Okay, so I had to take the summer off. Even activists need a little inactivity.
Came back to find the "China" thing had mercifully cooled a bit, now that Wolf Warrior 2 had suddenly scared the crap out of every studio in town over August ("Uh-oh, they, uh, like their own movies now?"), and more and more brave souls were coming forward, like Bill W., and forcing themselves to admit that, okay, maybe Tom Cruise in "The Mummy"'s new Dark Universe did actually ffff.....f-f-f-f-fffffffff.....flop.
And picking on Sony taking their big one-two summer punch with "The Emoji Movie" and "Valerian", leading to an analysis of why Sony now seems to be beating Fox as the new failed-franchise Sad-Sack studio still running to keep up with the Big Five's joneses (the one hit they had last summer didn't even belong to them anymore!), just seemed like kicking it while it was down. At some point, the discussion would have led to mentioning Ghostbusters again, and, well. Bury the dead, or at least wait till after the Jumanji movie.
But, to quote the elder Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in again--A new headline hit the movie discussion forums over August. And just in time for the kids going back to school.
But, to quote the elder Michael Corleone, just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in again--A new headline hit the movie discussion forums over August. And just in time for the kids going back to school.
And new literacy in the last half of the 20th century was born. But now the 21st century is facing a new kind of illiteracy: Kids who didn't read books in the 50's were never half as openly, combatively, or stubbornly martyr-complexed or smug as 18-24 yo.'s--the dreaded "Millennial generation"--who claim they've never watched an old classic film in their lives.
According to an unscientific survey conducted by FYE media-store chains last August--maybe not Nielsen, perhaps, but it got the discussions started across the net--conducted between 1000 over-50 movie fans and Millennial 18-24 fans, the results weren't promising:
"Millennials Don't Really Care About Classic Movies", NY Post, 8/16/17
According to an unscientific survey conducted by FYE media-store chains last August--maybe not Nielsen, perhaps, but it got the discussions started across the net--conducted between 1000 over-50 movie fans and Millennial 18-24 fans, the results weren't promising:
"Millennials Don't Really Care About Classic Movies", NY Post, 8/16/17
- 30% of the young audience polled had never seen a movie from the Black & white era.
- 20% said they feared one would be "boring"
- Only 28% said they had ever seen Casablanca, 16% said they had ever seen Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West", and only 12% had seen Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window".
-The most classic movies the young audience had claimed to have seen were those their own theater/DVD experience personally remembered from the 90's and 00's, including The Matrix, The Dark Knight and Return of the King, with, of course, Disney's "The Lion King" for most-seen "classic" film.
(C'mon, you're going to worship Quentin Tarantino, and you've never seen an actual real-life Leone film? And no Rear Window?...Seriously?? I knew the plot at ten years old, from a Flintstones cartoon!)
The discussion so far, on most news and film forums, has gone in the usual directions:
The older folk shake their head, the younger folk protest "Don't stereotype us!", and then fall back on asking what's so great about the movies they "should" watch, anyway.
This seems to be the main stumbling block that's been the hardest to overcome: How do you sell an audience, of whom less than half has ever actually seen "The Sound of Music", on the idea that maybe Terminator 2: Judgment Day might not be one of the Ten Greatest American Movies Ever Made? (Although I'll grant that Back to the Future may be high on the list.)
The issue is the same as putting a book in the hand of a grudging fourth-grader who won't read anything else after Harry Potter: Don't lecture them that they're not reading. Find out why they're not reading...And put something within reach just different enough to show them why they were wrong. And then, of course, gloat later.
To this end, it would first probably help to take on the Millennial's main arguments against having their parents' classic movies forced upon them--or "Pre-1970 movies", as the term has now come to call them (because pop-culture didn't exist before the 70's, of course), point by point:
- 20% said they feared one would be "boring"
- Only 28% said they had ever seen Casablanca, 16% said they had ever seen Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West", and only 12% had seen Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window".
-The most classic movies the young audience had claimed to have seen were those their own theater/DVD experience personally remembered from the 90's and 00's, including The Matrix, The Dark Knight and Return of the King, with, of course, Disney's "The Lion King" for most-seen "classic" film.
(C'mon, you're going to worship Quentin Tarantino, and you've never seen an actual real-life Leone film? And no Rear Window?...Seriously?? I knew the plot at ten years old, from a Flintstones cartoon!)
The discussion so far, on most news and film forums, has gone in the usual directions:
The older folk shake their head, the younger folk protest "Don't stereotype us!", and then fall back on asking what's so great about the movies they "should" watch, anyway.
