Monday, May 30, 2005
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood
I just finished watching Once Upon A Time In America. It was Sergio Leone's (The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) final film before his death. And it was pretty good. Nearly 4 hours long, but good nonetheless. The story was interesting and the editing was superb. However, between Boys Don't Cry and this movie, I think I've seen enough rape scenes to last me a few weeks.
I'm now going to tell a story about Hollywood.
Once upon a time, movies could be long. I don't mean 2.5 hours long. I mean 3-4 hours+ long. Long enough to require intermissions so people could take a leak.
Not only were these movies made, but they were good.
The Sound of Music became a classic. The Godfather and one of its sequels won Best Picture. Sergio Leone made a name for himself with lengthy spaghetti westerns. Ben-Hur won thirteen Academy Awards, the most ever won by a single film - a feat which was tied by Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Titanic, also lengthy films.
However, after a while, Hollywood changed. Soon nobody wanted to make long movies anymore. Sure, they might be excellent films, but they didn't make enough money to warrant the production costs. And people were starting to want a different type of movie: they wanted fast-paced movies. They wanted movies that didn't require them to think, or wait very long for the "good parts". The new generation was being raised on MTV, with the idea that anything that went for longer than 5 minutes without something to appeal to their sex drive or sense of adventure was...well, boring. People didn't want slow movies anymore. They wanted escapist entertainment. A story wasn't worth more than a couple hours of their time to see. With technology making society itself move faster and faster, movies had to keep up with their audience. Why sit through a three-and-a-half-hour movie when an episode of Friends made you laugh and was only 1/7 that long?
Enter my generation: people who have never gone to a movie and had to go stand out in the lobby during an Intermission. People who want their stories spoon-fed to them, leaving no room for something that might require effort, like following a complex story. People to whom a long shot or slow conversation doesn't raise the tension, increase the realism, or is there to express a message - it's merely a few seconds wasted.
And yet, even though Hollywood and its audience changed for the most part, there were some things that never changed.
For example, the ability of people to sit through a 3-hour movie in order to watch a few midgets carry a cheap ring to a mountain, simply because it interested them. Or the ability to then go out and buy the Extended Editions of such movies on DVD. People still were willing to sit through lengthy movies. The catch was that they had to be action-packed and filled with swords and death and blood at every turn.
Gone were the days of Leone, when people were patient enough to let a story take its time unfolding. Gone were the days when people were willing to sit for more than 5 minutes without "action", simply because they were so intrigued by the characters they were watching. Gone were the days when movies were made with enough skill to grab an audience by the throat and not let go for 4 hours - not through action or sex, but through drama. Through story. Through characters.
And although there was still a small chance people might be willing to sit through an Intermission again, Hollywood just didn't seem to recognize it. And if they did, they weren't willing to risk it. Soon even "epics" like Kingdom of Heaven were being cut down from 4 hours to a little more than 2 hours. Movies that were brave enough to risk misjudging the time audiences would sit through them, such as Troy, were often simply bad movies that bombed at the box-office - and yet, at least one of those characteristics might have been reversed given a longer time to tell the story. With the exception of movies about a certain hobbit, it appeared as though the days of Leone and long, yet well-paced epic films, were twitching in their final death stroke.
THE END
R.I.P.
Epic films that told great stories, and weren't afraid to take their time to do it.
Quotes of Da Moment:
"The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borgese on a daily basis."
--Federico Fellini
"The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all - that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open - has disappeared. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?"
--Federico Fellini
I'm now going to tell a story about Hollywood.
Once upon a time, movies could be long. I don't mean 2.5 hours long. I mean 3-4 hours+ long. Long enough to require intermissions so people could take a leak.
Not only were these movies made, but they were good.
The Sound of Music became a classic. The Godfather and one of its sequels won Best Picture. Sergio Leone made a name for himself with lengthy spaghetti westerns. Ben-Hur won thirteen Academy Awards, the most ever won by a single film - a feat which was tied by Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Titanic, also lengthy films.
However, after a while, Hollywood changed. Soon nobody wanted to make long movies anymore. Sure, they might be excellent films, but they didn't make enough money to warrant the production costs. And people were starting to want a different type of movie: they wanted fast-paced movies. They wanted movies that didn't require them to think, or wait very long for the "good parts". The new generation was being raised on MTV, with the idea that anything that went for longer than 5 minutes without something to appeal to their sex drive or sense of adventure was...well, boring. People didn't want slow movies anymore. They wanted escapist entertainment. A story wasn't worth more than a couple hours of their time to see. With technology making society itself move faster and faster, movies had to keep up with their audience. Why sit through a three-and-a-half-hour movie when an episode of Friends made you laugh and was only 1/7 that long?
Enter my generation: people who have never gone to a movie and had to go stand out in the lobby during an Intermission. People who want their stories spoon-fed to them, leaving no room for something that might require effort, like following a complex story. People to whom a long shot or slow conversation doesn't raise the tension, increase the realism, or is there to express a message - it's merely a few seconds wasted.
And yet, even though Hollywood and its audience changed for the most part, there were some things that never changed.
For example, the ability of people to sit through a 3-hour movie in order to watch a few midgets carry a cheap ring to a mountain, simply because it interested them. Or the ability to then go out and buy the Extended Editions of such movies on DVD. People still were willing to sit through lengthy movies. The catch was that they had to be action-packed and filled with swords and death and blood at every turn.
Gone were the days of Leone, when people were patient enough to let a story take its time unfolding. Gone were the days when people were willing to sit for more than 5 minutes without "action", simply because they were so intrigued by the characters they were watching. Gone were the days when movies were made with enough skill to grab an audience by the throat and not let go for 4 hours - not through action or sex, but through drama. Through story. Through characters.
And although there was still a small chance people might be willing to sit through an Intermission again, Hollywood just didn't seem to recognize it. And if they did, they weren't willing to risk it. Soon even "epics" like Kingdom of Heaven were being cut down from 4 hours to a little more than 2 hours. Movies that were brave enough to risk misjudging the time audiences would sit through them, such as Troy, were often simply bad movies that bombed at the box-office - and yet, at least one of those characteristics might have been reversed given a longer time to tell the story. With the exception of movies about a certain hobbit, it appeared as though the days of Leone and long, yet well-paced epic films, were twitching in their final death stroke.
THE END
R.I.P.
Epic films that told great stories, and weren't afraid to take their time to do it.
Quotes of Da Moment:
"The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borgese on a daily basis."
--Federico Fellini
"The public has lost the habit of movie-going because the cinema no longer possesses the charm, the hypnotic charisma, the authority it once commanded. The image it once held for us all - that of a dream we dreamt with our eyes open - has disappeared. Is it still possible that one thousand people might group together in the dark and experience the dream that a single individual has directed?"
--Federico Fellini
# posted by Andrew Johnson : 5/30/2005 01:35:00 AM 
