Nobody Knows Anything, For Real This Time

William Goldman’s famous Hollywood aphorism “Nobody Knows Anything” has never applied with as much profound depth it does now.

Hollywood as a collective definition is composed of several large interlocking systems, all designed to create, produce and distribute entertainment content. Most are being crushed by the coronavirus lockdown. Going through the process beginning to end:


• Pre-production is still going strong. TV writer’s rooms are staffed via video conference, and scripts are still being optioned. Projects are still being greenlit, and everyone is positioning for the days that will follow COVID-19.


• Productions are dark. Thousands of film and TV show production companies are shut down, crews on furlough, sound stages empty, equipment unrented. Film and TV Production are collective endeavors, ones that require a lot of close contact (for example: during shooting, an average cinema camera rig has three sets of hands on it) so it won’t be safe for a long time. News and some forms of reality TV have the edge here: “American Idol” is experimenting with a remote contestant format, which is better than nothing.


• Live theater is utterly dark. Hamilton is playing at precisely zero venues worldwide.


• Streaming services and cable are doing incredible business right now. Industry leaders are worried about the medium-term health of this sector: If the astounding level of unemployment continues, subscriptions to streaming services and full-service cable will start to dwindle as people find them increasingly unaffordable.

• The big hit to Hollywood: Film Exhibition. Movie theaters are closed, and the prospects of movie-going returning to prior levels any time soon is increasingly uncertain. In fact the very survival of movie theaters is in doubt: AMC may be looking at bankruptcy protection (something they do once a decade or so, but still).

Movie-going has been derided constantly in the age of streaming as a dinosaur, a relic of the pre-television industry. This is what most of this post is going to concentrate on, because I do not think people really grasp how absolutely vital the movie theater ecosystem is, and how losing them will profoundly affect almost every other aspect of the entertainment industry.

Studios operate on a “tentpole” model: big, well-publicized films released to thousands of theaters worldwide and provide revenue through box office sales for other productions. To turn a profit for these films, which are generally budgeted over $100 million, huge theater capacity is required, hundreds of thousands of butts in seats. Marvel, the newest large studio, operated on the tentpole model 100%. Others operate downmarket, packaging independent films made on modest budgets.

But all this machinery has stopped.

I’m offering two prognostications for the future of the motion picture exhibition industry, both on the extremes.



FULL RECOVERY SCENARIO



A seating diagram programmed to create a safe space around each sold seat.
A mix of singles, 2s, 3s and 4s shown. Nobody is placed in the middle of a row
so they do not have to pass close to anybody else. Capacity is reduced 75% to 80%.

When the states start slowly opening up theaters again, social distancing guidelines can be put into effect to assure patrons who are going to be VERY VERY NERVOUS about going into a darkened windowless room full of strangers.

The way I came up with (which no doubt the theater chains are implementing) is centered around the fact that most theaters are based on reserved-seat ticket sales. When a block of seats is purchased, the seats around them are condemned for the screening to maintain a 6-foot defensive space. If strict contact rules are allowed— two parties per row to eliminate close passing for the aisle, which is always ass-to-face— theaters can be filled about 25% of capacity. This does not allow for full sellouts, but it is at least equal to a modest weekday crowd.


During these first few weeks or months people will likely be treated to low-budget fare. Independent films, genre comedies, horror films: films with modest budget and the possibility of getting a return even in lower-capacity venues. Studios can and will reserve their large-budget tentpole films until they can get enough screening capacity to make releasing them a worthwhile risk. (a lot of big-budget films are frozen in post-production as well: visual effects houses are not operating, and a film the scope of something like Avengers: Endgame can’t be finished off on somebody’s iMac at home.)

Once the curve is safely flattened theaters can go back to full capacity, though it remains to be seen if people will feel confident enough to pack themselves into sellouts for quite a while. Some late-summer big-budget releases— the sequel to Wonder Woman being an example— are sticking to their release dates, betting the huge audiences are just waiting for the all-clear.





Bravely sticking to a mid-August
release date. Notice it's already
been moved down from June.

COLLAPSE SCENARIO

Major chains, empty but still paying huge rents for their their multiplexes, go out of business. Theaters that survive see persistent poor box-office as people, still spooked by COVID-19, stay away.


Without a way to recoup investment for big-budget films, the studios release them streaming at a loss. Streaming and on-demand represent a revenue source, but compared to theatrical release box office it’s tiny, ancillary, in the old days a way to slightly round up the numbers.

If the financial downturn continues and people cancel subscriptions, even this outlet will become even more problematic. Without a path to profit studios will eventually stop green-lighting big-budget films entirely. For movie geeks who hate comic-book movies this sounds heavenly, but remember that big films finance small films. The Lord of the Rings trilogy financed a decade’s worth of modest-budget New Line films.



Without theaters, the theatrical distribution system will collapse. This will create chaos: non-chain theaters that managed to stay open will have nothing to screen. Drive-in theaters, the only healthy subsection of the exhibition industry, will collapse as well when they run out of films to screen.



This bleak scenario ends on your TV: Streaming, on-demand and TV will be the only outlet for scripted entertainment. The big franchises will likely be broken up into series and miniseries. Cable and premium, already increasingly turning to series to attract viewers, will start to shrink: many of the add-on premium channels show endless theatrical films, and with that source of content gone add-ons like Starz Action and Showtime Comedy will start vanishing.



The other problem is the eternal conflict: Hollywood versus The Internet. If the theater industry collapses, the Internet wins— and never forget the old hacker battle cry: “The Internet wants to be free.” People naturally EXPECT films to be cheap or even free when they’re on TV. Additionally, any film put out on streaming is available for torrent download within hours. In my job as a post-production profession I’ve always advised indie filmmakers to only put your films on streaming platforms when all other revenue streams— festivals, optical media— have been exhausted. Once it’s online, you’re done making money off it.

 But with all the eggs in the TV screen basket we’re back to the ability of people to pay for these services. If hard times persist, many of them will end up cancelling, which will drive revenue even lower.

Well, those are the extremes. I think the reality will be somewhere in-between: some chains will close, some big-budget films will be canceled, and it’s going to be tough to make a living in Hollywood for a while.

But really: nobody knows anything.

The Rise of Skywalker: The Fall of In Media Res

The Rise of Skywalker is a perfectly fine entry into the canon. It’s tightly scripted and beautifully rendered, full of consequential situations and lots of action. It tells the story of the ragtag Resistance movement— still very reduced in size since the end of The Last Jedi— trying to find a hidden area of the galaxy where the “Final Order”— the successor to the First Order— is amassing a new fleet, lead by none other than Emperor Palpatine himself, back from the dead. It’s a complex goal, and it sets our heroes Finn, Poe and Rey on a literally non-stop quest. Meanwhile, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver, just an amazing actor) is on a singular collision course with Rey, who he wants to come over to the Dark Side. The film is full of neat cameos, some genuine surprises— and if you have been onboard with this franchise you’ll get a little weepy at the end. A fitting end to a truly spectacular franchise.

In broad strokes, Daniel is correct: The Rise of Skywalker is basically The Return of the Jedi after the application of Daniel's Remake Formula. The major story beats are pretty much the same. But without George Lucas mucking the thing up with Ewok kiddie pandering and a static mentor-father-son conflict at the center, it has been improved quite a bit.

