David Mamet in his wonderful new book Bambi vs. Godzilla:
Every [film] studio pays myriads of number crunchers, market analysts, and various other experts to predict and strategize. The breakaway hits, however, have usually been films that were originally discarded as “too.”
“Too” what? What matter? Too original, too predictable, too mature, too infantile, too genre, not sufficiently genre, etcetera.
I am reminded of what I wrote in a free-lance definition of Downtown music:
The only thing that all Downtown music might be said to have in common is that, at least at the time of its original appearance, it was too outré – by dint of excessive length, stasis, simplicity, extemporaneity, consonance, noisiness, pop influence, vernacular reference, or other purported infraction – to have been considered “serious” modern music….
Mamet’s right: “Downtown” is unnecessary. The correct and adequate term is too.