{"id":1396,"date":"2013-03-20T00:00:14","date_gmt":"2013-03-20T04:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2013-03-22T04:05:41","modified_gmt":"2013-03-22T08:05:41","slug":"the-idea-of-what-a-movie-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/the-idea-of-what-a-movie-is\/","title":{"rendered":"The Idea of What a Movie Is: A Very Greg Journey Through Film"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"field\"
\nA movie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Just a Bunch of Footage<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Security camera footage is not a movie, but screened at a film festival with a name like \u2018Big Brother\u2019s Kung Fu Grip\u2019 (or some artsy crap) it is.<\/i>\u00a0 Andy Warhol filming the Empire State Building for nine hours is a movie\u2014the video the real estate agent showed you of the interior of the house on Maple is not.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about context<\/i> and intention.<\/i>
\n
\nSince art is subjective, people make up their own definitions.\u00a0 Many people do not consider Andy Warhol\u2019s Empire<\/a> a movie.\u00a0 Since I\u2019m a science guy, I\u2019ll say this\u2014you can\u2019t technically<\/i> say that about it, but I get the impulse.\u00a0 You can\u2019t say it because art is a word with a definition and you can\u2019t just go all willy-nilly and make up your own.\u00a0 However, what\u2019s happening when someone says \u2018Empire isn\u2019t a movie\u2019 is that they think it\u2019s such a bad<\/i> movie that it can\u2019t even be considered<\/i> a movie.\u00a0 I agree with that.\u00a0 So from now on, keep in mind that when I say something is \u201cnot a movie\u201d, that\u2019s what I mean.<\/p>\n

Raging Bull<\/a> is not a movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bunch of footage of a guy walking around\u2014mostly he\u2019s mean.\u00a0 No attempt is made to explain why he\u2019s mean or why we should care about him or anyone around him.\u00a0 Hence, a bunch of footage.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty<\/i> footage though.\u00a0 Footage with an attitude, one might say, which is why people like it.\u00a0 Well, not people<\/i>.\u00a0 Movie geeks.\u00a0 I\u2019m one of them, so I should know (a movie geek that is, not somebody who likes Raging Bull). Raging Bull is boring, especially to the layperson who isn\u2019t concerned with pretty pictures, sound design, and editing techniques.\u00a0 Being a movie geek, I love that junk, but it doesn\u2019t make it a good movie.<\/p>\n

Field of Dreams<\/a>\u00a0is a movie. \u00a0The difference being, Raging Bull is celebrated merely for being \u2018beautifully photographed\u2019 whereas Field of Dreams is celebrated for making Dads cry.\u00a0 If you went outside, closed your eyes, and randomly snapped one hundred pictures, you\u2019d end up with a couple pretty pictures, but you wouldn\u2019t make your Dad cry (I hope).\u00a0 The irony here is that Field of Dreams also has pretty pictures and great sound design and editing.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that in Field of Dreams, those things add up to a singular idea that makes you cry\u2014not sit there, ambivalent.\u00a0 A movie is the result<\/i>, not the ingredients.<\/p>\n

Field of Dreams is advanced filmmaking. It uses the tools of cinema to express<\/i> rather than impress<\/i>.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what separates the big boys from the adolescent jerk offs that make \u2018stylistic\u2019 movies.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all relative though.\u00a0 Some of the people who love Raging Bull, those who force themselves to think it has a story (a series of hollow, dramatic moments is not<\/i> a story) probably don\u2019t consider Field of Dreams to be a \u2018movie\u2019, because they have a black heart, and believe it to be Hollywood fluff (or whatever generic, clich\u00e9 criticism an intellectual makes).<\/p>\n

There are some movies that are supposed<\/i> to be just a bunch of footage.\u00a0 For example, Microcosmos<\/a>, Genesis<\/a>, the Qatsi<\/a> trilogy, Baraka<\/a>, Cody\u2019s film Rehearsals<\/a>, and the aforementioned Empire.\u00a0 Some are good, like Microcosmos, and some are crappy, like Empire.\u00a0 It gets boring for me when the \u2018footage\u2019 technique is applied to what is supposedly a narrative.\u00a0 Is Raging Bull supposed to be a story or an atmospheric exploration?\u00a0 Well, I don\u2019t know, because it doesn\u2019t do either convincingly.\u00a0 Since it has events happening in an order\u2014chronologically, that is\u2014we\u2019re lead to believe it\u2019s a story.\u00a0 But those events happen without purpose or meaning, and are instead just artfully executed.\u00a0 The layperson snores, the movie geek applauds, and I say pick one method and go with it.<\/p>\n

