Psycho. #42
I don't understand the question and I won't respond to it.
Dear Caspar, thank you for your excellent advice for we mere cinema viewers. This week I would like your guidance for your fellow critics. Are there festivals they should avoid for their political perspectives? Are there films they shouldn't review for their corporate stance? At what point does hospitality and access tip into bribery? Is it acceptable to flaunt their promotional parcels of swag? Please, maestro, give us a peek behind the velvet curtain, and the debates and dilemmas it entails.
Allow me to congratulate you, as Animus and I have been running this column for quite some time now, but yours is somehow, still, the first wholly sarcastic question I’ve received so far. At least, I think! Well done. When we first started out on this venture I obviously thought that the anonymity afforded to questioners would see me overrun with submissions like, “Why, in your opinion, is your opinion worth anything?” or “Are you the prick who said Elton John wasn’t gay enough in the Guardian that one time” or “Hey Casp — have you ever considered eating five bags of horse shit?”
Your question is rather more restrained than that, but the phrases “we mere cinema viewers” and “please, maestro” — it cannot escape my ultra-discerning eye! — seem to carry more than a little cheek, if I may say so. I think it’s distinctly possible that I may be being lightly chided!
