A speculative initiative

There comes a point where you're not getting better at the thing you're doing just by doing it. You have to apply additional thought and training to it, if you want to see markedly better results.

I sometimes feel this way about watching movies, or more to the point, reviewing and writing about movies.

I can watch as many movies as I want, delve into the classics as regularly as I am able to find them, but those experiences are not fuelling my greater film knowledge unless I am supplementing them with something else. Something more.

And more, I have determined, means reading.

When the Filmspotting podcast spotlights new monthly subscribers on each episode, an incentive for creating more of us, it will run down that person's answers to a variety of questions. And one of them is their favorite book on film. 

I don't have a lot of favorite books on film. Because I don't read a lot of books on film.

And that, I have determined, is about to change.

A couple years ago, I don't remember exactly when, someone gifted me Quentin Tarantino's film memoir? is that what it is? called Cinema Speculation. It was probably for Christmas. I remember thanking whoever it was, assuming they were present in the room with me, and thinking "That's cool. I like Quentin Tarantino, but I don't really read books about film."

And why don't I do this, exactly?

For one I am a slow reader. I read about six to eight books per year. I might be able to get through more, but I do tackle some long ones -- the one I read in Europe was 650 pages. The bigger problem, though, is that if I'm not liking a book, I don't stop reading it. I just read it very slowly, so that I might end up wasting four months on a book I didn't like very much, when I could have been reading three others.

As a result of this slow pace, there are so many classics I've never read, plus I'd like to keep up on my share of new fiction. Then there are potentially biographies or other non-fiction books. To say nothing of the fact that in theory, I'd like to re-read some personal favorites. I re-watch favorite movies all the time, but due to the far greater time commitment, I almost never re-read books that I love. 

Doesn't leave a lot of time for reading books about movies ... especially when I'm already devoting so much of my time to movies. 

But am I losing out? Is there some indefinable part of my knowledge as a cinephile that is incomplete because I'm not getting deep, academic dives into the texts of these films, and into their making? And wouldn't I like to be just a bit more conversant about the origins of Hollywood and those who ran it a hundred years ago? To say nothing of all the greats who came after that, even ones from my own time about whom I can and probably should know more?

I'm not sure that Cinema Speculation will give me a huge amount of that. But I've got to start somewhere.

And once I've started, I'd like to make every second book I read a book about movies.

I don't think this is a sustainable pace in the long term. But I think it's something I can try to carry out at least for the next year, and see if I feel, I don't know, more complete as a cinephile after that period. 

If I don't, I can just go back to reading whatever, whenever.

I also think that if I am always trying to get to my next book that is not "homework" -- enjoyable homework, mind you, but homework of a sorts nonetheless -- it may increase my overall pace of reading. Which I think would be a good thing in my general quest to read more. 

I don't know that I will report on these books to you here on the blog. I certainly won't commit myself to doing it. I suppose it depends on whether something I've read inspires me to write.

But I think this is worth doing, and I think I will do it, and we'll just see how I go.