It's a question to ponder -- especially when they're Andy Warhol movies (whether or not Andy Warhol actually had anything to do with them besides putting his name on them). Consider this story from Reid Rosefelt at My Life as a Blog:
... I was a huge fan of Warhol's films, despite the fact that I had never seen a single one. Most, if not all of the films had been withdrawn from circulation, or very rarely shown, certainly not in Madison. That didn't stop me. I read everything I could about them, and I was totally fascinated.
Spotting Warhol standing at an appetizer table, plastic cup in one hand and plate in the other, during a late-1970s party in New York, RR worked up the nerve to approach the artist. It went something like this:
"Excuse me, Mr. Warhol, may I ask you a question?"
Warhol looked at me with his trademark languid affectlessness--a pose or really him?-- the ultimate in coolness. He didn't say anything.
"I've read all about your films, but I can't see them."
"Oh..." he said.
"Are they in distribution somewhere? Do you have any plans to bring them out?
"Not really."
"You really should. A lot of people want to see them and they can't."
"Isn't it better that way?"
And with that, Warhol was gone, leaving young Reid to stew over what the Great Artist could possibly have meant. That it was OK for him to keep his work to himself when they are so historically significant? That the films were better thought about than actually experienced? That the concepts were more important than the art objects themselves? What about a movie like "Empire," an eight-hour stationary shot of the Empire State Building (shot at 24 frames per second but screened at 16 fps, thus making it longer) -- a film that was said to be almost "impossible to watch," but that nevertheless deserved to be studied by scholars?
Or "Sleep" -- five hours and 20 minutes of a man sleeping? Or "Blow Job," a mere half-hour shot of a man's face while something goes down below the bottom of the frame? "Would it be like a low-rent Dreyer movie or would it be banal?" RR remembers wondering. "Warhol was refusing to let me see a movie where I wouldn't see anything."
(Read the whole [brief] post here.)
So, as I say above, I'm posting this as a thought experiment. (Sometimes I throw out ideas to consider and certain people read between the wrong lines and assume I'm really arguing one way or another, but I promise you in this case that I am not proposing we should all stop watching movies and just talk about them instead. If I were, I would come right out and say so.)
Warhol, of course, is famous for his conceptual art. Yes, the idea of painting Campbell's Soup cans and putting Brillo boxes in galleries was conceptually inspired -- but he (or his minions) had to actually do it (and put his name on it) in order to realize the concept, to actually give it form and shape. Likewise, it's one thing to think about pointing a camera at the Empire State Building for an interminable length of time, but if you don't actually do it, if somewhere the evidence that you did do it does not exist (even if nobody could see it, or would realistically want to), then the concept (or the joke -- I use the terms interchangeably here, meaning no disrespect to the art) kind of falls flat.
Then again, what if we could apply it to all those wannabe blockbuster movies (with no artistic pretensions whatsoever) that too often play like pitch meetings reduced to sped-up PowerPoint presentations? Remember the late 1980s and 1990s, when every studio action picture (starring Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Keanu Reeves or whoever) was "Die Hard on a _____"? How about "3-D CGI FernGully on Another Planet"? That is precisely the level of artistic inspiration and imagination that goes into the financing, making and marketing of many (most?) movies -- and I include
DIY "indies" and foreign language features, too.
On the other hand, if (as I insist) moves are largely about what you experience when you watch them, then isn't the experience itself -- no matter how tedious or unpleasant -- worth at least something? (Think "Funny Games," "Irreversible," anything involving Tyler Perry or Kevin Smith...) Or is that like saying you actually have to jump off a bridge in order to know what it's like to jump off a bridge? Which you do, but what if you don't want to? Still, doesn't the bridge have to actually exist in order for you to imagine what it would be like to jump off of it -- sort of like the way the Campbell's Soup cans have to exist in order to be fully appreciated? Is reading or thinking about or imagining a movie concept another kind of valuable experience, whether or not you've actually seen the movie itself? And if the movie doesn't exist, but is only hypothetical, then what happens to free will? How can you choose to not see it if that's the only option?
Perhaps this takes us back to Godard's "Masculin-Feminin":
We'd often go to the movies. We'd shiver as the screen lit up. More often we'd be disappointed. The images flickered. Marilyn Monroe looked terribly old. It saddened us. It wasn't the film we had dreamed, the film we all carried in our hearts, the film we wanted to make and, secretly, wanted to live....
I'm not sure where this is going (except 'round in circles), but I wanted to put it out there...
49 Comments
This is an amazing thought experiment and it puts into words something I've been unable to articulate but often thought about -- although maybe from the opposite angle from where you're approaching it.
What I mean is, it may not be that the movie in question is better if you don't see it, but more that you can only really pretend to appreciate some things when you haven't really had to suffer through them. So, those who do suffer through it can wear their dislike (or praise, I guess) as a badge of honor as if to say, "Sure, you guys sit around talking about it all the time, but I actually WATCHED it."
Especially in the Internet age, it's really easy just to claim you've done something or seen something and you never really have to prove it. There's a simultaneous anonymity and vast expanse of information at everyone's fingertips. I get the feeling certain self proclaimed geek experts do this a lot -- it seems there's no end of things they loved when they were kids and know more about than I do. Maybe that's because they didn't really love these things when they were kids and just say they do. After all, it's easy to claim the TRANSFORMERS movie ruins a "great, classic" cartoon when you don't actually have to sit through the actual awful episodes of the source material.
