DIARIES OF A CINEBUM #1: ORIGIN STORY

Written by Luke Mueller

Hi guys, it’s Luke from the Cinebums. I’ve been a co-host of the podcast about canceling your plans, not doing anything, but watching movies with my good friend Jon Nuehring for almost five years now, and my brother Jake for almost two years. In this time we’ve done a number of episodes I’m very proud of. This year, however, has been a little different. Jon and I especially have been busy with a number of things and have just had trouble lining our schedules up, and therefore haven’t been able to do the amount of episodes we have in the past. 

These past couple of years, we’ve been trying to expand the content we put out, but haven’t really known what to make being that we’re in different cities. So recently we realized that it’s just easiest for us to do our own shows on the side of the OG podcast. If you haven’t yet, check out Jon’s new show ‘Turn that Dial’ that he did with his wife Carly. It’s chill, laid-back, and very comforting. Most importantly, it’s different from what our channel usually puts out. 

This show, ‘Diaries of a Cinebums’, is going to be a very personal show to me. I plan to share a lot of my experiences of spending my young adult life as a ‘cinebum’, and also do little breakdown/analysis videos of films and TV shows I know WAY too much about. But today’s episode is an ongoing story: “A Cinebum Begins” if you will, Directed by Christopher Nolan. As you can see, I have a comparable budget to Oppenheimer. 

When I was a kid my movie taste was pretty typical for a dude of my generation. I hadn’t seen a lot of movies at all, but the movies I had seen, I’d watch over and over again. I was born in 1994, so Sam Raimi’s Spiderman’s were the biggest deal to me. Spider-Man 2 was, and still is in some ways, my Citizen Kane. When I was a kid I loved George Lucas’ Prequels… I mean who didn’t… When they were kids. No lie, when Attack of the Clones came out on DVD, I watched it twice in a day. Yeah, I watched “I don’t like sand”- twice. Every time we’d drive up to Michigan for the holidays, I’d be watching Back to the Future in the car. (It’s safe to say that I enjoyed the drive more than visiting family).

I was just into fun, straight-forward movies that tended to be on the action-packed side. I was into Spielberg, specifically the popular ones. I was into any action movie post the 70s. Terminator 2 was and still is the bible for me. I think that movie contains one of the first really sad endings I had to reckon with as a kid. I mean I didn’t have much to go off back then. It’s not like I had seen A Woman Under the Influence yet. I think the saddest movie I saw as a kid was Cheaper by the Dozen, where Steve Martin moves his twelve kids from Midland to Evanston, and that is the main conflict of the movie. I mean c’mon when Mark runs away and Steve Martin finds him on the train all alone and Mark says, “You said we’d be happier,” I challenge you, even as an adult, not to ball your eyes out. 

Then I did what a lot of people do when they start to get more into movies. I went from casual to Film-bro. I saw Goodfellas, the Godfather, Pulp Fiction, Scarface… Any movie about a man, you know? I could not stop watching the Nolan Batman films to save my life. I can recall truly thinking The Dark Knight Rises was a piece of art. I saw Pulp Fiction and thought it was the greatest movie ever made. I saw Shawshank Redemption and said I was going to “get busy living”, of course, I kept busy lying on the couch- that’s the whole point of this. When I saw Fight Club I’m pretty sure I thought about nothing but that movie for the next year.

I was learning about film by using the IMDB 250 list, which is sort of like doing an intensive research project and using Wikipedia. I remember I’d be looking at it and be like, “Wow, Avengers: Age of Ultron is the 5th best movie of all time… It’s better than “The Godfather Part II…” or “Wow, the Force Awakens got a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s like an A- at my school.” I had no clue how to objectively judge films. If I saw something that felt unique I had nothing to compare it to. If a film had something to say I couldn’t tell you what it was. And even when I was first able to string together any sort of theme, it would be something so obvious, like I’d be watching Apocalypse now and think, “You know I think this film’s about the horrors of war….” 

Luke seen here as a true Cinebum.

I watched The Big Lebowski and signed up to be a ‘Dudeist’ priest online. The only two times I’ve ever done psychedelic drugs I was watching 2001: A Space Odyssey. I couldn’t stop watching movies like Django: Unchained or True Romance… Heavy dialogue with excessive violence was my cup of tea at the time. When I first got to film school I would confidently tell classes that I’m most inspired by Quentin Tarantino movies, not realizing what a walking meme that made me. For a while, I measured my day through how many movies I’d watched.

