Defamer
It's been a rough week for you, the Internet-Enabled Movie Fan with Something to Say. Just a day after noted haimishe Luddite Barry Sonnenfeld's semi-hysterical vision of a Facebook-infiltrated culture in which Big Brother will monitor our every Twittered activity, comes a similarly technophobic EW.com conversation with the creative duo behind the Indiana Jones series (and possessors of 68.2% of all the world's wealth), Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Playing a sort of good cop/bad cop routine, Spielberg bemoans the eroding of the moviegoing experience by keyboard-tapping chatterboxes, while Lucas tempers all the grumpy-old-man talk by pointing out that the internet is also capable of producing some good things (e.g. an audience who actually cares what Indy has been up to after his 19-year sabbatical). We quietly slip in mid-conversation:
STEVEN SPIELBERG: It really is important to be able to point out that the Internet is still filled with more speculation than facts. The Internet isn't really about facts. It's about people's wishful thinking, based on a scintilla of evidence that allows their imaginations to springboard. And that's fine.
GEORGE LUCAS: Y'know, Steven will say, ''Oh, everything's out on the Internet [in terms of Crystal Skull details] — what this is and what that is.'' And to that I say, ''Steven, it doesn't make any difference!'' Look — Jaws was a novel before it was a movie, and anybody could see how it ended. Didn't matter. SPIELBERG: But there's lots and lots of people who don't want to find out what happens. They want that to happen on the 22nd of May. They want to find out in a dark theater. They don't wanna find out by reading a blog.... A movie is experiential. A movie happens in a way that has always been cathartic, the personal, human catharsis of an audience in holy communion with an experience up on the screen. That's why I'm in the middle of this magic, and I always will be.
While this may be the first official comment made by Spielberg on his utter contempt for Spoilers and the Spoiling Poison They Spread, his passionate and conservative views on the topic should come as little surprise to anyone who followed the story of Tyler Nelson—aka the "dancing Russian soldier" extra who spilled precious Crystal Skull plot secrets to his home town newspaper, and was subsequently disappeared in the dead of night, lest his blabbermouth ways further pose a threat to the experiential catharsis of witnessing Greaser LaBeouf for the first time.
[Photo: AP/EW.com]
Comments
It seems Spielberg is ignoring the fact that people still have free will. Those who don't wanna read spoilers and preserve the "magic" of a dark theater simply avoid spoiler sites and blogs. And like alannis morisette taught us, some hot shit can go on in a dark theater, who wants to ruin that?
Aaaaand we've come full circle: Democracy allows all of us to choose what we read on the 'net, just like it allows us to choose how we spend our money/time in the theater.
Saying, "the eroding of the moviegoing experience by keyboard-tapping chatterboxes" has to be the lamest excuse yet for movies with a blockbuster send up not delivering. The rough cuts must not be looking so good, eh?
@Leviticus_71: Im in ur cristal scull, surfing ur brain waves.
@Leviticus_71: Exactly. It's not like I turn on my interweb and the spoiler channel for Indy is tuned in.
Oh, and Barry Sonnenfeld is the exact opposite of a Luddite.
@Leviticus_71:
yup - i was just getting ready to say that i don't want to know, and i've managed to avoid the spoilers.
and i'm not that bright - just think what a smart person could do!
"The personal, human catharsis of an audience in holy communion with an experience up on the screen" doesn't begin to describe seeing a shaved Robin Williams on a waterslide.
Karl Marx said, "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
He hadn't seen anything yet.
Speilberg is an idiot. The catharsis he refers to entered the film school canon by way of Aristotle's poetics. Audiences then already knew that Oedipus had killed his father and married his mother; the "spoiler" is as old as drama itself but the power of a well structured drama is not undermined by it. OTHO, it is probably true that gimmicky special effects are much less effective the nth time you've seen them, so he is right to be worried.
"That's why I'm in the middle of this magic, and I always will be."
Am I crazy, or does this mean only a Highlander can kill George Lucas?
Aw, damn my sloppy reading skills -- the Highlander can kill Steven I guess.
We gotta keep looking for a way to get rid of Lucas.
God, don't they sound old and grumpy and out of touch? They used to be the young guns who embraced all the new technology. The more I hear Spielberg talk, and with every new marginal release he scrounges up, I'm more and more convinced that he peaked with Duel. As for Lucas...
sorry, "the internets" is forcing me to abandon the rest of my thought here, and troll for spoilers and half-truths against my will.
I'm all for renaming the internet "scintilla".
@Benovite: Yes, but a rose by any other name is still just a series of tubes...
It's a series of tubes. And the kids are filling them up with garbage.
Aye, the only bad thing the internet provides already existed before the net, the pirated DVD pre-release. To which I have to say, anyone who wants to watch a film on a shaky DVD rather than a silver screen deserves to be disappointed.
The more comments I read from these guys about this film, the more I'm eagerly awaiting "Iron Man"-starting with my lenticular Slurpee cups & the beautifully-rendered spoilers on them
OK, Peter Pan. Time for a nap.
I like that the picture of them is from their glory days, when they knew what they were doing. They still know what they are doing, and they know that they just made a stinker.
See you on the 22nd boys!
In Spielberg's defense, he probably does have iPhones and tablets and laptops shoved in his face all day, so he forgets that the average Joe actually has a choice about when to go on the internet and what sites to view.
"A movie happens in a way that has always been cathartic, the personal, human catharsis of an audience in holy communion with an experience up on the screen."
Finally, someone has put into words the feeling I had whilst viewing "Showgirls" for the first time!!!
Oh Steven, you're so adoreable with your Luddite sensitbilities.
Reminds me of a Married To The Sea cartoon:
"Oh Internets, how you have offended my delicate sensibilities!"
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