Not Meaningless After All? (Musing on my Movies)

Recently, I had a minor epiphany about myself and some of the films I’ve made over the years.

A question I’ve pondered from time to time regarding the whole activity of film making and story telling is how much do you focus on “message”–that is, the underlying meaning behind the plot and characters on the screen–as opposed to “story”.  Naturally, there is no reason a film can’t be strong in both, but what should be my focus, especially in the writing and development stage?

Citizen Kane vs. Speed Racer

To a certain degree, the movies Citizen Kane (1941) and Speed Racer (2008) sit on the opposite ends of some sort of spectrum for me.  One is a movie I acknowledge as one of the greatest movies ever made, but which I don’t particularly enjoy watching.  The other one is the film that I’ve described as “the worst movie that I ever thoroughly enjoyed”.  Guess which is which?  And which one shall I actually write about in this post?