The Edge of the Frame

In a recent online, slideshow piece, Salon asked some of today’s filmmakers about their favorite films from the last year. A lot of the responses are fascinating and great reads, but this one by four-time Academy Award nominated writer Eric Roth (“Forrest Gump,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Insider,” “Munich”) really got to me. It’s written with such elegance and prose that it raises the overall impact of David Fincher’s “The Social Network” to an even loftier level. A great little read:

“What’s going on here? They don’t let people make movies anymore that have a wit of thought, with great ideas expressed articulately by artists … these are movies of another time and place when giants roamed the Earth, and not Middle-earth either. That was the time of the Bonnies and the Clydes and the mean streets and the godfathers and the Kubricks and Leones and Godards and the names that are part literature, part poetry, all youth. So what is this movie that has something to say about the culture, about the way we think about each other and the ways we don’t? What is a movie doing today where the hero is unlikable and nasty and greedy and incredibly smart and lonely and part of a generation that has to announce who they are when they open a door to make sure they are noticed? What kind of a movie is that? Where does that happen in this landscape where Clashes and Crashes and Smashes are king. Where does it happen that a movie can make you talk about it all night, where it makes you remember why you went to the movies in the first place? Where does it happen that people with golden tongues and vision get to tell stories anymore? Where does it happen that a movie has near unanimous praise of critics afraid of their own shadows, and the public decides to give it a shot and it makes you want to be an awful lot younger and start all over again? Did I mention David Fincher’s “The Social Network?” We all should be so lucky and so good.”

Check out the full slide show with more comments from Scott Rudin, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, David Koechner, Malin Akerman, Andrew Jarecki and many others…