Do you want to write for the Mercury’s film section? Not a lot, mind you, just a bit—maybe one to four film shorts a month.

Okay, cool. But there’s a catch: You can’t suck. Every week, we receive literally billions of unsolicited pitches and clips from people who want to write for the Mercury. 99.99 percent of said pitches and clips are fucking terrible. No offense intended; I’m sure the people who send them in are very nice and all that, but I don’t care how friendly you are if your writing makes me want to jam a rusty crowbar into my left eye socket.

So: If you want to write for the Mercury’s Pulitzer-winning film section, you need to be able to write well, and you need to know and love movies, and you need to know and love the Mercury, and you also need to not be an insufferable jerk and/or an arrogant know-it-all. Also, you need to live in Portland, and you need to have reliable transportation to possible film screenings, and you (obviously) need to have a DVD player/TV. Also, you need to be funny, so as to counteract the brutal unfunniness of Matt Davis.

If you meet the above criteria, send me three movie reviews, each 100 words or less, of whatever recent movies you feel like writing about. Or, if you have published clips, send me a few links to your relevant writing. And if this wasn’t obvious already, I have zero desire to wade through a bunch of boring, pretentious, and/or poorly written bullshit, and I have entirely too many messages in my inbox as is, so if you aren’t any good, don’t bother.

Make sure your subject line is “I Want to Write for the Mercury’s Film Section!” Also, just because why the hell not, include your top five favorite movies.

Since I’m nothing if not fair, and I’d never ask anyone to name their Top Five without also offering to do the same, here are mine:

1. Teen Wolf
2. Teen Wolf
3. Teen Wolf
4. Back to the Future Part II
5. Teen Wolf Too