Writing About Film (Interview w/ Elijah Davidson)

Eli Price (00:03.35)
Hello and welcome to the establishing shot a podcast where we do deep dives into filmmakers and their filmographies I am your host Eli Price and We are not deep diving into director this week We are in the middle of our Spielberg series but this week we are bringing back on our guest from last week Elijah Davidson and We are gonna be talking about

writing about film. Elijah is a co -director of Brim Film as we kind of talked about last week at Fuller Theological Seminary and one of the main things Elijah does is doing some writing and editing and whatnot for both film criticism and also books about film.

Um, from, from writers and has written some books about film himself. Um, and I remember too, from our inception episode, um, you shared a little bit about how you just are a writer and if you weren't writing about film, you'd be writing. So you just, I felt like if I'm going to talk to Elijah about anything, it has to be about writing. And so, uh, but yeah, Elijah, how are you doing? Are you excited to talk about writing with me today?

Elijah (01:31.918)
Oh, absolutely. My favorite thing in the world is writing. Next. Yeah. So, yeah. I do love it.

Eli Price (01:32.022)
Yeah. Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about why you love writing maybe and then your background of what drew you into writing about film specifically.

Elijah (01:52.142)
Hmm. Yeah, I was trying to think. I don't think there's I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing and it wasn't always writing, you know, essays or much less film reviews or anything like that or books, whatever. But I was I've always I've just always been writing and I took so much to the so that I didn't realize I was doing it until I got a little older.

Um, and then I was like, Oh, I've kind of always been doing this. Oh, that's interesting. Um, and, uh, I remember when I was, uh, I had this little thing I did in like second or third grade or something like that. I don't know. I asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up, whatever. Um, I asked you what you want to be when you grew up. And, uh, I, I said, I want to be an ambulance driver. Uh, it's like a little, like a piece of like line notebook paper. I drew an ambulance and like,

Eli Price (02:21.814)
Yeah.

Eli Price (02:50.454)
Yeah.

Elijah (02:51.054)
said I wanted to be an ambulance driver. And then at the bottom of it, I wrote a little poem about being an ambulance driver. And I think it's so funny now because like even when I'm talking about doing something else, like I wrote a poem about it, you know, it's like a little kid and just stuff like that where I look back and I'm just like, I've always, I've just always been doing that. And I think I, when I was in,

Eli Price (03:06.038)
Yeah.

Elijah (03:20.302)
When I was in high school, I started writing, initially it was like song lyrics. I would write songs and song lyrics and always carried around, my dad's a football coach and he would do all his football prep play writing stuff like play creation, stuff like that on these yellow legal pads. So I decided stealing those out of his bedside table.

Eli Price (03:29.398)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (03:43.99)
Yeah, yeah.

Elijah (03:47.342)
And I would write on those and I would carry these yellow legal pads around with me everywhere I was except for my backpack. And I'd pull them out and I would write these like song lyrics, often with no music, just they were like structured like song lyrics all the time. And that was like when I was high school, I realized I was doing that because I that's what I like doing. Like that was like the thing that I did, you know. And then.

Eli Price (04:01.014)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (04:11.094)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (04:14.702)
I did that forever, like all through college. And then I would write other stuff too. I would write like little like private essays and prose pieces. And I all through college, I remember, and this wasn't like a premeditated thing. I just, I decided I was not, I would look up what the classes that were available that I needed to take. And then I would make sure I took the classes that had no written assignments.

Eli Price (04:39.894)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (04:43.982)
I took all the multiple choice test classes because I didn't want to have to do any writing for class because I wanted to do all my writing not for class. So I didn't want to get tired of writing. Yeah, I wanted to keep it separate. And so I, and like, again, this wasn't like I sat down and was like, I'm a writer, so I must do this. You know, it was just like, made sense to me to do that. And...

Eli Price (04:56.342)
That's, yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

Eli Price (05:07.734)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (05:13.454)
Yeah, I was always writing and I started blogging back right out of college when blogging was like first a thing. And I really enjoyed doing that. And of course, that was more like prose and not poetry -ish kind of things or whatever. And then from there, you get into seminary, you have to write, you can't get around it there. But in seminary, what I did is I...

Eli Price (05:24.054)
Yeah.

Eli Price (05:31.67)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (05:38.518)
Yeah.

Elijah (05:41.582)
took the classes that only had written assignments and did not have tests. And I did that because I came to Fuller to go to seminary because they had an arts program. And they told me that I could probably get permission from my professors to do like creative writing assignments or write about movies and stuff as ways to complete my assignments, even in stuff like biblical studies classes, stuff like that, like you can find ways to like bend it around.

Eli Price (05:44.246)
Mmm.

Eli Price (05:54.902)
Yeah.

Elijah (06:11.63)
And so I was like, oh, here's a way I can do the creative writing thing that I want to do while doing my seminary degree. So I'm taking the classes that only ever in assignments so I can like work it that way. I didn't want to study for a test. That would be stupid. I wanted to write. So yeah, exactly. I want to be writing. I don't want to be studying for a test. So anyway, so it's just kind of always been that way. I've just always been writing. And I even, even.

Eli Price (06:17.878)
Yeah.

Eli Price (06:21.878)
Yeah, waste of time, right?

Eli Price (06:34.326)
Yeah.

Elijah (06:39.022)
Like it was so, it's always been so part of me that I was even like in my like late twenties before I was like, you know, the only real sense of calling that I have is just to keep writing. Like I, you know, I went to, went to seminary and thought I might work in ministry some way or something like that. Maybe when I first went and quickly figured out that that wasn't going to be what I was going to do. Um, figured out that I didn't really have any like strong fits of calling.

to be a pastor or anything like a lot of my colleagues, my fellow students did or anything like that. I was like, the only thing I feel is just to keep writing. That's the strongest sense of calling that I have. And so I've just kind of always pursued that. The film writing thing came about, I've always loved movies too, like my whole life and was raised, my parents showing us movies all the time and important movies and movies they loved and all that. And we...

Eli Price (07:09.942)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (07:21.334)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:27.51)
Yeah.

Eli Price (07:33.142)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (07:36.91)
watch them and talk about them. That was just also always part of my life. And it was when I was blogging, when I started blogging that I started also writing about movies. Well, that's not true. I would write little songs about movies. I forgot about that. During the time in high school when I was writing song lyrics, I would make up songs about movies, like inspired by movies. That's really goofy. I remember writing a song about Fargo, the cornbreaders movie Fargo.

Eli Price (07:47.286)
Mm.

Eli Price (07:54.294)
Yeah.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (08:04.31)
Yeah.

Elijah (08:04.43)
Um, and it wasn't like a movie about like how great Fargo is. It was just like taking like images and motifs and little phrases from films and like working them into song lyrics kind of thing. I mean like process it. Um, I forgot about that, but when I was, when I was blogging though, I would start writing about movies at length and, um, people were reading my blog at in seminary and the guy who ran the student paper.

Eli Price (08:15.51)
Yeah, sure.

Eli Price (08:23.19)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (08:32.238)
was like, hey, you like writing about movies. You want to write about movies for a student paper? And I was like, sure. Yeah, why not? In fact, I already have written about the movies you want me to write about. So here, just take this and use that. And then the theology and film, the Brim film is called Real Spirituality. The people who ran that read the student paper and saw this and then asked me if I wanted to come work for Brim film just like part -time, like 10 hours a week.

And one of the things they were doing was rebuilding their website. And they asked me if I wanted to kind of for that to be my responsibility and to help run that, to redesign that and rebuild that and run that. I was like, sure. And as I started doing that, I thought, you know, if we're going to do this, like we need to be publishing film reviews. Like that's what you do if you have a movie website, you know? And so I just started writing them and started kind of recruiting other people to write them too.

Um, and, uh, that was when I started editing more, um, was when I recruited other people to write for us. Um, and I had always told people that like all writing is editing. Like that's awful. Even my own stuff. I thought I'm doing all the time, right? It's just kind of editing as I go. And so like editing somebody else's work.

Eli Price (09:39.382)
Sure, yeah.

