[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 114 (Monday, July 21, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Page S4656]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         INNOVATIVE MOVIEMAKING

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, during the past few years, Marcelle and I 
have come to know Christopher Nolan and his wife Emma Thomas, both of 
whom are extraordinarily talented and have made breakthrough movies.
  One of the things that we have enjoyed talking about with both of 
them is the concept of what movies can be as real entertainment, and 
that movie theaters provide an audience an experience they would not 
have otherwise. Recently, Chris wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street 
Journal explaining just how movie theaters will survive. That was music 
to my ears, as I too want them to survive. I ask unanimous consent that 
the article be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Christopher Nolan: Films of the Future Will Still Draw People to 
                                Theaters

       When Movies Can Look or Sound Like Anything, Says the `Dark 
     Knight' Director, Extraordinary Work Will Emerge.
       In the '90s, newly accessible video technology gave 
     adventurous filmmakers (such as Lars von Trier and his 
     colleagues in the filmmaking movement Dogme 95) an 
     unprecedented wedge for questioning the form of motion 
     pictures. The resulting 20-year process of radical technical 
     and aesthetic change has now been co-opted by the very 
     establishment it sought to challenge.
       Hungry for savings, studios are ditching film prints (under 
     $600 each), while already bridling at the mere $80 per screen 
     for digital drives. They want satellite distribution up and 
     running within 10 years. Quentin Tarantino's recent 
     observation that digital projection is the ``death of 
     cinema'' identifies this fork in the road: For a century, 
     movies have been defined by the physical medium (even Dogme 
     95 insisted on 35mm film as the presentation format).
       Savings will be trivial. The real prize the corporations 
     see is the flexibility of a nonphysical medium.


                           Movies as Content

       As streams of data, movies would be thrown in with other 
     endeavors under the reductive term ``content,'' jargon that 
     pretends to elevate the creative, but actually trivializes 
     differences of form that have been important to creators and 
     audiences alike. ``Content'' can be ported across phones, 
     watches, gas-station pumps or any other screen, and the idea 
     would be that movie theaters should acknowledge their place 
     as just another of these ``platforms,'' albeit with bigger 
     screens and cupholders.
       This is a future in which the theater becomes what 
     Tarantino pinpointed as ``television in public.'' The 
     channel-changing part is key. The distributor or theater 
     owner (depending on the vital question of who controls the 
     remote) would be able to change the content being played, 
     instantly. A movie's Friday matinees would determine whether 
     it even gets an evening screening, or whether the projector 
     switches back to last week's blockbuster. This process could 
     even be automated based on ticket sales in the interests of 
     ``fairness.''
       Instant reactivity always favors the familiar. New 
     approaches need time to gather support from audiences. 
     Smaller, more unusual films would be shut out. Innovation 
     would shift entirely to home-based entertainment, with the 
     remaining theaters serving exclusively as gathering places 
     for fan-based or branded-event titles.
       This bleak future is the direction the industry is pointed 
     in, but even if it arrives it will not last. Once movies can 
     no longer be defined by technology, you unmask powerful 
     fundamentals--the timelessness, the otherworldliness, the 
     shared experience of these narratives. We moan about 
     intrusive moviegoers, but most of us feel a pang of 
     disappointment when we find ourselves in an empty theater.
       The audience experience is distinct from home 
     entertainment, but not so much that people seek it out for 
     its own sake. The experience must distinguish itself in other 
     ways. And it will. The public will lay down their money to 
     those studios, theaters and filmmakers who value the 
     theatrical experience and create a new distinction from home 
     entertainment that will enthrall--just as movies fought back 
     with widescreen and multitrack sound when television first 
     nipped at its heels.
       These developments will require innovation, experimentation 
     and expense, not cost-cutting exercises disguised as digital 
     ``upgrades'' or gimmickry aimed at justifying variable ticket 
     pricing. The theatrical window is to the movie business what 
     live concerts are to the music business--and no one goes to a 
     concert to be played an MP3 on a bare stage.


                           Back to the Future

       The theaters of the future will be bigger and more 
     beautiful than ever before. They will employ expensive 
     presentation formats that cannot be accessed or reproduced in 
     the home (such as, ironically, film prints). And they will 
     still enjoy exclusivity, as studios relearn the tremendous 
     economic value of the staggered release of their products.
       The projects that most obviously lend themselves to such 
     distinctions are spectacles. But if history is any guide, all 
     genres, all budgets will follow. Because the cinema of the 
     future will depend not just on grander presentation, but on 
     the emergence of filmmakers inventive enough to command the 
     focused attention of a crowd for hours.
       These new voices will emerge just as we despair that there 
     is nothing left to be discovered. As in the early '90s, when 
     years of bad multiplexing had soured the public on movies, 
     and a young director named Quentin Tarantino ripped through 
     theaters with a profound sense of cinema's past and an 
     instinct for reclaiming cinema's rightful place at the head 
     of popular culture.
       Never before has a system so willingly embraced the radical 
     teardown of its own formal standards. But no standards means 
     no rules. Whether photochemical or video-based, a film can 
     now look or sound like anything.
       It's unthinkable that extraordinary new work won't emerge 
     from such an open structure. That's the part I can't wait 
     for.

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