Or as I should say, that cost was time. Last Thursday, the entire New York office of Rhapsody — the MTV and Real joint venture where I was a Senior Designer — got laid off.

For most of the 500,000 or so employees who lost their jobs in the last month, this is a stressful time of uncertainty. I don’t want to be the guy with a smile on his face while everyone else has their head in their hands, but not having a family to support, and being too young to know any better, there in a sea of downturned faces is my Cheshire grin. The way I see it, I didn’t get laid off; I graduated. After all, I’ve spent roughly as much time at this job (31 months) as I would’ve at film school. Tack on the severance we received and I’ll be graduating at roughly the same time of year, and at roughly the same age, as most grad film students would be.

This makes for an interesting self-exam (no, not that kind): would I be better off if I’d spent the last three years as a film student, instead of working a job? There’s no way of knowing, of course. Had I gone to a film program at NYU or Columbia, maybe I would’ve met a great professor, or a great peer collaborator, or directed a student film that opened doors to the industry. And of course I might’ve seen some amazing films and learned things I haven’t on my own.

On the other hand I’ve seen some amazing films, worked with a great peer collaborator, and made a film on the internet that opened doors to the industry — all the while working a full-time job. As such, I don’t have any student loans to pay off, so financially I’m certainly in a better place.

But who knows; every individual situation is different, and money seems like a pretty ephemeral issue for the film school decision to hinge upon. Despite the URL of this site, it’s not actually a question I’m interested in dwelling on endlessly; if someone is motivated to go to film school, they should go.

Regardless, whether I’d gone to film school or not, now is the time when the rubber meets the road: it’s time to be a full-time filmmaker. Finally.

This was supposed to be a more to-the-point post announcing the following:

• I got laid off;
• Zack and I made it through four or five rounds of layoffs, each time wondering why we were unfortunate enough to still be employed;
• The West Side is on hiatus;
• We have another project we’ve been pitching to studios.

The same day our office was shuttered, another 850 people in the building were laid off. While the reason may seem obvious, I’ll quote Viacom in order to smooth out my planned segue: “the cuts are a response to the global economic downturn.”

So really, as much as anyone I have George W. Bush to thank for my newfound freedom. If I had to find some additional things from the past eight years for which to thank the outgoing President, I’d thank him for:

• Running America so far into the ground that the clamor for change was such that a man of Obama’s background could be elected President (despite being an incredible candidate and running a superlative campaign, I still don’t think he could’ve won in any other clime);
• Trashing the economy so thoroughly that reluctant workers like Zack and I, who nevertheless fairly rapidly climbed the corporate ladder based on capabilities, could still get laid off — consequently receiving severance packages on the way out (thus getting paid while we launch full-time film careers).

Thanks for fucking things up so badly, George — with crisis comes opportunity. I’d been wanting to leave the day job for quite some time, but in this economy, without funding in place for any projects, I couldn’t feasibly pull the trigger. Now, however, I’ll be able to work full-time on future projects, and for that I’m truly thankful (and motivated).

Also, without a day job sucking time, I will probably be blogging a bit more; it’ll be my break from working on said projects. After all, if I’d spent as much time on a screenplay over the past three years as I have on this blog, surely I’d have a final draft in hand by now. For productivity’s sake, maybe I should start nonofilmschool.com… and post nothing.

Regardless, the truth is, I didn’t bring Westerns back. George W. Bush did.

The release of 3:10 to Yuma and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford–along with There Will be Blood and even No Country for Old Men–would be enough to justify the statement that Westerns are currently enjoying a revival in this country. The fact that the first two films (the only ones I’ve seen to date) rank as some of the genre’s finest, however, indicates Something Is Going On Here.

What makes the Western more relevant today than it was ten years ago? I can’t speak to the other filmmakers’ thought processes, but regarding The West Side, the idea for it dates back to 2001.

In American hearts, minds, and most importantly, media, the year 2001 connotates one thing. Not since communism has there been a struggle portrayed in oversimplified “good vs. evil” terms as is the war on terrorism. The Western, with its traditional focus on cowboys and Indians, fits perfectly into the democracy-versus-terrorism, us-versus-them model that our administration would have us buy into. It’s not a stretch to see how a violent, gung-ho American culture begets the resurgence of a violent, gung-ho American genre.

