     
1.
Well, here we go again! To begin with, a general question to set the stage:
Do films have a purpose without an audience?
Of course they could, but my general opinion is that they shouldn't. As I see it, art never reaches its fullest potential until it leaves the hands of the artist and is received and/or interpreted by an audience. The final creative touch is forced absolution on the part of the artist. A locked cut is inevitable. Just the other day, Jason Kottke quoted Jeff Tweedy as saying: "Music Is Finished in the Audience" (capitalization via moi). I think this is perfectly representative of the role the audience plays in art
– a role played with varying degrees of passivity. Film, perhaps, engenders the most passive of responses of all the art forms, and yet it also has the greatest propensity to challenge
– or at least the greatest number of levels across which to challenge (those of all the other art forms combined). There is certainly a risk inherent to this act of third-party completion
– refer to the previous Series and my thoughts on the possibilities of a film or piece of literature that exists purely for the sake of its uninterrupted content for an extreme example
– but I'm fairly certain that it's essential.
This belief was brought into question for me in my recent viewing two documentaries: In The Realms Of The Unreal, directed by Jessica Yu, and Monster Road, directed by Brett Ingram, both document the life and work of Outsider Artists (Henry Darger and Bruce Bickford, respectively), both of whose prolific output was done seemingly without an audience in mind. Darger, of course, went to the grave with his work unappreciated, while Bickford to this day labors, day in and day, out making beautiful animated film that gather dust in cans in his garage. Both of these men are perfect examples of the form of personal compulsion which generally produces the best works of art. In afterthought, however, I believe that neither man wants (or wanted) their work to go unseen; their compulsion to create simply superseded the need to exhibit.
(This is why, as directors, we need producers to take care of that sort of thing!)
This leads, somewhat, to my second, more precise question: to what extent, if any, should a filmmaker consider his or her audience when making a film?
This may not be a question so much as an exploration of a semi-guilty conscience. I personally find myself torn between two desires/needs: expressing myself on film, and satisfying the audiences viewing this film. I say semi-guilty, because I sometimes question the relevance of my own expression; I say torn, but on the other hand I wonder if these two intentions can't be perfectly complimentary. Can a filmmaker honestly serve others by being self-serving? Is to do so merely an indicator of the strength of one's artistic convictions?
I do think intent and conviction of intent has much to do with it. Hitchcock suggested, of course, that one should "always make the audience suffer as much as possible." And yet his films were such sublime works of reason and mechanics that I wonder if their creation excluded self doubt. On the other hand, I recall Paul Thomas Anderson talking about the writing process of Punch-Drunk Love, surely his most esoteric and misunderstood film, and how he fretted on a page-by-page basis whether or not the audience would 'get it' - a fear I sympathize highly with, and one which I think may be begotten of more personal cinematic expressions. It's not a case of being unsure of the art itself - but because one is putting oneself on display, in a sense, one is that much more desperate for approval. Thus, even though a filmmaker may be putting his or her audience through the ringer (and being cruel to them, although not in the Hitchcockian sense), their best interest is never far from the filmmaker's mind.
I think
– think
– that such consideration of the audience is natural, and a good thing. Where it becomes dangerous is when that desire for approval begins to subvert artistic integrity.
The solution, of course, is to make films for oneself. Not for you as a filmmaker, but you as an audience member. These two selves certainly inform one another, and are not mutually exclusive; but one is limited, and the other is not. One implies a selfish creative act, the other does not.
Whether or not these thoughts seem incomplete at this juncture, I'll now open up the table to your opinions on the matter.
dvd
2.
Dear David,
It's no secret that I'm not a huge fan of audiences, but it should be noted that, when I say this, I'm really only talking about a certain type of audience (that which is almost willfully ignorant of anything and everything) and that I've never said (not to my knowledge anyway) that film has a purpose without one. Of course, I believe that it does, mind you – ! – but that it can't be properly realised as such until the film been seen by someone – anyone at all – other than its maker. In other words, without an audience – even a willfully ignorant one that can be said to render it null and void – the purpose of a film lies dormant; we can call it, perhaps, "potential purpose," speaking of potential in the untapped sense. So, yeah. Every point you make in your first paragraph is a point that I more or less agree with.
