"I think American cinema, particularly, has become so disposable. It's not even cinema, It's just moviemaking"
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La Salle’s jab lands because it isn’t nostalgia masquerading as critique; it’s an industry insider drawing a bright line between art and product. “Disposable” is the key word: he’s not complaining that movies are bad, he’s saying they’re designed to be forgotten. That frames American studio filmmaking as a consumption loop - opening weekend, meme cycle, streaming drop, replace with the next piece of “content.” The insult isn’t aesthetic so much as economic: a system optimized for churn will inevitably treat attention as the only scarce resource, not meaning.
The pivot - “It’s not even cinema, it’s just moviemaking” - is a deliberately snobbish distinction, but it’s effective because it captures a real cultural downgrade. “Cinema” implies authorship, risk, a camera with a point of view; “moviemaking” sounds like a factory process, technically proficient and emotionally weightless. La Salle isn’t denying craft. He’s accusing the craft of being severed from intention, where IP management, test screenings, and franchise maintenance dictate choices more than curiosity does.
As an actor who came up in an era when mid-budget adult dramas still had oxygen, he’s also mourning a vanished middle lane: films that weren’t tiny indies or billion-dollar tentpoles. The subtext is professional as much as philosophical: when everything is disposable, so are performances, careers, and audiences’ capacity to be changed by what they watch.
The pivot - “It’s not even cinema, it’s just moviemaking” - is a deliberately snobbish distinction, but it’s effective because it captures a real cultural downgrade. “Cinema” implies authorship, risk, a camera with a point of view; “moviemaking” sounds like a factory process, technically proficient and emotionally weightless. La Salle isn’t denying craft. He’s accusing the craft of being severed from intention, where IP management, test screenings, and franchise maintenance dictate choices more than curiosity does.
As an actor who came up in an era when mid-budget adult dramas still had oxygen, he’s also mourning a vanished middle lane: films that weren’t tiny indies or billion-dollar tentpoles. The subtext is professional as much as philosophical: when everything is disposable, so are performances, careers, and audiences’ capacity to be changed by what they watch.
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| Topic | Movie |
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