Memo to Peter Bart: Don’t Be A Dick

I was perusing the trades (that’s slang for entertainment industry trade papers) recently in an effort to live vicariously through the people who actually do what I just imagine doing for a living, and I came across an article by Peter Bart (former Editor-in-Chief at Variety) regarding The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart and his foray into the world of film directing (the dickishly titled “Memo to Jon Stewart: Stick with Your Day Job Behind the Desk”).

Artist’s rendering of Peter Bart, who believes that creative people should be neither seen nor heard.

You can read the article if you like, but the general idea is that Peter Bart spends 600 words essentially just shitting on Stewart’s desire to sit in the director’s chair. How does Peter Bart justify his Debbie Dickhead attitude toward Jon Stewart’s project? Well, Bart points out, Bob Dyaln was a celebrity who directed a movie…and it was bad! Not convinced? Well, Bart says, Madonna was a celebrity who directed a movie…and it was also bad!

So just to recap: because Bob Dylan made a bad movie in 1978, no one should try to direct a movie ever again. Got it. And obviously this has everything to do with the fact that Dylan and Madonna were already established stars that tried to transition into directing, and nothing to do with the fact that they were just bad directors (the Dylan film’s final cut clocked in at OVER four hours long, but yeah, I’m sure it was only a flop because he was a celebrity trying to direct). Double got it.

Bart goes on to reference successful directors (Clooney, Sean Penn, Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Elia Kazan, and Francis Coppola) who didn’t release their best work until later on in their directorial careers, and whose first projects either weren’t well-received or just weren’t that good. Basically Bart’s message is if you haven’t already done something, you shouldn’t do it.

Um. What.

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Dustin’s Three to See: February

Don’t get out to the movies as often as, say, a single 29-year-old man-child with an escapism complex? Well don’t fret, I’ve taken all of Hollywood’s shoddy offerings and narrowed them down to the three that won’t make your $20 movie ticket feel like a total waste. I call it Dustin’s Three to See because I was raised to believe that rhyming things are better than non-rhyming things.

February is historically known for three things: Valentine’s Day, Black History Month, and $5-Footlongs at Subway. If I’m being honest, all three get me about equally excited. February is typically a pretty slow month for movies — and despite its romantic trappings, nary a single rom-com or rom-dram was released (rom-dram is an abbreviation I just invented for romantic drama). But I get it, even if there aren’t any good romance movies out, you’re still gonna need to find an hour and a half to kill between your romantic dinner and when you and your super hot girlfriend can go makeout in the car. With that in mind, here’s the three movies worth seeing from February:

Movie 1) — Warm Bodies
It’s a classic story of boy meets girl. The only snag is that the boy is dead, and sort of wants to eat the girl’s brains. It’s like Twilight, except for in this movie the lead’s acting is actually supposed to be stilted and lifeless (sorry K-Stew (not really)). I’m a little biased toward this movie because it’s essentially the same premise as a movie idea I had in college, and so the fact that it got made gives me some weird sort of validation (it doesn’t take much) despite the fact that I had nothing to do with it. The story is cute enough, the gore is calmer than trying to convince your girlfriend to watch The Walking Dead with you every week, that’s a win/win in my book.

AKA Drop Dead Fred

Rosewood Visualization — A Photoblog

Hi chums and chumettes (that can’t be right),

As you know, the primary focus of this blog is to brag about myself and have everyone be impressed with me (is it working yet?). However, even I have to acknowledge that my extremely inflated ego wouldn’t be inflated to nearly the same extremity without the occasional help of my other friends in the creation industry. Today I’d like to highlight a couple of my good friends at Rosewood Visuals, self-described purveyors of classically styled imagery (and I must say I agree). You can find samplings of their work and contact info here, and you can find their twitter handles here (Carl) and here (Jay). And while we’re plugging things, make sure to check out the other arm of their work at The Coveted Man (dot) com. Cool stuff if you’re a man or know a man…and without giving anything away, you might even see me pop up on there at some point in the future. (That’s called foreshadowing and it’s a trick I learned at screenwriting college in exchange for $160,000).

Anyway here are some pictures they took of me and later photoshopped into something attractive:

Play on,
Dustin

Like pictures of me? Well you can find more of them on my instagram, my twitter, and a couple from the cover of a Bed, Bath & Beyond catalogue.

Dustin’s Three to See: January

Don’t get out to the movies as often as, say, a single 29-year-old manchild with an escapism complex? Well don’t fret, I’ve taken all of Hollywood’s shoddy offerings and narrowed them down to the three that won’t make your $20 movie ticket feel like a total waste. I call it Dustin’s Three to See because I am as creative as a kindergartner. As always I keep things as spoiler free as possible.

As any even casual observer of movie culture can tell you, January is a bad month for movies. Generally considered the graveyard of the release calendar, January is where bad movies go to die. After the holidays people usually have less in the budget for activities like moviegoing or tipping their bartender, and as a result, movies that are deemed not as good as movies like Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Witness Protection end up here. Whether it’s rewrites, poor focus group results, or just an overall bad film…if you think of a movie as a toddler, January is the timeout-chair its sent to when it’s misbehaved.

That said, there were still a couple diamonds to be found in the rough of this January, and if you got an AMC giftcard for Christmas like I did, here are the January releases that are worth your while.

Movie 1) — Gangster Squad
Remember a second ago when I said how January is full of mediocre movies? Gangster Squad is not a good movie. However, it’s not a terrible movie, either. And against the rest of the January slate, that makes it…watchable. The awful tragedy in Aurora, Colorado last summer meant that Gangster Squad’s much-publicized scene where the gangsters shoot through a movie theater screen and into the audience instantly became extremely inappropriate, meaning that the newly-infamous scene and the ending of the movie both needed to be rewritten and reshot before the film could be released. Whether it was those drastic post-wrap changes or something else that made Gangster Squad only okay, we’ll never know. But if you like Ryan Gosling (and just a cursory glance at any social media suggests that you do…a lot), flapper-style Emma Stone, and some cool period-accurate visuals, Gangster Squad is worth a go…if only to whet your whistle for when The Great Gatsby comes out.

Hey girl, sorry you couldn’t be in Drive.

How I Lost All My Followers

Special disclaimer for attractive girls: good news, none of what I’m about to say applies to you, so you can just skip ahead to the end or read another of my posts or go back to taking selfies or whatever it is you do between getting hit on and tanning.

Everyone else, buckle in, because you need to hear this. I might’ve just unfollowed you on Twitter or Instagram or Google+ (ha just kidding about that last one, I don’t even know how to activate Google+…unless wait, is this it? Are we on Google+ right now? Is me typing this going to be in one of their sad commercials?).

I love you.

(I figure if they do use this in a Google+ commercial, me typing “I love you” is the part they’ll wanna use, for the strong emotional context it provides. I don’t really love you, but I do like you, and I’m glad we’re friends. Unless we’re strangers, but that’s cool too because it’s the internet and nothing bad ever happens from meeting strangers on the internet)

But I digress.