Q&A With The Tastemakers By Jekk

Q&A With The Tastemakers

By Jekk

J = Jekk M= Matt S= Sludge C = Chip (Charles)

On January 16th, 2022, I had the opportunity to meet with Arrowcord’s most acclaimed minds. They have assembled a group that goes by the name “Tastemakers”. I had been following them pretty religiously and was very excited upon receiving an email from their secretary stating they would be happy to conduct an interview with me. The 4 of us all met in a secluded spot in Buttfuck, Georgia, Sludge’s hometown. I had an array of questions prepared for them regarding their opinions on film, art, and breakfast. This is the result of our meeting:

C: Hello, Jekk!

M: Hello

S: Hi

J: Glad you all could make it today, we’re gonna start with a simple one. Where did the name tastemakers come from?

S: Honestly, I don’t think I remember an origin

C: As far as I remember, I think it was an inside joke that we did to make ourselves seem nerdier/more pretentious for a laugh. False exclusivity really

M: I don’t remember who said it originally but I do remember Chip saying something like “if you we say it again it’s gonna stick” or something to that extent. And we, or probably just me, just kept saying it as a joke and now here we are. Like Charles said, it’s just a false exclusivity that’s funny to all of us.

S: What they said.

M: I can’t remember if this was pre or post Bound takeover of the server. That might be the starting point if anything.

C: I doubled back and it definitely dates back to the criterion server at least.

J: Are any of you working on any film/music related projects or ventures currently?

C: I am not creatively inclined to be pursuing any artistic projects. it would certainly be cool though!

S: My music related projects are noodling on the geetar for maybe 10 minutes and then putting it down for a week....going very well.....

M: I’ve been working on a screenplay for what’s been like a year almost. I started it last year in my screenwriting class and just haven’t had a chance to finish it with work, school, and other personal stuff getting in the way. Sludge and Charles have both actually read the first 30 pages of it. And I’m still content on finishing it, soon hopefully…

S: I don’t think I’ve ventured long enough outside the usual big film countries to really say I’d be confident in championing one I believe to be underrepresented but over the past year I’ve become a larger fan of the very represented italians.....

C: I’m not as familiar with many foreign countries’ film representation as I’d like to be but from what I’ve seen from Verhoeven, I think the Dutch community may have more to offer than is particularly discussed. Cult Epics just did a Nouchka van Brakel set of some of her Dutch works and I’ll be picking that up eventually to peruse more of the country’s works.

M: Brazil for sure. I’ve only seen about two films from the Cinema Novo scene (both from Glauber Rocha) but I believe that’s where a lot of the meeting branch between stuff like French New Wave, surrealism, and American New Hollywood. Definitely recommend Black God, White Devil and Antonio das Mortes. I’m not super confident in the context of a lot of that stuff so I still have to ask Paige about what they’re talking about sometimes

S: Antonio das Mortes was very cool.

M: A lot of those countries where their art is a lot more based on religion or cultural events can be a lot to take in but it can be rewarding once you dive in.

J: Horror as a genre has been one many people believe is simply for entertainment. Just a fun way to kill time for an hour and a half. What are some horror films you believe contradict this belief as true works of art and why?

C: I’d be remiss not to say that “a fun way to kill time for an hour and a half” is exactly why cinema is the best form of art, but to address the question more head on, I’d say you can’t go wrong with the Argento Giallos, Mario Bava’s The Whip and the Body is a painting canvas on screen for its full runtime, and even modern works like Noe’s Climax and Begos’ Bliss are examples of horror as art while respecting the genre enough to not belittle its contemporaries and colleagues.

S: I don’t want to speak for Matt but I have talked with him about a letterboxd list he has for True Elevated Horror (https://boxd.it/ccJNq) that would perhaps lineup with this definition with a few favorites from the list being Onibaba, Possession, and a little known picture called Eraserhead.

M: I’m not exactly the horror expert of the Tastemakers but if I had to name a few, I would say stuff like Threads, Antichrist, Audition, and Martin. I believe all these movies sort of differ or go off the beaten path of what a ‘horror’ film is without getting that

sort of Elevated or Post-horror tag that goes around nowadays. I think the connecting lines for me is that these are something the filmmakers found horrifying, not really the masses. Sure a masked killer with a knife is scary but so is being an outsider (Martin), nuclear devastation (Threads), depression (Antichrist), and being objectified and fetishized by a culture (Audition)

J: Arguably the most important question: Waffles, Pancakes, French Toast. rank them.

C: Waffles, French Toast, Pancakes. Not kickin any of em outta bed.

