We can make more than enough awesome movies every year. I am confident we can — and will — improve the business. But who is helping people discover why cinema is worth loving in the first place? And how do we make that love last?
Do you remember when you first fell in love with movies? I don’t necessarily mean the first movie you saw, or even the first one you loved. I’m thinking of the moment you realized that cinema could offer something beyond entertainment with more wonders than you could possibly discover in one lifetime.
I grew up in a small town, where the possibilities for excellent adventures seemed rather limited. Even when my horizons broadened and new opportunities blossomed before me, there wasn’t much in my mind that could compete with cinema. From early on it struck me as the ultimate art form as well as my favorite past time. I assumed it was what everyone everywhere wanted to do with their life, and that I would likely never get my chance to participate. Things fortunately worked out a little bit differently than I had expected.
I realize I need to write the post on how I fell in love with cinema. I think there are ten key steps but I might be wrong. This is not that post. Really the key though was getting to make those steps. Each step made me love films all the more. I know how hard it is to make a good one, and how rare the truly great ones are. To hit the level that’s now needed to get into Cannes, Berlin or Venice is pretty astounding — and yes, I know those festivals are not the only measure, but they are pretty good ones. If you can’t find things to marvel at with films of that level, you aren’t trying. But then when you consider our long history and how many great movies we will never get to see, it is even more astounding. I could watch movies every night that I already anticipate I will love and never catch up.
I suspect a lot of you have versions of a similar story — how you fell in love with cinema — as well as how you stayed in love with cinema. Yet when we consider what America’s cinema business needs, we rarely begin with the experiences that made us care about cinema in the first place. We talk about financing, distribution, marketing, ownership, and the disappearance of the theatrical marketplace. All necessary conversations, sure; I’ve devoted the previous four installments of this series to several of them.
But imagine we eventually solve a good portion of those problems. We make more ambitious films, allow their creators to sustain careers, establish fairer terms, and build systems that help the work remain available.
Who is going to care enough to engage with it?
And whose responsibility is it to help that happen?
We weren’t born knowing what we love
Taste develops. Curiosity grows. We encounter something unfamiliar, resist it, perhaps reject it, and then sometimes discover that the very thing we didn’t understand has changed how we see the world.
I can’t quite imagine a worthwhile cinematic life without that process. Nor can I imagine much significant artistic progress if we only give people more of what they already know they like.
Our commercial entertainment businesses have become extraordinarily sophisticated at identifying existing audience preferences. They collect information about what we’ve watched, when we stopped watching, what resembles something we previously enjoyed, and what might persuade us to remain on a platform for another hour.
There is considerable value in that knowledge, but I worry about what happens when our dominant systems of cultural discovery become primarily organized around reinforcing demonstrated behavior.
A filmmaker attempting something unfamiliar needs an audience willing to venture beyond its established preferences. That willingness develops through exposure, context, trust, and the pleasure of discovery.
When did we decide that cultivating those qualities was somebody else’s business?
What if going to the movies were part of every childhood?
The French have far more than wine and cheese; they have an interesting approach to cultivating cinematic taste. Their national cinema-education programs bring children into theaters to encounter films selected for artistic and
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