…and walking out of a film can be beautiful. For there is nothing like the feeling of wonderful, ecstatic liberation when you do this. Fuckthatmovie fuckthatmovie fuckthatmovie…freedom!
“For years I’ve been getting roasted in this space for my occasional walkouts. ‘How dare you?,’ ‘You call yourself a critic?,’ ‘You have to see the whole thing!,’ etc. But everyone does it from time to time, and there’s nothing dicey about saying ‘I saw this much of a given film and then I bailed, but here’s what I thought about the portion that I saw.’ In my own small way perhaps I’ve helped to make the world a bit safer for those who wish to write this.” — posted on 5.22.14.
I didn’t just walk out of Roger Kumble‘s The Sweetest Thing — I did so at the six-minute mark. I could see in a flash it was a reprehensible confection.
Hollywoodandfine‘s Marshall Fine has written the following: “I seldom walk out on movies, [but] I ankled after a half-hour of The Secret of Kells. It looked like a ’70s throwback, with limited animation, ersatz psychedelia and an earnest story about early Christians furthering the written tradition. They do it in the face of invading heathen Viking hordes and with the assistance of the spirits of nature and the creatures of the forest (or so I’m guessing, based on what I saw).
“What I saw was so lifeless and flat that I fled into the winter afternoon, invoking the life-is-too-short-for-this-shit clause in my contract. It’s something I really ought to do more often.”
Piss-sprayer to HE: “Your inability/refusal to sit through an entire film at a film festival is why I think your term “l’movie Catholic’ is so appropriate. Like any Catholic, your ‘religion’ is only sacred when it suits you.”
HE to piss-sprayer: I honestly don’t think that’s it. I honestly feel that life is too short and precious to sit through shit.
Piss spray cousin: “If you want to approach movies with a true religious fervor, the absolute baseline for any level of devotion to movies is realizing it’s not just you and your precious time, and the movie you’re seeing deserves consideration from the first to last frame, not just the sections you deem worthy of your attention. And when you don’t give a movie that consideration, then your opinion on it is no better than the guy in the front row who was tweeting during the middle of it.”
Krazyeyes: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with walking out of a crappy movie that is severely not working for you at a film festival. There’s just too many other good things you could be doing with your time. I’m fine with Jeff in this regard. He’s always struck me as a straight-shooter.”