Eli Price (09:48.278)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (09:55.822)
just felt like the same kind of thing, except I didn't put those words on the page initially, but it's the same, almost the same thing. And so I really enjoyed doing that. And when the opportunity came to like start the book series, I was like, absolutely, I love this editing thing and writing thing. So once I figured out that that was the strongest sense of calling that I had, that I'd always been doing it.

Eli Price (09:59.382)
Sure.

Elijah (10:23.534)
And that was when I was like, okay, this is what I'm going to be doing. And I need to organize my life to make that possible. We can talk more about that too. But that was what it became like the central part of who I am and what I do, even though it's not my full -time job. And I don't really, I don't have Mickey money on it or anything, but it is my vocational work, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (10:35.286)
Yeah.

Eli Price (10:47.894)
Yeah, right. Yeah. And so you're still kind of doing a lot of that for Brim film. Yeah.

Elijah (10:55.566)
I do. Yeah. Yeah. I still, um, so write movie reviews regularly, um, for Bryn Film. We post them on our website called Deep Focus. It's like a column on the Fuller Studio is the content site for Fuller and have a column there called Deep Focus where their film reviews go. Um, and I don't, I, I don't write film reviews as often, um, as I used to. I still write them pretty often, but just not, I used to write one like every week, one or two every week, but.

Eli Price (11:01.43)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (11:24.782)
Now I kind of wait until a movie like really hits me and I thought I really have something that I want to write about a little more picky about what I spend my time doing that just comes from having kids and Need to like prioritize my time a little differently. So I still write regularly. It's just not as I don't review everything like I used to Yeah

Eli Price (11:34.294)
Sure. Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (11:45.398)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Um, well, let's talk, let's, let's maybe dig into a little bit of like the, the writing process. Um, when, what does your process look like for, like when you sit down and you want to write about, um, and maybe it's just a process in general when you write about anything, or maybe there's a specific process you go through when you're about to write for a film, but what, how do you,

Like, um, but I guess like, what is your process? Are you like, do you take notes in the film? Do you take notes after the film? Do you like, and then how do you like compile those and end up with like a review or a devotion about a movie or a book, you know, ultimately.

Elijah (12:37.486)
Different processes for different things. Let's just talk about writing about movies only. I guess that's probably a little bit easier and probably more interesting to your listeners. But let's talk about film reviews, I guess to start with. I don't take notes when I'm watching movies. I always have a notebook with me, but I almost never take a note. And if I do, it's like some little detail or line that I think I want to remember. But.

Eli Price (12:39.478)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (12:44.342)
Yeah.

Sure, sure.

Eli Price (12:53.398)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (13:06.766)
I don't say I'm not one of those note takers that's taking tons of notes during a movie ever. And that's partially because I just kind of want to be in the movie as much as possible and not be distracted by trying to take a note. So other people are able to do that. I'm just not like it. I sit there and start taking my notes and I lose track of the movie. So try to be more involved in it that way. And.

Eli Price (13:16.598)
Mm -hmm. Yep.

Eli Price (13:26.614)
Yeah.

Elijah (13:35.694)
What I do, what I have learned to do though, is when I'm watching a movie, I like...

I look for something that catches me, a moment or a theme or a scene or something that catches my attention. And often it's like a, ends up being a question, like something will catch my attention, like, well, why did they do that? Or like, you know, or like, or how did, well, that was very, I really felt something there. How did, why did I feel something there? You know, like it becomes kind of like a,

Eli Price (13:45.878)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (13:54.774)
Yeah.

Eli Price (14:09.814)
Yeah.

Elijah (14:13.166)
almost like a fulcrum point. And it can be at any point in the movie, you know, it can be any time. It's often not the end of the movie. It's usually somewhere in the middle or somewhere where I'm like, or if I know something that's like out of out of place, you know, something that seems weird that they're doing, I'm like, well, why are they doing that all the time? Like, why is this edited together this way? Or why that color? You know, just like things like that. And I'll when I pick up on something like that, I

Eli Price (14:15.702)
Hmm.

Eli Price (14:22.87)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (14:27.286)
Sure.

Elijah (14:40.942)
tend to focus on it and then start asking that question, like trying to figure out what purpose that thing serves in the narrative in the film. And that usually ends up being kind of a way in to what's going on in the movie, like what it's what it's, you know, quote, about. And I don't mean about like what it's what its meaning is. I mean, like. In the way that we say, like. How how something is about something like about town, you know, or like.

Eli Price (14:47.126)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (15:08.694)
Yeah.

Elijah (15:10.766)
how it gets about doing something. Like that's kind of the way I mean it. Like I want to get into like, how is it doing that thing? And what's it up to? Yeah, yeah. What's it trying to stir up in me, in the audience? Like, what's it wrestling with? What is it obsessed with? You know, like what's going on here? What's driving this thing? What's weird about it? You know, usually something's weird. It's like, well, like we talked about Temple of Doom.

Eli Price (15:12.598)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (15:17.686)
Yeah, what is it up to sort of? Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (15:29.782)
Yeah.

Elijah (15:38.702)
You know, like, why is Temple of Doom so mean? Like, you know, and like, like, and like, how are all the ways it's mean? And like, why does it feel mean? Like, it's the same filmmakers and the same actors and the same everything as the movies that don't feel mean. So why does this one feel so mean? Like all that kind of stuff. And then, like, then like, I pursue that question. So I'll sit down when I start, I'll think about it, watch the movie. I'll kind of ruminate on that. Whatever that thing was.

Eli Price (15:38.774)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (15:53.91)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (16:07.118)
that I latched onto until I feel like I find some kind of insight, some kind of, oh, I think that's what's going on. And it's usually not like I know that's what's going on. It's more like, I think that's what's going on. I'm not going to know until I start writing about it, though, if that really holds out. And so then I'll sit down to write a review and I'll kind of, usually helps if I can, if I have a lead in my head, like a first line to start with.

Eli Price (16:13.494)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (16:20.63)
Right.

Eli Price (16:26.294)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (16:34.806)
Yeah.

Elijah (16:36.526)
If I don't have that, it's a little bit harder. But if I have a lead, that's great. And then I'll start with that lead, and then I'll just kind of pursue that thing through the writing. And I'll start with what I observed, and I'll write about that. And that usually leads me to my thoughts about what it means or what its purpose is. And that kind of leads me to talk a little bit more about how that's connected to other parts of the narrative. And I can write about those things. And then that.

that tends to lead to kind of, so you can see I'm kind of like building, I'm kind of building an argument, you know, or building a scaffold really, or a structure, I'm building a structure, is what I'm building, of observation and a little bit of supposition about what the purpose is. And then once I have that in place and I can look at that and feel like, well, this makes sense, like, I think I do see something here.

Eli Price (17:10.518)
Right.

Eli Price (17:15.638)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (17:27.798)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (17:36.27)
I think this does hold together. I think it has enough that I can hang something on it. Then I can go into the, what does this mean for us? Like, what does this mean for me, for the audience, for the world? Like, how does this connect to anything else in life, you know, beyond the movie? And then I get to write about those things. And so that's one of the things I love about writing about movies is that movies are about everything. And so when you write about movies, you get to write about everything. So much fun, you know?

Eli Price (17:51.862)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (18:05.59)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (18:05.934)
And, you know, that'll send me down like little research rabbit trails that I can follow to learn something new. And then I bring the little bits of that back in that makes sense. And I start working on that, that last third part of the, part of the review or the piece that I'm writing where it's like, oh, well, this is, this is what, if this is what the movie is about, and we're going to accept that I've built this structure that this is what it's, what it's on, what it's on about, then.

Eli Price (18:30.294)
Yeah.

Elijah (18:34.958)
I'm going to respond to it now. And I want to respond out of my own faith, out of things that I've learned, out of, you know, all that kind of stuff. That's, I think, what theological film criticism or a kind of a spiritual devotional response is. It's you take the movie first, say, here's what it is. Here's what it cares about. Here's the question is asking. Here's what it believes and says. And then you respond hospitably, generously.

Eli Price (18:36.662)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (18:44.342)
Yeah.