But I guess it all just depends on what your idea of a movie is.<\/p>\n

The First Movie<\/b><\/p>\n

The notion of \u2018what a movie is\u2019 is not static.\u00a0 When movies started, they were literal.\u00a0 Which is why I love the word movie<\/em>\u2014because it\u2019s so stupid.\u00a0 A movie is literally a picture that moves.\u00a0 \u201cMovie\u201d is what people in the 1900\u2019s thought sounded neat, because they had no brains.\u00a0 In the first few years of movies, the idea of what a movie is was a shot of a guy sneezing or a train coming into a station.\u00a0 Then some genius figured out that it might be a good idea to shoot something that made you want to keep watching\u2014you know, like a story. They say that guy was Thomas Edison.\u00a0 Then another genius came along and figured out that rather than just pointing the camera at everything that was happening, you could isolate certain areas of what was happening and edit them next to other things. They say that guy was a racist named W.D. Griffith.\u00a0 Then it took about 70 years for movies to really become what we understand them to be today.<\/p>\n

In the \u201cgolden age\u201d of movies (according to Wikipedia it\u2019s between 1917 and 1960, but I\u2019ve always thought it to be considered around 1935-1955, namely 1939) the idea of what a movie is was melodramatic overacting filmed in front of a flimsy set\u2014basically a play photographed.\u00a0 If a scene took place outside, it looked awful.\u00a0 Then, in Italy, they decided to shoot those scenes outside and make them look good!\u00a0 Go figure. \u00a0They call this the ‘Italian Neorealist Movement’.\u00a0 It helped, I guess.<\/p>\n

But the idea of what a movie is didn\u2019t really happen until about 1975.\u00a0 Jaws<\/a> is sort of<\/em> the first movie.\u00a0 And not just because it\u2019s the first blockbuster.<\/i> (We could go on and on about whether that ruined everything or whatever, but who cares.)\u00a0 Jaws is sort of the first movie because it\u2019s one of the first times a movie feels<\/i> like a movie, like where things are happening and you care about them and it\u2019s executed in an interesting and effective way.\u00a0 The only two examples of this before 1975 are 12 Angry Men<\/a> and Inherit the Wind<\/a>, with Citizen Kane<\/a> as an honorable mention.\u00a0 Everything else before \u201875 pretty much sucks.<\/p>\n

Movies like Easy Rider<\/a> aren\u2019t good<\/i>, but they helped.\u00a0 They helped pave the way for movies like Jaws, which sounds insane but there\u2019s a whole litany of film history that plays into it that I won\u2019t bore you with now. \u00a0It\u2019s outlined in A Decade Under the Influence<\/a> and Easy Riders, Raging Bulls<\/a>, two books\/documentaries about cocaine.<\/p>\n

A year after Jaws came Rocky<\/a>.\u00a0 The first actual movie ever.\u00a0 The movie that defined the idea of what a movie is.<\/p>\n

Rocky is the first time a movie truly 100% felt like a movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s a straightforward, linear story that you follow to its natural conclusion.\u00a0 See, movies like All About Eve<\/a> or Vertigo<\/a> or whatever suck because they\u2019re boring.\u00a0 They don\u2019t even try not to be.\u00a0 They don\u2019t look like anybody tried at all.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just that they\u2019re dated, although that certainly doesn\u2019t help.\u00a0 They do have stories (I guess) but they lack the understanding of how movies can properly execute a story.\u00a0 Which is why they just look like filmed plays.<\/p>\n

Rocky was made for five cents, and incidentally, like Jaws, that\u2019s the best thing that ever happened to it.\u00a0 The limitations of Rocky make it feel real.\u00a0 When Rocky is being told \u201cup yours, creepo\u2019\u2019 I believe he\u2019s really on the street with that girl, because he is.\u00a0 This kind of realism did<\/em> exist before, but it\u2019s the story part that didn\u2019t.\u00a0 So ultimately, Stallone and Avildsen were kind of the first people in history with a real idea of what a movie is.<\/p>\n

What Year Did That Come Out?<\/b><\/p>\n

Once Rocky opened the gate, movies became movies and stayed movies until around 1999.\u00a0 In 2000, everyone\u2019s brains fell out again and movies lost their chance of being good again.\u00a0 Similar to the 50\u2019s, movies devolved back into static, phony-looking, glossy, melodramatic messes where actors over-emoted sappy dialogue on claustrophobic sets that all had a \u2018look\u2019 (which just means they were tinted green or desaturated in post to \u2018enhance the mood\u2019 or something.)<\/p>\n

