People want to TALK about it!

Now you know what it was like going to the movies in the late sixties and seventies. It was not high concept entertainment, it was food for thought, the movies were STIMULATING!

No one says they saw “Adolescence” and shrugs.

And maybe you haven’t seen it yet, but if so, you will. Because you’ll feel the societal pressure, your friends will testify, INSIST that you watch it.

This is the modern paradigm. Promotion/publicity/success comes from the bottom up, not the top down. The gatekeepers try to anoint winners. And sometimes they succeed. They’re in cahoots with the PR people… There’s the anticipatory hype, then the hype about each and every star, then analysis after the project launches.

The gatekeepers missed “Adolescence.”

But it’s more than that. Multiple people have told me that Stephen Graham is the best actor of the century. Your opinion may differ, but one thing is for sure, Graham is not a conventional movie star, young and good-looking.

And unlike an American series, there are only four episodes.

And “Adolescence” is not comedy or fantasy, but real life.

Felice told me she was glad she didn’t have kids. Amy wondered what her son was doing all the time in his room, on his computer.

We can’t know what our progeny are doing 24/7.

Having said that… I went to school. Public school. And there was a constant undercurrent of bullying and tribal war. Parents think they can stop bullying, maybe by going to the Administration. That’s the worst thing you can do, now your kid is a pariah.

To stop bullying you would have to start at the core. Why do certain people have to lord it over others, why do they have to make others scapegoats? And this is not only schoolchildren…

And you can be anti-technology all you want, but the internet is not going away. Even if you take away smartphones from kids, they’ll go home and get on their laptop.

And how do you cope when someone in your family steps over the line, acts badly. Some live in denial. Most soul search.

“Adolescence” is what we crave. In a constant world of me-too in entertainment. Tell me why I’ve got to see that TV show again, why I’ve got to listen to that record? Where’s the innovation, where’s the difference?

There is none.

“Adolescence” is a visceral experience that cannot be forgotten.

“‘Adolescence’ Sets Netflix Record With 66.3 Million Views, Best Ever Two-Week Total for a Limited Series”: https://shorturl.at/bxzjX

Proving that distribution is king. “Adolescence” would have had nowhere near the reach if it was a movie. Or on a service other than Netflix. Once people started to watch the series, it moved up the Netflix chart, and I don’t know about you, but I always see what is popular, and a lot of it is dreck, but I always investigate the left field stuff I haven’t heard of.

And the friction is almost nonexistent. You click and you’re watching.

Now it’s much harder to break a record. Then again, it’s much cheaper to make a record than a TV series. But with all art, first and foremost comes the conception. Which frequently occurs in an instant, a lightning bolt of insight.

Hacks don’t like this. They’d rather assemble the usual suspects, the same writers and players and massage something to be…exactly what? Something just like the rest?

And the major labels won’t sign and promote anything outside. It’s too heavy a lift for them. You must prove there’s an audience for it first. The music being so great that it deserves an audience? That disappeared with Mo Ostin.

So we’ve got two trains running. One going to the usual destination and the other to where people want to go but they’re completely unaware of. You have to make it and then they will come. This depends upon instinct, not research. That was Steve Jobs’s genius.

Most shows today have no legs. But people keep e-mailing me about “Adolescence,” weeks after it launched. And this wouldn’t happen if all four episodes were not available at once. Most people I know view them all in a day. You can’t stop. You’re in this milieu, there’s a mood, it’s more than wanting to know what happens, it’s wanting to inhabit this space where feelings, emotions are everything.

This is the artistic breakthrough of the year. Watch it to know why.

I can still feel the pain.