Remain Champagne - GET THESE MINUTES BACK.

You’re reading a review of some movie or TV show or even a song. And there it is. You almost got all the way through the piece without seeing it, but now your luck’s run out. That critic did it. He dropped it and you stepped in it. He played that card. And that card, goes a little something like this:

“I wish I could get back the ninety minutes it took to watch this film.”

Or variations of that same idea:

“The thirty minutes it took to watch this show are thirty minutes I will never get back.”

Or:

“The saddest thing about this two minute and forty-five second song is that I will never have those two minutes and forty-five seconds back.”

Et cetera.

Critics of the World (or, as I like to call you guys, The World [me included; trust me, I promise to heed my own request here], attend my words: You’ve gotta stop using this one. Knock it off. We get it. You didn’t like whatever the thing is you’re writing about. But expressing your desire to get the time back you spent watching the thing you didn’t like is one of the most played-out motifs in criticism. You’ve gotta stop it! You value the minutes out of your life spent doing something? Okay. Then spend those minutes coming up with another way to describe the thing you didn’t like. I realize it’s a tall order. There’s a lot of shit out there that we all don’t like. In Los Angeles, disliking something is like exercise. Hell, isn’t that what criticism has become nowadays? Just sitting around thinking up of new ways to hate something? Why, I’m doing it right now! I must be right!

Let’s play a game, shall we? Let’s pretend you did get back those ninety minutes spent watching that shitty movie. What would you do with them? Probably watch another movie, right? Another shitty movie that took you ninety minutes to watch, ninety minutes that—lemme guess—you’re never gonna get back, right? I got an idea. Instead of using those ninety minutes you’ve magically been given back to watch another movie, why don’t you spend them coming up with other ways to negatively criticize all the shit you don’t like? Because if you like writing “This film represents an hour and a half out of my life that I’ll never get back,” I guarantee you this: the people who made that movie you’re so committed to hating have worked way harder than you. (By the way: Even if you weren’t a shitty hack critic, the people who made that shitty movie are still working way harder than you.)

[Incidentally: I don’t know how many minutes you’ve spent reading this post, but you do realize you’re not getting these minutes back, right?]

I remain

Champagne