marco1475 said:

CPJacob said:

4. Joss’ song ("Pick-A-Part") gave me pause. The others are tongue-in-cheek, so are his anti-fan sentiments in these lyrics meant to parody those of other, more hidebound filmmakers? Or does he really not like all the citizen journalism that causes fans to populate sites like this (wonderful!) one?

---

I think you misunderstand the song (and its sentiments) a bit. I think the song is more about how people idolize Joss and pick-and-prod him to find out how he's thinking, where his genious is coming from. In today's media, we the consumers want to dissect everything and find the core of what we love instead of enjoying art as a whole and for what it is. Art is overanalyzed, focus-grouped, and dissected to death and the result is vapid, tepid, not-interesting bland nothing that pleases everybody and yet nobody.

The second thing the song is about is the "cult of Joss." Joss is, as far as I can tell from interviews and behind-the-scenes, a genuinly modest guy and I can understand that all this worshipping is distressing. Personally I see the message of the song as "love what I create, not me." He is not the story, his work is. The finished work, not the process, not the pieces, but the whole. It isn't meant as a bad thing against the fans – he knows we mean well and he is using his celebrity status for "good," but I bet he'd rather we would give all of our attention to his work, not his persona.

jm2c

Honestly, I was horrified when I heard this song. Really, I felt terrible about myself. I greedily eat up Special Features and "Making-ofs," as he says. But isn't the brilliance of art that, even once disected, it still holds meaning? I want to know about how it happened to better understand the material and the meaning of it. As I have read much and listened to much about the wacky verse of Joss, I have come to notice that very little has managed to escape about Joss himself, leading me to believe that he wants to live a very private life. Truthfully, I don't much care to know all about Joss, as I am mostly interested in learning about his work; and through his work, he reveals things about himself, and that is all I need to know about him. I shudder to think that there are people desperately trying to pry open Joss' life/mind. I only want to know what he gives freely. I often wonder if there were anything I'd ask if I met him (!!!!!), and I come up with little. What could I possibly ask him that he hasn't been asked a thousand times? I usually settle on the fact that I would simply state how much his work has changed my life and the impact it has made on me. And I might stammer and drool a little but that's besides the point…

Furthermore, I hate to think that Joss is peeved by us. He knows we mean no harm with our varied questions, yes? We just want to be a part of the little worlds he's created for us to love. We want to connect. And about the worship… he does know he probably can't stop that? In fact, I keep trying to write a sentence to state why but it keeps coming out flowery Joss-praise. So I thereby prove my point.