The Film Snob's stance is one of proprietary knowingness-the pleasure he takes in movies derives not from the sensory experience of watching them, but from knowing more about them than you do, and from zealously guarding this knowledge from the cheesy, Julia Roberts-loving masses, who have no right whatsoever to be fluent in the works of Samuel (White Dog) Fuller and Andrei (the original Solaris) Tarkovsky. Like his thinner, marginally more presentable cousin, the Rock Snob (see “The Rock Snob’s Dictionary,” Volumes 1 through 3,Vanity Fair, Novembers 2000-2002), the Film Snob is willfully perverse in his taste. He scoffs at Ingmar Bergman and Fe derico Fellini, deeming them to be mere name-drops for bourgeois losers wishing to seem cultured, and instead devotes his attention to drecky Hong Kong martial-arts flicks and such misunderstood works of genius as Mike Judge’sOffice Space and Michael Mann’s Heat.The Film Snob fairly revels, in fact, in the notion that The Public Is Stupid and Ineducable, which is what sets him apart from the more benevolent Film Buff, the effervescent, Scorsese-style enthusiast who delights in introducing novitiates to The Bicycle Thief and Powell Pressburger movies. 

This abridged edition of “The Film Snob’s Dictionary” provides lay readers with a rudimentary grasp of Film Snobbery—just enough of an education to sustain you should you find yourself puzzling over the organizational principles of your “alternative” video store (where Wes Anderson’sBottle Rocket has been shelved in the James L. Brooks section, because, as the indignant clerk says, “Brooks was the executive producer!”), or should you wind up snowbound in Middletown, Connecticut, surrounded by Wesleyan University film-studies majors. Alas, space constraints forbid an explication of why Snobs feel that Toronto’s is the only film festival worth taking seriously, but perhaps this omission will be redressed in a future edition.

Anime. Catchall term for Japanese or Japanese-style animation, an understanding of which is said by Snobs to be crucial to understanding the future of cinema (yea, of our very culture!), since it, like CHOP-SOCKY, will inform all filmmaking visionaries worth a damn—even though it reliably focuses on species-nonspecific furry animals and childlike humanoids with enormous, saucery eyes. A societal subculture as much as it is a genre, anime takes many forms, including merchandise-shifting product (Pokemon), lyrical children’s fare (the films of Hayao Miyazaki), and explicit pornography (the subgenre known as hentai, in which the childlike humanoids have enormous, R. Crumb-inspired bosoms to go with their enormous, saucery eyes). Anime has established an American beachhead with the Chicago-based Manga Entertainment, the distributor behind the cult hits Ghost in the Shell and Blood: The Last Vampire.

Argento, Dario. Italian horrormeister who forsook his legitimate screenwriting background (he co-wrote Sergio Leone’s Once upon a Time in the West) to popularize a genre of splatter pic, known in Italy as the giallo. whose films, like those of HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS, are required viewing for Gore Snobs. His Snob-ratified classic is Suspiria (1977).

Bollywood. Broad term for India’s Bombay-based film industry, which, though it has produced visionaries like Raj Kapoor, more routinely pumps out soapy, mass-market movies that, when projected in theaters in American university towns, somehow morph into art films.

Braldiage, Stan. Prolific, Kansas City-born maker of labor-intensive films known only to difficult art-world people; the proto—Matthew Barney. At it since the 1950s, Brakhage has made more than 300 films using various methodologies—sometimes hand-painting the celluloid frame by frame, sometimes filming actual scenes of childbirth, autopsy, and intercourse in a Warholian deadpan. Recently accorded the honor of being anthologized by the CRITERION COLLECTION. Titles include Thigh Line Lyre Triangular, Christ Mass Sex Dance, and The Cat of the Worm’s Green Realm.

