Changed Times and Fresh Avenues
 |
| Statesville's Last Theatre Fall Down and Go Boom |
Still I Say, Banquet Tables Never Fuller
Statesville no longer has a movie theatre. They tore the last one down a few weeks ago. It was a ten-plex folks thought would stay forever. Someone who was there for D-Day told me dozers peeled the roof off as if from a sardine can, then stripped sides so you could look in on auditoriums next to go. What is happening to picture houses reminds me of drive-ins eclipsed during the seventies. Fear of television finishing off theatrical, so acute in the fifties, sees fruition today, not via TV as we knew it, but stream sites to heap a monthly plate for what single admissions once cost. And now they play brand-new movies, windows shut between what used to be theatrical and consumption at home. I drove by the Liberty and they had Godzilla v. Kong on the “Coming Soon” marquee, but didn’t I read HBO Max has it for subscribers later this week? G v. K was supposed to be out last year, as was the latest James Bond, slated for release sooner than that. This “new” 007 will drag a long beard by the time anyone sees it.
The Liberty lures nowadays on its popcorn reputation, which is stellar. Some people stop in for a whopper box, then take it home to eat. With so few attending, seated rows apart if they do, how can distributors realize barest nickels for Godzilla Vs. Kong? My guess: Theatres, those still operative and willing to play what they can get, are given content essentially for free, loss leaders toward TV. You’d think sentiment would ease me into Liberty embrace for G v. K, my having been there after all for King Kong vs. Godzilla in 1963, then again in 1966, but what would I do but reflect on all seats filled back then? Needless bummer. Had there been Netflix and HBO Max in ‘63/66, would we have spent quarters downtown? 2021 “Opening Day” amounts to little more than tuning in. Events of last year pushed forward an outcome we were headed for anyway. Condolence to those who hoped to see Justice League or Godzilla vs. Kong on Imax screens. Entertainment is forever though, and will always be served somehow or other. Trouble for older viewers is change so convulsive. I no more understand modern movie business than how to rebuild a broke transmission. Film gone from theatres? A ten-year-old might easier absorb that blow, adjust as we all must to what I'll mordantly call progress. Imagine if this had happened in the 30’s or 40’s, when going to shows really was important to people. Statesville once had several hardtops, plus drive-ins dotting county roads. Think anyone will build another theatre there … ever? Only if they’re looking for a quicker way to starve.
I don’t resist so long as there are Blu-Rays and TCM. We had on Netflix the other night. Ann wanted me to see their update of The Haunting of Hill House, a series with ten episodes so far. I could not tell the characters apart. They all look and talk the same. Has actor training become so rigid as this? The Haunting tells of a tormented family, parents and five offspring, accent on the torment. I search in vain for islands of normalcy in Netflix drama, It’s OK for what it is, my tact-alternative to Why must we watch this? Takeaway came of two faces amidst the ensemble: Timothy Hutton and Henry Thomas, latter the E.T. boy. It occurred to me that these two occupy a separate category from players they now work with, Hutton and Thomas being actors of the theatres, not the stage, mind, but paying screens, audience screens, back when we had, and attended, them. Are there children born of recent years who will never see a movie at what used to be called cinemas? (2070 interviewer to Henry Thomas: “Sir … as one of the last survivors from that period, what was it like acting for movies that people once crowded together to watch in large auditoriums?”) Romance of old Hollywood revolve for me around night clubs, streetcars, trains with dining and bar space, yet I never experienced these in my lifetime. They belong to a past, but surely my elders ached at seeing them go. Better to focus on advantages we enjoy that predecessors could not. Fact I’m able to write and then instant-publish another Greenbriar column is a miracle to awe me still. Should I somehow travel to that past I profess to long for, what would I say? Probably Get me out of here! … and back to my Internet and Blu-Rays.