Elijah (19:05.07)
to it out of who you are. Hopefully if it's written well, it makes space for both those things. It makes space for the reader ultimately to be able to accept or reject any part of it, to bring their own selves to it. If you do it, I think also if I do it well, even if the reader doesn't necessarily want to respond to the way I did, I've still given them enough about what the movie's doing that that's true and it becomes like a window or a way into the movie for them and they can respond their own way.

Eli Price (19:16.534)
Yeah.

Eli Price (19:30.806)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (19:35.318)
Right. Yeah.

Elijah (19:35.374)
what's going on. And then I did that well. And then I close it. And I close it.

That's probably the most fun part is finding the end of the thing. And I usually write to the point I write until it's done. That sounds dumb. I write until I've said everything that I need to say that I think I need to say. And then when I can feel like, oh, I could keep going, but I don't have to, that's where I stop. That's the best way to describe it. Yeah, because I don't want to...

Eli Price (19:48.758)
Yeah.

Eli Price (20:07.03)
Mm.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Elijah (20:12.942)
I don't want to close everything off for the reader. Like my ultimate goal is to push them back to the movie or to push them to the world or to scripture or to whatever else I'm working with. I want to push them to that. And so I kind of want to leave them like hanging a little bit, not hanging exactly, but I don't, I don't want to close it up too neatly. Um, I also ultimately don't want to be the final authority for anyone who's reading what I've written either. Um, I don't want.

Eli Price (20:16.246)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (20:30.582)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Elijah (20:42.702)
I kind of keep myself out of it as much as possible. I think you can hear from what I've said, like I'm an essential component in this, because it's my, all this kind of stuff, but I try to keep myself out of it as much as I can. I bring myself into it when I kind of figure like, oh, the reason I've latched onto this is because of something personal in my life. Like this happened to me. Or, yeah, or like, oh, this is because I'm going through this right now.

Eli Price (20:51.446)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (20:55.702)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (21:05.11)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (21:11.438)
That's why I'm seeing this. Like when I recognize that and when I'm writing, I'm like, I gotta be honest about that. And so I'll bring myself into it at that point. But most of the time I don't have to do that. And I can kind of keep myself out of it as much as possible. And then we're done and hopefully the person will go back to the movie itself. So that's the basics of how I've cut about a review. The devotional thing is a little bit different than that.

Eli Price (21:12.854)
Yeah.

Eli Price (21:17.046)
Yeah.

Eli Price (21:30.358)
Yeah.

Eli Price (21:40.438)
Yeah.

Elijah (21:41.166)
The devotions like I've written for like my Icons of Cinema series or for the Come and See book, those are really built around a very strong structure that I, a very strong structure and a very, very deliberate, like a very deliberate use of like, like sentence length.

Eli Price (21:46.262)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (22:10.958)
and a certain kind of language that I both use and other kind that I avoid. It's very exact because those need to be very short, very direct. I'm allergic to kind of flowery spiritual language that kind of, I think a lot of that flowery spiritual language like kind of,

Eli Price (22:11.766)
Sure.

Eli Price (22:21.75)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (22:33.846)
Yeah.

Elijah (22:41.294)
separates us from the world. It makes like the spiritual a separate realm from the physical and makes our spiritual lives a separate realm from our day -to -day real world lives. And I don't like that. And so in my, those devotional writings, I try to be very, very descriptive, very direct, very exact, very succinct because I...

Eli Price (22:44.022)
Yeah, yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (23:04.182)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (23:08.91)
and I avoid all that kind of flowery language stuff because I just want to get reconnect people to the craft of the filmmaking, the hands -on craft of the filmmaking and to the lived experience of how we love.

Eli Price (23:10.326)
Yeah.

Eli Price (23:20.822)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (23:29.518)
our neighbors, filmmakers, the world, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah.

Eli Price (23:32.758)
Yeah, and I think because of that, like, I think it's a book that is written from, like, very much obviously from a theological perspective, like their devotions with prayers, it's, you know, it's theological film criticism in a devotion form, of course, but also, like, because of that grounded way that you've obviously, like, been very, like,

Elijah (23:47.63)
Yeah.

Eli Price (24:02.614)
I guess, like compelled to write in, uh, in that grounded way. Um, I would feel very comfortable like sending this to a non, you know, religious friend and being like, Hey, you know, you're, you'll get a lot out of this. Like, yeah, there's prayers and they're directed at God, but like, you know, if you, you know, if that's not for you, you want to take the word God out of it. Like it's still going to be relevant. Like it's still going to mean something. Um, yeah.

Elijah (24:16.942)
Yeah, it's nice to hear.

Yeah.

Elijah (24:28.928)
Yeah, that's good. That's good to hear. Yeah, I, those come and see thing, like so much about that that had to be like obsessively structured because there's 250 pieces in there. And that book could have been a thousand pages long if I wasn't careful. You know, I didn't want that. And that was tough because I...

Eli Price (24:40.502)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (24:44.566)
Yeah.

Elijah (24:55.95)
I also didn't so I only have like 400 words. I literally had 400 words per film. Plus a little bit on the prayers, which those are like less than 100 words almost always. And that was the way to keep the book linked to a manageable thing. It also forced me in a great in a really good way. Limitations are everything. To to I made the the the top part.

Eli Price (25:16.982)
Yes.

Elijah (25:25.39)
the description devotion piece, adding the prayer to the end allowed me to be not so Jesus -y in the description of the film. It could be more about the history, more about the aesthetics, more about the importance of the film and how the art form has developed in that top piece, and then respond in the prayer out of my own faith to what I had learned about why the film is important and how it was made.

Eli Price (25:32.214)
Yeah, yeah, sure.

Elijah (25:54.35)
So the prayers end up being like model prayers. So I don't actually expect anyone to pray them, you know, the kind of prayer that one could pray that I would pray. And if someone doesn't have that in my faith, they don't have to pray that prayer, you know, but it becomes kind of like an example for that whether they might respond to their own whatever to that kind of thing. So, yeah.

Eli Price (25:57.622)
Yeah.

Sure.

Right.

Eli Price (26:14.934)
Yeah. And, you know, like thinking about what I do with the podcasts, like I usually like to end the whole discussion with some sort of like final thought, kind of a food for thought thing. Um, just because like, I think it's important to like, not just like spit out a bunch of like information and have fun discussion and then like, just be like, okay, that was fun. Like, I think it's.

Elijah (26:26.734)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (26:37.742)
Yeah.

Eli Price (26:42.55)
I just feel compelled to like, okay, I'll like, let's respond to this. What we've talked about together, like, and they're usually like only like, I'll spend like one or two minutes on, on that. It's a very small part, but like, it's just something that like, I feel compelled to do. Like, let's, let's do, let's give this some sort of meaning, you know, let's not just like talk about it and then walk away. Let's, let's.

Elijah (26:51.342)
Yeah.

Elijah (26:55.566)
Yeah.

Elijah (27:05.966)
Yeah, yeah. Because it does, they do have meaning, right? And it does matter. And like, if all we do is collect information, like, who cares, you know, like, there's, you can collect information anywhere. But like, that, that just that little bit of response, like where you kind of make it your own. And I think it honors, I think it honors the filmmakers, you know, like, they did it.

Eli Price (27:11.638)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (27:16.95)
Mm -hmm. Right.

Eli Price (27:22.23)
Yep.

Eli Price (27:33.526)
Sure, yeah.

Elijah (27:34.862)
They didn't make the movie. Well, some filmmakers probably do make the movie just for you to like watch it and walk away and forget it. You know, but most of them don't do that. Like most filmmakers are they're dealing with something, you know, and they want you to think about the world in a different way. And it honors them. That was everything with putting the prayer piece and come and see putting the prayers at the end on the icon. Send them the little books like put them at the end. Is it like it ensured that I didn't have to Jesus took the movie, you know?

Eli Price (27:42.518)
Sure.

Eli Price (27:47.286)
Yeah. Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (28:03.318)
Yes, yeah.

Elijah (28:03.822)
I can just let it say what it wants to say without needing to read Christianity. I read my faith into the film, which I don't want to ice to eat anything. So, yeah.

Eli Price (28:12.086)
Yeah.