A film like EMPIRE doesn't just work as an interesting concept, and doesn't only work because it actually exists. It also works because virtually no one will ever sit through it. So, it's untouchable -- you can't review what you won't (or can't) watch. The concept becomes the only thing you can really discuss with any honesty and the actual film itself is just this abstract thing that very few people have even actually experienced (in its entirety -- sure, you can watch bits on YouTube). The film itself remains safe from scrutiny.
I'd argue the same thing about films known for intense violence or hard to watch rape scenes or incredibly long running times. Yes, this stuff can serve the story and can have artistic merit. But sometimes I get the sneaking suspicion a movie is made unwatchable on purpose: first to get people to talk about the concept and then to prevent anyone from ever actually watching the film and destroying the magic (or intrigue or infamy or whatever) of the concept.
I still don't know if I'm articulating my thoughts very well, but as a film buff interacting with other film buffs, I've often found a gap between the "talking points" of a given movie and the actual experience of watching the movie, and I usually assume this means many of the people perpetuating view points on the movie in question haven't actually watched it.
Interesting. Will take some time to get my head around that. But it would take guts of steel (or unbridled insanity) to go about making a film that you don't want anyone to watch.
And sometimes, a movie stays better when it's not actually made (case in point: most spoof films)
Wasn't it Voltaire who claimed that the Divine Comedy will always be held as the towering achievement of literature, because no one ever has and no one ever will actually read it?
Also, I'm not sure how much the very existence of the work of art which has been conceptualized counts; I think the novel "The Road to Almotasim" is a great work (though a bit tedious in the middle section), but all there exists of it is the review by Jorge Luis Borges (who, IMO, is the master of the art of describing non-existent works of art instead of diluting these concepts by actually carrying them out).
I also am reminded of "Inglourious Basterds": I got hardly anything out of watching that movie I didn't get out of reading about it and seeing stills (except the image of Shoshanna in her working clothes, looking far better and much more humane than in the red dress used in all the marketing). The concept, the ideas and especially the character of Hans Landa are great, but you don't really need the movie to get to know those.
Isn't that like saying I get what Citizen Kane's doing as much from the exorbitant criticism as from the film itself? The difference is the form, the presentation; film is such a creative and usually entertaining vehicle for expression. And if you get down to it, Marshall McLuhan's right insofar as Tarantino or whoever is as much conveying an extractable thesis as presenting an indiscreet sensory experience. I'm not sure you can actually "get" the surprise of Landa suddenly appearing at Shosanna's back at the restaurant just through description. If you can, is it as strong an expression as the way Tarantino cuts the scene and arranges the soundtrack? And in this particular case, there's the added self-consciousness in watching a theater massacre while sitting in a theater with people laughing at violence.
"Citizen Kane" is a good example of a movie which is really not much to watch, but which is great to analyze (and yes, I have seen it). It seems almost as if it was deliberately designed for use by teachers, who could discuss its in-your-face social themes with students or examine its revolutionary camera work.
But that's like saying "'Crime and Punishment' isn't actually enjoyable to read, it just has a lucid and incredibly readable style, fascinating themes, and an involving storyline." If "Citizen Kane" isn't much to watch, then really, what film is?
This is a debate I have with my film friends often... Can there be a great movie that you don't particularly return to watch often and you know no viewing can recreate that original experience (and maybe you're even afraid to rewatch it for that reason too) but you know it was a genuine *experience* that every person should hope to have if they are so lucky?
"400 Blows" is like that for me. I don't know if I wanna see it again... but I understand exactly what it did to me and how it did it and I think it's worth everybody seeing once.
In other words, are there some movies that are, as Roger puts it, capital G Great Movies that, nevertheless, are only one-time or two-time viewings but essential to see that once or twice because of the unparalleled cinematic insight they offer into that subject? And then other movies that are watched again and again but you wouldn't feel right saying that they're "better" Great Movies (GreatER movies) just for that reason? Is this making any sense?
I don't have many days where I wanna, say, throw on "Psycho." But is it a great movie? (Do I really, really have to explain to you all here every reason why it's certainly one of the greatest or can I just link you to the Far Flung Corespondents' Page here, Kim Morgan's appreciation or Owen Gleiberman's equally in depth couple of essays... just for a start...) And I could say the same for many other movies. "Le Boucher," "M", "Paths of Glory," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Persona," "Silence of the Lambs," "E.T.", "Easy Rider", "The Searchers," "The Godfather," "GoodFellas," "Aguirre, The Wrath of God," "2001," the list goes on and on... I think I speak for a lot of us here when I say "a person who can must try to see these movies" because the experience is so powerful and will make other movies look like they were made on an etch-a-sketch. But are you in a rush to pop 'em in again? (Other than to study their craft more closely?)