M: French Toast, Waffles, Pancakes

S: Waffles, French Toast, Pancakes

C: Good to see all the Tastemakers agree that Waffles are better than Pancakes

S: Waffle House represent…

M: I think the issues with pancakes is I’ve never been to a restaurant where they’re consistent

S: I like the cheesecake pancakes from IHOP

M: Waffles are consistent because you just throw the shit in the waffle maker, pancakes a lot of middle men.

J: Really adding more depth to the TASTEmakers name it seems.

M: Food is actually a big topic for us, believe it or not

S: *gives thumbs down*

J: What was the catalyst that got you to delve deeper into film? Typically, I find that there is usually a particular film or filmwatching experience that strikes one so deep that they know they need to look deeper into the medium. Was there a specific film or experience that stuck with you?

M: If I had to pinpoint a specific film watching that threw me into it all, it had to be a night I just watched Oldboy and Eyes Wide Shut on a whim on Netflix for a double feature. Before that I had liked Tarantino and searched up ‘movies like Pulp Fiction’ on Google countless times. But those films were like the first time I was watching something that was different or out there. It wasn’t stuff that just looked cool to me, a 16 year old at a time.

S: Movies have always had an in and out presence in my life with the interest generally growing deeper with most returns to “having a phase” but what really kicked the wagon into it being more of a consistent interest was honestly probably seeing Blade Runner 2049 in theaters, over the previous years I’d gotten into movies more via classic favorites like American Psycho and Drive but BR2049 definitely catapulted me in to keeping up with movies more beyond just looking at movies with actors I liked in them....this is a long winded way to say I only like Sigma Male Cinema.

C: It’s funny because I definitely got deep into my movie watching at a much older age than most people in the server. I was pretty casual with it until I turned 25 and then it took off as I read more and more about international film and American independent works as well. I think the thing that really got the gears turning was seeing Inside Llewyn Davis (at one time my favorite movie) was in the Criterion Collection and then one thing led to another and I began to gain interest in other works with the same distinction. I guess becoming interested in physical video collecting is what really helped spur the obsession.

J: TV is just as important to cinema as films are, what are some television shows you guys would consider to be cinematic masterpieces and why?

C: I’m terrible with watching Television in a meaningful fashion but I’m a huge fan of The Leftovers, Succession, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. I think I’ve liked these more than others for a variety of reasons but mostly because, unlike a lot of modern television, it feels like there’s a method to the use of the serial nature of the medium while also utilizing the extended runtime in a modest fashion.

S: I don’t think I’ve watched a ton of more big drama shows so my main big answers are the big obvious ones like Breaking Bad, Twin Peaks, Evangelion. The first couple seasons of It’s Always Sunny might as well constitute a cinematic masterpiece. Some of the first couple Dexter seasons are quite good. There’s several Twilight Zone masterpiece episodes out there....Space Ghost Coast 2 Coast.

C: I should say that the three shows I listed are ones I’ve completed in full to the most recent episodes. The Wire, Sopranos, and Mad Men are all fantastic in their own right but I’ve yet to finish the series as a whole.

S: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the apex of television. Viva La Bam.

J: My stepmom went to summer camp with Bam Margera.

M: I’m genuinely not a big TV guy, mostly because my attention span is fucked really. But if I had to name some that have impacted me it’s a lot of the earlier Adult Swim

like Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Moral Orel, Xavier Renegade Angel. I think a lot of that stuff really resonates for me because it’s just a bunch of weird dudes working with themselves really. And it’s honest. Other shows I would say are like Nathan for You, Arrested Development, Cowboy Bebop, Barry, and I Think You Should Leave. I need to catch up on more premiere TV shows like Sopranos, The Wire, The Shield, and all that. Oh and Twin Peaks obviously!

C: *rolls eyes*

J: Love me some Space Ghost and Moral Orel!

M: It’s funny how cheap the space ghost coast to coast budget was. Very inspiring with how much they did with like a couple of hundred dollars an episode. Maybe even less!

J: What are your stances on the debate surrounding the prevalence of franchise films and blockbusters in recent years? Do you believe that these films are simply ways for big companies to rank in money or do you believe that there is genuine love and value put into these films that should be recognized and appreciated?

S: I’m sure someone is putting genuine love into the films behind the scenes but it’s hard to feel anything but annoyed at such prevalence even if it feels annoying to overstate because it does take up such a large space in the Pop Culture Movie Space... I can enjoy the new spiderman movie but i can also be very annoyed about it…

C: I don’t think that being a blockbuster or sequel or part of an existing IP franchise automatically negates the possibility of a movie being good, but I do feel like it tends to hamstring a lot of the necessary creativity and passion that is available to put into it. The more a given movie is tied to its need to be profitable, the more it gets a mandatory sanitation from the studio. There are obvious exceptions but when you’re gambling on 10s of millions of dollars, you want the most possible palatability and that can be a hindrance to the movie more than it does good, obviously. Horror movies tend to be more exempt from this though as they aren’t usually as expensive to make and the audience they’re geared for are already accepting the disgusting wacky choices as a positive to the experience.

