Anne Thompson alerted me this morning to A.J. Benza and Neal Gumpel‘s “Real Guys” series — obviously a concept riding the coattails of Marcia Nastair and Lorenzo Semple‘s “Reel Geezers.” Here‘s their riff on 21.
I agree with Thompson that the Geezers offer more interesting insights and issues, but Benza and Gumpel feel like the real thing to me. They process and talk about movies in the manner of “real guys” (i.e., men who enjoy saying it straight but at the same time have some sort of trepidation about being too intellectual). It’s culturally valid, it’s fairly unpretentious and it adds to the national dialogue so I don’t see a problem. Are they Andre Bazin and James Agee? No, but are they pretending to be?
