Thursday, February 21, 2008

Be Careful What You Wish For or The Pitfalls of Wine Tasting

Years ago I used to think how cool it would be to review movies, if not for a living at least on some kind of regular basis. When the opportunity presented itself to be part of a review panel for a cult film publication I jumped at the chance.

The deal was simple... the publication would send films to the people on the panel. Your obligation was to watch the film and send it to the next person within a couple days then write up your thoughts for them to cull into a Zagat-esque capsule. Sounds good, right?

And at the start it was good. One or two films arrived each week and they were usually within the drive-in/cult/horror genres for which I'd originally signed on. Pretty soon, though, the frequency increased and the films – at least in my mind – got worse and worse and worse.

Not only did I find myself without time to watch the stuff I wanted to watch because of what I was obligated to watch but I was also beginning to really hate movies.

I mean really hate movies.

Luckily, the panel died off (I don't think I was the only one having a similar reaction to receiving things like THE KING'S WHORE starring Timothy Dalton) and after a brief drying out period I was able to return to watching movies (and writing about them) just for the fun of it.

While I certainly wouldn't compare being driven to hate movies with the destruction of a career, marriage and family, Alice King's story of how being a successful wine writer sent her down a harrowing path is a cautionary tale of getting what you wish for and all that comes with it.

1 comment:

Ticket 4 Two said...

I almost joined one of those review panels! Whew. Glad I didn't.

I'm a very picky movie watcher as it is.