This seems to be the main stumbling block that's been the hardest to overcome: How do you sell an audience, of whom less than half has ever actually seen "The Sound of Music", on the idea that maybe Terminator 2: Judgment Day might not be one of the Ten Greatest American Movies Ever Made? (Although I'll grant that Back to the Future may be high on the list.)
The issue is the same as putting a book in the hand of a grudging fourth-grader who won't read anything else after Harry Potter: Don't lecture them that they're not reading. Find out why they're not reading...And put something within reach just different enough to show them why they were wrong. And then, of course, gloat later.
To this end, it would first probably help to take on the Millennial's main arguments against having their parents' classic movies forced upon them--or "Pre-1970 movies", as the term has now come to call them (because pop-culture didn't exist before the 70's, of course), point by point:
1. "But I don't WANNA watch Citizen Kane!" Well...you don't have to, y'know. No one's forcing you to--And that seems to be the main perception at the very top of Millennial's fear-list: That embarking on a self-help kick for watching Old Movies(tm) will become the same punishing highbrow foreign/classic syllabus as the Film majors. Engage in any film-stubborn debate with the right age, and wait for the K-word to appear as the big demonic straw-elephant in the room.
Keep in mind, if you're at the age where you're in college, just come out of college, or either way just made it through high school, you've been actually forced, at various points in the recent last years of your life, to read Julius Caesar, 1984, Pride & Prejudice, Huckleberry Finn, A Tale of Two Cities, and at least one Franz Kafka or James Joyce novel, without the clarity or courtesy of being told WHY you should. Beyond a make-or-break term paper where you're presumed to suddenly have the same enlightened analysis of the book on first read that hundreds of literary critics before you have expounded upon.
And then, when those same Grown-Ups tell you you haven't watched very many "great films" made before your birthday, what's the first one they tell you to respect, watch and analyze?--Or at least the first one you're afraid they will? Like your high school Lit class, your first worry is "Does this Famous Book have a plot, so I'll have something to take my mind off my assignment while I'm reading it?"
Here, don't worry, you're clear: This one passes the "Things actually happen in it" test, and, one might add, with flying colors B&W.
Y'know...there's nothing WRONG with Citizen Kane. Do a lot of pundits commanding you from on high to be amazed by the first use of "bold cinematography and editing" in the 40's just somehow, in some way, not excite you? Try Orson Welles' character instead. In telling a non-linear fictional story of William Randolph Hearst--of whom to say was "the Rupert Murdoch of his day" would be putting it mildly--Herman Mankiewicz's script, mixed with Welles' own smooth, literate sardonic-velvet from his post-radio bad-boy days, fairly drips with acidic irony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzhb3U2cONs There's a very good, and very deserved reason the real Hearst took the movie so personally.
If the idea of watching a 40's film avengingly analyzing the rise and big ironic fall of an egotistic but ultimately insecure self-styled tycoon, who believed he could personally manipulate the world around him "like a modern feudal baron" for its own good, sounds a little, um, familiar right now, well, it should. A lot familiar. Even if you've never heard of Patty Hearst's Granddad, but you've heard of Ivanka's Dad.
And, yes, it's got a lot of those neat cinematography shots, editing, and set ceilings that all the fancy people talk about, if you're into that. What you may instead be surprised by is just how darn good it is by the last reel...An experience you may or may not have probably already had in Lit class with Dickens or Orwell.
And as for going on to "snooty" critics' "overpraised" great-film-syllabus recommendations of Vertigo or The Seven Samurai...heheh. Why is this expert smiling nastily?
(But don't worry, even I won't make you watch Death playing chess in Bergman's "The Seventh Seal", if that's what your imagination's also afraid of. This isn't college and you don't have to agree with anyone older than you, but you're still not going to get anything over a C- if you didn't do a little homework before the lecture.)
It's a reason used to say that the movies that are readily available at hand--the overexposed studio-marketed 80's classics and current blockbusters--are easier to watch than those that take effort and film knowledge to track down, so watch in amazement as I download last summer's hit on my smartphone! Wow, you've got Disney's live-action Beauty & the Beast, right there in your hand!...It's magic OUR generation never had!
The problem, however, is one that's frequently brought up with remakes--Particularly the remakes of old films the same audience actually is sentimental for. Movies that had genre coolness, but were "handicapped" by the fact that they couldn't use CGI, or faster editing, or that Sean Connery's 007 couldn't do the same wild stunts that Jason Bourne could.
There's a love/hate relationship, in that admitting that old films had great appeal, and how wonderful it must have been for an earlier generation to see 80's films, or even 30's films, in theaters, as good...But not as good as WE could make them today if we tried! And then when they do, they discover it was a lot harder for somebody else, who was good enough to make it look too easy.
