Imagine a movie so long, at nearly four hours, that it is broken up by an intermission so that people can stretch, use the rest room or go out for a quick smoke.
The film has to be made in a harsh climate and will take more than a year to shoot.
The plot, about a real-life war hero (played by an unknown), arguably contains just one significant battle scene and surprisingly sparse scenes of dialogue. There is not one female speaking part in the entire film.
Does this sound like anything Hollywood has made lately?
Hopefully, your answer was no
because the film I'm referring to is David Lean's 1962 masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia. I'm using Lean's work as a way to illustrate the American film industry's fear of the Big Movie. There's no way Lean would have been able to make Lawrence in today's world, even though it was a huge critical and box office success in its time and influenced future filmmakers like Steven Spielberg. It's doubtful whether today's moviegoing audiences would even come out to see it.
Now I realize that my assertion can be countered with, Well what about 'Titanic'? 'The Lord of the Rings'? 'King Kong'? Granted, Titanic is a three-hour plus epic that cost a tremendous amount of money to make, but nowhere in its maudlin story of star-crossed lovers does it ever attempt anything on the scale of Lawrence in terms of character or plot. It also positioned itself to do well by including a teen idol lead, a seemingly (and tortuously) unforgettable C+ the films themselves are little more than action spectacles that sometimes look more like video games than movies.
As for Kong
well, despite a talky first hour that takes a stab at character development, the movie feels like an endless parade of really bad action scenes. It is only epic in the scope of its poor quality.
But I digress. The point is that Hollywood is too prone to playing it safe, and frankly, it's ridiculous. Even if a studio today would greenlight Lawrence
there's no way it would retain its length. I shudder to think of what might have happened to it if former Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein had acquired it; Harvey of the nickname Harvey Scissorhands for the drastic cuts he makes in films.
And this not to say that even during the time of these epics there weren't some duds. Lean's own Doctor Zhivago
while meritorious in many ways, still plays pretty corny and overly sentimental today; ditto Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. But for every Zhivago and Spartacus
there's an Apocalypse Now and a Once Upon a Time in America.
For the last year-plus Hollywood has been scratching its head, wondering where the audiences have gone. Well I say, give us a reason to come back. Give us an Event Movie, one that everyone will talk about at the water cooler the Monday after it opens, one that people will go see more than once, one that will forever embed itself into pop culture and our collective consciousness.
At least give us one without a C+
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Ben Saylor