Satisfying endings aside, one dissonant element shines through The Rise of Skywalker: the undeniable feeling of compromise, that the owners of this intellectual property are running scared. They’re scared of their own fans. They went out of their way to placate the vocal critics of the last entry, the controversial The Last Jedi, manifested as annoying notes throughout the new film. Rose, Finn’s plucky teammate, is completely sidelined. Kylo’s helmet, smashed to pieces in the previous film (and for good reason) is fixed as good as new. And there is one, huge, ridiculous erasure so egregious it made me say, “What?” out loud in a darkened theater.

The Mandolorian and "The Child." This show was also
influenced by the manga and film series "Lone Wolf and Cub"

Disney’s timid, full fan service approach to the IP is also evident in “The Mandalorian,” currently streaming on Disney+. In the details, the show is as rich as any canon entry, full of robots and aliens and great visual effects. But the story it tells is not nearly as rich. The premise is simple and episodic: The title character enters a situation, gets into a bit of a scrape, then gets out, ready for the next situation. It’s very 1970s-TV-like: It reminded me of the Bixby/Ferrigno “The Incredible Hulk” or (as John pointed out) “Kung Fu.” I’m not caught up and I’ve already seen story lifts from Shane, Seven Samurai and The Unforgiven. “Baby Yoda” is drawing all the attention now as only a beloved character redesigned as a tiny, high-eye-to-face-ratio character can, but it’s now depressingly clear this show is going out of its way not to stray from rote recitations from canon.

Werner Herzog as "The Client," making his own German
Chocolate Existential Ripple ice cream.

This need for fan service is why the most hilarious goof that ever appeared in any Star Wars film had to be ruined. Near the end of The Empire Strikes Back, when Lando Calrissian announces the evacuation of Bespin, we see in a crowd panic scene a guy carrying a plastic ice cream maker. It’s a bucket with a bar on the top to carry the inner container. They were common: I ate a lot of ice cream that came out of those things in the 1970s. It was very obviously thrown in so an extra could have something to do with his hands.

In episode 3 of “The Mandalorian” we see the title character get rewarded for a successful bounty job with stacks of special steel carried in a round bucket with a base on top. It even has a name: a "camtono." In this universe an ice cream maker is actually a safe, apparently. Goof erased.

What happened? As much as I’d like to blame Disney, I think 42 years of fandom has loved this franchise to death.

This isn't the beginning of a movie: it's the middle
of a complex sequence.

Consider the first film-- from a 1977 viewpoint. For kids and grownups who liked genre sci-fi films, Star Wars was an utter shock. The film BEGAN in the middle of a great space battle, and we were quickly introduced to a cast of androids and robots and a masked villain and a princess. As the story unfolded George Lucas refused to explain a single thing. Laser swords? Superluminal travel? A giant monkey dog thing? Nope, we were left as clueless as if we were randomly dropped into an exotic foreign city without a guidebook. The only explanations we were given about anything were plot points, usually one-on-one efforts to convince people to do things: to get Luke to leave his home, Leia to give up the rebel base, to get Han to rescue Leia, etc. But the super-weird stuff? Just a given. Pre-“Episode IV” Star Wars was perfect expression of in media res ("in the middle of things"): An entire self-contained universe we got to run around in for 135 minutes, which was a big part of the thrill. It hooked a lot of people, me included.

Ten years prior “Star Trek” had done something similar in science fiction, but that universe was our universe, just in the future. But know one thing about the humans in the Star Wars universe: they look like us, are similar to us in most ways… but they aren’t us at all. The opening title card “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” has never been explained.

Star Wars was a huge success, and it spawned a dedicated fanbase: a sequel HAD to be made, even though the first episode had a tight ending and only one open end (Darth Vader survived). This sequel— The Empire Strikes Back (1980) was remarkably good. Written by Lawrence Kasdan and Leigh Brackett, It matured the space-opera story of the first movie, introduced romance and mysticism and had a plot with genuine consequences. It also had the best final reveal in any popular film, maybe ever. It was a triumph, not only because it was not the “Star Wars Goes Hawaiian” sequel everyone expected, but it rewarded every fan, deepening their relationship to the franchise AND raising their expectations.

Like I said, Empire was good. Maybe too good: It raised fan expectations so high the franchise had nowhere go but down. This may well have been the place where fandom began to fray, leading to the awful state it is in today.

The ecstasy of fandom is how it creates personal meaning and forges communities. But the tragedy of fandom is this emotional satisfaction comes with a relentless need to identify, classify and explain. Humans are pattern-seeking, storytelling creatures: it's our nature. To draw deeper meaning from a hermetic work like the original Star Wars, we needed all those mysterious little details explained so we could feel more at home there.

When the second set of trilogies came around, George Lucas adamantly refused to bow to fan service. His ideas concerning his own creation had changed and matured between 1983 and 1999, and he had whole host of things to say, some of them quite bizarre. He wanted to explain things, but he did it with complex political discourses and the added existence of a symbiotic organism which “gave” people The Force. He also added more of the feeble kiddie pandering he hinted at in Return of the Jedi, but to his credit he corrected it by Episode II. Lucas clearly didn’t quite understand what the franchise’s fanbase had evolved into-- and, delightfully, he really didn’t have to care.

The throne room from The Rise of Skywalker

But he eventually sold off his franchise, and the new owners— Disney— were aimed like a laser beam at giving fans what they want. The overarching theme of the entire third trilogy of Star Wars films is how their new IP has been guided by the expectations of the fan base. Every fan has a strong opinion about what Star Wars is and should be: some foolish, some nuanced. They started out strong with The Force Awakens and successfully deepened their commitment to original storytelling with Rogue One: a Star Wars Story.

But The Last Jedi was the tearing point. Rian Johnson’s film got a lot done in its exceeding length: it deconstructed George Lucas’s galaxy as a place of irredeemable corruption, where noble causes were not worth much more than the sinister ones. It pulled away from the Holy Skywalker family, establishing that Rey was a Jedi from nowhere, just as Annikin Skywalker came from nowhere. As for Luke Skywalker himself, he was disgusted with the Jedi and saw it as a pointless cult that needed to die.

There were a lot of Star Wars fans who were okay with this redefinition, mostly because it represented a fresh viewpoint, a way to appreciate this universe with added complexity and nuance.

Rian Johnson directing Daisy Ridley on the Throne Room
set in The Last Jedi. Rian's use of red in this film was
incredible. Apparently the curtains on this set were made
from real red velvet.

But there were an equal number of Star Wars fans who HATED what Rian Johnson was doing, and wanted it stopped. For them, they needed the comfort of a black-and-white universe. They needed the saga to be about powerful families: the galaxy far, far away was to be administered by the Kennedys and the Windsors and the Rockefellers. They spoke loud and long, loud enough to spook the IP’s new masters at Disney. Revealing new things is anathema: they wanted stories that explained things. In media res, the style that animated the first film, was extinct by the last one.

When it came time to make Episode IX, guess who Disney listened to?

Still, I am putting in a very strong recommendation to go see The Rise of Skywalker. It is still an immensely entertaining film, especially If you have been a fan of the series. You will leave very satisfied— even if part of you will always wonder what might have been if we hadn’t screwed it up.

In a strange, roundabout way the evolution of Star Wars fandom from awestruck enthusiasm to toxic, second-guessing complaining is a tonic: it makes it easier to say goodbye to the franchise.

The Tarnishing

Hey, I saw Doctor Sleep this last weekend! Date talked me into it. I can't say it was disappointing because you could see that flaming train coming round the bend a mile away. I will say, though, that it made me like The Shining all the more, for the wrong reasons.

