I do think it's hard to make movies about artists who produce art that's not reflective of mass tastes. And there are enough tortured artist movies out there to last us a while, I think. But I wish it was possible to make a mainstream movie about non-mainstream art that didn't have at its core the implication that maybe the art involved is really just terrible, and maybe the people invested in it are delusional for caring about it. There is actual musicality involved in new music, it's not just an absurd spectacle. There are things to parody in arts communities, but it isn't always the art itself or the commitment to making it.
Pretension? Or Satire?
I genuinely can't decide how I feel about Untitled, a movie about the avant garde arts scene in New York. On the one hand, there's Adam Goldberg and Vinnie Jones, who pops up in the most unexpected places. There's the fact that the description of the movie uses the phrase "new music composer" instead of "avant garde composer," which seems to suggest some actual familiarity with the way folks in that scene describe themselves, rather than a rank stereotype. The use of a bucket in Goldberg's character's performances may be a joke about Bang on a Can, which if true, would be a decently witty in-joke. On the other hand, there's a hot-girl-seduces-weird-artist plot, and a lot of visual art that doesn't seem to be a terribly original commentary on Damien Hirst. So I'm conflicted.