I would like to put a ban on 14-year-old boys and not allow them to see any movies. If that happened for one year, the whole definition of what is a big movie and what is a little movie would flip-flop.
I see what he's getting at, but it's a little much, this comment. I certainly wasn't the smartest or most open-minded fellow at 14, but my interest in movies was just starting (a la Tarantino), and it would be the next few years that I would come to love cinema and embrace it as a career option (along the way I discovered The Player, Short Cuts, and Nashville -- all by the time I was 18 ).
So I'm sure he's just railing against some exec that told him him they need to sell to "14 year old boys", but to single that group out (especially when there's 13 year old girls supporting shit like Honey and Save The Last Dance, and middle-age women supporting every plastic romance J-Lo / Julia Roberts flick) is just plain unfair.
Thoughts???
(this is from the new Ebert interview, btw)
Sounds like a comment out of anger but couldn't there be some truth to it?
Say we put a ban on all people under 16. What would happen to cinema then? Good things is my bet.
No, I'm betting just less intelligent older people.
Let's face facts: none of us started off in film by watching the most "challenging" or "important" works. In North America anyway, we came to cinema via commercial films. When we were younger. What I'm saying is maybe Altman has it the wrong way around, instead of banning the 14 year olds, try to sell the good films to younger people, and teach them to be more open-minded. It will never happen, I know, but I've decided to be utopian today...
You're right.
I'm not at my most intelligent right now.
I don't think he is really serious about the comment. Maybe just an example of where all the attention in film promotion is going these days.
Quote from: The Gold TrumpetI don't think he is really serious about the comment. Maybe just an example of where all the attention in film promotion is going these days.
It does. How did it come to this? How did that group become the most vital one? Easier to please 14 year old boys than grown ups. How?
It saddens me when I get into a near empty premiere screening of a PTA film or when a PDL screening is filled with 14 year olds.
Quote from: SoNowThenNo, I'm betting just less intelligent older people.
Let's face facts: none of us started off in film by watching the most "challenging" or "important" works. In North America anyway, we came to cinema via commercial films. When we were younger. What I'm saying is maybe Altman has it the wrong way around, instead of banning the 14 year olds, try to sell the good films to younger people, and teach them to be more open-minded. It will never happen, I know, but I've decided to be utopian today...
it's hard to sell those films to 14 year olds because i've read somewhere that children can't really understand the concept of death till age 12. You can't expect them to understand more abstract things and subtle messages. You can test yourself: watch a movie(or read a book) that you saw last time when you were around 10, or 14. Try to remember what you thought of it then and what you think of it now. Children grow up and learn about the world from books (or picture books, fairy tales...) and they don't have informations to see things that grown ups do.
The problem is that lots of bad movies with agressive advertising become "must see" for teenagers. And "must see" in teen age means literally that.
Finding Nemo has a story told in a way that is appealing to children and grown ups, each of them seing different things and nobody feels neglected. It's hard to do that - people say that only the biggest have that ability to be simple but not stupid.
Very true.
However:
A lot of the stuff I consider "best" or "my favorite" now, I wouldn't have got when I was younger. Some of it I revisited and of course got greater depth out of it, but it was nice to have been exposed earlier, so that it had some time to sink in. A good example of this is Straw Dogs. I saw that when I was 15. Did I understand it? No, I liked seeing Susan George naked, and cheered for Dustin to kill the intruders. But just last month, after not watching it since (but remembering snippets) I had a conversation with someone who was kinda disgusted by it, particularily the scene **SPOILER ** where Susan willingly allows herself to be raped. And at the time I was baffled by this, but now I've come to understand it in the context of the film, and somewhat trying to get into what the ideas were -- and I realized how perfect and precise and ballsy this scene was. Now I can't wait to revisit that film!!
Also, sometimes when you're young, 1% of the really good stuff can slip through and you actually understand it (however this happens, I dunno). I got into Dickens fairly young, when many others my age were bored to death with him, and that's stayed with me.
I dunno, I just wanna expose as much good stuff to as much people as possible, and see what sticks. Cos some of it eventually will, it's inevitable.
I like Altman's comment. Sometimes you need to tug extra hard in the cultural tug-of-war when you have such a hard, hard pull from the other end, and I think that's what he's doing. Do you think Johnny Rotten would have actually murdered the Queen of England? No, but he might've thought about it, and at that time and place, it was very important that someone speak up, even if their vehemence seemed out of proportion. I like people who speak up, particularly when it's about the elephant in the room thatnobody will acknowledge.
