The Incompatibility of Appreciation
It's not often that I slip into complete bitching mode, but I feel like I have to today. It's not that I had a particularly bad weekend, because I didn't; in fact, it was quite relaxing and soothing. However, like most everything else in life, moderation has a way of rearing its ugly head and forcing itself upon the proceedings -- even if happiness and satisfaction is what needs moderating.
I spent a vast majority of the drive home reading excerpts from The Descent of Man, the other famous text by the ubiquitous Charles Darwin. Mr. Darwin and his theory of evolution and natural selection played a critical role in the novella I finished this weekend -- A.S. Byatt's "Morpho Eugenia," from the collection Angels & Insects. What struck me most about reading Darwin was the lack of expected boredom. This is not to say that it was the most thrilling, enlightening, just-can't-put-it-down text I've ever picked up (far from it, I'll confess), but there was a lucidity and, dare I say it, poetry to Darwin's writing that I was not expecting. The fact that such a scientific text could be so evocative was a very pleasant surprise.
That, coupled with the insightful seminar discussion/analysis that predated my reading of the majority of "Morpho Eugenia," reminded me of the beauty of my major: faced with very seemingly-simple things -- books, at their core, are no more than words on a page, after all -- we are tasked to look beyond the obvious to find the deeper meaning, to see the depth of the genius that put those words on that page in that arrangement. It may be, to some, over-thinking, but in reality it's a form of historical psychoanalysis, and opens up so many more pathways that one may initially expect.
Granted, not everyone sees things that way. That variety, after all, is what makes the world go 'round. But there's something to be said for taking the time out of our busy, often predetermined lives, to take a slow, careful, close look at things and try to appreciate them. We spend so much time trying to see a forest that we miss the trees, which seems in opposition to conventional wisdom but is really so critical.
So, you may be asking, what's your point? Why are you bitching? I'm glad you asked.
Back in April, a film came out that was radically different from what I would normally want to see, but which looked so unbelievably cool that I simply couldn't resist. It was Grindhouse, the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature that was highly anticipated, critically lauded, and (ultimately) fiscally devastating. In its entire run, it made barely half of what it cost to make it. Some wondered if it was the nearly 3-and-a-half-hour running time that did it in; others claimed it was the timing of its release (Easter weekend); still others claimed it suffered the same fate as Snakes on a Plane, a combination of two facts: that internet hype need not necessarily equate to actual hype, and that horror-comedies tend to be problematic because they're too funny to be scary and/or too scary to be funny.
Whatever the reason, the fact that was obscured throughout the process is that this labor of love (and no, I don't believe I'm too frivolously tossing around that turn of phrase) was not seen by many people, but those who did loved it. Myself included. I'm an unabashedly outspoken advocate of both Grindhouse and Snakes on a Plane not because they're great films, but because they do what they aim to do exceptionally well. They're both incredibly cheesy, hackneyed to the point of amusement, and so self-aware of their schtick that you can't fault them for being either. They're fabulously well-done in the B-movie style, which is certainly not for everyone, but they both take a certain depth of appreciation to enjoy. In fact, a huge part of the Grindhouse and Snakes experience is about where you see them and with whom. I viewed both films on the night of their premieres (Snakes, in fact, I saw at 10:00pm on the Thursday before its official release) and found that the films delivered more in a setting in which the audience interacted with what was on the screen. After almost 4 hours in my seat at Grindhouse, when the end credits finally rolled, the adrenaline was pumping so much I was ready for another viewing. It was a unique, visceral experience.
And I do believe that last word -- experience -- is the key. All great works of art, whether visual, motion pictures, music, or any other, are far beyond just the piece itself. And to truly get the experience, you have to have a sense of appreciation. And that appreciation (to bring myself at last to the title of this rant) is frequently incompatible with the business end of the arts. That lack of compatibility, as much as it sounds like I'm just a whining little hippie, is a huge problem because it reduces things to the lowest common denominator and disrupts the fundamental experience for the sake of making a few extra points.
I am spurred to this because I discovered last night that Grindhouse is not being released as a single DVD, with the fake trailers intact and all the grainy effects still in place, but will be released as two separate features (Death Proof, in an unrated, extended version, comes out tomorrow; Planet Terror, I've heard, will be released sometime in October). Even worse, the faux trailers, with the exception of the initial trailer for Machete, will not see the light of release, at least not at this juncture.
