Movie attack/rambling diatribe

I worked a miserable telemarketing job for a month in the early part of my second year of college, and during orientation on the first day, the trainer asked each person to name his or her favorite kind of music during one of those forced getting-to-know-each-other exercises that are supposed to ease us into the job and create a bond but only breed contempt and distrust between manager and staff right off the bat. We answered the awful question and my mood became especially surly when at least five people said they didn't really listen to music, two people answered "Phish" and another guy said "Dave Matthews Band." I must have been away from my desk when those two bands were declared their own genre. Anyway, a vaguely indie-looking guy seemed to be as uncomfortable as me, and when he answered "punk rock," I figured I might actually make a friend at this job. When we were on break, I walked over and pretended to be casual, though I probably looked like the utter 19-year-old dork that I was, and said: "Hey, I heard you say you liked punk rock. Are you into the Minutemen?" The guy looked at me like I was dipped in three layers of shit, then kept looking at me that way, silently, for several seconds. Finally, he spoke, in a tone meant to strongly suggest to anyone listening that it greatly pained him to have to explain something so glaringly obvious. "The Minutemen are a college-rock band. I only listen to punk." I'm proud of myself for realizing immediately that this guy was an utter, fucking moron with a ridiculously narrow view of punk and for sowing the seeds that blossomed into my intense hatred of scenesters, hipsters, and indie kids everywhere. I am no longer 19, but I am still a dork who likes music and is enthusiastic about it. And the Minutemen are punker than any 500 generic hardcore bands you can squeeze into a blender and reduce to a Tupperware container full of bloody goo.
I don't know why yet, and I've been thinking about it for two days, but this memory latched itself into my brain and wouldn't let go after I watched a documentary about Hollywood production designers on PBS late Saturday night when I was lying in bed flipping through channels. Over the last seven years, I've slowly become as obsessive about movies as I've always been about music and books, and, in the last four years, I've become aware, mostly by accident, of certain things I look for in art, and a philosophy I have about what makes great art great. I've been trying to articulate this in my head for a while, but I don't think I can do it on paper yet. The way I watch things has changed greatly since I was in college, and I feel like a whole world has opened up and sort of whapped me on the back of the head. But I don't really know how to explain this to anyone other than forcing you to sit on my couch and watch the movies I consider to be the supreme masterworks, the ones that have the most to do with being human and the lives we actually live, over the course of several weeks at gunpoint, while I jump up and down and yell, "See, isn't this changing your life? Changing the way you think? Not just about movies, but about your own life, and everything in it?" So you see, I get really enthusiastic about the stuff I like to the point of mania and obsession, but I don't know how to articulate it and let you know why. I just know what I don't like, and, Jesus, I didn't like this PBS documentary. The production designer for "The Graduate" was talking about all the heavy symbolism he used in the movie and how Benjamin's parents' house and Mrs. Robinson's house were exactly the same because the lives of the wealthy suburbanites were so similar, except that since Benjamin was male, his parents' home was a "male" house with square doors and a straight staircase, and since Mrs. Robinson was female, her home was a "female" home with round doors and a curved staircase. The production designer for "American Beauty" bragged about how he used red as a motif for freedom and enlightenment, and when a character in the film was breaking out of his/her role in society, the character was dressed in red, and when he/she was trapped or stuck, the character was dressed in grays and browns. Much more of this kind of bullshit was trotted out in a reverential, unquestioning tone, and the production designers congratulated themselves on their supreme, artistic achievements. Is this what we consider our crowning glories in film art? Is every character a cipher with a big sign around his/her neck telling us who they are and what they feel? So many film studies programs focus on ideas like these, and it sucks. They teach students to decipher all these metaphorical clues and congratulate each other on how smart they are for figuring it out. It's a parlor game for pseudo-intellectuals, and it ignores real art, the kind that can't be compartmentalized. "See, he's wearing blue because he's sad." How does shit like that help us become better people and teach us anything about being human and being alive? Isn't that what great art does, or at least attempts to do? I watch a lot of stuff just for entertainment and I have a good time doing so, but I don't assign it an importance it doesn't have. Too much credit is given to films that have Big Ideas, Big Metaphors, Big Generational Signifiers, Big Symbols, Important Subjects, and Majestic Sweep. It's late, I've had some drinks, and I'm really shooting my mouth off incoherently now, but I will put my money where my mouth is and name a bunch of directors I think are great artists and whose worst moments have more to do with my life than anything ever done by any overpraised piece of junk full of Important Ideas, beautiful cinematography and beautiful production design. P.S. I don't hate production designers. Some of them are subtle, wonderful talents. P.P.S. When I say "having to do with real life," I'm not talking about realism. Some of the directors' films are close to real life, some are exaggerations and fantasies. But all of them confront what it means to be human, they have respect for their audiences, and they have respect for their characters. It's not stuffy art for art's sake, and it's not dumb, loud filler that treats you like a human ATM machine. It will not make you feel like it took two hours of your life and refused to give it back. It will make you feel like your life is just beginning. Christ, I'm all fired up tonight. Here's the people I like. If I didn't turn you away with my bizarre rant, rent as many of their films as you can.
John Cassavetes, Howard Hawks, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Robert Bresson, Marx Brothers, Mike Leigh, Preston Sturges, Roberto Rossellini, Vittorio de Sica (early stuff), Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Tom Noonan, Nicholas Ray, Werner Herzog, Jacques Tati, Yasujiro Ozu, Ingmar Bergman, David Cronenberg, the dance numbers in "Singin' in the Rain," Elaine May, Jim Jarmusch, Aki Kaurismaki, Larry David, Andrei Tarkovsky, Gus Van Sant (except for the shitty ones), Harmony Korine, Carl Dreyer, Frank Capra, Monte Hellman, Wim Wenders (until 1988), Robert Altman, Wes Anderson, Jafar Panahi, Abbas Kiarostami, Kenji Mizoguchi, Kateshi Kitano, Sam Peckinpah, Su Friedrich, Shirley Clarke, Claire Denis, Luis Bunuel, Morris Engel, Jean Renoir, Terry Zwigoff, and a bunch more I'm forgetting because I'm tired. Goodbye, everybody.