Indeed, I kind of wonder about the "potential purpose" of this series if we're going to be agreeing so much! What gets me worked up, of course, is the idea of filmmakers pandering to an audience, which in my mind is tantamount to looking down on them and talking in a voice reserved for babies and pets (one of my favourite lecturers once said that he once walked out of a film that opened with a shot of the Eiffel Tower and a subtitle that read "Paris" because he thought it was insulting). I don't think, mind you, that to avoid pandering (or "looking down upon") one has to make the audience suffer in a literal sense (I don't know how you'd actually go about doing that; it depends on what one takes to mean "suffer"), which isn't at all what I think Hitchcock meant when he said what he said, and you're right, where it becomes dangerous is when that desire for approval begins to subvert artistic integrity. And I believe it happens all the time in Hollywood, or indeed wherever it's not so much approval of an emotional or intellectual sort that drives artists (like Hitchcock and Anderson, the two you cite), but approval of the fiscal sort; money has people subverting art all over the place. Not to say that good films can't get made in the mainstream systems and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but let me just say "test screenings" and "audience cards" and leave it at that.
I really don't know where to go from here, David, but to maybe ask some questions of my own. We're talking about audiences and their importance and everything and I'm interested in hearing how (if at all) your relationship with them changed, as a filmmaker, while taking Deadroom around to different festivals. I mean, we're talking about ideals here – the audience who completes the work and whatever – but audiences, we must remember, are volatile, unpredictable, subject to not being what we expect – or necessarily want. So, what makes for an ideal audience? Who did you have in mind – who did Anderson have in mind – who did Hitchcock have in mind when the three of you made your pictures? Based on your love of the audience (so to speak), surely not yourself and yourself alone, even if you were thinking of yourself as an audience member. And how did the reality stack up to the audience you were working towards?
I think the difference between you and I is that, while I too take seriously an audience's reaction (particularly, as you know from my ridiculous string of e-mails following your comments on Notes from the Arctic Circle, if the reaction belongs to someone I hold in high esteem), I make a film for myself and myself alone, "as" whatever (audience member, critic, filmmaker, wannabe anthropologist), with very little regard during the process of the audience – it's only afterwards that I begin to care. (The Sven script, you might say, is an exception, but I disagree; it was only after the draft, which is a work in and of itself, that I suddenly started caring about – and taking – people's feedback seriously. And even then only the feedback of people I actually respect.) You see to labour over the idea of the audience (though maybe that's a little strong) during the actual creation of the work, which is when I care about them least.
I don't know if any real argument has developed in these last few paragraphs or not; to be honest, I'm not sure I even agree one-hundred percent with what I've written. It's been difficult to try and come up with something that adds to the discussion as opposed to killing it dead with agreements left, right and centre, but I've tried.
Hopefully you can take some of my questions and/or "accusations" and make something of them as soon as you're able.
Yours, as ever,
m.
3.
Dear Matt,
I did have a notion that this conversation might end up being a catalogue of agreements; and indeed, I think whatever differential points you and I have about audiences nonetheless converge at the point you outlined in your first paragraph – that of the dormant purpose – a point significant and inescapable enough that it pretty much renders all arguments falling beneath it nil. Thus, perhaps this series is best looked at as a brief selection of clarifications and refinements – or, as I suggested in my last e-mail, exorcisms. I'll present just a few more thoughts and ideas that have been circling through my head of late.
You mention test screenings and scorecards as symbols of all that is evil about institutional filmmaking, and I agree completely. On the other hand, showing early cuts of one's work can be incredibly helpful, at least in my experience. All audiences are different, and gauging their reactions to a work-in-progress over the course of several screenings is an unrefined art; but simply sitting amongst a group and experiencing your film as it awakens from that dormant state can reveal things you'd never notice while staring at the screen in your editing suite. The work takes on new properties, or develops what was previously latent; often it's practically a transmogrification. An objective audience isn't necessarily required for this to happen, although it helps.
And of course, I have indeed been showing my own film to an objective audience over these past few months. You ask how have my expectations been met and/or changed. The answer is: not much, on either count. It's been an interesting experience – refreshing, intriguing, nerve-wracking, and yet not all that surprising. I think this is a result of something I discussed in my last e-mail, about making films for oneself as an audience member, but not as a filmmaker. During the editing process, trying to maintain some degree of objectivity, I looked at the film critically and then, as a filmmaker, tried to meet my own standards. It was a rather troubling, schizophrenic way to work, particularly in the case of this omnibus effort, in that I was often working against myself. The result, though, is that audience members react pretty much exactly as I anticipated; if anything, my own self-defacing nature allows some room for surprise when someone really responds positively to the work. I should note, too, that audience reaction at festivals is always going to be far different (and most likely more intellectually slanted) than your standard multiplex crowd.
