Hello beautiful readers. Just over 8 years ago I started The Movie Bit. It was a passion project. It was a labour of love. Writers came and went and contributed some wonderful and thought provoking content. You lovely folks commented, tweeted, downloaded and swore at us :)
However, over the last few months I find myself not only having less and less time to work on the site, but I’m also finding my passion and love for movies dwindling. I’ve been a movie fan since I was shitting myself nearly 40 years ago. Movies have been a huge part of my life and no doubt they’ve forged my personality along the way. I always blame Mel Gibson for my kissing techniques. I blame Marty McFly for my driving and I blame Darth Vader for my lightsaber skills.
I find myself getting more and more frustrated as time goes on as certain studios more or less ignore sites like us completely. Sites with passion for film. As opposed to hap hazard portal sites where movie related news is as disposable as the cat memes the same sites deal out. While these sites do well, and that's fine people will be left without intelligent, insightful and legitimate movie punditry, reviews and so on.
The likes of Disney and Warner Bros along with Paramount have been exceptional to deal with and work alongside, as have some of the Irish distributors like Element Pictures and Eclipse Pictures. The rest of them however….well..I’m keeping the swearing to a minimum.
When you step back and look at things, it’s a crazy world, this whole movie website thing. Studios need you to talk about their products. They moan when things are critical. Some will even black list you when things get too opinionated. And, like most things in Hollywood, you’re only flavor of the month for a short while. And then they move onto the next movie site. And eventually the circle starts up again. And, as much as that annoys me, I get that. In years to come, we'll probably be in a bunch of Adam Sandler movies as opposed to a Tarantino classic!
Then there is the complete switch to social media where people are literally consuming as much content as they can shove into their eyeballs while on the toilet. That's fine, but unfortunately as a bi-product sites like us find it harder to get audiences. And find it harder to get good content from studios and everywhere else. Far from an excuse, but that's they way things are going. Again, I'm not blaming anybody, but this is the digital environment that we all live in.
All that said, we’ve had an amazing ride here. We’ve brought some of the biggest names in movies to you in exclusive interviews, the majority of which are on our podcast...all for free. I’ve been privileged to talk to some of my heroes. We won awards. We had the highest rated, number one movie podcast on iTunes countless times. We hosted exclusive screenings. We did full on Facebook live videos, professionally produced. We did a damn lot. Nobody got paid, everybody did this for a labor of love. Which was probably the biggest problem….in hindsight.
So, what does all this mean, considering you’ve waded through the above horse poop. The site will be producing very little written content moving forward. And when I say very little, I mean next to nothing. As of typing, this will be the 10,368th article that we’ve published.
Which is a phenomenal amount of content when you think about it. Is it our last article? More than likely. Any other articles may just be links to future podcasts..but more on that in a bit.
As for the much loved podcast, things are a bit up in the air there. I haven’t quite decided on which way to go with this. In a perfect world, it’ll stay on it’s weekly upload schedule. It may move to every other week or monthly, or it may go away completely. Ultimately, I’m finding it incredibly hard to put all of this down. The site and the podcast have played such a part in my life for nearly a decade. Whether it’s ego or what, I don’t know. I just don’t want to pull the trigger on this old dog. But I know, that's the right thing to do.
I’ve developed other projects that are taking my time, I’ve two kids, a wife, an amazing day job and no life. Something's gotta give.
So to all the writers that have passed through, thank you. You’ve made this site what it is. Especially to Tom White. Tom has been the glue that has held The Movie Bit together for so long. He worked without asking. He worked harder without encouragement. He worked his ass off. The dude gave such a fuck about this place.
Quick story. A while back myself and Tom shared a room attending a movie event. It may well have been a Disney Day. I generally wake early, so I was lying in bed listening to a snoring Tom. Not long after, he woke up. I stayed motionless. What’s the first thing he did? Picked up his phone and started logging onto the site looking at stats. This blew my mind, that anybody would care so much. So, thanks, buddy!
Most of all, thank you to YOU. You’ve read, you’ve lingered, you’ve enjoyed and you’ve endured. You’ll never know how much it meant and still means to know that you guys read and loved what we produced. THANK YOU!
So, that’s it. That’s all we wrote! I’ll leave you with a parting quote from a certain, scruffy looking nerf herder!
“You’re all clear kid, now let’s blow this thing and go home!”
Vic Barry
Editor
