Hacker Cinema
About Schmidt
2002 · Film · 125 min
Directed by Alexander Payne
A recently retired man embarks on a journey to his estranged daughter's wedding, only to discover more about himself and life than he ever expected.
1 positive2 neutralfrom 3 commenters
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3 comments on Hacker News
I think it is more that people who were married to their job find themselves suddenly divorced.
Without other activities to give them a reason to get up in the morning it is easy to fall into depression. There was even a movie that explores this situation: About Schmidt.
The 70's were a great time for character driven film.
A more recent character-driven film that reminds me of the 70's was "About Schmidt" with, of course, that veteran of 70's films and filmmaking, Jack Nicholson.
Oh, "Frances Ha" comes to mind as well. You'll probably have to pick through the indie films to find character these days.
Thanks for sharing your experience, and especially the details about your approach. As a writer, I'd like you to maybe consider that the effort you put forward at least was self-improvement exercise in communication - as in, through practice and time, you had some realizations about how you want to present yourself, your product, etc. I genuinely think time spent in your objective isn't a waste, per se, because you've got material that you created which can be used as a reference, template, or reminder in the future.
> None of those emails generated a single article or mention. I probably sent a couple of hundred over the course of a week, and the success rate was literally 0%. What's more, although I worked hard to make each email sound positive, I hated doing it and it made me feel like scumbag.
I occasionally participate in a Reddit forum for music production, and a frustrated member just went through the exact same experience trying to submit to music review / blog / coverage sites: More than 100 emails, targeted, using methods that the community had identified and cited as constructive. 0% response rate.
In the course of telling the group about the experience, sure, several members chimed in saying they'd be willing to take a look...some might even be writers or editors relating to a music blog, but I think the lesson I learned was that "joining a community and sharing with it is much easier than attempting to solicit interest." In a past experience, working at an indie movie theater, the biggest "success stories" were almost always word-of-mouth buzz related (e.g. Big Fat Greek Wedding) versus the films which did a lot of advertising (About Schmidt being the biggest exception).