Doctor Sleep, as you know, is based on Stephen King's novel which is a sequel to King's The Shining. It details the adult adventures of Danny Torrance, the kid who escaped violent death at the Overlook Hotel when his dad Jack, to quote President Merkin Muffley, "went a little funny. In the head". Danny didn't come out of the experience unscathed. He's a depressed alcoholic who can't connect with people. But he manages to connect with a 14-year-old girl who has his psychic gift, when she enlists his help in finding and stopping the people who are killing children who ALSO have his psychic gift.

What went wrong with this thing? It's certainly well cast and shot. Ewan McGregor puts in a fine performance as a troubled American. All of the actors, in fact, are convincing. And the screenplay is competent at least. I haven't read the novel (I don't recall having read ANY Stephen King novels because he was doing fine without me) but this movie plays like a skillful adaptation of a book, brisk and faithful. Probably.

I think where we get into the weeds is the book is a sequel to another book, and this movie is ostensibly a sequel to Stanley Kubrick's movie. It's filled with visual references to the Kubrick's The Shining. And that property was NOT Stephen King's The Shining. Kubrick ground that book up and made it into some dense, multilayered crazy Kubrick lasagna, so deeply enigmatic that there's a documentary about people's varying interpretations of it. It's scary not because it's about murder and ghosts; it's scary because you're trapped inside Kubrick's head and you have no idea how to get out.

Doctor Sleep, on the other hand, is a pleasant little adventure about bad guys and good guys that is so resolutely understandable that it makes the ability to know when people are dying feel like the knowing when it's about to rain. It's not scary, it's annoying.

One of the reasons I have such fond memories of Kubrick's The Shining is because it came out a few years after MGM tried to make a sequel to another Kubrick film. 2010: The Year We Make Contact had most of the same problems that Doctor Sleep has. It's an attempt to normalize and literalize the magic of the original, and it fails because it lacks the spark of genius that made you notice Kubrick's work.

One more thing - this movie recasts the leads in The Shining with summer stock lookalikes who kind of suggest Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall and Scatman Crothers. There must have been better choices than these actors. Or maybe digital masks would have worked. SOMETHING. As it is I think anyone would walk out saying "I look more like Scatman than that guy."

JOKER: Nihilism With a Purpose

How fascinating was Todd Phillips' Joker? I didn’t even realize until it was over that the movie was in 1.85:1, traditional spherical widescreen. We’re in an era where almost every theatrical film, tiny indie or major studio release, is in 2.39 ‘scope. It was presented in the period-correct aspect ratio, and the period-correct film washed over me so thoroughly I didn’t even see the frame— and I ALWAYS see the frame.

Controversy swirls around Joker like the cloud of delusions that define Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), the movie’s antihero. we’ll get to that later, but first an appreciation of the film’s star. Phoenix was given a lot to work with here and he delivers. In truth, he over-delivers: his character is mentally ill and unknowable and his performance never deviates from this condition. This lends his story and the larger story of Joker a disjointed, alienated feel.

Arthur is a clown-for-hire who aspires to be a stand-up comedian, except his illness leaves him basically without a sense of humor. Inappropriate laughter is his illness’s major symptom: we see him in a comedy club, trying very hard to understand how comedy works, writing notes and laughing at the set-ups, not the punchlines. And his laugh is not a chilling villain’s cackle: it’s a strangled, involuntary reflex he cannot control.

Joker is set in a realistic version of a fictional past: Gotham, the East Coast city from the Batman franchise, in the late 1970s or early 1980s. It has the look and feel of the gritty “New Hollywood” films shot in New York or Philadelphia at the time: trash in the streets, tagged up subway cars, theaters downtown devoted to pornography, and there is not a computer or cellphone in sight. You will think Todd Phillips is emulating Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) to an extreme degree, and you‘d be right. But I’ll argue it’s worth it: the art direction, locations, sets and costumes are worth the price of admission by themselves. The attention to detail is remarkable and thorough. Joker only betrays its 21st-Century origins in the beauty of the images (Shot on an Arri Alexa 65) and the smoothness of camera movement (they have all sorts of magical tech gizmos to facilitate that). Back in the bad old days filmmakers like Scorsese and Melvin Van Peebles and Joseph Sargent and Gordon Parks had to make do with Arriflex IIc cameras loaded with grainy, pushed 35mm film, wooden sticks and Lowell incandescent lights.

Gordon parks, making do with an Arri IIc.

In my opinion Joker could have dispensed entirely with the entire DC Batman mythology. The film did not need it, and it added nothing to the core of what is essentially a psychological thriller. In fact, the baggage of the Joker mythology creates an ethical issue: we know that Joker will become a master criminal and an unrepentant, cold-blooded murderer: this aspect is part and parcel of Joker’s DC persona. But remove Arthur Fleck’s known fate to be a villain, and it becomes the story of one man’s mental disintegration during an era where isolation and alienation were practically the norm.

Martin Scorsese, behind a soundproofed Mitchell NCR.

It’s not a perfect film and it is not that easy to watch: Arthur Fleck is set up as a victim for most of it, and we see him on the ground getting his ass kicked twice. The first half of the film is set-up, and we see things in Arthur’s life, which started out bad, just get worse. The very conditions of urban life in the late 1970s are the antagonist here: Budget cut-backs eliminate Arthur’s weekly visits to a social worker and access to medication to keep his illness in check. He lives in a hideous apartment with his declining mother (Frances Conroy) in a neighborhood overflowing with trash. Adding humiliation to alienation, Arthur’s attempt at stand-up comedy is mocked by a late-night talk-show host (Robert De Niro, playing Jerry Lewis from The King of Comedy). His character is clearly being pushed towards a break with normality, and when it comes the only thing surprising about it is how gory it is.

Joaquin Phoenix, before an Arri Alexa 65.

It also makes Arthur Fleck’s eventual transformation into the Joker problematic. The film explains him away: he is the product of bad genes, a terrible childhood, an even more terrible environment, and horribly complete social isolation. This was the thrust of most of his comic-book origin stories as well: in the famous graphic novel “The Killing Joke,” The Joker is the result of one normal man after one very bad day.

At the point in the story where Arthur Fleck eventually snaps, everything in the film has been placed to make his move to villainy sympathetic. This makes Joker an exercise in pure cinematic nihilism: it’s a director deciding make a murderous villain his movie’s hero. And this is where the film goes from compelling but flawed to brilliant, because Joaquin Phoenix’s performance is the counterbalance to Todd Phillips’ nihilism. He portrays Arthur Fleck as disjointed and mercurial: his moods change from scene to scene, from somewhat sympathetic to completely alien. He leaves the audience with nothing to grab on to, which is the point. As much as the film tries to set up the origins of Joker as pitiable, Joaquin Phoenix pushes back, making sure you don’t feel shit for the guy. It is rare these days to see the an actor-versus-director dynamic play out onscreen, but that’s what we get here.

The “tell” of Joker— the element Todd Phillips and co-writer Steve Silver steered away from DC canon to stake out new narrative territory– is the portrayal of Bruce Wayne’s father, industrialist Thomas Wayne (an almost unrecognizable Brett Cullen). In the comics he is the just, benign father-figure of young Bruce, whose strong ethical sense set Bruce on the path to be a superhero. But in Joker he is a grasping, bloated capitalist who literally sneers at the poor: “Those of us who have accomplished something with our lives will always look down on those who have not as clowns.” Thomas Wayne's statement sparks deep resentment among Gotham’s beaten-down residents, and starts a clown-themed anti-establishment movement— not too far off from the Guy Fawkes thing from V for Vendetta— to topple the rich of the city.

