Q&A with BKR: On Classic Films and the Channel!

[Music] hi i'm izzy welcome to be kind rewind i am the person behind the channel uh and we're gonna do a q a as you know this is typically a video essay channel and it will continue to be a video essay channel in the future but i took a few weeks off after i published my last video and i didn't really want to leave you guys hanging without content for an entire month so i thought i would film a video to sort of introduce myself and to talk a little bit about what this channel is about i asked you guys to send in questions and we got a ton of responses and i'm super excited to answer them for you before i get started i just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you to everyone who has subscribed to this channel i never expected anyone to watch these videos i thought they would just disappear into the ether of the internet so i'm just very pleasantly surprised that i've found this community here um so i just wanted to say thank you again to all of my subscribers and especially to my patrons who are so generous and so kind um thank you so let's just hop right in favorite books on the golden age of hollywood and or your favorite actresses this is the best film book that i've ever read it's called from reference to rape by molly haskell this will change how you view cinema ron haver's book on a star is born painfully details everything that happened leading up to and during the filming of the 1954 version it's pretty brutal but it's an incredible read and you will definitely have some sympathy for judy garland afterward and for everyone who worked with her myrna loy's book being and becoming is really really good um she's a pretty good writer actually i think she wrote it with somebody else but still it's very good and she spends a lot of time complaining about republicans which i love sam watson's biography of bob fosse that came out really recently is really good it's probably really good to pair with fosse verdin on fx if you watch that i didn't watch it he's an excellent writer so really anything that you pick up by him is going to be really good if you had to do a video about a historic win in one of their male categories is there one that immediately comes to mind no if you could see the secret vote totals for one oscar year which year would it be that's a really good question i would definitely do um the whatever happened to baby jane year i want to know if betty davis says that she thought it was close i want to know if it was close i feel like it wasn't close what made you decide to start your channel in the first place i've been a fan of movies and classic movies for as long as i can remember but i really only thought of it as a hobby for a really long time and i thought it was just kind of impractical to focus on it as a career path so i guess long story short i found out that my major that i had chosen international relations was not for me i was living in berlin at the time and i went to their um movie museum i suddenly realized that there was this physical space where people were working dedicated to talking about classic films like it was a physical space it wasn't just me alone with my laptop it wasn't me googling pictures or watching interviews on youtube like there were people there dedicated to maintaining the history of cinema and i was like that's a job i can have that job why did i ever think that this could just be a hobby so i basically started the channel as a way to kind of legitimize my passion for cinema i didn't have anything on my resume that would say like oh she really cares about this and so i just kind of started it as a way to have something to talk about in interviews to demonstrate what my skill set was having worked in digital media and digital strategy and to just you know get to dive into all these stories essentially it took off from there and i never expected it to be as big as it was or i mean it's like still small i'm i'm not like egotistical about this but like um more than 10 views is surprising to me fun fact the berlin film museum has all of marlena dietrich's old stuff like they have all of her costumes and props and things like that we love her here i think that's when i decided like oh i'm gonna make this about actresses because actresses were always the way that i entered film history so in the early days of youtube there were literally no content ids like people would just upload full movies and just leave them up there so you could just google or youtube i guess betty davis full movie and you'd have like her entire filmography just sitting there so that's how i would learn about film is i would just sit there like watch that whole list discover someone new watch her whole list and you know kind of learn that way if i wanted to get into jane fonda's cinema where would i start well several ways you could do this so her filmography is kind of split up into like three or four different pieces there's like sex symbol jane who is in kind of dumb rom-coms and then there's edgy activist jane so you've got klute that's a good place to start and then you've got low-key activist gene so that's nine to five or the china syndrome and then you've got almost retirement jane where she like said she was going to retire but then she didn't and then she comes back and is just like playing a lot of rich stodgy women those are fun too i think uh georgia rule was probably the first movie of hers that i ever saw in a theater because i was like 14 or something and it's just really funny to me that that was my exposure to jane fonda the places we've gone since then what a gift just a she's a gift love her thoughts on bollywood i need to learn more about it i really don't know very much about bollywood at all so if you have any recommendations let me know do you work alone and if so would you be interested in having a team i do work alone right now i have a full-time job and then i also do this channel on the side so basically i'll do the whole nine to five thing and then come home and put in many more hours to work on these videos which is usually why they take so long to make there's a lot of research but there's also just like regular life that i have to live also thank you guys for being patient with that because i know some channels do once a week twice a week every day which is crazy i don't know how they do that but uh thank you for being patient with the cadence that i'm making things um i know that's probably a little frustrating but that's how i