Now, in Part 2, we explore why audiences reject movies that remind them that they are, well, fake.

The insistence on a certain type of realism, which in Hollywood comes down to slickness, truncates the audience’s imagination.  When everything is presented in the slickest way possible, it’s difficult to engage with film in a meaningful way – unfortunately, this is what people have come to expect.

Ask people why they go to movies, and many will tell you that they want to get out of their own heads and escape from their normal lives.  Reality is boring.  Movies are fun and exciting.  People love explosive disaster movies, epic battles, and sexy rom-coms with witty dialogue delivered by attractive Hillarys and Astons.  People even love extremely dramatic tearjerkers with overwrought and tragic endings.  What do all of these things have in common: they pull people intensely outside of their own experiences. People obviously want to be distracted…but there’s a catch: they want the intensity, the otherness, to appear as natural as possible.

What does this mean?  Basically, people don’t want to see the strings.  Slick Hollywood movies have similar pacing, perfect mis-en-scene, standard lighting styles, accepted acting styles…heck, we can all name which working actors and actresses fit best in dramas and which work better in comedies.  In order to meet the needs of the audiences fed on a particular brand of realism, movies need to stay within the lines.

Are all movies slick?  Nope.  Some are delightfully clumsy, awkward, and generally unreal.  And that’s okay.  As a matter of fact, it’s what we often prefer here at King is a Fink.

Movie artifice can be denoted by a number of things.  In a musical, there are bursts of song and dance.  In certain low-budget or amateur films, like the cult classic Plan 9 from Outer Space, audiences can revel in the hand-crafted mise-en-scene: cardboard gravestones, toy space ships, and overly-corseted, washed up stars.   But artifice also takes more purposeful forms: expressionistic camera angles, too slow/too fast pacing, nontraditional casting, unique lighting and set design, etc.  These things can break the spell of a movie, calling the audience’s attention to the fact that what they’re watching is not real.

Melodramas are excellent examples of movies that call attention to their movie-ness. In the 1950’s, Douglas Sirk pushed the melodrama to the nth degree, allowing his actors to overdramatize their feelings, his lighters to over light, and his costume and set designers to use color and kitsch to their hearts’ content.  For some, Sirk’s melodramas call too much attention to themselves, and are rejected.  His films look fake, yes. But they’re supposed to be fake.  Sirk was unabashed in his insistence on allowing film language to present his thoughts and provoke the audience’s response.

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I don’t know that I would have come to love movies so much if it weren’t for the pre-school-esque playfulness of filmmakers like Michel Gondry, the expressionistic angles of Orson Welles, the bold colors and colorful characters of Pedro Almodovar, the strange combination of noir lighting and overwrought drama of Douglas Sirk, the irreverence of Godard, or the outrageous crassness of John Waters.  It is the filmmakers who’ve embraced the cinema as a creative playground, those who take risks in inviting the audience to play along, that have inspired me the most.

The problem with realism, or at least with too much realism, is similar to the problem caused by tidy endings.  When movies only show reality in certain ways, the audience’s imagination, and thus engagement, is cut off.  There’s no chance to imagine, to wonder, to project, or interpret when everything is wrapped in a nifty (and all too familiar) package.

I thought I’d end today with something supremely artificial.  How’s this for artifice: a murder-mystery, musical melodrama by Francois Ozon! Yes, I know it’s in French, but you don’t have to know the language to delight in Ozon’s “8 Femmes”, groove to the music, giggle at the cheezy dance moves, or celebrate Catherine Deneuve’s stint as a back-up dancer.  Stick through it to the end to see Isabelle Huppert’s entrance as Deneuve’s uptight sister-in-law, as denoted by costume, hair-do, and…yes, over-the-top acting.

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Ready for Part 3?

When they watch a movie, they want a blockbuster: they want guns; they want explosions; and most of all, they want slickness. If anything interrupts or calls attention to the illusion of cinema, they become enraged.  They particularly hate it when movies end – no matter what happens at the end, they yell, “That’s the end?!” and then they pout while we shift from illusion to reality.

Slick Hollywood movies share an illusion with the audience…but only for the length of the movie.  Their endings are clean, obvious, and satisfying.  “The bad guy got caught.” “The lovers got married.”  “ET found his way home.”  Nice.  Neat.  No thinking required.  Next movie.

So what happens when we encounter movies of another sort, ones that leave the fate of the characters to the imagination of the audience?  Examples include The Graduate, The Birds, Blade Runner, 2001, No Country for Old Men, and Before Sunset.

Some people like these movies. They take the illusion home with them and explore it via discussion with friends or private contemplation.  They ponder different options, consider different forks in the road.  In essence, they have to think in order to finish their experience with the movie.  And this requires work.  Other movie-goers leave these movies crying, “Then what?”  They’re distraught.  They’re disappointed. They feel cheated of their easy, entertaining movie escape.  And they’re very vocal about it.  “That movie was stupid.”  “That movie didn’t make sense.”  “That movie felt unfinished.”  Well, maybe it did…but that’s because you have to finish it.

“Then what,” indeed.

Consider the open-endedness of two recent indie films vs. a recent Hollywood franchise: Chop Shop and Ballast vs. Michael Bays’ Transformers.  The indie films end with simple, mundane activities that emphasize the importance of the protagonists’ newfound closeness with family: a brother and sister scare pigeons and watch them fly; a boy sleeps in the backseat in a car containing his new family.  In Transformers, the good guys beat the bad guys. The end.  One might argue that Transformers ended with a little ambiguity (were all of the bad guys eliminated?) but that person would also have to admit that’s for the sake of sequel generation rather than thought provocation.  Very few sequels actually develop and deepen a storyline. Transformers 2 is just Transformers 1 revisited, with better special effects.

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So, what’s the final word on movies with open endings?  Think about them.  Talk about them with your friends.  Decide for yourself what happened.  And don’t be turned off by the fact that this requires thinking (ugh), consideration of the artist’s statement (boring), and, maybe, reflection on our own lives (no, thank you.)

Now…are you ready for Part 2?

• FIERY FOOD: Thai food at Me Dee with the stars of Anxiety Acres (Mike Ayres & Heather Rush)
• FRENZIED FUN: An NYC Midnight 48-hr screenplay contest (Deadline Sunday at 12:00am EST)
• FINE ART FRIDAY: Our friend & fave artist Danny Hein took us to a couple of art openings.

At the Packer Schopf Gallery we saw paintings & photos by mother/daughter team Ann & Maria Ponce, family members of Chicago Tonight host and local celebrity Phil Ponce.  Danny is a big fan, and, when we asked for a picture, Mr. Ponce was a class act and a gentleman.  Then we went to a cool eyeglasses store / gallery space in Wicker Park where we met Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick.

Here are some pics from our art-filled night:

Julie + Dan + art by Steven Seeley

Dan + Chicago Tonight's Phil Ponce

Chicago newscaster Kathy Brock + fan + painting of herself

Dan + Jess

Dan + Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick

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