And that is what makes Joker timely. Set in the 1970s, it nonetheless completely understands the cruelty of inequality in our time, and the fact that a society without empathy breeds monsters.

It's Nice To See ANY Side of the Wind At This Point

You know, I watched a lot of Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in my youth. And it was great comfort food but if you asked me to tell you now about something I remember from all those years of TV, I couldn't. Almost.

I remember one anecdote from the late seventies. Rich Little was on the show, chatting with Johnny about his experience shooting Orson Welles' The Other Side Of The Wind. It was a party scene, and suddenly Orson, behind the camera, bellowed "look down! Between your legs! Midgets are running between your legs!" And later between takes, Little asks Orson "hey, what's with the midgets?" And Orson grunted, "We'll put the midgets in later, when we're in Mexico."

Since then, I've wanted to see that movie.

And by all accounts, Orson wanted me to see it too. Principal photography was done, piecemeal, from 1970 to 1976 whenever people were available and there was enough money; and post production went on for another 5 years until, tragically the footage was seized by the Ayatollah Khomeini during Iran's revolution. (a major portion of the film was owned by the Shah's brother-in-law). From then until his death, Welles devoted his time to getting the footage released and raising money to finish it, but it never happened and Wind became another unfinished Welles movie. There's a lot of 'em.

However, perhaps because it was his last and because the subject matter was clearly so much about Welles himself, people have been trying to until the Gordian knot that secured this thing ever since. And Netflix, a company with resources so great that they could achieve what Showtime failed to do in 2002, has finally done it. Those crazy bastards not only finished The Other Side of The Wind, they also slapped together a documentary about it called They'll Love Me When I'm Dead. It's a documentary about a movie which is, largely, a movie about itself.

Let's just call it TOTSOTW, shall we? TOTSOTW takes place during the last night of film director Jake Hanneford's (John Huston) life. Hanneford is a legend, a firebrand iconoclast genius with enormous appetites, gallons of toxic masculinity and little discipline. His friends (allies, I guess) are throwing a party for his birthday but also to screen his unfinished art film, "The Other Side of the Wind" in hopes of raising the money to finish it. At Hanneford's side is his pal and erstwhile biographer Brooks Otterlake, a character obviously based on Peter Bogdanovich who was originally to be played by Rich Little because Bogdanovich lapses into impressions frequently. However Little dropped out because he only had 3 weeks to shoot, and Welles replaced him with Bogdanovich, So Bogdanovich is playing the Bogdanovich character but Huston plays the Welles character.

Most of the guests are either film students, critics, old Hanneford compatriots, mannequins, or mischievous drunk midgets. I'll be honest, I thought Rich Little had made that part up.

I'm giving you the setup and not the plot here. Frederick Wisemen, the documentarist, was once approached by a film festival. There were writing up a program for the weekend and they wondered if he could summarize his entry into a paragraph for them. Wiseman scowled, "if I could do that I wouldn't need to make the documentary!"  TOTSOTW is pretty similar. It IS the summary. It's kind of those ten years boiled down into 2 hours and 2 minutes. I can tell you it's shot in 3 or four different styles, two aspect ratios, and seemingly whatever film stock Welles could get at a discount. It looks like Oliver Stone's work from a couple decades later. Part of the conceit is that some of the footage is from the film within a film, some is just the movie, and some is documentary footage from film students. Mostly it's a hall of mirrors so you won't notice that there is three years between the close up and the reverse angle.

As infuriating as TOTSOTW can be, I kinda love it. I want to watch it again a few times. Once Welles gave up on trying to sell tickets to the normies he did his best work (and worst simultaneously) and it's fascinating driving around the sharp curves in his brain.

Dunkirk in 70mm

Saw Dunkirk last night at the Century 9 in downtown San Francisco in a lovely auditorium. Some theater chains are giving up on seat-filled rooms and are opting for a luxe experience. This place had just that: reclining seats with footrests, low wall between each row so you couldn’t even see the heads of the people ahead of you. If they wanted to re-create the living room experience, they succeeded.

Christopher Nolan lines up a shot on an IMAX camera.
Dunkirk features some of the first hand-held IMAX
footage ever shot. That does not sound like an
easy thing to do.

The Format: Dunkirk was screened in vertical 70mm-- the second-best way to see it: 2.20:1 70mm film threaded through a Cinemeccanica projector. This yields a super-sharp picture, the equivalent of a 13K Digital Cinema image— which is significant because 13K Digital Cinema does not exist. In the few moments when the film slows down— there aren’t many— you can scan the frame and take it in. The 65mm cameras captured it all: Every gold thread on the brim of Kenneth Branagh’s cap. The anguished face of a solder standing on a quay, far in the background. The deep color of Blue Hour over blowing sea foam on the strand.

The Story: Dunkirk follows three main story threads happening at different times during the evacuation of Dunkirk, in different places: on the French shore, on a small boat joining the improvised rescue, and in three Spitfires above the fray. These plots intertwine and cut back and forth, in a way that is unusual for most movies and almost unheard of in war movies, which tend to stick to a linear timeline. But it is a testament to this film that this intercutting is never confusing or abrupt: as the threads come together the tension builds and builds to an almost unbearable level near the end. I would credit this to director Christopher Nolan, of course— but he was abetted by both Lee Smith’s precision editing and Hans Zimmer’s percussive musical score.

Requisite cast of thousands, on a quay.

It’s worth noting that the script for Dunkirk was only 76 pages long. This has everything to do with the dense action sequences and remarkably spare dialog. There are many scenes where soldiers say things to each other which are entirely unintelligible over the noise of war. It doesn’t matter in the least. Nolan, I believe, is making a statement about the smallness of the individual in the face of titanic events (like World War II and the evacuation of 400,000 people from a beach in France) but also about  the sort of everyman quality of the average British soldier. Much has been made of the fact of One Direction’s Harry Styles having a lead role in Dunkirk— but really he just looks like every other British soldier in the film: a skinny, pale extremely young man in a brown wool uniform wearing a permanent expression of terror.

The official format guide for Dunkirk. We saw it in
70mm, the left center format. When I see it again,
it'll be in IMAX 70mm.

The Scope: Christopher Nolan is famous for relying on practical effects over digital effects, and in Dunkirk this is very much in evidence. His extras are running from real explosions on the beach. He had ships rigged to capsize, and strapped cameras onto them so you see and feel the roll over. He put Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden in a two-seat Yak modified to look like a Spitfire and flew them over the English Channel. In fact, his hesitancy to go digital shows on the edges: You can take in stretches of beach other filmmakers would have filled with “tiled-in” digital extras, and ocean vistas that could have been populated by little digitally inserted boats but weren’t.

Lack of Germans: You never see the face of the enemy in Dunkirk. There are fighters and bombers doing damage, and snipers and machine-gunners, but the film doesn’t bother with scenes of the German soldiers or pilots. This makes this an even more unusual war movie. As Jared pointed out after the film was over, you don’t need 'em: The British soldiers stranded on the beach never saw them either.

One of the best elements of Dunkirk is its length, or rather lack of length: 106 minutes. Tell a story, do it well, and tell it with efficiency. And hopefully the relative shortness of the film will give you extra time to travel to a screening in 70mm or 70mm IMAX.

