The Art of the Excerpt (Why Skipping Around Might Save Cinema)


We’ve been lied to.
Somewhere along the way, “respecting art” became synonymous with finishing it — start to end, no bathroom breaks, no fast-forward button. Sit. Obey. Digest. Clap.

Nonsense.

Not all art earns your full attention. And that’s okay.

Watching *every* minute of *Sleepwalkers* (1992), *Humanoid* (1979), or *Gang Wars* (1976) is like insisting you must finish every entrée at an all-you-can-eat buffet. No one is awarding medals for endurance. But take the best five minutes of each — cat-incest vampire mythology here, rubber-monster laboratory scene there, plus a gritty street brawl for seasoning — suddenly you’ve created a better movie through collage. A cinematic mixtape. A highlight reel of weird.

Why slog through mediocrity when the sublime hides in the seams?

We live in the age of the excerpt. People quote books they never read. They preach albums without listening past track three. TikTok remixes are more alive than the original films they cannibalize. It’s not disrespect. It’s evolution — the audience as editor.

Art isn’t sacred because it’s **whole**.
Art is sacred because it’s **interesting**.

And sometimes the most interesting thing you can do is take a machete to the running time. Jump scenes. Intercut timelines. Turn B-movies into surrealist quilts.

Maybe the future of cinephilia isn’t devotion… but sampling.

Cinema as chaos curation.

Because if culture is going to drown us in content, the least we can do is build our own raft out of the most entertaining scraps.

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