Noel’s blog entry about
critics and music piracy rang through my head the other night at an evening screening
for the awful, awful Four Brothers.
After being treated to the half-assed wanding and bag checks that have become
standard issue security measures at these things, the DJ for whatever t-shirt-hurling
radio station is sponsoring the screening (in concert with the generous folks
at Paramount, who have wasted our time for free) made an announcement.
He said that anyone caught with his or her cell phone on would be booted out of
the theater. Why? Not because cell phone usage is an annoying distraction, but
because some of them are picture phones and could be used to illegally copy the
movie. Okay, I’ll admit that I haven’t been keeping track of the great
new advances in cellular technology, but I’m pretty sure that none of current
models have the shutter speed, resolution, or memory to record a ready-for-street
dub copy of the latest blockbuster. Yet retarded ideas like these are common in
the movie industry, which loves to squander its vast resources for no good reason.
On the piracy front, the movie industry has it easy compared to music. Even those
committed Napsterites who believe that every piece of music is public domain have
to admit that file-sharing has dealt a serious blow to the labels’ bottom
line. If so much as one CD gets leaked to a file-sharing website, that title is
compromised forever, because everyone with an Internet connection has easy access
and nothing is lost in terms of sound quality. But I don’t think street
sales of poorly recorded blockbusters are taking nearly as big a chunk out of
the movie industry, which can blame its current slump on other things, such as
high ticket and concession prices, improved home technology, and crappy movies
nobody wants to see. Yet the MPAA remains committed to fighting piracy as best
it can, and that usually means picking on the biggest culprit: Movie critics.
Now I won’t waste time talking about the ill-conceived screener ban, which
was rightly struck down in court early last year for unfairly discriminating against
independent distributors that rely on screeners to get the late-year buzz their
little movies sorely needed. But that didn’t end the studios’ scrutiny
of critics, which continues to grow more desperate and surreal as time goes on.
Here are just a few of the highlights I’ve witnessed: 1. A screening of Collateral in which a theater manager patrolled the aisles wearing night-vision
goggles (!). 2. Semi-regular high-profile screenings where a full security detail
is brought to the private Chicago screening room to check bags for cameras and
pockets for…really tiny cameras? Guns are permitted, however. 3. A public War Of The Worlds screening, less than 36 hours before opening day, in
which all attendees had to check their bags, cell phones, iPods, Blackberries,
and other gizmos before entering. Only in this case, they were checked in a small
storage room just outside the theater door, meaning that only one person could
be helped at a time as the huge line jammed everyone back into the theater, creating
what I’m sure was a terrible fire hazard. I’m told that some people
at a similar New York event had to wait a full hour to get their things.
Combating piracy is a little like plugging up holes in a dike, yet critics get
abused because they’re the only potential leaks that can be plugged. Meanwhile,
there’s a flood of other, more likely possibilities that presumably rages
out of control. Since studios and exhibitors cannot possibly front the money to
support an airport-like security system at every theater, there’s nothing
to stop ordinary moviegoers from sneaking in with their picture phones and snapping
away at a rate of 24 frames per second. And speaking as someone who once worked
at a movie theater, where prints are delivered a few days in advance for projectionists
to build, there’s nothing stopping an unscrupulous employee from holding
his own private screening after hours and mounting a video camera on a tripod.
Then there are reports of technicians working within the industry itself who leaks
copies of work prints to the black market. And on and on and on…
I don’t doubt that movie piracy will become a much bigger problem as time
goes on and technology improves, but if the industry keeps looking at critics
as the #1 suspects, it’ll get what it deserves.