Star Wars 40: The Franchise Re-Awakens

I recently posted a link or two on social media to a post I wrote five years ago about the 35th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie. An interesting read, a take in a very specific moment. One that requires an update!

This was the last effort of
George Lucas's Lucasfilm.

Five years ago Lucasfilm was still in the hands of creator George Lucas— and it was looking sad. In some sort of last-ditch effort to keep the whole franchise relevant he re-released Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in 3D, and it was met by remarkable indifference. Part of it may well be the fact he was trying to push the least popular movie of the series, and the audience was having none of it. part of it was how uninspired an idea it was in the first place: by putting 3D lipstick on the Phantom Menace pig he was signaling that he no longer had any new ideas for his creation.

That 35th post reflected this sense of despair, of the ending of things. It was the slowly dawning realization that we were going to move past Star Wars being a current, active franchise and more an artifact of past film glory. Back to the Future? Great Franchise. So was The Thin Man. Throw Star Wars on that old pile.

But less than five months after I wrote that post, the unthinkable happened: The franchise fired George Lucas. He was the immovable object: as I said in a post on the subject,

It's obvious that the rock in the road in terms of the last three Star Wars films has been George Lucas himself— his feeble kiddie-pandering, his dull political pontificating, and his peculiar and depressing take on morality. His decisions were impediments that prevented the second three films from reaching the heights of the first three.

Kathleen Kennedy shows us where her heart is.

Lucasfilm was sold to Disney without George being any part of it, veteran Lucas and Spielberg producer Kathleen Kennedy took over production for Lucasfilm Ltd., and she immediately started making brilliant decisions. She hired Michael Arndt and Lawrence Kasdan to write the next episode of the main franchise, and attached JJ Abrams to direct it. Soon after Kennedy let ILM head John Knoll develop a standalone story and brought in Tony Gilroy to write it.

This Vanity Fair excerpt tell you everything you need to
know about why Kathleen Kennedy is running
Lucasfilm now. (h/t Tadd Schellenbach)

The aspect that Kennedy brought into the franchise was more than the removal of the dead hand of Lucas’s faded imagination: she showed amazing respect for the both franchise and the audience. She realized something Lucas forgot: Star Wars was partly owned by its fans, and that base stretched back 35 years. Any new effort required fealty to that canon.

The results exceeded all expectation: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015, right on schedule) was a exciting new installment which introduced new characters while keeping the main protagonists of the franchise— Han, Leia and Luke— front and center as well. Sure, the story was variation of Episodes IV and VI (Death Star, Starkiller Base, same diff) but it was tightly written, full of humor and surprisingly positive dialogue (after a while, you really start noticing how much all the protagonists complement the efforts of the other protagonists: it's kinda weird). The production was both spectacular and felt materially substantial, utilizing as many practical sets and effects as possible. Episode VII was critically acclaimed, very successful and sent out a tremendous message: Star Wars is back, and we went out of our way to respect the franchise and you, our fans.

With the triumph of Episode VII still hanging in the air like a rainbow Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was released one year later. This was a remarkable film in that it featured no Jedis, no lightsabers and (almost) none of the Skywalker clan. It was a completely standalone story, a bold experiment to test the ability of the Star Wars universe to support completely original characters and story forms. Rogue One also celebrated the ordinary people in the Star Wars universe, those struggling under the yoke of the First Galactic Empire-- it shredded David Brin's objection of the franchise, which he saw as anti-democratic and focused on elites. It was nearly as successful as Episode VII, and many critics (me among them) proclaimed it one of the finest entries in the canon.

Teaser one-sheet: a bit of Episodes
IV, V and VI all mooshed together.

Here are how things stand mid-2017: Lucasfilm under Kathleen Kennedy has successfully revived a dying franchise. Disney/ Lucasfilm is 2-0 so far, with two more in production: Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi opening in December and an as-yet unnamed Han Solo standalone film, due out next year. Of these two, I think we can count on one more solid win with Episode VIII. The “Young Han Solo” movie? Not so sure. It has a solid director team (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) and Lawrence Kasdan wrote the script-- but there’s such a whiff of “Disney’s Star Wars Babies” to it that it has the possibility— a slight one, but it’s there— of this anthology entry landing with a thud.

I’d say the pessimism I have had over a beloved movie franchise five years ago is pretty much gone, and I’m one happy Star Wars fan. But when you live in golden times (I’m talking about the franchise, not the larger world, which sucks right now) you are constantly searching the horizon for storm clouds. This re-awakening can only last as long as it is led by executives who both love it and know how to make it profitable, and in Hollywood this is always a balancing act.

The other concern is more philosophical: Sure, a huge number of people love the franchise, and some have for 40 years: but being given more quality installments is like going to a huge chain restaurant that always serves everyone their favorite food. You never get tired of it, but after a while you wonder: Are better and newer restaurants being crowded out? How long can they keep serving this great stuff before everyone gets sick of it, even though the quality has never flagged? And how long can this fabulous chain go on before new management decides to cash in-- and steak and Stag’s Leap Malbec 2011 becomes saltines and tap water?

Donald Trump and Hollywood Omertà

Many people have seen, or at least read about, the now-infamous “hot mic” tape of a candid conversation between Donald Trump and Billy Bush in September 2005. News outlets and the internet are currently saturated with analysis of the content of this tape, in which Trump admits that his money and power permits him to commit sexual assault. The astounding crudity of the verbal exchange was seen as revealing the true nature of Donald Trump’s personality and attitude towards women, and the revelation of this tape may well prove to be the tipping point of the 2016 presidential election.

But this article isn’t about the content of the tape: it’s about why it took so long for it to be released. This is the part of this incredible story that seems to be under-discussed— and it relates directly to Hollywood, which is why it’s being discussed here.

The official story is the producer of “Access Hollywood,” Steve Silverstein, remembered this interview about two weeks before the release and dug the footage out of archives. This story is almost certainly false. The reason why it’s not believable is actually embedded in how the tape was recorded.

This political bombshell (more of a nuclear warhead) was taken from a segment of “Access Hollywood” which documented a cameo Donald Trump was making on the soap opera “Days of Our Lives.” It was shot on the backlot of NBC Studios in Burbank. A camera crew was following Trump and “Access” host Billy Bush: both men were fitted with lavalier microphones and transmitter packs which broadcast RF signal to receivers attached to the camera. During the publicly-released segment a cameraman had stepped outside the bus to set up a shot showing Bush and Trump arriving at the studio to be greeted by soap star Arianne Zucker. Thinking they were off-camera, the two men engaged in a crude, degrading conversation about women. Aside from the on-camera personalities there were seven people involved in this taping: two cameramen, the segment producer, a production assistant, Trump’s bodyguard and PR person, and the bus driver.

After this segment was shot, the footage was likely seen and handled by even more people: on-line and offline editors, more show producers, audio technicians and maybe even an archivist.

Charlie Chaplin, during one of his
many, many court appearances.

So about a dozen people— very likely more— heard and saw this footage in 2005. Yet NONE of these people recalled this conversation, one of the most devastating revelations of character any political aspirant has ever uttered? Particularly as this 2005 taping came on the heels of complaints by the cast and crew of Trump’s show “The Apprentice” about his crude on-set behavior? That is an impressive case of collective amnesia.

Hollywood’s code of silence strikes again.

