Film Buff Quotes

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country--indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky--provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut... ...Other cultures have camped here a while and disappeared. Only earth and sky matter. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light. You begin to see that God does not owe us much beyond that.

I love the French. They’re the biggest film buffs and protectors of cinema in the world. They really look out for the filmmaker and the rights of the filmmaker, and they believe in final cut.

I felt suffocated. And alone. More alone than ever. Every year, I ostentatiously crossed out of my address book any friend who'd made a racist remark, neglected those whose only ambition was a new car and a Club Med vacation, and forgot all those who played the Lottery. I loved fishing and silence. Walking the hills. Drinking cold Cassis, Lagavulin, or Oban late into the night. I didn't talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I'd stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people.

You stand there, braced. Cloud shadows race back over the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country -- indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky -- provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.

He was more ab­sorbed with the peo­ple around him, the cou­ples and teenagers and solo film buffs hav­ing per­fectly nor­mal days. He’d had thou­sands of nor­mal days him­self. It seemed such an alien con­cept now, to have a nor­mal day. To walk around obliv­i­ous, just par­tic­i­pat­ing in the world. It seemed un­rea­son­able for any­one to be al­lowed a nor­mal day.

Holly has been a movie buff all her life and has found things to enjoy even in films the critics have roasted (she believes, for example, that Stallone’s Cobra is woefully underestimated), but It’s a Wonderful Life has always made her uneasy. She can relate to George Bailey at the beginning of the film, but by the end he strikes her as someone with a serious bipolar condition who’s arrived at the manic part of his cycle. She has even wondered if, after the movie ends, he creeps out of bed and murders his whole family.

Some film buffs then and even now may consider Soup to Nuts, released September 28, 1930 little more than a cinematic curiosity but such an assessment couldn’t be further from the truth, particularly with respect to Ted Healy’s popularity, the continuing transformation of his supporting players Shemp, Moe (then billed as Harry) and Larry, the intrigue of Rube Goldberg’s projects and debut of the five-year-old Billy Barty as Junior.

I think that Ryu Chishu, or Tanaka Kinuyo, or to be more precise, the imaginary characters they portrayed, were more real to the film buffs than any existing human being. This is why cinephiles are spookier, on the whole, than music lovers or balletomanes. For they are creatures of the dark, getting off on the lives of others.

Meanwhile, on Raghav’s wish list was a film company. He was a Hindi film buff, but he was not in any way star-struck. He simply thought it was a good business idea, and that the time was right. Vandana, who had a lot of connections in the film industry, was to be a part of the venture. Raghav launched the film company as a personal venture, though TV18 was a minority investor, with a holding of 20 per cent. In June, the Indian Film Company raised Rs 400 crore at London’s Alternative Investment Market, much to Raghav’s amazement. ‘Almost any guy with even half a track record and a gleam of new economy, media or technology in his eye could go to London, float a company which hardly did anything, probably even if revenues were zero, and pick up equity. We did exactly that with our film fund. We had no track record in the film business. Zero.’ But investors were more than willing to throw money around in 2007.

What made a movie buff different from others was the amount of freakish details they chose to fill their heads with. The typical movie-goer remembered the big lines, the ones that you could find on the film’s shirts and posters. Just a bunch of tag-lines used for promotion. A true movie buff memorized the odd ones that said more about the story’s theme or characters. A true buff read up on the movie’s history.

Of course, we do need to change in a long-term relationship. We do so willingly; ideally, we do so enthusiastically. We give up sleeping with other people. We start to share our living space and our daily routine. Our perspective becomes more long-term and we start to think about developing the “we” instead of just walking the path solo. Yet sometimes we end up mothballing important, joy-bringing parts of us—the dancer (our partner doesn’t like to dance), the fisherman, the museum-goer, the aspiring yogi, the film buff, the person who travels or who doesn’t count calories on Saturdays. Part of this is a function of adulthood, not just of coupling, but how much of it is really required, and how much of it is a prison of our own making? What would my clients say to those who might listen—or, more poignantly, to their former selves, though it’s too late to salvage the marriage? This, in essence, is what I hear them saying: You stay interesting to your partner by staying interested in things outside your life together. You stay interesting to yourself—therefore better equipped to stay interesting to your partner—by stepping outside the marriage, from time to time, to find satisfaction. Your spouse can be a lot of things for you without being everything. Why the hell did we start trying to have one person be everything? Who thought that was a good idea?

Do you like scary movies?” Did I also like breathing? I twisted the curled connective wires on the phone, not sure if he was quoting the Scream film franchise villain or legitimately asking. “I guess you could say that, Ghostface.” Any horror buff would get the reference.

YOU STAND THERE, BRACED. CLOUD SHADOWS RACE OVER the buff rock stacks as a projected film, casting a queasy, mottled ground rash. The air hisses and it is no local breeze but the great harsh sweep of wind from the turning of the earth. The wild country—indigo jags of mountain, grassy plain everlasting, tumbled stones like fallen cities, the flaring roll of sky—provokes a spiritual shudder. It is like a deep note that cannot be heard but is felt, it is like a claw in the gut.