I'm sorta new around here; most interested in the PTA forum. Can anyone relate a history of the site? When / how / why was it formed? Was it always film-related, etc, etc.
Long story short, we started on the forums at ptanderson.com. When that website was shut down, Michael Wilson started this forum and invited us over. More info here:
http://xixax.com/index.php?topic=2.0
Curious question back: how did you found xixax, through cigs and red vines?
I haven't been around for that long compared to others members here, but it's rarely you see new members post anything. They mostly lurk around in the shadows. There's usually some activity around big news regarding a new PTA film or around it's release, though.
Also, don't forget to introduce yourself here!
Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on October 04, 2017, 06:50:16 PMhttp://xixax.com/index.php?topic=2.0
Quote from: wilberfan on January 22, 2018, 07:23:09 PM
Some quick googling didn't turn up anything... Has there ever been any discussions of Xixax elsewhere--by non-Xixaxers? Or Xixaxers who were perhaps lurking or posting undercover? Maybe this is such an off-the-radar place that only the truly motivated find their way here. Perhaps I'm thinking of a situation like Reddit, where they'll roll their eyes at 4Chan (or vice-versa)? Is Xixax really the one-of-a-kind, low-key, insular place that it feels like sometimes?
I'm hardly one to speak on this with any authority, but yeah, I think it is. Been fascinating to watch the rest of the movie bubble catch up over the years while this place has remained a secret garden.
currently i'm posting a couple times a day and i feel like i'm flooding the place lol
it's important to my mental health for there to be at least one place i can talk about one thing i like in this world, and really anytime you movie geek here you're doing okay
once again casually overwhelming the place. even with faulty conversations i think the spirit still lives. there's maybe a lower amount of posting than during other low periods, but i actually think there's more general people than other times. and many people with deep roots. frankly again again i see the names of people i know nothing about. sometimes i wonder if people i irl know stop through here and wonder about this side of me unseen to them. these days i'm pretty solid at keeping it pure movies. this is as far as i go off track, this post that's about me, about you.
it is still one of the sites I visit regularly. I enjoy reading the posts here, even if they are few.
I've been around, in both participatory and non-participatory capacities, since the early days of ptanderson.com. Activity and passion here ebbs and flows, usually in strict accordance with PTA's shooting schedules, but this forum remains for me a treasure trove, a wellspring of cinephilic joy, dense with knowledge and teeming with positive, often hilarious vibes. I love you all.
Also: we helped, in our own way(s), birth the inimitable David Lowery! A great soldier of cinema.
Yay us.
if we don't like each other by this point we're doing it wrong
I registered in 2003. I can't think of other sites I still visit after 15 years outside of maybe IMDb and Yahoo! Sports. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram didn't even exist...
Too much history over here :violin:
the people is what keeps me here. there is more active places I can visit if I just wanna read about movies.
love y'all!
This is the first spot I check each morning, and any new post makes the day a lil better ~
This is the only place I really post on the whole internet, and the only message board I've ever visited with any regularity. Doesn't bother me when things are slow. Great just to know y'all are out there.
Quote from: jenkins on October 18, 2018, 04:58:06 PM
sometimes i wonder if people i irl know stop through here and wonder about this side of me unseen to them.
Thought the same thing a few times. Few people with whom I'm close are super into movies, but there are friends of friends of friends who I suspect must have stumbled on here at some point. It's too big and too good to miss, especially for cinephiles of a certain age group. As interacting with strangers on the internet has become more socially acceptable, I've become more comfortable with participating and even making the odd reference to seeing something on here in conversation, but it's still not something I'd flat out ask an acquaintance about.
It's strange but also kinda nice to think you're the only ones who get to see most of these thoughts I share. This side of myself would otherwise be almost completely silenced.
