I'm Living My Dreams and It's a Nightmare

Movie Man, or the unexpected hell of talking about art online.

These people I had been watching for months started to follow me. Then the people I had been listening to and reading for a decade started to follow me. Then celebrities started to follow me. I got invited to big events and premieres. I got to interview actors and directors. I went to Sundance and SXSW. Wow. I made it. This is great.

Right?

As far back as I can remember, I wanted to talk about movies online. Sort of. At first, I dreamed of selling a gigantic, high fantasy tome. I’ve spent countless hours inventing worlds, drawing maps for made-up lands that have their own religions, languages, and histories. Put “Hugo Award winning novelist” on my tombstone, please.

In my teenage years things took a sharp turn. I was still obsessed with elves and wizards but my gaze shifted from Mordor to Hollywood. I found L.A. Confidential, Pulp Fiction, and Trainspotting. My humor was shaped into a strange alloy of Clerks, South Park, and Monty Python. I read every book I could on writing screenplays from people like Syd Field, Blake Snyder, and Robert McKee. I plotted my scripts beat for beat on index cards.

But I was high. Like, really, really high. I dropped out of college and hit the streets more than the books. I took a multi-year detour through homelessness and despair and, by the time I arrived at sobriety in my early 20s, I had lost my dreams of Oscars and Pulitzers and just wanted a clean apartment and a fridge full of food.

It took another few years of marveling at basic life necessities before the old itch crept back in. It started with a podcast. While mowing my lawn I found The Slashfilmcast (it’s called the Filmcast now) and it was like a gateway drug. Three men reviewing movies every Tuesday—laughing, crying, interacting with fan emails and interviewing Jeremy Saulnier, Kevin Smith, and Rian Johnson. I thought, “Wait, Kevin Smith will talk to you if you have a podcast?”

Kevin Smith will talk to anyone, but I didn’t know that at the time. I found other podcasts: Filmspotting, Nerdist, Blank Check, Cast of Kings, Storm of Spoilers. I devoured them all. I read all the blogs. Slashfilm, Screenrant, Birth Movies Death. Variety, Deadline, Rogerebert.com.

I bought books about movies by Patton Oswalt and Owen Gleiberman. Like Captain Barbossa, I could never be satiated. Soon it wasn’t just mowing the lawn or commuting to work, it was while working. I got some cheap wireless headphones and listened to the cinephiles talk all day while rolling dough or doing dishes at the pizzeria where I worked.

Before long, I started my own podcast. It was awful and no one listened so I started another one. It was better but we needed better equipment. I applied to every entertainment website in existence but none of them responded. I started my own website. It was awful and no one read it. I took a bunch of gigs for lesser sites that paid in exposure. I wrote garbage and clickbait that everyone I admired loathed if they read it at all.

I just wanted to be a part of the club. At this point I figured I would never even finish my novel, much less sell it, and I probably wasn’t a very good screenwriter, either. I just wanted to hang out with someone who knew the difference between tilt and pan. I wanted to see movies before anyone else and get paid to talk about the work I used to dream of making. That seemed reasonable.

I wanted to be a professional nerd.

I existed in this purgatory for about five years. I got great jobs in sales and marketing, making more money than someone with my life choices could expect but it was never enough. I’d be in my office reading Priscilla Page articles or watching Mikey Neumann videos on YouTube. I’d call off work to make a short film or go see John Wick Chapter Two. Everyone around me wanted to get promoted and retire early, I just wanted to go to Sundance and Comic Con.

What finally worked, after all of that, no one could have seen coming: a global pandemic and a strange new social media app called TikTok. All through the pandemic and multiple quarantines my wife watched TikTok on the couch, laughing maniacally. She was having so much fun. I resisted for a year. It seemed beneath me and my intellectual pursuit of Call of Duty: Warzone.

I remember the day I finally downloaded the app. I was at work (of course, what else am I going to do, work?) and at first I saw strange dances and some odd melodrama about something called “womb lands”. But I also saw people talking about movies. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Is this a thing?

I watched for a few months, skeptical. Is anyone going to take these people seriously? Is this worth my time? “I’m already working so hard on the podcast,” I thought. Then I saw a “Tiktoker” hosting the red carpet of The Batman premiere.

Holy fucking shit.

I put everything I had into TikTok. I quit my six-figure sales job (I hated it anyway), cutting my pay by 50% to give myself more time to talk about movies. I’d wake up early to make a video before I went into work. I’d come home and watch the newest releases and go Live.

It worked. A thousand followers. Ten thousand. Fifty thousand. I started getting PR packages and screeners in the mail. My daughter was born. A hundred thousand followers, two hundred thousand followers, oh my god, it’s working! It’s working! FINALLY!

These people I had been watching for months started to follow me. Then the people I had been listening to and reading for a decade started to follow me. I got invited to big events and premieres. I got to interview actors and directors. I went to Sundance and SXSW. Wow. I made it. This is great.

Right?

It is and it isn’t. I don’t want to be dramatic or sound ungrateful. I’ve worked countless jobs in restaurants, behind desks, painting houses, even pouring concrete. There are so many people working thankless, exhausting jobs that actually keep society functioning, that make a tangible difference in peoples’ lives. I wouldn’t go back to any of the other jobs I’ve done before willingly.

But, man, it isn’t like I thought. There’s something about waking up for work in the morning, drinking your coffee, and immediately reading dozens of people telling you to eat a dick that isn’t great for your mental health. Convincing your friends and family you can’t attend the function because you’re working, when your work is watching Twisters, isn’t easy, either.

In the beginning I thought I could fix the internet, kind of. I thought if I just stayed relentlessly positive, only interacted with the rational people, and worked hard I could build a community of people that understood the subjectivity of art. I wasn’t completely wrong—I’ve managed to do that, for the most part. What I didn’t know is that, despite its benefits, I was choosing a career in which I would never be good enough, walking a path teeming with buzzards and the rotting corpses of better, stronger, smarter people.

I’ve met a lot of wonderful people, people who check-in and offer kind words, a supportive smile, and plenty of free advice. Many of the veterans say, “Do not read the comments.” One of them even said to hire someone to post all of my work and monitor things for me. Don’t engage. That would work.

The problem with that is it takes me right back where I started. In a room, alone, just me and a screen.

If I do that, what was the point of all of this?

The truth is, my unhappiness has nothing to do with the trolls, the views, or what events I’m invited to. If my internal self-worth is a reflection of the external world it’s only because it was lacking to begin with. Being chronically online might have been a mistake but being chronically selfish is just as painful. Maybe, just maybe, I have something to add to the stream of life and, with mortality rushing at me at twenty-four frames per second, I should get to it. It’s only meaningless if you choose not to add meaning.

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