Is it me or is it the movies? Part IV

Between my teens and well into my forties I probably averaged 1-3 movie theater visits per week. It was mostly a way of self-medicating. Trading my reality for a couple of hours in one which wasn't my own. It didn't really matter what movie was playing. It could be triple bill in the Oriental of The Master of the Flying Guiliotine, The Toolbox Murders, and Cleopatra Jones, followed by a walk over to the Water Tower and Being There. Some of these theaters had their first showtime at 8am. It wasn't unusual for me to see almost everything which was released in any given month. And if I ever ran out there was always the Parkway or the Fine Arts. 

In the present it's been at least two years since I've been in a movie theater. COVID accounts for some of this, but is it also because not only the movies might have changed but also how and where we watch them? I have a 75 inch big screen HD TV with a Dolby sound bar, a couple of remotes and a subwoofer under my comfy couch. Multiple streaming services with the ability to pause, fast forward, rewind and super slow-mo. The fridge is within walking distance as is the bathroom. So why did I leave this alternate reality paradise? Bond, James Bond. 

If ever there was franchise which needs the big silver screen I can't think of one at the moment. And that's how I found myself at the Regal City North 14 IMAX & 4DX. I don't much care about the IMAX and 4DX and 14 is for the number screens. I was in screen number 9 and as an added bonus could occasionally listen to the sound track from screens 7 and 11. I don't usually have an issue with digital projection, but the ambient lighting might have been off so everything on the screen had a slight gray tinge to it. That's the price you pay for digital. The sound was good, but the same was true for screens 7 and 11. The film itself unfortunately wasn't the best send off for Daniel Craig. It had the traditional Bond elements, but it was as if the Brocollis decided to do a Merchant-Ivory version of an Ian Fleming novel. The acting was fine. Love Connery, but Craig is still the best Bond. The villains were villainous. The female characters attractive and the cars and scenery beautiful. Not sure if it was the writing or the direction, but it just didn't work. If nothing else On Her Majesty's Secret Service finally has some competition for the weakest Bond film. 

So if Bond can't save the movie theater is that the death bell tolling for the movie theater experience? 

P.S. Random observations from watching 30 minutes of trailers:

I have no desire whatsoever to watch anything in which Roland Emmerich is involved. 

Will Smith is a good actor but he is always Will Smith regardless of what he is in. 

I thought Jon Bernthal was a one note actor. He is not. 

Is Jessica Chastain following the Charlize Theron path? Fine if she is. Just asking. 

Speaking of Chastain's path. As long as Hollywood is willing to make movies like The 355, why spend all this energy arguing about whether or not the next James Bond should be a female? Leave James alone. He has suffered enough. Maybe just spinoff Miss Moneypenny. I'd pay to watch that. 

Love trailers, but 30 minutes is too much of a good thing.

Is it me or is it the movies? Part III

An article about a remake of Ocean’s 11 with an all-female cast appeared in my newsfeed recently. Skimmed through it. Skimmed through the comments. Some pros. Some cons. The usual casting arguments and the inevitable personal flame wars. However, nowhere did I see anyone mentioning the elephant in the screening room. That this is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea!

And no. It’s not because it objectifies women in film (or depending on your political leanings objectifies men). It’s not because it doesn’t address the wage gap in film (or depending on your political leanings politicizes film casting). It’s not because it casts (insert actress of choice) as (character of choice) when it should cast (actress of choice) as (character of choice)! It’s not because they should remake (insert favorite movie of all time) first. It’s not because … HEY!!! OBAMACARE SUX. VOTE TRUMP!

It’s because (SPOILER ALERT!) … it’s a gimmick. Nothing more. It has nothing to do with anything other than a marketing talking on point on some Hollywood exec’s power point presentation. Don’t know who pitched this and who greenlit this, but I am pretty sure the conversation went like this:

Pitcher: Ocean’s 11, but with women in the main roles.

Greenlighter: Go!

I don’t claim to be a Hollywood insider (in the interest of full disclosure, however, I was an extra on The Package once) or much of an expert (I did, however, see The Player), but I have watched a lot of films and over the years it seems as if the reasons to make films have now been reduced to their most simplistic basic principles.

