“You’ll think you have experienced it…”
“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?”
– H.M. Warner (Warner Brothers), 1927
Let’s agree on one thing: different is different. Fine. That’s pretty straightforward. But to say something is better or worse — without giving some context — because it’s different… is ignorant.
Recently, David Lynch had a little video moment about how watching a movie on your (”fucking”) phone is, in his words, “a sadness.” He says that you can’t “experience” the film on your phone. “You’ll think you have experienced it, buy you’ll be cheated.” The video’s been around the ‘net and parodied, etc. Here’s my favorite version:
Now… if you watch this YouTube video of an iPhone playing the video, rather than the original, and you think you’ve seen it, you’re wrong. You may think you’ve experienced the 30 second interview with Lynch, but you’re being cheated. My appologies.
If Lynch’s obvious point is that films are created with an original intention that they be watched on a large screen, and that watching them on a much smaller screen is different… well, ok. That’s fine. The experiences are, clearly, different.
But couldn’t we say the same thing about watching films on TV? Or on the 8-of-12 screens at my local multiplex that are, frankly, way too small to be considered movie screens? The ones only about as wide as 10 seats. That’s not a movie; that’s a really big TV. You wanna see “Lawrence of Arabia,” you should have to turn your head a little, even from half-way back in the theater.
Couldn’t we say the same thing about eating while watching a film? The creators didn’t write, direct, produce and perform the film with the thought, “I wonder how this will look and sound while someone is slupring Diet Sprite and mawing down a 2 lb. bag of Goobers.” We could say the same thing about seeing the movie while drunk, stoned or tired. I’ve seen hundreds, if not thousands, of films in theaters, and I’ve fallen asleep for a moment or two a few times. Have I been cheated?
What if I don’t understand the references in a movie? Either actual ones (vocabulary, history, geography) or tangential ones (art, cinematography, culture)? Am I being cheated if I don’t “get” all the funky allusions in a Tarantino picture?
Follow this out far enough, and I don’t think I can experience a David Lynch film uncheated… unless I’m David Lynch. He seems like a nice enough guy, sure… but I think my wife would be surprised if he showed up in the kitchen at 7 am tomorrow.
Who decides? In the creation of art, the author does, obviously. A writer or director or actor makes innumerable decisions about what to edit from any moment of a piece. You (often/usually) can’t go back and ask for the early drafts or takes. You get what is put forward as the final piece.
But from there, it’s up to you to decide. Do you power-read a book of Yeats’ poetry so that you have a vague familiarity with it? Or do you spend some good, quiet time with each piece? Or do you read some background history on the work so that you can put it into a biographical and cultural context? That’s up to you.
“You’ll think you have experienced it” may be the most egotistical remark I’ve heard thus far this year.
Update: Another iteration. Thanks m_m:
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Lynch has earned the right to make the odd egotistical remark every now and then, don’t you think?
As for me, I didn’t interpret his statement as being egotistical or elitist; just a plain statement of fact. I can’t quite see a way to get the impact of any of his films via a 2 or 3 inch screen.
Many other filmmakers and studios would of course be interested in the commercial prospects that mobile-phone distribution offers.. but why is it so strange for an artistic filmmaker such as Lynch to express a distaste for a medium that would take so much away from his work?
Simon: Thanks for the comment.
Lynch is a fabulous director, and I love much of his work. But I don’t think anything earns us the right to be egotistical; it’s usually self-defeating and unhelpful, anyways.
Would I rather watch a good movie on the big screen? Sure. Almost every time. Do I agree with Lynch that there are good reasons to try to see a movie that way in many cases? Again, yes. But to say, “You’ll think you have experienced it” pre-supposes that I am not wise enough to judge an experience for myself.
If he had given good, specific reasons as to when one should see a film on the big screen, I would have applauded. There’s a difference between “teaching” and “telling.” Just because Famous Guy says, “I know better than you,” doesn’t make it so. If he’s got specific reasons, super. I didn’t hear any; just rhetoric.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddlekGTntT4&feature=related
Boogers.