Our so-called commander-in-chief poses as a cowboy on his Texas ranch, posts “Most Wanted” lists, constructs a wall on the Mexican border (remember the Alamo!), and generally extols frontier-style justice. Whether Americans are conscious of it or not, Bush has given them a new framing device for Western imagery. Movie trailers featuring men in hats and gunbelts feel more relevant than they did before he took office. Western-style commercials are increasingly common, with Coors selling beer, Chevy selling trucks, and Wrangler selling jeans–all in the same weathered, big-sky, tough-guy image he cultivates:

What an asshole.

One could argue that the Western has also always been tied to war, but I’m not enough of a historian to back up the point. Cursorily, it would seem that the Western’s previous heydays have all coincided with, or followed, America at war. The John Ford pictures of the late 40s and early 50s followed World War II (Ford himself served in the Navy), Sergio Leone brought back the genre (albeit from an Italian perspective) during the Vietnam War in the late 60s and early 70s, and now we’re seeing a resurgence during the Iraq War (ahem, “occupation”). It’d be sickening to think that our taste for fictional shootouts increases during the times our actual citizens are fighting and dying; but it may just be we’re a nation frequently at war, and it’s impossible to tie the Western’s ebb and flow to that of our warmongering.

It’s possible James Mangold, Andrew Dominik, Paul Thomas Anderson, and the Coen brothers would all deny that they are responding to Bush or the Iraq War (although Anderson’s There Will be Blood is based on a book originally titled Oil!). But one doesn’t have to set out to respond to specific current events to be a participant in a larger cultural shift. Also, keep in mind that all of these films are based on books: with the exception of the Coen brothers’ adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s 2005 novel, each film is based on a source text that has been around for many, many years. So why are they all being simultaneously adapted into films? Perhaps it has less to do with the director’s own whims, and more with the out-of-touch studio executives who green-light the projects–they are almost certainly relying on cultural artifacts like Coors commercials for their understanding of the zeitgeist.

But several films merely coming out at the same time is not enough to read into the cultural tea leaves. The fact that these films are some of the best of the year, however, is indicative of import. No Country for Old Men is getting terrific advance reviews. 3:10 To Yuma is a tightly-crafted crowd-pleaser, a film doggedly determined to single-handedly bring back the genre. When I saw it last month, I ate it up; the surrounding audience applauded when the credits rolled. Its better-than-expected box-office performance–the film made back its production budget during the domestic theatrical run alone–will ensure a slew of revivalist Westerns in the coming years.

But The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, at its finest moments, is one of the richest Westerns ever made. The film is inconsistent (especially at the end), but that’s like criticizing a runner trying to set the world record for having imperfect form (especially at the end). Director Andrew Dominick set out to make a contemplative, atmospheric film in the mold of Terrence Malick; unfortunately, he succeeded in more ways than one.

Malick’s The Thin Red Line, one of my favorite films, didn’t start as a screenplay full of commercial conceits, but rather as a project made in the white space of the page. Studios should be applauded when they fund such risky projects–albeit rarely–but in the case of both The Thin Red Line and Jesse James, the director’s original vision was compromised during the editing process. Rumors have circulated about Malick’s original cut running six hours; according to Wikipedia, Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Sheen, Gary Oldman, Bill Pullman, and Viggo Mortensen all acted in the film, but none of them appear in the cut released by Fox. Clearly, the meditative epic suffers in the editing phase, when executives are more focused on the project meeting certain revenue figures (and running times) than they are with catering to the director’s vision.

Dominick’s Jesse James suffered a similar fate (though perhaps the studio-director relationship was not as contentious), as it’s just now being released, two full years after shooting wrapped. As with The Thin Red Line, there were reportedly numerous re-edits, but the fact that the film still runs two hours and forty minutes is likely a testament to the presence of Ridley Scott and Brad Pitt as supportive producers, more so than Dominick’s cache with the studio (as it’s only his second feature).

In the case of both films, I would love to see a Director’s Cut released on DVD; with DVD being a firmly-entrenched format, directors should put in their contracts the rights to an alternate DVD release in case of intractable disagreements with the studio.

Blame for the fate of such ambitious films does not lie solely with the studios, however. If the best films of the 70s were shown to test-audiences today, they would certainly receive unfavorable ratings. How and why audiences have changed is a subject for another time or another person, as I wasn’t even alive in the 70s. But Rocky won the Best Picture Oscar over Taxi Driver in ‘76, so maybe audiences haven’t changed all that much.

So who’s left to blame? Critics.