Eli Price (28:17.174)
Yeah, well, that's a, I think that's a good segue into another question that that is probably will probably be interesting in in relation to like your your theological criticism, but also just your your your normal film, like film reviews, which is how do you balance like the subjective elements and the objective elements of the film and your response to it when you write?

Is there Do you do you just like write and see where it leads you and then edit Edit down from there or do you like is there a way that you think about those different elements?

Elijah (28:59.822)
Well, tell me a little bit about what you mean by objective elements and subjective elements.

Eli Price (29:03.702)
Well, I guess like, so the subjective elements would be mostly like how you're responding. So like, obviously like there's sometimes you're responding the way the filmmaker wants you to, but it's still subjective. Sometimes you respond in a way that like, just it's a natural thing with art. Like sometimes you get something out of a film and respond in a way that like the filmmaker had no intention of. Um, but either way it's even whether they're successful and

Elijah (29:27.47)
Yeah.

Eli Price (29:32.598)
getting the response that they want out of you that they were aiming for, or it's a response that they didn't aim for, it's still subjective for you. So that's what I'm thinking of subjective. What I guess objective would be more like the tech, like the filmmaking techniques, the, you know, the object, the history that you focus on and come and see, like how do you balance those, um, those elements?

Elijah (29:42.318)
Okay.

Elijah (29:55.182)
Yeah.

That makes sense. Yeah, I...

Well, starting with the subjective, that part of it, I've gotten to a place where I find the question, if I like it or not, to be completely inconsequential. Or inconsequential as to the value of the film and to whether or not it's worth my time or anybody else's time. I just...

Eli Price (30:17.814)
Sure.

Eli Price (30:26.07)
Right. Yeah.

Elijah (30:32.974)
I just don't care anymore about that in his own self, you know, like, or even, and when it comes to things like my response to the film, I use that as an arrow pointing me towards something. And so I look for like, oh, am I bored? Wait, why am I bored? You know, or am I really excited? Why am I really excited? Like we talked about Inception.

Eli Price (30:49.302)
Sure.

Elijah (31:02.222)
you know, before, and that was a, there was a moment, that was a key moment for me, was watching Inception in the theater for the first time. And I remember being literally on the edge of my seat, almost standing up, and I thought to myself, this is the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life. And then, like, so that's an emotional response, right? That's a subjective emotional response to what I'm watching. And I remember having that thought, and then I remember,

Eli Price (31:14.07)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (31:23.83)
Yeah.

Elijah (31:29.646)
And I literally was on the edge of my seat, almost standing up. I had that thought. And then I sat back in my seat, like sat down hard in my theater chair. And I thought, what did I just think? Why did I think that? Because this is not the greatest movie I've ever seen in my entire life, you know? But in that moment, it was. And I was just like, why did I think that? Why did I feel that in that moment? And I mean, you may think that that's like a bit of like remove.

Eli Price (31:46.742)
haha

Yeah.

Yeah.

Elijah (31:59.438)
from the experience of watching the film, you know, and it is, I guess, in that moment, but you gotta think like it happens like quick, right? It's like you have the one thought, then you have the other thought, then you're back in the movie and whatever. But like, but I carry that moment with me and, and I start thinking like, well, I did feel that in that moment. Why did I feel that? Like what's going on here? And that kind of leads me to that, that objective thing, you know, it's like, oh, well, I feel that now because.

Eli Price (31:59.574)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (32:30.35)
No one has static.

one, two, three, four different timelines on top of each other. And it's edited together so that all of these moments are crescendoing at the exact same moment. And...

Eli Price (32:48.662)
Yeah.

Elijah (32:53.422)
And not only is it like that action scene thing where this is happening and this is happening and this is happening at the same time, it's also, they're all happening in the same people in the same moment. And it's slower. There are physical, like physics things happening at each level because of the way this is stacked up. And it's like, this is not just like a fun...

Eli Price (33:02.742)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (33:13.814)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (33:23.566)
science fiction element, this is what movies do, right? Like movies, and this is an example, like movies play with time. That's what they do. Movies play with time and he is explicitly playing with time here. And he's like rubbing your face in it, you know, that he's playing with time in this way. And it's not just that he's playing with time, he's playing with time and it's emotional resonance that's running from the bottom all the way to the top.

Eli Price (33:26.39)
Yeah.

Eli Price (33:35.286)
Right.

Eli Price (33:41.91)
Yeah.

Elijah (33:53.262)
of this stack of moments. And that's what a movie is. So I took a subjective moment, and then I figured out, oh, it's a matter of editing, it's a matter of narrative, it's a matter of special effects, and it's a matter of acting that's pulling all these things together all at one time. And you start describing that, and then you understand, oh, that's how this works. And that leads you to things like,

Eli Price (33:59.862)
Yeah.

Eli Price (34:09.43)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Eli Price (34:20.502)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (34:23.214)
This is how movies work. Like this will be going to movies for it's to believe that it's possible for time, which is this relentless taskmaster that drives us forward the way we, we, we had that we experienced time, this Kronos time, the way the agents talked about it Kronos, right? This, this time that drives us forward, what we're looking for, what we're desperate for is Kairos time. It's that.

Eli Price (34:26.934)
Right.

Eli Price (34:42.934)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (34:53.262)
It's that time out of time where things could have eternal time. It's that thing you feel when you are caught up in something bigger than yourself, like all these people are. And so this is the thing. So it takes me from a moment of subjective to an objective understanding of the craft of how these things put together. And then from there, I want to draw out, well, what does this mean? And I'm not drawing it out from...

Eli Price (34:55.446)
Yeah.

Eli Price (35:04.79)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (35:17.366)
Right.

Eli Price (35:21.398)
Yeah.

Elijah (35:23.054)
from, I think this is the greatest movie ever made, what I'm drawing it out of is this is the objective thing of how this works. And I can see that because I was aware of how I felt in that moment. So that's kind of how I, it's not really a kind of balance, it's just like a path you take. And I can do that with lots of moments in movies, so yeah.

Eli Price (35:26.038)
Right.

Eli Price (35:30.07)
Mm -hmm.

Right. Oh, that's great. Yeah.

Yeah.

Eli Price (35:42.806)
Yeah. Yeah. No, that's really good. And I think like you're, you're giving me more. Um, so I, I've done like a couple of times, a little seminar on, uh, I call it movies as mirrors. And, um, I'll talk about how movies I talk about it in the sense that they're mirrors, both for yourself and their mirrors that like reflect your.

culture or society, they can show you things about yourself and also about your society or the culture or their perspective that they come out of. Um, and so like when I talk about, okay, when you're watching a movie, how do you see, how do you learn things about yourself? And one of the things I talk about is, you know, taking note, like you were saying about when you watch movies, taking note of the times where you have strong emotional reactions. Um, and, and like,

Elijah (36:10.67)
Yeah.

Eli Price (36:37.878)
putting that in the, on a shelf in your mind so that after the movie, you can kind of examine like, why did I have such a strong emotional reaction, whether like sad or mad or happy or whatever in that moment. Um, and it, it, it's because like movies are, um, movies like easily break past like the walls we typically have built up because we, we kind of bring them down when we're entering like a world that's not quote unquote real.

Elijah (36:44.974)
Yeah.

Elijah (36:48.91)
Yeah.

Elijah (37:00.75)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (37:07.734)
Um, and so like it can like get at things in you that like typically don't get past your defenses. Um, and, uh, and so, yeah, that's one of the things I talk about. And I think you're, you're making a good connection here that I can like build into that talk to, to lead into like, okay, so not only can you like learn something maybe about yourself, but then you can go back and look at the objective elements of the movie.

Elijah (37:11.662)
Yeah.

Elijah (37:25.614)
Good.

Eli Price (37:37.654)
Um, and make sure you're like thinking about it, like how, like, how did it get that out of me and why, you know, and then asking the, the question that's like both objective and subjective, which is like, kind of like, how did that work? Why did it work? Sort of, um, you kind of have to like meld the objective and subjective together for that because it, you can't have one without the other for that, to answer that question.

Elijah (37:55.726)
Yeah.

Elijah (38:06.798)
Yeah.