If you follow me, maybe this brings us to another question (or is this the original question coming back full circle?): is it the space that movies take up in our heads that's actually important -- the lasting influence on the way we perceive, as if we've absorbed it into our (sub?)consciousness -- or is it the movie itself? I mean, obviously it's both. But once we're basically familiar with what makes it great... then what? And can we ever really equal that first experience again? (Keeping in mind that some movies need a few viewings over time for their greatness to sink in.)
My personal feeling is that, yes, there are some movies that simply need to be seen. That if you don't return to them, that's alright, it was what you took away from the experience that mattered. In the same way that some people can sit through a great movie infinite times and still not get it at all, feel nothing, because they're dead inside. I think then, to some degree, the concept we carry around in our heads that matters just as much as the execution we felt in our gut.
To follow-up to what I wrote above and attempt to answer your question Jim...
I guess I feel that (and maybe I'm wrong or my opinion could change but), if there are movies that aren't ones we feel compelled to return but can nevertheless appreciate for how they demonstrate something, then "EMPIRE" should be a movie we value because of what it demonstrates. At least (and only) *in theory*.
The problem with the reality of it, I think, is that EMPIRE, like Funny Games, just doesn't work to begin with. The problem with both being that the idea they set out to prove hardly matters because everybody is smart enough to get the point before even going in. Which would come back to my point that, as much as we lovers of cinematic integrity might hate to admit it, "the concept" matters quite a bit. And there's a certain amount of integrity involved at that stage, before the movie has even begun being made.
Warhol's stylistic approach works gloriously at proving his point but his point we hardly cared for. So I guess I would say, no, somebody does not have to build the bridge in order for us to get the idea. Why? Because a bridge isn't that difficult for us to grasp. But two women's identities merging together while they are in isolation? For that we may need Bergman to build us a "Persona."
I don't necessarily think it's better to not see a movie than to see it, but I do believe there are plenty of movies that simply are not worth seeing. This only comes after seeing hundreds of movies of the course of one's life. I pity professional film critics who are required to see many films every year they are certain in advance that they will not enjoy. I read plenty about the deplorable "Transformers" sequel and determined that spending two-plus hours viewing it would be a waste of time.
Or would it? One can never know such things until one sees the movie in question firsthand, no matter how many detailed synopsies one reads or listens to. Many of my friends and acquaintences would not be interested in watching "Scream 3", no matter how enthusiastically I encourage them. I could tell them about the uttely brilliant example of cinematic misdirection that occurs during Jenny McCarthy's death scene, and how no one character in the story is more fooled than the viewer because of it. I could describe in detail what happens in the scene and in later scenes that set up and confounded my expectation...but then, they would be deprived of experiencing what I so admired for themselves.
Jim: This is indeed an interesting thought experiment. The Warhol-to-Reid quote makes me laugh because it makes me think of another quote you've used here at Scanners several times -- the one by one of the Coens in relation to plot ambiguity. To paraphrase, in essence Warhol is saying, "Well, you could see my movie, but where would that get you?" He's taken what the Coens apply in small pieces (the mystery of Chigurh behind the door or the meaning of A Serious Man) and applied it to his entire film. And, here, you're still right: The film has to actually exist to create this scenario in which actually watching the film is meaningless (or at least potentially meaningless). Again, fascinating.
P.S. I watched 3-D CGI FernGully on Another Planet. The novel was much better.
What I think what this may really be about (or should be really about) is about the difference between the idea and the execution of the idea: and it isn't proper art if it doesn't follow through with the execution correctly.
Japanese proverb: Art is the illusion of spontaneity.
Taken with this quotation above, I believe that art is a space where the artist knows where to insert the spontaneity; there should literally be places where the idea blends with the idea of spontaneity, that is, there should be moments where the artists inserts moments of spontaneity (be spontaneous here; and here; and here).
So, therefore when art is just an idea or doesn't exist or only exists as an idea in one's mind, then that's not the proper art in terms of execution, which would be knowing where to insert the spontaneity. Putting a stationary camera pointed at the Empire State Building might feel spontaneous at first, but how would you keep the spontaneity going? You couldn't, so the art really ended in the first few seconds.
Sandor Vegh knows how to find and bring out the spontaneity in the pieces. I have the cd, but haven't put it on youtube yet, but listen to some samples of his interpretation of Bach. Notice how it feels spontaneous when it is meant to be and every single second of it is controlled toward that end. http://www.amazon.com/gp/recsradio/radio/B00004SDHJ/ref=pd_krex_listen_dp_img?ie=UTF8&refTagSuffix=dp_img
I think a lot of interpreters of art don't know that there are precise moments where to insert spontaneity: which should affect the way art is executed, and also artists who don't think of art as spontaneity; it should be designed FOR spontaneity.
When you ask your everyman how would you define, say, a good movie, the answer will 9 times out of 10 will be that "You can watch it repeated times." Well, if the spontaneity is interpreted properly in the art then the answer should be "able to keep watching it over and over" and not just "repeated viewings" but "it's alive...somehow." If someone tells one a good idea for art, then you'd probably have a feeling of spontaneity at first for the idea, but then the spontaneity would die because it comes from the execution not the pondering of spontaneity (would one know where to insert spontaneity? I doubt it), but if someone did know when to insert the spontaneity and it was perfectly alive in one's mind, then I figure that they should probably be equal; like with Beethoven; he must have known his late quartets (also played great by Vegh) were alive and well in his mind...although, there are others who just play it rather flat; great music can sound like crap from crap players. It's the same with movies. A good idea can be crap realized OR imagined or good realized or imagined; that's from both the writer and the director.