This brings up the old observation that anything you can do is not always what you should, and what you should do is that much more of a challenge if you can't. It takes a bit of life experience to know the difference, and maybe someone before you who had, did.
Pursue Millennial Fear #2 into a corner, and the cornered animal will in the end strike back with "Eh, Grandpa can't handle what the new kids on your lawn are into, didn't get your Metamucil today?"...Tribalist trash-talk? Oh, now that's just being childish.
3. "The only good B&W films were Psycho and Young Frankenstein!" - Ah. So, there are good old B&W films you don't mind watching, and bad ones you'd never touch with toxic gloves. It's not a double standard, we actually have some dividing line between one and the other.
Pursue this argument into a corner, and most Millennials are happy to explain why: The movies were newer, and CHOSE to use B&W, you see, to show off...They could do that, if they wanted to. It's not like one of those old musty-dusty films from Reason #2, that hobbled along in technical obsolescence.
The one argument you don't tend to hear is that there was some culty-reputation preceding the movie that made them sit down and watch it as part of American mass pop-culture, and lo and behold, the movie turned out to be good. Stuff actually happened in them; one was a horror movie where things turned out to be scary, and the other was a comedy where things turned out to be funny. And once the Millennial had watched it, it became his film to adopt, one that rebelled against the system and did things its own way, unlike all those others that had to do what they did back then. It may not have been in color, but like the 10-yo. says after falling off his skateboard, the movie MEANT to do that.
So, no chance that you might find the same personal "adopting" discovery in a movie that didn't "mean to" use B&W, and made the most genius use of what they had? Or was making movies with a little hip informed experience just an idea that somehow sprung into human consciousness after 1955?
4. "What do old movies have to teach us today, anyway? They put all the women in housewife aprons back then!" - And here is where the argument finally starts dropping its big, loud, ugly penny.
The basic foundation of the Millennial is one that's been raised on thirty years of Historical Revisionism since the 80's--in which we were told how many slaves George Washington owned, and every "shocking" bad thing our forefathers ever did to women, minorities, natives, and other countries--and not very much actual history of causes those people stood up for, or things smart people occasionally did right. When you hear one story over the other long enough and not both, you tend to believe the one you hear...And if you're at the age where college independence makes you want to Change the World personally, the first thing you're going to want to change are the crimes committed by the fact that Americans in the 20th Century Were Evidently A Bunch of Major Racist/Chauvinist/Imperialistic Jerks.
And if you can't make actual guilty heads roll because they're, um, already dead, the other weapon is dismissive historical-revision laughter at the naivety or un-PC of any idea that YOU weren't enlightened enough to live to figure out. And maybe if hip people laugh at it long enough, Bad History will eventually slink away into the shadows and disappear.
Persuade a Millennial to watch Gone With the Wind, if ("if"?) he hasn't yet seen it in its epic-roadshow entirety. Take a guess why he hasn't watched it, and then take bets on what's the first thing he'll say when you ask him why he hasn't watched it. The reason he'll likely give you is that he believes it's a movie he shouldn't watch, followed by progressive and self-righteously historical arguments why it's a movie that now, in 2017, NOBODY should watch, so don't go around faulting him if he hasn't. Well, that's taking a bold stand against dogmatic thinking, isn't it?
I confess it's not my own personal favorite either, but certainly not for any reasons regarding racial stereotypes or defenses of racist American history...Let's face it, either you like spending four hours cataloguing the dysfunctional relationships of a spoiled brat, or you don't. But one thing I will grant in the movie's favor--Those amazing sunsets. (Yes, in Technicolor!) And why Clark Gable was the Coolest Male Human Alive in the 30's.
I'm not watching History. I'm not watching a Confederate-Sentimental Defense Of Segregation. I'm not watching the Relics of Destructive 20th Century Thought. I'm watching a movie, featuring amazing sunsets, amazing Max Steiner music, and starring the 30's coolest man alive. To be a movie fan is to know how to do such things, and you can learn from the masters, or you can learn from your local hobbyist who got the knack on his own.
There is one bit of sunlight on the horizon: Millennials don't like being called "Millennials". They say old people "unfairly stereotype" them too much, in thinking that they have smug persecution complexes, hate old people, and wave smartphones in their faces.
And when Millennials want to combat the stereotype that they "Don't watch old films", they immediately rush out to go see one, so they can be Cool and Different from other nasty old Millennials, so there. Where we now run into the problem that they don't know WHAT to watch, or WHERE to go see one.