M: I believe, with some exceptions, that a majority of the major blockbusters that are specifically older IPs are made to keep us locked into nostalgia. The producers running these studios know we’ve been craving childhood fantasies since Star Wars released in 1977, which themselves are repackaged Flash Gordon serials and silver age sci-fi comics. They think people want the same thing they watched when they were 12, and they’re right. The rare times filmmakers have had a genuine love for a franchise to move it first and bring something new, everyone hated it. Obviously Lana Wachowski and Rian Johnson being the most recent examples. We’re stuck in a cycle that most

moviegoers are content with living in because they really don’t know that their options are being limited. It’s sad, really, for consumers and creatives.

J: Are there any specific pieces of media that don’t include films or music (video games, literature, fine art) that you feel have inspired you or you just generally find to be true works of art?

S: Wrestling matches. Nothing is more artful than Omega vs Okada in the Tokyo Dome at Wrestle Kingdom 11.

C: I am god awful at making time to read literature and would love to change that but I’ve always had a fondness for fine art. I was very briefly an art history major in my minor stint of higher education. Impressionism specifically has always been fascinating to me and I feel as though that love has bled into my cinematic enjoyment as well. Pretty colors shown in a cool way. Now that’s what I call art, baby!

M: I’m not a major reader of them anymore, but I believe a lot of comics/graphic novels is the most untapped potential for an artistic medium we have. It’s been pretty much mandated to superheroes and indie splice of life stuff now but there’s so much you can do with still art panels and word. Obvious examples being Watchmen (and most Alan Moore) which is probably my favorite book. How he uses it to mess with non-linear time, there’s like lore in between chapters, and just all this crazy insane storytelling details. It sucks comics are just used as a film adaptation farm now because at its best, film could never do what comics can do (in the same way comics can’t be films of course) but we’ll probably never get to see that I guess for games I’ll name drop the Mass Effect series because I’d say it’s pretty important to me. And I’ll nudge sludge to mention Silent Hill 2 because I just started playing it and loving it so far.

S: *clinks glass of sangria with Matt’s glass of apple juice*

J: What would you say is your favorite decade for film? Why do you feel this way and what are some prime examples of what you feel are the best of the best for your respective decade?

C: I think my favorite decade for movies has to be the 90s. There was this culmination of cultural ambiguity and carefree mentality that allowed for some of the most truly outrageous and magical movies. Columbine and 9/11 kind of ruined that cultural apathy and formed an American identity that became much more puritanical on the surface. So i’ll choose the 90s, several of my very favorite movies come from that decade and I think it was one of the last times when sex in movies was being grappled with at an honest level.

M: Mine would by far be the 1970s. Just so many great filmmakers working at the time and coming up together. The Movie Brats and New Hollywood with Scorsese, Altman, Coppola, De Palma, Friedkin? Just so much going on with those guys, the studios had just gotten some younger producers and studio heads and tried to tap into the youth through film schools and they got all these radicals that were convinced they were going to change the system and make it a director’s Hollywood. I mean, they ultimately failed but it was an admirable failure that was inevitable. But we got stuff like Taxi Driver, Chinatown, Apocalypse Now, Halloween, Dog Day Afternoon, Paper Moon, Mikey and Nicky, The Deer Hunter (and I can just keep going on and on)

C: Shit did look so much cooler back in the day.

S: Very tough question, even though I still have so much to dive into for this decade it’s hard to resist saying the 70s, kicking into the height of New Hollywood, there’s plenty of crazy epics you don’t see anymore like The Deer Hunter, the goat independent film Taxi Driver, two of the many credited to birthing the slasher genre while already peaking the genre... Halloween, Black Christmas, the prime era for giallos. Maybe it’s pretentious to say but just in general in a lot of films for the time things look and feel just a bit more raw and rugged and it’s nice to look at. Even just for how cities looked in the 70s and what not makes shit look cooler. I wish I could be more sophisticated on this....

J: I have to agree that the 70’s is also my favorite decade.

S: Yeah fuck you, Chip.

M: I can go on and on about this decade. I’m sure I’ve annoyed these guys enough with talking about New Hollywood and all these guys all the time.

C: Shut up, Matt.

It was then that a full scale brawl between the three Tastemakers ensued. I put in no effort to stop them simply because I thought it was funny but eventually the police were called and our meeting place was tear gassed. All three of them were arrested but only Sludge served a jail sentence because he had broken probation for an unrelated incident three years prior in which he spit in a child’s face for being, “kinda ugly”, according to his testimony. He got out six months later on good behavior and we reconvened at our original meeting spot to close out the Q&A with individual questions for each of them.