Martin Scorsese wrote recent about grim fate for films. You’d think after spanking he got a last time, for saying Marvel movies “aren’t cinema,” he would keep shut, though I can’t help admiring the man’s pluck. Latest salvo came wrapped in Fellini appreciation, Scorsese going off topic to assail “content” as a “business term” applied to all moving images. Something new lands on the Netflix “platform” (that grim word!) and withers quick as bananas left in the sun. Traditionalists want movies to be an event, as once defined by trailers, one-sheets or banner art hung along approach from boxoffice to lobbies. A film might play a year to paying customers, as did Star Wars as projected by my friend Geoff in comparative small town that was Hickory, NC back in 1977-78, but wait, Scorsese’s The Irishman has been on Netflix since November 2019, and I don’t expect it to leave. Check online to find multiple style Irishman posters, each arresting and accessible to collectors on 27X41 for home display. Trailers were rife as run-up to the 2019 “Premiere” … admittedly a different sort of premiere, but there was excitement attending it, a months-long anticipation for those who keep eye upon digital happenings. Scorsese grieves for “fans of cinema” who “can’t depend on the movie business, such as it is, to take care of cinema.” To his mind, “value is always determined by the amount of money to be made from any given property” (you mean that wasn’t the case before?).
“In that sense,” says Scorsese, “everything from Sunrise to La Strada to 2001: A Space Odyssey is now pretty much wrung dry and ready for the “art film” swim lane on a streaming platform.” To that “wrung dry” characterization I part company, at least so long as my Sunrise Blu-Ray spins its multiple versions of the feature, extras aplenty (outtakes, a 20-page booklet, more). “Wrung dry” was me and Sunrise-seekers during the 80’s when the 1927 silent was had only on diminished terms of a 16mm dupe that cost $275 or better. La Strada is had on Region Two Blu, and though I have not seen it, is said to look lush. 2001 can now be got in 4K, which must be like living inside the pod. If this be the swim lane cinema occupies, issue me flippers and a snorkel. Not to be flippant, however, as I understand what Scorsese misses. It is movies as movie-movies, a happening worth the wait among kindred crowds. The last thing I saw on terms approaching this was Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, a fitting last stand, perhaps, for movie-movies.
Change teaches us to be self-reliant where entertainment, or enrichment, is the object. Make the most of platforms, which for me, are gold veins once pyrite is passed and goodies are dug out (sample of buried treasure: Amazon Prime briefly streamed the 1951 Death of a Salesman, which had not run anywhere else in decades). So much is free (again I laud You Tube), while each week brings half-off or better sales of Blu and standard discs. To You Tube option comes wealth of film exploration from fans who devise videos to celebrate what they enjoy best, run-time from five minutes to feature-length depending on level of commitment. These I think have taken the place of long-form writing we previously got from blogs. Dazzling is the best of fan handiwork done with passion tough to convey in cold print, movie musing having entered a new and exciting epoch. Compare with extras we get on discs, but with energy cranked up, often irreverent, sometimes outlandish (as in good outlandish). No corporate toadying here, nor anxiety at running afoul of a legal department. Clips are accessed via “Fair Use,” high time a fan universe took custody of that. These creators, virtually all 70’s-or-(well)after-born, demonstrate how a younger generation view old films, theirs a freshest wind to blow through our area of interest since I don’t know when, a wide-as-horizons swim lane where back-flip dives and cannonballs are norm. Not before have I been better informed and got more fun in the bargain.