Take someone like Hitchcock who said the he had the whole movie in his head already, which took the fun out of making it. Well, if art is the illusion of spontaneity, there should be moments that kind of say "insert spontaneity here" that should have made it fun to make. So, it seems the execution wasn't lined up with the idea/the idea wasn't lined up with the execution and was just kind of an idea that may have been spontaneous on parts, but wasn't designed specifically for spontaneity.
I guess this all means, if someone who really knows what art is about (spontaneity) then it's about the same thing.
But why does art have to be spontaneous? Maybe that's what life is about and art is trying to tell people what life is about for our lives. In being alive and spontaneous, maybe it tells us why we are alive and spontaneous.
I have contemplated this SO much recently. I realized this very idea is one of the strongest tools I use to point me in the right direction of finding good movies, a skill essential to any film buff. And the more I read and listen and watch, the more I am able to hone this skill thereby finding the good ones and skipping the bad ones. After all, we only have so much time in this world, and isn't it best spent on the good movies? Of course I'm not always right (is anybody?), but I'm a LOT better now than before, and my reward is a higher batting average of finding those good ones.
Your Godard anecdote reminded me of this: When Tim Burton was making "Frankenweenie", he wanted the pet cemetery to look like something out of "Frankenstein" (1931). But instead of going back to the film for direct re-creation, he went from memory (the film he carried in his heart) for the appropriate look. He later revisited "Frankenstein" and saw how flawed and pale the sets were in comparison to how he remembered it and benefited from using his glorified memory version instead.
I saw EMPIRE when there was a Warhol exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts a couple of years ago. Okay, I didn't watch the whole thing of course, but I spent at least 10 minutes staring at it, and I tried to imagine actually "watching" it as a film. It was projected quite large on one of the museum walls. The image was beautiful, grainy black-and-white 16mm film, the top half of the Empire State building in a telephoto shot against a grey sky. As I walked away and looked at other objects and paintings in the room, once in a while I'd glance back at the haunting film, and it occurred to me that it was no different than a painting. I thought it would make a beautiful, framed, living photograph on a wall, something not meant to be watched as a film. I'm not a Warhol fan, but that bit of film I saw was my favorite piece by him.
Back to the original question - are some movies better if you don't see them - I've had discussions with fellow film buffs where it becomes obvious that some of us imagine we'd seen a film, when in fact have not. I've been guilty of this myself, having seen so many movies I have a false memories. When something is popular enough in the collective psyche, it's easy to piece together a story from the numerous fragments of clips, articles and images. This is especially true of great classics or silent films. I've caught more than one person who was convinced they had seen Metropolis, when it's been more the idea of it.
For years I was sure I had seen Gone With the Wind as a kid, but when I finally saw it realized I imagined it. In my false memory, it was a great epic romantic adventure. After finally seeing it, I realized it was a huge kitschy soap opera, that spawned the generation of filmmakers that created Dallas and Dynasty. I guess for me that one was better in my mind.
The opposite was true for Keaton's The General. In my mind I imagined a fast-paced gag-filled romp. I thought I'd seen the film in high school, but what I saw was a clip of the famous locomotive/rail-tie stunt. When I finally watched the entire film this year, it quickly became one of my all-time favorite films.
I can't believe anyone would want to watch Empire or Sleep. I don't understand why anyone would even care that they exist, or why they "deserve to be studied by scholars." They don't deserve to be studied by scholars, unless you believe that everything ever created by any famous artist deserves to be studied by scholars.
But that's really the crux of the matter, isn't it? "Famous artist." If Empire had been made by my dad on a trip to New York, it wouldn't even occur to anyone that it's something worth watching, or even something worth existing. It's like with Duchamp and his damn urinal. If some random guy walked into a museum or gallery carrying a urinal and said, "This is my art," he'd be booted out onto the street. But somehow, because it's Duchamp who says so, it magically becomes Art. It becomes Important.
If you really want to watch Sleep, grab a camera, go into someone's bedroom while they're sleeping, film them for five hours, and then watch it. Really, is there any difference?
In my "early years" I worked in a specialty video store and this seemed to be the running conversation late into many evenings. We discussed how spectacular, challenging, difficult, and transformative certain films were when, in many instances, the films being discussed had never been seen. Often times the praise poured out onto a specific film was due to the director's previous films, the performances by the leading actors, the cinematography, etc.
I encountered this again just recently when discussing the performance of Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood. Accolades, upon accolades were poured out on the performance and the person I was speaking to had never seen the film! It seems that in many instances films (and the components that make up the film) become iconic and are heralded before they are ever seen by large audiences. Another example would be Heath Ledger's performance in TDK. Who hadn't already made up their mind on what a great performance it was prior to seeing the film?
