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December 20, 2004
Screenwriter Without a Screen
It's odd, but I'm a screenwriter who no longer enjoys going to the movies. Once, it was the passion of my life. I cannot count the times I've seen The Seven Samuari. I cannot remember how often I've sat down and inhaled The Searchers. For the past few years, I can hardly bear to sit in a movie theatre. Most of the movies I see just plain bore me. I can tell what is going to happen twenty minutes before it happens. There's also a little matter of the audiences. People talk to the screen. They shout out comments. Cell phones trill, sing and shriek. Other people, slobs really, loudly chew popcorn, repeatedly crack their gum. I have no patience. I have to hold myself back from saying rude things to these rude people. I get fidgety. I feel like the walls are closing in on me. In the last movie Karen and I attended there was a scene where a child is having his arm amputated. Karen and I looked at each other, panic in our eyes, and we fled.
Are movies worse now than when I was a kid, or am I just older and no longer part of the target demographic: sixteen to twenty-two? It's a bit of both, I believe. I saw Spider Man Two on a flight to NY. What did I feel? In all honesty, all the special effects of Spider Man flying from building to building only induced extreme nausea.
There is one movie Karen and I have watched recently and adored. It is, get this, a German film: Gloomy Sunday. Karen saw it in a movie theatre with one of her closest friends; she loved it and urged me to go, but I just couldn't bring myself to chance it. But I trust Karen's judgement and so I managed to get a DVD on e-Bay. It is a wonderful film about love, about art, about friendship and loyalty, and about Jews trapped in the Final Solution. It is beautfully acted and the script is a study in classic dramatic construction. If you get a chance to see this film--do so. You will not regret it.
I have a feeling that I could renew my love of the big screen by viewing the kind of movies that Ariel would almost certainly enjoy: Pixar films like Shrek II and The Incredibles. But somehow, I can't bring myself to see these films without my Ariel. I wonder if I ever will? The truth is, I feel flattened; as if I've encountered some massive animal who has been galloping along at a great speed for many miles, and finally the animal has crashed right into me. I am caught in a paradox, I want to renew my love for movies, but the very movies that would do the trick cause excrutiating pain.
Posted by Robert J. Avrech at December 20, 2004 02:01 PM
Comments
Seraphic Secret is private property, that's right, it's an extension of our home, and as such, Karen and I have instituted two Seraphic Rules and we ask commentors to act respectfully.
1. No profanity.2. No Israel bashing. We debate, we discuss, we are respectful. You know what Israel bashing is. The world is full of it. Seraphic Secret is one of the few places in the world that will not tolerate this form of anti-Semitism. That's it. Break either of these rules and you will be banned.
Try watching movies in Taiwan! People come into the theater with plastic bags that crackle when being opened, and they are being opened all the time, full of delicious spicy hot snacks, like fried crickets, stewed mouse meat, grilled octopus on a stick, fermented tofu and monkey brains, and all during any particular movie, people eat eat eat, slurp slurp slurp and use their cellphones loudly and without any care for the people sitting next to them in the hushed theater. Hushed? Foregettaboutit!
The only solution is to either join 'em, which I do every Sunday, slurping the fried liver and noodles as loudly as I can, or stay home and watch the movies on Dvds. Modern life has come to this. In America too?
And yes, they don't make em like they used to. Art is a lost art nowadays. It's all commerce and demographics and zip codes. Sad. Stop the world, I want to get off!
Danny
http://jewishblogniks.blogspot.com
We've added your blog to this listing...
Posted by: danny bee at December 20, 2004 08:00 PM
FYI: Shrek is a Dreamworks film.
Thanks so much, Mike. It just shows how outside the loop I am.
RJA
Posted by: Mike at December 21, 2004 04:34 PM
I used to go to the movies all the time, but now since having two small children at home I haven't been for a long time. The funny thing is that I don't miss it. Any preview I see doesn't entice me to want to go back to the movie theatre. Perhaps the quality of movies has gone down as you said.
Posted by: A Simple Jew at December 22, 2004 06:59 AM
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Posted by: ujjwal at July 23, 2005 10:09 AM