Everyone is talking about a recent run of creator-made horror movies that just crushed at the box office. Naturally, every person with a Substack or Beehiiv is now beating the subject to death with such abandon that we might call it, rather than blogging, a flogging.
But there’s one angle worth exploring still — these three creators were not trained through the legacy system. None of them went to film school. And that tells you a lot about what’s happening now. Because film schools and their relevance are a perfect metaphor for the larger conversation: legacy and creator systems colliding, converging, changing each other, becoming inseparable. It’s what makes it interesting to anyone paying attention — whether you’re rooted in the old system or building the new one.
Last August as I was looking at the implications of all this and couldn’t ignore the questions about the relevance of film school. I teach a class at Columbia University and also studied there and love and cherish it. And I’…
