Transcript: Never Talk Down to Your Audience — Even When They Have Terrible Taste

Rob Long on how to treat a man whose favorite Star Wars movie is 'The Phantom Menace'

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Anker.

First, an explanation on the background noise this week. Last week I was in a train station in France, this week I’m in a cafe somewhere in Europe. Last week, a bunch of people made a special effort to let me know they really liked the extra layer of audio atmosphere, the little dollop of authenticity in the train station one, so I thought, well, okay, for the next few weeks, anyway, I won’t worry about finding a quiet spot to record. I’ll just sit down somewhere and let it rip. If the audience likes it, keep doing it, is how it works in show business.

Audiences, of course, can be wrong. “You know what my favorite Star Wars movie is?” an accomplished and intelligent person said to me recently as we were making polite chit-chat before a meeting got underway. “It’s The Phantom Menace. I just love that one.”

“This meeting is over,” is what I did not say in response, but boy, did I want to.

There’s a lot about contemporary politics and culture that’s debatable, of course. We all have our own opinions and positions when it comes to things like taxes and Ukraine, but if there’s one thing that brings us all together into an undivided polity, surely it’s that the Star Wars movie with Jar Jar Binks and the pod race is really, really awful.

The Phantom Menace is hated by all sides. To the progressive left, it’s racist. To the Comic-Con nerds, it’s unforgivably childish. To cinephiles, it’s too reliant on fake-looking special effects. The terrible dialogue and the complicated plot manage to be both boring and offensive at the same time.

What you expect when the subject of the movie comes up is a general discussion about which parts, exactly, are the worst. What you don’t expect is someone to cheerfully say, “It’s my favorite Star Wars movie!”

And then you have to sit down and have a meeting and take this person seriously.