Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > Sam Raimi, Peter Jackson, and that warm feeling you get when geeks like yourself make it big

Am I the only person who gets a genuinely warm feeling when they think about the careers of people like Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi? People who are into a lot of the same shit as me, who started out trying to live their dream with ridiculously low-budget splatter movies and are now the toast of Tinseltown?

I mean, it helps a lot that (imho) their blockbusters are damn good movies too... but reading stuff like Bruce Campbell's (absolutely genius- thanks again Mr Auckland) autobiography, where he goes on about the low-budget hell that was the making of Evil Dead, where a bunch of mates put themselves through all this shit just because they WANTED TO MAKE A FUCKING MOVIE, because it was what they dreamed of while watching all their fave genre flicks, and now a few years later he's breaking all the records?

For me, there was something intensely... not sure of the word here... I guess nice about watching the LotR movies in a crowded cinema full of people LOVING IT and thinking "it's the Bad Taste guy. The only thing that makes him different from me is that he actually went out and did the stuff I always thought it would be cool to go out and do but couldn't be arsed. Well, that and he knows how to make films."

I get the same feeling watching stuff like Jim van Bebber shorts- utterly nihilistic, totally horrible- and then watching the interviws on the DVD and thinking "this guy isn't a psycho. He just absolutely adores horror movies". There's a passion there that truly rocks, and makes the interview an uplifting experience, especially compared to the brutality of the films themselves.

Not entirely sure what point I'm making here, other than to say "isn't it cool when people we perceive (however wrongly) as being like ourselves make it big in movies?"

(Although I'm not as thrilled by Kevin Smith's descent into Hollywood, for some reason).