One of my favorite podcasts of this year was Downlow.D: The Rise and Fall of Harry Knowles and Ain’t It Cool News. This nine-part series chronicles the birth, dominance and downfall of the infamous film news and criticism website, and the allegations of sexual misconduct against its creator, Harry Knowles.
I’ve spoken many times about the impact Ain’t It Cool News had on my life. It was the first site I visited for almost a decade; I can still remember sneaking to a back computer in my high school journalism class to read the spy reviews of Batman and Robin and Titanic back in 1997. The site was the first one to make me realize film criticism wasn’t something for only the elite, and looking back on my older blog reviews from those days (which I will never share), I can see the influence of that site on my writing, for good and ill. I aged out of the site as I grew older and gravitated toward critics like Roger Ebert or the collectives of Birth.Movies.Death. and The Dissolve, but several of the AICN writers are still doing work I follow closely. The sexual misconduct allegations against Harry Knowles further diminished any interest I had in the site.
I was able to speak recently with Downlow.D writer and creator Joe Scott about his experience creating the podcast, the impact and legacy of AICN, and his recent interview with Knowles. If you’re a We’re Watching Here subscriber, this will also be posted as an interview there. I greatly enjoyed this talk with Joe, and I hope you do, too.
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