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I Love Tom McCarthy Movies Because I F**king Earned It, Douchebag

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Trade News | Comments (22)

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A few months ago, a guy named Noah Buschel on a site called Hammer to Nail wrote a brilliant and withering attack on “The New Hipster,” a piece I was rather enjoying right up until the realization that he was talking about me. Then I felt ridiculed, and what I really wanted to do was write a gloriously biting response piece, but for the fact that the essay, in many respects, was spot on.

In that post, he takes particular aim at NYTimes movie critic, A.O. Scott, and one of my favorite directors, Tom McCarthy. For some of you, this might hurt a little. Read it as though taking off a band-aid:

It was understood that if someone like A.O. Scott got it right off the bat, it probably wasn’t very new. It’s probably just a Tom McCarthy movie if A.O. digs it. And that’s all good—those Tom McCarthy movies are solid, shiny things. But hipsters fancy themselves rebels—not middle of the road yuppies. And yet, for all the Robert Downey Sr. posters and Sam Fuller books, most of today’s hipsters are a lot closer to McCarthy than Nick Ray. McCarthy’s movies feel like they’re made by the Sundance Film Festival itself. They’re not offensive. They’re very politically correct. The timing is pretty much the same as studio films, maybe just a little quieter. And the stories are not too different than studio films, if on a smaller scale. And they have that neat, bright look that A.O. Scott loves so much. I’m convinced now that if one makes a film where the males are somewhat well groomed, A.O. Scott will just about hail it as a masterpiece. McCarthy’s latest, Win Win? A.O. Scott must have felt much at ease in that theater with those gentlemen. Yes. He must have felt much at ease indeed. Perhaps he even ate his own roasted nuts.

Ouch. And then this:

[A.O. Scott] needs tidy movies. Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck [Half Nelson] and Ramin Bahrani [Goodbye Solo] are the perfect directors for Scott, because he can go to the Dominican Republic or a down and out motel and still feel a certain familiar yuppie sheen cast over the proceedings. These too I find to be new hipster films. There’s a chill in the air, even when they’re emotional. Something metallic and robotic going on. A preconceived awareness—an inorganic vision. The hand-held camera, hand-held just so. Impersonal. The choices of topics—are they truly of interest to the filmmakers or just what the filmmakers feel like they should be interested in? And all so contained. Someone please smash these films open now.

I wonder what Buschel would think of Ryan Gosling? It’s almost too much to contemplate.

But what I couldn’t glean from the piece is what Buschel likes. Does he enjoy anything? In addition to swipes at Sundance-y fare, he dumps on the ironic appreciation of movies like The Rock and Fast and Furious. But that he held up Kerouac and Mailer as hipster icons made it easy to dismiss Buschel, not because he was wrong, but because he was one of those guys. Those guys reject materialism and wealth and J. Crew jeans because they belong to a socioeconomic class that has a choice in the matter. I grew up destitute in a shithole in Arkansas with a gay drug-addicted father, a suicidal mother, a meth-addicted brother, and a sister knocked up in her teens, so to an extent, I embrace what little material possessions I can grasp onto. I went to law school not out of some Noblesse oblige but because they were dumb enough to let me in. All of which is to say: I love Tom McCarthy films because I fucking earned it, douchebag. Now please pass the roasted nuts.

That’s a very roundabout way of getting to the point of this post, which is that Tom McCarthy is writing a screenplay for a family-oriented supernatural comedy. It’s called Home Movies, and it’s about “a man who is able to revisit certain moments in his life through his home movies and change things.” Shawn Levy (Night at the Museum) is producing. And before you go dumping on it, remember that Tom McCarthy, in addition to writing/directing The Station Agent, The Visitor and Win Win, also co-wrote Pixar’s Up, so he knows his way around family movies. He knows how to hit all the right notes and create a small, intimate story even within the confines of a big studio picture.

It’s still in the early stages, but I’m looking forward to Home Movies, and Noah Buschel can go choke on his copy of On the Road. I just hope he takes a bath first because the “yuppie” mother he is so obviously rejecting doesn’t want to find a dirty corpse in soiled underwear.

(Source: THR)









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Comments

Save a seat for me Dustin.

Posted by: tamatha at June 8, 2011 12:00 PM

What I'd really like to read is the real story behind whatever gave this guy a giant grudge against A.O. Scott. There's some real bitterness and singling out in that piece.

Posted by: PaddyDog at June 8, 2011 12:00 PM

I really can't think of anything I find less interesting than film critics/bloggers writing about each other, yet it seems to be happening more and more. I mean, does anyone who is not a blogger care what Blogger A thinks about Blogger B?

Posted by: Will at June 8, 2011 12:04 PM

From his comments section in response to the other comments:

To the people saying I'm a new hipster-- I am. I have Criterion Collection DVDs and smell and touch them. I like big sneakers and big eye glasses. Heroin chic sometimes is a turn-on too.

I want to be like the original hipsters-- The Beats and Beboppers. And part of me is. I wanna make art and not change it based on the crowd's reaction. Not care if I'm well-liked or popular. I wanna just practice meditation and be humble and human. But sometimes I get scared and act cool. And I feel myself falling into new hipster stuff I don't believe in just to get a film made or make my career easier. And the compromises add up. So mostly that messy essay was the new hipster and the original hipster battling it out. It takes one to know one. It takes one to know two.

I'd apologize to all the people I pissed off with the piece, but that would just be me wanting to be liked. Truth is I wrote it in fifteen minutes and sent it in and that's all.

