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Dan Carlson
Los Angeles, California

I'm a twentysomething white male with ambitions to be a professional film critic and generally spend my days getting paid to watch movies and write about it. I try not to think too hard about how I want to build my life around talking about other people's creations and not mine. A compulsive reader and stubborn cineaste, I take an often contrary stance to my more fundamentalist peers and upbringing by celebrating the pursuit of the good, and the Good, in life, love, art and film. If you watched enough episodes of a few TV shows ("The Hungry and the Hunted," "The Cut Man Cometh," "The Body," "The Zeppo," "Waiting in the Wings," "Out of Gas," "April is the Cruelest Month," "20 Hours in America," "Colonial Day," "An Echolls Family Christmas," and "Look Who's Stalking," for starters), you would understand me completely, and you'd also realize that much of my worldview and philosophical insights are heavily influenced by fictional works/programs, and many of the good things I've said in my life are just a regurgitation of someone else's imaginings. I guess I was made to be a film critic.

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« Like The Man Said: It's Judd Apatow's World, And We're A Better Place For It |Main| Review: Drillbit Taylor »

March 20, 2008

I Think "What Would Riggins Do?" Is An Acceptable Social Philosophy, Or At Any Rate, It's Going To Guarantee You Have An Adventure Or Two

By Dan Carlson

My second and final trip to this year's Paleyfest was for the "Friday Night Lights" panel. The rush for the stage was stronger than it was after the Apatow panel, and there were even more collectors there, hordes of people with DVDs and Sharpies who had this weird habit of calling the stars by their first names to get their attention. Still, it was a fun night. And damn if Connie Britton isn't something else, you know?

Also: Seeing Tyra Collette play volleyball on the screen in the Cinerama Dome is an experience I can only describe as transcendental.

Anyway, click here for the full write-up.

Comments: 4

ryan English

At first I thought that was Riggs, like from Lethal Weapon

Mar 20, 2008 11:01 AM

Chris Dowdy

Have you googled your devoted commentor "Elitism Fighter" yet? I think this person is experiencing some kind of persistent synaptic catastrophe. Or he's a cutting-edge performance artist for the age of new media. The devotion to irony that would require is just mind-boggling.

Mar 21, 2008 6:27 PM

Beckylooo

So. Jealous.

Mar 22, 2008 4:36 PM

Dan

Ryan: Modeling your life after Riggs would seem to require more suicide attempts and living in a trailer on the beach, neither of which sounds appealing.

Chris: I'm torn. At first I thought it was just really high-concept, but then I began to wonder if it wasn't just some wildly unhinged person. Also, if I ever form a band, I will write a song called "Persistent Synaptic Catastrophe." And it will be awesome.

Beckylooo: Word. Too bad Riggins wasn't there, but still.

Mar 22, 2008 8:10 PM

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Remembering speechlessly we seek the great forgotten language, the lost lane-end into heaven, a stone, a leaf, an unfound door. Where? When?

O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again.
— Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
— John Stuart Mill

We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful instant we remember that we forget.
— G.K. Chesterton

We were, for the briefest of moments, something greater than the sum of our uncertain parts; we were youth itself, in all its painful glory and sharp joy.
— Me, Fall 2003

There is a time in the lives of most writers when they are vulnerable, when the vivid dreams and ambitions of childhood seem to pale in the harsh sunlight of what we call the real world. In short, there's a time when things can go either way.
— Stephen King

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— Ask the Dust, John Fante