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Let's Go See a Movie in the Park!I've got a better idea: Let's not.

By Juliet LapidosPosted Monday, July 6, 2009, at 7:04 AM ET

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At a cocktail party recently, a fellow guest asked me whether I'd ever seen Double Indemnity. "Yes, of course," I said, dismissively and untruthfully. I did once sit in front of a screen playing Billy Wilder's famous noir, about a femme fatale who schemes to kill her husband, for the full 107 minutes. But the screen was located outdoors, at Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan. And I was located on a damp patch of grass, peeved at a friend who'd eaten more than her fair share of the hummus. Meanwhile, an acute pain throbbed in my lower back. So I can't say I really followed the storyline, or that I developed an opinion—even a small talk-ready one—about what I had watched.

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You can find open-air screening series in just about every major American city—among them Baltimore; Chicago; Portland, Ore.; Raleigh, N.C.; San Francisco; and Seattle—and in smaller cities and towns too (Rosslyn, Va.; Florence, Ala.). Here in New York, you can subject yourself to the vagaries of the weather and watch a movie in Bryant Park, in Central Park, on the Hudson River, by the Brooklyn Bridge, or on a number of Brooklyn rooftops. But why would anyone willingly attend such an event?

The most common response I get to that question is: "It's free!" True, most outdoor festivals don't charge for admission, but what about the fancy picnic you're expected to bring along? At nearly every Bryant Park film I've attended, either Camembert or Prosecco has been in evidence—sometimes both. Besides, the cost of a movie ticket is quite low if you consider that it protects you from the indignities of the outdoors. I'm not a cinema-experience snob—really, I'm not. I rarely notice when I'm viewing something in the wrong aspect ratio, and I regularly watch movies on my laptop. But I have three basic requirements: Darkness, comfort, and quiet, none of which a crowded lawn can provide.

The usual protocol at outdoor events is to start the screening after sundown—a futile attempt to satisfy the darkness requirement. In New York, the buildings, cars, and street lamps give off so much light that you might as well be watching at midday. Although the lighting problem may be confined to big cities, general discomfort is not. The human body was simply not intended to sustain either of the customary outdoor screening poses: legs straight ahead, upper body weight resting on the elbows, no neck support; or cross-legged, elbows on the knees, back bent like a comma. Certainly not for the duration of, say, Dog Day Afternoon (125 minutes, playing at Bryant Park tonight).

But streetlamp glare and neck strain are nothing compared with the real problem with outdoor screenings: The people who attend outdoor screenings. Before the movie starts, they prattle ceaselessly about the best nursery schools and the best cheese shop to get a good Camembert. After the opening credits, they still won't shut up. They chat in stage whispers, making banal yet dubious observations, such as "Isn't it great that we're watching a movie al fresco?" Like the denizens of art house cinemas, they guffaw and chortle operatically at the slightest provocation, so that everyone in a three-blanket radius will think they're paying close attention—which they're not. Case in point: Right after the climactic scene in The Man Who Knew Too Much, my neighbor let out an audible "Mmm." He then turned to his date to ask what was going on. That, anyway, is how the adults behave. The teenagers are worse. Influenced, perhaps, by Hollywood depictions of youthful necking at drive-ins, there's always far too much underage action at outdoor movies—with none of the privacy afforded by a back seat.

If it were universally acknowledged that sincere movie-watching cannot, in fact, take place at outdoor screenings, these events might be less irritating. I wouldn't feel guilty about kicking back, noshing on a cucumber sandwich, and ignoring the plot of Viva Las Vegas. But the programmers of outdoor festivals insist on filling their lineups with highbrow films—or, at least, films that actually require attention. One of the worst offenders is Chicago's Outdoor Festival in Grant Park, which this summer is showing Sunset Boulevard (poor Billy Wilder) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (the story of a sexually frustrated wife and her sexually confused husband—perfect for a family outing!). Other movies that really ought to be viewed indoors include A Street Car Named Desire (featuring a rape and a nervous breakdown, playing in San Jose, Calif.), The Class (a French film about a teacher in a low-income Parisian school, playing in Raleigh), and Kramer vs. Kramer (Meryl Streep abandons her young son, playing in Bryant Park).

My friends may never again invite me to an outdoor film festival, but you, dear reader, will surely field such an offer sometime soon. When the subject comes up, explain that you've heard of an even better venue for movie-watching. You can sit in a comfortable chair, there's air conditioning, pitch darkness, and it's considered common courtesy to pipe down when the previews come on. Prosecco is not typically served, but you can order a Sprite, the Prosecco of soft drinks. It's called a movie theater; I highly recommend it.

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Juliet Lapidos is a Slate assistant editor.

Illustration by Alex Eben Meyer.

COMMENTS

I'd resist attending one of those park screenings for a movie I haven't seen before, in a regular setting. You've got to expect a lot of talking, outdoor noise, weak projection/sound. (Even more pronounced with the improvement of home cinema technologies the past few years; a decade ago, it was more novel just seeing an old movie on a "big screen".)

It's best seeing a movie you've seen a million times before -- one that might play well with a large crowd, almost Rocky-Horror style. You're not depending on hearing every word and connecting with every small moment.

Still, it's gotta be something that's worth the overall package: getting there early enough to snag some prime real estate, holding down your fort of blankets for hours before it darkens, having to negotiate the densely packed lawn every time you need to go to the bathroom -- stepping through a dozen picnics to make it to some porta-potty and then trying to make your way back.

-- dystopika
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There's one good one in the world.

The Locarno Festival has outdoor screenings in the main piazza every night during the festival. The sound is great, the projection perfect, and because the plaza is entirely surrounded by four-story buildings, it's protected from street noise from the rest of the city. There are folding chairs for seven thousand, and if you snag a table at one of the cafes on the piazza, you can eat and drink in comfort during the film. The only downside is that it rains often in Locarno, but the experience of watching a movie in that piazza is so entrancing that thousands of people sit there, in the ponchos they hand out, and watch happily through the rain. If you're in one of the cafes under the awning, you don't even have that worry.

A long way to go for an outdoor screening, but that piazza is one of the great screening rooms in the world.

-- jalawa
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