Now, does a film retain its status if it goes unseen? I think it does. What's been put to film has been put to film. Touch of Evil will always be a masterpiece regardless of those who have seen it, or those who have not and are simply praising Welles. In my opinion, what changes is the merit of those praising (or condemning) when they haven't seen the film. When you have participated firsthand in watching a film, at that point praise or condemnation is almost a rite of passage. If someone ‘actually watched it’ and sat through the junk or the jewel, their praise or "0" (or 1/2, 1, 1 1/2) star review now carries more value and credibility. The viewer get to truly I can sing all the praises in the world and others can deduct that the film must be great and further the praise, but it really is still the individual's experience.
While reading this post, I kept thinking about some of John Cage's shittier pieces.
And I *like* John Cage! What a monumental figure!
But still!
Last spring, on my first trip to Paris, I saw two Warhol films at the Cinémathèque Français: "Blowjob," which held my interest, and "Eating Too Fast," which starts out good but lost me in the second half. (If anyone's interested, I blogged about them at http://chuck-a-luck.blogspot.com/2009/04/two-films-by-andy-warhol.html .)
What a timely post; I finally caught up with "Funny Games" (U.S.) the other night, and found myself thinking something similar to this. I had read about the film (both versions) from a number of sources, including Scanners, and I knew exactly what I was getting into when I sat down to watch it. The experience of watching it did provoke a few visceral emotional responses, but it wasn't able to surprise me. I knew that "Funny Games" was designed to be a cinematic "test", and, because I knew that, I felt impervious to it. Why did I need to see this movie? Seeing it did nothing more than confirm my expected opinion of it. I can now remember images from it, I can appreciate some of the performances in it, and I can feel free to pontificate about the film without hesitation; otherwise, seeing it wasn't terribly different from reading about it. But, then again, I would never know that if I chose not to see it.
I wonder what I could learn from watching "Empire". Would it be any different than going to New York City and staring at the building for eight hours? Of course, a movie theatre might have air conditioning.
I don't think there's any real answer to your question, but I do think that the root of the question is linked to the idea of knowing. In the case of "Funny Games", I now know what I've seen, and I don't have to trust the reporting of a critic or friend. "Funny Games" is no longer a concept for me; it is a living, breathing movie. "Funny Games" (Austria), however, will always be a concept in my mind.
Funny Games shut the book on this for me, as it was explicitly concerned with this question, and it was explicitly obnoxious to put up with.
I liken it to the big speech in Ken Russell's "Savage Messiah," when Gaudier warns against locking up art in museums and "worshiping" it. To me, Warhol's stuff in particular sounds like claptrap that *demands* you worship it.
Justanotherfilmbuff's comment about spoof films is, in fact, the actual case with most SNL/Lorne Michaels films. The problem those films make is in assuming if a single premise joke is funny a whole movie built around the single joke will be even funnier.
Even for someone with some great spoofs under his belt like Mel Brooks, a movie like High Anxiety proves the point. I can see Mel saying, "Wouldn't it be funny if all these birds gather around the main character but instead of attacking, like in 'The Birds', they crap all over the place?" Yeah, that's kind of funny as a spoken 'what if' joke but somehow isn't that funny on film.
I recently enjoyed reviewing some movies I haven't seen more than I ever could have enjoyed sitting through them (http://torontomovieguy.blogspot.com/2010/06/movies-i-havent-seen.html).
And then I finally saw Out One, an experience I've dreamed about for over 25 years. I'm overjoyed to have seen it. My dreams fell so far short of the reality.
All experiences are worth something, sure, but since the one sure thing about life is that we're all going to skim off just a tiny fraction of the experiences available, skipping a few movies the idea of which make your heart somehow sink seems like a reasonable place to start....
I find the existence of a movie like "Funny Games" to be an interesting thing. I'm intrigued by the idea of a movie designed to criticize the audience for watching it--and the debate it inspires of whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But I would never actually watch it, not even if I didn't already know how it ends. So for me, that movie's better without being seen.
On a related note, I never watch a movie just to see "what everyone's talking about." I go to have an experience of my own if I think it can benefit my life.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, infamously awful films like "Plan 9 from Outer Space" take on a certain cult appeal, due to their notoriety. One begins to assume that the film must be hilarious, because of the way it is described. There is something oddly compelling in the tale of incompetent director Ed Wood, particularly since his life was dramatized by Johnny Depp. The idea that the movie actually won awards for being the worst movie ever made makes it a conversation piece.
And then you actually try to watch it, and discover that while it has scattered moments of unintentional hilarity, it's mostly just boring and terrible.
I find this idea to be most applicable to the creation of art. Finding disappointment when confronted with an actual six-foot man eating chicken when the marquis outside promises a SIX FOOT MAN-EATING CHICKEN could lead one to create spectacle on the boorish CGI level or want perhaps to concoct wonders of the soul that deliver on their promise.
I find the idea of living in appreciation of the unwitnessed without application to creation to be a bit grim. But art need not only be in the creation of a physical thing, perhaps that promise or idea could lead to an appreciation of love in one's own life, or an understanding of actual events from another perspective.
Thinking is good. Until its bad.
Jim, to suggest that a film can be better as a concept than as an experience seems like an idea that contradicts your own philosophy of film (correct me if I'm wrong): that it's all about what is onscreen at the moment.
