I just THINK in Movie Theaters

SFIFF: Brad Bird's State of Cinema Address
go to original article ... or email me for article text

"Studios need to 'fire the MBAs and bring in people who know film.'"

As Martha put it when she read this, "That's me!" Or actually, she said "That's you" referring to me and my desire to be in the thick of the business of exhibition (and my lack of an MBA). This is one of the many, many fantastic quotes that came out of Brad Bird's address, "The State of Cinema" at the San Francisco Film festival. I had Martha look around for a transcript, but she was unable to find one, so instead, I'd point you over to the SFist which was my source for hearing about his talk. I highly, highly, highly recommend you follow the link and read it as the talk sounds like it made some great observations about the state of movies.

And consequently echoed a lot of the things that this blog is about :)

When I first read it I wanted to stop every 5 seconds to compose something about each comment for my blog. But that would amount to writing the exact same article the SFist produced, so I'll refrain. I'd like to reprint the whole article here, but it's the SFist's content, so I can't steal credit for it. Hopefully it'll stay up for as long as anyone wants to read it.

Aside from agreeing heartily with everything the man behind "The Iron Giant" and "The Incredibles" had to say about the movies, I was particularly touched by the part that the SF included at the end of their post.

"It reminded us of a time, several years ago, when we were teaching media literacy at a summer camp and asked a particularly energetic and ambitious high-school student why he wanted to be a filmmaker. “I just, you know, THINK in movies,” he said, and it was sort of cute and naïve and idealistic, but it’s also exactly the same brand of passion exuded by successful, creative luminaries like Brad."

Now that I've read that, I'm stealing it because it definitely captures what I always want to tell people when they ask me why I want to own a movie theater. I just, you know, THINK in movie theaters. And if I'm anything, it's cute, naive and idealistic. :)