We\u2019re still in that era and I hope it ends soon.\u00a0 David Wain is currently the only good filmmaker, although Inglourious Basterds<\/a> was Tarantino\u2019s best movie, by far.\u00a0 And Moneyball<\/a> and Looper<\/a> were both pleasant surprises.<\/p>\n

The idea here is that decades are really genres.\u00a0 You know what I mean when I say \u201880\u2019s movie\u2019, and you know I don\u2019t actually mean a movie that came out between 1980-1989.\u00a0 Wet Hot American Summer is an 80\u2019s movie, albeit a send up of one.<\/p>\n

Super 8<\/a> desperately wanted to be an 80\u2019s movie, and I guess it was.\u00a0 It wanted to be one so hard that it couldn\u2019t even remember what genre it was supposed to be.\u00a0 But an A for effort.<\/p>\n

Try to think of movies that came out in the wrong decade. It\u2019s a fun exercise!\u00a0 And try to think of movies that want to be in another decade, too.\u00a0 Like the fonts Tarantino uses (a bunch of decades) or The Sitter<\/a> (the 80\u2019s\u2014fuck that piece of shit movie) or Kevin Smith\u2019s Cop Out<\/a> (which strives so hard to be an 80s movie, even using Harold Faltermeyer for the score).<\/p>\n

I\u2019m surprised they haven\u2019t dug up Tangerine Dream with all these 80\u2019s movies coming out lately.\u00a0 Although I guess Noah Baumbach did that, by using pieces of score from Three O\u2019Clock High<\/a> in his 80\u2019s period movie The Squid and the Whale<\/a>\u2014perhaps the most bizarre, visibly earnest repurposing of any score ever.<\/p>\n

Back to the Future<\/a>, an 80\u2019s movie, wanted to be timeless so bad that they tried picking the most accessible, universal song to open their movie with\u2014which, ironically, and perhaps partly due to the popularity of that movie, is now the most dated song of all time.\u00a0 But hey, you can\u2019t win em all.<\/p>\n

The truth is though, movies aren\u2019t good.\u00a0 Sometimes they accidentally are, and a lot of times it\u2019s all because of their \u2018era genre\u2019.\u00a0 I suspect that the Indiana Jones trilogy is good because of the limitations and popular styles of the time.\u00a0 Not necessarily more so than the talent of the filmmakers, but maybe.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bizarre chicken or the egg situation.\u00a0 See, Spielberg and Lucas trail-blazed that era.\u00a0 They famously came of age in the first generation of filmmakers to be influenced by movies rather than other art forms.\u00a0 Whereas Hitchcock and John Ford grew up with literature and plays, Spielberg and Lucas grew up with Hitchcock and Ford.\u00a0 And they spun straw into gold.<\/p>\n

What you have to consider is the fact that the limitations of the time had perfectly aligned with the frontier of imagination\u2014which spawned Indiana Jones, one of the greatest movies ever made.\u00a0 However, if you look at the fourth installment, released in 2008, it becomes evident that had Lucas and Spielberg been able to do what they fully wanted to do back then, the movies would\u2019ve sucked.\u00a0 Either that, or they\u2019ve lost their minds. I\u2019m willing to accept either explanation.\u00a0 However, remember, Jaws is good partly by accident\u2014the shark not working, etc.\u00a0 Now, the shark not working does not negate the fact that Spielberg has proved his filmmaking prowess time and again with an overload of amazing moments in Jaws and his other movies. So, it\u2019s not as simple as whoops, the shark doesn\u2019t work, oh hey, it\u2019s good now.\u00a0 But you see what I\u2019m driving at.<\/p>\n

The relative goodness of a movie is often mired by what was popular at the time.\u00a0 Had Ghostbusters been made today, it would have been full of constant references to dildos and asshats or something, and it would be all glossy and fake looking.\u00a0 And the scary moments wouldn\u2019t be effective.<\/p>\n

The best example of this is the Terminator series.\u00a0 Each installment feels exactly like the era it was released, and each one suffers or succeeds relative to its era.<\/p>\n

Terminator<\/a> (1984)\u00a0 A fresh, foreboding thriller with well-defined characters.\u00a0 Its superficial trappings reek of the 80\u2019s so obviously that I won\u2019t bore you with the minute details, but basically, the score, the sex scene, the lightning effects, the way the cops act, etc.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little boring and outlandish, but its style is compelling and it\u2019s clearly trying to create an interesting world.<\/p>\n