I imagine this creative schizophrenia will diminish as I become more sure of (a) what I want to make from the outset and (b) what I want to see when it's finished. The two ideals will never meet – I'll never be able to watch my own work and truly enjoy it in full (nor, I imagine, could any filmmaker) – but I think that the closing of the distance between them may ultimately result in fewer labor pains. It'll be as close as I might ever be able to come to saying "I could care less about an audience" – and the reason I'll be able to say that is because I'm confident in what I'm preparing to give them. If they don't like it, it's their own fault! At this point, though, I still carry a bit too much of the blame.
It's very much a love/hate relationship that I have with audiences – and this relationship includes other films and filmmakers as well. I love audiences who simply want to be entertained, but I hate audiences who allows themselves to be pandered to; I love audiences who seek out the unusual, the brave, the extreme, but I hate audiences who seek them out expecting to be pandered to. At the same time, to return to Paul Thomas Anderson as an example, I feel sympathy for the young Adam Sandler fan who sat behind me at Punch-Drunk Love the night it opened, insisting to his girlfriend that they should stay because "it'll get funnier," but I have none for that girlfriend who would have walked out. I suppose what I'm getting at here is: I want audiences to take risks with what they see, and if the risks don't pay off for them, that's fine; all I ask is that they don't like a film for the right reasons (high hopes, right?). This, then, leads into discussions of critical thought, which, in my eternal optimism, I believe most filmgoers have at least a subconscious capacity for – how many choose to use it, I have no idea.
On a more grand scale, this all ties into the cyclical, tail-chasing explanation for all of the crap that's foisted upon audiences (and this goes for television, music and in some cases literature as well). During our recent lecture, James and I put as much blame for the current state of cinema on the viewers as we did the studios that pander to them. In a sense, we may have come across as vilifying audiences for choosing, say, Fat Albert over The Brown Bunny , which isn't exactly a fair judgment (I'll say it again, just to protect myself – it's all a matter of taste, which is all a matter of subjectivity, and subjectivity comes in degrees). Still, if audiences exercised some discretion in what they went to see, I think some form of subtle revolution in terms of content would occur.
Likewise, the filmmaker has a responsibility to provide audiences with something that is, at the very least, an engaging bit of entertainment; of course, I'd like to see more filmmakers do more than just entertain. I'm reminded of what Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa wrote about Abbas Kiarostami at Senses of Cinema : "Not only does he break away from conventional narrative and documentary filmmaking, he also challenges the audience's role. He plays with their expectations and provokes their creative imagination. His films invite the viewer to reflect, confront stereotypes, and actively question their assumptions."
Need we merely dream of a world in which producers readily find funding for filmmakers with such ideals, and audiences prove such investments worthwhile?
Must popular filmmakers be populist as well?
Has it really only been 30 years since the release of a Godard film would bring crowds of people to form lines wrapping around the theatre in a way that only a new Star Wars film might these days?
I'd say that a rebellion is in order if I didn't already suspect that it is underway, quietly, subversively. I don't think the model of 70s era of studio filmmaking will ever come to pass again
I'd like to end this particular e-mail with the suggestion that all art, no matter what it is, has an audience somewhere that will appreciate it, and it's simply a matter of the connection being made. Thus, we can take solace in the fact that, even if some wonderful obscure little film is a box office bomb, its legacy will endure and grow on DVD. The advent of (high quality) digital projection, as long as it remains corporately unobstructed, allows such legacies to achieve wider dissemination at an earlier point; and this leads to the fairly conclusive point you made recently in your blog, concerning Creative Commons licenses: "that artists really just want their work to be seen, heard, read and experienced – shared – and that, given a choice, no real artist – even a struggling, poverty-stricken one – would rather live in obscurity than prominence, however financially insecure."
Amen to that, and also to the audience members like ourselves who give filmmakers like ourselves validation.
I'll leave the table open for your thoughts, final or otherwise; in the meantime, I'm adding some Catherine Breillat films to my Netflix queue, in anticipation of Series 4; as I mentioned a few weeks ago, perhaps this instalment can be viewed as a pleasant calm before the storm.