The instinct is to look up where a classic film is streaming, but the new 21st-century reality is that you don't find very many of the essential-list AFI 100 Classic Films on streaming: They're certainly not on Netflix, and studios don't make money on them--They'd much rather you buy the new hit blockbusters they're still trying to pay the bills on, and have the live-action Beauty & the Beast playing on your very own smartphone.
The next instinct is to wait for them to show up at a theater, and TCM and Fathom screenings have started to make those trendy again in the shopping-mall cineplexes, especially during a lull seasons for the new hit movies. But the hard business truth is that seats have to be filled, and there's usually more tickets sold to The Princess Bride and Fast Times at Ridgemont High--great "Old films from the 80's", as the age group calls them--than for Double Indemnity or Gunga Din. Only a 30th, 40th, 50th or 75th Anniversary, to help sell the disk release, will usually get any "unmarketable" old classic movie back into the plexes for a night or two only. (Although, ironically, take a guess WHO'S the reason most old films aren't showing at random for free on local TV stations anymore, where anyone can see them.)
But if it's cool to be curious again, curiosity won't kill you. It's still a night at the movies, after all, and yes, Things Happen In Them. You might even find a few at the library, for free, on those old disk things, if nothing's playing on Fathom this week.
As a wise saying once taught me at the same age, "Never proudly show off in public what you DON'T KNOW. It's darned hard to try and impress someone that way."
The basic foundation of the Millennial is one that's been raised on thirty years of Historical Revisionism since the 80's--in which we were told how many slaves George Washington owned, and every "shocking" bad thing our forefathers ever did to women, minorities, natives, and other countries--and not very much actual history of causes those people stood up for, or things smart people occasionally did right. When you hear one story over the other long enough and not both, you tend to believe the one you hear...And if you're at the age where college independence makes you want to Change the World personally, the first thing you're going to want to change are the crimes committed by the fact that Americans in the 20th Century Were Evidently A Bunch of Major Racist/Chauvinist/Imperialistic Jerks.
And if you can't make actual guilty heads roll because they're, um, already dead, the other weapon is dismissive historical-revision laughter at the naivety or un-PC of any idea that YOU weren't enlightened enough to live to figure out. And maybe if hip people laugh at it long enough, Bad History will eventually slink away into the shadows and disappear.
I confess it's not my own personal favorite either, but certainly not for any reasons regarding racial stereotypes or defenses of racist American history...Let's face it, either you like spending four hours cataloguing the dysfunctional relationships of a spoiled brat, or you don't. But one thing I will grant in the movie's favor--Those amazing sunsets. (Yes, in Technicolor!) And why Clark Gable was the Coolest Male Human Alive in the 30's.
I'm not watching History. I'm not watching a Confederate-Sentimental Defense Of Segregation. I'm not watching the Relics of Destructive 20th Century Thought. I'm watching a movie, featuring amazing sunsets, amazing Max Steiner music, and starring the 30's coolest man alive. To be a movie fan is to know how to do such things, and you can learn from the masters, or you can learn from your local hobbyist who got the knack on his own.
There is one bit of sunlight on the horizon: Millennials don't like being called "Millennials". They say old people "unfairly stereotype" them too much, in thinking that they have smug persecution complexes, hate old people, and wave smartphones in their faces.
The instinct is to look up where a classic film is streaming, but the new 21st-century reality is that you don't find very many of the essential-list AFI 100 Classic Films on streaming: They're certainly not on Netflix, and studios don't make money on them--They'd much rather you buy the new hit blockbusters they're still trying to pay the bills on, and have the live-action Beauty & the Beast playing on your very own smartphone.
The next instinct is to wait for them to show up at a theater, and TCM and Fathom screenings have started to make those trendy again in the shopping-mall cineplexes, especially during a lull seasons for the new hit movies. But the hard business truth is that seats have to be filled, and there's usually more tickets sold to The Princess Bride and Fast Times at Ridgemont High--great "Old films from the 80's", as the age group calls them--than for Double Indemnity or Gunga Din. Only a 30th, 40th, 50th or 75th Anniversary, to help sell the disk release, will usually get any "unmarketable" old classic movie back into the plexes for a night or two only. (Although, ironically, take a guess WHO'S the reason most old films aren't showing at random for free on local TV stations anymore, where anyone can see them.)
But if it's cool to be curious again, curiosity won't kill you. It's still a night at the movies, after all, and yes, Things Happen In Them. You might even find a few at the library, for free, on those old disk things, if nothing's playing on Fathom this week.
As a wise saying once taught me at the same age, "Never proudly show off in public what you DON'T KNOW. It's darned hard to try and impress someone that way."
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