I admit this current crop stays to large part with films made in a last fifty years, but think what fifty years is to someone who is not yet forty … or thirty. They have tech skill to generate video as pro as what big production houses come up with, so how can I reasonably expect them to dote on Ken Maynard or Blanche Sweet? These videos speak language refreshing to hear, not scholar boilerplate I for one am fatigued by. So what if he/she regards film history as having begun with the American “Renaissance,” or “New Wave” as it is understood to have emerged in the late 60’s or early 70’s. Videos do go back earlier to favor genres or certain directors. There is much on horror, and Hitchcock, and Fritz Lang, varied others who still claim a corner of fan focus. Vertigo and M are deep wells one can dive into. James Bond gets tremendous coverage, and there must be a hundred videos on The Godfather(s), Goodfellas, Casino … we sift among them to locate the best, and believe me, the best are things wonderful. Explore a while and be happily addicted. Joy for me is perspective not had before, like “killer suits” men wore in Hitchcock films (yes!, come to think of it), how Young Frankenstein is what everyone thinks of with regard the blind hermit, not Bride of Frankenstein, where the character first appeared. Ouch to that, but the narrator is probably right. Found one analyst, born years after The French Connection came out, railing against fellow students in a film class who call it a “boring old movie.” Love it when young people take up cudgels on behalf of our boring old movies. Favorite uploaders are numerous, fresh ones added each time I check in, herewith but a few: Essential Films, JoBlo Movie Clips, CinemaTyler, Flick Fanatics, The Whole Equation, Jack’s Movie Reviews, Renegade Cut, The Critical Drinker, Haunted Blowfish, Matt Draper, Screen Junkies, Matthew Danczak, Nerd Soup, History Buffs, Biographics, Dark Corner Reviews, Eyebrow Cinema … obviously, I could go on. These creators are the future of film study. Provided they stay busy, I’ll not despair for lively discourse along lines of our passion.
posted by John McElwee at 7:48 AM
13 Comments:
One would think that the new King Kong vs. Godzilla would be my meat ... but I found the trailer so nauseating (who picks the music for these things? Dr. Mengele?)that I will definitely pass. I liked the new Godzilla films well-enough, but I thought Kong of Skull Island risibly pretentious and I think I'm done with the new line of monster flicks.
Come to think of it, the last movie I've seen in theaters (other than the Atom revivals of the original Kong and Meet Me in St. Louis) was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Though still relatively young (still in my 50s!), that might be my "new film" swan song.
Skip if I told this one before:
Back in the early 60s there was a sitcom called "Hey, Landlord", about two youngish guys who inherited a small apartment building full of stock characters. I clearly remember one episode where the guys found an old floor model radio and tried to make it work with comic complications. Throughout, they talked about sitting in front of a radio like this listening to The Shadow and the Lone Ranger (they would have been kids in the 40s, remember). Finally, it works ... and blasts out an annoying DJ playing rock'n'roll. They realize they were expecting their childhoods to come back, and that wasn't going to happen. That made an impression on me long before I could possibly have that experience.
Some decades later you could go into any big box store and find simulated antique radios, usually enhanced with tape, CD and/or turntable. Wooden cabinets with long-dead brand names glued on, or plastic models of those tabletop juke boxes from pre-franchise burger places. I wondered how many people took them home with the vague expectation they'd turn a modern room into a long-ago place, the way big scented candles now promise.
We don't necessarily miss the movies, seeing as how they've become more accessible than ever. We don't miss just the old theaters, as much as the airport-styled cineplex makes us yearn for the neighborhood houses and downtown palaces. What we miss is the world in which those things existed. Even if it was a world too rosily recalled, or even one we knew only as mythology.
Recently found a 1990s book of Hopalong Cassidy collectibles, lavishly illustrated. The author of the book, looking for a silver lining on the fading of Hopalong from general consciousness, mused that prices would begin to fall as the nostalgia-driven collectors grew scarce. That particular craze was fading by the time I was born, but it was still fascinating to look at all this stuff and imagine the excitement of being a spoiled kid back then. I have an abiding fascination with a lot of things that were essentially over and done with by the time I was aware of them, a sort of parallel universe to my real nostalgia.
In film, "cinema" is only a piece of it. The old movie-going experience, the attendant pop culture presence, the days when the soundtrack LP was as close as you could come to owning a recent hit ... as usual, selective memory kicks in. Seeing overstuffed 60s musicals on a huge screen, or animated specials with a bunch of cousins on Thanksgiving, or a merely okay movie with a girl who laughs ... good feelings override quality. I can still enjoy Disney's "Babes in Toyland" and even the musical "Doctor Dolittle" for that remembered vibe.