Cahiers du Cinema. The single greatest force in inviting ridicule of French intellectuals as absurdist twits. Founded in 1951, the still-extant Paris-based monthly first attracted significant American attention when, in 1954, it published contributor Francois Truffaut’s auteur theory, which posited the director as the sole author of a film. Subsequent issues built auteur-ist mythologies around such red-blooded Americans as DON SIEGEL, SAMUEL FULLER, and Nicholas Ray, putting far more thought into analysis of these directors’ B pictures than the directors had put into making them. Cahiers du Cinema also abetted the French mania for Jerry Lewis, deeming him “le Roi du Crazy.”

Cassavetes, John. Handsome actor-director (1929-1989) whose heavily improvised, occasionally tedious independent films, especially Faces (1968) and Husbands (1970), anticipated and influenced the DOGME 95 movement— though Cassavetes carried off his self-indulgences with an acuity and slim-lapelled flair that his heirs lack.

Chop-socky. Formerly derogatory term for Asian martial-arts movies, since repurposed, a la “queer,” as the hipster’s term of choice. Though it encompasses everything from the Taiwanese kung fu films of the 70s to the product cranked out by the Singapore-based Shaw Brothers studio, chop-socky is most identified with the Hong Kong film industry that begat Jackie Chan, Chow Yun-Fat, and John Woo. Despite genre limitations that its Asian audiences plainly recognize, chop-socky, like ANIME, is upheld by feverish Snobs as the path all future cinema must take, which is why the only recent mainstream films that matter are Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Matrix trilogy, and Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming Kill Bill. Tarantino’s a Johnny-come-lately; I was going down to Chinatown for my chop-socky fix in ’83!

Cinecitta. Massive filmmaking complex located outside of Rome, best known as the place where Fellini shot most of his films and where U.S. studios, seeking to lower production costs, steered their business in the wide-screen era of Quo Vadis, Ben-Hur, and Cleopatra. For Snobs, the ability to pronounce “Cinecitta” (Chee-nih-chee-tah) is a crucial demarcator between the savant and the idiot.

Criterion Collection, the. Achingly tasteful video-reissue company that, like Starbucks, has found success by convincing consumers that connoisseurship always comes at a cost. (The lovingly packaged two-disc Criterion version of Straw Dogs—with Dolby Digital Stereo 2.0, a Peckinpah documentary, and a new interview with Susan George!—will set you back 40 bucks.) Having all but cornered the market on the works of prestige directors like Jean Cocteau, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa, Criterion has branched out into repackaging rock documentaries (Gimme Shelter, Monterey Pop) and “acceptable” fun movies such as My Man Godfrey, Armageddon, and Withnail and I.

Dogme 95. Severe, self-parodying directors’ collective (founded by the Danish filmmakers Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg in 1995) that calls for greater authenticity in film and argues that new video technology will democratize the filmmaking process and deliver the masses from their oppression by evil, formulaic, special-effects-laden studio fare. Dogme 95 makes its members adhere to a “Vow of Chastity” whose 10 rules include “The camera must be handheld” and “The film must not contain superficial action. (Murders, weapons, etc. must not occur.)” Official Dogme films are amusingly numbered and titled like abstract-art studies—e.g., Dogme #2: Idioterne, Dogme #8: Fuckland.

Falconetti, Maria. French stage actress of the early 20th century, renowned for having given only two film performances, the more significant of which was in the title role of the Snob urtext The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). A FILM COMMENT writer recently tried to stump the “Oracle of Bacon at Virginia” Web site— which runs a computer program that plays the “She Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game—by entering Falconetti’s name, only to find that she, despite her scant film credits, could be connected to Bacon in just three steps.

Fessenden, Larry. Gaunt, raggedy character actor turned hotly tipped savior of indie horror. Having written and directed the vampire movie Habit (1997) and the creepfest Wendigo (2001), Fessenden now bears the weight of Snob expectation that he will deliver some sort of horror masterwork that will place him in league with John Carpenter, George Romero, DARIO ARGENTO, and 70s-era Brian De Palma.

