Conversations are important- they keep a marriage alive, a business running smoothly, and whole countries intact. Unfortunately, conversations with yourself are not very fulfilling. They require a community, and they’re at the heart of what makes Spout a community. In our case, it all stems from our belief that film watching should be an activity [...]
We love them and crave them-they’re the glue that holds people together at Spout. They inspire us to respond in some way, or in other words, to be more human: to laugh, cry, form an opinion, develop a new idea, sit in stunned silence.
When we Tag them, we sort our films into categories that work [...]
We are people-not animal, not a computer algorithm. We can get inside another person’s mind and begin to understand not just the WHAT but the WHY. It seems natural to connect people to films and films to people. At Spout, it’s hard to find a film without finding people and hard to find people without [...]
A guy and a girl are sitting in a bar. They’re discussing general things like work and mutual friends. She makes a film reference, he picks up on it, then the bartender, who has just come over to see if they want another round, says he loves that film too. Then he starts talking about [...]
There can be too much of a good thing. Surrounding yourself with the most savvy mavens and watching only the most avant-garde films and eating only food that’s too unusual to even name gets old after a while. Every once in a while I just want my childhood friend, a James Bond film, and a [...]
The Midwest is a special place. Granted, it doesn’t have real mountains or the ocean or a film metropolis like New York or LA, but we love it. There’s a certain unpretentiousness, a genuineness, and a real drive to make up for all that isn’t here. We believe great things come out of the Midwest.
Life doesn’t fit into neatly labeled packages. Neither do films. “Action, comedy, drama and horror” are sadly insufficient labels. Can you remember the last time you could neatly label a day in your life with one of those terms? Neither can we. That’s why we believe in embracing the messy complexity of life.
Moving forward involves looking back. Even if it’s writing one sentence each morning on a piece of paper you keep on the bedside table or making lists of films you love. As time goes by, you can look back and see where you’ve come from. Seeing where you come from is the clearest way to [...]
Continuing Education is a state of being. The best educational experience is the one that we seek out of our passions. Being intentional (doing a bit of research, asking some questions) helps really suck the juice out of an educational experience. We believe the best education for filmmaking is watching films.
Exercise your freedom to love what you love, but don’t love it because you’ve never tried anything else. Say you eat one soft-boiled egg with a piece of white toast every morning for breakfast. Or maybe you only ever watch films that show up in the theater or at the big rental establishment down the [...]
Lists are indispensable. Lists are how we keep track of things and define who we are. A list of my favorite books, a list of places I’ve lived, a list of friends I have or no longer have. Lists are the bones my life’s story is built on. In lists I can also find out [...]
Old-fashioned community-building is underrated. We each probably have one or two close friends we could happily spend all our time with, but we think bringing together a broader community-many different people with different strengths, opinions, and backgrounds-is where we can find some sizzling vitality. We believe in broad community.
Humans are humans. Computers are computers. In some way, we’re all on a human journey together. Films are helpful tools along the way. A computer can try to guess WHAT film we may want to watch, but only another human can discover WHY we might want to watch it. We believe WHY is most important.
Great films don’t have to be promoted by Hollywood. We now live in a world where one passionate person can pick up a camera and make a film. In the same sort of way, now one passionate advocate can promote a film to the people it was meant to reach. It’s a different world than [...]
It takes a village to watch a film. Maybe we’ve been conditioned by the multiplex to believe the movie experience starts when the movie starts and ends when it ends. Imagine, instead, sitting around a campfire that’s playing The Godfather. Maybe before the film gets going, someone who’s there has some interesting insight on Coppola’s [...]
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We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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