Eli Price (38:07.478)
of why did it like why did that work on me in that way yeah right

Elijah (38:10.734)
Yeah. So that's like the making it personal part, right? Where you're like, so I take that same example of the Nolan moment, right? And then I had to ask a question like, well, why do I, do I feel burdened by Kronos? Like, do I feel overwhelmed by the daily?

Eli Price (38:30.518)
Mm.

Elijah (38:36.846)
grind of my schedule and my life and my longing for Kairos, like my longing for eternal time. How can I have more of that in my life? And maybe I was so busy. Maybe I was so overwhelmed, but I wasn't even aware that I was overwhelmed. You can be that, you know, and maybe it took that moment and my awareness of what I felt in that moment to be like, oh, I need to figure that out because I'm in a moment in life where I am so busy.

Eli Price (38:44.694)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (38:53.11)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (39:06.926)
with taking care of kids and work and the house and all this stuff. Like, how can I find time in this? And this is not hypothetical here. This is honest. You know, this is me right now in the moment thinking like, why did I bring up that example? I could have begun a hundred examples of moments like that. Why did I choose that one? Why did I choose that one? Why did my subconscious choose that one in this moment? Maybe I feel that way. Maybe I need to find some way to put a little bit more kairos into my life.

Eli Price (39:10.07)
Yes.

Eli Price (39:16.758)
Yeah, right.

Eli Price (39:23.83)
Yeah.

Eli Price (39:29.846)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (39:37.134)
And that would be a conversation with my wife to figure it out. How to work some of that out. Sure. She needs it too, you know. But that's where you're saying that's where you take it and you turn it back to yourself then. And that parts probably doesn't need to be in the film review or the piece that I write, you know, that parts for me. And but the task of writing then is to say like, OK, so how can I how can I give that to somebody else? How can I give?

Eli Price (39:40.47)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (39:49.718)
Yeah.

Eli Price (39:54.614)
Right, yeah.

Eli Price (40:05.238)
Yeah.

Elijah (40:06.862)
that prompt where they can like take that next step. How can I give that to them? And I started thinking like, okay, well, I've got to take them on the same journey I went through. But how can I do that? So I don't want to tell the story about how I thought this is the greatest movie of all time, because that's a needless narrative. So I maybe just start with Inception is the greatest movie ever made. Okay, it's not. I know it's not. But it is pretty great.

Eli Price (40:10.486)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (40:16.758)
Yeah.

Eli Price (40:25.91)
Yeah.

Eli Price (40:31.67)
Yeah. Yeah.

Elijah (40:33.87)
And here's a moment that's super great in it. And then start describing that moment and then explaining how it works. And then turn that into, you know, what we feel here is we feel the burden of Kronos as the ancients called it, and go from there. But that's the writing part. It's how to take that and turn it into something somebody else can get some out of. Yeah.

Eli Price (40:49.846)
Mm -hmm, yeah. Yeah.

No, that's really great. And I think, I think you're like, so when I read, um, you know, I think that's something that like, one of the greatest, you know, film critics ever in Roger Ebert, you know, that's something he does so well is take you back to that, that like self -reflection, like,

Elijah (41:11.374)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:16.726)
He's, he's, you know, obviously like great at breaking down the film, what works and doesn't work in it. But like, he always has these moments in his writing where like, he, he leads you to ask something that you have to wrestle with. Um, and I, you know, the, the, the film critics that like, I enjoy reading the most are do that. Um, and, or even like a lot of times I'll be reading a good film critic.

Elijah (41:30.766)
Yeah.

Eli Price (41:46.454)
And, uh, I will basically like, they'll be saying something about the movie and a takeaway that is not what I ended up walking away from their review with. And it's because like, they kind of unlocked something that I was having a hard time, like organizing in my mind of like a way I felt or something I saw in the movie. Um, and they say something that's like,

Elijah (42:04.398)
Yeah.

Elijah (42:09.006)
Yeah.

Eli Price (42:16.118)
Related to but not that and it but it unlocks for me and I'm like, oh that's why This worked that way or that's why I had this response and they weren't they didn't say that explicitly but something they said unlocked that for me and I think that's kind of what you're talking about is is that that work in your writing about film where you can unlock something for someone by taking them through that that process

Elijah (42:18.158)
Yeah.

Elijah (42:25.102)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (42:31.95)
Yeah. Yeah.

Elijah (42:41.934)
Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's in that's a like a even like even separate than the devotional writing, just the review writing thing. Like that's really kind of what you're trying to do. Like you're you're kind of just wanting to describe the film correctly and clearly so that the reader can get more out of it. You know, I mean, there are there are critics who who.

Eli Price (42:52.342)
Right.

Eli Price (42:59.318)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (43:10.798)
Part of what they think is important is telling you whether the movie is good or not and like judging the movie in that way. And I'm not really interested in that. I think you can get that from my reviews quite often. Like you can tell if I like the movie or not. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you can tell I really struggle with a movie, but sometimes you can't. I think most of the time, most of the time I want there to be something more than,

Eli Price (43:14.166)
Mm -hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Eli Price (43:26.07)
Sure.

Eli Price (43:30.294)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (43:39.79)
than mere description. I think mere description is not super useful. But I want there to at least be description. Yeah.

Eli Price (43:41.974)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah. I, yeah. That's one thing like that. Probably I do like when I'm writing about a film, cause cause a lot of times I'm not really, I'm just like writing a letterbox review most of the time. So it's not like going on a website. It's not like an official edited down thing. Um, but like a lot of times you can tell like,

If I didn't like a film, but a lot of times what I, I kind of wrestle with it and, and like what I'm writing and like, this is, you know, this did not work. And I think this is why, um, you know, and. You know, obviously like maybe it, maybe it worked for someone else, but this is why it didn't work for me. And there's a reason, but it's, but it's the act of like digging into that. Like that's what I think that's what's important.

Elijah (44:32.526)
Yeah.

Eli Price (44:39.926)
The most important thing maybe about film writing is like digging into like what works or what doesn't and trying to figure out like the mechanics of, of why that is. Cause, cause art, you know, all art is meant to like elicit a response of some sort. Um, that it's otherwise why, why make it, you know? Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah.

Elijah (44:47.726)
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Elijah (44:58.062)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (45:03.15)
Why put it out there? I mean, you can make it, but if you're gonna put it out there for other people to see, you must want them to respond to it in some way. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (45:10.198)
Yeah. And so, yeah, that's, that's what it's, that's what it's there for. So that's, you know, that's what we should do with it. But yeah.

Elijah (45:16.302)
Yeah, yeah, it is true that like, so I use like letterbox, I log everything there. I don't always write something down about a movie if I log everything that I watch. And usually when I write anything there, it's like, I write something that I want to remember when I go back later to see like, when I watched that movie before, you know, sometimes it's quippy and stupid and silly. And sometimes it's like a little observation that I want to remember. Sometimes about the moment that I watched it and it's alive, you know.

Eli Price (45:23.894)
Mm -hmm.

Sure.

Eli Price (45:38.966)
Yeah.

Elijah (45:45.07)
I kind of treat Letterboxd like a little film diary. I used to do that in an Excel spreadsheet before Letterboxd, where I would write out every movie. Yeah, I did. It's nice. I like it. But.

Eli Price (45:47.574)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (45:51.542)
Yeah, they made it so easy. Yeah, it's like to have a user interface instead of a spreadsheet. Yeah.

Elijah (45:59.246)
Yeah, the one good thing about this spreadsheet was it was all mine. I never had ads alongside it, but that's how it goes.

Eli Price (46:02.934)
Right. That's true. Um, I guess I'll, uh, you know, we'll, we'll do a couple of like, maybe quicker, quicker fire to, to, to end this. Um, what, um, I'll start with this. What are maybe a few influences for you in, in film writing, like some, some critics or writers that like,

when you were starting off or even maybe now that are big influences for you and maybe, maybe the way you write about film or maybe just like that encourage you to keep writing about film. Yeah. Who would, who would those people be?

Elijah (46:48.43)
Well, I really love reading Matt Ziller's Sites. He's a great writer and also I feel like he's a searcher. And so I like how he searches through what he writes. I value that a lot. He's a very honest writer. I like that a lot. I think one of the...

