To say there are a lot of shows out there is to understate every part of that sentence. “A lot” is humbled by the weekly rollout of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Disney and Apple creations. “Out there,” too, is a phrase more appropriate for the impressive space and variety of jungle life than for the celestial procreation of starry Hollywood universes. Even “show” feels a little inadequate - modest writers are now given opportunities they never dared dream of before. Good ones are given budgets and artistic freedoms reserved a mere decade ago to the rare few directorial auteurs. Great ones? Well, great ones hardly put on something as meek and unassuming as a “show.” No, great ones shatter your sense of human psychology and the limits of artistic world-making. Great ones don’t make shows – they make interstellar shooting fucking stars.īryan Koppelman and David Levien (henceforth K&L) are probably the best creators of testosterone-filled worlds Hollywood has ever seen. Their claim to immortality will always be the poker movie of all-time, Rounders, a movie that has brought tens of thousands of people to gambling ruin by portraying poker as a path to ultimate masculinity. Sit at a poker table anywhere around the world, and speak out any one of the movie’s hundreds of memorable lines, and you’ll get nods of recognition from every single person at the table. 21 years after the film’s release, people who barely speak English will recognize every single line, often with glee. When you create something this powerful and memorable, you really ought to consider quitting - it’s going to be nearly impossible to match. It took them 18 years, but after many pale imitations of their own past glory ( Knockaround Guys, Runaway Jury, Tilt, Runner Runner ), K&L ended up writing something that somehow trumps the best card movie that will ever be written. I’ve enjoyed many shows and good ones of late. Billions - billions outrages me in its beauty, reminds me over and over of the distance between good writing and HOF writing, and is a creature I would quite gladly have given up my life to spend a day near the site of its birth.
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