I Kind of Miss Top Ten Lists, But Not Enough to Actually Ever Do One Again
There are many elements of my former life as a staff writer for The A.V Club and The Dissolve that I don’t think about very often because if I were to think, I mean really think about everything that I’ve either lost or given up in the move from salaried staff writer with benefits at two respected, powerful sites to total independent just barely making a living through crowd-funding and self-publishing it would be almost too much to bear.
There are many things about the jobs I used to have and the life that I used to lead that I miss terribly. I used to go to Sundance every year and see dozens upon dozens of movies before anyone else in order to be on top of the upcoming year in film. That was exhausting but it was also tremendously exciting and satisfying. I hated being away from home for so long and wasn’t overjoyed about having to work until two or three or four in the morning most days but I’m sad that unless something dramatic changes professionally I will probably never go back to Sundance ever again.
I similarly miss getting to see all of the big movies for free at press screenings. This could also be exhausting and a pain in the ass as well as exhilarating and deeply satisfying.
I particularly miss mail time at the A.V Club, when interns would make like Santa Claus and deliver daily presents in the form of CDs, DVDs, books and various other glorious pop detritus (oh, but I loved promotional garbage and miss it terribly!) from folks hoping that The A.V Club would use its tremendous power and visibility to help them and their projects.
For that matter, I miss the power and visibility that came with being a staffer for The A.V Club and The Dissolve. It is a wonderful feeling being able to use your position to genuinely help artists you love. I tried to use that power judiciously, for good, never for evil. I just don’t have that power writing for a website with literally a 1/10000th of the audience of The A.V Club.
But if I love and miss a lot of my old life I also feel tremendous ambivalence as well. For example, I both loved and hated everything that went into making year-end lists for movies, music, television and podcasts.
I hated the idea that something as messy and complicated and ineffable as art could be conclusively judged and ranked so as to determine which piece of art is better than another piece of art. That seemed like bullshit. I also hated the year-end rush where I’d binge five or six important movies in a single day to determine whether they’d end up on my top ten list and in which order. It felt like I was doing a terrible disservice to these films and their makers by seeing them largely, if not exclusively, through the prism of top ten list eligibility.
In order to write a top ten list that did not fill you with shame and make you feel like a total pretender of course you need to stay on top of ALL the movies all year long, including documentaries, foreign films and art movies. It’s an intense, year-long process that pays off in a flurry of lists and award voting at the end of the year.
My favorite part of making year end lists was a delightful phenomenon known as screener season, when critics are given all of the awards contenders for free on disc or videocassette (#OldSchool), sometimes with free promotional crap. Lord, how I miss those bribes!
The best part of year-end lists involved helping movies and actors and actresses and filmmakers I felt passionately about. When done right, a top-ten list can be a force for good in the universe, turning readers onto worthy movies they might ignore or not even know about without your passionate evangelism. Like awards, top ten lists don’t really matter except for when they do, when they’re a matter of turning the public onto worthy movies that deserve to be singled out for praise and awards.
When I started Nathan Rabin’s Happy Place I decided that I wasn’t going to do anything that I did not want to do. That included year-end top ten lists. I don’t belong to any critic groups anymore. I’m not asked to vote in any year-end polls. In a very real way, I’m barely in the business anymore.
That was partially by choice and partially because I lost my last job as a salaried staff writer a half decade ago and almost all of my outside columns have ended in the ensuing years. This website and my career more or less ensure that I do not see new movies. I used to at least dabble in new releases for Nathan Rabin’s Happy Cast but I discovered, to my surprise and moderate disappointment, that my readers don’t particularly seem to care what I have to say about Black Panther or The Force Awakens or whatever the huge new movie might be. They’d rather read about flops or weird movies they’ve never heard of.
Thinking about my old life is a profoundly bittersweet, melancholy endeavor. That is particularly true when it comes to year-end lists. I miss them and I intensely don’t miss them and feel plenty of other mixed, intense emotions that fall somewhere in between.
I don’t miss top ten lists enough to commit myself to watching, I dunno, the 200 new 2021 movies I’d need to see in order to feel qualified to make a legitimate top ten list but I do apparently miss that simultaneously cherished and resented tradition enough to blog about it.
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