Dear David, Tony, and colleagues,
I have also been reading Jonathan Rosenbaum’s book and agreeing with a great deal of it. The fact is that the mainstream media do discriminate against films that are not themselves mainstream. When I’m invited on a talk show, I may mention in the pre-interview good art films I’d like to discuss, but somehow the host never brings them up. Those few shows that were open to such titles, like Tom Snyder’s, are no longer on the air. The mainstream is dedicated to publicizing new national releases starring celebrities. Period.
I am fortunate at the Sun-Times that I can review whatever I want, and I do review as many nonmainstream movies as I can. The proviso is that I must also review the mainstream movies, of course. On our TV show, we do a lot of alternative titles (recently: A Time for Drunken Horses, George Washington, Two Family House, Broken Hearts Club, Human Resources, Dark Days, Smiling Fish and Goat on Fire, Aimee and Jaguar, An Affair of Love, The Tao of Steve, Girl on the Bridge, Time Regained). We know we invite a ratings penalty when we review these films. We tend to put the foreign movies later in the show because analysis of ratings shows that many viewers automatically switch channels when exposed to the horror of a subtitle.
Two years ago I started an Overlooked Film Festival at the University of Illinois and was gratified to find last April that a full house of kids at the free Saturday matinee sat enthralled through Children of Heaven, subtitles and all, without the slightest difficulty. What is it in American society that penalizes curiosity as we grow up?
When we review such films, we get e-mails from viewers complaining that the movies are not playing in their town (or state!), and of course that is true. Dan Talbott told me years ago that 85 percent of the U.S. gross for a foreign film came out of eight or nine cities, and I imagine the situation today is much the same. That’s why the mainstream shies away from them: 90 percent of the readers or viewers are never exposed to them.
Although I remain opposed to digital projection, I concede that it might be the answer for distribution of marginal films, since a cinematheque could run a low-cost repertory policy if the films could zip in from satellite. Of course, digital projection is an overhyped phantom; no theatrical-quality satellite delivery system currently exists, and a recent Kodak analysis shows that the best digital projection equals one-sixth as many pixels as celluloid, but still …at a time when art films are never seen at all in many markets, digital is a future possibility.
Reading David’s opening salvo, I was struck by another critic’s definition of George Washington that he quotes: “like Gummo directed by Terence Malick.” That’s meant as an attack, but it sounds like praise to me. Is there anyone reading this who wouldn’t go instantly to see Malick’s Gummo? If George Washington is not a film to praise and defend, then what is? What are we looking for?
