fuck out of my bar before you get yourself a reputation.”

Innumerable retorts rested on the tip of Chris’s tongue as his eyes bled fire onto his cheeks, but much to his surprise…he found himself pocketing the bills and lugging his case back across the driftwood that continued to cry out beneath his every step. A lingering shot of whiskey lay upon the bar beside the seat of his previously adoring fan, and as Sal slammed the door to his makeshift office, Chris noticed the napkin beneath the glass had been scrawled upon rather hastily before the old man’s exit.

“I hope you find her”

The liquor fell smoothly down his throat, and Chris quickly pocketed the glass before trudging back out into the chilled Florida night.

Me too, man…me too.

I Can't Even

I can't even.
I'm done.
I am dead.

If you have been in the vicinity of anyone in their teens or early 20s, you have likely heard a number of these phrases used in everyday conversation. Stereotypically, these exclamations are attributed to young white girls, but as someone who inhabits this particular demographic, I can attest that race and gender have nothing to do with the popularity of these statements. Everyone makes them (myself included from time to time). More often than not, these sentiments are used comically to exclaim how unbelievable something is, how ridiculous something is, or how amazing something is. Oddly enough, all of these phrases can be used in every single one of those situations, so diction and situational awareness are incredibly important when deciphering their true meanings.

Despite the myriad ways these exclamations can be employed, however, they all have one thing in common: they glorify the halting of effort. Each phrase immediately stops any possible progress of understanding or discussing something in favor of comedic value, and while harmless at first glance, this increasingly popular trend is leading to the rapid decrease of intelligent conversation -- especially when related to humor.

The use of vibrant descriptors is becoming increasingly rare among the unoriginally classified "millenials." If a video is particularly exciting or engaging, many adolescents will post it on their respective feeds with the simple line of, "I can't. It's so...I'm done." Although this may sound like a number of nonsensical fragment, every teenager in America can decipher the exact meaning behind it despite its obvious lack of flavorful description. No longer are movie trailers hailed for technical achievement or storytelling prowess...they simply have to be so awesome that you "can't" any longer.

Whatever you were evidently doing...it is now done because of the awesome.

That sentence was physically painful to write.

Aside from the rampant spread of online examples, this trend is ravishing conversations across the world at a rate just as alarming. As a substitute teacher, I am unfortunately privy to many of these attempted dialogues, and they often sound something like this:

"My God, did you see the Star Wars trailer last night?"
"YES! It was just...guh it was--I mean, I can't. I fucking can't."
"Right?! I was just like 'done. I am done. Dead now. kbye.'"

Don't get me wrong -- I am perfectly aware that slang is ever evolving from generation to generation, but this particular linguistic advancement crosses the boundary from slang to laziness. The intelligence that is required  to form an educated opinion about anything (be it the new Star Wars trailer or the potential need for gun legislation) is rapidly decreasing in value to the point where it is now often viewed as gratuitous. Why would you need to properly enunciate your beliefs about a specific topic when you can dismiss it in the blink of an eye with three simple words? Minimal effort is required, potential embarrassment due to misinformation or undereducation is avoided, and it is there that I believe we find the root of the problem.

Confidence.

"I can't."
"I'm done."
"I'm dead."

Each one of these statements halts the progress of intelligent thought due to a perceived notion that the speaker is unable to form one. Everyone who has ever been in a classroom is aware of the astoundingly misguided idea that lack of knowledge can be seen as "cool," but these declarations take that to a whole new level. Instead of feigning ignorance in front of a teacher in order to fit in with a standard of forced mediocrity, teenagers are dismissing intelligent discussion from every corner of their lives.

But what if they didn't? What if every, "I can't" was replaced with an "I can describe exactly why I had such an intense reaction to this stimulus"? What if every, "I'm done" was replaced with a description of the beauty of what was just witnessed that simultaneously encouraged further dialogue? Younger generations have been gifted with more data about the world than all previous generations combined, but the ability to speak eloquently about that data needs to be given its share of importance before it is completely eradicated.

The next time that you think you can't even, think instead about how you can, because you are intelligent, eloquent, and worth far more than three monosyllables.

On Death

I have attempted to write this post a number of times over the last week. This topic has been festering within my mind for longer than I would fancy considering, so in the tradition of what I have discovered this blog to be, I have attempted to scrawl my thoughts onto the page. Unfortunately, I have been halted in this pursuit, because I keep falling into a trap that I would very much prefer to avoid.

Anger.

I hate death. I despise death. I find no comfort in the thought of its release, and I find no joy in its tendency to necessitate the remembrance of life. Some people may find this ironic considering that my chosen field often includes death in some fashion, especially if I am lucky enough to choreograph a particularly brutal fight scene. However, the aesthetic honesty of violence bears a sharp contrast to the actual reality of death, because at the end of the fight…my partner gets back up. They rise, they bow, and if we want, we can go grab a drink.

I never grabbed a drink with Kassi or Elliott.

Kassandra Keyzer and Elliott Orr are two of the people I felt rather close to in high school and a good amount of college, and within the last year, I have attended both of their funerals. Kassi was murdered by a family member at 21, and Elliott died of cancer at 23. Throughout their lives, they were two of the happiest and most caring people that I have ever known, and beyond that, they were two of the strongest Christians that I have ever known. Now, when I mention that, it bears importance, because neither one of them was judgmental or forceful in any way about their faith, but it undoubtedly defined them. For my money, they appeared to be the type of Christian that Jesus could have intended, because they radiated love and compassion consistently.