Take care,
dvd
4.
Dear David,
I hope someone taped your lecture as I'd very much like to see it. (Indeed, you could even vlog it!)
That said, I'm going to skip over the majority of your e-mail's points, admitting that, despite my best efforts to disagree with you (or even to find places where I could play Devil's Advocate for the sake of argument), most of what you have to say is stuff that I agree with. I presume that when you say "the current state of cinema" you mean the current state of mainstream American cinema and not the current state of international art cinema or even the current state of cinema in general? I don't think we're in a crisis in those latter two arenas; indeed, as you yourself suggest when you say that you suspect that a subversive cinematic rebellion is already underway, I'm not even sure the latter is in as big a crisis as we may think. Well, maybe the mainstream is (but when isn't it?), but not the truly independent American cinema (of which Indiewood is not a part). Or maybe I'm just more concerned with the crises of my own country's cinema to be as perceptive to yours?
I'm also not one-hundred percent sure that I place a terrible amount of blame on the mainstream audience for the current state of anything; I may have contempt for them (to whatever extent), but that's just personal frustration born of their sleepwalker-like state. No, my real loathing is reserved for the people in charge who couldn't care less for art, see cinema as (nothing but) a commodity and who use cinema as a giant ideology and status quo-confirming machine. But, then, they allow me to turn my cinema (hopefully) into a status quo-deconstructing machine, which I have a ball doing, so I don't know. Maybe you've just caught me in too optimistic a mood tonight? I pity mainstream audiences I think, and pity is closely related to contempt and revulsion. But I can't blame them for falling asleep at the wheel when the radio station's playing nothing but lullabies...
Need we merely dream of a world in which producers readily find funding for filmmakers with such ideals, and audiences prove such investments worthwhile?
I don't know. Do we? I'll readily and willingly admit that, of you and I, you're definitely the more knowledgeable, if only by way of your recent experiences, when it comes to the independent film scene. Didn't you just sign on to be one such producer yourself? Tell me a little about that. And about how you've come to suspect that the revolution is taking place as we speak.
Meanwhile, I'm not one-hundred percent sure what you mean when you bring up populism and popular cinema, and your nostalgia for the golden days of Godard doesn't strike me as being particularly well-founded. Weren't the majority of Godard's films commercial failures even before he went off to became a politically committed filmmaker?
The final paragraph of your e-mail brings up some questions that I feel are worth exploring a little further. You bring up any given film's ability to endure on DVD, even if it fails theatrically. Following this lead, though veering us away from our discussion of the audience slightly, I can't help but wonder (and ask) what the importance of theatrical distribution is really going to be in the coming five to ten years. Though I don't at all consider myself to be the standard textbook example of the future of filmmaking, I plan on making a DVD quality version of 5 Studies (an admittedly minor work) available for download for free on Ourmedia.org in the hope that people will download it, burn themselves a copy of it and, indeed, project it on to a wall or whatever. It's likely that I'll do the same (probably not for free, but certainly not for much) with Sven Deconstructs the Status Quo (and will hopefully vlog the entire pre- and post-production processes of that film as well). I'd be willing to do the same with my features, too I'll enter the film in festivals, of course (and let's cross our fingers for Notes , meanwhile, which I have entered in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth), but the Internet and grassroots dissemination of product (not to mention DVD) are all going to be major parts of the process, far outweighing the importance of our traditional concept of the theatrical experience. I am reminded of Caveh Zahedi's recent (wonderful) interview in BRAINTRUSTdv:
Anyone can make a film now, and anyone can put it on a DVD and hand it to or mail it to anyone else.
