[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.
____________________