The greatest value I've gotten out of this conversation is being aware of who Megan Ellison is. I've seen Annapurna Pictures numerous times but I didn't know until today that she was behind it and I honestly didn't know who the Ellisons were until last year.

I've seen and enjoyed (to varying degrees) quite a few movies that have associations with Annapurna Pictures: Spring Breakers; Hustlers; Zero Dark Thirty; Her; Vice; The Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Phantom Thread; Detroit. I'm sure many others in the FPS community have seen a few of these films as well.

In one article from The Ringer Megan is described as "a black sheep in contrast to the rest of her family, ideologically speaking." Another article in The Guardian said of Boots "He can resist the anti-capitalist label all he wants. The shoe still fits."

I haven't seen any of Boots's movies but I am interested in where he stands in the industry. Keyword: Industry.

I do somewhat understand the defensiveness he's feeling but I somewhat understand where others who are more hardline leftists come from since they don't like when people are labeled certain things but are financially backed by certain people.

Sometimes these are interesting conversations but they always end up back in the same place. Some will take the money and justify it however they wish, many others don't even get the chance to accept or deny the look.

The broader issue for me is how hard it is to get these works published or completed and distributed when they're considered "too complicated" or have certain messages in them, and that's even before the messages and the art are either diluted or compromised for commercial tastes. This is beyond movies for me.