A very early Peanuts strip had Charlie Brown musing that a perfectly good hot dog didn't taste quite the same without a ball game in front of it. I suspect the Liberty's take-out popcorn wasn't just a culinary attraction but a means of melding the old experience with an old movie at home.
The last film I saw in the theaters was "True Lies", in the Summer of 1994; it happened in Oswego, New York, with friends, and I remember the venue, though not its name, as it was one of those old movie palaces, right downtown near the water - either it had been recently refurbished or lovingly maintained over the years, I'm not sure which - and it was plush. Plush like old movie palaces were plush. It was great. I don't have a clue as to whether or not it's still in existence.
I guess I haven't been near an actual factual film-on-a-reel projector since, not as far as I know anyway. And now that I've come to think on this, you can color me surprised. For I watch a lot of movies, and I have done that over the past quarter-century. I guess I just haven't seen any films during that time!
As a fan of "Sunrise", I have to ask: what are the different versions? And are the outtakes interesting?
On the question of The French Connection being a "boring old movie", something I realized watching it again and also watching The Seven-Ups (which was a sort of movie version of a sound-alike follow-up to a hit record) was that in those days they only had enough money in the budget for one big car chase per picture. It becomes like one of those samurai movies where there's an hour and a half of buildup for a ten-minute swordfight at the end. Back then we could think of those as thrill rides because we had never seen the kind of action pictures they have now, with car chases from the first frame to the last. Little wonder the younger generation yawns.
Another thing illustrated by The French Connection: A chase is actually more exciting when you identify with the pursuer than the quarry, but in three out of four movie chases at least it's set up to identify with the quarry.
To Kevin re SUNRISE:
The Region Two Blu-Ray I have includes the US release, and the more-less same Czech version, but with what I consider to be superior image quality. Outtakes are fascinating ... the more so that such a thing would survive.
Dan Mercer considers changes in the movie-viewing experience (Part One):
There have been many changes affecting the movie-going experience since the first movies were shown, more than a century ago, including rise of the studio system and its collapse, after the integrated production and exhibition system was ruled to be a violation of the anti-trust laws, the implementation and then the abandonment of a production code, the competition of radio and then television, which affected the number and effectively ended reissues and B program pictures, and the replacement of film as film, with a photo chemical emulsion to hold images, with film as a digital program.
Almost from the beginning, however, the movies have been images projected on a screen in a darkened theater before an audience. Until now, there has been only one fundamental change to this arrangement, when silent films were replaced by the talkies. This brought about a new way of watching the movies, for silent films did not capture reality so much as an aspect of reality, with the imagination of the viewer left to provide what the medium could only suggest. As such, it transcended reality to reveal the ideal underlying both reality and the consciousness of the viewer. The introduction of sound closed this door by giving reality an expression that was concrete and substantial and, relatively speaking, of the moment. Other doors might be opened, but talk mitigated against the introduction of anything from the viewer, except by way of interpretation.
Part Two from Dan Mercer:
Watching a movie in a theater remained a communal experience. I remember seeing “Casablanca” for the first time at a college campus showing. Everyone understood the romantic yearning between Rick and Ilsa, everyone got the arch and witty dialog, especially that given Captain Renault. I could sense how absorbed they were in the story by their murmurs and chuckles. At the end, when Rick had killed Major Strasser to allow Ilsa and Victor Lazlo to escape, there were almost incredulous cheers and laughter when Captain Renault, after a pause, ordered his men to arrest “the usual suspects.” Afterwards, I walked out of the auditorium with the other young men, all of us as world weary and cynical as Humphrey Bogart’s Rick, save for hearts still tender for the touch of the beloved.
Theater-going had always been faced by competing modes of entertainment. The development of various video formats, such as VHS tape and compact discs seemed to offer an alternative means of exhibition as well. This possibility was heightened when streaming TV services began to be offered, for now a much wider variety of films could be seen without the need for separate, discrete copies of each film being distributed. A person with such a service could watch almost anything by pressing or entering a code number, and never leave his home.