The film industry has been creating and controlling secrets since the days of Charlie Chaplin (and Lita MacMurray) and Fatty Arbuckle (and Virginia Rappe). The studios all had (and still have) well-funded departments which handled public relations and “fixers,” producer-level executives who specialized in keeping indiscretions out of the press. (Hail Caesar was a thinly fictionalized account about a famous studio fixer.)

The culture of secrecy goes very deep in both the film and TV industries. Entertainment is an unusual industry in that the general public is constantly and intently curious about it. Supermarkets do not devote shelf space at the checkout counters with magazines dishing the dirt on astrophysicists and farmers, after all. Scripts and storylines have to be kept secret: details of film shoots are kept from public view as much as possible as well. The need for confidentiality rivals the Pentagon’s.

It’s all for the greater glory of the Industry, of course. That, and jobs. A scandal that would bring down a star would shut down production. A leaked script would kill off box-office potential. Finally, there’s the prestige factor: being on the set gives even the lowest PA or grip access to some of that rare stuff, Hollywood Glamor— stacks of non-disclosure agreements are willingly signed to gain access to that inner circle.

Why did this revelation take so long to emerge into the light of public scrutiny? The culture of Hollywood, a full century of studio secrets kept, reputations protected, indiscretions hidden. And they are so good at it: Did you know that Tom Cruise is only 5’7”? It took a LOT of will to overcome that much inertia and tradition.

The Brilliant Hack Work of "Stranger Things"

The one-sheet by Kyle Lambert.  I would
call this composition form "Drew Struzan
Baroque:" The color fields, grouping
and eye-lines are nearly identical to
any number of his 1980's posters.

Watched all 8 episodes of this Netflix series in short order: it’s slow and convention-bound in the first few episodes, but it soon stretches out into a satisfying-- if strangely derivative-- science fiction/horror series.

In 1983 Indiana, a young boy suddenly vanishes after a game of D and D with his friends. This sparks several searches and investigations by the missing boy’s friends, family and local authorities, which soon start turning up something unsettling, malevolent and supernatural lurking in the woods outside town. At the same time a strange girl appears, an escapee from a secret government site, embodied with telekinetic powers-- who may prove to be the key to finding the missing boy.

Millie Bobby Brown as "Eleven." Apparently
that buzz cut was not all that easy to achieve.

The direction in these eight episodes is remarkable. The visual style is striking, the art direction is thorough and the individual shots are extremely well-composed (in 1.85:1 Spherical Widescreen, the most popular aspect ratio in the 1980s). The central cast are young teenagers, and every one of them offers realistic, emotive performances— in particular Millie Bobby Brown, who plays the mysterious Eleven. Strong performances by children is an indication of a strong director— or, in the cases of some episodes, directors (the show's creators, the Duffer Brothers).

The Duffer Brothers with Winona Rider on the
set of "Stranger Things." Or is this an homage
to Dead Ringers (1988)?

As stated in the title "Stranger Things" is, nonetheless, “hack work of the highest order.*” A little Poltergeist and E.T. here, a little Evil Dead and Firestarter there, litter the sets with vintage movie posters, and it's a solid tribute to the era. If you were able to subtract these period elements, I doubt there would be enough to fill a single hour-long episode. The title sequence is a well-imitated optical-effect-looking shot, complete with negative specks and vintage fonts (Korinna and Avant Garde). As solid and satisfying as the main plot threads are, there are also weak subplots about bullies and ex-husbands and past loss. Still,  "Stranger Things" is very much worth a good binge-- If anything, it’s fun to watch the show and pick up the 80’s references as they come, flashing like bulbs on a string of Christmas lights.

A few notes:

Castroville in da house!

Acknowledgement of a classic era: “Stranger Things” is set in 1983-- and going past the period setting,it just strip-mines the cinema and popular culture of this era. This was a good choice, as it was a remarkably fecund time for original science fiction, horror and fantasy. Bladerunner, E.T., Mad Max 2, Excalibur, Dragonslayer, Heavy Metal, Conan the Barbarian, The Dead Zone, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Shining, Poltergeist, The Evil Dead and especially Firestarter were all released around this show’s setting. “Stranger Things” is a pastiche of many of these works, perhaps underscored with a narrative form borrowed from Stephen King. So this isn’t an mere exercise in period visual authenticity: it is also a reworking of genres, kept inside the generic rules of the era. It’s less like, say, “The Americans” or “Fargo,” which are set in past eras, and more like The Artist (2011), which reproduced the narrative and social trappings of the silent era in a silent film.

Cinematic New Mexico: this was the name of a TV and movie trope where cell phones are useless. In the days before wireless become omnipresent horror stories were often set in rural areas, so the instant communication afforded by cell technology was eliminated, which increased the isolation of the characters and intensified the drama. ("New Mexico" was, for a time, a mythical movie region where cell phones didn't work.) 1983 was definitely the pre-cellphone era. This allows places like a regular rural house to be completely cut off and vulnerable to attack from inter-dimensional monsters. The filmmakers even hang a lantern on this by having a regular land-line phone fry into uselessness not once, but twice. This was obviously not the entire reason to set “Stranger Things” in the pre-cellphone past, but it sure didn’t hurt.

Local Angle: Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), a friend of the missing boy,  wears a “Castroville Artichoke Festival” t-shirt for several episodes. It’s totally unmotivated— He lives in Hawkins, Indiana: Castroville is in Central California, south of Santa Cruz. I do appreciate the shout-out.

* h/t to Jared N. Wright, who coined this one-line summary. Once he wrote it, I couldn’t get past it, so I just included it.

Reviewed: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

...and here's the YouTube link:

Hang a Lantern On It's review of THE FORCE AWAKENS

QT's Roadshow Gimmick: or, The Heuristic Eight

This still is the actual proportion of Ultra Panavision 70mm.

Went to a late screening of The Hateful Eight at the Century San Francisco Center, where a friend (Chris) has successfully seen the thing. Very nice place with leather seats where you can buy a beer. At 11:00 on the dot the projected cranked up and the overture screen appeared on that wide, wide screen.

The rest of this is going to a Hegelian dialectical analysis of The Hateful Eight in Roadshow format. It's important to quantify the entire experience this way because when you get right down to it, the synthesis of technology and subject here is super goddamned peculiar.

THESIS: The Ultra Panavision 70mm Roadshow Release.
The extra wide format Tarantino used here -- 65mm source with an extra anamorphic squeeze bringing the frame to a stunning 2.76:1 aspect ratio-- is quite rare and was used exclusively for prestige Hollywood productions. Ben Hur, The Greatest Story Ever Told, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and The Fall of the Roman Empire were previous films lensed in this format.

The technical presentation at the Century San Francisco Center was simply excellent. The image suffered a little bit from the screen masking, which was open at the bottom, showing a soft edge. I believe the auditorium was equipped for either 'scope (2.35:1) or spherical/HD (1.8:1) and simply could not mask the screen down to the right aspect ratio.

70mm film. This is a faded clip from
Hello Dolly! (1970) which was shot in 65mm.

For the sheer visual experience, it's worth the effort seeing the film this way (and you can until January 11th, when they will dismount all the 70mm projection gear). I have been fortunate to have seen several films in Ultra Panavision before (Ben Hur and It's a Mad x4 World, in the Cinerama Dome no less) and the sheer visual aspect of the film-- incredible 70mm detail, rich color and natural tone of photochemical film makes for a memorable experience. (it would have been even better to have seen a screening on a deeply curved Cinerama screen but those are no longer available in the Bay Area.)