Superheroes? Go!

3D? Go!

Tom Cruise? Has he done or said anything stupid lately? No. Go!

Remake (insert old popular TV show title)? Go!

Remake (insert old popular film title)? Go!

Hot selling novel? Go!

Spiel…? Say no more! Go!

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a Cahiers du Cinema subscriber (okay, the fact that I know that there is a Cahiers du Cinema taints me a little bit, but in my defense I don’t know what Cahiers means and I left off the doohickey over the e in Cinema). I realize show business has always been a business first. It’s first and main objective, and always has been, is to put butts in seats by whatever means necessary and reap as much financial rewards as possible. Awards and critical acclaim are all nice, but they don’t pay the rent. Nor am I unaware of the fact that the rent for making films is mighty high. The risks great. Hollywood invented creative accounting so it’s hard to give a definitive answer, but most estimates put the average Hollywood budget to get a movie from alpha to omega somewhere between $100 million to $150 million. The reasons for this are complex, but mostly they are the creation of Hollywood itself. It’s mostly due to egos and about who makes more than whom. It’s about the progression from making $3 million in the box office from a $1 million budget and being satisfied with that to wanting to make $999 million and therefore now having to invest $333 million. Either way, that’s a lot of risk and if it was your money you too would want some safeguards to guarantee a return on your investment.

And yes, I realize that it was always this way. All you need to do is pick up some books about the old (old being a relative term to your own age) Hollywood moguls and stars or just Wikipedia them to see that it was so. But that’s not the elephant either.

Nor does the elephant have anything to do with the age old art v. commerce argument. I like Tarkovski as much as the other guy. I saw Stalker twice. His mastery of ambience is second to none. He is a true artist. Will I ever watch Stalker a third time? Only if you pay me. Citizen Kane? Greatest movie ever made. 400 blows? One of my favorite films. Bicycle Thief, Rules of the Game, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Battleship Potemkin, Medium Cool, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now? Seriously! Don’t insult me by even asking. I can appreciate when films become something larger than just mere entertainment. I relish the moments when they do. But I also happen to love comic books. If it has Marvel in the title I will see it at some point. Not a huge fan of 3D but I did go to see Hugo simply for that reason because I wanted to see what Scorsese will do with it. Tom Cruise I can take or leave, but if Jackie Chan makes a movie odds are I will see it some point. Taranti… I’ll see it! Long story short, if I have a life or death choice between a Terrence Malick film and whatever the latest entry is in the Fast and Furious franchise is I will probably go with Furious and fast. Not proud of it, but I’ve had a very long day.

Let’s get serious and dig deep here. Why do I/we watch? To be entertained. What entertains me and whether I am one of the masses or the ruling culture elites is debatable, but when all is said and done I/we all watch to be entertained. Some might be entertained by things blown up real good. Others by stupid teenagers in skimpy clothing running into seemingly deserted houses that are rumored to be haunted while an escaped convict\mental hospital escapee\the unpopular ugly kid with a sharp object fetish is on a rampage. Or perhaps you are entertained by metaphysical ruminations on the nature of the universe and what does it all mean shot in soft focus and slightly off angle?

Regardless of what that is what really entertains us? It’s not the casting. It’s not the genres. It’s not the format. It’s not the marketing. All play a role, but none of them are the elephant in this room. It’s the story and how we feel while being a part of it. To borrow AMC’s slogan: Story Matters Here! [Sidebar: While I love the tagline and think AMC’s Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, and even Hell on Wheels are excellent examples of everything that is good about that slogan, AMC itself is part of the problem due to how they choose to present their shows. Do we really need three episode mini-seasons with long gaps in between? Does it make the story matter more? Does it give the creators more time to create a more mattering story? Does it matter to the audience? No. The only reason they are doing it is so that they would have a longer period to charge advertisers higher rates. I predict it will eventually fail and 5 years from now we will be talking about how do you remember when there were really good shows on AMC. And yes. I know HBO actually started this long gap thing, but their reasons are different since they don’t care about advertisers, and at least in between gaps they take chances and release really good shows so it takes some of the sting out.]