Most people, however, preferred going to a theater to watch a movie, or at least enough of them for theaters to continue as the initial point of distribution. Even the smaller screening rooms of the multiplexes were different in degree from what an HD TV screen or video projector system could offer. There was also the shared experience of watching a movie with other people, sensing their pleasure or sorrow or excitement, and contributing one’s own. This could not be duplicated in the isolation of a living room.
That link between people and the movie-going experience may have become ever more tenuous, but it persisted. With the pandemic and the imposition of social distancing, however,
It may have been broken. All theater chains have been adversely affected and some have been driven into bankruptcy. Studios have been forced to use alternative means of distribution. Even with the gradual relaxation of pandemic-related restrictions, most theaters have not resumed normal operations and may not for some weeks or months to come. When they do try to reopen, there will be a question whether there will still be a movie-going public, or whether the fears that have been engendered about any kind of public gathering will have at last ended this relationship, when watching a film in the safety of one’s home seems the better possibility. If so, it will be the second fundamental change from what the movies are and have been, and one that is at least as important as the first.
I stopped going to cinemas for reasons that have nothing to do with the cinema itself; but, thinking back on it now, I never did go out to see a movie but when in a group, or when out on a date - so for me, the social aspect of going out to the movies has always been front and center, independent of the merits of the film being screened. I agree that it's that social aspect that has kept cinemas going, and which will enable them to come back, too, once this virus gets beaten back.
Speaking of which, I've been reminded that I did as a matter of fact attend a showing of the film "Congo" in 1995 - a memory I must have suppressed, for some reason - so it is that film, not the above-mentioned "True Lies", which was the actual last film I ever saw in a movie theater.
That said, I never would have thought seeing crowd scenes in old movies - pretty much any old crowd scene, too - could ever make me feel nostalgic in quite the way that they do now.
That opening showing the devastated movie complex is sad. Only one of our two cinemas is open and that one only four days a week. Long before the pandemic, I was calling movies in our town a weekend business.
Craig Reardon stops in to share some insight (Part One):
Hi John,
Wonderful new piece about the 'state of cinema' today. It's not often--I don't even know why I don't say, 'ever'!--that I use the term 'cinema', and with a straight face. They've movies, to me. Anyway, I congratulate you for retrieving movies from the clutches of Martin Scorsese. As much as I admire his admiration of fine movies going way back, and am forever grateful for his Film Foundation and its alliances which have achieved wonderful rescues of great pictures (the most recent I've enjoyed is "Moulin Rouge"--the good one, as I always put it)...as much as I believe his love and dedication are real, I have never particularly liked his movies. I'd go further than that. I dislike his movies--most of them. I have a friend who is working on his latest, excited to be there as it has a good script, and of course there's Scorsese's reputation for putting art before commerce, etc. It will be interesting to me to see if this one is much different than all the others. I rather doubt it. I think you made an excellent case for what Scorsese was probably referencing as a man of a certain age who remembers the excitement of seeing movies in theaters back when that meant something. I'm about to turn 68, so I'm old enough to remember stuffed theaters abuzz with excitement about a particular sort of movie, and the tumultuous reception for it once it began, curtains parting, usually a familiar big studio logo roaring at the patrons prior to the titles...all that. It was fun, it was great, and I cherish some of those memories.
