“Don’t read the fucking comments, Charlie.” Richard Linklater not only makes fantastic movies (reminder that “School of Rock” is one of his best) but he also gives pretty good and timeless advice. Here, he was referring to Charlie Kaufman talking about how he made the mistake of reading the comments on The New York Time‘s top films of 2020 lists.
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During a recent roundtable panel with Indiewire about Kaufman’s latest film, “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” the filmmaker shared his frustration at seeing commenters being overly happy with Kaufman’s film being omitted from the list — with comments saying “Thank God” and taking aim at the director himself. “It wasn’t in the list. Why are you adding this ‘Thank God’? It feels personal,” Kaufman explained. “It’s not the critique, it’s when it gets weirdly personal.”
That’s when Linklater chimed in to give the timeless advice never to look at the comments, and offer encouragement to Kaufman. “It does suck,” he told Kaufman. “and [when you release a movie] you really have to deal with what the world is bouncing back at you for a window of time. I think [those commenters] are sort of impoverished people who are poisoned by the storytelling tropes they’ve come to expect. You’re in pure cinematic territory. Rest assured, when we look back at 2020 — at this period in history — you have offered the world maybe the greatest cinematic gift.” Honestly, saying commenters are impoverished people poisoned by storytelling tropes is a fantastic comeback we should all use from now on.
It’s not that filmmakers should be above criticism, but it’s never right to personally attack a filmmaker. In any case, regardless of what you think of “I’m Thinking of Ending Things” it is clear the film made an impact on audiences. Our own review called the film a “weird, infinite, messy cacophony of reflections, somehow expansive in its narrowness and confrontational in its honesty to a soul-baring degree.”