Hey everyone I thought I'd share a little bit about where I come from as far as film criticism goes. I first started writing reviews when I was in high school (Carmel, IN '98-'02) for the school paper. I started off just kind of writing reviews and then became the entertainment editor in charge of the reviews. (I had a wonderful co-editor who handled the entertainment features.) I even won a high school journalism award for one of my reviews (of my favorite film, "Requiem for a Dream.") It was an Indiana High School Press Harvey Award, first place for opinion/review writing.
When I went to college at Ball State University in Muncie, IN (from '02- '06) I majored in English (creative writing emphasis) and Political Science and started as an op/ed columnist for the Ball State Daily News. After a few semesters I managed to snag the film critic spot as well. My senior year a friend forwarded me an e-mail that one of the execs at WTHR, the Indy NBC TV affiliate, had sent out to communications departments at Indiana colleges. The station was seeking college film critics for its web site for which it was starting to develop original content. I was the first of a group of four or five college-age critics to write reviews for the site. (If you look at the WTHR page with the movie reviews many of the ones near the bottom are by other Indiana college students.)
Eventually -- not quite sure why or how -- I became the station's sole critic, and started writing a review each week. (This was a little over a year ago.) A few months ago I also received a film blog for me to post miscellaneous movie thoughts. In addition to film reviews I've written two story series for the website, one on blogging and another on the book trend of the "new atheists" and the clash between fundamentalists and atheists.
It is a GREAT writing gig. The pay is nice (not enough to live on but a nice supplement,) my editor is very friendly and supportive, I can review whatever I want, I have no word limit, and no deadline. With my blog I can write about anything movie-related that interests me.
I view my film criticism as one third of my writing life. The other two legs are my fiction and nonfiction projects. Right now fiction-wise I've been working on the first novel of what I'd like to be a series. It's an epic fantasy novel for the young adult age group. I'm not generally a fantasy fanatic really but I had the idea and I've been running with it for about a year and a half now. For my nonfiction writing I'm in the planning and research phase right now on a book. The research can be found on my book blog and it would basically be based off of something I began with my senior political science thesis. I'm something of a political junky so if anyone enjoys that subject as well then it's another thing I'm always enthusiastic to discuss.
As far as what you might want to know about me personally... I'm engaged and will be getting married sometime in the next year and a half. My fiancee, April, sometimes makes appearances in my reviews and accompanies me to all the movies I review. I pay the bills by working full time as a collector for Sallie Mae. She works there too when she's not in school. (She has a year left at Ball State, then we're moving for grad school.) It's an interesting job that I enjoy more than I would've expected. Eventually I'd like to be able to write full time.
So what about you guys? What are your stories?
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In a nutshell, I've been a freelance journalist for about 25 years. Started out writing pieces for local publications like the daily paper and alt-weekly. Couldn't make enough money to feed the kids doing that, so jumped into nationals and wrote for Family Circle, Woman's Day, Ladies' Home Journal, Fitness, USA Weekend, AARP, a bunch of others.
Got tired of the editorial committee grind (query - follow up - get assignment - write story - submit story - wait 3 months - beg for payment), so decided to write about what I love - movies, TV and celebrities.
I have several core gigs I write for regularly - FilmGecko.com (which is part of the b5 blogging network), AOL's TVSquad.com, and my family movie column, which is syndicated to about 300 print and online pubs around the country.
I still do some celeb profiles for a few inflights and other mags, but honestly, celebs (or rather their publicists) can be problematic, especially the A-Listers. I mostly interview lesser-known actors, directors and filmmakers for Film Gecko. They're usually overjoyed to get some PR for their project, and I'm happy to have the interviews on Gecko.
Today I interviewed Chin Han, who has a role in The Dark Knight. Will post that by tomorrow.
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