Ask yourself this question. When you talk with your friends and peers, whether they be wine cork sniffing caviar truffle soufflé eaters or beer swilling hot dog heavy on the mustard munchers, what was the last movie you talked about or really excited about seeing in recent years? I am not talking about your occasional James Bond, Bridge of Spies, Imitation Game, Guardians of the Universe, Interstellar, Jurassic Something somethings. And please, please, please don’t anyone mention that story that began (in the middle) of a galaxy long ago and far away… These are to be expected. They’re merely statistics. No more than expected blips. Sooner or later there will be something X. Either due to scarcity or by actual merit.

Now ask yourself this question. When you talk with your friends and peers about TV shows which TV shows do you talk about or can’t wait to watch? Just off the top of my head and with no particular genre or target audience in mind here are mine: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Gotham, Fargo, 30 Rock, South Park, 24, Walking Dead, Rescue Me, Nip and Tuck, Downton Abbey,  Sherlock… The list can go on and on. We can argue about the relative merits of any individual show, but that’s not really the point. These are shows that people feel passionately about. What was the last movie you felt truly passionate about? I can’t think of many. Or at least not as passionately as the audiences of these shows feel about their shows. If you were to go back 20 years or so I can give you a full list of films people felt passionately about. TV shows? Not so much. Of course it’s possible it’s simply because I’ve seen so many films and I am getting older and older and ultimately you will see the same story no matter what package it comes in, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen many TV shows over that time span as well and I stopped watching TV because I didn’t find anything on it all that entertaining and have now resumed because I find it to be so. Pretty sure it’s not more entertaining because TVs now have bigger screens and HD.

Is there any real difference between films and TV shows? Media geeks can excuse themselves from answering this question. I know there are, but this isn’t about the mechanics of the relative media. It’s about the entertainment value each brings to the audience and as such they’re very close together. Is making a TV show cheaper than a movie? Not really when you boil everything down to their basic components. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Are television creative and business types any less greedy than their film counterparts? Don’t think so. Is there more creative freedom in TV? Are you nuts? So if none of these things is the elephant what is? Story, story, story.

TV started taking chances. They put the cart and horse (or elephant as the case may be to untangle my own metaphorical meanderings) back in the correct order. TV realized that, yes, story matters. Start there. Write the story you are interested in telling. If you tell it well and give it time it will find an audience. There will still be plenty of time to run focus groups and tailor for demographics and find product tie ins and talk about corporate synergies and vertical integrations and make lots and lots of money. First be good and be patient. The rewards will come. Don’t rush them. Don’t underestimate your audience. Make the story matter. Everything else is secondary.

In Hollywood this is reversed. Story shmory. Who is the star and how much did their property bring back last time out? I know this will be a story about a Holocaust camp survivor taking in Syrian refuges, but have you considered Adam Sandler? There is X% of people who will see an Adam Sandler film regardless of what it is so that means $XXX already that we can bank on. Maybe Will Smith. We will just change the Holocaust to Rwanda. Who is the writer? Never heard of him. No worries we’ll buy the screenplay sight unseen and then have Hot Writer of the Week rewrite. Did you know the last thing he rewrote brought in $XXX so that’s another chunk we can bank. You want Old Hack to rewrite? Can’t do. You see what This is a Sure Fire Moneymaker did? Box office poison! Can we get Spielberg to executive produce? He won’t do anything, but we get to put his name on the film and that’s another $XXX guaranteed. There’s this young director we have an eye on. He did this slasher film on his IPhone for $100. Grossed $12 mil. He would be perfect for this. It’s a shame we actually have to shoot the damn thing because right now on paper we are about $100 million in the black. Adrian, call our guy at Variety so that this thing makes it into the news tomorrow! Our corporate stock will jump at least 6 points. Tiffany, call my broker now! Sell if it hits 7. If they also finally bring that Infinity Vacuum cleaner to market at the same time the stock will really jump! We will do a two for one split and a 0.7 dividend. Tiffany, hold that call!

Anyway, what were you saying about the story? Something to do with an elephant?