J: Chip, it’s no secret you’re a fan of eroticism in films, what role do you believe eroticism has taken in terms of the growth of the medium over the last 100 years or so?

C: I think eroticism and its many possible depictions (including the ones that aren’t necessarily sexual in an appealing or socially acceptable fashion) are fascinating to me because it attempts to tap in to the basic human instinct of curiosity. Movies couldn’t or wouldn’t always show nudity but it didn’t stop directors from utilizing the femme fatale in the film noir era, or the seductresses of the 60s and 70s even when nudity was allowed more leniently. Obviously the pushback has lessened and movies got more sexualized but still tend to embrace these foundations. People very much like to see hot people doing hot things with as few clothes on as possible and in a way I think it’s endearingly honest to see this happen. People do bad things in real life and we show it in movies, people swear in real life and we show it in movies, and people fuck in real life and there’s no reason not to be forthright and truthful in movies about that too. I will say as I mentioned briefly above that american cinema has taken a step back in making sexiness something that sells big movies. Fatal Attraction was the number one movie in the world in 1987, and adjusted for inflation it grossed approximately $750 million worldwide. That simply can’t happen today in an america that has gone so anti-sex and clutches its pearls for anything erotic in mainstream media.

J: Love that passion! Matt, you’ve expressed that you’re a bit of a writer yourself and have shared some of your work with the server on occasion, can you share a bit of your writing process? This may include what you need to do to help you write, a system you use to develop characters, or some writers or works from writers that have inspired you?

M: There’s not a lot to my personal writing process, I think to me the most important thing has to be finding a character that is an extension of myself. Obviously I’m not just writing every character as a 1:1 but I think it’s important to be able to identify with what I’m writing. I’ll start with detailed biographies that could also include what kind of music or books they would like. Just to make them feel real. Outside of that I’ll try to make playlists to get into the feel, a majority of these are instrumentals or music that fits the mood of whatever I’m writing. Tone, texture, and atmosphere are big for me. I guess writing influences jump around. I like Cormac McCarthy’s brutal but simple storytelling. Kurt Vonnegut and William Burroughs have such strong writing voices that I think I find it hard not to try and emulate. And obviously film-wise, Paul Schrader is the ultimate inspiration for character studies where the protagonist feels like a real person you’re just watching and following around.

J: I love your statement about your characters being in some way extensions of yourself because I feel that some of the best stories and literature come from subconscious urges from the author which can speak deeply about the human condition and this is shown most strongly through characters and their interactions with one another. Authors having characters be extensions of themselves shows the true feelings of the person behind the medium and how they feel about humanity.

M: 100%. This is why I don’t really like using the term “character studies” as a micro genre because to me the best art is a character study of the protagonist. You could say something like as big and broad as Star Wars is a character study of a farm kid joining a rebellion under the fist of fascism but also something small like Catcher in the Rye where you’re following a high schooler around for a few days as he complains about girls, parents, and school.

J: I truly believe all stories can be character studies but one of the author rather than the characters in the story.

M: Exactly.

J: Sludge, you’re a big fan of Silent Hill, the 2nd one in particular, what personal connection do you have with either the franchise as a whole or just Silent Hill 2, and what impact do the characters and symbolism of these games have on you to make them such a staple in your life?

S: As being a fan of horror stuff all my life, particularly picking up on Resident Evil while mostly observing other names like Silent Hill and Fatal Frame more in passing since uh besides the awful HD collection the main games worth playing weren’t easy to come by and a bit more intimidating since they did seem a bit scarier, I’d sprinkled emulating the first game a couple times over the years but it wasn’t until around 2015 I finally got a copy of Silent Hill 2, played through, and exceeded any thoughts I had prior making for definitely one of the most memorable “gaming experiences” in my life. It excels in nearly everything I love about a horror game, genuinely creepy monster design, the terrifying sound design, dark varied soundtrack, and the rarity of a well done emotionally mature intense story in a game with tragic characters that don’t feel manipulative or just made to have an edgy backstory but are there to flesh out the heart of the game with James. The melancholic mood of Silent Hill is addictive to sit in whether it is walking around the in-game city or just listening to Akira Yamaoka’s soundtrack... Resident Evil is goofy fun but Silent Hill gives a deep seated feeling that just leaves me wanting to go back to that special place...

J: love your thoughts on the series and I’m glad they were able to bring you the experience that they did. I’m looking forward to my eventual playthrough!

These were all the questions I had for the one and only Tastemakers. After our interview, we shook hands and went our separate ways, except for Sludge, who was chained to the table we were sitting at while being monitored by a prison guard due to his criminal record. I was honored to meet and talk to this mysterious group of geniuses about what they truly believed the art of film had to give the world. Until we meet again, Tastemakers!