Primal screens

By STEVE PERSALL

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 6, 2001

LAS VEGAS -- For centuries, people gathered at tribal campfires to share stories and themselves. Drawn by the light, kept there by the company.

Modern movie theaters do the same thing, according to panelists at the recent ShoWest convention of film exhibitors.

Don't worry about improved home video technology, they told theater owners. Watching movies on TV can't replace the social, almost primal satisfaction of a theatrical experience.

Moviegoers can't help it. It's in our nature.

"There is no technology that has begun to replace the social benefits of going to a movie," said Richard Brown, executive director of the International Center for Film and Television.

"You can't because that social nature is not based on hardware, it's based on people's company. That's what preserves the ritual of getting together, of sharing, or just physically sitting next to each other."

Brown, clinical psychologist Armond Aserinsky and director Daniel Petrie (Miss Congeniality) mused for an hour about why they think theaters will survive home video expansion. At times, the seminar felt like a therapy session, reassuring exhibitors about their future. Theaters endured studio divestment of theater holdings in the 1940s and Uncle Miltie a decade later, and they'll get through this crisis, too, they were told.

The convenience of staying home won't make movie theaters extinct.

"The idea of a film is to engage in a fantasy, to be moved to a more primitive level, a more direct, experiential level that's not so intellectual," said Aserinsky. "We release the distractions of the outside world, sometimes reaching unconscious levels. You're simply not going to get that at home."

First of all, Aserinsky proposed, the human brain can't be fooled into believing that even a 50-inch TV screen packs the sensory impact of watching a theater screen. "Frankly," he said, "we're not quite so dumb as to think that a blown-up little thing is the same as a big thing.

"The eye and brain power we bring to watching movies makes theatrical movies not just the foremost way of showing a film, but really the only true experience of that movie. Everything else is a copy of a reality. From our standpoint, a theatrical movie is a real thing. A television viewing of that is a picture of the movie."

Social factors also come into play. Watching movies at home is too distracting and misses the group dynamics of viewing with an audience. Laughter and other emotional responses are, in fact, contagious.

There's something special about sitting in the dark, anonymous, immersed in someone else's uninterrupted fantasy and making it our own. Screen size and sound systems are important, but more than those is how feelings unlock in those surroundings. Psychologists dim the lights to allow patients comfort in revealing themselves. Theaters are no different.

"When you sit and watch a movie at home, even on a big screen with a very decent sound system, I defy you not to notice that the carpet needs to be vacuumed," said Aserinsky. "Complete escape is offered by the unique setting of a theater."

Brown added: "When you sit in the dark, you can cry in a way that you can't do at home, particularly for men. It's a great bonus that's never spoken about, that emotional comfort. There is something hugely cathartic about that.

"People can do things in theaters -- like crying or indulging in foods that we're not supposed to eat -- that they can't feel comfortable doing" elsewhere in society.

Sometimes, this includes dealing with family members. Brown proposed that as a key reason why holidays are traditionally huge moneymakers for exhibitors.

"Families love to get together; we just don't want to talk to each other," he said. "All families have issues. That means Christmas is difficult. Thanksgiving is difficult. Passover, very difficult. Many of us know the seders where you sit around and all that stuff gets dredged up from generations past.

"Go to the movies and you're together, sitting, sharing. You don't even have to look at each other. Then, after the movie, you have plenty to talk about. You don't talk about issues, but the film. Movies give you a non-threatening, non-confrontational excuse to truly get together.

"And, when people stand up and talk about a movie, they're talking about their own lives, always."

Knowing that moviegoers depend on theaters for emotional release can inspire filmmakers, according to Petrie:

"In my editing room, I tape cut-outs of audience-member heads across the bottom of the screen, just to constantly remind myself that I'm not doing this for me. I'm doing it for them.

"Audiences are so sophisticated these days, they don't just want to observe. The movies have to take us farther than mere entertainment.

"We want revenge, justice, romance, or to die gloriously. We want to be transported to another place, another time and other lives, to lose all objective thought of the outside world, to be totally subjective with that movie. Then we want our discussion time afterward, to relive favorite moments or analyze the story."

You just don't get that sitting in your La-Z-Boy.

"People can look at movies at home all they want," Brown said. "The experience is fundamentally different, especially socialization. What you do in your business is satisfying a tremendous human need that never was satisfied in quite the same way before.

"Whatever happens with technology, it'll never replace the dream palace."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.