There's a part of me that's being jaded about this. I've seen my share of DVD releases, and I know that many films end up with souped-up special-edition releases several months or years after their initial releases. The problem is that one would expect that Grindhouse would offer, at the very least, both alternatives: buy the films separately, or buy the original, untainted theatrical release. Now, I'm not naïve about why this will be: it's all about the money, and separate releases offer the promise of more money to recoup more of the money lost on the original release. It makes fiscal sense, I suppose.
Except for the fundamental bit of logic that was missed here: have you heard raves about the separate releases of Death Proof and Planet Terror (admittedly, more of the former than the latter)? Yeah, me neither. The two have done okay, I suppose, but not superb. And the reason is quite simple: they were honestly never meant to stand alone on their own. Take Death Proof: it's being released in an unrated, extended version, as I've already said. But what's the point? Frankly, the lengthy dialogue and lack of action in the 75-minute version of that film was borderline-intolerable already; I can only imagine how slow the extended feature must be. The thing is, it was effective in the context of the larger Grindhouse film because Planet Terror was so outlandishly over-the-top, in terms of scares, gore, and laughs, that the slow pacing of Death Proof was a deliberately anticipatory move. You waited and waited and waited for something as outlandish to happen, and just when you thought it wouldn't...BAM! The single most incredible car chase I've ever seen on film, and one that runs easily 20 minutes in length. It's relentless, thrilling, and incredibly satisfying. But without that larger context, it's just a really slow, shitty movie with a rockin' car chase at the end that probably feels incredibly out-of-place.
Grindhouse worked because the audience understood the appreciation involved in getting all that. And what The Weinstein Company is blowing here is that the people most likely to buy the movie on DVD are the same people most likely to understand that experience. Why? Because they saw the movie in the fucking theatres while everyone else stayed home. The fans got it. Rodriguez and Tarantino got it. Separating the films is not only an insult to the wallets of the fans of this film, but an insult to their sensibilities and appreciation as well. I don't give a fuck about the extended edition of Death Proof or the super-special cooking school features that will end up with Planet Terror. I care about buying a DVD that will bring me back into that theatre on that Friday night in April, when everyone around me was cringing and screaming and laughing and yelling for four uproarious hours.
Call me idealistic if you will, and I'll probably deserve it, but I can't be the only one who actually appreciates shit like this and wishes more people noticed the trees, or noticed the subtlety involved in making a film that's both horrifying and hilarious. I'm seeing more and more a world in which there's no room for subtlety and incisiveness, and it's that -- far more than Grindhouse or Snakes on a Plane -- that scares the shit out of me.
I spent a vast majority of the drive home reading excerpts from The Descent of Man, the other famous text by the ubiquitous Charles Darwin. Mr. Darwin and his theory of evolution and natural selection played a critical role in the novella I finished this weekend -- A.S. Byatt's "Morpho Eugenia," from the collection Angels & Insects. What struck me most about reading Darwin was the lack of expected boredom. This is not to say that it was the most thrilling, enlightening, just-can't-put-it-down text I've ever picked up (far from it, I'll confess), but there was a lucidity and, dare I say it, poetry to Darwin's writing that I was not expecting. The fact that such a scientific text could be so evocative was a very pleasant surprise.
That, coupled with the insightful seminar discussion/analysis that predated my reading of the majority of "Morpho Eugenia," reminded me of the beauty of my major: faced with very seemingly-simple things -- books, at their core, are no more than words on a page, after all -- we are tasked to look beyond the obvious to find the deeper meaning, to see the depth of the genius that put those words on that page in that arrangement. It may be, to some, over-thinking, but in reality it's a form of historical psychoanalysis, and opens up so many more pathways that one may initially expect.
Granted, not everyone sees things that way. That variety, after all, is what makes the world go 'round. But there's something to be said for taking the time out of our busy, often predetermined lives, to take a slow, careful, close look at things and try to appreciate them. We spend so much time trying to see a forest that we miss the trees, which seems in opposition to conventional wisdom but is really so critical.
So, you may be asking, what's your point? Why are you bitching? I'm glad you asked.
Back in April, a film came out that was radically different from what I would normally want to see, but which looked so unbelievably cool that I simply couldn't resist. It was Grindhouse, the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino double feature that was highly anticipated, critically lauded, and (ultimately) fiscally devastating. In its entire run, it made barely half of what it cost to make it. Some wondered if it was the nearly 3-and-a-half-hour running time that did it in; others claimed it was the timing of its release (Easter weekend); still others claimed it suffered the same fate as Snakes on a Plane, a combination of two facts: that internet hype need not necessarily equate to actual hype, and that horror-comedies tend to be problematic because they're too funny to be scary and/or too scary to be funny.
