About me

Nobody Knows Anything takes its name from one of the film industry’s most enduring observations. Predictions are everywhere, but understanding is much rarer. This site looks beyond the headlines to examine what audiences actually watched, why trends emerge, and what the data really tells us.

The title comes from William Goldman’s 1983 book Adventures in the Screen Trade. More than forty years later, his words remain just as relevant. For every The Odyssey that arrives with huge expectations and delivers as expected, there is an Obsession that quietly exceeds everyone’s expectations and reminds us that cinema is still wonderfully unpredictable.

“Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

I have been passionate about all things film and media for over 30 years. In that time, the industry has been transformed, from the days of film reels and print magazines to streaming platforms and social media. I’ve watched it all change, and I’ve been part of that change.

I might seem overly critical about the state of the film industry, but that criticism comes from a place of deep passion. I have spent 35+ years working within it and talking about it. It saddens me to see so many people in denial simply because box office figures keep rising. But a rising box office does not mean a healthy industry; it just means tickets cost more. Cinema used to be, and should still be, about more than just the big event movies.

The industry is in denial, but the numbers don’t lie. While audiences will always show up for the biggest tentpoles, the broader cinema-going habit has been eroded. Streaming has fundamentally changed how people watch films, and the industry is still catching up. Or pretending it isn’t a problem.

My analysis is not based on ComScore data. It is based on hours of online research, industry knowledge built up over almost 30 years, and a commitment to looking beyond the headline numbers. I read Screen International, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter cover to cover every week. I remember buying them from Wardour Street News—and I remember the many other film, broadcast, and media magazines that have come and gone.

Research was always my passion. I have spent weeks going through 50-year-old film ledgers to track down film materials around the world. I have gone through 60-year-old legal files to track down ownership of films Rank had lost rights to. I have searched through nitrate film storage vaults at Pinewood and Elstree Studios, and at Rank Film Laboratories in Denham, hunting for pre-print material of films Rank had lost rights to—tracking down ownership and returning material to them. I have also organised donations to the National Film Archive for films of interest to them, including several films in their 1992 “Missing Believed Lost” campaign to find 100 films that were believed to be lost.

Before that, I worked for nine years as a projectionist in preview theatres at Rank Film Distributors and 20th Century Fox. It’s probably easier to let Tyler Durden explain the rest.

“You’re waiting for a train… a train that will take you far away… You know where you hope this train will take you, but you can’t be sure. But it doesn’t matter.”

Those cigarette burns—the two sets of cue dots at the end of each reel—were the projectionist’s moment of truth. Every four dots or slashes over four frames, running at 24 frames a second. Blink, and you’d miss them. You waited, heart racing, wondering if you had caught it just right. Now, digital has made that obsolete. It was supposed to bring a top-quality presentation to every cinema, but it hasn’t. There are still the haves and have-nots.

I started this blog because 140 characters were never enough. Film deserves context. Numbers deserve explanation. Sometimes the biggest story isn’t the biggest opening weekend. If Nobody Knows Anything has taught us anything over the last forty years, it’s that understanding what happened is often far more interesting than trying to predict what will happen next.