Quote from: BB on October 20, 2018, 11:53:55 PM
It's strange but also kinda nice to think you're the only ones who get to see most of these thoughts I share. This side of myself would otherwise be almost completely silenced.
that's like a valentine card. it's a really good one.
oh right so Just Withnail met the guy i co-directed Gooses with and that was like years ago and i'd always meant to ask one of them how the introduction went and i ended up asking Just Withnail when i irl saw him and it turned out he'd mentioned Xixax and i was like oh, you know i mean i was like "oh," because that was when i learned that. i actually haven't seen that co-director in a long while but that's literally an outside story.
still I think the spirit is alive, I am not saying it's not, but now I realize even some of the xixax staples have drifted. Sometimes there is in fact no one here. When I would see this from the outside in the past I remember thinking both "serves you right" (because if I saw this from the outside it meant I'd departed for one of the reasons I have) and "but it will keep on." As in, I never thought myself a vital figure, you know, I believed in xixax on its own. So when I am here and no one else is now hmm I think "well fuck" in a general sense, reflecting upon cultures and attitudes shifting, people aging and their lives changing etc. this not a rally cry or a desperate plea or anything like that, it is an observation that xixax is no longer the 24/7 it once was
i'm guilty of thinking i was exaggerating, but i was being highly accurate in fact. again, it's not a cry for help. you should do more? lol. i'd never ask such a thing. you should do exactly what you do. and i should face reality. that's how i like things.
Who here is from the old board? I don't remember everyone who is that is still active. I am. Got on when Magnolia was the buzzed about new film from PTA. Good times.
Me! Though I was a mere teen at the time - right around the theatrical release of PDL, so some 16 years by now? - and at one point just became a lurker for about a decade before re-emerging.
Quote from: Gold Trumpet on November 14, 2018, 08:17:09 PM
Who here is from the old board? I don't remember everyone who is that is still active. I am. Got on when Magnolia was the buzzed about new film from PTA. Good times.
15+ years strong and still going for me :yabbse-thumbup:
A week from today, I'll have been here 15 years exactly.
18 years? Can that be right? Watched Magnolia on video (VHS!), watched Boogie Nights shortly thereafter, found the old C&C site and devoured everything on it, signed up for the board whenever it was added, posted way too damn much, migrated to Xixax with everyone else after Greg shuttered the old forum.
I stumbled onto the Cigarettes and Coffee board in the summer of 2001, when I would've been 12. I had a life changing experience watching 'Magnolia' on a VHS rented from the library that spring and I wanted to attempt to figure it all out. The board was helpful in that, along with providing a whole range of film related topics to mull over. You could feel the sense of camaraderie there bleeding through every post. I most vividly remember reading this guy's rough draft of a Kevin Smith styled script entitled "Strapped For Cash". It was probably really bad, but at the time I was just so impressed that he wrote it all. I started to sneak away into the acres of woods in my uncle's backyard with a notebook and began writing ideas for movies. I would usually go back there to look for snakes- a favorite 12 year old past time, but instead I started to conceptualize a movie about kids who go out hunting for snakes and are lured bv a child molester who lives in an old mansion there. The blossom of another idea was about a paranoid conspiracy theorist investigating strange coincidences and connecting the dots between them (very Magnolia inspired) I still want to write that script, I was so captivated by the idea for a long time.
The important thing here is that the board encouraged me to pick up a notebook and start writing, reading that guys script showed me that you could make cool things happen on paper. It was a very secretive practice at the time, I would leave the house out of the back door so no one would see me with a notebook tucked under my shirt and head down the trail a few hundred yards before I sat down to write. I must've been highly aware of the stigma applied to a boy keeping a journal. Looking back on it, anyone who had known I was writing would've been incredibly supportive of it! I just didn't want them inquiring about what I was up to, perhaps deflating my balloon being under the assumption that a 12 year old can write a movie.
I still remember where the first Magnolia vhs ended ("Yes, Stanley.") and the second one began ("Well, that was in French..."). But I cannot understate the massive influence this site has had on my development as a cineaste/man of taste.