Collected Ideas for Saving Cinema, An Ongoing Discussion Between Me and Jamie Drew
- Fewer ads. Obviously fewer ads and also the ads should only be allowed to be shown before the trailers. Like, you get a couple of ads, then you get trailers, which are more fun, then the movie. It used to be this way. It could be this way again.
- Also, while we're at it, stop putting trailers on the internet. Or at least don't put them on the internet immediately. Remember how exciting it was to learn about an upcoming film for the first time by seeing a trailer for it in the cinema? Bring it back!
- Short films before movies instead of ads!
- Stop putting films on streaming so goddamn quickly. I realise this is very back in my day of me, but back in my day it would be a full six months after cinema release before you could rent a film from Blockbuster (RIP) and another six before you could buy your own copy. It would maybe be on Sky around that time also, and then ages again before it was on normal people TV.
- It's easy to say make better movies but I think what we really need to do is to make more movies. More, cheaper movies. Not cheap but cheaper. Every time a studio spends $200M+ on one big, loud franchise they should also spend $200M+ on a selection of like 20 other movies. Little $5-$20M guys everywhere.
- Related: release just tons of money for script development of original ideas!
- Don't stop remaking movies entirely, but do remaking movies that are already good. Start remaking movies that are almost good. Jamie's suggestions here are The Butterfly Effect and Dark City, personally I think I'd do Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia which I've discussed within these pages before.
- Make more movies about women kicking ass but for the love of god make them good! Crucially they should be made by people who actually enjoy women, you know?
- Let Cathy Yan make whatever she wants forever.
- Stop over-exposing actors. It is not a good marketing strategy.
- Stop casing so many conventionally attractive people. Cast interesting looking people more! People with faces like Shelley Duval and Harry Dean Stanton!
- Cast people who fuck. Jamie would like it specified that a person who fucks, as opposed to a person who is merely a shagger, understands sex as about interplay and connection between people. I would like it specified that a person who fucks is someone who really knows how to look at a person. Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice fucks. Elliott Gould in that one photo with Elmo fucks. Jonathan Bailey in any given circumstance fucks.
- That is all a subset of make movies horny again. Make movies horny again! What's happened here?! You see it in all the endless remakes and sequels. Twister? Horny. Twisters? Not horny. Top Gun? So horny. Top Gun: Maverick? Completely sexless. In both cases this is in spite of the presence of Glen Powell who definitely fucks. Like, what is going on?
- End the slow rot of late stage capitalism so people have more time, energy, and money to spend going to the cinema.