Maybe you can defend a piece like "Empire" on the grounds that it is a work of art, not entertainment. I don't think that's workable, however, because the value of art is in the experience; it is more tangible than abstract. Yes, Captain Ahab in "Moby-Dick" is valuable as a go-to analogy for all monomaniacs in media, but it's true worth is in the experience of reading Melville's prose, savoring the leisurely pace and poetic insight of each sentence. Without it, "Moby-Dick" is a parable, not a work of art. And what is "The Sistine Chapel" without the actual imagery? What is Beethoven's 9th if you merely think of it as an expression of French Revolutionary ideals and never bother listening to it?
Well, of course, sometimes when you see a film you realize the execution was a disservice to the concept. But perhaps you missed this paragraph (and the headline):
BTW, I haven't seen "Empire."
I apologize if my tone sounded confrontational, since that wasn't what I was going for. I realize that this is a thought experiment; as for how the experiment is "working" with me, I just have a hard time even trying to imagine a work of art whose concept and value are one and the same. (The backward narrative of "Memento," for instance, is an interesting concept, but it wouldn't mean much if not for the execution of individual scenes within the narrative.)
No worries, Max. You were going with the experiment. I just wanted to be sure my intentions weren't misunderstood.
This post brings to mind Keats's line, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter." The anticipation of an experience is sometimes more fulfilling than the real thing even if the real thing is fulfilling itself. I don't know if that's the point you're making or not, but this is my immediate reaction.
Lettrisme (1960) :
Supertemporal art = "The supertemporal frame was a device for inviting and enabling an audience to participate in the creation of a work of art. In its simplest form, this might involve nothing more than the inclusion of several blank pages in a book, [or a sealed canister of unexposed film stock], for the reader[/audience] to add his or her own contributions."
Infinitesimal art = " a work of art which, by its very nature, could never be created in reality, but which could nevertheless provide aesthetic rewards by being contemplated intellectually."
see Alain Satié
Susan Sontag : "[..] Nor can silence, in its literal state, exist as the property of an art work — even of works like Duchamp's readymades or Cage's 4'33", in which the artist has ostentatiously done no more to satisfy any established criteria of art than set the object in a gallery or situate the performance on a concert stage. There is no neutral surface, no neutral discourse, no neutral theme, no neutral form. Something is neutral only with respect to something else. (An intention? An expectation?) As a property of the work of art itself, silence can exist only in a cooked or nonliteral sense. (Put otherwise: if a work exists at all, its silence is only one element in it.) Instead of raw or achieved silence, one finds various moves in the direction of an ever-receding horizon of silence — moves which, by definition, can't ever be fully consummated. One result is a type of art which many people characterize pejoratively as dumb, depressed, acquiescent, cold. But these privative qualities exist in a context of the artist's objective intention, which is always discernible. To cultivate the metaphoric silence that's suggested by conventionally lifeless subjects (as in much of Pop Art) and to construct "minimal" forms which seem to lack emotional resonance are in themselves vigorous, often tonic choices."
The Aesthetics of Silence, in Styles of Radical Will, 1994
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"
John Keats (1819)
Most bad movies are better if you don't see them, the true gems are the ones that exceeds already high expectations. One of my all time great disappointment was watching Jules et Jim. I know that I should love it, I know that I should be moved by it. I´m not the greatest fan of french new wave, but I have never been bores watching any of them. I probably like the early films of Goddard more than those of Traffaut, but still it's Jules et Jim, and yet i was bored out of my life watching it. The characters irritated me, I did not care about them or what happened to them.. So thats and example of a movie that I found was much better until i actually saw it. Because now instead of being the person who just has not seen Jules et Jim yet, I'm the guy who has to defend the indefensible: not liking Jules et Jim.
1. Snakes on a Plane
2. Hot Tub Time Machine
Much better if you don't see them.
Also: I loved the first Matrix movie, never saw the sequels, and don't regret it at all. From what I've heard about them, I'm guessing my imagined ending to the story is a LOT better what the Wachowskis actually offered.
The Matrix sequels actually make the first film worse, by filling in a lot of the blanks in such a manner that what initially seemed cool and hip and mysterious in the first film actually starts to look pompous and stupid.
I'm amazed - over two dozen comments and not one reference to Star Wars episodes 1-3.
Oops.
Seriously, I think you started this out as a thought experiment about movies that are considered good, but are not practically watchable (such as "Empire"), as opposed to bad and therefore legitimately not watchable (such as Bob K's candidate "Snakes on a Plane").
So what would make a movie such as you intend it? Robert Fuller touched on the "famous artist" influence. To that I'd reply that the difference between a famous artist filming the Empire State Building for 8 hours, and someone like me doing it, is intent and knowledge. The artist intends to do it, and knows what he/she is doing when doing it. Me, I'm just wasting a bunch of film.
I think what would qualify a movie for such an accolade would be taking its premise to an extreme. Both "Empire" and "Sleep" spend a lot of time presenting something that cannot move, or doesn't move a lot. That's fine as a concept, but by taking it to the extreme of doing it for 8 hours, renders it almost a self-caricature.
And I have to ask...did Warhold actually stand there monitoring the camera the entire time (or running it, if he was using an unpowered camera)? Or did he just set it up, let it start running and walk away? If the latter, I think he copped out of his own artistic statement.