Exactly. Such opportunities for those of us who couldn't care less about fame or money in the mainstream sense. The number of "audience members like ourselves who give filmmakers like ourselves validation" is going to increase significantly. Or so I hope (I have to admit that I have a tendency to get a little too excited over such so-called revolutions). I'm not saying that the theatrical experience is dead, that it should die, or even that I wouldn't love to see my own films up there on the big screen, but I do believe that purists with the (forgive me: ideologically suspect? undemocratic? elitist?) intent of seeing the darkened theatre remain the only justifiable place for cinema (and the standard, fucked up means of distribution the only justifiable means of distributing it) are out of touch. This, too, is what I mean when I say morally imperative; it's almost as if we should work in the margins simply as a means of demonstrating that it can be done. Needless to say, it's very likely that, by the time I shuffle off this mortal coil, I'm going to have a very strange oeuvre to my name – but, then, that's the way it should be! That all films must be projected in a cinema, shot in colour on celluloid, and run between ninety and one-hundred-and-twenty minutes in English is rubbish, and yet another way that the mainstream has, over the past one-hundred-and-whatever years, conditioned the audience to automatically guard themselves against the majority of important, probing, inquisitive, destructive works that try to teach them to see for real. It's morally imperative to be the avant-garde! But I've turned this series into something that it shouldn't have become, perhaps. Just lately I've developed a tendency to rant. At least I didn't use the term "dominant forms"! Oh, wait...
Did I just end the series or swerve it off the designated path and towards a cliff?
Take care,
m.
5.
Dear Matt,
I'm actually rather pleased by the manner in which you've resuscitated this conversation – pleased, and a bit wary, because the future of film distribution is a dissertation worthy subject.
(First, let me parenthetically wrap up a few rambling points.
1. When I said "the current state of cinema," I was making a far too general, overtly pessimistic statement. In all honesty, I can't even completely decry the studio system, not when they put out films like I ♥ Huckabees or (yet again) Punch-Drunk Love. I should have said "the current state of popular cinema," which would have then tied into my later question regarding the difference between being popular and populist, by which I meant to ask whether or not a filmmaker could ever be truly popular without simply trying to appease the masses (both consumer and corporate).
2. That, though, along with the two other questions I posed near the end of my last correspondence, were intended to be somewhat rhetorical – over-emphatic, romantic, grandstanding, etc. Thus, the description of that "golden age of Godard," which I have to admit I based entirely on the nostalgia of another like-minded romantic, Roger Ebert, who described those lines around the block. And as for producing – well, there are the producers who have the money (and are therefore called executive producers), and then there are producers who know where to find the money; and then there are producers like me who know how to prepare a mean schedule and hire a crew and even outline a budget, but are still fighting the learning curve in the search for financing. I'll have to offer a rain check in terms of personal insight – and as it might instigate another book-length tangent, this wouldn't be the best place for it anyway.
3. In regards to not blaming audiences for falling asleep at the wheel – that's all fine and good, but the problem is that they aren't falling asleep at the wheel – or at least not at the right wheels. It's a matter of misplaced values and laziness that finds audiences happy to make mindless drivel the number one movie most weekends. Corporate studios are happy to keep filling that demand. The circle continues, but in a corporate-consumerist culture, it's ultimately up to the consumer to make the first move towards change (that's not the case, necessarily, in subcultures, but I'll get to that later).
And so that's that, I think, as far as this whole audience thing goes. Now let's see how much dirt I can get under my fingernails.)
When I spoke of a quiet, subversive rebellion, I did indeed have these new methods of distribution in mind. That's where it's going to happen. And in many of these cases, it will be up to the distributor/exhibitor to make the first movie – and the audience will follow, and if not follow, eventually discover. And the distributor/exhibitor will, I think, also turn out to be the filmmaker as this revolution continues.
When you think about it, the current mode of art-house releasing is not all that different from the golden age of studio releasing, prior to the advent of the summer blockbuster. These small films are still being given platform releases, and a small but dedicated following still seeks them out. Just the other week, I read about lines stretching around the block in Los Angeles for the 6 hour Russian film The Best Of Youth. So that still happens, it's just on a more niche scale; and the people in that line are probably not the same people who went to see Sahara the same weekend (and those people wouldn't have lined up to see a Godard film in the sixties, either; it's just that back then, there were no blockbusters to appeal to everyone at the same time – and as I wrote that, I suddenly realized I may have uncovered a fallacy of a previous argument – but it's too late for that now!).
This is a very limited means of exhibition, though. Can it be widened? Let me count the ways.
First and foremost, but perhaps least effectively, we have the advent of high quality digital projection in mainstream theaters. It's really a non-issue, especially since studios are likely going to be leasing the projectors to theaters and thereby "owning" the screens.
