One of the most interesting social experiments I ever witnessed was how humor and wit on a base level really transcended culture, economics and social structure. I once knew an accountant who was of Indian Sikh background. One day I asked her, out of genuine curiosity, what do Sikh’s laugh at ? For a moment she looked at me incredulously and like I had green onions growing out of my head. She realized that I was serious in my questioning, she gently answered back….they laugh at the same things you do. I was shocked…but she was right.
At the time, the business where I was working had a night time Sikh cleaning crew. At the stroke of 8 PM every night a set of bearded and turbaned men walked into my place of work, talking among themselves in rapid Punjabi. I decided to test out the revelation told to me by the account and I began to make it a habit to make a quip or comment which might be considered funny to the cleaning crew, often I got a good laugh which I loved . One night I inquired how it was “hanging”…they broke into hysterics. Eventually my interaction with these folks became a high point of my day.
Movies are truly magical. They can introduce generations of timid immigrants to this new country called America. Inhabitants of the lonely Australian outback would travel miles in order to witness a traveling movie roadshow. Filipino farmers would sit in recently cleared jungles and watch movies projected on a screen lashed against a couple bamboo trees while the sound of a sputtering generator and insects filled the wet night air. People are drawn to movies and the diversion they provide.
One the best film going experiences I had was sitting with some friends in my first car, a Chevette and watching Star Wars projected against the side of a white washed grain elevator sitting in the middle of a prairie. The movie was projected in 16mm with a projector borrowed from a local high school. In the middle of the movie during a key Rebel assault …..a grain train lumbered down the tracks, suddenly Tie-Fighters and Rebel X Wings screamed across a series of rolling grain rail cars. It was magical and it was perfect.
In the movie business we are quickly becoming the diseased victims of a pollution of our own making. For several decades, the movie industry has made everything bigger The movies were made bigger because the studios started making money packaging larger budget movies. Release patterns became much bigger; remember Star Wars had only a 920 theatre release. Giant shrines to the bigness of movies were built, the multiplex. The popcorn got bigger, the soft drinks got bigger and the prices got way bigger. The only thing that got smaller was the movie theatres themselves. Community was thrown away as an ideal, diversity of product was laid to waste in light of the need to release a film globally into order to return a profit. I firmly believe such scale has led to the tragic dehumanization of the movie going experience and has produced a failed and doomed system of exhibition and production that will continue to do great harm to the movie going tradition and the movie going experience. We must, if movie going is to survive, go back to the concept of showmanship and really embrace the credo, smaller is better.
In the movie business, like other businesses, bigger has become better. In other business sectors, niche brands such as The Body Shop in the UK or Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream in the US attempted to build a “small is beautiful” model of economic enterprise that put relationship, craft and environment at the heart of their way of working. They were later snaffled up by corporate giants. Small became cool but only as part of a branding strategy which masked the ongoing concentration of political and economic power. In humans medical gigantism, is a condition characterized by excessive growth and height significantly above average. It is a condition that is painful, not healthy, and usually leads to an early death by anyone afflicted with this condition. The movie business is afflicted by this condition.
The power of the global multinational and the financial institutions was beginning to become apparent in the early 70s, but it has grown exponentially and has become unaccountable to national governments.
However, “small is beautiful” is an idea that keeps reappearing, the latest manifestations are concepts like farmers’ markets, pop-up cinemas and restaurants because it incorporates such a fundamental insight into the human experience as well as the humanity of small business. We as a people, a species, yearn for economic systems within our control, within our sense of understanding and that once again provide opportunities for genuine and profound human interaction. Yet increasingly we as a species are being constantly overwhelmed by a vast global economic systems that are corrupting and corrupt.
As you get older you realize that a true human happiness would not be achieved through material wealth but by a series of bona fide experiences and interaction with other humans. At one time the movies were the prime purveyor of this to our society.
Not any more.
There is hope and there Is a chance for revitalization within this business. I am betting that drive-ins and single screen community based theatres will show us the road forward. Drive-ins please begin to show a more diversified line-up of movies, combine new and old together. Take a chance on an opera, or on a dark night invite a local ethnic group to screen a movie from their culture on your big screen, Single screen theatre owners fight hard against the four week hold studios are placing for the bigger pictures. Lets face it Rogue One may have legs for ten days worth of shows. Forcing theatres that struggle at times, to be dark for 20 days is not right. Engagement your community show more diverse films. Celebrate the movies and celebrate your community.
I befriended Afghan refugee, an eminently decent and kind man who fought for the Taliban against the Soviet Union. He left his country because he was tired of war and wanted peace for this children. As you probably have guessed by now, I like people and really enjoying striking up a conversation. I told this fellow that I worked in the movie business and his face lit up. He told me as a young man he loved to go to Kabul and watch the films made by French director Francois Truffaut, his favorite was the tragic romance Jules et Jim. As he talked about his love for this movie, racial and cultural barriers evaporated and we were just a couple of movie fans chatting.
Smaller in all things is so much better. It is time we realized that. We love movies as a species, but lately movies and the movies business have not really loved us.