Eli Price (46:54.166)
Mm -hmm. Okay.

Eli Price (47:13.846)
Yeah. And I'll shout for him. I'll shout out the, the Wes Anderson, um, books, which are, which are great. I used that when I was doing that series and those are, those are phenomenal. They're, they're, yeah, they're not just like giving you information about the making of the movie, but like, like you said, they're digging and searching and those, especially in those interviews he has with, with Wes and those. Yeah.

Elijah (47:19.854)
Books. Yeah.

Elijah (47:24.462)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (47:32.398)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Elijah (47:38.734)
Oh yeah. Yeah, he's a really good interviewer when he, especially when he knows the person pretty well. He's really good. So being interviewers though, I think that Tasha Robinson is one of the best interviewers out there. Even when I don't care at all about her subject, I will read her interviews. I think she's really good. I appreciate like when Matt's...

Eli Price (47:51.67)
Mm, yeah.

Elijah (48:06.99)
Matt's best, Matt's best when he's interviewing somebody he knows pretty well. He has a relationship with them being kind of deep with them. I appreciate he always asked craft questions. I care a lot about craft. But Tasha, I can't even put my finger on why, but she she just seems to be able to get people to talk and to say things that you don't expect them to say. And she seems to be pretty insightful about like,

Eli Price (48:11.35)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (48:33.142)
Sure.

Elijah (48:36.686)
what do I need to ask this person to learn something important? Like one important thing that I haven't read somewhere else. And so I tell people we hear interviews all the time just to learn more about interviewing. Gosh, I'm not going to name them, but there's a few critics that I read that I almost always disagree with. And I'm only not going to name them because why? Why name them?

Eli Price (48:43.478)
Mm -hmm, yeah.

Eli Price (49:00.022)
Sure.

Elijah (49:06.734)
But I think it's important to find some people that don't see movies the same way you do and read them regularly. I think it's really useful to kind of have different lenses to look through.

Eli Price (49:09.558)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (49:17.494)
Yeah. I'll, I'll say this on that note. Um, one that I really love to read his reviews is, uh, David Ehrlich. Um, and it's because like, it's like 50 50, if I'll agree with his take or not. Um, but one thing he always does, even in his takes that I disagree with, he unlocks some, it's that goes back to that. He unlocks something even in his like,

Elijah (49:27.278)
Oh yeah.

Elijah (49:32.686)
Yeah.

Elijah (49:42.574)
Yeah.

Eli Price (49:45.398)
more negative reviews of movies that like, um, that like, unlike something that I liked about it. Um, so yeah, yeah, he's a really good, good writer. So.

Elijah (49:47.95)
Yeah.

Elijah (49:53.582)
Yeah.

Elijah (49:57.998)
That's fine. Yeah, I like him too. He's fun. I agree with you. I might even say I disagree with him more than 50 % of the time, but I do appreciate. I appreciate him. And then there's, I will say, you know, there's a handful of Christian film writers, Christians who are right about movies. And I love them. And I'm so grateful for all the things that they do. There's things that they do.

Eli Price (50:04.758)
Yeah.

Elijah (50:27.886)
better than me and I appreciate those things about them. Like, like Joss Larson is somebody who, he's a good friend and he and I, I think we have a fundamental difference in the way that we initially see a movie. I'm kind of a see the forest first and then crowd discern the trees and he's kind of a see the trees and then try to find the forest kind of person and.

Eli Price (50:34.454)
Yeah.

Elijah (50:56.814)
I just don't see the world at all that way, not just movies, like anything. I'm a big picture to detail kind of person. And he seems to be a detail to big picture kind of person. And I think that's usually really useful for me. Because I can be so sure about the forest that I can't always identify the details that I need to identify to explain why it's there. And it's kind of a growth area for me always, trying to figure that thing out.

Eli Price (51:00.15)
Yeah.

Eli Price (51:03.702)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Eli Price (51:20.79)
Sure.

Elijah (51:26.83)
I think Josh sometimes can get hung up on some details and miss the forest sometimes. I would tell this to his face, so I'll say it here. But I think it's, but he's a good friend and I love him. And often he'll point out details that in things that I'm like, oh, I didn't notice that. Yeah, that does qualify what I thought actually. He's probably right about that. It happens quite often. So, Gareth Higgins is someone who I really love. You know Gareth?

Eli Price (51:47.08)
Mm. Yeah.

Elijah (51:56.91)
at all, with Gareth. Yeah, he runs a group called, a magazine called The Porch and does stuff called Movies and Meaning, but he's a couple of books. He's an Irish writer and he's also on a podcast called The Film Talk that was my favorite film, my favorite podcast forever. And it stopped like 10 years ago. It's him and a friend of his named Jettlo. It stopped like 10 years ago.

Eli Price (51:57.334)
I don't, but now I will look into him.

Eli Price (52:21.462)
Oh man.

Elijah (52:24.686)
But I have like all the episodes downloaded and still re -listen to them. And they recently restarted their podcast actually, very recently, like the last couple of months. And Jet Lo, his co -host on that show, Jet is like one of the smartest film watchers I've ever heard, ever. Like he sees movies so clearly and is so good at articulating what's going on in a movie and why it works. Like why what works works. And he has a very...

Eli Price (52:31.958)
Okay.

Eli Price (52:40.63)
Mmm.

Eli Price (52:49.494)
Yeah.

Elijah (52:52.846)
Uh, he and Gareth both have a very, um, broad, um, very broad, like base of film knowledge about movies I've never heard of before or have, but, uh, and just, they just know so much and, um, their, their conversations are great. They're kind of back and forth conversations. Jet, like I said, Jet is like super into like, like, like cinema studies, like how this thing works and why or why not. And Gareth is all about the meaning, like why it matters to our lives.

Eli Price (53:01.878)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (53:21.43)
Yeah.

Elijah (53:22.894)
and or doesn't matter to our lives or where the movie could maybe be a little better if it had a little bit more of a moral core to it, stuff like that. And they're both incredibly articulate and funny and terrific. Gareth has a couple of books, Mal Movies Helped Save My Soul and Cinematic States that I really love. So I recommend those a lot.

Eli Price (53:31.542)
Yeah.

Eli Price (53:50.614)
Yeah.

Elijah (53:52.558)
And then beyond that, though, beyond film writers, though, I've gotten a lot of I get a lot of a lot of help by reading nature writers. I read a lot. I read a lot of nature writing. And that has been super beneficial to my film writing because nature writing is all about observing the world, describing what you see and then communicating a response to it. That's what it's all about. And.

Eli Price (53:59.99)
Okay.

Eli Price (54:17.91)
Mm.

Elijah (54:21.262)
There's so many good nature writers. So I would especially recommend Ella Malloy, her book, any of her books really, maybe The Anthropology of Turquoise, probably my favorite one. And then, of course, one of the greats, Aldo Leopold, Read the Sand County Almanac. It's a foundational book in the nature writing canon. Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold.

Eli Price (54:27.862)
Okay.

Eli Price (54:47.254)
Okay.

Elijah (54:50.702)
And it's just his observations of his farm in, I think, Missouri is where he is. His farm was over the course of a year, and it will absolutely change the way not that you know, it won't change the way that you like understand the world. It'll change the way you use your eyes to see the world, like the kind of things you focus on and how you understand what's going on. And it will change the way you see movies and everything else, because it's just his his writing is.

Eli Price (55:07.606)
Mm -hmm. Mm.

Elijah (55:20.366)
His writing is good. I mean, it's great writing, but his vision is terrific. Ella Mamoia is great because she's also a nature writer. So it's all about observation of the world around her. She lived in the Four Corners region and wrote about the desert. But she's just a hilarious, smart writer who everything is coming out of experience. She's, she's...

Eli Price (55:22.966)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (55:34.358)
Mm.

Eli Price (55:42.568)
Yeah.

Elijah (55:49.23)
the appropriate mix of sure of herself and also self -deprecating. She's excellent. So nature writing has probably been as helpful to me in my film writing as anything else, even the film writers. Yeah.

Eli Price (55:54.454)
Yeah.

Cool.