On a potentially more accessible level, there are "pioneers" like Mark Cuban, who two years ago purchased the Landmark theater chain (the largest art house exhibition company in the US) and is also in the process of installing digital projectors in all of them. It's also his intent to produce films (through his 2929 Entertainment shingle) that will be released in theaters, on DVD and on television – all on the same day. I really can't muster much interest in this means of distribution, but it's very much worth noting that Steven Soderbergh just signed a six picture deal with Cuban; all six films will be directed by Soderbergh, shot digitally with budgets ranging from around two to three million, and be released according to this trifecta model. Also of interest is the fact that Landmark theaters will begin showing short films prior to the features. All in all, this might create a wider avenue of demand for films, and the fact that Soderbergh is getting involved might mean that they're looking for quality material - or it might not. We'll see.
Next (finally getting into more interesting territory) we have theatrical self distribution, á la Greg Pak and Robot Stories. It was an ultimately successful venture, and the film was finally picked up by Kino for DVD release. There are also filmmakers like Hal Hartley, who labored for years in Indiewood and developed a fan base. Now, he's created his own production and distribution company, Possible Films - effectively removing the middle man from the production-distribution equation. I'm quite excited to see what he does with this new freedom. I'm quite excited, too, to see if any other filmmakers follow his example. In a way, it's the upper echelons of what you were talking about in your latest very pertinent blog entry – the democratization of cinema.
So that brings us to where you and I and so many of our friends are at this moment in time – struggling to make a name for ourselves, to develop that audience that will both validate and, with any luck, sustain our output. The sustenance is less important than the validation, of course. I'm reminded of American filmmaker Todd Verow, who might have been included in the New Queer filmmaking movement if he hadn't instead come to define the parameters of DV filmmaking during the technology's infancy (he's famous for shooting ten DV features between 1999 and 2000). Many of his films have distribution, he's a festival darling, he's a respected artist, and as of at least a few years ago, he was still managing a movie theater in Maine to fund his creativity. It's not an ideal circumstance for a filmmaker, but it's a pretty satisfactory give-or-take, all things considered. He never has to wait to make his next film, or cater to anyone else's taste; and yet his films get seen and appreciated. Evan Mather would be a similar example, one confined (almost) entirely to the internet. Which, outside of film festivals, is where you and I will be making the biggest impression for the time being.
The prospects are exciting. I think Eli Chapman's brief treatise, Models For Sustainable Cinema, has to be brought up here. To steal one equation: Emerging Technology + Creative Process = Money, Metrics and Word Of Mouth. Or, more appropriately for this discussion: Fans + Digital Artifacts = Word of Mouth and Success. Those last two results are important to consider, as neither necessarily involves money, and at this grassroots level, capitalism should support creativity but not supersede it. This is why sites like Ourmedia.org are so important to have available. They empower the artist to create demand, and to then fulfill it on a level that might have previously been cost prohibitive, without putting demands on the artist. To be sure, at this level, demand will be contingent on the quality of the work, but for the first time, that's irrelevant to the distributor.
Thus far, I've chosen to be my own distributor – making my own short films available for download from my own website. If I reach the point, though, where I want to release a DVD-quality VOD version of one of my films, I know where I'll be turning.
I'm not sure yet, though, when and if I'll reach that point. I say this because I'm personally not at all enthralled with the notion of existing strictly cyberspace. I'm reminded of another portion of that wonderful Caveh Zahedi piece at BRAINTRUSTdv, in which he cringed when he heard that the interviewer downloaded his film and watched it in a Starbucks. I cringed, too. Subversion of dominant form be damned, I have to strive for something better. Perhaps it was because I grew up without a television, but the concept of the communal theatre-going experience is too integral to my love of cinema to forfeit all hope of ever showing my work on the big screen. Perhaps because I love the physicality of objects and still buy CDs instead of downloading music, I want my films to be available on DVD, in well-designed cases.
I guess I should say that I simply want the best for my films! And while I have my own notion of what "the best" means, I would never limit myself to just that. Thus, while I'm not going to say that I will willingly work in the margins just to prove that it can be done (if also for fear of seeming hypocritical should I ever have the chance to do otherwise), I'm certainly going to exploit those margins to the fullest while they're what I have to work with. And of course, should my films ultimately only be available for download on the internet - should they remain underground – I can live with the Starbucks scenario, complete with window-glare, as long as they're being seen. That's always the bottom line. That, and getting them made in the first place.
