Wednesday, 19 July 2000

RANTING & RAVING

The next evolution of human beings must be spiritual.

I'm hardly the first person to write that and I surely will not be the last. But as we have moved from an obsession with Outer Space in the '50s and '60s, our obsession with Inner Space continues to reach new crescendos, it seems, almost daily.

It has been my premise from way back that the leap from being a manufacturing-based economy in the U.S. to being a service-based economy meant that there was more time and more energy for distraction. That isn't to say that a waitress or an engineer or even an Internet columnist doesn't work long, hard hours. But the life of the mind is quite a different thing than the life of the lifting of heavy things. While it feels like technology's simplification of our lives is actually adding new complications, the truth is that we are adding them by choice.

Each time we add a cell phone or a DSL line or a Palm Pilot to our arsenal of tools for the modern world, we tear away at the comfortable silences of our lives that once came so naturally. We complain about cities like Los Angeles having bad public transportation, but when push comes to shove, those of us who can afford cars each want our own cars. When we talk about exhaustion, it is now more often physical-driven-by-mental rather than the other way around.

So how does this have anything to do with movies?

Well, we are in a state of obsession now that is certainly at an all-time high. The medium that is the Internet has created the opportunity to focus in a new on powerful way on niches that were once the provenance of only a lunatic fringe. Now, a 20-year-old in New Jersey and a 39-year-old in Montana and a 90-year-old in Sri Lanka can share their eternal fascination about Keanu Reeves every day.

In the movie business, the Internet has given rise to a new sense of proprietary relationships with movies long before they even become movies. Star Trek conventions were once a unique phenomena in this country. And as the Star Trek realm got a little weaker, the conventions expanded out to other related programs and movies with which the group who loved Star Trek also connected. Now, the Web has space for all the conventioneers and hundreds of times more. When 5000 people got together in Rhode Island for a Star Trek convention, Paramount cared. Now, if you only have 5000 people on your Star Trek Web site, you are a tiny piece of the pie. Copyright obsession still goes on, but the overall song has changed.

Filmmakers are hard working people, physically and intellectually. When you are in the midst of making a film, you are looking at weeks and weeks and weeks of 18-hour days and one day off a week, which you spend working "only" 12 hours, prepping for the next days of work. When a team decides on a script and gets a green light, that project very much becomes a child of their loins. It used to be that the child was gestated, born, reared and then presented at a grandly choreographed coming out party. Now, the very first in-vitro photos are posted on the Internet by people who are interested.

This is well before one can tell whether the baby has a penis or not. Those photos go up, too. In fact, there are pages and pages of debates about when the next set of in-vitro photos are going to be taken and whether the 12-year-old in Nevada and the 37-year-old in Louisiana think that there's going to be a penis or not…or maybe the baby will have its legs up so you can't tell, even though something is developing there. The filmmakers are hearing about the conversation and if the general buzz is that the baby is beautiful…even though you can't tell anything like that from an in-vitro photo…the filmmakers are thrilled. And they start telling the studio that the buzz of the fetus is good.

During the production, the mother is, of course, as every mother is, vomiting and feeling gross and not really wanting to talk in too much detail about her pregnancy, except to her closest friends, preferably ones who have gone through the process. Still, reports on each episode of puking end up on the Internet because someone on the set finds it amusing to expose the woman who employs him.

Finally, the baby is born--the rough assembly--covered in blood and other slimy material, not ready for anyone to see. Most directors say that they are near suicide after seeing that first rough assembly. Everything is wrong. Nothing is right. Of course, you rarely read about that moment on the Internet because some things are too private for prying eyes.

But the filmmaker knows that they are going to have to show the baby to someone before too long to find out what parts of the baby are cute and which ones are ugly and if that can be fixed. This is far more dangerous than the eventual coming out party, where the lighting will be perfect and there will be a group of paid professionals to walk around shouting, "Look at the pretty baby!" And now, the studios know that someone in those test screenings will be commenting on this still drooling infant. Of course, those who publish the Drool Reports don't really know or care about the legitimacy of the people sending in those reports. This is the "freedom" of the Internet.

Meanwhile, back at the studio, the grandparents, who paid for all of this, also have a lot of opinions. They go to all the coming out parties and examine each one carefully. "Remember that baby that was too long and its feet kept coming out of the blanket and everyone noticed?" "Remember that baby who was smart enough to talk, but a talking baby freaked everyone out and only the critics like it?" "We've seen a lot of babies and if the eyes aren't sparkling when they first see the baby, they will reject it…really, we love the rest of the baby, but can't we do something about the eyes?"

And with the evolution of entertainment from being something that the presenter controls to being something that the audience can obtain on demand, who can blame the grandparents foe being paranoid? Well, I guess I can. But you get my point. (I hope.) Is a fast-paced, quick-cut movie that meets all of the audiences expectations all of the time the ultimate in entertainment?

Ahhhh…the humanity.

No. If you look at the movies that really connect with the huge audiences, they are all flawed and human in ways that could never be packaged. Titanic is by far the highest grossing film in the history of the business. Flawed. Leo DiCaprio is not the world's biggest movie star. Nor is Kate Winslet. And when Jim Cameron finally does a next film, he will have to climb every mountain that he's climbed on every other film. Talented as they all are, it's the movie. As much as we critics hate to admit it, box office does mean something. A film may stink on objective criteria, but if millions of people connect with the film, there is something magical happening there. I may not like it, but I'm an idiot if I just dismiss it.

"More Babies and a Reader Has His Day"