Movie Wars: How Hollywood and the Media Conspire to Limit What Films We Can See Jonathan Rosenbaum A Cappella Press 2000 234 pages

Author's Note: This article began as a discussion with Jonathan Rosenbaum about his newest book, Movie Wars. Due to technical problems, the recording of the interview was unusable. Rather than risk misquoting Mr Rosenbaum, no direct quotes from the interview have been used. Any quotes used in this article are from Movie Wars.

I work for a production house in Chicago with a daily subscription to the New York Times. The paper is a valued resource for our producers and writers. I prefer the Chicago Tribune myself, but I'll pick up the Times when looking for a quick read while a project renders out. A few days before I started reading Movie Wars, the New York Times provided a stellar example of just what the book is about. "The Movies' Digital Future Is in Sight and It Works" by Rob Sabin explains how digital cinema is set to overtake the film industry. Led by George Lucas (dubbed the father of digital cinema by Sabin) and Sony, High Definition Video (HD) is posited as a dragon killer to the hoary beast that is film. HD is cheaper and faster to shoot than film and can be made to look just like film. Together with digital projectors in the theatres, "film" will soon be 100% digital from capture to exposition. If only that was true. My boss has a vested interest in HD and as such has outfitted our office with a couple HD monitors and video decks. Segments for several of our shows have been shot in HD, and I've taken the time to look at as much of the footage as I can. HD is a fine replacement for the present forms of analog and digital video, but not for film. Perhaps the next generation of HD or the generation after that might be an equivalent medium, but not yet.

Reading Sabin's article, though, one couldn't be faulted for thinking that Kodak is set to shutter its factories' doors at year's end. That's what Sony and George Lucas would have you believe, at least. It's just a shame to see that the Times is so willing to present this as such.

"At the beginning of most movies, including quiet a few bad ones, there's a period of grace when exciting possibilities still hover." - from Movie Wars

I've yet to encounter another critic whose writing embodies the essence of the quote above as much as Rosenbaum. I enjoy the sarcasm of Anthony Lane in the New Yorker and the even and fair writing of Gavin Smith in Film Comment, but I hardly ever save their reviews to reread later as I do with Rosenbaum's work. A couple of years ago Chicago magazine ran a short story on all the film critics in town. Their description of Rosenbaum read something like, "Has seen the latest 16mm short films from Brazil. Have you?" To which I counter: as a film critic, shouldn't he have?

"If someone dying of thirst is offered a choice between liquid soap and shoe polish, can the selection honestly be equated with what he or she wants?" - from Movie Wars

Rosenbaum's issues are all variations on the idea that American filmgoers are getting shafted. We are shortchanged by the studios and distributors. The press assumes the worst of us. And perhaps we hurt ourselves just as much by refusing to go outside of the comfort of what we already know.

The studios and distributors' problem, according to Rosenbaum, is that they are caught in a feedback loop. Nothing new gets in and nothing new gets out. The studios assume that the public doesn't want a change because they keep coming back for the same thing, but they never offer something new to test that hypothesis. Distributors never provide an alternative to mainstream movies, and then say that the public never comes out for anything but mainstream films. This is then taken up by the press. Why should the media devote their attention to small films or foreign films or difficult films when the distributors and the studios don't want anything to do with them, and thus neither does the public? Add to this the need on some studios parts to turn every corporate initiative into a cultural imperative ("The Grinch wore Khaki's") or treat every film the same when they are not, and filmgoing can become a sickening lot. When a movie like Fresh or The Virgin Suicides is treated as a simple commodity like Wild, Wild West, what does that say about American film?

What about a company like Miramax -- a company committed to releasing good movies, even foreign films -- one might ask. Isn't Miramax different from the large studios, an independent? Rosenbaum's reply is, what independence? Miramax, as well as pretty much every other "independent" distributor, is beholden to some larger power, either directly, like Miramax belonging to Disney, or through the economics of film distribution. Christine Vachon, producer of such films as Safe and Boys Don't Cry, can rightly be called an independent producer. Vachon is committed to helping filmmakers with unique visions get their films made, but she still has to hustle and jive with the studios when if comes to getting those movies seen in theaters. The studios and the distributors like their fences and aren't about to let any of their parts upset the order made by those fences.

