I tried watching Fellini’s La Dolce Vita today but became insanely bored by the 7th minute. I shut it off. I’m slowly starting to come to the self-admittance (slowly starting to admit to myself?) that I don’t like old movies. Fuck it, I hate old movies. Fuck old movies. Alexander Payne did this special DVD introduction at the start of Dolce Vita that was so nauseatingly pretentious I had to shut THAT off in the 3rd minute.

I’ve always tried to assure myself that I love old movies because I’ve been spending all this time trying to get into filmmaking and I feel a certain degree of pressure to thus become a bit of a cinephile. All of my movie heroes appear to be big cinema buffs, spouting off references to countless old films I’ve never seen. So then I go to see them (thank you, Netflix), and they blow. They’re so agonizingly slow. I couldn’t bear to sit through the M. Hulot films (a Paul Thomas Anderson recommendation). Is it possible to be a devoted filmmaker/cinema buff if you can only get your head around and sit through contemporary films?

The oldest era I can get down with is the 70s––Network, The Graduate. Anything pre-Dick Nixon makes me want cut off my cinephellic nuts. I Love Cuba? The Last Picture Show? Could barely get through them. What gives?

People always lament the declining American attention span. But what if the phenomenon is really nothing more than the residual result of a ballooning American intelligence? A few months back I kept seeing stuff about that book “Everything Bad is Good For You,” about how pop culture has become increasingly more complex and, despite cries to the contrary, American IQ is on the rise. All these old folks keep complaining about how us youngins are going to hell in a hand-basket because of our shrinking attention spans, but maybe they’re really just jealous because we’re a lot smarter than they ever were. And as result of our increased intelligence, we thrive on our increased saturation in media and information.

Then again, I’m sure if it ever came up, my grandfather would probably tell me to actually read a book before using its thesis in an argument. I’d have to help him pee, but he’d probably be right.