Terminator 2: Judgement Day<\/a> (1991)\u00a0 The superficial trappings spell 90\u2019s all the way\u2014the obligatory use of Bad to the Bone, the cool factor added to Schwarzenegger, the haircut on Edward Furlong, the practical, clean blue light in the night scenes. And the story and it\u2019s structure feel very 90\u2018s: we\u2019ve come further than the 80\u2019s, there\u2019s a little more pizzazz, way more spectacle to the action, and everything is a little less boring because of it.\u00a0 The action is heightened but not yet masturbatory.\u00a0 It feels cool and necessary somehow, because the obligatory action beats are filmed in such a way that they keeps you invested.<\/p>\n

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines<\/a>\u00a0(2003)\u00a0 Completely forgettable.\u00a0 Um, it has a hot girl and a truck chase.\u00a0 That\u2019s about it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even want to talk about it.<\/p>\n

Terminator: Salvation<\/a> (2009)\u00a0 Here\u2019s where the era thing becomes most apparent.\u00a0 This movie blows because of its era.\u00a0 The entire thing is tinted some glossy, desaturated, pukey-grey color.\u00a0 The reason is that the movie is about a stark future where humans live in a desolate desert of their own creation, constantly at war with machines.\u00a0 All very 1984, Devo, minus the fun and sardonic political satire.\u00a0 The problem here is that the first two are about that too, but they didn\u2019t need to be tinted some weird color to express it\u2014the story did that.\u00a0 This time we are made to look at puke because the director wants to put us in some kind of mood, and since the writers didn\u2019t supply it, he figured tinting the screen would help.<\/p>\n

And just as much a sign of the times is the bland, overcomplicated, low-stakes story. In the first two, the idea is simple\u2014a badass killer is hunting our hero, and someone has been assigned to protect her.\u00a0 Through this we are given all of the political and social commentary we need.\u00a0 The fourth one is about a guy who\u2019s a robot but doesn\u2019t know it yet or something, and a kid who fights robots because that\u2019s what ya do in the future I guess.\u00a0 Nothing really matters and the climax that they clumsily arrive at is uneventful because there doesn\u2019t appear to be any real difficulty in achieving it\u2014\u2019it\u2019 being whatever they were trying to do. I forget. Something to do with Skynet or something.<\/p>\n

Auteur Theory, or, One Dude\u2019s Idea of What a Movie Is<\/b><\/p>\n

What I like best are movies without era.\u00a0 Signs<\/a> and Raising Arizona<\/a> are the best examples.\u00a0 These movies are about universal ideas, with a clear story, artfully executed by people with a strong grasp of how movies work.\u00a0 Their style is a reflection and expression of their story, rather than an alignment with the status quo.<\/p>\n

Movies without an era often come from writer-directors.\u00a0 I think this is because, by default, they\u2019re creating something original.\u00a0 And also by default they\u2019re creating something for themselves.<\/i>\u00a0 Their idea of execution is tied to their idea of the story, with no room for misinterpretation.\u00a0 It\u2019s not surprising that the Coen Brothers meticulously spends three weeks with an artist storyboarding every shot in their entire movie.\u00a0 This not only saves money, it also ensures that the movie is designed to their liking.\u00a0 It gives them their distinctive tone.\u00a0 The study of this (a director\u2019s distinctiveness) is known as \u2018auteur theory\u2019.<\/p>\n

Auteurs can circumvent era or fall victim to it.\u00a0 It\u2019s always sad to see a director succumb to the style of the time.\u00a0 Look no further than Tim Burton, who\u2019s early work captured a rustic exuberance that was wholly original, but who\u2019s later work embraced the glossy nonsense of modern Hollywood.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, a filmmaker who has been able to successfully adapt is Sam Raimi. The simple charm of Evil Dead<\/a> evolved nicely into the Hollywood scope of the Spiderman<\/a> trilogy.<\/p>\n

Auteur theory is why I like the bad movies the Coen Brothers have made,\u00a0 and why other people even force themselves to actually think those movies are good.\u00a0 No Country For Old Men<\/a> isn\u2019t good, but it\u2019s a Coen Brothers movie.\u00a0 It\u2019s fun to see what\u2019s in their brain every few years, even if it\u2019s boring (try cutting out Tommy Lee Jones).\u00a0 As Kevin Pollak puts it on his ever-brilliant chat show, The Kevin Pollak Chat Show<\/a>, \u2018it\u2019s when an artist achieves the status of that his work can only be compared to the rest of his work\u2019.<\/p>\n