As far as picking on the boys vs. the girls, more teenage boys than teenage girls go to movies, and more teenage and young adult men go to movies than any other group. It's a Catch-22, because the idealistic (Altman-esque) way of looking at it is that if that weren't the case, you would actually have more of the other groups coming to movies, because movies would be made with them in mind as an audience, and though a huge rise in the overall quality of cinema wouldn't automatically follow, there might be more openings for different kinds of movies. The people who need to sell the movies would be able to believe they could sell more kinds of (and even better quality) movies.
Poppycock, I say.
Quote from: godardianI like Altman's comment..
Oh yeah, banning certain groups of society based on their age, sex or race from culture and information is really a good idea. Someone else tought about it before Altman and you though,
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stormfront.org%2Fbooks%2Fmein_kampf%2Fhitler.jpg&hash=764a6d3fbee8458f5332ff05de8110312bd0e5d8)
godardian will pick up where Adolf left off, I'm sure.
Quote from: Pas RapportQuote from: godardianI like Altman's comment..
Oh yeah, banning certain groups of society based on their age, sex or race from culture and information is really a good idea. Someone else tought about it before Altman and you though,
How embarrassing for you that I have to point out that Altman's admirably curmudgeonly tongue was, obviously, firmly in cheek, while Hitler's just as obviously wasn't. He was being disproportionate as a little joke to make a point. Subtitles for the humor-impaired, Pas?
It's actually pretty gross and irresponsible to compare Altman's obviously facetious comment to Nazism; it's exactly that kind of overreacting attitude that right-wingers are always accusing the so-called "politically correct" of, but when such a joke comes from farther left on the spectrum, the person making it is fucking
Hitler!!! Dull, dull, dull.....
Altman is always right. Nobody has more integrity than Altman, and he shoots from the hip. What's great is that instead of mellowing with age, he is launching verbal ICBM's at the world of commerce. The worst thing that has happened in the history of cinema is the 80's, in which all films were aimed at kids and teenagers.
Quote from: godardianQuote from: Pas RapportQuote from: godardianI like Altman's comment..
Oh yeah, banning certain groups of society based on their age, sex or race from culture and information is really a good idea. Someone else tought about it before Altman and you though,
How embarrassing for you that I have to point out that Altman's admirably curmudgeonly tongue was, obviously, firmly in cheek, while Hitler's just as obviously wasn't. He was being disproportionate as a little joke to make a point. Subtitles for the humor-impaired, Pas?
It's actually pretty gross and irresponsible to compare Altman's obviously facetious comment to Nazism; it's exactly that kind of overreacting attitude that right-wingers are always accusing the so-called "politically correct" of, but when such a joke comes from farther left on the spectrum, the person making it is fucking Hitler!!! Dull, dull, dull.....
Admit his comment was dumb at once. I'm sure you'd scream scandal if the Farelly brothers (or whatever) said that intellectuals should be banned from theaters so we would have only 'entertaining' movies. It's the same thing, except not in an elitist bastard way.
Quote from: Pas Rapport
Admit his comment was dumb at once.
Oh, en garde! :) I'll admit nothing more than that his comment was an off-the-cuff, throwaway, joke-y remark, a purposely exaggerated reaction based on a more or less accurate perception.
its not the 14 year olds fault that they are sold crap. They usually don't have the means to seek out what is good because it is never marketed to them. The consumers don't make the fads, the MTV's, The Cosmopolitans, The Sprint Wireless Halftime reports do. The downfall of artistic society therein lies with the above fadmakers, Money is what it is about, and unfortunately movies like Magnolia, Dancer In The Dark, Brazil and the like are not what people want to see. Everyone knows that "regular" society would rather see Arnie in a terminator movie say "I'll be back" in endless sequels than see something that they have to think about. And thats not the 14 year olds problem. It's ours as consumers buying into what were told we "NEED"
i was 14 in 1999. that was the year of fight club and american beauty and fun good movies. pulp fiction was my favorite movie when it came out. i think i used to be smart, but as the years went on i became corrupted by the internet and drugs. now my favorite movies are xxx and anger management.
Quote from: Pas RapportQuote from: godardianI like Altman's comment..
Oh yeah, banning certain groups of society based on their age, sex or race from culture and information is really a good idea. Someone else thought about it before Altman and you though,
(https://xixax.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stormfront.org%2Fbooks%2Fmein_kampf%2Fhitler.jpg&hash=764a6d3fbee8458f5332ff05de8110312bd0e5d8)
:lol:
classic
---- so, Taz, you're only 18/19???? Crazy. I wish I'd made as many shorts as you when I was that age!
altman needs to learn how to put the freaks up front. then the 14 year old boys might come around.
Quote from: themodernage02altman needs to learn how to put the freaks up front. then the 14 year old boys might come around.
I hope that was a joke.
Hahahaha !
altman's right, pas is right
altman's pretty old.