Yet, having begun to attend movies regularly in the '60s, I also remember many showings where the theaters were NOT full, and the prints were NOT in good shape, and there was often a slightly forlorn feeling in the experience. I saw both ends of it, and I'm talking about way back, as far back as I can reach in memory. As you mention the heyday of drive-ins, I well remember seeing titanic movies like "Ben-Hur" and "Lawrence of Arabia" (and earlier, the last grand MGM musical original, "Gigi"), ALL at our local drive-in in Inglewood, CA. Today I can't think of a less appropriate way of seeing such well-made movies, as a venue in which you had to view them through your mom and dad's tinted windshield, with what were in fact carefully made stereophonic soundtracks playing in your car or station wagon through a crappy little speaker in very much mono sound! Yet, we were thrilled to see them all the same. Then there were the rituals of going to a drive-in vs. a walk-in theater, including often a pre-trip to a massive snack bar (in our drive-in) to stock up on junk food before the feature began. I should say 'features', because as you know both drive-ins as well as walk-ins had TWO movies, very often, slated for your admission, and if you could last, you could see--often--two excellent movies in one sitting.
Part Two from Craig Reardon:
But today it's not like that anymore. What you enumerate, all of it, demonstrates that for movie lovers, it's not a dire situation, it's an almost incredibly thrilling situation, where you can literally have it all. Whether accessed via fading (as in, losing popularity) physical media such as video discs, or streaming, you can see almost any really good film whether it was once a programmer or a big seasonal 'A' picture in its day, and very likely in a restored version superior in appearance and in sound to what it was when it was new. Have you seen the teasers for the upcoming WB restoration of one of their great 'prestige' pictures of the late '30s, "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex"? My god, it's phenomenal. Obviously you can't pull a rabbit out of the hat if there's no rabbit in the hat, but this one's been a pretty sad, mangy old rabbit for a long time, and now it's a beauty. I was an early proponent of digital restoration, and I can only say, "because".
Some respected pals of mine were all in a dither as to whether things they valued such as 'film grain' and so forth would be respected, and meanwhile all I could think of were the fairly repulsive attempts at rejuvenating some older titles, especially ones produced originally in color, via conventional photochemical means, vs the best of even the earliest digital restorations, and I saw where it was going to go, and I was all for it. Who could possibly view this new version of "...Elizabeth and Essex" and say, "Ah, but I wish it was film!", in the conventional or literal sense? They'd be ridiculous. The new 4K version of "Vertigo" is unquestionably the best the movie's ever looked (or sounded, with a completely artificial and yet completely convincing surround stereo soundtrack the original film never even had!) And what about "The Red Shoes", as another random example? The Criterion edition of this, now several years old, includes a featurette narrated by the old boy himself, Martin Scorsese, in which he enumerates all the problems the original B&W separation negatives had, and how these were all surmounted using modern digital techniques. Then you watch it and you're sold, or you're frankly out of your mind. I saw a very good original Technicolor print of this classic in the early '70s, screened at Filmex, which no longer exists but was a wonderful series put on honoring and exhibiting all manner of films old and new with invited veterans willing to come speak about their roles in making them (as actors, as directors, as art directors, special effects people, composers, etc). And "The Red Shoes" looked wonderful to me. But I know the new digital version has to be better. It has to be. I can't dredge up my original impressions so accurately that I can place them side by side with what the Blu-ray edition of this Film Foundation restoration did for the film, to determine which I like better. I just take it on faith at this point that the one I like better would be the digital version...hands down.
Part Three from Craig Reardon:
And, your other topic, the way in which film evaluation has finally been wrested from the precious grasp of the gurus and the self-appointed priests, to where any reasonably bright and insightful enthusiast can weigh in with their impression via home-made but often professionally-polished videos on YouTube channels is democracy in action, as far as I'm concerned, too! Let's let anyone have their say. We can learn something from the best of them, just as surely as if they'd had a published column in a tangible magazine or newspaper back when there were no pixelated press like today. I miss some of those elegant magazines (recently one I admired, Cinefex, shut down for good after 40 years, roughly the same amount of time I worked in the movie industry as a makeup artist.) Still, one can learn just as much from a published interview online as one ever could from a printed one--and in additional today have the option of listening to someone talk, illustrate their point with frame captures or clips, and share their own enthusiasms with any of us. Bravo to them. Bravo to YOU, John, for celebrating all this.
Post a Comment
<< Home