Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. Ain't It Cool is entering its 19th year of existence, which is freaking me the heck out. I've been a part of the site since it began in one way or another. I don't think I started writing for Harry until late '96 or early '97, but even before our professional relationship I knew him, his dad and his sister as the ginger folks who had all the cool movie posters at the City Wide Garage Sale every month. I bought Empire Strikes Back lobby cards and one sheets for Up In Smoke, The Terminator and Friday the 13th from them.
I saw Harry at Austin Film Society events and began chatting for real around the time the first Quentin Tarantino Film Fest happened. I was 15 and a freshman in high school. At age 14 I had already locked down an interview with George Carlin for my school newspaper and knew that whatever path my life took it was going to involve movies. Little did I know how big of an influence this walking, talking, movie-paper selling cartoon character would end up being on my life as a friend, mentor and colleague.
Ain't It Cool was in its infancy when I began writing for it. Harry and I developed a close friendship and luckily for me back then Harry just had his buddies writing for him. Somehow I went from teenage dork who would contribute the occasional review or interview to becoming Managing Editor, a term I still don't really know the definition of since I pretty much still do the same thing I used to except now I get to try to organize things a little bit behind the scenes.
It's been a long road, but at the same time it feels like it's only been a blink of an eye. 2015 marks the 19th anniversary of the site and also my 19th year with it. I've been here well over half my life and while there have been ups and downs I've always been proud of my output, flabbergasted by the nerdy situations I've found myself in (I mean, why the hell would Steven Spielberg ever talk to me about Jaws for 45 minutes? Really. That's just absurd.) and frankly humbled by the love aimed my way over the years by you guys, the readers.
The Talkback is a notoriously Mos Eisley-ish place, a forum you don't want to wander into unless you're ready to shoot first and ask questions later, but they do represent a (mostly) unfiltered viewpoint of many a geek out there. However negative the anonymous posters can be I've also seen a bright side of these forums over the years. There have been real, passionate movie discussions that have unraveled in the depths below and genuine friendships forged therein. Personally I've appreciated the commenters. They've kept me honest and absolutely helped me hone my writing over the years.
Still, these talkbacks represent less than 1% of AICN's readership.Over the last two decades I've been fortunate enough to field emails, Facebook messages, twitter replies and even had the occasional personal meeting with many of the silent majority and can not thank you guys enough for being so cool and sticking with us over the years.
I know we haven't made it easy at times. I've started columns only to let them fizzle out without any notice and promised coverage I just couldn't give. I can't guarantee that won't happen again as we continue on, but I can say that I've been working with Harry to try to make 2015 a banner year for the site in terms of content from the voices you guys have come to know over the years. It's a much different landscape for movie news than it was in the wild west days when the site started, but I'm hoping to bring some of that identity back to the site in the coming months.
This article marks the 70,000 recorded article on AICN. There's a whole year plus of content that is just gone, but 70k ain't nothing to blink at and the reason we've been able to hit that landmark is because of you guys. If you didn't give a shit about reading us looney tunes over here then we would have folded up our doors years ago.
So, thank you guys for all the support. Here's to another 70,000 articles full of cool news, rumors and maybe the occasional insight from the writers here. Fair warning, at least 65,749 of those articles are probably going to be about Star Wars... I mean, who isn't foaming at the mouth about these new movies at this point?
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
Follow Me On Twitter