I feel like I've only scratched the surface of this subject, and clumsily at that. There's so much progress right now, so many sea changes, in the realm of distribution and exhibition, that I've overwhelmed myself trying to take measure of it all. I'll leave it up to you to clarify things!
Take care,
dvd
6.
David,
Okay, so, finally! Your e-mail has been sitting in my inbox for the last four days making me feel guilty for not having replied to it yet. I keep looking at it, meaning to make a start, and then thinking, no, no, I'll tackle it later...
I'll skip your first two little notes, namely because I agree with you on them enough not to nitpick (I still can't imagine lines around the block for a Godard film given what I've read about the majority of them being commercial failures but that's pretty trivial), and will jump right on into number three. I think the difference between you and I on this point is merely one of the degree to which we place blame on consumer and supplier; I just happen to place less blame on the audience than you do. It's essentially a matter of "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" Are the films crafted for a lazy audience or are audience's lazy because that's how the films are crafted? I believe it's a little of both, but undoubtedly more so the latter. The history of cinema is a history in which a language, and an entire arsenal of techniques along with it, was developed, not necessarily "in order to establish," but certainly "with the outcome of," ultimately, what we now call suspension of disbelief. Essentially, all that defined (and continues for the most part to define) mainstream cinema (the big one being the continuity system) pacified the audience: movies became what I believe Godard once referred to as "the image bed". Which is not to say that subversion can't take place from within the system (recent examples include not only Huckabees and Punch-Drunk Love , but also things like Anchorman , which is like a fine piece of surreal stream-of-consciousness writing, and Down With Love , which is like pop art) or that attacks can't come from without (three names among countless others that I could cite here: Godard, Brakhage, Cassavetes). Instead, it's really just to say that the nature of the beast is such that the majority of contemporary audience members, by way of this careful conditioning over time – this evolution (not to mention mankind's inherent love of narrative storytelling, which I'd be interested in reading more about if'n the research exists) – are held hostage. Which isn't to say, either, that the illusory language of classical Hollywood cinema is inherently bad, or that films of that period are evil, but that, well, the dominant structures are often ones that have been set up to simulate the dark ages. What is encouraging, of course, is the pockets of enlightenment that exist around the place and which, I have a slightly optimistic feeling, are becoming more and more numerous. One reason for this, of course, is the gradual collapse of so many of the dominant modes of distribution, as I'll move on to momentarily. My point is that I have faith in audiences, perhaps presumptuously, that, once awake, they'll stay awake for a time. I don't believe audience demand has made popular cinema what it is today. I believe in the manufacture of consent.
Firstly, before I continue (and just to be anal), I believe The Best of Youth was Italian, not Russian, but, yeah, I've heard great things about it, too. I wonder if I'll ever get a chance to actually see it, though – sigh – wouldn't it be nice?
Secondly, I like your little list of ways that independent films might be able to find distribution in this brave new mediascape of ours. Weird that you would being up the Cuban/Soderbergh partnership just before the media storm broke, too. Like you, however, I don't find this means of distribution to be particularly interesting, for no logical or rational reason other than that it just doesn't sit with me as being necessarily beneficial. Perhaps a theatrical/DVD release on the same day, sure, but isn't the idea of putting it on television as well potentially detrimental to DVD sales? I don't know. I guess we'll see.
I'm much more partial, as you are, to self-distribution, four-walling and other autonomous means of dissemination, though I've been told that, ultimately, self-distribution is a bitch (and so it would be), hence my love for the Internet. I think this is where you and I begin to differ slightly, too, in that I'm almost completely fine with being what call "confined" to cyberspace (with the exception of film festivals and the like, of course), which, as always, isn't to say that I wouldn't be pleased – very pleased even – to have my films get released into actual cinemas. But the nature of film spectatorship is changing, too, and while I definitely want, as you do, to see my films available in nice DVD cases, I'm less and less enthralled by the so-called communal cinemagoing experience (again with the exception of film festivals), which I quite genuinely believe DVD and home cinema has the potential to erode to a very significant extent. Up until very recently, when I realised that there was a huge contradiction between my love of the Internet as a harbinger of consumer control and my disdain for the effect of DVDs on the audience's relationship to cinema (the passive viewer becoming the aggressive, remote control-wielding channel surfer), I felt, too, that theatrical distribution was, if not the be all and end all, then at least the purest place to aim for. Indeed, the word "pure" is as important to understanding this mindset as it is misguided. I no longer consider theatrical distribution to be the highest rung of any hierarchy of distribution modes – a somewhat narrow, reactionary, traditional viewpoint – and in this respect I perhaps find myself siding with Cuban and Soderbergh, for whom all modes of distribution have been created equal. Maybe Godard is right in saying that cinema is dead – or, at least, the cinema as it once was (actually, I finally think I'm coming to understand what he means and it's not a negative thing at all). The place to aim for is wherever the audience is – the goal is to have one's films seen – and I don't necessarily think they're in the cinema anymore.