Eli Price (56:02.615)
Yeah, that's really cool to hear. I've never heard anyone say that before. So yeah, that has me interested. It might be good for me to delve into some of that to expand my vision for doing this, for sure.

Elijah (56:13.102)
Yeah.

Elijah (56:21.39)
Yeah, well again, like I said, you write about movies, you write about everything, so you gotta read about everything. It'd be on the writing.

Eli Price (56:24.694)
Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the, you know, I'm, uh, as far as like books goes, I haven't done a ton of like reading, you know, full books on film, but I did read, um, the Nolan variations by Tom Shawn, um, in my Nolan series. And that was such, that was such great writing. Um, uh, such a good mix of like,

Elijah (56:45.774)
Uh -huh.

Eli Price (56:55.318)
talking about the craft, but also like delving into like Nolan's mind and like the philosophies and just like the world around us. Um, yeah, I thought that was really well written. Um, it, yeah. And it's kind of built around interviews he has with Nolan. Um, um, but yeah, that's one that I recommended during that series and you know, relevant here too, just.

Elijah (57:06.222)
Mm.

Elijah (57:23.918)
Yeah.

Eli Price (57:24.374)
Helping you see... He just helps you see the movies in a more like a bigger perspective, I guess, than just like the film itself.

Yeah, yeah, I guess the moral of this section is like read read all the things like read people you agree with read people you don't agree with read people that have this perspective and that perspective and also some nature and beyond movies. Yeah.

Elijah (57:49.646)
Yeah.

Elijah (57:54.798)
Read Beyond, yeah, Read Beyond, Read Beyond movies too. That's my own, that's what I enjoyed most about when I've done, so I did this little series called Icons of Cinema, which is kind of like a book version of your podcast, where I go film by film through a filmmaker's filmography and write about every one of their movies and kind of try to put them all in context with one another. And the most fun thing about that for me is that I follow all the research trails.

Eli Price (58:07.126)
Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (58:18.39)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (58:24.27)
Um, as I do these things, so like, um, I'm doing James Cameron right now. Um, and so that led me to, you know, reading biographies about Leonardo da Vinci, uh, and learning about, um, plant -based eating and, um, of course the Titanic, but also like submersible technologies and, uh, things like that. I mean, it's like everything that like all the research that he cares about that pours into his life and his movies, I end up like,

Eli Price (58:34.966)
Mm.

Eli Price (58:45.206)
Yeah.

Elijah (58:53.006)
going on all those trails to better understand what goes on. So it's like, I just love learning about the world, you know? And it becomes an excuse to learn all kinds of stuff about the world and read all kinds of different books. So I did Miyazaki. That was when I read Into the West and a whole bunch of other Russian and Chinese and Japanese folklore that I had never heard of before. But that super influential for him, super fun to do that. Just immerse myself in a whole different narrative world than I.

Eli Price (58:57.558)
Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (59:05.142)
Yeah.

Eli Price (59:14.902)
Hmm. Yeah.

Eli Price (59:19.894)
Yeah.

Elijah (59:22.958)
that I knew. Movies are great. You get to learn about everything if you want to.

Eli Price (59:27.254)
Yeah. Yeah, I'll plug those icons because you have, so you have Guillermo del Toro, yeah, Christopher Nolan, Hayao Miyazaki. Okay, yeah, so that'll be the fourth one. Okay.

Elijah (59:35.246)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I'm, I'm working on Cameron right now. So Cameron will be the next one. That'd be the fourth one. Yeah. And when I get, when I get all four of them put together, all four of them, I get Cameron done. So I've only released them digitally currently. You can download them for free on my website. Or if you want to buy them for your Kindle and they're like three bucks on Kindle. But when I get them, when I get the Cameron one finished, I'm going to put all four of them into a paperback.

Eli Price (59:51.51)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (01:00:04.942)
because they'll all together be just over 50 ,000 words and that'll be enough for a paperback, respectable paperback. So I'll put them all together in a paperback at that point. Yeah, they're fun. I like them. I like doing them. Hope people like reading them. I like doing them. Even if nobody reads them, I like doing them. That's the glory of writing. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:09.558)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:13.11)
Very cool. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:00:18.998)
Yeah. Right. That's, that's the glory of podcasting too. Even if no one ever listens to this, I sure had a great time. Yeah. That's, that's how you have to think about it when you're an independent podcaster that's not making any money doing it.

Elijah (01:00:31.854)
It's good.

Elijah (01:00:42.542)
Yep. Yep. At the point in which you're no longer having fun doing it and getting out of it, you probably stop, right?

Eli Price (01:00:49.078)
Right, yeah, exactly. Yeah, because no one's paying me to do it, so I'll just stop when I don't enjoy it anymore, which hopefully will be a long time from now. But yeah.

Elijah (01:01:02.318)
Hopefully this episode will not end and I just like cut to black. I guess Eli was done. 49 is a good number. 7 times 7, 49, that's always been my favorite multiplication problem.

Eli Price (01:01:05.046)
Yep, he didn't make it to 50. Yeah, that's right. But seven times 70 is 490. Yeah, yeah. Oh man. How many podcasts should I make? The Disciple Asked Jesus, seven times 70. Yeah.

Elijah (01:01:19.022)
That's true. So you got a ways to go.

Elijah (01:01:30.158)
No, seven times, seven times seven. Oh, I better get to work, said the disciple, and he went off to record.

Eli Price (01:01:38.582)
Oh man. This is another question. What's maybe one or two quick pointers that you would give to someone that is interesting in walking down the path of writing about film? Some aspiring film writers.

Elijah (01:01:57.678)
I would say just start doing it. Just start writing about the movements you watch. Even if you write one sentence or a paragraph or whatever, just start doing it and don't stop doing it. Writers are writers because they write. So write. And it sounds so pithy, but that is so true. There's just no, there's no nothing else besides that really.

Eli Price (01:02:01.846)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:02:09.11)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:02:14.102)
Yes.

Eli Price (01:02:23.158)
No, yeah. No, I, I agree.

Elijah (01:02:27.31)
Um, and then secondly, um, well, we've already touched on it. I would say read, um, read a lot, read widely, read, read anything that sparks your interest. Um, when you're watching a movie, you don't understand something. Read about the thing you don't understand. Uh, we start writing and you get to a place, be humble enough in your writing to realize that you get to a place where you don't know what you're talking about. Uh, and then learn so you can know what you're talking about.

Eli Price (01:02:33.846)
Mm.

Eli Price (01:02:45.27)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:02:56.15)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:02:56.59)
and do that. And that's all it is really, you know, is write and read and learn when you don't know what to write about anymore. And that sounds simple, but that's it. It's super fun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's super fun. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:07.702)
Yeah, that's a cycle of cycle of taking in and pouring out, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Well, you've already you've already kind of shared a little bit about what you're working on currently with the James Cameron icons of cinema. Is there is there anything else that you would like to?

Elijah (01:03:31.118)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:36.854)
to plug or talk about as far as things you're working on other than that.

Elijah (01:03:41.646)
Um, no, I just say like, um, we've talked about come and see a little bit and what that is. And that is a book, um, that you can buy if you want to. Um, and you do, you have the, you have the hardback too. You're one of the, one of the few, the proud purchase, the hardback, the paperback version as well. $10 cheaper.

Eli Price (01:03:45.462)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:03:50.966)
I have it right here if you're watching, right here. Yeah. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:03:59.798)
Yeah, I think, uh, so I put the, I send my family, um, wish lists, like they're like, what do you want for Christmas? And so I just like, I have a Amazon wish list with like some books and movies and that's like all that's on it. And it's just easy. Like here you can pick something out of here. And so, so that's what, that's how I ended up with the hardback version of come and see. So that's a pointer. If you want come and see.

Elijah (01:04:11.342)
Uh huh. I got one of those. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I do that too.

Elijah (01:04:22.638)
That is so...

Eli Price (01:04:26.038)
but don't have the budget to maybe buy it yourself. Just send it to your family and they might buy it.

Elijah (01:04:29.614)
Yeah, smart. Yeah. It's fun. So yeah, so there's that. But there's also there's also an email version of the book. Kind of. It's not exactly the book, but it's pretty much the book. And so that's totally free. And I love people to sign up to that. It's I actually when I was writing, come and see. I got more excited about the email version than I did about the book version of the thing, because I realized I could build it.