Miramax, as any regular reader of Rosenbaum's writing knows, is a favorite target. It is not so much that Miramax is that bad, but that they are treated by the mainstream media as a paragon for everyone else to look to. Miramax, when it commits to a movie, might be the best supporter a filmmaker has. But what happens when Miramax decides it doesn't like your film after it buys it? Or that it likes it but decides that changes need to be made? One recent example is Billy Bob Thorton's All the Pretty Horses. In several interviews given when the film was released, Thorton expressed his disapproval with Miramax's choice to cut almost an hour from the film. Upon seeing the film, you can't help but feel, as moving as it is, that the middle is missing something. Yet come Oscar time, expect to see Miramax pushing All the Pretty Horses for every award -- because what really matters to Miramax is the prestige and the money it brings in at the box office, and not what is or isn't seen on the screen. As far as the majority of the press will be concerned, Miramax was justified in its actions.

The Friday Chicago Tribune, like just about every other daily newspaper in the country, has a special section devoted to reviewing new movies released that week. Michael Wilmington, the Tribune's lead film critic, comes across as an intelligent enough guy. Wilmington seems to be fair, but he also can't stop giving three and four star ratings to films that just don't deserve them. In light of issues brought up in Movie Wars, how much of this is Wilmington's innocence or his playing along with the studios? How much of it is Wilmington's editors expecting such work from him? Rosenbaum makes a great study of newspapers' and magazines' dismissive attitude toward films. Real Estate writers aren't asked or expected to cover the opera or theatre, but many editors have no problems assigning them to review films. There are no qualifications to be a film reviewer (Even Rosenbaum himself might be open for some potshots here. At least I'm trained as a cinematographer, have worked on professional movie sets and hold a job in a related industry (television), but what has he done other than watch movies?). Editors have not only editorial space to fill, but ad space to fill as well. Though cases of studios withholding ads from papers because of bad press are rare, who is to say that the threat doesn't keep bad press from happening at all? Studio pressures aside, what are newspapers and magazines doing to further cinema? Running the third puff piece this week on The Legend of Bagger Vance is certainly not the answer. Rosenbaum states, "Any reviewing or journalism worth its salt is about more than catering. It should also be about cultivation and education and offering the public choices." When was the last time you felt this way about your Friday movie section?

A few years ago, I kept reading about the film Cyclo, directed by Anh Hung Tran. It played at one theatre in Chicago for about a week and then disappeared before I got a chance to see it. Two years ago, Cyclo made a weekend appearance at the University of Chicago's Doc Film Center. I made a point of seeing the movie and to this day, despite having not seen it since, images from it are stuck in my head. It is a mesmerizing movie that I am happy to have seen. In a couple of weeks, a movie from 2000, called George Washington, will arrive in Chicago -- one of the largest cities in the world, but a backwater hick town as far as distributors are concerned -- and I plan on making a night of it with my wife. I don't want to pretend that I'm any great example of the perfect filmgoer, but I do try to make an effort. That is all Rosenbaum seems to be asking for. If more audience members stop taking the shoe polish that's offered at the multiplex, perhaps something genuine will be offered instead. The audience, as abused as it is, is also responsible for what it sees. Sure, we don't really want Mission:Impossible 2, but just going along because it's there isn't helping matters either.

"How can film criticism be perceived as an honorable activity under such circumstances? By Reading it. By believing that understanding movies is desirable" - from Movie Wars

In the first half of the last century, the studios released just about anything because they had theaters to fill and the public didn't really have any other options. Today, the market is fragmented and the studios work under the impression that the lowest common dominator is the best way to attract a market share. But perhaps if they worked toward the oddest denominator, a wider audience would find its way to that new center. As many options as people have now, there is still nothing like seeing an image on a forty foot screen in a theater full of people. You can't beat the communal experience. Now we just need something worthwhile to experience. The press and the audience need to look beyond the studios, beyond New York and Los Angeles, and see what is there. More importantly, access needs to be opened to this "outside" production. Andre Techine's Alice and Martin is not a foreign movie or an esoteric movie in France, but a mainstream movie. Who's to say that the same can't be said of it here, if given the chance?The press makes much of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, but how many people actually saw those films when the came out? Aside from the Hearst-angle coverage of Citizen Kane, how much was written about the film in 1941? That said, how do we know if the next Citizen Kane is here or not if all we read and hear about is Big Mama's House?

Movie Wars is an invigorating book. I was already aware of many of the issues it discusses, but seeing them all here in one place works the blood. I tore through Movie Wars in a couple of days and have gone back to it a couple of times since then. I'm not even saying that I think Rosenbaum is right about everything, or that he knows all that he's talking about, but at least he has taken the time to think it over. At least he has made me think about things. All the New York Times does is piss me off.

-- Jason Broccardo