Eli Chapman's presentation notes are indeed really excellent, and I hope to use them when putting together Sven Deconstructs the Status Quo over the coming months (and then again with The Winter Bolero whenever that eventually happens). I'm going to vlog the entire process from pre- to post-production.
Take care and I'll talk to you soon,
m.
7.
Matt,
Yes, yes, yes, yes...the agreements continue! Even in the supposed disagreements, for how can I argue with something like manufacturing consent? Except to say that I still believe its up to the consumer to make a stand in opposition – just as the denouement of The Corporation suggested.
And perhaps that stand will involve the dominant form of cinematic exhibition crumbling – although I don't think it will crumble so much as evolve. It will never be pure, as, indeed, no form of cinema can ever be – except, perhaps, the paradox of a film that is never watched, never shown, never made susceptible to the corruptible influence of opinion.
I was thinking of the Soderbergh-HDNet deal earlier, and I think that Soderbergh must know, and Mark Cuban must definitely know, that this three-tiered distribution method is a temporary facade. For TV and the internet will eventually merge; DVDs are already viewed by some as an artifact of a bygone era; and the movie theatre itself, well – by digitally projecting films streamed in through satellite, it's sort of leading the way, isn't it?
Do I want my films shown in the cinema? Yes. Do I think that is the best place for them? Only idealistically. I want the people like me who sit in the front row ('so that the images hit them first,' to quote Bertolucci's The Dreamers , a film that captured the very essence – and the eroticism – of the communal theatre-going experience). I want the image to be big, physically, projected across a wide expanse in a darkened room for all eyes to be drawn towards. Because that's how I like to view films – I, who live in a city with a multitude of art house cinemas, who will indeed be able to sit through all six hours of The Best of Youth in a theatre, who can view all the films I'm interested in seeing in this manner.
And yes, I suspect that theatrical self-distribution, would be a bitch – perhaps even a bitch and a half. Far easier to do so on DVD.
And in truth, the largest audience my films will find will be those that see them in the comfort of their own homes. I hope they buy the DVDs (or at least Netflix them). The boxes will look nice on their shelves, within the rest of their collection. The discs themselves will last up to ten years or more, provided they do not scratch them. The sound and picture will be optimized to its fullest, and fixed immutably, and the ultimate quality of the exhibition will be up the viewer.
Perhaps you see what I'm doing here; waxing poetic on limitations of a given medium eases the pain of their passing. That's a bit melodramatic, but in essence: until the internet becomes sentient, takes over the world and kills us all, it's going to continue to be and continue to evolve into a hell of a fine method of distributing media. My films included in that term, my own disinclination towards laptop cinema be damned.
That disinclination, I should note, concerns feature length films of the traditional form. Internet-specific filmmaking is an entirely different animal, and one that I embrace wholeheartedly. One of my favorite filmmakers, David Lynch, is almost a pioneer in this sense, in that he's practically abandoned the traditional cinema in favor of creating content for his website. Ideally, I'd like to do both – and I must admit that I do hope their remains a "both," in at least some form.
I have to admit, I'm a bit unsatisfied with this discussion – not because of its lack of fissure, but because I just read a lecture by Peter Greenaway that expresses, with far more eloquence and order, these very same ideas.
The name of the lecture? " Cinema Militans: Towards A Reinvention Of Cinema."
Or:
'Cinema Is Dead, Long Live Cinema.'
Enough said, I think!
dvd
8.
David,
Well, if the discussion is unsatisfying, let's put a stop to it there, shall we? As for Greenaway's eloquence...well! I thought I was being eloquent!
A toast to agreements, disagreements and the cinema – dead, alive or otherwise!
m.
     
Matthew Clayfield & David Lowery
Esoteric Rabbit Films | Road Dog Productions
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