A couple of you are still not getting why I got so profoundly, profanely disgusted with the professional reviewer who praised a small-scale movie at length, who said that it was the kind of movie we should get more of, and then went on to say that since it had no large-scale action scenes or glorious special effects audiences would be “better off seeing it on home video.” You both said, that’s helpful advice! After all, movies are fifteen dollars where I live! A family outing is a major expense! I have a big screen TV! What did he do that’s so wrong? Let me see if I can break it down for you. First, let’s explain that I do understand that going to the movies is a financial decision, especially in areas with those premium prices. I am fortunate enough to live in an area where no non 3-D, non-Imax movie costs more than eight dollars, and where some matinees are less than six, and I still have to make the decision with every movie that interests me: do I want to go out and see this in the theatre? Do I want to wait til it hits Netflix? Even in my area, I cannot see everything that interests me, because I cannot afford either the time or the expense. I **get** that. I also get that it’s possible not to understand or more properly to care about the extra added value you get from seeing a smaller-scale, character-based movie on the big screen, with an audience. One of you mentioned TWELVE ANGRY MEN in particular, saying it looks “just as good” at home, on your own giant television. You haven’t had the special kick that comes from seeing that particular movie with a large and appreciative audience, which is significant. You may not be able to get why an intimate and immersive drama derives additional power when seen with a large group, and that the big screen can amplify things other than CGI and explosions. But this is an aesthetic point. Not one I’m arguing here. But the two of you who raised this point are book people. A writer, an editor. Imagine a book reviewer who said of the hardcover novel you just published, “This is a great book, with a terrific plot, an amazing setting, well-realized characters, and prose of spectacular beauty, the kind of book we need more of?” And THEN went on to say, in his REVIEW, his PROFESSIONALLY PUBLISHED REVIEW, “However, it’s a hardcover. It’s expensive. You can go to the library and get it for free. Or wait for paperback. Or borrow it from a friend. Save your money for when Stephen King writes a new one.” You would rightly conclude that that reviewer was a bloody jackass. Imagine a music reviewer, a professional music reviewer, who said that this hot young band you never heard of represented a great new sound, and is really great, and that you should borrow a copy from a friend, because they’re not Lady Gaga. You would rightly conclude that the reviewer was a bloody jackass. I am a writer, and I get that books are financial decisions too. I frequently run into readers, some of them friends, who proudly tell me they love my books so much that they have reserved them all at libraries. (Because, the unspoken part of the compliment goes, they would never actually buy one.) I am forced to take the compliment as intended. You love my books, but you have other uses for your purchasing dollar. I understand. Thank you. As long as you got them legally, as long as you appreciate them, I am not complaining. At least the libraries bought their copies. I get something. I will take the intended compliment. But a book reviewer who said these books are great, these books are terrific, these books are amazing, read these books, we need more books like this, but don’t pay a dime for these books, because they’re not quote-unquote bestsellers, they’re not the Stephen King books that you pay money for, is overstepping his bounds. The two of you with big TVs at home and local high ticket prices will now go back to your standby. “Yes, but movies are expensive. They DO cost fifteen dollars where I live. I have to hire a babysitter. We go out to dinner. It takes hours out of our day. I need the reviewer to tell me whether I should go to the expense or wait until they’re available on my big screen!” And my answer to you is: a good reviewer isn’t doing that ALREADY? You can’t make that decision from reading a thorough review ALREADY? Review: “Lars Vonstrom here presents a soft and lyrical coming-of-age story based on the Sigmund Helstagg’s memoirs of growing up in his small town in Norway; it’s a movie of small pleasures, but captures the beauty and the terror of childhood with unflinching majesty, and will be remembered as a masterpiece.” Or whatever. Review: “This tale of the downfall of a small-scale gangster occupies a milieu of cheap tenement apartments, smoky basement card games, grubby rooftops and cramped jail cells: a world where a man will commit any crime to get a little more cash, a little more respect, but where death can come without warning. It also features one of the most frightening interrogation scenes in movie history and the greatest performance in the career of screen legend Morris Lipshitz.” Or whatever. Are you so helpless you can’t tell from those reviews whether the aesthetic of the films in question are such that you in particular want to spend money on them? Whether you’re willing to call the babysitter? Or do you really, really need the reviewer to then say (of a movie he liked mind you!), “but there are no big-scale explosions in it, you really are better off waiting until you can see it for free?” You really think it should be a reviewer’s job to say of any movie that’s not a theme park ride that even if it is well-written and well-acted and a commendable work of art in every other way, that it’s still not the kind of movie you pay money for because it doesn’t make the seats shake? That the only acceptable exchange for ticket price is buildings falling over? That praise of any other achievement must be tempered by the caveat that you should get it for free? Fine, then. Then that hardcover you just spent a year putting through production can be praised to the skies based on its unique narrative voice and the reviewer is not a jackass for then making a point of advising potential readers that it will be just as available at the library. Do you not get this?
Posted on: Thu, 25 Sep 2014 13:45:21 +0000
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