It’s not even half way through October and I have to say, I’m already Octobered out. I know, I know, how could I be? I haven’t even done a full-throated post on horror yet. It’s not that I’m tired of horror, far from it. It’s that October has now become inundated with lists of every kind (Top 100 Movie Killers, Top 10 Best Scary Movies, etc) and for the last several years, looking for a new angle at which to approach the month seems more and more difficult. A part of it is blog fatigue to be sure. I’ve been blogging for ten years now (at other places before here) and each and every October has been a celebration of a genre I dearly love which means that for ten years I’ve pulled the genre apart and analyzed it from one end of the horror spectrum to the other. I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want to write up a genre because the time of year tells me I have to. Of course, it’s still October and this is still a movie blog so I’m going to talk about the movies today but no particular genre. Instead, I’m going to talk about what scares me with the movies. No, not scared as in horrified, more scared as in concerned, worried. Here’s what scares me… or worries me:
I’m scared that I’m movied out. I notice that when I have free time, time that used to mean it was time to sit down and enjoy a movie, I now do almost anything else. I run, play music, or watch a science documentary. I love science documentaries. Sometimes I’ll watch a movie or a favorite show but I find myself with less interest in narrative fiction than I once had. I think a part of that comes from watching and reading about movies for several decades and then, as a result, building up a very particular set of likes and dislikes that suddenly seem overwhelming because the landscape of cinema has changed and you haven’t.
I start worrying that no one knows how to make a movie under 90 minutes anymore. Forget that, how about 75? I write up all kinds of movies for TCM and many of the ones from the thirties often come in at 65 minutes, tops! But why should that worry me? I think it does because it feels like a lost art form, the ability to tell a complete story, in depth, in 65 minutes. Why must everything be longer? And I’m not just talking about movies here. Why aren’t there more tv shows like True Detective or Fargo that tackle one story a season? Why must every show, or most of them at least, have one long continuing story arc?
To a lesser degree, I also worry that a large part of the cinematic experience holds little appeal for me at this point. That large part is the act of seeing a movie in the theater. I still prefer to see movies on the big screen but I don’t like big crowds so I attend matinees during the week when I can. As for blockbusters, I don’t even bother with the theater. I watch them at home instead. There was a time when seeing a blockbuster on opening weekend was thrilling to me. Now, they seemed to be filled with large crowds who make lots of noise, play with their phones, and kick the seats. So with the exception of The Force Awakens, which I did see opening weekend, I see most of the other big action/adventure/sci-fi/comic book stuff at home, even though it means waiting a couple of extra months to see it. So last week, I saw Captain America: Civil War finally. I liked it. Nobody made a noise or used their phone once. Except me. But hey, it was my house.
Another thing I used to do quite a bit was watch a movie several times a year. Sometimes I’d see a movie in the theater, love it, and then watch it on cable, then DVD. Then cable again. And so on. Favorite movies would be watched again and again. My DVD collection was huge, in the thousands. And then, I just kind of stopped. Nowadays, I see a movie once and, with rare exceptions, that’s enough. Even old favorites I don’t much watch anymore. When I do watch a movie, it’s usually one I haven’t seen or a new tv show or, as mentioned above, a science doc.
Of course, I will always love the cinema and love talking about it. The thing is, and it’s kind of odd, I think I enjoy talking about it more than watching it sometimes. I’d much rather engage in a conversation here with all of you, or just read your own insights in the comments, than watch a movie. Almost as if a part of me has seen so many movies without discussion (I used to consume two or three a day, every day, without fail) that I need to catch up and talk about them more before watching them again. I’ve learned things about movies I thought I knew inside and out from the comment section here and I expect that’s what keeps me going.
The movies that I know and love will always be there, in my memory if nowhere else. And maybe the many threads of expansive online media available will produce a renaissance of shorter feature length works and single season television shows. I hope so. In the end, I probably need to adapt at a faster clip. Entertainment media isn’t going to slow down for me or anyone else and I don’t want it to. I look forward to a continuing love of the cinema and discussing it with fellow movie lovers. As long as I can do that, I don’t suppose I’ll ever be movied out completely.