The Counselor tries for cool, but ends up cold

Sometimes too much of a good thing is not a good thing. The Counselor on paper must have seemed like a cinephile's dream. Start off with an A list cast which includes Michael Fassbender, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt in the lead roles. Even the bit players read like a whos who of film. Bruno Ganz, Rosie Perez, Ruben Blades, Dean Norris, Goran Visnjic, and John Leguizamo all play parts that in other films would be given to whomever showed up at the casting call. Not enough? Let's throw in Ridley Scott to direct. Want more? We will have Cormac McCarthy write the screenplay.
Are you salivating yet? No?  Wait until you hear the story. There's an amoral lawyer (is there really any other kind?) (Fassbender), a mysterious middle man of uncertain business background but an interesting taste in clothing and hair styles (Bardem), a cool philosophizing cowboy drug dealer (Pitt), a cold hearted femme fatale (Diaz), a beautiful good girl (Cruz), a cartel boss expounding existential philosophy (Blades), and plenty of nameless and merciless killers. There are even a pair of pet cheetahs.
Have we got your attention yet? I thought so. The plot is set on the Juarez/Texas border and revolves around a drug deal gone bad. There are plenty double crosses, shootouts, car chases and crashes and at least one ingenious decapitation. The dialogue has shades of Tarantino if he had actually gone to university and ended up with a Ph. D. in philosophy. There are noir shades of pretty much every Bogart/Bacall film ever made and, well, shades of No Country for Old Men.
Sadly all of the above never really pays off. The Counselor is lesser than the sum of its parts. Its a collage of "cool" film moments that seems too self aware of how "cool" it really is and none of them ever come together. It tries too hard and never really captures a single genuine moment. Plenty of films can give us amoral characters, but the great ones also give us an inkling of a moral baseline that gives the story poignancy. We never get to care for any of the characters. The lead character doesn't even get to have name and is known simply as The Counselor.
If anyone really wants to see an interesting story dealing with the similar themes I suggest getting the first season of The Bridge. The Counselor feels mostly like an exercise in style and mannerisms. It doesn't seem to be sure if it wants to be "a who done it", "a how they done it", or "a why they done it". It never progresses beyond being "a they done it" and that's supposed to be enough. It isn't.

Is it me or is it the movies? Part II

Coming to you soon in glorious 3D!!!

If I see one more preview for a film in 3D I am liable to throw something at the screen. Enough already. Not that there is anything wrong with making films in 3D, but the films being made in 3D are for the most part nothing more than a marketing gimmick. Shows what Hollywood thinks of their audience. Story? Direction? Acting? That's hard and no predictor of success. Let's film it in 3D! Boffo box office! Pretty sure Sophie's Choice in 3D can't be far behind.
On the other hand, there's a part of me that is really tempted by Jackass 3D. If ever there was a gimmick that one's it.



Machete

Robert Rodriguez is a very talented and skilled filmmaker and it really shows in Machete. I saw more than my share of grindhouse films in the 70s. Machete is so good that despite watching it inside of a state of the art movie theater in Riga, Latvia (that's in Europe for the geographically challenged), from the start of the opening credits I was instantly transported to the seedy Chicago Loop of the late 70's. I could even imagine hearing the popcorn popping in the lobby and other not so fond sounds and smells came back in sense memory. Mark of a great film if it can capture the sense and feel of a time and place.
One problem. Grindhouse films were awful. Really, really bad films. The kind of films that distributors would buy the pound and were judged by how many shots of naked women they had and how many kills they contained. These were the type of films that could and would only appeal to 16 year old boys or those who no matter their age still had the emotional maturity of one. So here's the conundrum. If someone makes a great bad film does that make the film great or bad? I don't know the answer, but a part of me wishes Rodriguez would make a straight film for once. Same goes for Quentin Tarantino.

