Have Movies Gotten Too Long?
Are radical films lacking the respect that the chances they take deserve?
The burdens and expectations of capitalism makes life tough enough. Time to enjoy ourselves is becoming more scarce each year. And streaming further exasperates this.
If something is hot, and you want to keep up with the Jones of pop culture, you have to make time for it. But when a season of television can be dropped in a single day, how are you going to enjoy it and be a functional human being?
Listen on –
Russ Stevens “Student of the Game”
Russ Stevens arrived at adulthood as an aspiring website designer with an anime obsession. His plan was to gain a computer science degree, but it only took two semesters at Illinois Central College to realize that his rejection letter from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign was warranted.This led him to pursue his primary passion, a career in pro-wrestling. There were many a long road trip, and talking about movies (or inappropriately quoting them) was a common means to pass the time.
Making the towns went into his late twenties. By then, all of his friends in that world had either grown out of playing hero for their friends or grew up to raise families. Russ realized that there was a starving artist in him, and hoped going back to school for screenwriting would provide him with a “grown up” path.
Thus, Ninety For Chill: The Podcast was born.
And the ideas that the most fun films led to just accepting that he digs crazy flicks.
I DiG CRAZY FLiCKS, LCC is the evolution of CatBusRuss’s fandom.
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Russ was able to obtain his second associates degree before ICC offered the screenwriting course that inspired his return. While waiting for this course, he impressed instructors in his multimedia classes and wrote well enough about cinema to become the school newspaper’s film critic. From his life in wrestling, the jaded demeanor that he gained allowed him to get some of his satirical editorials printed as well.
In the end, the course was so dull, our host dropped it, and he finally joined the workforce full-time. The knowledge gained did allow him to write a no-budget, pro-wrestling, zombie-comedy script called “Main Event of the Dead”, but he was never able to rally any support to get it made.
Stuck in cubicles as a third-party copywriter for Walmart, Russ finally gave “The Art of Wrestling with Colt Cabana” a listen. He was a fan of G4’s “Attack of the Show” and “Web Soup”, which led him to Chris Hardwick’s Nerdist network of podcasts. Cabana and Chris were famous nerds, but those podcasters he was introduced to through them were not. They were all smart and loved their fandoms. CatBusRuss decided internet radio may be his niche.
Taking into consideration how little time he had for overly-bloated blockbusters and the hot streaming television series, he determined that discussing movies that can fit right into anyone’s schedules was an untapped resource.