Damn Shame

About a week or so ago, I sat down to watch a two hour documentary about the making of the original Jaws film. (It was on the Biography Channel I think) anyway, it was a fun program. It discussed all of the problems that a young Steven Speilberg and his crew had with getting the mechanical shark to work. It was tested in fresh water and it worked fine, but upon putting Bruce (the name the shark was given.) into salt water, it began to go haywire. (and someone on that crew should have figured that out or at least questioned..)

But anyway the most interesting part of the documentary was toward the end. The cast and crew were all being interviewed, Steven Speilberg, Richard Dryfuss and a number of production members, and Dryfuss said something that really stood out to me. It was in regard to the movie's staying power. During the year the movie made its debut it remained in theaters from June to December of 1975.

Toward the end of the program they showed a picture of a Times Square theater with a monstrous line of people waiting to get inside. I smiled at the end of the documentary, I was so very thankful to have seen this movie in a film theater, so thankful to have experienced everything this documentary talked about. Then i thought about my neices and nephews and their generation.

Damn shame.

This young generation wont get to experience true tentpole films. They walk instead into a massive mega theater (which is of course part of a monsterous chain of hollow classless establishments which are scattered across the country), they will pay an obscene $15 dollars to walk into a small shoeboxed shaped room and sit through a bland 20 minute program which has...COMMERCIALS!! To finally get to the trailers, and maybe, just maybe the movie that they paid to see will have some sort of substance to it and will resonate within their heads for more than a week or so, before finally being supplanted by the next piece of fluff that hollywood swears will be the next big thing.

The films of my youth played to packed houses, did repeat business, stayed in theaters for months and created legacies and lasting impacts. There are so many films from the 70s and 80s that created the foundation for my own universe..so many of them to list here (that would be a fun project though)

sigh..so this is progress. (how long was Iron Man 2 at the top of the box office this May? Is it even still in theatres?)

Damn shame.