It was in 2019 that I decided to hang up my film critic hat. Let’s be honest for a moment, FilmSnobbery had slowed down to a crawl content-wise long before that.

I was living in Los Angeles at the time I decided to turn my back on film criticism. I was working full-time for a movie studio. I had gotten married, and I got a dog. The American dream, right? Also, the landscape for being able to make a living as a film critic had changed.

Fast forward to today. I’m no longer working in Los Angeles and have bought my first house back in my home state of Massachusetts where I’m spending most of my time on home repairs while writing novels, short stories, and screenplays. I’ve had a lot of time in the past year or so to reflect on my contribution to the film industry, indie film specifically.

So why go back to FilmSnobbery after I summarily burned the entire site, all the previous content, and most of my social accounts to the ground? Why now?

The answer is simply this: I’m not done with FilmSnobbery yet. I thought I was, but I was wrong.

When I originally started the website back in 2009, it was as a podcast first, a review site second, and whatever else we could jam into it third. I spent years building up the website, the content, and my credibility within the independent film community with the vital help of several co-hosts, guests, and a dozen or more writers allowed me to create more hours in the day than I was able to fulfill on my own with their reviews and columns.

I was convinced after my first time at Sundance in 2012 that Los Angeles was going to be my ticket to making FilmSnobbery bigger and better. I believed that LA was my chance to truly help indie filmmakers at the heart of where the industry did business.

I was right in one sense. Once I got high enough in the studio food chain to make decisions on content programming and budgets, I was able to help a lot of indie film friends with screenings, table reads, DCP tests, and more at the studio I worked at. But that work came at the price of FilmSnobbery as a whole. I didn’t have the time to split between the two, and as a newlywed that needed the money, I chose the paycheck over the website.

I don’t have any regrets. I was able to live out several childhood dreams during my time in Los Angeles, and I’m proud of the work I and the rest of the FilmSnobbery team accomplished with the website over the course of a decade, but I needed to put that iteration of myself to rest.

Now, years later, I’m finally in a place where I can devote more time and energy to something that meant so much to me, and I hope meant a lot to others as well. I’m back to where I started FilmSnobbery, and it seemed like an apt place to resurrect it.

I don’t want to speak too much as to what we have planned, as I’m still working out the logistics of a few things and I don’t want to put the cart before the horse, but I hope you’ll let us inform and entertain you again in the coming year. To those who have never heard of us until now, welcome! To old friends and colleagues, welcome back!