So you have to be famous in order to have intent and knowledge of what you're doing?
I think if the film does exist and the artist does not want you to see it then why bother filming it in the first place? Wharhol could just as easily have said he filmed it and given the appaerance of doing so without actually putting in the necessary time. However, I have an example of a concept that was more engaging than the actual piece of resulting film would have been. Years ago I convinced a group of friends that there was once a television show called "The T. Rex Show" back in the 80's and that it was about a tie wearing dinosaur that worked in an office and was always getting into trouble with the boss. One friend caught on and inserted himself into the joke and we continued to describe this show to our other friends who were shocked that they had never seen or heard of this show (we said it ran in Canada for one season on a community channel). Anyway, my point it that conceptual "art" or film can be just as good, and often times better, than any psychical creation because it allows people to use their imagination about how "amazing" something is that doesn't actually exist. It's fun for a short conversation or joke, but why would you want to watch an 8+ hour stationary shot of the Empire State Building when the notion of it is all you really need in order to know what it's about.
Greg, I found your story about the "fake dinosaur show" interesting, because . . . it really exists! ABC ran the show "Dinosaurs" from 1991 to 1994, with a protagonist similar to what you dscribed. Here's a link on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_(TV_series)
I barely remember the show itself (although I saw several episodes of it back in the day), but I did remember the catch phrase "Not the momma!" And with a Google of that phrase, I was able to find the entry above.
Perhaps this proves the subconscious power of movies or television. Some of our memories of media experiences are so subtle, so deep, we forget about the reality and assume they're imagined -- the opposite of what happened with Meinert and "Gone with the Wind."
Still, your point is taken. I can almost guarantee your "made up" take of the show was at least as good, if not better, than the execution of the real show itself.
Movies, like any art, do not exist in a void. Some depend heavily on external context for their value, while others do not. Warhol's movies only make sense in the context of Warhol's body of work, not necessarily as stand-alone pieces of art. "Empire" or "Sleep" could not be made by your typical person, because the typical person is not a famous person. These films are well-known because the person who made the films is well-known. In a way, this type of art work can be very intimate for the viewer, because it depends very heavily on our own knowledge of Andy Warhol, of New York City, of the Empire State Building, etc. We have to invent our own story for the film, so for each viewer will likely have wildly different (and very personal) interpretations.
The headline in this thread made me think of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", a book many people have heard about but few actually read. I have read Joyce's other work and Ellmann's great biography, but have very little interest in actually reading all the way through the "Wake", because I know that a full appreciation of the book would require a significant investment of energy reading up on many, many external sources to which Joyce alludes. Rather than spend 20 years writing the book, Joyce might have been better off if he'd just written a hundred pages or so and died with the novel "unfinished", like all of Kafka's novels. The idea of the book might have been enough - he didn't need to actually finish the damn thing.
I think the art that affects us most does so because it agitates questions, and then leaves them unanswered.
I've seen some of those films by Andy Warhol, and... they are really boring and pointless. They offer nothing from an intellectual or aesthetic point of view. They are just a waste of celluloid.
So yes, some movies are better if you don't see them.
I don't get the feeling that Warhol was talking about the effect of his movies on the audience, so much as he was talking about their effect on his reputation. A few very articulate people saw them, found them provocative, talked about them pro and con, and in no time the name of Andy Warhol, filmmaker, was on everyone's lips. (How nice for him.) That was the concept of these films, I think: What is the least I can do with a movie camera that will force influential people to talk about me?
Would it have served Warhol's reputation to have more and more people see the films and thus be able to make up their own minds about them? Of course not. They're all but unwatchable. He understood this. He had fun playing with fame, and good for him.
Now, as to the thought experiment in general. Does the bridge have to exist for us to be able to jump off it? Well, as our beloved former president once said, it depends on what your definition of "is" is. A long time ago, Preston Sturges had an idea for a movie called O Brother Where Art Thou, which he never made but only had one of his characters in the movie Sullivan's Travels talk about. Many years later, Lawrence Kasdan made Grand Canyon, in which Steve Martin played a movie producer who spoke of that hypothetical movie as an inspiration. The bridge didn't exist, but Kasdan managed to jump off it in a way Sturges never would have anticipated. A bit later than that, the Coen brothers came along and finally made the bridge real. Neither Sturges nor Kasdan could possibly have imagined the bridge it would finally be. (So was it a bridge too far?) At any rate, now we can all jump off the actual bridge that Preston Sturges first imagined. Or not. It's entirely up to us. But some among us didn't have to wait for the Coen brothers to take the leap.
Personally, I prefer movies to concepts, but that's just me. However, in my mind, I have written many treatments for the movie Rounders 2, and now I hear they're trying to get it made for real. I'm not sure I'm looking forward to it. I'm probably going to feel that my idea, my bridge, my leap, was better.
This reminds me of an incident in the Illuminatus Trilogy by Robert Anton Wilson. One character at a party relates how he saw a story in a magazine called "The Man with no wife, no horse and no mustache." He immediately closes the magazine because, he says, there is no way that the story could be as good as the title.
The only Warhol movie I ever saw was Andy Warhol's Dracula, which is on my personal list of worst films that I've ever seen.