Posted by: jamiepants at June 8, 2011 12:13 PM

Scott Templeton is a fraud

Posted by: Helder at June 8, 2011 12:15 PM

Damn. I hit the "different than" speed bump and then just went off in a loop wondering, "How is this guy getting paid to write?"

Posted by: Laredo at June 8, 2011 12:19 PM

Noah Buschel is a genius.
Tom Mccarthy is a whatever.

Posted by: Collared Greens at June 8, 2011 12:34 PM

So, I'll add to the class politics here, as a kid from a little dairy farm in the sticks of the midwest. Go read the douche's bio:
--
Oh boy, this will feel good.

First, fuck you, you privileged know-it-all. So fucking hip of you with your Village heritage. Maybe you have the best of intentions, but you lack the experience to have any empathy for actual humans who strove to elevate themselves under difficult circumstances. Stories matter to people - they don't all have to be something else or more.

Second, how clever to publish after one of your precious little curate's eggs debuted at Sundance. Eat your fucking cake, motherfucker.

Third, you hired Adrian Grenier. How fucking stupid are you?

Fourth, your profile includes a photo, making it clear that I could beat the living shit out of you, just like Mailer would, you little piece of shit.

Now, let's move on.

Posted by: Tao at June 8, 2011 12:48 PM

Oh, you mean the Butterfly Effect for kids? Cool?

Posted by: valerie at June 8, 2011 1:08 PM

So I'm not allowed to like nice things because they are nice things?

Thank god I'm too fat and nerdy for this hipster shit.

Posted by: twig at June 8, 2011 1:11 PM

Dustin, I'd like to give you a standing ovation with a slow clap for your closing arguments.

Can I also say that I'm sick to death of people, specifically bloggers, using the term hipster in every single article as some sort of kiss of death? It seems that anything and everything is getting labeled as hipster just because it could be considered pretentious. It's driving me insane.

Posted by: beckster at June 8, 2011 1:34 PM

I don't know what is more silly, the angry piece by Dustin Rowles or the comments following it.

Anyone who posts a piece ending with Douchebag is clearly not too bright.

But besides that, what does liking or not liking Tom McCarthy's movies have to do with whether your mother was an Ozark crackhead or Greenwich Village teacher? What does that have to do with anything? I loved The Missing Person. I'm from Alabama. I didn't go to college. I'm not a fan of Kerouac. I think Tom McCarthy is dull, mainstream fare that passes for indie. Burn me at the cross if you will.

Posted by: hamsteer at June 8, 2011 1:39 PM

I recognized about 5 names in that whole column on Hammer to Nail. And one of them was "The Rock". Oh, you mean he wasn't talking about Dwayne Johnson? Well, phooey. Make that four.

Posted by: TylerDFC at June 8, 2011 1:43 PM

Hipsters are, ultimately, just people trying to appear (to themselves and others) to be what they hope they can be. And that's not such a bad thing.

Posted by: Lucas at June 8, 2011 3:16 PM

I don't really think his argument of "hipster" movies even adds up. He talks about them being empty and detached and there being "a sheen" over them, but Half-Nelson? The Station Agent? Those movies struck me as sweet and sad, not really ironic or hipster-y in any way. There are those twee movies, like Miranda July's stuff, that strikes me as potentially hipster-y, but even then, the stories are about people trying to connect, not the sarcastic separatism of the hipster elite.

And really, there's no faster way for me to discount your argument than to assume a hypothetical about somebody else's tastes, like when this Buschel character doubts that A.O. Scott would have appreciated Two-Lane Blacktop in its own time. That's just unprovable and a silly claim to make.

Posted by: The Wandering Parakeet at June 8, 2011 3:42 PM

beckster,

I completely agree with you there. I think the words "hipster" and "pretentious" get thrown about these days to the point that they've lost most of their meaning.

Posted by: Alex00 at June 8, 2011 3:43 PM

like mccarthy's movies and i like goodbye solo. i like what i like. i don't have to think about it too much and i don't care if others don't like them. they're wrong.

Posted by: splinter at June 8, 2011 8:51 PM

Been reading and loving this site for years now, but most of the time react with meh to Dustin's stuff--this post, though, was fucking stellar.

Posted by: icecreammang at June 8, 2011 10:49 PM

This guy Dustin writes like ten year old. Douchebag? Really? Sad, immature stuff. His argument is tired and weak. He's earned the right to like mediocrity? Taste is taste is taste. You can come from anywhere and be a phillistine like Dustin. You can come from any background or any state and not be bright. You can be a dim bulb from rural or urban. It's not too hard.

Posted by: jadrocklin at June 9, 2011 10:21 AM

Did this fucking idiot really just start talking about Buschel's mother? Wow. That's low. Embarassing stuff, Mr. Rowles. You should be ashamed. Especially considering you don't even know what it means to be a New Yorker.

Posted by: Colleenfort at June 9, 2011 12:53 PM

Dustin Rowles, dumb ignorant fuck he is, would not have lasted a second growing up in Downtown Manhattan in the 8o's.

Posted by: claundike at June 10, 2011 3:58 AM

"Hipsters are, ultimately, just people trying to appear (to themselves and others) to be what they hope they can be. And that's not such a bad thing."

I disagree. If you're pretending to be something you're not, you're a big f*cking phony. And that's definitely not a good thing.

Posted by: Jen at June 12, 2011 10:50 AM