Once Upon a Time in a Cinema
A moviegoing experience fades to black…
Last night was a treat. I got to see a movie in an actual movie theater. This is something we so rarely do these days because, well, life.
But, babies aside, it’s an experience that is overall becoming more rare for basically all but the biggest blockbusters. And that made last night extra unique: we weren’t seeing a superhero movie or a big-budget sequel. We were seeing a sub-$100M period piece — well, as “period” a piece as 1969 Los Angeles can be — Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
And it was great. Magnificent, really. But while watching it, I was acutely aware that part of what was so wonderful about it was the increasing novelty of seeing a movie like this in theaters. In the future, there is almost no chance a movie like this gets a wide release in the cinema. Instead, it will be on Netflix, or Amazon Prime Video, or Apple TV+, or the like.
Now, the caveat here is that this movie happens to be a bit of a unicorn. First and foremost, it’s a film by Quentin Tarantino — his 9th, as all the marketing will have you know. Given his stature as an auteur, and his relatively long creative gestation periods, there is almost no chance his movies don’t make it into theaters.¹ This is only true for a handful of directors — Christopher Nolan also comes to mind — but I have to say “almost” because I would have thought this would also be true of all of our greatest living directors. And yet no less than Martin Scorsese — Martin Fucking Scorsese — is releasing his next movie this fall on Netflix. Did I mention that it stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci? Yes, they’re all bringing their gangster talents to streaming.
And the reason why is telling. While Scorsese shopped around the historical crime drama to all the major studios, they all balked at the budget. (Beyond the talent involved, there’s actually a lot of visual effects work which was needed to “de-age” the stars to show them as younger men.) This is the current, sad state of Hollywood. A movie must either be an extremely low budget prestige film (which has a chance at awards) or a horror film (which has a chance to make huge profit multiples). Otherwise, it has to be a massive budget superhero movie or sequel (less risky, with a chance to make a large dollar amount internationally).
Again, this makes Once Upon a Time unique. While it was relatively “cheap”, with a reported $90M budget, it will still likely need to make several hundred millions of dollars to make the studio money (because of the undoubted back-end deals for the stars and talent). And, actually, Tarantino was able to secure the ultimate sweetheart deal for himself: full ownership (after a set period of time), which is far more rare than even final cut (the ultimate say over the final version of the film) or back-end points.
So, again, Once Upon a Time is an outlier. And that’s largely based on legacy. And yet even the legacy of Scorsese couldn’t ensure such treatment! The reality of the situation is that the next Tarantino won’t be able to either. Because of the aforementioned new model of Hollywood theatrical fare, new filmmakers who are not doing horror movies and/or blockbusters (which a new filmmaker is undoubtedly not going to land — see again: risk) are unlikely to cut their teeth in theaters. Or, at least certainly not with wide release movies. Instead, they’ll prove themselves on Netflix and the like. And that’s fine! Netflix is great! But there is something we’re all losing, as was abundantly clear to me last night.
While a movie such as Once Upon a Time doesn’t necessarily need to be seen in theaters, it’s so much better for it.² The format allows you to fully appreciate the vision the filmmaker was hoping to capture. The setting makes a film grandiose in a way that even the best home theater cannot. It’s the atmosphere. The fact that not only are people not on their phones, they’re not allowed to be on their phones. Everyone is — get this — paying attention to the massive fucking moving image in front of them. And the booming sound surrounding them. And maybe even the reactions of the other people around them. It was not a Wednesday night, it was an event. It was a spectacle.
You were not watching a movie. You were witness to a slice of life in the 1960s. You were on a ride. You were along for the ride.
I feel as if all of this gets lost in translation when you try to talk about why seeing a movie in a theater is a totally different experience than seeing it at home. Again, there’s an image on a giant screen in front of you and sound around you. Maybe the screen is a bit bigger (but maybe not!) and maybe the sound is a bit louder (but maybe not!). So really, what’s the difference?
It’s about a thousand intangible things — some big, some small, many imperceptible. That’s what makes the moviegoing experience an experience.
And yet, I’m still realistic. This model is broken in a way that will never be fixed again for the vast majority of movies (or other types of content as the lines increasingly blur). My heart hopes that there will always be movies that make the cinema grade beyond just the mega-budget franchise films. But my brain tells me that this will fade to black with the Tarantinos and the Nolans of the world.
And so it was nice to remember and appreciate all of this, even if just for a night. A perspective gained perhaps by being away from a theater for so long. A piece of art as the purest form of escape. From home. From the phone. Something my child is unlikely to experience, save for the Disney movies.
¹ And certainly not if he really does stop at 10 — which seems… unlikely?
² Unlike, say, Nolan’s Interstellar, which I would argue did need to be seen in theaters for be fully appreciated.