In that sense, like era being genre, directors are genres too.\u00a0 Spielberg is families, Cameron is imagination, Tarantino is whatever movies he\u2019s currently obsessed with, De Palma is Hitchcock.\u00a0 Similar to era, people are always trying to make movies like other people.\u00a0 De Palma makes better Hitchcock movies than Hitchcock.\u00a0 With Super 8, Abrams wasn\u2019t only trying to make an 80\u2019s movie, he was trying to make a Spielberg movie.\u00a0 A lot of folks try to make Woody Allen movies. I don\u2019t know why, since Woody\u00a0 himself barely makes any good Woody Allen movies (but when he does they sure are great).<\/p>\n

I think ultimately a movie should be whatever it is.\u00a0 That\u2019s a stupid thing to say, but what I mean is, the story will tell you what it should be.\u00a0 Most movies shouldn\u2019t be what they are.\u00a0 Most movies shouldn\u2019t exist in the first place.<\/p>\n

Raging Bull probably doesn\u2019t need to exist.\u00a0 The script is just fodder for Scorsese to aimlessly show how good he is at creating tone.\u00a0 He is awesome,\u00a0 sure.\u00a0 I mean, he uses slow motion in the middle of a scene\u2014I could go on forever about that but I\u2019ll save it for another post.<\/p>\n

Field of Dreams existing is pretty cool.\u00a0 It\u2019s about a guy who\u2019s searching for purpose in life and finds it when a magic voice tells him to build a baseball field in his corn crop.\u00a0 He does so because this is a movie, and what ensues is a fun journey about not taking for granted the most important thing in life: family.\u00a0 The movie itself is beautifully constructed\u2014each shot builds upon the previous, never relying on coverage.\u00a0 The visuals, sounds, music, performances, and dialogue all work together and help each other create a symbiotic rhythm that doesn\u2019t keep us in awe at the cinematography, but instead melts over us and lets us enjoy the story.\u00a0 The beauty is invisible, not insisted upon us. \u00a0It\u2019s informed by the story\u2014the one we\u2019re following, not waiting for.\u00a0 This is my idea of what a movie is.\u00a0 And it\u2019s what only about 92 other movies are.\u00a0 The rest are just a bunch of junk.<\/p>\n

So I guess what I\u2019m saying is, in the summer of 1989, Phil Alden Robinson had a great idea of what a movie should be. \u00a0But it wasn\u2019t an \u2018idea\u2019 at all\u2014it was a movie.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"field\"
\nA movie.<\/em><\/p>\n

Security camera footage is not a movie, but screened at a film festival with a name like \u2018Big Brother\u2019s Kung Fu Grip\u2019 (or some artsy crap) it is.<\/i>\u00a0 Andy Warhol filming the Empire State Building for nine hours is a movie\u2014the video the real estate agent showed you of the interior of the house on Maple is not.\u00a0 It\u2019s all about context<\/i> and intention.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,17],"tags":[693,707,696,700,582,691,687,566,32,705,704,723,697,695,698,718,688,690,37,724,685,322,694,70,720,721,454,689,702,719,692,567,716,53,699,332,104,185,717,590,436,715,708,709,711,710,712,713,714,686,703,706,722,701,607],"class_list":["post-1396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-gregsessays","tag-12-angry-men","tag-3-oclock-high-squid-and-the-whale","tag-a-decade-under-the-influence","tag-all-about-eve","tag-back-to-the-future","tag-baraka","tag-bunch-of-footage","tag-citizen-kane","tag-cody-clarke","tag-cop-out","tag-copout","tag-de-palma","tag-decade-under-the-infleunce","tag-easy-rider","tag-easy-riders-raging-bulls","tag-evil-dead","tag-field-of-dreams","tag-genesis","tag-greg-deliso","tag-hitchcock","tag-idea-of-what-a-movie-is","tag-inglourious-basterds","tag-inherit-the-wind","tag-jaws","tag-kevin-pollak","tag-kevin-pollak-chat-show","tag-looper","tag-microcosmos","tag-moneyball","tag-no-country-for-old-men","tag-qatsi","tag-raging-bull","tag-raising-arizona","tag-rehearsals","tag-rocky","tag-signs","tag-smug-film-2","tag-smugfilm","tag-spiderman","tag-super-8","tag-tarantino","tag-termination-salvation","tag-terminator","tag-terminator-2","tag-terminator-2-judgment-day","tag-terminator-2-judgement-day","tag-terminator-3","tag-terminator-3-rise-of-the-machines","tag-terminator-salvation","tag-the-idea-of-what-a-movie-is","tag-the-sitter","tag-three-oclock-high","tag-tommy-lee-jones","tag-vertigo","tag-woody-allen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1433,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}