No less pleasurable is the entire Roadshow experience: an overture, intermission and a quality program handed to every patron. More films should do this. When I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in Cinerama Roadshow when I was a little kid there were programs, but you had to buy them.

ANTITHESIS: The Hateful Eight
The movie itself was vile. Set in the Old West, it's a tale about a collection of mostly unpleasant Western movie types holed up in a mountain trading post during a blizzard. Having a full complement of characters, Quentin advances his story by having his characters give little speeches and then kill each other. His idea of a "plot twist" is killing off a character and letting the story dynamics fall into a reductio ad absurdum pattern until the next killing. If anything (and H/T to Chris for pointing this out) it's a lot like John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) complete with Kurt Russell.

They're hateful and there are eight of them.
Walton Goggins (#6 here) turned in a great,
unusual stand-out performance.

There are no overarching themes aside from vengeance and pointless violence and super-casual 19th century racism. Like Django Unchained, one could look at this film as a addressing slavery and institutional racism, but it's clear that ol' QT is only vaguely aware of this: he merely loves having his characters say "nigger" over and over and over until the shock value hardens into dull acceptance.

Some critics have argued that Quentin Tarantino is expertly deconstructing archetypes of classic cinema in his movies. That may well be, but I do not think I have ever seen a Hollywood or spaghetti western quite as nihilistic and meaningless as The Hateful Eight. If anything it gave some glimpses into QT's thought processes-- and man, it's ugly in there. Maybe he's trying to meld the classic low-budget Western with the Austrian horror genre (i.e. Funny Games) in terms of sheer lack of human empathy, but I doubt it. It's all just those ugly thoughts. In fact he's so in love with his own tough-guy, everyone-is-a-killer narrative that he reads the left-hand narration out loud right after the intermission-- apparently because he believes we're a bunch of goldfish who forgot everything in the first half of the movie.

The Hateful Eight also claustrophobic. Most of the movie is set in one room. Wide film notwithstanding, this film has the lowest and simplest production values of any Quentin Tarantino film-- and this includes Reservoir Dogs, another one-set film but with a lot of interesting scenes set in other interesting places.

SYNTHESIS: Tarantino's Roadshow Gimmick
Roadshow implies prestige: Every other film released in Ultra Panavision 70mm had incredibly large budgets, stellar casts and sweeping vistas and locations. Even the ones shot in spherical 65mm, from Oklahoma! (1955) to Samsara (2011) have a certain cachet, a promise of an enhanced experience. Add to that the roadshow format, with an overture, intermission and a program-- all elements of legitimate theater transplanted into cinema to impart a sense of occasion and importance--  it adds up to the anticipation of a special, full-sensory, even transcendent cinematic experience.

We don't get any of that here.

The Hateful Eight is an anti-prestige movie. It's a grindhouse Western full of grungy, glib characters who spend the majority of the film in a rustic shack pointing revolvers at each other. There are some gorgeous sweeping vistas in the beginning of the film, when the first four of the eight meet up in a stagecoach, set in the snowy wilds of Wyoming. But aside from some clever use of cross-frame staging and mise-en-scene, the super-wide frame and rich film look is wasted. It's the least spectacular large-format movie I've ever seen.

The synthetic effect is, as I said, super goddamned peculiar. It's like putting on evening wear and paying a premium to watch a bunch of YouTube cat videos. I overheard a few conversations during the intermission: Most other audience members were trying to define what the big deal was about 70mm and why the screen was so squished. This represents a misuse of the format. Tarantino should have made Inglorious Basterds in Ultra Panavision 65: it had sweep, spectacle, a huge cast and amazing settings. Hell, he should have made Kill Bill into a single, 200-minute-long-with-intermission roadshow production. In terms of matching content to format The Hateful Eight deserved to be filmed in 16mm and blown up to plain HD.

If you want to see a bit of cinematic history, a real live roadshow 70mm release with the full bells and whistles, The Hateful Eight technically qualifies, I suppose. If you're all hype to see Jennifer Jason Leigh (who was great, BTW) get punched in the face, covered with her own and various people's blood, and called a bitch about a million times, see the Digital Cinema version: it's shorter and cheaper.

Quentin would have been PISSED

With nothing compelling on TV and a movie pass burning in my wallet, I decided to attend a roadshow screening of The Hateful Eight.

I've sort of fallen out with Tarantino lately, what with his ardent passion for turning junk movies from the past into faux-junk cinema and utter devotion to pointless nihilistic gore and over-the-top vengeance stories. It's all part of his huge movie-geek thing-- but something of substance DID come out of it. The man cares about old-school widescreen cinema: so do I. That's where our Venn diagrams intersect.

He went through an extraordinary amount of trouble to create a roadshow release of The Hateful Eight. The last film I remember seeing in a proper roadshow release was Apocalyse Now, a credits-free 70mm screening with a program provided. The Hateful Eight goes a few steps better, with a musical overture, intermission and a three-hour program length.

At least, that's what I understand is supposed to happen.

The fun part: going out with a big ol' 65mm
camera and shooting cool lens flares.

December 28th's  last screening was supposed to start at eleven at the Daly City 20. I got there early, paid the $3 up-charge and staked out a seat near the screen, pleased they had curtained it for crazy wide 2.76:1 Ultra Panavision. Two young women-- practically the only female-only party in a half-full show-- stopped on the way in and noted the smell. Sure enough-- this was the fourth screening of the day and Quentin's core audience demographic had filled the auditorium with a heavy, funky, manly fragrance.

11:00 became 11:10, then 11:20. No movie. The floor manager appeared, handed out rain checks and promised we'd be up and running in about ten minutes. At 11:40, he came back and cancelled the show. So, in the end I did NOT see The Hateful Eight-- but I got two movie passes and three roadshow programs out of the experience, so not a total loss.

The floor manager and I chatted just before he called the screening off. Apparently the theater got all the hardware for a 70mm screening just before it was supposed to start. The projector was refurbished, and at the end of the roadshow screening they will haul it away and 2K digital shows would take it's place. The problem was the projector was just plain broken: it simply would not pass the wide film, some sort of mechanical failure. This cancelled screening was not the first one they had to axe either. Roadshow screenings have gone dark all across the US and Canada in regular intervals.

Hey: Quentin Tarantino and The Weinstein Company are trying very hard to give the audience a taste of the widescreen glories of the past, and more power to them for it.  The thing is: they're giving audience a taste of not just that, but the entirety of photomechanical projection technology.

For each of The Hateful Eight roadshow venues they had to ship in a 70mm projector, set it up and align it, and station a projectionist exclusively to handle the thing. (I'm sure they had to bring in flatbed film platters in some places as well, but not Daly City: they still had one Christie system left). These projectors are likely vintage Century or Todd-AO machines they bought used and had mechanically refurbished. But without the infrastructure and expertise to maintain these machines, they break. They didn't break as much in the past because they were so common.

DP70 35/70mm projector.

Back in my movie theater management days a surprising number of theaters I managed had 70mm capability. In the 80s United Artists had the presence of mind to buy up and install a lot of DP-70 Todd-AO projectors made by Phillips/Norelco in the Netherlands in 1955 or so. The reasons for buying up these machines was twofold: they were very solidly made and reliable for regular 35mm screenings, and even the dopiest non-union assistant manager could switch them over to 70mm. Even with dopey non-union assistant managers running the shows, there were technicians available for overhaul and spare parts were in abundance in every projection booth (sometimes even spare projectors). This all made the average screening in the film era a reliable thing.