I used to think Warhold was a joke but I went to an exhibition and saw some of the soup can paintings and, I have to say, my opinion of his art entirely changed. The same thing happened for me with a much less controversial artist, Van Gogh. I had never liked "the Potato Eaters" because it seemed so depressing to me. Seeing it in person - it was an entirely different painting. Instead of seeing depressed overworked starving people, I saw people who were happy to be eating together after a hard day's work like any modern family. It's a joyful painting, the subtleties of which were lost by the flattening impact of photographic copies.
Some things you have to see with your own eyes.
I've read a lot about the First Blood movies (better known as the "Rambo" movies). I find them fascinating to read about. I have no intention of watching them.
In this case, these aren't "good" movies, but fascinating cultural artifacts. Much like Warhol's stuff.
I'm not sure what my point is, but it's in here somewhere. . . . maybe that some movies are good because of the experience that an audience can have watching them, and other movies are good (or valuable) for other reasons. The movies that fascinate me that I'm not interested in seeing tend to be movies that are interesting for cultural or historical reasons rather than artistic ones.
I've seen all of the Rambo movies, and I have to say that the first one and the last one are the only ones that hold up as movies. The second one is terrible as a movie, but it's a fascinating exploration of the thinking built into right-wing politics. The third one is just awful, and I believe Sly Stallone made the fourth one just to wash the terrible taste out of his mouth from the third one.
Of course, "great" is a subjective term. Sometimes it means quality in its own right, and sometimes it means comparative with a work's peers, especially if it plants a flag that influences others.
Citizen Kane is the latter kind of "great" film to me. I can't argue its profound innovation (the cinematography, the non-linear storytelling and subtlety) compared to other films, but when I first watched it, I realized that it was that innovation I was expected to reward, not the movie-going experience.
I found I didn't really care about Charles Foster Kane, and that "Rosebud" was more an O Henry ending than an earned conclusion to a true psychological character study. Upon seeing the movie, I was forced to judge it for myself rather than second-hand reporting of its significance, and came away underwhelmed.
This is precisely the sort of pretentious nonsense that drove me out of the art scene. Both the creation of something that is not intended to be seen, but for which the mere act of creation is supposed to be "sufficient"; and the endless self-important pontificating about works that one has never actually experienced. Does a seemingly endless film of the Empire State Building say anything at all besides "I had a lot of film to waste, and nothing more interesting to waste it on?"
It's all just so much mental masturbation. The sort of thing beloved of shallow Post-Modernists and self-absorbed Deconstructionists who are only passingly familiar with art; but fully in love with the sounds of their own voices. People who are more interested in being "hip" and "edgy" and "avante garde", than they are in being creative.
Warhol, for me, is a very mixed bag. On the one hand, he raised some profound questions on the nature of art and art culture. On the other hand, he was a brilliant huckster who fully understood the nature of the scene in which he moved, and played it for all it was worth. In the end, like too many satirists, he began taking himself far too seriously; and what was once satire became earnest.
It may seem like a slightly strange example for someone to put forward, and it may be a slight twisting/bending of the original idea as posed by Jim, but when I considered the concept of a film that I personally don't feel I need to actually see in order to be physically and emotionally affected by it in the way that its director/writer intended, the first type of film I thought of was the likes of Eli Roth's HOSTEL...Perhaps in my slightly younger days of 18-21, I may have been more keen on (or just less averse to) the idea of deliberately testing my personal tolerance limits with regards to extreme violence and mutilation and sadism depicted in the cinema, but at my current age of 27 (and possibly ever since I had to walk out of WOLF CREEK in order to avoid vomiting), I generally try to avoid movies that I have a reasonable expectation will contain this kind of material; even if I could find merit in the film intellectually, I can safely predict that, physically, I would have a bad time with the likes of HOSTEL, and would regret spending my time and money on the experience (I smile wryly when I remember that I came close to passing out in my seat during the dog-face-eating moment in HANNIBAL!)
The trouble is, I was unable to suppress my curiosity about whether the film was REALLY as horrifying and depraved as I was imagining it to be, but I couldn't bring myself to actually WATCH the thing - so I did what in this day-and-age is sometimes the next best thing: I investigated one of those websites run by-and-for parents which provides a detailed description of the adult content, all the while thinking that I would be informed by the text without being affected...but I WAS affected, to the point of nausea! Whether the level of sickness that overcome me is merely one tenth of what the actual movie would have brought on me, or whether the film's images and sound would in fact have had LESS impact on me than what my imagination conjures up, I will probably never know, because even though I find it an interesting question up to a point, it's not SO intriguing to me that I want to settle the matter once-and-for-all by spending 90 minutes of my life being 'entertained' by torture and mutilation and sadism - even allowing for the slight possibility that the experience, at the very least (and as with a lot of horror movies, and a l;ot of cinema in general, I guess) would actually make me feel better for the realisation that it's not me being sliced and diced! There's a German word for that, isn't there? hehe
Let's use Occam's Razor to explain Warhol's buffet-line comment: Isn't it better to maintain a state of anticipation for the unseen even indefinitely, rather than collapsing that expectation by actually seeing a less-than-stellar film?
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