Film Comment. Smug, aggressively elitist bimonthly magazine published by the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Where Snobs go to read (or write) dithery articles about BOLLYWOOD and despairing critiques of popular cinema.

Film Threat. Surprisingly buoyant, unsmug Web ’zine (originally a print magazine) devoted to independent film. Where Snobs go to read fulsome appreciations of Sam Raimi and interviews with such “Queens of the B’s” as Debbie Rochon and Tina Krause.

Fuller, Samuel. Grizzled, irascible, ultra-prolific director and ex-crime reporter (1911-1997) who defined the first era of independent film with his violent pulp pictures in the 1950s and 60s. Though his Snob repute is unimpeachable, many Film Snobs would be hard-pressed to actually name one of his films. (His 80s comeback movies, The Big Red One and White Dog, are the fallbacks.) In the latter part of his life, he relocated to France and basked in his auteur status there.

Kael, Pauline. Revered film critic (1919-2001) whose work, most of which appeared in The New Yorker, stood out for its bracing, provocative prose and its author’s loony, nonsensical taste; no one was smarter and more cogent about Cary Grant’s career and Steven Spielberg’s early films, yet no one was more reckless in overpraising grim 1970s murk and unbearably blowsy female performances (e.g., Elizabeth Taylor in X Y & Zee, Karen Black in Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean, Bette Midler in Big Business). A tiny woman, Kael nevertheless inspired fear in her legions of movie-critic acolytes (known as “Paulettes”), full-grown men and women who tremulously sought her unforthcoming approval and pilgrimaged to her home in the Berkshires in the vain hope of being anointed her heir apparent.

Kehr, Dave. Third-or possibly even fourth-string New York Times movie critic. Preferred by Snobs over Elvis Mitchell, A. O. Scott, and Stephen Holden.

Laser disc. Outmoded digital-video format, introduced in the early 1980s but superseded by the DVD in the late 90s. Though the unwieldy, pizza-size disc never caught on in the mass market, Snob purists insist that it offers superior picture and sound quality, and pride themselves on owning out-of-print, special-feature-enhanced discs from the CRITERION COLLECTION. Dude, I just found a laser disc of Blade Runner on eBay!

Laughlin, Tom. Eccentric writer-director-producer-star of the 1971 movie Billy Jack, a queasy melding of hippie proselytizing, proto-CHOP-SOCKY fight sequences, and Costnerish embrace of Native American wisdom. Filmed on a tiny budget outside of the studio system, Billy Jack is a Snob rallying point, though it resides in an uncertain place between kitsch classic and fearless feat of maverick 70s filmmaking. Laughlin tends carefully to his cult, selling tapes of his lectures on Jungian psychology and occasionally threatening to run for president and/or make more films.

Lewis, Herschell Gordon. Dilettante filmmaker hailed by Snobs as the Godfather of Splatter. On a lark, Lewis, who to this day works full-time as an advertising executive, began making low-budget, excessively gory movies in the early 60s, among them Blood Feast, Two Thousand Maniacs!, and The Gruesome Twosome—all required titles for anyone wishing to flaunt his trash credentials.

Mini-DV. Abbreviation for “miniature digital video,” the preferred format of both independent filmmakers shooting on a shoestring and affluent directors seeking to infuse their films with a frisson of guerrilla intransigence. Steven Soderbergh used Canon’s XL IS Mini-DV camera to shoot Full Frontal, his DOGME 95 homage. For my next film, everyone’s working for free, and were shooting it entirely on Mini-DV in Casey Affleck's garage.

Mitchell, Cameron. Ursine veteran character actor (1918-1994) with astonishingly long list of horror and straight-to-video credits; the Brian Dennehy of the B’s. Though he had “straight” roles in the 50s studio films How to Marry a Millionaire and Carousel, Mitchell derived his Snob cred from playing military men and police officers in such obscure 80s splatter pics as Rage to Kill, Killpoint, and Kill Squad.

