The Sorta-Death of Cinema

Notes on the digital invasion — and that kid who sees dead people.

by Sam Adams

August is usually the month when film critics take their vacations, but New York Press critic Godfrey Cheshire started the month by dropping a quiet bomb. Cheshire, one of three critics who make the Press’s Web site (www.nypress.com) required reading for anyone even vaguely interested in film, can talk theory without making you feel like you’re back in school. His article, in two parts titled "The Death of Film" and "The Decay of Cinema," is part wide-eyed prognostication and part cry of despair — an alternately compelling, frightening and sometimes loopy view of the future.

The article, which reappeared on the Press’ Web site last week, begins with the premise that digital projection, unveiled last fall by Philadelphians Lance Weiler and Stefan Avalos — and, to substantially more fanfare, by George Lucas (Phantom Menace) and Miramax (An Ideal Husband) earlier this summer — will inevitably supplant celluloid projection, and will do so more quickly than anyone would think possible. Rather than just transforming the last link in the distribution chain, this change will have profound ramifications on every aspect of filmmaking. Sooner rather than later, celluloid will become a thing of the past, not only for exhibition but for production as well. That’s the "Death of Film" part.

"The Decay of Cinema" follows from that initial scenario. Once digitally equipped theaters are transformed from film palaces into glorified TV sets, the boundary line between TV and film will more or less disappear. TV events like concerts and sporting events, which already draw much larger audiences than the most successful Hollywood film, will make their way into what Cheshire calls "the enormoplex," the entertainment coliseum of the future.

That’s only a barebones summation, but it’s enough to get the ball rolling on the most important questions raised by the article: How likely is digital projection to replace traditional exhibition, and What kind of impact would a digital marketplace have?

Cheshire’s central analogy, one I’ve used myself, is the introduction of sound. Anticipating skepticism, he writes: "Do you suppose audiences in the fall of 1927, when The Jazz Singer opened, had any idea that the form of expression they knew as movies would be overthrown in a mere matter of months, replaced by a very different form called ‘talkies’?"

Digital projection has only been around a year or so, but digital (or digitally assisted) filmmaking has been around quite a bit longer. While movies like Jurassic Park or Toy Story ended up on a piece of celluloid, much of their kick and popularity came from images created inside a computer. A Bug’s Life recently became the first movie to be mastered directly from computer to video, without the intervention of celluloid.

Jurassic Park paved the way for the countless CGI-driven blockbusters that followed in its wake; eschewing craft almost entirely, such films reduced cinema to its most primitive form. Just as moviegoers flocked to see the Lumière brothers’ film of a train entering the station, so they went to see Armageddon or Wild Wild West for the sheer promise of spectacle. Awkwardly constructed around their digital doodads, these movies were as rudimentary as the first sound films, where actors were forced to emote into shrubberies or light fixtures which concealed hidden microphones, and the elegant camera moves of Fritz Lang were replaced by a stationary camera trapped in a soundproof booth. Apart from Wild Wild West and Deep Blue Sea, effects-driven movies were on vacation this summer, but more lie just around the corner — the upcoming Stuart Little is reported to have spent half its $90 million budget on the digital creation of its mousy protagonist.

Cheshire is right to focus on exhibition, which is, after all, where the money comes from. But as the Star Wars-related flap over digital projection grew, Lucas’ equally troubling comments on the making of the film went largely unnoticed. In a hagiographic New York Times piece which affably granted Lucas his self-appointed "techno-wizard" status, Lucas mentioned how, dissatisfied with the look on young actor Jake Lloyd’s face in one scene, he digitally removed the mouth from another scene and pasted it into the current frame. And The Phantom Menace wasn’t even shot digitally, as Lucas plans with the next two films in the franchise, just transferred to computer for effects and editing purposes.

Awkwardly constructed around their digital doodads, CGI-driven blockbusters like Armageddon or Wild Wild West were as rudimentary as the first sound films, where actors were forced to emote into shrubberies.

In most cases, digital is an auteurist’s wet dream. Just as the digital AVID system radically transformed the editing process, digital filmmaking and projection promise to transform the filmmaking process. (Which will take hold first? You take the chicken and I’ll take the egg.) But the most compelling of Cheshire’s predictions has ugly ramifications for filmmakers. Digital exhibition will, he says, allow for infinite and ongoing manipulation of the movie itself, even during a theatrical run: "Let’s say Studio X opens their latest idiotic post-Sandler comedy on a Friday, and people don’t go batshit over it that night. There can be a newly edited version for Saturday’s matinees."

Such a prediction makes so much sense it’s hard to believe no one thought of it before. Recently, critics screening Killing Mrs. Tingle a week before its opening date had to be telephoned and told the film’s ending, since it was an entirely different scene than the one on the print shown. Without the $2,000-3,000 currently spent on each theatrical print, studios would be hard-pressed to avoid tinkering with movies after they’re released — they certainly have no qualms about interfering in any other aspect of the filmmaking process. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "final cut."

There seems little doubt digital projection will be the future of the multiplex. But what about all the smaller outlets scrabbling to stay alive? The cost of upgrading — around $100,000 per screen — promises to be too much for any art house without the financial stability of a Sundance Cinemas or at least the Ritz. And let’s not forget all the foreign territories, where Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters make much of their dough. Somehow I doubt China will be going fully digital any time soon.

The transition from celluloid to digital will be messy, and probably not comprehensive. While the move from silents to sound may have cost a few actors their careers, the transition from celluloid to digital would throw thousands out of work, from lab technicians to projectionists. It’s hard to imagine entire branches of the industry willfully swallowing a pill that bitter; you try telling the projectionists’ union all you need is a college kid who knows how to click a mouse. The enormoplex’s day may come, but the miniplex will always have a place alongside it.

In the three and a half years I’ve been reviewing movies, I’ve never received anything like the outpouring of mail triggered by my review of The Sixth Sense — and they weren’t love letters. Not only did the people who wrote in disagree with my (admittedly vitriolic) review, but they seemed outraged by the very idea that someone could not like the film.

Prompted by that response, and by the film’s utterly baffling success, I returned to The Sixth Sense last week. Not with an eye toward changing my mind, since my feelings were hardly mixed the first time around, but with a hope of understanding the film’s popularity.

As the lights went down, I prepared myself to be wrong, mentally checking off each element that had made me dislike the film the first time. Yep, there was the overemphatic acting, the trite sentimentality underlined with precious word games. And here were so many things I’d forgotten to criticize the first time: Bruce Willis’ cutesy-poo mannerisms, the coy preciousness of having the child say things like, "What are you, wiggin’ out?" and above all, the film’s fondness for unnecessary and overblown gestures. An accident that stops traffic in both directions? A child who turns away from the blackboard and draws a perfect line with the chalk? This was not the stuff of blockbusters — in fact, the audience catcalled the sublimely ridiculous scene where the kid freaks his teacher out by repeating a derisive childhood nickname.

But as we neared the end, what was this? To the left, to the right, people pulling out tissues and crying? Suddenly it all made sense. Not only are people more forgiving of tearjerkers, they’re more defensive about them, too. That and the fact that the ending, a well-orchestrated gimmick but still a gimmick, so bamboozles them they forget the film’s previous dullness. Perhaps that explains it. But the crying — come on now. If only George Lucas had been there to paste a smile on their faces.