basically am going to keep sane you spend a day languishing in paris with one director and one writer at the end of the day they cast you in a star-making role who were they and what did you three come up with time and money don't matter i like that we're in paris just great love that for us so it's me robert altman and joan tewksberry in a cafe in paris and they immediately realized that i would be very bad at acting and they don't cast me but they invite me to some parties favorite underrated youtube channels doesn't have to be about film so i probably watch a lot of stuff that you already watch but there are some underrated people who i think deserve a lot more attention um up from the depths does godzilla video essays which matt baume does lgbtq history video essays um he talks about like special episodes and sitcoms where like they'll have a gay friend come in for one episode and it's usually about like the golden girls or other 80s and 90s sitcoms that are really funny cold crash pictures is very good he does a bunch of different types of essays and he just started a series about dinosaurs which is um which i'm really looking forward to molina pendulum princess weeks she's amazing and she um really touches the nerd part of my soul that just needs to be like encouraged every once in a while you know oh there's this new youtuber brie larson i don't know if you've heard of her she's like up and coming but i don't know she's new are there any non-best actress oscar races that you've analyzed slash that live rent free in your head like certain years for best actor or best picture etc so this might actually be surprising to many of you but i don't actually think about the oscars as much as people probably think that i do when i started my channel my main goal was to tell the story of women in hollywood history the way that i decided to do that was basically to anchor their stories in a specific moment in time so that it would just be easier to kind of create the narrative of a journey rather than just more broadly telling you random facts about their life so the oscars would allow me to not only contextualize a specific performance but also talk about how it was received uh what the climate of the country was like at that time and also other performances that you could kind of compare and just kind of get a sense of what filmmaking was like at any given time i don't really think about it in the horse race aspect i'm not the kind of person who is eagerly filling out a ballot every year to see if i can correctly guess the most winners and things like that that's just not really what makes me excited about this kind of stuff so they don't really occupy a ton of space in my head but i still think they're interesting and obviously i spend a lot of time researching all about them which classic hollywood actor do you think is genuinely bad and you don't understand how they became famous here's how i'll put this i think there are some actors that i just haven't had enough exposure to let's say that i'll give you an example when i first saw an irene done movie i was like not for me this isn't great um and then i watched what was it the perfect wife which was amazing and i realized i just hadn't seen her in her element you know what i mean so i think there are some classic movie stars that i just haven't seen doing their thing in the right environment so i'm not gonna say that they're bad it's just that i don't get it yet it hasn't clicked norma shear is one for me louise reiner i'll never get it i don't know elizabeth scott i i just haven't seen enough i don't know i don't want to say any of these people are bad i'm just saying i'm not there yet i'm not there yet i'm progressing will you eventually do all of the best actress winners probably not i think there are some that i've kind of addressed in videos that i just don't really feel the need to tackle again i did a whole video about meryl streep and honestly i don't think that i want to spend a lot of time researching the iron lady or even sophie's choice just because that feels very obvious and that doesn't seem very interesting to me to research but who knows i might get there who are some modern day actors who would have excelled in the screwball comedies of the 30s and 40s julia louis dreyfus favorite outdated old hollywood fashion trend hats and shoulder pads we should bring those back what's a movie that you love deeply that you've never mentioned in a video so many so many most of my favorite movies were did not do very well at the oscars but i will link a list of some of my favorite movies in the description ever since i started watching your videos i've become interested in watching classic films but i don't know where to start so what i would recommend is trying out a bunch of different genres see what you like some are going to hit with you some aren't maybe try out a screwball comedy a friend of mine recently watched the awful truth and doesn't care about classic cinema at all and had a great time um if you want to try film noir double indemnity is always amazing to watch and then if you're thinking of melodrama maybe the letter i would say roman holiday for sure all about eve uh i think the thin man is also a good one in your opinion what is the most stacked year for best actress like easily could have been a complete tie i think a lot of people would say 1950 i get a lot of requests to do that here um which has made me less inclined to do it because i'm terrified i don't want to get it wrong so i promise like i know i need to do it i'm working on it just gathering the courage how do you go about conducting your research for your work i try not to go in with any preconceived notions about what i'm gonna find i try to research and see if there are any books on the topic that's always my first go-to i still have access to jstor via my school um there are a lot of great archives online that you can find yeah i just try to read as much as i can and start to see what threads are running throughout a bunch of different sources and kind of pick up from there have you seen barbara loden's wanda and if so what are your thoughts on it it's great uh i talked about it a little bit in my mrs america video you've done videos regarding the issues that african-american and asian-american actors and actresses have faced and continue facing in hollywood have you thought about doing a video about hispanic actors and actresses and their own struggles and successes in the entertainment industry absolutely