The Endless Cinema
Slate’s list of famous movie-people’s most-watched movies suggests rather quickly the difference between true blooded movie fans and people whose job it is to work around the movies. Not to say that there isn’t any crossover (there is), but it’s telling when a director or screenwriter has never seen any particular movie in double-digit repeats. Laura Ziskin, the Spider-Man producer who has such a cute relationship with her partner than he actually reads aloud to her every night (according to this month's Atlantic), has seen All the President’s Men “at least ten times.” Well get out the record books—ten times! I’ve probably seen it closer to twenty times, and it’s not even in my top 20 or so favorite films. Liv Schrieber has seen Citizen Kane six times. I’d estimate I watched Aliens, Die Hard and Face/Off six times each last year.
This strikes me as a sad thing for a movie director; there’s something immensely satisfying about having seen a movie so many times that it ceases to play in front of you, but instead plays inside of you. It has become internalized, a part of who you are, and thus, when you see it on the screen yet again, the experience is not just of watching a movie, but of seeing a part of yourself.
Those of us who fell in love with movies as children understand this. Children tend to watch the same things habitually, so repeat viewing seems natural. By the time I was ten I had seen the Star Wars films, most of the Star Trek movies, and Superman II and IV (they’re what we had on tape) in countless repetitions. Jake Kasdan, who the article says has seen Ghostbusters in triple digits, understands this; critic Michael Sragow, who saw The Wild Bunch six times in its opening week at the theater and 50 more since, also gets it. For these people, movies are not merely part of the job, they are part of life.
In some ways, it’s equivalent to the end of Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451, in which the book-loving refugees internalize their favorite works completely, even taking on the book titles as their names. We don’t just read books or watch movies; we become them.
posted by Peter @ 6/29/2006 12:53:00 PM
5 Comments:
Wow - I think your take on this is pretty extreme. For instance, Pauline Kael rarely watched movies more than once.
Aside from the movies I watched compulsively as a kid and the movies I watched multiple times because I had to write about them for a class, the movie I've seen most often is The Long Goodbye, clocking in at about 12 times. (Although I did see it on the big screen twice in one day).
There's a handful of movies I must have seen around half-a-dozen times (The Wild Bunch, Ride the High Country, The Big Sleep, The Rules of the Game, Groundhog Day), but, for the most part, once or twice is enough.
My favorite part of the linked article is Peter Farrelly talking about Something Wild, which is also one of my faves. I think I've seen it 4 or 5 times.
Hear, hear, Mr. Suderman! I watch Groundhog Day literally whenever I am tired, depressed, worn out--I've probably seen it thirty times this calender year.
I think that I've actually invested some of my ability to cheer myself up and pull myself together in this film.* Surrendering to it is a participatory ritual of sorts, and the film is an essential aspect of resetting or starting over. It has become an important part of my coping mechanism.
This is definitely an extension of my childhood movie watching habits. I compulsively watched the Star Wars films almost daily until I was 15 or 16, and though I've seen them only a handful of times (10?) since then I still have nearly all of the dialogue memorized. Again, they played a role in my life more akin to prayer book than to mere "movie."
I know so many people (real people, not cinephiles) who just don't "get" Citizen Kane. I think a large part of Kane's magic derives from the film community's collective relationship with the film. We've each seen it so many times, poured over the stills, read Sarris rebutting Kael rebutting Bogdanovich, written about it, argued about it. And at some point you cease to watch it, you simple experience it.
* I'm re-reading The Sandman, and I'm thinking of Morpheus investing parts of himself into his "tools." And man, oh man, does this comment have "nerd" written all over it...
Admission: I've actually only seen Kane all the way through once, and it wasn't until last fall.
And sure, Jon, extreme is a good word for how I see movies. I love Kael (more on that soon), but I've never understood her watch and toss approach. And it's not that I think that everyone, or even all fans of film, should watch as zealously as I do--but it does seem to me that the majority of film fans, those of us who've been totally swept away by cinema, have at least a few films that we've thoroughly digested into our bloodstreams, and it saddens me and worries me when our filmmakers -- the people who're actually producing movies -- can get through a life of movies without seeing any film more than a few times. If they actually cared about movies, it seems to me, most would want to go see more.
I didn't, by the way, watch movies all that often as a child (due to parental restrictions), but when I did watch them, I tended to watch the same few.
I love seeing movies I've never seen before so much that I sometimes almost forget to make time to rewatch old favorites. I do agree with the value of having films that feel like part of the bloodstream, but sometimes all it takes is a half-dozen or so viewings for me to feel that way about a film. (The Conversation is an example of that.)
That said, the films I've seen the most I've seen dozens of times. That would be the original Star Wars trilogy. It's going to take a while for any of the films I've discovered as an adult to be seen enough to suprass all the Star Wars viewings I indulged in as a child and teenager.
I've seen Back to the Future 1-3 literally hundreds of times a piece. I of course watched Star Wars and Star Trek movies from the time I was a toddler until grade school, but it was BttF that got me through my parents' divorce and remarriage. I've probably seen the first installment north of 500- just a guess of course. All that to say- watching movies multiple times just seems like a normal thing to do for a fan of movies. I can't understand anyone not doing it.
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