Three days ago A.V. Club’s Drew Fortune posted a q & a with The Canyons screenwriter Brett Easton Ellis. And there’s something that Sasha Stone said during our Oscar Poker chat a few hours ago that feeds into a similar comment that Ellis made. Stone said that J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost has to be seen in a theatrical environment because it really needs to be be front and center — it needs to dominate or command a viewer’s attention, and that viewers needed to give it their all and not watch it home with all the distractions. Here’s the Ellis quote:
“I have to admit that I might have been faking it for the last two or three years in terms of not accepting the fact that American film, as an art form, is nowhere near the place it once was, and that people have drifted over toward television and content on the internet. Basically, film and serious, auteur-driven movies…no one’s interested. I experienced the disconnect really powerfully for the first time this year. I do go to movies, and I still have that habit from when I was young: I want to drive to the theater, and I want the movie to control me. I don’t want to sit in my bedroom able to control the movie, and turn it off whenever I want. I like the fact that the movie demands things of you, and that’s what was always exciting about the moviegoing experience. I think for younger people, that just doesn’t hold an appeal. I’ve seen a lot of movies this year, and nothing’s good. I was really kind of depressed by it, but this idea that movies were no longer at the center of the culture definitely was announcing itself to me within the last three years. Sometimes an art form can lose popularity, and it’s not speaking to the masses in the way that it once was. This has been going on for a long time in American film, and yeah, it’s mildly depressing.”