Throughout the last few years, I have fallen away from the church for a variety of reasons, and when I started writing this post, I used a lot of those reasons to lash out at the God I had once trusted so completely. My initial writings contained pages of hateful language and proclamations of pure, unadulterated malice at a creator who I thought had abandoned His most devoted followers. Those feelings have not disappeared, by any means, but out of respect for both of their respective legacies, I feel as though I should refrain from such indignant actions in favor of a more leveled approach.

But that doesn’t make it easy.

Death is not easy in any way, and I get extraordinarily frustrated when people shrug it off as anything less than a monumental and catastrophic event. On a Monday, there is a person that I know drawing breath and talking and existing, and on a Tuesday, all of those processes have stopped. There is no more breath, there is no more speech, there is no more light, and the he or she that was has now been reduced to an object meant for transport and burial. This concept still blows my mind. I suppose that I contained a relatively common knowledge of death before the passing of Kassi and Elliott, but the true weight of death is unable to be conveyed until you walk into a room with someone you once loved inside a box.

One of the usual methods for dealing with the death of a loved one, especially before their time, is the repetition of the sentiment, “They’re in a better place now.” This theory of a glorious eternity lies at the root of the large majority of the world’s religions, and as far as my experiences go thus far, it is present at 100% of funerals.

They’re living in paradise.

They’re the lucky ones.

They’re in a better place.

But I want them here. I still do. Why do we always have to make death part of some universal plan? Why can’t it just suck? Because man, it sucks. It really fucking sucks, and in an admittedly selfish manner, I want to be validated in that belief. Let me see the casket and feel free to cry out in anger, because I never asked them out for that drink. Let me remember the best parts of their lives without immediately negating them with the thoughts of the paradise in which they now reside. Let me feel without restraint, because as a human being, I have been programmed with the necessity to grieve but not the ability to fully comprehend. I am working on that, I assure you, but I have enough awareness to admit that there is still a long journey ahead of me.

This may be the most selfish post that I have ever written, but in the past two years, I have cried over the deaths of two of the greatest people that I have ever known decades before their time, and end of the day…I’m just not okay with that.

Thwip Thwip

Spider-Man got me into comic books. When I was in college, my best friend lent me the introductory volume of the Ultimate Spider-Man series by Brian Michael Bendis, and from the moment that I finished the first issue, I was hooked. The writing was snappy and exciting, the art was electric, and as I breathlessly raced down the hall of our dorm to grab the next paperback, I could feel a new addiction burning within me. I had tasted the first droplets of the ambrosia I so desperately needed coursing through veins, and the resulting years have transformed me into a perfectly content junkie with no hope of rehabilitation.

While Ultimate Spider-Man gave me the first look into who Peter Parker was on the page, I had known about him throughout my adolescence. Our friendly neighborhood web-slinger had recently been splattered across the silver screen in Sam Raimi’s monstrously successful franchise, action figures had been strewn vigorously across toy aisles since long before my inception, cartoons laced with quips and thwips had entertained me throughout elementary school, and the death of Uncle Ben had practically been cemented as a landmark event in American history. Spider-Man’s legacy has been intricately linked to the national consciousness and beyond since those precious pages of Amazing Fantasy 15, and for all of the possible grudges the nerd community may hold against him, we are forever indebted to Stan Lee for this and myriad other creations.

Essentially, Spider-Man is not new. I know that. I am keenly aware of it.

So everyone can stop telling me that.

This past week, Marvel Entertainment announced that Spider-Man will be officially joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in 2016 thanks to a special agreement that they worked out with SONY. For those of you that do not know, SONY has owned the film rights to Spider-Man for years, and ever since the overwhelming success of the MCU began to reveal itself, Marvel has desperately been attempting to negotiate a deal with SONY to bring the wall crawler back home so he can have some face time with Captain America and Iron Man. This announcement allows that to happen, and for millions of fans across the globe, this was an announcement of monumental—even historical importance.

However, this news was simultaneously accompanied by groups of people outraged by the idea of even more Spider-Man after the relative plethora of movies that have been released about him over the previous decade and a half. Accusations of laziness were ferociously slung around the internet as people cried out in anger over the seemingly endless repetition of Spider-Man movies, and to all of those people that screamed those words of annoyance to the heavens, I say this:

Then don’t see it.

Nobody in the world is forcing you to see any of these movies, so kindly save your hard earned dollars to see another film. For people like me, we adore seeing these characters that entertain and inspire us flying across movie screens, and there is no logical reason why our indescribable pleasure should bring you offense. Spider-Man may be a character that you have seen too much lately, but I relish any opportunity to see him swinging across the streets of New York, and the fact that he may be able to play a crucial role in the upcoming Captain America: Civil War – a role which helped define the character in 21^st century comics – brings me unparalleled elation. There may also be a little girl or boy that’s never seen Spider-Man before, and maybe their parents want to share that moment with them using this next batch of movies, and how dare you rip that opportunity away from them?

Spider-Man movies get made, biopic movies get made, Transformers movies get made, and indie films get made, but the prevalence of one does not negate the existence of the others. Support the art in any way that you wish, and if you’re not seeing films that are aimed precisely at the itch you can’t scratch, we live in an age where you are free to make them yourself, and I encourage you to do so. Creation in the modern day is explosive and exciting, and I will fully exercise my rights to be vigorously excited about the revolutionary direction of Birdman as well as the energetic exuberance of Spider-Man, and whether our new Peter is black, white, purple, or orange, you can bet that I’ll be there opening day waiting to see my wall crawler with the same amount of joy as the eight-year-old three rows down.