Nykvist, Sven. Swedish cinematographer who, by virtue of his early renown as Ingmar Bergman’s regular cameraman and his later work for Woody Allen, Philip Kaufman, and ANDREI TARKOVSKY, among others, has earned that rarest of honors for a cinematographer: his own section in your local alternative video store. Idiot, you’re looking in the wrong place! Star 80 is in the Nykvist section, not the Bob Fosse one!

Office Space. Mildly diverting 1999 comedy about cubicle life in corporate America, puzzlingly accorded classic status in Snob circles, where ritual mass viewings are common. The sole live-action feature by Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill creator Mike Judge, Office Space is representative of a whole strain of underperforming studio films that only Snobs “got,” such as John Boorman’s Excalibur, the Keanu-Swayze surf movie Point Break, the Val Kilmer vehicle Real Genius, and the PAULINE KAEL-anointed Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai.

Rosenbaum, Jonathan. Industrious but mirthless film critic for the Chicago Reader; one of the few important film writers of the post-KAEL era. Given to chiding fellow Snobs about their ignorance of Iranian cinema.

Siegel, Don. American-born, Cambridge-educated director and Clint Eastwood mentor (1912-1991) who earned Snob plaudits by virtue of having directed the prison drama Riot in Cell Block 11, the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the Eastwood masterworks Dirty Harry and Escape from Alcatraz. Like SAMUEL FULLER, Siegel elicits strong public endorsements from wannabe-toughster Snobs trying to make up for dermatological and penile shortcomings; unlike Fuller, Siegel was more bemused than flattered by the auteur treatment he received in France.

Sirk, Douglas. Prime purveyor of the lavish and lachrymose “women’s pictures” of the 1950s. A refugee from Hitler’s Germany, Sirk transformed himself into America’s premier soapster, elevating the schlock melodramas Magnificent Obsession, Written on the Wind, and Imitation of Life into Snob classics with his keen eye and prescient kitsch sensibility (as evidenced by Dorothy Malone’s suggestive fondling of a model oil derrick in Written on the Wind). Snob auteur Todd Haynes paid painstaking homage to Sirk with last year’s Far from Heaven.

lamiroff, Akim. Hirsute Russian character actor beloved for his swarthy, often comic turns in Orson Welles’s films of the 50s (Touch of Evil, Mr. Arkadin, the unfinished Don Quixote) and seemingly every movie made in the 1940s. Valued by Snobs for the Welles connection and for being less known to lay film buffs than his contemporary Euro-eccentric Peter Lorre. Orson always said to Cybill and me, "There’s no one I liked working with better than Akim Tamiroff. ”

Tarkovsky, Andrei. Russian director (1932-1986) of stunning intellect and visual acuity, but afflicted with a glacial sense of pacing that makes watching his films not so much an entertainment choice as a lifestyle. His seven features, which include the original Solaris and the SVEN NYKViST-shot The Sacrifice, are manna to Snobs for whom Jean Cocteau, Ingmar Bergman, and Alain Resnais are insufficiently opaque.

Tasty print. Grating Snob catchphrase for a museum-quality print of a restored film. The Film Forum had a tasty print of The Manchurian Candidate—the blacks were so deep!

W.I.P. Snob abbreviation for Women in Prison, the exploitation subgenre whose films reliably feature sadistic lesbian wardens, gratuitous shower scenes, and titillating-appalling catfights. Though the heyday of W.I.P.’s was the early 1970s, when Roger Corman’s New World Pictures released its “Women’s Penitentiary” trilogy of The Big Doll House, The Big Bird Cage, and Women in Cages (all of which starred Pam Grier), W.I.P.’s continue to be made by low-budget outfits to this day, and tastemaker directors such as John Waters and Quentin Tarantino have incorporated many stock W.I.P. elements into their work.