Whatever the reason, the fact that was obscured throughout the process is that this labor of love (and no, I don't believe I'm too frivolously tossing around that turn of phrase) was not seen by many people, but those who did loved it. Myself included. I'm an unabashedly outspoken advocate of both Grindhouse and Snakes on a Plane not because they're great films, but because they do what they aim to do exceptionally well. They're both incredibly cheesy, hackneyed to the point of amusement, and so self-aware of their schtick that you can't fault them for being either. They're fabulously well-done in the B-movie style, which is certainly not for everyone, but they both take a certain depth of appreciation to enjoy. In fact, a huge part of the Grindhouse and Snakes experience is about where you see them and with whom. I viewed both films on the night of their premieres (Snakes, in fact, I saw at 10:00pm on the Thursday before its official release) and found that the films delivered more in a setting in which the audience interacted with what was on the screen. After almost 4 hours in my seat at Grindhouse, when the end credits finally rolled, the adrenaline was pumping so much I was ready for another viewing. It was a unique, visceral experience.
And I do believe that last word -- experience -- is the key. All great works of art, whether visual, motion pictures, music, or any other, are far beyond just the piece itself. And to truly get the experience, you have to have a sense of appreciation. And that appreciation (to bring myself at last to the title of this rant) is frequently incompatible with the business end of the arts. That lack of compatibility, as much as it sounds like I'm just a whining little hippie, is a huge problem because it reduces things to the lowest common denominator and disrupts the fundamental experience for the sake of making a few extra points.
I am spurred to this because I discovered last night that Grindhouse is not being released as a single DVD, with the fake trailers intact and all the grainy effects still in place, but will be released as two separate features (Death Proof, in an unrated, extended version, comes out tomorrow; Planet Terror, I've heard, will be released sometime in October). Even worse, the faux trailers, with the exception of the initial trailer for Machete, will not see the light of release, at least not at this juncture.
There's a part of me that's being jaded about this. I've seen my share of DVD releases, and I know that many films end up with souped-up special-edition releases several months or years after their initial releases. The problem is that one would expect that Grindhouse would offer, at the very least, both alternatives: buy the films separately, or buy the original, untainted theatrical release. Now, I'm not naïve about why this will be: it's all about the money, and separate releases offer the promise of more money to recoup more of the money lost on the original release. It makes fiscal sense, I suppose.
Except for the fundamental bit of logic that was missed here: have you heard raves about the separate releases of Death Proof and Planet Terror (admittedly, more of the former than the latter)? Yeah, me neither. The two have done okay, I suppose, but not superb. And the reason is quite simple: they were honestly never meant to stand alone on their own. Take Death Proof: it's being released in an unrated, extended version, as I've already said. But what's the point? Frankly, the lengthy dialogue and lack of action in the 75-minute version of that film was borderline-intolerable already; I can only imagine how slow the extended feature must be. The thing is, it was effective in the context of the larger Grindhouse film because Planet Terror was so outlandishly over-the-top, in terms of scares, gore, and laughs, that the slow pacing of Death Proof was a deliberately anticipatory move. You waited and waited and waited for something as outlandish to happen, and just when you thought it wouldn't...BAM! The single most incredible car chase I've ever seen on film, and one that runs easily 20 minutes in length. It's relentless, thrilling, and incredibly satisfying. But without that larger context, it's just a really slow, shitty movie with a rockin' car chase at the end that probably feels incredibly out-of-place.
Grindhouse worked because the audience understood the appreciation involved in getting all that. And what The Weinstein Company is blowing here is that the people most likely to buy the movie on DVD are the same people most likely to understand that experience. Why? Because they saw the movie in the fucking theatres while everyone else stayed home. The fans got it. Rodriguez and Tarantino got it. Separating the films is not only an insult to the wallets of the fans of this film, but an insult to their sensibilities and appreciation as well. I don't give a fuck about the extended edition of Death Proof or the super-special cooking school features that will end up with Planet Terror. I care about buying a DVD that will bring me back into that theatre on that Friday night in April, when everyone around me was cringing and screaming and laughing and yelling for four uproarious hours.
Call me idealistic if you will, and I'll probably deserve it, but I can't be the only one who actually appreciates shit like this and wishes more people noticed the trees, or noticed the subtlety involved in making a film that's both horrifying and hilarious. I'm seeing more and more a world in which there's no room for subtlety and incisiveness, and it's that -- far more than Grindhouse or Snakes on a Plane -- that scares the shit out of me.
posted by Dave at 9/17/2007 10:35:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home