Letting Idiots Be Idiots

Last night while waiting for a movie to start I couldn't help but overhear a conversation from the couple behind me. This is not the same as eves dropping, not that I give a rat's pooper whether that's what I was doing. When you didn't bring anything to read and you decided to attend an event even if it is alone, there's that moment when even the most mundane succession of words are something to latch onto. It's like the value a used free newspaper takes when you have to kill time on the subway.

I'm learning to just let idiots be idiots, and that may be one of my New Years Resolutions, except that it gets easier the less I care. The guy was telling his date about his experience on the field of battle - Internet discussion boards. He was boasting that he had "corrected" someone and that "CS Lewis was not a contemporary of Tolken" and he want on to shoot some shit about the Narnia books. His girlfriend rebuked him a little by saying that at least the Narnia books are readable and that she couldn't get through Lord of the Rings. He went on regardless, insisting that Narnia is so simple and Rings are so detailed that the two authors wouldn't have known each other. I wanted to say "Have you read the Screwtape Letters or any other Lewis?" I wanted to put him straight about whether the two authors were peers. But before I could twist around to politely invite myself into their conversation, the guy went on to speculate about how people will receive his upcoming internet review of Astroboy and how the kid who plays Charlie in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chololate Factory does the voice of Astroboy. By then my eyes were glazing over and I was ready to splash the last of my coffee into my own face.

That's how it sounds when someone reviews movies online on a regular basis, the pointlessness of the exercise driven home perfectly by this stranger I didn't much respect. I've been accused of having "too much free time" myself having posted my share of comments and reviews on imdb and other sites. But the futility hadn't hit home as well as it had listening to this dink. I forget who said this of critics versus doers but, "all respect should go to the person actually in the arena." True critical thinking is rarely seen among so-called critics and audience chat board wags. Try to set something straight and it is like diving in after a drowning person and being pulled under.

"There is too much detail."

"There is too much dialog."

"The ending isn't ________."

For people starting out with a project, passing a draft script around, these can stop a writer in his or her tracks. And yet, without feedback they could move forward and create something that makes all of those comments moot. I'm thinking of Bill Murray's words of wisdom at the end of Meatballs, "It just doesn't matter, it just doesn't matter. . ."