"It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another if he has not distinguished himself by his own performances" -Joseph Addison

I know that I am taking this WAY too personally!
All day long it has bothered me.
I've done nothing all day but to think about how much I wanted to write the person and express how upset and hurt I was by his flippant comments.
I awoke this morning and followed my regular morning routine. Having a bit of extra time, I decided to visit a blog that I recently started frequenting. Upon arrival I noticed an entry in reference to an event that took place this weekend. It was a top ten list of glib observations from the event.
Part of me knows that it was written in jest and intended to be a clever blog entry to entertain his readers. If some of the statements had not directly pertained to me, I might have found it amusing. However, the more I looked at it and the more I thought about it, the more upset I became.
Mostly I'm surprised because last week the writer attended a party and wrote about how upset they were when someone spent the night attempting to trivialize what they do.

This post, arriving 10 hours later and after a full day of pondering, was going to be my response to the post I read.
I was going to start with the fact that I spent the last 10 months working a full time job, taking care of a wife and 2 daughters, struggling through my mother getting sicker and eventually dying and spending about 20-30 hours a week of my own personal time on the project.
It was that important to me.
I was going to say that in order for a writer to get better...they write. It does not matter what they write, just as long as they do so. That is why blogs are so popular amongst inspiring writers.
In the same vein, in order for a filmmaker to get better...they need to make films. Unless you attend film school, the opportunity to make a movie is not an easy one to come by. Techniques needed to complete a film can only be learned by actually doing them in conjunction with a project. The best thing a budding filmmaker can learn from a film is what mistakes he can correct then next time around. Believe me, every little error and Diet Pepsi bottle that was left in a scene during filming has been lamented and cursed at during every viewing of the film since. Only having 48 hours of location availability and at least 5 days of filming actually needed is a prime recipe for continuity errors.
That being said, I am surprised that there were not more errors in the film.
I was going to say that the inference that a filmmaker is knowingly copying a style is a bold one that should be backed up with cited examples. Tarantino did not create crime films and Mel Brooks did not create comedy. Each one took an existing genre and worked to shape it into something personalized.
Now, I'm certainly not looking for praise...I actually would prefer not to receive any for the film. I know it's faults and we've never claimed it to be a masterpiece.
We needed to make a film to get the technique down and we feel we've learned a great deal in the last 10 months.
I was going to say that I think he missed the entire point of the festival. It was not to brag and show off how great these films were but to celebrate the completion of something so that we can move on to the next one.

Now it's the end of the day and I sit down to write this post.
I'm tired and I've thought of nothing all day but how those damn niggling remarks made me feel this morning.
I know he was just trying to be clever and I took it way too personally.
I'm not mad anymore but I am upset...upset with myself for dwelling on the minutiae of it all.