For me, special occasions were rewatching movies I’d already seen, accompanied with lots of weed and alcohol. Literally one of the most fun nights of my entire life was when I drank eight beers and rewatched The Departed. The night I graduated from college I drank a 50 dollar bottle of champagne, then watched Spring Breakers and had a religious experience. When I interned at a major production company in LA I would go home and watch Cassavettes movies, thinking that I was also going to make ”real art that goes against the system.” When I read “Easy Riders/Raging Bulls”I was actually envious of the drug habits of Paul Schrader and Dennis Hopper. When I see my cousin we drink and watch Dazed N’ Confused, literally every time, it’s tradition. And speaking of Linklater- every time I watch the Before Trilogy, I have to watch it in a day. I once called off work because I took a strong edible, watched Stalker, and then began to have a panic attack.

I recall becoming obsessed with 50s Nicholas Ray movies: specifically In a Lonely Place, Bigger than Life, and Rebel without a Cause. I remember wanting to see every Paul Schrader movie- a feat’ both equally rewarding and disturbing. (I think you could put Vincent Gallo in this category as well.) Seeing Network changed my life. Seeing A Face in the Crowd changed it more.

I remember seeing Coppola’s other works: Rumble Fish, One from the Heart, Tetro, and thinking: Why are people not talking about these more?” I remember watching every Abel Ferrara movie, every Harmony Korine movie, every Safdie brothers movie, Larry Clarke movies even. I remember my brother showing me Tampopo. I remember trying to watch every Miyazaki piece on HBO MAX like everybody else. I tried watching Godard and French New Wave, even though we all know how hard some of these are to get through. Although, I couldn’t help but watch Truffaut and see the Scorsese influence.

I’ve spent entire days with Altman, Kurosawa. I remember seeing Vincente Minelli movies and them lifting me up through some of the more lonely, depressing times of my life. I remember when Jon and I got into Sam Fuller, probably one of the most overlooked old Hollywood directors. And I still can’t get over the versatility of Howard Hawks and how his slapstick comedies have influenced literally everything… from Sorkin dialogue to Will Ferrell movies. 

This is what my youth was like. I come from a place of tremendous privilege. My parents paid a LOT for me to study film. For years I had an open schedule, no responsibilities, nothing but free time. If I wanted to wake up, smoke a joint, and watch Ghost Dog or Jackie Brown, I could. If I wanted to watch the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy in a day with my brother Jake, I could. If I didn’t understand a film- no problem, I could watch it again tomorrow. If I heard about something new that I hadn’t seen- no problem, I could watch it that night. I lived the ‘Cinebum life cause’ I could afford it. I mean I was immersed in the flow, I had it all… And now, it’s all over… 

Now, I live in Los Angeles California, specifically in the San Fernando Valley. I spend most of my time working at a restaurant where I make just enough to make the rent. I also have a beautiful girlfriend and partner and a dog that occasionally doesn’t bark too loud. But as far as my ‘cinephelia’ goes: I’m an average nobody. If I start a movie after 10 o’clock I’m sure to fall asleep. Hell, I’m lucky to finish a shitty episode of a TV show. I gotta wait for my weekends to binge content like everybody else. 

Watching movies all the time can become a very unhealthy addiction. I can also say from experience that it can make you a very awkward, disconnected person. The Cinebums tag: “Don’t go anywhere, don’t do anything, just watch movies”- I did that for literal years. And yes, I definitely have had a ton of personal problems going on- I wasn’t purely doing this for my passion for Cinema. I was dealing with anxiety, depression, not knowing how to deal with the adult world. And I was definitely using cinema, not only as an escape from these things, but also as a reason for why I wasn’t dealing with anything. 

It truly was a really sad, really weird, lonely time. I remember a stretch of time where the only people I saw were my barber and my weed dealer. This went on for months. The main thing I noticed when the COVID pandemic started was: “Wow, now everybody else is doing what I’ve been doing for years.” I remember working at a bar and having no idea what to say to anyone because I had spent the last week watching Jarmusch movies and Twin Peaks: The Return. For me, ‘going out’ used to mean that I’d go to a diner with my brother and tell him the latest thing I’d discovered about some PTA movie. Even when I’d go home and visit my parents, we’d usually end up watching some movie from my childhood. I mean it was non-stop… 

There’s a quote that Josh Safdie did for Criterion that I really like. It goes, “Cinephelia is a disease.” I totally agree. He goes on to say, “The best thing is going out there living life.” For this, I only half agree. For being a Cinebum is what I know. I don’t think I’ll ever know anything about living. 

The Cinebums truly spawned because I needed someone to talk about how I had absolutely no life. That guy was Jon Nuehring and I’ll forever be grateful to him for that. I’m also grateful to my brother Jake for recommending practically every film I’ve talked about today. 

Thank you so much for reading and I hope everyone continues to see the value in not having a life the way I have…