For one, an artist has the right to despair that he (or she) has labored long and hard to deliver an experience to an audience (which is what artists do) and that the experience they are intending to deliver is being tremendously altered by the unusual medium through which it is being experienced. If, for instance, your poems were read by the robot voice that alerts me to the fact that I have books waiting for me at my local library, and said robot voice mispronounced half the words of your poem and mangled the meter and changed a profoundly moving sonnet into a comic jingle or a comic poem into a limpid dud, you too would have the right to say “You may think you have heard my poem, but in fact what you heard was a mistranslation”. That’s not arrogance, and it certainly isn’t a way to say that you are dumb or incapable of making choices, it’s simply one way of saying that one medium does not suit some material.
I find myself thinking of Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon, and how Kubrick labored long and hard over the lighting in that movie. Did you know that not one single source of artificial light illumined the sets of that film? Kubrick spent thousands of dollars on a special camera with special filters in order to capture candlelit scenes in the most natural setting possible, so that every shot looks like an oil painting sprung to life. Or, too, the Beatles first movie — remember the scene where the camera swings around Paul McCartney and just above and to the left of his head, there’s a sun spot that glimmers and brightens. When the film team showed the producers their raw footage from that scene, the producers said “Oh look, you have a lighting flaw” and the director said “That’s not a flaw! Do you know how hard we worked to get that into the shot?” And these are all elements that would translate onto a television screen but not so much on a little 2 inch display on a cell phone.
I think that if I spent several days preparing my house to host a dinner party, and I shined the silver and I painted the dining room and I ordered flowers and arranged them in special vases and you showed up two hours early and took your portion of what I was planning to serve and ate it in your car, that I’d have the right to say “You really did not get the whole experience of the dinner party”. Again, that’s not arrogant, that’s simply true.
And I do think that people who miss cultural references in movies are cheated a little. After all, even you would have to admit that when Tarantino makes a really obscure reference, a big part of the appeal of that obscurity lies in the disparate takes on it, that some people will get something from the references and the rest will be left a little tantalized. If those individuals left in the dark where not at least slightly cheated from the full experience of the film, there wouldn’t be a sense of tantalization and the references would lose their edge.
@Jen: and boogers to you, my friend
I never said the experiences weren’t different; and it’s great, I believe, to analyze differences. If you want to say, “Some films provide better visual experiences of some aspects while in a theater,” I got no beef. But to say another person has not “experienced” a film watched in a particular way is, as I said, arrogant.
Let’s take your dinner party analogy. Suppose I come in, am a lovely guest, chat with you and your friends, make lovely conversation (as I do, being so damn charming), entertain with my wit… but can’t eat some large percentage of your fare because of food allergies. I’m gracious, as are you, because I don’t expect others to cater (ha ha) to my specific dietary needs, and you’d rather provide food that’s acceptable to the dozens of other friends you have at the event. Have I “failed to experience” your party?
[Extreme example alert] What about someone with poor vision outside of short-sight range? Someone who has to watch a screen that’s within 12-18″ of his/her face? Sitting that close to even a small TV can be disconcerting. Perhaps, in this case, watching on an iPod or iPhone would provide a *better* experience for that individual than a theater or big TV.
As I said… I have no beef with the argument that an artist can develop a work with a goal of having certain things perceived in various ways. As an artist myself, I clearly don’t create works with a generic audience in mind, nor an audience with no background or history. That being said, I’d be delighted to have someone mix up my work in the ways you mention (robot voice, change it to limerick, etc.), if it provided someone with an additional chance to experience my work, or to get something new out of it. At what point is it so changed that they are experiencing something different? Something completely apart from what I originally intended?
As soon as they experience it with their own mind, in their own life. I can’t stand inside your head and inform how you read my words. When I let them go, they’re out there for you to experience. I may disagree with your interpretation of the experience, but you have every right to it.