Dear Reader:
I am writing to commend Adam Langer in shamelessly abetting the transparent agenda of Reader editors to exalt yet another of a spate of self-marginalized middle managers to the level of artists ["Celluloid Antihero," August 9].
Langer wisely eschews any critique (but perhaps he has never seen one) of Jim Sikora's films in favor of a listing of mundane biographical cliches paralleling a People magazine puff piece. Not to claim that these details are inaccurate, just meaningless.
Yet this angle is perhaps only a ruse to cloak Sikora's yawning lack of anything remotely resembling talent; less a Cassavetes, less a Welles, less even a Wayne, more likely a model on which Baudrillard based his Simulations, or, better, a poster child for organizations warning against teen illiteracy.
If, in the classification of rebellious behavior, pissing while on the phone to low-level functionaries, hanging up without saying good-bye, and answering even when "it's a bad time, man," constitutes a high-ranking grade among social outlaws, then Sikora should be placed only slightly above Tori Spelling.
Obviously, lack of talent is no obstacle in the pseudounderground world of rebel filmmakers the Reader so daringly uncovers, therefore fulfilling its role as messenger of the strikingly banal and powerfully mediocre.
Kudos, morons!
Chris Washburn
N. Winchester
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