Nonetheless, there were a lot of moving parts and flying film and things went off the rails all the time. I am personally responsible for destroying a $3000 reel of 70mm: I started a screening of Bonfire of the Vanities in 70mm blow-up (why? WHY?) forgetting to engage the feed platter motor. Reel One wrapped around the hub and was torn to shreds. Fortunately we could switch to 35mm until a replacement reel arrived (and Larry Levin finished yelling at me).

Digital projection has as we all know, transformed the moviegoing experience. For the audience the changes have been subtle: the picture is more steady, screenings more reliable, and unfortunately trailers nearly endless. the films still "break," though, but they do it digitally: It was reported that an opening night screening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens glitched a few minutes in and skipped to the very end of the film. Digital Cinema's most profound change happened in the booth: no moving parts. Films are loaded via hard drive. The roar of the average film projector (which was terrifyingly loud when running 70mm) has been replaced by the hum of cooling fans.

Like I said, big praise for Tarantino for bringing back Ultra Panavision, but it's a kind of stunt, like wiring theater seats to shock people. My cancelled show was part of this whole retro-technical stunt rather than the continuum of modern Digital Cinema technology, and as such none of the backups were available. There was no 35mm print backup or a spare digital projector. He's giving people a taste of the old film days, but it's so late after the passing of this technology it's definitely a double-edged sword. Part of this is sheer hubris: it's easy and cool on the front end to go out and shoot a film with 65mm Panavision cameras and hand-restored 1.25X anamorphic lenses. On the back end it's not so easy: conforming 100 theaters to a nearly dead film format is a tall order indeed, a stunt not as easily pulled off.

So I'm gonna try again soon to see another roadshow screening, but this time I'm going to a theater that isn't in the sticks (Daly City: I'll bet they installed the less reliable refurbished projectors in the outliers). Sheer law of averages means next time the projector will light up.

Jaws as Socio-Economic Parable

Chief Brody (left) deals with pressure from the
Amity Selectmen and their 1974 Cadillac Fleetwood.

Jaws (1975) was a more than Spielberg’s breakthrough thriller hit, a huge box-office hit, and the film that, with Star Wars, invented the idea of the high-concept summer blockbuster. It is also a parable. The most obvious theme is man versus nature— how humanity can band together to defeat relentless forces of death and chaos. But the parable that is touched on but rarely explored is how Jaws is a study of American social structure- How they fight, and how they cooperate.

America in 1975 was somewhat different than it is today. Wall street was still well-regulated, the top marginal tax rates on income were much higher than they are now, and unions were much stronger. The wealthy were very wealthy, but they still had some common ground with a healthy middle class. It was a time when the middle class was still given substantial incentive to prosper: single-income families were still the norm, and even the poor were considered “lower middle class.” It was before Reagan, union-busting and trickle-down economics, and the long and fantastic post-WWII run of prosperity was still going— it was near the end, but it was still working for most people. Looking back, I think most folks didn’t know how good they had it.

Into this prosperous, fairly harmonious but increasingly cynical post-Watergate world enters a shark, who begins eating people off the shore of the small East Coast resort community of Amity. After a few disastrous mistakes by the local powers-that-be that result in even more death, the right decision is made and a fishing expedition to go kill the shark is financed.

And, oddly, a representative of every level of American society is on-board.

Quint: "Let me feel your hands... They're city hands,
soft from counting money."
Hooper: "hey, I don't need this 'working class hero' crap!"

• Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) is the Woods’ Hole Shark expert. He represents the upper class: He is college-educated, well-traveled and pursues his avocation (oceanographer) with expensive equipment he bought himself. His approach to the challenge of the antagonist is initially aesthetic: He thinks sharks are magnificent, beautiful creatures, the pinnacle of piscine evolution.

• Quint (Robert Shaw) owns the Orca: He is a charter fisherman specializing in shark hunting. He represents the working class: a poorly educated, crude rustic with a strong Down East accent. Quint’s motivations are personal: as a survivor of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis in World War II, he has dedicated his life to vengeance against creatures who killed his shipmates. Considering the condition of his ship and shore facility it seems Quint has turned his obsession into a marginal sort of living.

"I think we need a bigger boat." Perfect example of
middle-class pragmatism from Chief Brody.
(This classic line was ad-libbed by Roy Scheider.)

• Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider) is on-board as a sponsor: his efforts financed the expedition. He is ostensibly the protagonist of Jaws— and he is solidly middle class. A former New York City policeman turned town police chief, he is pragmatic, methodical and cautious. A civil servant, Brody is fully enmeshed with the pitfalls and complexity of local government, and spends a good part of the film trying to convince Amity’s selectmen to take the shark threat seriously. His viewpoint on the antagonist is a common one: ignorance and fear. He does not like the ocean, does not go into the water, and is frankly terrified of sharks. However, he displays a common-sense willingness to facilitate, learn and help.

With representative of every social class onboard the Orca pursuing the common goal of ridding the fair town of Amity of a rogue Great White it would seem their goals are unified. But there are tensions between each man as much as there are tensions between classes:

The "moment of greatest settled success" of Jaws:
all levels of society literally harmonizing together
before the shark starts taking the boat apart.

Brody and Hooper vs. Quint: As well-integrated members of mainland society, they see Quint as an unhinged, dangerously obsessed yokel.

Hooper and Quint vs. Brody: As experienced seamen and shark enthusiasts, they see Brody as a useless landlubber who has the potential to get into serious trouble onboard.

Quint and Brody vs. Hooper: Hooper has a tendency to be snippy and is constantly suspected of not sharing the primary goal of the expedition: to kill the shark, not study or admire it.

These squabbles are put aside (mostly) when the shark seems to take an interest in them and begins a personal (and scientifically nonsensical) vendetta against the Orca and the three intrepid class representatives onboard. Sharks don’t take vendettas: in fact, most marine biologists believe Great Whites don’t care for people meat, and most fatalities are “test bites” that have bled out.

"How do you work this thing of yours?" Quint setting aside
his working-class resentments for the sake of survival.

This shark vendetta does not makes sense— unless you cast the story as a parable about class. Then the shark becomes a common enemy to all society, high and low, a threat which requires complete socio-economic cooperation.

Hooper, Quint and Brody all work together to battle the shark, who also busy trying to eliminate all of them in no particular order. The final act of the film can even be seen as a microcosm of how chaos and disaster are typically visited upon the American body politic (from here to the end are solid ••• spoilers ••• but shame on you if you haven’t seen this film!)

Quint, being working class, is eaten by the shark, which fits into the demographic of natural disasters affecting the poor proportionally worse than anyone else. Hooper, having access to expensive gear, is able to swim away from his high-tech shark cage, hide on the seafloor, and survive. The job of dispatching the shark falls on the capable middle-class Brody, who uses a tool left by working-class Quint (M1 rifle) and another tool left by wealthy Hooper (compressed-air scuba tank) to blow up the shark. Thus was the burden of the 20th century American middle class.

Peter Benchley, looking sharp in wide lapels.

The original novel was written by Peter Benchley, the grandson of humorist Robert Benchley. In the novel as well as the movie Brody is the protagonist, but Benchley was in life much more of a Hooper (Phillips Exeter prep school, Harvard University). Interestingly, Hooper was a bit of a rich cad in the book: he had an affair with Chief Brody’s wife. Then again, in the book Hooper did not escape the shark cage and was just plain eaten. He comes off much nicer in the movie, which may or may not be social commentary.