Eli Price (01:04:37.27)
Yes.

Elijah (01:04:59.758)
and that it could be free and that it would be a really great way to learn about cinema and to experience movies and the devotions that I wrote and all that kind of stuff. So come and see is a free weekly email. It goes out on Sunday mornings. It starts at the beginning. Whenever you sign up, it's not like everyone gets the same email. So like whenever you sign up, you start at the beginning of cinema and then like chronologically you work your way through week by week. So sign up immediately so you can get started.

Eli Price (01:05:27.158)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Elijah (01:05:29.166)
working through because it's a five year long subscription to get to the end. So.

Eli Price (01:05:32.726)
Yes, yeah, I highly recommend it. Even though I have the book, I've only used it a few times as more of like a reference. Like, oh, I just watched this, let me see what's in here. But the email I do, like I read it every week. For movies I've seen and haven't seen because, you know, either way it helps me think about film. And so,

Um, and they're not like spoiler, like, um, devotions. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so I'm, let's see, I'm, I pulled up where I am in the emails. I, last Sunday, I got spring in a small town and bicycle thieves before that. So I'm pretty, I'm getting, yeah. Getting, uh, I don't, I guess I'm not quite in the fifties yet am I? Um.

Elijah (01:06:05.742)
Oh no, there's only like two movies in the whole thing where I talk about any kind of spoiler thing and I warn you before I do it. So, yeah.

Elijah (01:06:20.142)
Oh, cool.

Yeah, you're moving along. Yeah, that's good.

Elijah (01:06:31.022)
You should be somewhere, late 40s? Yeah, late 40s with... What number are you on? Do you know? I don't put the numbers in there, do I? I'm looking it up. I at one point considered putting the numbers, but I didn't want people to feel like they were completing something.

Eli Price (01:06:31.926)
Late 40s. Late 40s. So.

I don't know if it has a number, no.

Eli Price (01:06:47.542)
Yeah.

Elijah (01:06:49.71)
It's a journey, it's not the destination, you know.

Eli Price (01:06:52.598)
Yeah, it's it's like something I look forward to on Sunday mornings. I'm like, oh, I got the email. Like I could go look at it in the book anytime, but it's just but it's nice to like, yeah, it's like a little it's like when you get a package from Amazon, it's like, yeah, I know I ordered this, but it's still fun to like, be like, oh, my package came. It's arrived.

Elijah (01:06:57.518)
Yeah.

You could, but it's so much more fun. 52. Uh huh, yeah. Yeah.

have it arrive. I know, yeah, just like that. So come and see Stolely Free. So you can sign up for it on my website. My website is just my name, elijadavidson .com, and you'll find your way there. The menu is pretty simple.

Eli Price (01:07:25.334)
Yep, and I'll link it in the episode description.

Elijah (01:07:29.518)
Yeah, cool. You can also find the Icon Cinema Books there too. So if you're interested in those, again, those are also, you can download those for free PDF versions on my website, or you can buy them for three bucks on Amazon if you want the Kindle. I did that because I like reading things on my Kindle. So I'll put them on the Kindle too. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:07:33.43)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:07:39.318)
Yep.

Eli Price (01:07:48.086)
Yep. And I think too, I'll, I'll, I'll try to link to, um, I'm sure there's a page on the, the Brim Film section of the Fuller website that has some of the books you all have, um, published. Um, so I'll, I'll link to that too, because those are, those are also books that you have, um, had some part in at least. So.

Elijah (01:08:05.646)
Oh yeah, yeah for sure. There, there.

Elijah (01:08:15.854)
I do, yeah, I've edited all those books. Yeah, they're super fun. I love those. That's a really joy, is doing those books. I try to find writers who have something interesting to say, and then we help them get that out there. So they're simple little books. They're not, none of them are long. They're small books. They're small for a couple of reasons. One, I'm pretty convinced that most books are too long.

Eli Price (01:08:17.526)
Yeah, so.

Eli Price (01:08:30.486)
Mm -hmm.

Eli Price (01:08:36.63)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:08:45.398)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (01:08:45.646)
says the person who wrote a 500 page book. But most books, that book's not too long, but most books are too long. And so.

Eli Price (01:08:51.862)
Yeah, well it's a 500 page book made of basically like 250, yeah 400 word quote unquote booklets.

Elijah (01:08:56.686)
250, 400 word things, yeah. Yeah. It's really a short book. It's really a short book that just looks long, right? But the real spirituality monograph series, they are short books. But again, they're exactly the right length. And there's like seven of them now. And they kind of cover different, they're like film series or filmmakers or movies or ideas. There's one on,

Eli Price (01:09:05.11)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:10.038)
Mm.

Elijah (01:09:26.158)
Christian appreciation of horror films. There's one on the alien movies. There's one on, yeah, it is Josh's book. Yeah, yeah. There's one on Stalker, the Tarkovsky film. There's one on Public Enemies, the Michael Mann film. There's one on, oh, it's good. Yeah. Oh man, that's a good book. It's about faith, like what faith is and how.

Eli Price (01:09:29.238)
The horror one is Josh Larson who you mentioned earlier.

Eli Price (01:09:40.63)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:09:44.278)
I need to check out the stalker book because it's an incredible movie.

Eli Price (01:09:52.758)
Okay.

Elijah (01:09:55.438)
stalker helps us understand what faith is supposed to look like. It's really good. Colin Heber Percy wrote that one. There's one on a movie called Souls for Sale, which is kind of like the first satire of Christianity that was ever made. My book, How to Talk to a Movie is one of those. There's also one about documentary films. It's kind of like an introduction to documentary filmmaking across time and kind of a spiritual rubric for understanding.

Eli Price (01:10:07.414)
Mm -mm.

Eli Price (01:10:19.894)
Mm -hmm.

Elijah (01:10:25.102)
like what's going on in documentary filmmaking. So I think that's all of them. Yeah. But we always work on our new ones. And again, super fun. All writing is editing. So I enjoy editing those books too. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:28.15)
Very cool.

Eli Price (01:10:31.702)
Yeah.

Eli Price (01:10:36.15)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah. Well, I'll, I'll make sure to link to those two. Cause, um, get the, just again, more perspectives, more ways of writing, take it all in so you can pour out into your own, own thing. Um, especially, you know, maybe eventually this will make, make its way into the ears of someone who wants to write about film. We'll see. Yeah. Somewhere down the line. Uh, but yeah. Uh,

Elijah (01:10:49.486)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Elijah (01:11:02.574)
That'd be awesome.

Eli Price (01:11:08.694)
I appreciated the conversation. I think there were some really good insights for me and hopefully for our listeners too, in this conversation about film writing. I enjoyed it, Elijah. Appreciate you coming on for this and the Temple of Doom episode and, you know, who knows? Maybe you'll make your way back on to another episode in the future.

Elijah (01:11:23.566)
Thank you.

Elijah (01:11:32.302)
Maybe so, maybe so. But when you do late Spielberg, I wanna talk about the Fablemans. I could talk about the Fablemans for hours and hours and hours. So.

Eli Price (01:11:39.35)
Okay.

That's good to know. I'll note that in my mind. Whenever people tell me specific movies, I make sure to note it in my mind. And I've followed through so far. So yeah. Well, I appreciate it. Yeah. A lot of fun. I appreciate it. I'm sure we could probably talk for another like couple of hours on just writing about film and all the nuances and everything. But...

Elijah (01:11:46.126)
Okay.

Elijah (01:11:51.054)
It's good. Nice.

Elijah (01:11:57.678)
Well Eli, it's been a pleasure. Yeah.

Eli Price (01:12:12.342)
But we're not going to do that today. We'll maybe save that for next time. Um, film writing part two, maybe. Um, yes, electric Boogaloo. Uh, very cool. 

Elijah (01:12:18.862)
Sounds good. So, my part two, the way of water or something like that. The electric booloo. That's the best part two title ever.

Um, but yeah, that's all we have for this week. Uh, for Eli Price and Elijah Davidson, you've been listening to The Establishing Shot. We will see you next time.