It seems that, as of late, I’ve forgotten what it was about movies that I’ve come to love. For the last few years I’ve started, written and eventually discarded many a screenplay because it wasn’t good enough. I’d somehow put it into my mind that the artistic value of the work was the most important part of the process. Moreover, if a script didn’t immediately live up to that expectation, it would be ignored. Filed into a scripts folder on my hard drive never to be seen again.
I’d become so caught up with the title filmmaker that I forgot what it was that I wanted to make. Movies. Not "films". It’s not to say that I don’t aspire to make beautiful works of art that translate onto the screen, allowing people to juxtapose the character-driven plot and the story contained within against their own lives, finding some greater meaning that’s between the lines. That’d be a beautiful goal.
However I can also remember the film that made me want to hop into the director’s chair and make decisions. And it wasn’t Citizen Kane, or The Seven Samurai or Vertigo. It was Raiders of the Lost Ark. That’s right. A George Lucas story with Steven Spielberg at the helm. Can you find a deeper meaning in it? Of course you can. There’s morals in the story, there’s examples of how to live a better life in the story. There’s also entertainment! It wouldn’t be a surprise if the first image your mind pulls up of Raiders of the Lost Ark had nothing to do with the Ark of the Covenant, or battling against Nazis in Africa. No, it had to do with a man in a brown fedora being chased by a two-storey stone marble.
I was reminded of all of this last night, when I walked out of the movie theatre having just seen Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s double-feature extravaganza, Grindhouse. On opening night. What’s interesting is that I walked in with low expectations. The previews made it look completely cheesy. The dialogue and acting appeared second-rate in the trailer. Oh look, I thought to myself, they’ve made it look like a seventies B-Film. Whoopie. But I went, because my friend had a spare ticket and I had nothing better to do.
But then the film began. Credits rolled, the audience cheered. The last time I heard an audience cheer in a film was 300. Before that? The opening credits to any Star Wars film. There’s no cheering at The Notebook.
What’s more, I was absolutely right. The movie looked like a seventies B-Film. The acting was bad. The dialogue was cheesy. And what’s more, they did it all on purpose! And suddenly I was reminded why. It was the experience. Rachelle said it best, "I never go to a movie on opening night. But you need the audience to make the experience complete."
I walked out into the crisp spring air refreshed. I was reminded why I want to do this. I immediately wanted to write a bad movie. Something fun! A movie that is an experience! And perhaps, if I do it the way I want, not the way I think an audience wants me to make it, it might one day be labeled a film. And maybe one day I can inspire someone to want to make films like me, as Speilberg and Lucas have done with me.
…Let’s just hope they don’t fuck up Indiana Jones IV like they did the Star Wars Prequels.
