My mom was a screenwriter. I saw a lot of people who didn't seem very fulfilled creatively or otherwise by their roles in the motion picture industry.
Matthew SpecktorPeople will continue to make movies. But I do think the economic model of the studio movie is closing in on a kind of systemic collapse.
Matthew SpecktorEverybody says, TV is great, the writer has so much power. I'm still trying to convince myself that's true. When do the writers ever have power? Ever? They don't. Even in the book industry.
Matthew SpecktorThe 90s were the decade in which studio filmmaking became a much more purely corporatized process, when their crassness ceased to operate on such a relatively individual scale.
Matthew SpecktorI think it's what fiction is for: to illuminate that gap between our secret selves and our more visible and apparent ones.
Matthew SpecktorYou look at the absolute scorn that gets poured on a fallen celebrity, whether it's Tom Cruise or Lindsay Lohan or Marlon Brando, or Elvis when he got fat. They're not allowed the dignity of ordinary failure. And I think that plays into people's notions about Los Angeles, too. It's not allowed to be a regular city with problems.
Matthew Specktor