Goodbye, (for good) and Thanks for All the Likes
This was a difficult decision. My blog is not professional and has always been for my selfish desire to share my thoughts on film. It was a way for me to connect with some really awesome people and a way for me to have discussions that otherwise would never have happened in my day to day life. I've had some form of film blog for the last five years, this being my third, and after a lot of consideration, I've decided that this will be it. The Film Assist blog is done, caput, finito and will also be my last film blog I ever make.
Over the past year, my interest in posting new content has waned and become slapdash to those who've known my previous work. I would go months before posting something else and then tell my followers that I'm coming back after this latest release...and I never did. I enjoyed doing this so much over the years and am very eternally grateful to everyone who read, or clicked for a second before running away appalled at my sorry excuse for a blog, my work from all over the world. I believe that I've grown a lot over the course of doing this blog and because of that, it is time for me to depart.
My taste in film has changed drastically, and I've come to understand that my relationship with film has changed just as much. Around the same time last year, I discovered that I didn't want to review movies anymore. There was something about writing the same formulaic way of reviewing a film without spoiling it that didn't sit right with me. I got bored with it and wanted to open it up to essays and discussions. I think I provided some good essays for thought on here but clearly, haven't done enough with them. Essays took longer to write and so my release schedule was spaced further and further apart to the point where writing one essay felt like I was doing a disservice to my readers without another coming out relatively close to it. In between post releases I have been working on a number of articles, but that too I had to accept that I would never get around to finishing. Why? Because I don't see myself as a film writer anymore.
In 2019 I decided that I was going to be better to myself. I was going to try and be more proactive in what I wanted in my life and this was the year I would dive into film writing. That didn't happen. I did, however, get a few interviews which I honestly never thought I'd be able to do. Funny how asking somebody can actually produce something amazing. I've done three interviews on my podcast and they all turned out beyond amazing. I really enjoyed talking to the filmmakers and people in the film industry. It was a great look into their field and my only regret was that I had to be in the interviews, fumbling up my lines and being so much lesser to them. They were all great and I hope I at least was able to give them a platform for others to realize their existence. But, after those three interviews, my life got crazier, I needed to work more, and so my free time dwindled to the point where continuing the interviews would be troublesome and not fair to the subjects. That was the first nail in the coffin for me to make this decision.
As I was writing my last post, AppleTV+ First Impressions, I realized that I didn't enjoy this anymore. I always felt like an outsider looking in on the industry and that's the opposite of what I want. I still dream of becoming a filmmaker, and hopefully, that'll happen in the future. But for right now I only see this blog as a way for me not to move on. If I constantly look at other people's work and critique them then I'm not doing any justice to what I want to accomplish. During the next five years, I've made a life decision that will see me traveling the world if I am lucky. During that time I want to study as many film industries as I can, make friends and relationships all over the world, and maybe, hopefully, sometime down the line in the near future, I'll have the guts enough to make something for myself. I can't see that future if I'm dedicating so much time to this blog. That was the second nail.
The last nail is pretty simple. I've grown. As a person, I don't want to critique somebody else's work. I just want to sit down with somebody and talk about the craft. I want to expand my knowledge and experience other films. Lately, I've been getting into world cinema. I've watched some really spectacular Asian documentaries, Netflix has a section for African films that I've been diving into, and really as I look back on my blog I realized that it has been limiting me to the Hollywood discourse that I so loathe these days. Yes, those topics are important to talk about, but there is literally a whole world of film out there that I don't know about and I want to have the freedom to explore.
I hope this explains my decisions and that I did not take this decision lightly. I've had a lovely time and I wished I could complete the posts that I was working on to give to all of you. Some of the posts I was working on were "How Hollywood as Given Up on Superman," "Did Batman Ruin Superhero Movies," "Why is Slapstick Looked Down Upon," "Planet of the Apes in a Social Media World," as well as tackling how comedy changes with time a-la Cadillac Man and comparing/contrasting how television shows show disabled/troubled characters by talking about Monk vs The Big Bang Theory. Leaving these posts for the void has been a great disheartening realization of this decision. This will also include my Podcast. That too will be done with, although I'll leave it up for all to hear. I just never had confidence in my voice or my ability to create a good show for all of you. Writing was always my forte, not talking.
Film will always be part of my life, the title to this post is in reference to Hitchhiker's Guide for heaven's sake, and hosting this film blog was only going to be a part, an era, of my life that I always knew was going to have to end at some point. I just didn't expect it to be so soon. Again, I'd like to thank every single person who read, liked, shared my posts with the world and to thank everyone whom I interviewed. You all were great and I hope every single one of you does great in life.
Goodbye.