Red

There's a little desperation in my film watching of late. Its not that I haven't seen some good films lately (Social Network, The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), but sometimes you just want something mindless and less filling. I knew exactly what I would get with Red and that's exactly what I got. The only thing I can say about the film is that movie stars should never ever surround themselves with actors. Its just asking for trouble. Bruce Willis is good at what he does. Really he is. I loved Die Hard. All of them. He has even shown an occasional, no matter how brief, flash of acting ability. But in a film with John Malcovich, Helen Miren, Brian Cox and Morgan Freeman, all excellent actors, oops. Movie stars and actors should never mix. The secret of a movie star is that they attract the audience's eye. As Mel Gibson once said they know where to stand and how to look at and look great on camera. As long as they're the focal point of the scene. In an ensemble cast Willis is lost. He just simply does know what to do when the camera is not on him and he isn't the center of the action. And on the few occasions when he tries to act it just falls flat because the other actors don't have to try.

Is it me or is it the movies?

I love the movies. I've seen quite a few of them. At a rough count lets say 5000 or so. Started having disposable income around the age of 14 and like most at that age had plenty of motivation to escape reality. Hey, at least it kept me away from drugs.

I used to cut school often and take the L into the Loop and get off at Washington. The Loop of those days was quite different. Not quite the shiny tourist mecca that it is today, but it didn't lack for movie theaters. Within minutes walking distance you had the Chicago, State and Lake, Woods, Oriental, United Artists and McVickers.

These were the days of double, and sometimes triple, bills. The first showtime often started at 8am. The fare certainly wasn't highbrow. We're talking The Master of the Flying Guillotine, Bruce Li and the Tool Box Murders. But there were also plenty of middlebrow choices. Whatever Hollywood decided to release for better or worse could be found in one densely packed movie mecca.

For the highbrow you could walk a few blocks and you had the Water Tower and Fine Arts. For the truly obscure you had the Parkway on Clark which had a different slate of films each day. Then the VCR came along, HBO, Blockbuster. Long story short, my film tastes were omnivorous and I certainly didn't lack for choices. I'd watch almost anything. When the AFI releases those lists of Top 100 this or that I've often seen between 60 to 90 of the films on any given list. This is not meant to be me bragging about how much I've seen. Just that I used to go to a lot of movies and the movies I would sit through cut across a pretty broad scape of genres and styles.

Until recently. Now weeks could go by without me seeing a single film. Might not seem like a big deal to most, but remember that I am someone who has probably averaged about 3 films per week for the past 35 years or so. Something changed. Is it me?

I am not a fan of nostalgia. Always been distrustful of the longing for the past. As they say the only thing certain in life is change. Sorry, but things were not always better when you were a kid. Popular and creative tastes go through cycles just like everything else.

Nor am I one to bash Hollywood for releasing commercial films for the lowest common denominator. Might come as a shock to some, but film making was always about finding the broadest possible audience. Films are far too expensive. They require far too many people to make. The average Hollywood film costs around $100,000,000 to make. Quite a bit of that is creative accounting, but that's still an awful lot of zeros. If you were putting up that much money you'd want some guarantee on your investment as well.

But something has changed. I first noticed it a few years ago when I started watching films on my PC. I'd start watching a film and then at some point, usually around the same time into the film, I'd start playing Freecell or Minesweeper. One eye on the film and one on the game. Okay. So some of that might be middle age ADD and some part of it is just simply that most films follow a fairly common structure. They even teach it in Film School. By page such and such, such and such thing must happen to advance the plot, etc. You watch enough films and that pattern gets kind of burned into your psyche and at some subconscious level you know when you can get up and go to the bathroom without missing some important plot point. Its not necessarily a bad thing. Its like meatloaf. No matter what you do to meatloaf it usually comes out the same usually. Its predictable and comfortable and I still like it.

The other thing I noticed is film previews. If you go see an animated film the film previews will almost all be for animated films. Romantic comedy, action, drama, the same. And even within that they'll be almost all the same.

Films are no longer just films. They're product. To some degree they've always been product, but now it seems like they're product first. Like a can of Coke. They're slotted for a specific audience with specific tastes and tug on specific emotional wavelengths. Nothing wrong with that in a way. I like Coke, but the films themselves seem to have become secondary. You don't start out with a film and then find an audience. You start with an audience and then create a film for that audience. Its like if you were making Coke now, you'd start with the can. Not with what's in it. Its about the packaging. Not about the content.

Then again, maybe I've just seen too many packages.