yes i definitely definitely definitely want to do that when i make videos like that i do spend a lot of time researching them and making sure that as a white person i am being respectful and uh not like white splaining anything i try to space them out a little bit so that i have the correct amount of time to research and really do those topics justice but do know that that is definitely on the agenda and it's very important to me to address do you have any pets yes i have a cat named tomlin as in lily this is him what is your preferred method to watch movies i prefer a theater full stop if i'm at home i probably will distract myself with my phone or with food or my cat i don't want to feel like i'm ignoring a filmmaker that just seems rude just being focused on movies no noise this might be a cliche question but who are your top five favorite actresses if you have any i cannot pick that here are some ones that i like what's your view on supporting roles winning for leading roles um i don't care i know a lot of people get very passionate about category fraud but yeah thoughts on ryan murphy's shows what are your thoughts on netflix's hollywood i got through about an episode and a half i don't love revisionist stories just because i think it puts a lot of responsibility on the audience to kind of parse through what's true and what's not and as someone who spends a lot of time making sure people know what's true and what's not uh that can be kind of frustrating here's a nice thing about ryan murphy ryan murphy does a really good job casting actresses who need to work more often we need more jessica lange more judy davis obviously sarah paulson's everywhere but still sarah paulson could you do a video on marilyn monroe i think it'd be interesting i have a really good idea which i'm probably gonna do so hold on to that thought what inspired your interest in older slash classic films was it a family member or school or something else tcm was on in our house a lot so i think i just kind of got access to classic films pretty early on i also was pretty close to my grandma and talked to her a lot about what her childhood was like so i became really interested in life in the 30s and 40s and i think that just kind of bled into me wanting to learn more about classic cinema somehow everything just kind of melted together did you say you don't like jean-luc gadard i did i feel kind of bad about it but it's not for me actually i don't feel bad about it do you plan to make some videos on the best supporting actress category sure there are at least two that i would really like to talk about so i definitely see that coming in the future but i don't know if i would do them in a complete way that i've tackled the best actress category one thing that i think about a lot with my channel is that the oscars are kind of a barrier to entry for new subscribers not that i'm like trying to be like an enormous youtuber or something but i think that a lot of people who would be interested in the hollywood history aspect that i bring to my videos maybe are turned off because they don't pay attention to the oscars and that's the first thing you see that's my thumbnail on so many of my videos i don't want people to think of my channel as a place to go just to learn about the oscars i don't think that's what it is already even now my videos are oscar video not oscar video oscar video not oscar video and i want to continue to do that to mix it up a little bit so i have an entire notebook of ideas of things that i want to talk about and i think are really interesting so i'm hoping that you guys are open to going on that journey with me too and not just sticking to oscar topics all the time but i think the supporting actress category has a lot to offer and i would be excited to tackle it for sure what was the film that got you into classic film or film in general apparently i would watch the beauty and the beast a lot i don't know if that counts i don't know if i was like sentient enough to know what i was doing maybe whatever happened to baby jane i used to rent that a lot at the library which is maybe weird because i was a child i don't know what that says about me and i don't frankly want to know do you want to write direct or otherwise make films yourself one day i would like to direct a documentary i think um i'm not sure that narrative forms are really in my wheelhouse who knows if anyone wants to give me boatloads of money to make a documentary please feel free how do you decide which best actress races to make videos about and are there any that you would like to do but can't because there isn't enough information available initially when i started the channel i picked them randomly whatever i felt like doing or if i was just feeling like talking about a certain actress at any given time i would just pick her now my lovely patrons help me pick how that goes is i offer three topics and they vote on the one that they would most like to see the way i pick the three topics is usually also still very random the things that i usually consider are things that i'm just thinking about at the time maybe something that's happening in current events or just a time period that is a little distanced from the last video that i made okay i think that i'm gonna leave it there thank you so much for watching this video for subscribing to my channel for generally being so nice to me in the comments i really appreciate that i'm able to talk about things i'm passionate about on youtube i just never thought any of this stuff that i've just kept in my brain for so long would be of interest to anyone so again i cannot emphasize how surprised i am and happy that this community has developed i have some really cool things planned for the rest of the year something that i think you'll find really exciting in december so if you're not already be sure to subscribe and you can i guess hit the little bell notification to make sure that you are alerted when my next video comes out i think it's going to be really exciting and judging by the questions you guys were sending in i think it's a little twist on my usual topic that you might find very interesting so like i said notifications subscribe and i'll see you in a few weeks thank you [Music] you

Channel: Be Kind Rewind

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Rating: 4.9757628 out of 5

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Id: VgryC22O3xw

Length: 21min 22sec (1282 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 02 2020