Film critics reviewing movies are like schoolteachers grading papers; they often hand out better grades to projects that do the expected very well, instead of rewarding those that push the boundaries. Risk-taking films (like so many 70s pictures) might be a bit rough around the edges, but the most polished movies rarely advance the art form; critics tend to forget that when they point out a movie’s faults. And plenty of them have jumped at the chance: Jesse James is receiving somewhat mixed reviews, with a current score of 72% at Rotten Tomatoes. Compare this with last year’s critic’s darling, The Queen–holding steady at 97%–and you have a prime example of critics rewarding spit-shined blandness over more erratic, edgy fare. Also, I love Pixar as much as the next moviegoer, but the uniformly glowing reviews their movies receive are starting to rub me the wrong way; while it’s true the folks at Pixar make movies that everyone can agree on–and do a wonderful job of it–a Ratatouille at its best is not nearly as valuable to the art form as is a Jesse James at its best.

Not that Jesse James is rough around the edges; indeed, it’s such a gorgeously crafted film that I hope one day we see a version of it without the explicit narration. The story, acting, production design, music, sound design, and especially cinematography flesh out the film’s themes so effectively that I found the narration detracting and redundant at times.

As an industry outsider, it’s not often I see a film before it goes into wide release, although living in New York does help. But, despite my opinion on embracing small screens, Jesse James is truly a picture that needs to be seen in a good theater. If you find the film uneven, take heed: as a still-young art form, films should be judged on reach rather than grasp. And The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford has not only the longest title, but also the longest reach, of any film I’ve seen this year.

These words were written by Malachi Ritscher (pictured) shortly before he set himself on fire. On an early November morning in Chicago, he brought a can of gasoline and a book of matches before an audience of rush-hour commuters, and performed his own coup de grace. When his protest of the United States’ occupation of Iraq was over, his body was charred beyond recognition and the population of Chicago had shrunk by one.

Viewed in historical context, I suppose it’s not surprising that a citizen of an attacking country responsible for tens of thousands of innocent civilian deaths would take his own life to protest the war. It follows that self-immolation would be the way to ensure the protest was heard ’round the world, despite–or because of–the unimaginable anguish of burning alive. Ritscher felt, similarly to Norman Morrison or Roger Allen LaPorte, that by igniting himself on fire, he would draw the international community’s attention to the fact that Americans felt strongly enough about the actions of their own country to kill themselves. But while Morrison got his own postage stamp and a street named after him in Hanoi for his protest of the Vietnam War, Ritscher, forty years later, instead received a media blackout and accusations of being mentally unstable.

The mainstream press responded to his excruciating death by accusing him of insanity and describing his obituary as “rambling.” But in actuality, his self-penned obituary is entirely lucid and leaves no doubt as to why he did what he felt he had to do. By no means was he “insane”–insanity, as Albert Einstein said, is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Insanity, thusly, is embroiling ourselves in another Vietnam when Vietnam happened during all of our current leaders’ lifetimes. Insanity is turning Saddam Hussein over to a lynch mob and watching him hang via online video, when we think of the town-square hangings carried out in the middle ages as barbaric. Insanity is constructing a 700-mile long fence between the United States and Mexico when we tore down the Berlin Wall less than 20 years ago. Insanity is letting an administration steal one election, and then four years later letting them repeat the same feat of electioneering.

Not learning from history is a cardinal sin. But I’m 25, so what do I know of history? And I’m not religious, so what do I know of sin? Better, then, to let the most powerful man in the world explain this “don’t repeat your mistakes” mantra: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… You don’t get fooled again.”

By Einstein’s definition, Bush and Cheney are insane, but the mainstream media in this country refrains from launching sustained character attacks on them. Somehow, with everything that is wrong with the leadership in our country, Malachi Ritscher–citizen, dead–is the one who is attacked. Our political office consists of war criminals and our press is full of neutered houseboys.

In his last known writing, Ritscher asked:

What has happened to my country? We have become worse than the imagined enemy – killing civilians and calling it ‘collateral damage’, torturing and trampling human rights inside and outside our own borders, violating our own Constitution whenever it seems convenient, lying and stealing right and left, more concerned with sports on television and ring-tones on cell-phones than the future of the world.

Are these the words of an insane man?

A), no.

B), it’s not even a question worth asking in a public forum. To debate his mental condition at the time of his death is offensive–not only is it belittling to his sacrifice, but to do so is to participate in the same charade of misdirection that our current administration uses too often. To ask whether he was sane or not is to imply that he had a point if were sane and he did not if he were insane. The fact is, Ritscher was reacting to the problems created by those currently in power in this country, and it is them we should be questioning, not him. To call in to question his character is morally repugnant. If the canary in the cage dies from toxic fumes, do you question the canary’s medical history or do you try to do something to improve the air quality?