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"If ever there were a video I've made that required a companion essay or some kind of artist statement to go along with it I suppose it would be this one. It's a strange project that I've been working on for the better part of six months now, a process of trying to disentangle myself from myself. It's about a lot of different things, it's about James Rolfe but also not about him because we have so many versions of him and we can only react to those imperfect projections. He's been doing this for basically 20 years at this point, and out of that arise a million different ways to tell the story: AVGN is deeply influential, but what does that influence mean? I found myself fascinated with his creative fixations, the motifs and stories that he keeps coming back to, and felt like the only way to engage with that honestly was to expose all my own fixations, insecurities, and fears."
Just to note, this is made by the same guy who made that truly excellent Line Goes Up video about crypto/blockchain/NFT bullshit. As such, I went into the above video in good faith, not really knowing what exactly to expect. This is only the second video from the "Folding Ideas" channel that I have ever seen. (The only other video from this channel that I was, at least, aware of but haven't watched yet is "The Nostalgia Critic and The Wall", which was released long after I had kicked all my Channel Awesome bookmarks to the curb and had pretty much lost any interest in anything at all related to Doug Walker or Channel Awesome. I... might actually go back and watch that one, too, at some point... [EDIT] ...and I did. [/EDIT])
"I find myself, at times, uncertain about what it is that I'm actually watching."
That line was said by Mr. Olson at around the 45 minute mark, during the bit where he was discussing himself watching every AVGN episode, presumably as "research" for the above video. And... I find that that line there perfectly describes how I feel about the above video itself. Why was this made? What was the point of it? What was its purpose? Why am I still watching this? I watched the whole thing, trying to get answers to those questions, and I don't think I accomplished that goal.The gist of the video, as far as I can tell: James Rolfe is a terrible filmmaker (and writer [and musician?]), apparently. He is, in fact, so abysmally bad that Dan Olson became obsessed with just how bad he is and... felt compelled to make the above video in an attempt to purge some demons and divest himself of this weird obsession with James Rolfe, I guess. I think? Maybe? There's also a fair bit of self-deprecating "I'm kind of like that too" bits in the video, so maybe it's actually about that, really? I have no idea, to be honest.
The video is a strange, often (weirdly dispassionately) mean-spirited tear down of James Rolfe.[1] It goes on at length about how much of a shock it is that his movie[2] even exists at all, because of how bad it was and how unsuited Rolfe was to make it. It also goes on for a while about how Rolfe's self-published autobiography (which I have not read myself) was apparently very poorly written and unintentionally self-destructive. And his opinion of the AVGN series as a whole is that it actually has not gotten worse over the years (as the below-mentioned trolls claim)... simply because it was never good to begin with.
But it tries to be sort of even-handed at times, too? For example, it mentions the whole "CinemassacreTruth" dumbshit, but then dismisses all of that as just Reddit/4chan trolls being Reddit/4chan trolls (which, in fact, they are), but then it says, wait a minute!, hold on!, there might be some merit to their complaints, actually, but then concludes, nah, they're just Reddit/4chan trolls, and their complaints are petty and don't matter at all, but maybe!..., nah, but still!..., nah. (EDIT) And man oh man did Olson rile those dumb motherfuckers up over there in their little circlejerk subreddit, ha ha. (/EDIT)
The video also mentions the "Screenwave era," and the guys involved with that, in passing, but doesn't go into any great detail, mostly just describing them collectively as black holes of charisma who generally harmed the reputation of Cinemassacre and Rolfe on the whole (a stance with which I don't necessarily disagree), despite Screenwave's goal being to help him, and even though they probably did get him a fair bit more income than he otherwise would have now, just through sheer quantity if not quality.
What this 1:16:55 long video does not do is mention the (former?) relationships that Rolfe had with his (former?) friends, such as Kyle Justin (though Justin, at least, is mentioned in the video a few times) or Brendon "Bad Luck Bootsy" Castner (who isn't mentioned at all) or even how Mike Matei (which Olson consistently mispronounces as "Ma-tie" instead of "Ma-tay") himself mostly cut ties with Rolfe/Cinemassacre at one point to go off and try to do his own thing (though he has since started showing up in AVGN videos again). Perhaps that was beyond the scope of the video, or outside of the goal of the video to disparage Rolfe (even though going into the subject of the cut ties between Rolfe and most of his former collaborators might have fit right in with that goal), for whatever reasons.
And the main thing that Dan Olson apparently never once did during the six months he made this hour-plus long tear down of James Rolfe was... ...make any attempt to actually communicate with James Rolfe (or anyone else related to or associated with James Rolfe) in any way whatsoever. Go figure. (Or if he did try to do so, he never mentioned it in the above video.)
As for me, I'm still a fan of James Rolfe (not just AVGN, but Rolfe himself), even after watching this. I've never once loaded up one of James Rolfe's videos (or bought and watched his movie, which I don't regret having done) expecting to see 5-star cinematic masterpieces, but that doesn't mean I didn't still find them entertaining. As such, while I don't regret having watched the above video, and while I don't even disagree with its assertion that James Rolfe maybe isn't the greatest filmmaker to have ever lived, I still find myself disagreeing with the... "spirit" (or lack thereof) of the thing.
(One other thing that I greatly disliked about the above video was Mr. Olson's repeated usage of the words "cringe" and "bespoke,"[3] which set my teeth on edge every time he said them.)
So, in conclusion, yeah... ...I found myself, at times, uncertain about what it was that I was actually watching.
[1] - I say "weirdly dispassionately," because even when Mr. Olson is directly aping and mocking Rolfe's "angry" mannerisms as the AVGN during different parts of this video, it still feels... strangely spiritless, as if he's just going through the motions or whatever. (But then Rolfe's own critics/trolls would make [and have made] the same claim of Rolfe, too, so... *shrug*) Aside from that, everything else Olson says is in that same, general, bland, mostly inoffensive "documentary voice."
[2] - Which I have seen and thought was... okay, I guess? I haven't watched it since the one time shortly after it was first released. It wasn't the greatest thing since sliced bread or anything like that. And it was indeed definitely something of a departure from Mr. Rolfe's typical oeuvre, at least as far as AVGN itself goes, though maybe not so much when compared against the rest of his non-AVGN films he's put out over the years.
[3] - Kind of surprised that I haven't made a "linguistics pet peeve" post about "bespoke" yet. Let's just say that I'm seeing it being used, inappropriately, more and more often these days, and it sucks diarrhea. Maybe this footnote can de facto serve that purpose, I suppose.
