Concerning insults, everytime I've tried to "call a spade a spade" about contemporary sondtracks and their way of being "composed", I've been (on many fora) attacked in any ways and called many names. When I claimed I really believe in "freedom of speech" and criticism is there to be used, to create a positive confrontation of ideas, there were no answers...
I've spent all my life studying (and I still do it) music and all its aspects: history, composition and conducting. Graduating years ago! I'm not a kid and I'm not an amateur. Am I allowed to speak frankly and give to my ideas some life?
Criticism is often "disturbing" just for those who cannot "read" things and dream about being the next HZ (and many others!) with the "one finger" stuff ready. Forget paper, pencil and a piano. Those were from the beginning and still are my main instruments, as well as for other people, I hope. The orchestra is "imagined" first on paper, then - why not?- since some new means are there, I record my music via computer and orchestral libraries. Still having to cope with frustration though, because what I imagine and write down is often far from what I can obtain with virtual instruments.
HZ's success generated the opposite: people assembling powerful computers in order to create "montages", absurdities of no meaning, because the way of "thinking" music is just killed. We're supposed to be the "optical race", always connected to some magnetic field...A foolish way of living. In addition to this, there's no creation in business, being the two terms -creation and business- incompatible nowadays. Maybe years ago, that was still possible, with very different people around though.
I'm listening to Alex North's 2001 (Dietz, are you around?) which was refused by Kubrick...
Other men, other times, other music (for movies, but still classy!)...